The Protégé (9 page)

“It’s all like you thought.”

“Yeah, but now two other sources have confirmed it. People I trust.”

“How did you find out this stuff, Quentin? Who did you talk to?”

Stiles shook his head. “Don’t ask.”

“Come on,” Gillette pushed.

“Before I started QS, I wasn’t just with the Army Rangers and the Secret Service. I worked in another area of the government, too. We had dealings with some of these people.”

“What area was it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Quentin, I—”

“Don’t push it, Chris. Really.”

Gillette took a deep breath. “So, if I don’t play ball with the Carbones, I’ll have problems with the construction of both the stadium and the casino, and I might be denied the ability to operate the casino when it’s ready to open.”

“Exactly. But there are . . .
consulting
firms that can take care of all that for you.” Stiles smirked. “If you get my drift. You pay them a flat fee for something called ‘general business services,’ and they make the payoffs for you. They skim a little off the top, but you don’t get your hands dirty and they make sure you don’t have any . . .
interruptions.
”

“I bet it isn’t just a little off the top, either.”

“It’s not as bad as you think. Over time, markets get efficient. This one’s no different. There’s enough of those firms now that the skim isn’t outrageous.”

“The problem is,” Gillette explained, “I want to bring in a construction group from the outside. There aren’t any based in Vegas that can handle both jobs at the same time and get them done as fast as I want.”

“I think as long as you hire one of these consulting firms, it doesn’t matter that much. Might be a little more expensive, but as long as the Carbones get their pound of flesh, they don’t care if you use someone outside.”

Gillette brightened. “Good, then talk to a few of them for me. Are they all out in Las Vegas?”

“The ones you want to deal with.”

“I’m going out there soon. Do phone interviews with the best ones and narrow it down to two, then we’ll meet with them while I’m in town.”

“Got it.”

Gillette took another drink of water. “Some of these other New York crime families are in the paper every week. Somebody’s being arrested for something, but I’ve never heard much about the Carbones.”

“They’re run by a guy named Joseph Celino who hates publicity as much as you do.”

“Get some more on them from your contacts, will you? As much as you can. Specifically on Celino.”

“Sure, sure.” Stiles pushed his plate away, a few bites of the steak uneaten. “Man,” he said loudly, “that wouldn’t have happened a year ago. Wasting food like that, I mean. Hell, I would have had seconds.”

“Like you said, it’ll take a while.” Gillette slipped the Blackberry back into his pocket. “Listen, Friday morning you and I are going to Washington. Then, in the afternoon, we’re going to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to meet with the mayor of a small town down there.”

“You’re really going to follow up with those people in D.C.?”

There was no choice. Gillette had a gut feeling that Daniel Ganze really did know something about his father, and he wasn’t going to miss even the
slightest
opportunity to find out what had happened to that plane sixteen years ago. “I’m going to meet with them at least once more,” he replied. “I don’t think I’ve got anything to lose doing that. Just the time if it turns out to be a dead end.”

“I hope it’s just the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you need to be careful.”

“Always, and I’ll have you there.”

“Why the meeting with the mayor?” Stiles asked.

Gillette liked the fact that Stiles recognized when he didn’t want to talk about something. If only most people he knew understood him so well. “She’s getting in the way of a store Discount America is trying to build in her town, stirring up the natives. She’s calling people in other towns, too. We can’t have that.”

“You going to bring her up to New York for a big, all-expenses-paid weekend? Turn on the Gillette charm at some swanky dinner? Make her an offer she can’t refuse?” Stiles smiled. “If I know you, you’ll have her begging you to bring that store to her town by the time the weekend’s over.”

“I wish.” It wasn’t going to be that easy—not according to Harry Stein, anyway. “I’ve got to get going. I’ve got this ground-breaking ceremony for the new hospital wing we’re building at St. Christopher’s,” he explained, standing. “Why don’t you come with me? We can talk more about the QS deal on the way over. It would probably help for me to let you in on all the things to expect when you sell your business. There’s more to it than you think.”

“Sure, and thanks for lunch.”

Gillette grinned as he pushed in his chair. “Lunch is on you, pal. You’re about to bank five large. You can afford it.”

BOYD LOOKED UP
from his desk when he heard the rap on the door. “What is it, Daniel?”

“I did some checking on that Miles Whitman situation,” Ganze replied, moving into the office. “Called over to Justice to see what was what.”

Boyd put down the report he’d been working on. “And?”

“They’re not as stupid as we thought.”

“What do you mean?” Boyd asked.

“It’s taken them some time, but they’ve started to figure out that Whitman must have had help hiding his forty million. It’s hard to hide that big a money transfer these days with the way banks have to report transactions.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“They’ve put out feelers to several different agencies, including the right one. It could take them a few days, maybe even a week, to run it high enough up the flagpole to get an answer, but they’ll get a bite if they have information to trade. Then we’re screwed.”

“We need this.”

“I know.”

Boyd groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Okay, let’s move.”

GILLETTE STOOD
behind a raised podium erected in a field beside St. Christopher’s Memorial Hospital on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was a beautiful early fall afternoon, the sky a deep blue, the air crisp, the summer humidity gone.
Football weather,
Gillette thought as he looked out over the hundred invited guests. Several of the hospital executive officers and board members had already stepped to the microphone to thank him for his personal generosity, and it was his turn to say a few words, which included reminding everyone that it was Everest Capital making the ten-million-dollar donation, not him.

He said a few more things—he hoped the new wing could make a difference to more than a few people’s lives, hoped the research lab the wing would include could produce results, and assured the hospital executives that Everest Capital would continue to support them in the future with their new projects. Gillette was close to several of the hospital executives—people he’d dealt with for years—so he knew the money would be used for the right purposes and not siphoned off into some leech’s pocket. He was generous with money he controlled, but careful. Because he knew how easily money could fall into the wrong hands. It was like water, always following the path of least resistance.

As Gillette stepped down from the podium, one of the construction company’s representatives moved forward with a gold shovel Gillette would use for the ceremonial ground breaking and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” Gillette said.

The man smiled from beneath his yellow hard hat, not letting go of the shovel right away.

“What is it?” Gillette asked.

“We’re looking forward to having you in Las Vegas, Mr. Gillette,” the man said quietly. “For everybody’s sake, go with the flow when you get there. Make things easy.” His smile faded. “Or we can make them very hard.”

5

DAVID WRIGHT
drew back the pool cue, hesitated for a moment as he aimed, then struck the white ball hard. A tiny puff of blue chalk flew in the air, and the white ball raced across the table and careered into the seven, sending it toward the far corner pocket. But it skidded against the rail just in front of the pocket and bounced left, then rolled back almost a foot. “Damn it!”

“Too hard,” Gillette observed, checking out the table as the seven came to rest. The ten was all he had to drop—Wright still had five balls on the table. If he knocked the ten in just right, he could set himself up perfectly for the eight and the match would be over. Three games for him—none for Wright.

“
Way
too hard,” Stiles agreed. He was leaning against the wall beside the mahogany cue stand, sipping the iced tea Debbie had brought him.

“I don’t need any coaching from the cheap seats,” Wright snapped.

Stiles laughed. “Just trying to help, my man. I want to see your boss go down as bad as you do. He tells me he’s never been beaten on this table.” He winked at Gillette when Wright wasn’t looking. “I get tired of hearing how good he is.”

“Yeah, well, I almost beat him a couple of times, so screw you.”

Wright and Stiles had just met, but Wright didn’t care about first impressions, Gillette knew. He cared about winning.

“Why don’t
you
play him,” Wright said, gesturing at Stiles.

“I will when he’s done with you,” Stiles answered. “Which looks like it’ll be in about thirty seconds, thanks to that last sorry-ass shot of yours. I thought Chris told me you had game.”

Wright glared at Stiles. “Hey, you can—”

“Enough,” Gillette interrupted, hiding a grin. He dropped the ten and eight quickly, then straightened up. “Looks like Quentin was wrong,” he said. “Only took fifteen seconds.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Rack ’em, David,” Gillette ordered. He picked up a bottled water off the table in front of the cue stand and took several swallows. “You and Quentin are going to play first,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “One game, then the winner gets me. We’re going to settle who’s best right now with a little tournament, but it’s my table so I get a first-round bye.”

“What’s he doing here, anyway?” Wright grumbled, gathering the balls into the rack.

“Quentin’s in charge of my personal security.”

“I thought we had a company doing that.”

“Right, QS.
Quentin Stiles.
He’s the one who got shot in Mississippi last fall. He’s the one who saved my life down there.”

Wright stopped gathering the balls and looked over at Stiles. “Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry.”

Gillette had introduced Stiles to Wright only by his first name.

“I didn’t put two and two together,” Wright continued. “God, you’re a legend around here.” He hesitated. “No offense.”

Stiles pulled a stick from the cue stand. “None taken. I got skin like a rhino.”

Gillette sat at the table as Stiles prepared to break. “McGuire and Company is going to buy QS, and Quentin’s going to join us at Everest when the deal’s done. Which should be in about thirty days. I’m going to propose that he become a special partner at that time. Not a full partner like Faraday and me, but he’s going to have some of the same privileges.”

Wright’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.

“One thing I’m going to do right away is give Quentin a piece of the ups on Everest Eight. You okay with that, David?” Gillette assumed Wright wouldn’t be okay with that. Ups allocated to anyone meant less for everyone else, but Gillette had asked because he wanted to see Wright’s reaction. “Well?”

Wright was waiting for Stiles to break. Stiles gestured for Wright to answer first.

“It’s up to you, Christian,” Wright replied, his voice uncharacteristically subdued. “It’s your firm. If you think it’s the right thing, do it. We’ve been damn successful with you as chairman.”

But Gillette could see Wright wasn’t on board a hundred percent. Which was fine—he wanted Wright to think for himself. He didn’t want his most valuable people doing what they thought he wanted them to do or saying what they thought he wanted them to say. “You sure you don’t have any issues with that?”

Before Wright could say anything, Stiles drew back his stick and sent the cue ball flying toward the triangle of balls at the other end of the table. It exploded with a thunderous crack and four balls dropped—three solids, one stripe.

Gillette had assumed Stiles was good—Stiles had told him how he’d hustled older guys in Harlem pool halls as a teenager, and another QS agent had said he’d been whipped by Stiles when they were on an assignment in Dallas one time—but Gillette had never actually seen Stiles in action. “Pretty good, Quentin.” You could tell by the way he broke that he knew what he was doing. His stroke seemed effortless, but the cue ball had rocketed to the other end of the table. And the result had been impressive—four balls off the break. A lot of that was because he was strong as hell, even in his weakened condition, but you still had to have the coordination to make it all come together.

“Pretty good?”
Stiles ambled down one side of the table toward the spot where the cue ball had ended up. “You only wish you could break like that, Christian,” he said, sizing up the way the balls lay, figuring out the best way to play things. “I’ll take stripes,” he announced.

“But you dropped three solids off the break,” Wright pointed out.

“Yeah, but we’ve got to even this up somehow. If I took solids, it’d be over in two minutes, judging from what I’ve seen of your play.” Stiles grinned. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“That’s the other reason I’m going to be around more,” Stiles said, “to keep Chris humble when it comes to pool.”

“We’ll see,” Gillette said.

“That would be nice,” Wright mumbled.

“Chris.”

The three men glanced toward the door at the sound of Debbie’s voice.

“Yeah, Deb.”

“Kurt Landry is on the phone. Says it’ll only take a second.”

“Okay. Transfer him in here.”

“Right away.”

When the cordless phone on the table in front of the cue stand rang, Gillette picked it up. “Hi, Kurt.”

“Hello, Christian. Two quick things. First, thanks for lunch.”

“Sure.”

“Second, I want to let you know that I spoke to several of the owners about the casino issue, and they wanted me to assure you that you can move forward on that. Everything’s fine there.”

Gillette’s mind raced back to the man who had handed him the shovel at the ground-breaking ceremony, wondering how that encounter fit into all of this. “Good.”

“Other than that, welcome to the NFL. Don’t hesitate to call me if you have any questions or issues.”

“Thanks.”

“What did he want?” Stiles asked as Gillette hung up.

Gillette shook his head, indicating they’d speak later about it. “So, David, no issues with Quentin joining the firm?” he asked again as Stiles bent to line up his next shot. He watched Wright struggle. It was obvious that the younger man wanted to say something, but it was also clear he understood how close Gillette and Stiles were and didn’t want Gillette to think hiring Stiles was bad.

“Well . . .” Wright paused. “What exactly are you going to do for us, Quentin?”

Gillette liked the way Wright was going directly at Stiles, shifting the conversation away from them, not using him as the intermediary. Efficiency was the key in business. And no matter what anyone else at Everest said about Wright, about his arrogance or his brash manner, he was direct as hell. People who were direct made progress, and progress—whether the results were good or bad—was the only way to get to the bottom line.

“I’m going to focus on disaster planning, risk mitigation, and recovery alternatives,” Stiles answered. “I’ve had a lot of experience in those areas both in the private sector and when I was with the Secret Service and the Army Rangers. I’ve found that most entities aren’t really prepared for disasters, even big corporations. Whether the threat is terrorism, internal fraud, fire, bad weather, whatever. Most companies haven’t focused on protecting the entire entity against a disaster. Whether that means the physical plant, computer networks, or employees, they just haven’t done enough. In some cases, they haven’t even analyzed what disasters they face.” He gestured toward Gillette. “Chris wants me to do a full review of all the Everest portfolio companies to make sure your investments are protected as much as possible.”

Wright’s gaze flickered back and forth between Gillette and Stiles. “How much of the ups are you giving him, Christian?”

“One percent.” Gillette saw Wright’s relief immediately. With a twenty-billion-dollar fund, one percent could be a meaningful number, but it was probably well south of what Wright had feared. “I’m going to pay Quentin a million a year in salary, too. He’ll stay in charge of my personal security as well as doing all the other things he just talked about. I think a million’s fair.”

“Of course, of course,” Wright agreed.

“Any more questions?” Gillette asked.

Wright shook his head.

“Will you back me internally on this?”

“Absolutely,” Wright said, “but I’m not sure that’s very important. I mean, I’ll be glad to say something positive about it at the managers meeting, if that’s what you want me to do. But I don’t know if that’ll help much.”

“I’m going to have the managing partners vote on it before then,” Gillette said.

“You probably don’t have to do that,” Wright pointed out. “This is probably something you can do on your own, as chairman. I can take a look at the partnership documents if you want. To make sure.”

“Thanks, but don’t bother,” Gillette said. “I’m going to be extra careful here. Since Quentin’s a friend, I’ll feel better if the partners vote, even if the documents say I can do it on my own.”

“Okay, but then what do you want me to do? I can’t vote, I’m just a managing director.”

“Not anymore.”

Wright’s eyes shot to Gillette’s. “Huh?”

“David, I’ve got good news and bad news. Here’s the bad. Nigel and I have decided to open a Los Angeles office. I know how much you love L.A., but you won’t be going.” Gillette held up his hand when he saw that Wright was about to speak. “But here’s the good: I’ve promoted you to managing partner. I need to talk to Nigel one more time about your compensation, but the promotion’s done.”

“Jesus,” Wright whispered. “Thanks.”

“You deserve it. And I will need your vote as far as Stiles goes.”

“You got it.”

“Of course,” Gillette continued, “this means there won’t be any more incidents like this morning.”

“Incidents?” Wright asked hesitantly, swallowing hard.

“Not being able to reach you.” Wright had finally called Gillette as he and Stiles were headed to the hospital for the ceremony. “Debbie started calling you at nine this morning, but I didn’t hear from you until three-fifteen. What the hell happened?”

“Sorry.”

“Where were you?”

Wright looked down. “I was shopping for my wife. Our wedding anniversary is coming up.”

Gillette looked over at Stiles, who had stopped playing. “That took all day?”

“I’m buying her a diamond ring, and I was designing it with the jeweler.”

“You didn’t have cell phone reception at the jewelry store? Where was this place, in a fallout shelter?”

“I kept getting calls. The guy got pissed and told me to turn it off.” Wright looked up. “Sorry, it won’t happen again.” He took a deep breath. “Thanks again for making me a managing partner; it means a lot to me. A hell of a lot.”

“You’re the youngest managing partner in Everest Capital history,” Gillette said, not completely satisfied with Wright’s explanation. “Beat me by a year.”

Wright gave Gillette a grateful nod for the comment. “Does this mean I can call you Chris from now on?”

“No. In fact, if you take more than thirty minutes to call me back again, you’ll be calling me ‘Mr. Gillette.’ ”

Wright rolled his eyes and motioned for Stiles to start playing again. “By the way, Christian, I meant to tell you, I was able to get a meeting with the Hush-Hush CEO. It’s tomorrow morning. I know this is last minute, but can you come with me?”

“Sure.” Faraday had already called his contact at the French clothing company. As Gillette had suspected, they’d been ecstatic about the possibility of picking up a hot U.S. women’s clothing company. Gillette figured they could bang a big profit on a quick flip here, maybe three to four hundred million without a lot of work, so he wanted to make certain everything went right. “What time is the meeting?”

“Ten o’clock.” Wright watched Stiles sink one striped ball after another. “It should go about two hours.”

“Okay, then I want you to come with me to my Apex meeting. That’s at one.”

“Apex meeting?”

Until now, Gillette had discussed his plans to buy Apex only with Faraday. “Yes, I’m getting together with Russell Hughes tomorrow.”

“He’s the chairman, isn’t he? Why are you meeting with him?”

“I’m gonna buy Apex.”

Wright’s mouth fell slowly open.
“Buy it?”

“Yup.”

“They aren’t doing very well right now. In fact, from what I hear, they’re doing awful.”

“Which gives us an opportunity. Plus they’ve got five billion dollars of dry powder. And if we shoot some of the operating people at their dog investments and put our people in, I think we can turn those companies around fast. I’ve talked to the Strazzi Trust, the people who control Apex, and they’re interested in my offer.”

“Which is?” Wright asked.

“Par, what they have in it.”

“How much is that in dollars?”

“A billion.”

Wright chewed on the figure. “Doesn’t seem too bad for twenty-two companies and five billion of equity commitments.”

Gillette had known Wright would come around fast. The great thing about David was it was what he really thought, too. He wasn’t agreeing just to ingratiate. “The trust people are worried that if they keep Hughes as chairman much longer, their investment won’t be worth anything. Par sounded good.”