Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 01 (8 page)

Chapter 16

When Brenda slipped into the room at three
A.M.,
Bobby was sprawled, mouth agape, dozing in the chair by the window. He’d intended to stay awake and confront her when she returned, but as agitated and angry as he’d become, the two double scotches Leo insisted he drink canceled out all of those good intentions. She was undressed and headed for the bed when he awoke.

“Where’ve you been?”

She stretched and yawned. “I just went to the bathroom. I didn’t want to wake you. Sorry.”

“You didn’t just get up to go. I’ve been sitting here all night waiting for you. You’ve been with Travis.”

“For a little while, yeah. I’m working on getting the stock back. Frankie at the club set it up so we can get it back. You need that, Bobby. Trust me, I have a deal. You should be thanking me, not hassling me about where I’ve been.”

“That won’t wash, Brenda. I…” Leo’s admonition to act as if nothing happened caught him up and Bobby shifted his ground. “And you’re paying for them, how?”

He rose and stepped close to her. He was not the brightest dude in the world, he knew, but he could tell when somebody has had sex, especially if it wasn’t with him.

Brenda hesitated, apparently weighing in her mind what he might or might not know. Finally she took the approach that had always worked for her in the past. She went on the offensive. That would be offensive as a descriptor. “I told you, Frankie set it up. Look, you dumb bastard—” Brenda didn’t finish her sentence because Bobby slapped her. Slapped her hard. She stood, slack-jawed and unbelieving. Her cheek began to burn. It wasn’t that she’d never been slapped before. Beginning with her alcoholic mother, then her stepfather, and a handful of men she’d had dealings with in her former life, she’d had her share of physical abuse, but never before from Bobby. This was something new and potentially dangerous.

Bobby slipped over the edge. “You’ve been doing more than talking with Travis.”

“No, I…look, Bobby, I’ve set it up so we can work a deal where we can get out from under Leo’s thumb, make some real money. Travis will put it together for us.”

“For us or for you? Sure he will. Forget it. I’m not working with that guy. You can have him if you want him, but not me. I don’t need him, so I’m out, you got it?” He decided not to mention divorce until Leo had everything nailed down.

“Not you? You are, like so not getting it. He can make it happen. You can’t do squat and—”

Bobby smacked her again. “You slut, you must think I’m really stupid.”

“Stupid isn’t the half of it,” Brenda screamed and launched into a tirade so intense and scorching it might have peeled the wallpaper off the wall, had there been any. During the course of her diatribe she managed to include most of the commonly exercised profanities, obscenities—some that seemed to be the exclusive usage of exotic dancers—and at one point managed to use the word associated with sexual intercourse as an adjective, noun, and verb all in the same five-word sentence. Had Bobby majored in English in his brief stint in college, he might have appreciated the skill it took to put together this nonstop bit of invective. As he hadn’t, and because he had no other place to go with his anger and sense of betrayal, he picked her up, threw her face down on the bed, and acted out at least one of her characterizations of him.

Bobby had played football and lacrosse in school. He still retained some strength and agility in spite of his dissolute lifestyle, and Brenda could only struggle helplessly and scream at him. He shoved her face into the pillows and finished what he started.

A porter, who happened to be cruising the corridor, heard the commotion and started to knock on their door to be sure no one was in trouble, but when he heard what he took to be moans and bedroom activity, he smiled and moved on. That was the room with the hot American tourist, after all.

Travis, one floor up and two rooms over, tossed and turned in his bed oblivious to the commotion he’d manufactured and instead wondered what he’d gotten himself into. Brenda Griswold might not be the best ally for the undertaking he had in mind, and he surely did not want her hanging around after it was over, but he needed to hold on to that stock, and he guessed she would be the price he’d have to pay. At least for the short run.

***

Leo Painter couldn’t sleep. Travis’ apparent duplicity hurt. Yet, he didn’t know whether to be angry at him or admire his chutzpah. Leo guessed if their positions were reversed, he might be doing the same. Not might, most assuredly he would. He smiled and checked his watch. An eight-hour time difference separated Gaborone and Chicago. It would be a little after six in the morning. Probably too early to call Baker, the snoop.

He lighted a cigar, puffed twice and stubbed it out. He’d been smoking all night, and his mouth felt like old burlap. Even with a good Cuban, taste paled after a while, and your tongue went to sleep. His doctor had warned him, “You want to die, Leo, keep on drinking, smoking, and juggling all those corporate balls.” Well, that last part would be over soon if Greshenko did his job.

He stood and paced some more. He still hadn’t heard from Greshenko. It had been three days, and they were due to fly to Kasane in twenty-four hours. He pulled out his map of the Chobe River National Park and the area nearby from the pile of papers on the desk. There was an airport and commuter service in and out of Kasane. More important, its landing strip could handle corporate jet traffic. Perfect. He’d need to build a first-rate FBO on the field to handle the private planes he figured would be arriving. He’d have to talk to someone in Jet Aviation or Signature Flight Support about leasing and managing it when he did.

He ran his finger across the map following the course of the Chobe River. There were four main lodges on the river and several smaller ones. If push came to shove, he might have to settle for one of the lesser ones, but he hoped not. The Chobe Game Lodge was probably out of the running, too, as it sat deep in the park and had limited access. What he wanted was an easy in and out with a view. The Safari Lodge was near Sedudu Island. That would work best. He’d discounted the Okavango Delta for the project. It had more in the way of tourist attractions and better animals, but was hard to get in and out of and more or less seasonal. Maybe later.

He checked his watch again. Still too early to call. The Bears had made the playoffs. He wondered how they’d fared. Football interested him only slightly. Just enough to hold a VIP box at Soldier Field, which he used to lubricate politicians and potential business associates who could do him favors, provide him with contracts, or introduce him to the people who could. But his real interest was baseball. He followed the Cubs and suffered though the years of disappointments that only true Cubs fans knew. The same sort of VIP arrangement did not work at Wrigley. You had to be a fan. Most pols were into instant gratification.

Watching the Cubs required patience.

Chapter 17

Dawn. Sekoa, his ravaged lungs gasping for air, approached a small clearing at the edge of the forest. The multiple scents of humans overpowered all others. He paused. This was not an area he would have ever willingly entered in the past. In front of him, a small pile of dirt barely covered buried trash. Farther on, the remains of a fire pit made a black smear on the ground. The ground seemed trampled, and what little grass there was grew in scattered clumps around the edge. He no longer sensed the presence of the menace that had trotted along his trail most of the previous day. Either his nemesis, the pack of hyenas, had not found the break in the fence or, wisely, they had refused to venture this close to humans. Except for elephants, Sekoa feared nothing, and on occasion not even one of them, but humans were a puzzle. He wouldn’t have ventured this close, either, except in desperation. He turned toward the river a few meters away. He would drink and then find a resting place and perhaps sleep. His need for the latter made him stumble at the water’s edge and that, in turn, attracted the attention of a large crocodile. Much as it might be tempted, it would not attack. At this early hour it needed time to bask in the sun to bring its metabolic rate up to a level sufficient to tangle with prey as large as this.

He found a bower back from the water and collapsed. In the past he would have dozed and awakened periodically to take in any shift in his immediate environment. But so complete was his exhaustion, he would sleep through the comings and goings of area wildlife, including the few humans using the facilities in a building no more than fifty meters to the east. His tawny coat nearly matched the bush seared by the seasonal drought. To any but the most experienced eye, he was all but invisible. He slept.

***

Leo Painter rose every morning at four-thirty. He would gulp down the array of pills the cardiologist at Rush Medical Center prescribed and be at his desk an hour later. Leo had little use for the doctor whom he referred to as “the fat quack,” but he knew from painful experience that if he skipped them he could expect a bad day and possibly a trip to the ER. He usually substituted some pastry and two cups of strong coffee at his desk for breakfast. He expected his employees to keep the same hours—at least those who shared offices on the same floor with him.

Henry Farrah considered himself a night person. When he retired, he planned never to get up before nine in the morning and to dress no earlier than ten. So he presented himself to Leo at six the next morning bleary-eyed and annoyed. Leo gestured toward the pot of coffee and tray of pastries on the side table. The odor of stale cigar smoke nearly made him retch. Henry filled a cup, wolfed down a croissant, and sipped at his coffee. He found a chair as far from the ashtray as possible. He wished Botswana was as diligent in reducing the health consequences of smoking as it was in its attempt to rid the country of AIDS and alcoholism.

“Henry, I need some paperwork done and right away.” Farrah started to protest but Leo waved him to silence. “There should be a business center somewhere in this hotel, and if there isn’t, there’ll be one in town somewhere.”

Henry sighed. It was typical of Leo to impose on and inconvenience his underlings. Henry had a planned visit Debswana, the diamond sorting center, this morning and had even arranged for a taxi and a tour. That would have to be canceled.

“What sort of paperwork, Leo?”

“I need a bill of sale sort of thing, a transfer of title, maybe, that shows the ownership of Griswold’s shares in the company have been assigned to me. It has to be iron-clad, Henry. You understand? I can’t have any outside lawyer coming in and finding a way to fiddle with the effect. When you’re done, sign it as a witness.”

“I can’t sign as a witness to something I didn’t see.”

“Sign it anyway. When I get Griswold up here later you can come back and watch, but I want the thing in place pronto.”

“How many shares are we talking about?” Henry knew but asked anyway. Something was up, and he wanted Leo to keep talking. He had a big stake in the events of the next few weeks, and it wouldn’t do to be caught on the short end of the information stick.

Leo frowned and pursed his lips. “Write it so it covers any and all. You know what his share total is supposed to be, but he may have acquired more or dumped some since then. So, make it inclusive, Henry.”

Farrah nodded and rose. It should be a simple enough matter to frame up a document. Back in the office he’d ask one of junior members to pull some boilerplate off the hard drive and fix it up. Hell, a paralegal could do it. If he got on it right away, he might still make his tour.

“I want a second copy, but leave out the names. When you get that done, check back here. I should have Griswold up and more or less awake by then, if that doxy of his hasn’t reduced him to jelly.”

Henry opened the door. His mind had already begun to frame the wording for Leo’s document.

“One more thing. I’ll be calling the States in a few minutes and may have another thing for you to do.”

Another thing? Since Henry had thrown in with the consortium of wheeler-dealers in Chicago, he’d become paranoid, perhaps clinically so. Leo, he knew, could never be trusted to tell him the truth except when it served his purpose better than a lie, and Henry doubted very much he’d get much information if he asked. Nevertheless, he tried.

“Another thing? Will this have something to do with the IPO?”

“No.”

Henry realized there would be no more information forthcoming and left the room. His next act would to be to call Chicago to find out if they knew if there’d been any new developments. His ulcer started talking to him again.

***

“Weasel,” Leo muttered to the door as it closed on Farrah. “You’d sell your grandmother to find out what I’m up to. Not going to happen, Bub.”

He reached for his Blackberry and speed-dialed Sheridan Baker, his personal snoop and errand boy. What kind of a man has two last names, or two first names, either? Henry James, Nick Charles, Forrest Tucker, Michael Steven Gregory. Weird.

“Yes, Mr. Painter.” The wonder of technology, caller ID, “I have the information you requested. But I’m afraid you’re not going to like it.’

“Let me be the judge of that, Baker. What have you got?”

“Very well, I found your son. He wasn’t at the address you gave me, though, and he doesn’t work at the ad agency anymore, either.”

“What? Why?”

“They had to let him go. He missed too many days. Called in sick.”

“He’s sick?”

“Yeah. Listen Mr. Painter, I’m not sure you want the rest of this. Why don’t you just let this go? Send the kid some money and drop it.”

“Send money? He won’t take it from me. He won’t let me help him in any way. That’s why I sent you out to find him.”

“I think he might now. I talked to his significant other, private-like. You can send it to him and he’ll see that it gets to Junior.”

“He’s living with someone. What’s she like?”

“You didn’t hear me right, Mr. Painter. It’s a he, not a she.”

“What? Not a woman. I thought you used that idiotic expression to describe the person he’s in a relationship with.”

“Yes, sir, I did. And you heard the rest correctly, too. You didn’t know, you couldn’t have known. Your son is gay, Mr. Painter.”

Leo dropped into the chair next to the table. The phone seemed to weigh twenty pounds.

“The sickness that cost him his job…?” Leo waited for Baker to answer for what seemed an eternity.

“AIDS, Mr. Painter. I’m sorry. Yeah, he’s got it pretty bad. He’s getting treatments at a local hospital, and they aren’t cheap. The…guy he’s living with, his name is Edwin Cavanaugh, Eddie, he’s called, and he said they’re about out of resources to keep up the treatments.”

“You want me to give money to some stranger who…hell, he probably gave the disease to my boy. I’ll kill him.”

“As near as I can tell…Medical records are hard to get hold of, even harder to read, but it looks like Cavanaugh is AIDS-free, sir. And there’s the other thing.”

“There’s more? What else can there be?”

“Your son is married.”

“Married? I thought you said he was gay. How can he be married if he’s gay?”

“He’s in California, Mr. Painter. He’s married to Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh has spousal rights and will inherit if Leo Junior dies. He has Junior’s power of attorney as well. You can give him the money. He’ll be sure to see your son is taken care of.”

Leo held the phone away from his ear and stared at his reflection in the mirror over the dresser. He didn’t recognize the haggard gray visage. He took a breath and returned the phone to its functioning position.

“I’ll have to call you back. Jesus.”

Leo reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew a silver engraved pill box and popped a nitro under his tongue.