Ride the Titanic! (14 page)

It lasts almost a week. Seven delirious days filled with happy phone calls to my attorney, who ‘has a friend who has a friend’ who can represent us in the state of Nevada, and even happier meetings with Joe, Lewis, Scooter, Herbie and Robbie as we try to get used to the fact that our dream is now a fifty-million dollar reality, and more employees need to be brought on board and fast, and that’s when the joy ends and the meetings get serious in our above-the-garage office in Orlando.

‘All the good ride people are already working,’ Lewis says with his usual pessimism.

‘We weren’t.’

His smile pities me. ‘An exception that merely proves my rule.’

I gloomily regard our ride model, still packed inside its transport crate. How in God’s name are we going to scale up this fantasy until it becomes a reality? Robbie, who’s traveled back with us, reads my mind because he clears his throat.

‘I can get you elevations and initial specs in a week, if I can have some peace and quiet, which I doubt, from the way things have gone so far.’

‘Thoughts on builders?’

‘The external hull can be built by anybody worth their salt. But
Fincantini
Navali
without a doubt for the pressure hull. They’re in the submersible business already.
Todaro
Class subs for the Italian navy, and other nations with a few billion dollars lying about.’ He pulls out his smartphone. Got a YouTube clip of a launch somewhere – ah, yes, here’s the little beauty.’

‘Why not Electric Boat? We need to build American wherever we can.’

‘Because you need a pressure hull to hold an amusement park ride, not launch ballistic missiles. Electric Boat has a one-track mind. It’s a good one, don’t get me wrong. They build great subs. But Fincantini is an Italian outfit. And Italians know how to have a little fun.’

‘Fun?’

‘Flexible. Go with the flow. Take in a little business on the side. See a little humor in what we’re doing. Electric Boat is all blueprints and bottom line. Their pressure hull will cost you a fortune and you won’t get it for five years, IF you’re lucky. Can you wait that long?’

‘Something tells me you’re already talking to the Fincantini folks.’

‘A bit.’ He fiddles with his phone. ‘A few of their lads pitched in when I was bidding out the
Miss Fortune’s
pressure hull.’

‘They built it?’

‘Like I said, they do know how to have fun.’

Before I can answer, a knock on the door.

Joe says, ‘Who the hell knocks around here?’

I open the door, expecting Adam, Fiona’s ever-dutiful boyfriend, his hand in mid-knock. Instead I face chromed sunglasses hiding the features of a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, tuxedo pants, Converse tennis shoes, and a white silk scarf.

A familiar voice behind him growls, ‘Mr. Wu, meet Mr. Genius.’

Off come the glasses and on goes the thousand-watt smile of a round-faced, sumo-wrestler-sized young man, maybe thirty if that. The voice behind him is Herbie Gottschalk who steps into view.

‘Mr. Wu just took me to lunch, and what a lunch it was.’

‘American food.’ Wu’s voice is surprisingly high. ‘We ate at pancake house. I had many waffles.’ He pats his ample stomach. ‘Too many to count.’

‘And you are here because. . .?’

He doesn’t answer, but walks past me, all smiles. ‘You Mr. Corelli, right? And Scooter, and Robbie? Hello, I am Kuan-yin Wu. Call me Wu. Easier to say, yes?’ He swivels round and cocks his head to one side. ‘When we get larger quarters? Like closet here.’

‘We?’

‘I do not need much space, but my hotels take up lots of room. Especially inside iceberg.’ He fishes out his computer tablet.

Herbie says, ‘You ought to see what this guy did with my design. Turned night into day he did. Show them, Wu.’

The sumo-wrestler fiddles with his device. ‘Not loading.’

Joe laughs and pokes Herbie in the ribs. ‘Sure beats hell out of golf, don’t it?’

‘Golf,
schmolf
. Wait till you see how Wu’s going to prefab the suites. Never would have thought of it myself. This kid’s a natural.’

Wu’s happy look sharpens around the edges. ‘My English terrible, but for record, I graduate from Yale School of Architecture.
Summa cum laude
.’

Herbie bows in mock apology. ‘Sorry, your honor.’

Seconds later Wu’s notepad lights up with a convoluted set of drawings that make no sense at first, except to prove that this oddly-dressed, young giant knows his way around blueprints, construction schedules, and lift-slab construction like Mozart knows music. And the deeper he scrolls into his designs, the more exciting it gets to see how he absorbed Herbie’s original idea of first class, 1900s period-authentic hotel suites, and then, by reversing walls here and flipping door openings there, and using a template-like interior wall-finishing for all the rooms, he managed to make them look different from each other. In one fell swoop, Wu has single-handedly designed an economy of scale methodology that allows total off-site room construction with on-site installation as the final step.

After absorbing the scope of his work, I say, ‘We’ll need a dedicated factory for something like this.’

‘Got one - two if needed,’ Wu says.

‘China, right?’

He beams. ‘We make, you take.’

‘Wish we could build these modules in America.’

‘No problem. Double your direct costs and triple price concrete and steel. Think your banks will agree? Ms. Zhu does not.’

‘How does she know?’

‘She talk with Wu, and she ask me give you this.’

He reaches inside his Hawaiian shirt and pulls out an envelope containing a letter stating the sum of fifty million dollars has been wired from the Hua Xia Bank, Beijing China to Citibank, Orlando, Florida, USA, to be credited to the account of ‘I.S.M., LLC.,’ an abbreviation for
Industrial Smoke and Mirrors
, our company name as of a week ago. Credit our company name to Lewis, a
Star Wars
fanatic, who decided George Lucas’s
Industrial Light and Magic
needed some friendly competition. I stare unbelievingly at the numerals, $50,000,000.00 and lose track of the zeroes.

Wu taps the letter. ‘Please note Xim Bank and the China Development Bank now ready to review loan package. Miss Zhu believes China Development good for two hundred million and Xim, double that. Not bad for start.’

‘I guess you’ve done this sort of thing before? Hotels, I mean.’

‘My fifth with Zhu family. Now I show you how we build one inside iceberg.’

His notepad spews out an animated timeline with multicolored task lines rising and falling like ocean waves as the months progress, showing various milestones approaching, being met, and new ones appearing.

In a smaller, thumbnail to the right, an artist’s rendering of the hotel construction moves in sync with the timeline, starting with the foundation site, then footing pours, “first steel,” then the skeletal framework rising higher and higher, then the prefabricated hotel suit units sliding into their predetermined positions like obedient little Lego blocks.

The animation concludes with the completed hotel in all its pristine, gleaming blue-white splendor; a massive iceberg miraculously stranded on the Las Vegas Boulevard. No ship in sight, however. That’s our job. And according to Wu’s Technicolor timeline, and my big fat mouth, we have slightly over two years to build it.

I tap the screen where the timelines converge into a single point signifying completion. ‘Ever build a hotel this quick before?’

He purses his lips before answering. ‘Yes and no. I build
Summer Palace
Hotel in year-and-a-half. But no extra.’

‘Meaning a ship that sinks.’

‘Yes. Much fun to ride. Cannot wait.’

‘Don’t worry.’ I tap his notepad screen where a nighttime rendering of the
Titanic
floats in its water basin with the hotel in the background. ‘By the time your hotel is finished, our ride will be ready.’

‘Like so?’ Wu smiles and enlarges the screen. Tinny sounds of music and sound effects came from the small computer screen as the
Titanic
starts sinking by the bow, complete with rippling water, light effects and finally her stern poised vertically, bronze propellers dripping water, before sliding into the depths.

Lewis whistles in admiration. ‘How the hell did you get that demo together so fast? It’s only been a couple of weeks since the deal went through.’

Wu waves off the compliment. ‘Two weeks in China a lifetime, if enough people around to do work. And they always are.’

‘Who’d you get to do this?’ I say, trying to act as if I’m in control of the conversation.

Wu ticks off on his fingers, ‘I shop timeline to
Red Sky Animation
in Beijing.’

‘They’re hot,’ Lewis says.

‘Like stir-fry.’

‘Hotel imagery to
Onward Animation Studios
.’

‘That the group in Hangzhou?’

‘You bet.’

I say to Lewis, ‘How do you know all this stuff?’

He dismisses my question with a frown and keeps pressing Wu, ‘How many days to deliver?’

Wu holds up five fingers and Lewis whistles.

‘Not that great. Gave them four with delivery penalty.’

Lewis laughs. ‘If we shopped your job domestic, the creatives would still be taking meetings and eating M&Ms.’

Wu says, ‘Now you understand my country’s way of doing business.’

Joe bristles. ‘No question you can get the job done, but you folks don’t know how to mix business with pleasure. It’s all work, work, work. Not good for the system.’

Wu bows slightly in deference to Joe’s age. ‘Chinese know how to have good time. But first we work!’

Herbie claps Wu on the back. ‘And then they eat American pancakes.’

Wu shouts, ‘So many!’

Fast forward thirty days and I’m landing in Vegas on a non-stop flight from Orlando, courtesy of Xia’s
Gulfstream G650
, painted robin’s egg blue. Our team is back home, long gone from our garage digs and working out of newly-leased offices that Geena insisted we find when the ISM gang grew from four to eight, to sixteen, including two animators, a 3D graphics whiz, and two mechanical engineers I hip-pocketed from
Bollinger and Mabillard,
a company that knows more about steel coaster rides than anybody in the business. A husband and wife team, Jeff and Janet, both skinny as whippets, work shoulder-to-shoulder like Siamese twins. When one talks, I swear the other one’s mouth moves.

We’re making enough progress on the ride side that I agree to join Xia in Vegas for what she terms ‘an important consultation.’ But not about our loan terms, like I thought at the beginning of our terse video conference call ten hours earlier.

‘Can’t we conference like we’re doing now?’ I said, having just spent thirty thousand bucks pimping out a video conference room with screens as big as bed sheets and HD quality so vivid you can count pores on the other person’s face – not that you’d want to – in fact Lewis dumbed down the resolution for that very reason. Sometimes too much information is not a good thing.

‘I prefer to see you face to face for what I want to show you,’ Xia says evenly.

I stare at her image on the video screen. She really is beautiful, and for an instant I regret Lewis’s tweaking down the pixel count.

I say, ‘Did you have luck with your negotiations?’

‘Mr. Duvall was his usual successful self.’

The Zhu family has a long-standing relationship with real estate attorney Louis Duvall, the ‘Western face’ of their hotel dealings in North America. Unbeknownst to her father, Xia had Counselor Duvall ‘third-party-purchase’ an existing property on the Las Vegas strip.

‘Did he get the
Continental
?’ I say.

The twenty-five year old, slightly seedy, high-rise is one of three locations we researched that could satisfy our needs. Not the ideal location, but when in Vegas, you play with the cards on the table, not the ones in the dealer’s deck.

‘Found one better.’

‘Which?’

Come out and see for yourself.’

Xia’s face seems ever so slightly playful. But I quickly dismiss the possibility of humor. She’s as serious as a heart attack. And yet. . .

‘I can come this weekend,’ I say.

‘I’m sending my plane tonight.’

‘But it’s Tuesday.’

‘See you tomorrow. Business casual.’

The screen goes blank, the soft hiss of white noise.

‘The Empress has spoken,’ a voice says, and I spin around, surprised.

Lewis leans against the doorjamb. ‘She who holds thy purse strings holds thy balls.’

‘No way.’

He lifts a lazy eyebrow. ‘You going?’

‘Of course I am. We’re partners.’

‘Scooter’s got the finals on the
Wireless Room
scene. Needs your okay.’

‘Has to wait until I get back.’

‘When’s that?’

His simple question startles me. I actually don’t know when I’m returning. Xia summoned me and I will obey because Lewis is right; her venture capital partners have raised – so far – almost two-thirds of the necessary 850 million-dollar preliminary loan package. The hotel alone is coming in close to one-point-seven billion, but that’s Xia’s headache, not mine. And yes, it’s all happening through so-called ‘foreign’ banks, and yes, there should be a
Citibank
somewhere in the mix to show the flag, but the idea of a bank belonging to a specific nation is absurd.