Free Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 01 by Predators Page A

Something was up and he needed to know what. He’d scoped out Farrah’s scheme early on and believed he had it under control, tumbled to it early, by God, the dumb suck. But Travis cutting in behind his back, he had not seen that coming.
    “What’d he say to you when he asked about the stock?”
    “What?”
    “I said, what did he say to you then? Did he mention what he wanted it for?”
    “Something about a vote. He wasn’t very clear. Hell, I don’t know. I had debts and at least one loan shark on my case. I needed the money, so I sold it.”
    “He said a vote. You’re sure of that?”
    “Yeah, I’m sure, like, there’s a meeting coming up soon or something. Maybe it had to do with the IPO.”
    “And you thought you’d let him play with your stock for a year and then you’d buy it back.”
    “Well—”
    “Shut up and let me think.”
    “I need to find out what Brenda is doing.”
    “Sit still. You want to know what she’s doing? Put your ear to the wall. They’re next door. But don’t you leave this room. I’m not done with you.”
    Bobby seemed to consider putting an ear to the wall, rose, and then sat down again with a groan. Leo studied the young man on the sofa and scowled. He didn’t like Bobby very much. He thought him a fool for marrying the tramp from the night club and an even bigger fool for letting himself fall into the kind of debt he acquired. His promise to the boy’s mother notwithstanding, his first impulse was to toss him to the wolves. But as he had learned from one moussed, moronic, motivational speaker, that every failure carries within it the seeds of an equal or greater benefit. Bobby Griswold could be useful at the moment. He would help him.
    “Listen to me, boy. Here’s what you need to do.”
    ***
    Travis Parizzi and Brenda Griswold were within fifteen feet of Leo and Bobby. Had they been aware of that fact, they might have been more discreet. But they were caught up in their own conniving and sublimely unaware of their potential for destruction. Brenda might have discounted the danger, but Travis had been around Leo Painter long enough to recognize it, had he known.
    Travis decided the woman could be trusted with what he planned. He did not fool himself about her fundamental dishonesty. She would sell him out in a New York minute, but he also knew she would be driven by self-interest and would work with him as long as the rewards outweighed the consequences.
    “It’s like this,” he said, “Leo is losing his grip. Somehow, he’s got it in his head that licensing ActiVox will save the company’s copper and nickel division. A down economy doesn’t even register on him. ‘Cheap nickel and copper,’ he says. ‘We capture the market by selling low. Low enough to stay in business until things get back to normal.’”
    “What’s that to me?”
    “Between us, with the stock I bought from Bobby, we control enough stock to move him out. I take over the company, make some restructuring moves, and we jump into the black. Minerals are dead. Alternate forms of energy are in. This country we’re visiting has gas reserves. We need to be talking to the minister about drilling, not mining copper and nickel.”
    “I still ain’t heard anything that makes me moist, pal.”
    “Stay with me, here. I can do this without you, by the way. You won’t have the money in time to buy me out, and the deal is with Bobby, not you, anyway.”
    “He’ll do what I tell him.”
    “Yeah? Well, even if you don’t get him to go along, there are other places I can go to get the votes I need.”
    “Bullshit, Parizzi, You must think I believe in the Easter Bunny, too.”
    Travis sighed and wondered if it was even worth the effort to recruit this woman. But the truth of the matter, it would be infinitely easier to pull the thing off with Griswold’s stock than without it. And there was the problem of timing. He plunged ahead.
    “Do you know Leo’s story—how he took over the company?”