Offerings

OFFERINGS

Richard Smolev

Academy Chicago Publishers

Published in 2012 by

Academy Chicago Publishers

363 West Erie Street

Chicago, Illinois 60654

© 2012 by Richard Smolev

First edition.

Printed and bound in the U.S.A.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smolev, Richard G., 1948–

Offerings / Richard Smolev.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-89733-682-6 (hardcover)

1. Women bankers—Fiction. 2. Investment banking—Fiction. 3. Corporations—Corrupt practices—Fiction. 4. Art thefts—Europe. 5. Jewish families—United States—Fiction. 6. Wall Street (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3619.M648O34 2012

813’.6—dc22

2012030499

eISBN: 9780897337076

Nancy

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Kate Brewster – Working hard to become the first woman to head Drake Carlson, a Wall Street firm

Peter Brewster – Kate’s husband whose own firm—Ascalon—is in serious danger of imploding

Sarah Brewster – Their 12-year-old daughter who is filled with self-doubts

Mack Brewster – Their 8-year-old son who is fearful of the insecurity the family faces

Ed Roth – The boss of Drake Carlson who wooed Kate away from Greene Houseman to join him in the executive suite of Drake Carlson with a promise she would succeed him when he retired

Jack Roth – Ed’s weaker younger brother

Steve Reed – A sudden competitor to Kate for the top spot at Drake

Clive Daley – Drake’s general counsel who can’t control Ed Roth or Steve Reed

Leslie Eliot and Mary Kay McDonald – Young Drake associates helping on the Majik IPO

Andrew Butler – Kate’s mentor at Greene Houseman and an Ascalon board member

Chris Franklin – Owner of Majik, the games company Kate is trying to take public

Beth Parker – Majik’s CEO

Michael Hirsch – The patriarch of the Hirsch family whose confidence and grace allows him to make a deal with Kate regarding an important family heirloom which may be returned to the family decades after being stolen by the Nazis

Bibiana Hirsch – Michael’s insightful wife

Marta Hirsch – Their daughter, who is furious over the Americans’ meddling in their efforts to retrieve artifacts that had been stolen from her ancestors

David Hirsch – Michael’s brother

Yolanda Hirsch – David’s wife

Eric and Andrew Hirsch – David and Yolanda’s sons who share both Marta’s passion to recover what belongs to their family and her anger

Cloe Marc – Owner of Gallerie Marc in Basel, Switzerland, where Kate researches the provenance of the painting in Chris Franklin’s office

Jack Carpenter – Head of a company called Amigo whose testimony that he was interested in taking over Ascalon draws Kate, Peter and their companies into litigation

Karl Maxwell – A victim of the financial meltdown and a friend able to guide Peter through the morass of a failing company and litigation from his shareholders

Joanie Maxwell – Karl’s wife, who knows all too well what it means to lose everything

Brandon Jefferson – A potential client for Drake Carlson

Cass Denton – Peter’s partner at Ascalon since the inception 

Connie Meyers – A Sotheby’s executive who Kate wants to hire to sell a Leger Peter owns to raise some much needed cash for their family

Nina – The translator hired by Drake to help Kate at the City Hall in Linz, Austria when she travels there to look for heirs of the man who originally bought the painting she is researching

Oskar – The clerk at the Hall who couldn’t care less what Kate was looking for

Ingrid – A gracious clerk at the Hall who feels moved to help both Kate and the family she is trying to locate by volunteering what information she has

David Blakely – Drake’s largest investor, through the Harvard Endowment Fund

Pat Dyson – Holder of a large block of Drake shares and a friend of Mike Conklin

Mike Conklin – CEO of Keiffer Benedict, who fires an unsolicited tender offer at Drake (putting Kate even further from the top spot) when it stumbles due to what Kate learned about Ed and Steve

Bill Dickstein – A lawyer with Carter and Foster hell bent on attacking Kate’s integrity

Fritz Banner, Bill Lawrence and Monica Kwan – Lawyers with National Mutual whose main function is to find a way to deny insurance coverage for the claims against Kate, Peter and their companies.

Caitlin Hennessey – Kate’s lawyer in the suit filed by Bill Dickstein, who’s every bit as tough as Kate

We cannot be filled unless we are first emptied, to make room for what is to come

—Thomas Merton,
The Seven Storey Mountain

MAY

ONE

What in the world was Steve Reed doing lounging in Ed’s office, dressed like the Prince of Wales? Was Ed having second thoughts about Kate, a woman, stepping into his shoes when he finally retired? After what felt like a month and a half of questions and no answers, Kate did what she always did to bring herself down to earth when meetings got crazy around her. She started spelling her kids’ names backward. H-A-R-A-S. K-C-A-M. Haras. Kcam.

By the time Kate got to Mack a third time, she was ready to find out why Ed had emailed her, asking her to drop whatever she was doing and pop into his office. And now, still not more than four or five feet inside Ed’s office, Kate turned to him and said, “How can I be of help?”

“Steve has an interesting lead and we haven’t much time.” Ed leaned into his desk. “We need you to jump in. Steve, tell her.”

Steve Reed moved from the sofa that was under the Frank Stella to the chair next to Kate. The man smelled like he’d spent too much time at the fruit vendor on the corner across from their building. Grapefruit. Mint and blood orange. Cinnamon. A bit of leather. Torero by Guiliano. A few years back Harvey Weinstein had taken Kate to one of his Oscar parties to thank her for helping to find funding for
Shakespeare in Love
. Afterward she gave Peter, her husband, the cologne from one of the swag bags. Peter had sprayed some on his wrist, said he smelled like a male whore, and pitched it. The word Torero became shorthand around the Brewster household for
who the hell are you kidding?

“It could be a real find. The company is called Majik,” Steve said, and began describing the small game making outfit in Boulder. It had a couple of good titles and was interviewing investment bankers to help it crunch all the numbers, dress up its story, and do everything else a company needs to get listed on one of the stock exchanges. Wall Street thrives on IPOs (what the rest of us call initial public offerings), but Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had taken a pass. Steve had been able to get an interview with the company management on Friday.

“And the big boys said no because?” Kate tried not to sound condescending.

When Ed Roth had convinced Kate to think about succeeding him she’d asked if there was any serious competition for the job. Steve’s name never came up. He’d dumped a slew of dolled up subprime mortgages on Drake, and the result had made him radioactive. But now he didn’t look worse for wear. A two-hundred-dollar haircut, nails that outshone hers, a bespoke Anderson & Sheppard pinstripe suit and a smirk.

“Who knows?” Steve said. “Not enough sex appeal. Not enough time to get their act together. Maybe they’re not as hungry as we are.”

“How about not enough upside?” If it were Kate’s call, she’d suggest they keep trawling because there were bigger fish out there. But this encounter was some sort of test, and she needed to calibrate her next steps carefully. Was Ed looking for loyalty or enough judgment to push back at the idea and save Drake’s resources? Did he want prudence or fealty? Resistance might cost her everything. She said she was in.

Ed muttered something about being kept in the loop. Steve picked up his BlackBerry and said he’d email the company to confirm their time slot. Kate reached into her pocket and fetched hers. She hadn’t been in Ed’s office more than five or six minutes and there were two messages from her husband. Both had exclamation points. Both asked when she could talk. The second said he was losing his mind.

She smiled at Ed and then at Steve as she typed her response.
Give me three minutes. I’m just wrapping up an ambush.

When she got Peter on the phone he sounded as though he’d just been waterboarded.

“How do you feel about spending the next year or so married to a guy living in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere China?”

“Not now, Peter. I just got pulled into something that’s about to take over my life and I don’t have time. And I’m already married to a guy who lives in Scarsdale. What’s with all the exclamation points on your email?” Since Peter was going goofy on her she decided to multitask. She Googled Majik.

“No joke, Kate. We’re in play. I just got a term sheet from some outfit in China to buy what’s left of Ascalon for a buck a share.”

Kate pulled back from her computer. Something like this had been inevitable ever since Ascalon got hit with a patent-infringement suit it couldn’t seem to shake off. The stock had been sinking for months. Kate knew some bottom feeder would come along. But if Kate and Peter were going to drown in all that debt they took on while the value of Peter’s stock was in the stratosphere, why not at least be brought down by some good old American like Carl Icahn?

“What’s with the married-to-a-husband-in-China part of the conversation?”

“One of the terms is that either Cass or I need to transition everything we know to their people and their systems. Without that, there’s no deal and our shareholders will be all over our asses.”

Kate leaned forward on her desk. “Why can’t Cass go? He doesn’t have any children.”

“Amy announced last week that she’s three months pregnant. At least ours are in school.”

The blasting sound of one of Majik’s computer games jumped out of her speakers. She reached for the volume control.

“You don’t have to say yes, Peter. Being in play only means you’ve got to look for a white knight.”

“I know. That’s why I’ve got so many lawyers in my conference room I can barely hear myself think over the sound of all their goddamned meters ticking. Fingers crossed, babe. If you’ve got that Prince Charming on your Rolodex, send him over. If not, we’ll be stuck with phone sex for a while.”

Kate picked up her pen and wrote,
I’m in a fight for my career and the S.O.B. won’t be there for me
. It wasn’t the way to bring the conversation to a cheery end.

“Good thing we’ve got Skype,” she said. “Let me make a few calls and then we’ll talk tonight.”

She looked at her phone for a few moments before putting it back in its cradle.

Kate told her assistant to hold her calls and then shut her door, picked up one of the cushions from her sofa, held it as close as she could to her face, and screamed.

She did a few neck rolls and took a couple of deep breaths. She needed to jump on the project Ed had dumped on her. But she took a small photo from her desk and walked to the window to see the picture in the morning light.

It was Mack and Sarah, Kate and Peter in the photo. Mack was a newborn, just home from the hospital. Sarah was leaning into her new brother and touching him on the cheek, whispering his name, bending in to kiss him. At the instant Kate’s mother said she was ready to take the picture, Sarah had turned toward her grandmother with the most delicate smile. Peter beamed with his arms around them all.

Kate closed her eyes and ran her finger across each of the three pink roses on the top of the gilded frame.

TWO

Mack, wearing no top, threw open the door and charged at Kate in his bare feet. He grabbed her around her waist. What was he doing up at eleven thirty?

“Are we going to have to sell the house? Are we going to have to move? I don’t want to go to China. Mommy, tell me we don’t have to.” The words tumbled out of him as though he’d been waiting hours to set them free.

“What in the world are you talking about, Mack?” Kate looked through the open front door. Where was Peter? Mack was running around half-naked in the middle of the night and Peter hadn’t said a word?

“Carey called me after school and said he heard his parents talking about Dad’s company. They said it’s being sold.” Mack gulped for air. “So Sarah looked it up and told me everything. Is it true? Are we going to have to sell the house? Do we have to leave?” Damned Internet. Why hadn’t Peter focused on Mack?

Kate stroked her son’s back. His body was shaking against her leg. She said nothing until they were safely inside. Siena, their Brittany, who sensed Mack’s anxiety as though he were one of her puppies, stood at attention.

Peter was standing at the bottom of the stairs with his toes sticking out from under a pair of bleached-out jeans and his bluetooth hanging on his ear. He was wearing a Tampa Bay Buccaneers tee shirt. He’d never been much of a clothes hound, even after Ascalon went public. He’d probably worn those clothes to work that day, to the place he called silly-con valley east, an office that had been such a hot commodity that some mornings Peter could wake up three or four million dollars richer on paper because a trader on the Tokyo Exchange got it into his head that today was Ascalon day.