To Save a Son (6 page)

“So there doesn't seem to be any cause for us to fall out?”

“You should have warned me what you were doing!” insisted Franks. He was irritated at his own petulance.

“I've explained that!” said Nicky with a trace of irritation of his own. “I was behaving in a proper and professional manner on behalf of contracted clients. I would not have been behaving professionally if I
had
told you.”

Nicky had an acceptable answer for every accusation, Franks conceded. “In the future I want to know what's happening. I don't want to have to find it out myself,” he said hollowly.

“So there is going to be a future?”

“What?”

“You've raised the money, sufficient for control?” said Nicky.

The price at which it was being offered was still too high, but Franks refused to let the other man know he was bluffing. “Because of what they're asking for the land, it's difficult to know now just how much is needed.”

“The vendors will come down,” said Nicky confidently. “Let's work on the original figures. Can you come in with the twenty-five million for you and Tina?”

“Yes,” said Franks, keeping his cards from being seen.

“And do you want to go on, with Dukes and Pascara and Flamini?”

Franks realized he didn't have any choice. “I think there would be some purpose in a further meeting,” he said, still reluctant to make it look too easy for the other man.

Nicky got up and came around the desk, not stopping this time. He extended his hand and said, “If I caused any misunderstanding, I apologize. I wasn't trying to cheat you out of anything. I don't want to sour what exists between us.”

Momentarily Franks remained seated, looking at the offered hand. Then he stood and accepted the gesture. “Maybe I was too hasty,” he said in apology of his own.

8

The second thoughts were almost immediate, the awareness that he'd overcommitted himself and should, if he were sensible, back away. But he didn't. It had become so important for him to be the consummate businessman in the eyes of Nicky and his father that those reflective second thoughts at once clashed with his refusal to appear unsure or hesitant to them, to risk even the suggestion of Enrico's childhood accusation that he wasn't the best. So he flew to Britain to get the necessary finance, although the price was high. He spread the loans through five institutions—four banks and a pension fund—and at varying rates, the lowest eleven and the highest fourteen.

It was three weeks after the confrontation with his brother-in-law before Franks returned to New York. He traveled alone and took a hotel room in the city, at the Plaza, which was his favorite. He flew the Concorde, so there was no jet lag, but he gave himself an intervening day to revise and prepare himself for the encounter. He carried the preparations as far as timing his arrival so that they were assembled and waiting when he entered the conference room. They were seated exactly as they had been on the earlier occasion, Nicky as nominal chairman, Dukes to his right, Flamini to his left, and next to Flamini the blind Pascara and his obedient son.

Nicky guided the meeting, going detail by detail through the professional survey and assessment before Franks spoke up, pointing out that the extra cost came from the landowners' belief they had two prospective buyers. Nicky at once deflated the criticism, suggesting that if they agreed to a proper company formation, he proposed to write to everyone whom he'd approached, officially withdrawing his interest. Dukes improved on the suggestion, saying they should time their approach to coincide with the lawyer's rejection, when the owners would be eager to conclude the original sale rather than risk losing any purchase at all. Franks had the impression of being an onlooker instead of a participant in the discussion.

Pascara introduced the independent assessment that Nicky personally carried out, and for another thirty minutes Nicky dominated the discussion, with more detailed figures going beyond the costing to a forecast of profit. Franks immediately attacked the assessment as overly optimistic. The forecasts were based upon every complex being completed on time and almost at once achieving an occupancy of seventy-five percent. Franks said that if they went ahead they should anticipate minimum building delays of six months beyond whatever finishing date was given, and that in the first year they should consider themselves lucky if they managed fifty percent occupancy. Franks supposed he should have warned the lawyer in advance of his criticism, but he had reached the conclusion only the previous night and he wanted to achieve supremacy in the discussion. “I think we should prepare ourselves for every complex staying in the red for two years,” he concluded.

“As long as that!” said Dukes.

“Maybe longer,” Franks exaggerated. He wondered if it would work. Nicky's figures were too optimistic, so he was being quite truthful and quite professional. So it still might be possible to frighten them away. If they decided to withdraw because the return was too small in the short term, the company formation would be abandoned and he'd be extricated without losing any face. Being the strong man unable to carry the weaker ones with him, in fact.

“Haven't you been too optimistic?” challenged Pascara. “Your prospectus talks of it having a high profitability potential.”

“Nowhere in anything I've said or submitted have I promised quick returns,” rejected Franks easily.

“Let's look at the long term,” said Dukes. “When everything is established and running, Nicky's estimated five million dollars a year, from each complex. Is that optimistic?”

Shit, thought Franks. As much as he wanted to escape he wouldn't impinge on his own integrity with an outright lie. “No,” he said. “When everything is established we could expect something higher, maybe even seven million dollars.”

“It's gamblers who expect an instant profit,” said Pascara. He spoke as if able to see Dukes.

In reply, the Texan said, “An eventual seven million dollars a unit looks pretty good to me.”

Shit, thought Franks again. He said, “That won't be achieved for years.”

“If we decide to proceed today, you still want control stock holding?” said Flamini.

“Yes,” said Franks. If they tried to override him on that he'd have another acceptable reason for withdrawing.

“So you intend making the success a personal thing?” said Flamini.

Which was how it had always been, reflected Franks. Would a psychiatrist see an inferiority complex in the attitude? Probably. He said, “I think personal control and supervision is important, as you know. That's how I've always operated. I couldn't consider any other arrangement.”

“I think the personal involvement is extremely important,” said Pascara.

“Is there anything that anyone doesn't consider to have been covered?” prompted Nicky, resuming the chairman's role.

From the assembled men there were various gestures and head shaking.

“Then it would seem to be the time for commitment,” encouraged the lawyer.

Pascara was the first to speak. He said, “I accept Franks' controlling stock holding. And I'm prepared to come in for an equal third of the remaining stock.”

“That goes for me, too,” said Flamini at once.

“I'm happy with that,” said Dukes.

“Which leaves you, Eddie,” said Nicky.

Franks responded to everyone's attention, rationalizing what had happened. From a true business perspective, it was a good deal; an excellent one in the prevailing economic situation. Fourteen was his top percentage payment, which was just acceptable. Forming the company with them meant he wasn't held up by the current financial tightness. And he was retaining what was always the primary essential: his own control. It was time he succeeded in subjugating completely his ridiculous attitude toward Nicky. Time, too, to lose the sort of inferiority complex that he'd wondered about earlier. He said, “I'd like very much to go forward.”

Franks returned to England that same night and the following day called upon the loans he had negotiated. It took only days for the arrangements to be completed and now it became Franks who made the telephone calls to New York, imposing a timetable and belatedly seeking a character reference from each of the financiers. Franks had begrudgingly to concede the response was impressive. Nicky personally vouched for the three men, providing satisfactory details of their previous associations. Franks drafted his own money from London to Manhattan on the same day he received confirmation of the loans, but already Dukes had made his investment. Pascara and Flamini were only three days behind. The only delay came from the legal formalities of incorporation, which would be done in Delaware because of its advantageous tax arrangements. Franks waited until the company became legal before instructing Nicky to send his rejection letters to the island landowners. In each case there was immediate capitulation to the old price, and Franks let them imagine they'd lost a deal by their intransigence until finally they approached him. He drove the price down from their original figure, settling $150 an acre cheaper and saving $375,000.

The bribes he'd predicted were necessary, and Franks went through the formality of calling them commissions and negotiated figures not low enough to cause resentment but not high enough, either, for any of the officials wrongly to imagine there could be additional draining demands.

All the time Franks remained aware that he was operating differently than before and meticulously summoned New York meetings to which he gave complete progress reports. Never once was he seriously questioned.

Franks was busier than he could remember being—even in the early days when he was starting out—and he enjoyed every minute-stretched, hour-packed day of it. The expansion broke the relaxed, long-weekend life-style that he and Tina had enjoyed. There was far less tennis and more long evenings when he isolated himself in the study, maintaining a cent-by-cent check on expenditure and equating it against the day-by-day progression of the building. Franks was very aware of the difficulties that could have arisen between himself and Tina and loved her all the more because she never once complained. There were many times when she had reason. He was in England for the pre-starting Open Day introductions to Harrow, but on the day David actually started at school Franks was unable to leave Bermuda because of a material supply crisis. And he missed Gabriella's birthday, which he had assured her he would attend.

When construction work started simultaneously on every complex, the only way to maintain the supervision he intended was to virtually live permanently in the islands, reducing further his time in England. He decided it was time to fulfill his promise and buy a home in America.

Tina didn't choose to live as close to her parents as he had expected. The Scargo mansion was just outside Pleasantville, with a distant view of the Saw Mill River. The house that Tina selected was quite a lot farther south, on the outskirts of Scarsdale, sufficiently far away from the Scargo house and, conveniently, much nearer to Manhattan. There were about seven acres of land—two of those undeveloped scrub and undergrowth for which he immediately hired a landscape gardener—and the house itself was smaller than the one in England, only four main bedrooms and a small servants apartment over the garages, which meant Elizabeth, who had become Gabriella's permanent nanny, had to live in the main house. It was colonially designed: white clapboard, with front porch pillars and a widow's walk like a hairnet around the roof, although it was a long way from Boston and Portland and Rockland where such high balconies were the traditional lookout points for wives seeking the return of their sea-going husbands. Franks indulged Tina, leaving her entirely in charge of the furnishings and decoration, pleased she had something with which to occupy herself during his long, enforced absences.

He took permanent hotel rooms in Nassau and Hamilton, commuting between the two island capitals in a private aircraft, succeeding by his presence in reducing the building delays to an absolute minimum, the longest being two months in Bermuda. He created an extensive advertising campaign and altered the sailing schedules to enable the cruise liner to offer a combined shore-cruise itinerary. The schedule change succeeded, establishing at once a satisfactory occupancy figure, in advance of the response from the advertising campaign. And when that response came, it exceeded Franks' expectation. It didn't achieve Nicky's estimate, but neither did it reflect the realistically careful figures Franks had advanced.

He made a ceremony out of every opening. Dukes and Flamini attended, but Pascara said business commitments prevented his coming. Dukes' wife was much younger than the Texan, blond and long-legged. Her name was Angela, and Tina said later she liked her. Flamini's wife was quiet and appeared slightly bewildered by everything; she reminded Franks of Mamma Scargo.

Nicky came too, bringing Maria Spinetti with him. Franks was surprised but didn't show it. She behaved impeccably, absolutely confident but never once showing any overfamiliarity because of her working relationship with the board.

The Bahamian ceremonies took ten days, and on the last night, when they were alone in their suite, Tina said excitedly, “Nicky told me tonight he was getting married.”

“Who to?” asked Franks obtusely.

“Maria, of course,” said the woman. “Isn't that wonderful?”

9

The Caribbean operation became an Eddie Franks success, like everything else. The family was practically domiciled in America, having David brought from England for vacations. Franks divided his time between Manhattan and the islands, commuting weekly and often taking Tina and Gabriella with him. Increasingly there was little to report beyond the profit forecast for the end of the year, but Franks continued to summon monthly board meetings, and Dukes and Flamini and Pascara always attended.