* * * *
Tabitha continued crying in my arms. My shirt was soaked through. It was both scary and comforting to hold her. I stroked her back slowly. There was no sexual desire in my hands but there still was a thrill of touching her warmth. Through gaps between the tears, she told how the family's laundromat had been torched and the loan and banking problems that were started by Blythe and Jones. My mind went back to the man watching my home. Could he have been working for Blythe? I looked up and saw Move-over's eyes. I silently whispered, “You need to watch her."
“Meowwwerrr.” Somehow I knew Move-over understood and had accepted the task.
Tabitha left my arms to wash her face. The whole side of my shirt was wet and cold. I went to the bedroom to put on a new shirt. Talking through the walls and doors to Tabitha, “You don't have to go back to school. You can stay here."
“I am going to school. Blythe isn't going to stop me from finishing my degree."
“You need to be careful. If Blythe had the laundromat burned, your broken leg might not have been an accident."
“I thought of that myself. I will find out what happened."
She came out of the bathroom. Her face was the same one I saw those weeks earlier in the video store. I knew she would find out what had happened. But I was still afraid. I spent the remaining hours of the weekend trying to talk her into letting me protect her or to play it safe and stay home. She refused both choices.
I was again sitting on the stump in the woods. The knife blade throbbing in my hand and the birds watching. This time when I had skied into the woods, I had taken a step further in the transformation. I had become a predator. I felt the forest breathing and the life but this time my senses went out to find the life and my body relaxed to attack. At first, I couldn't understand why the tension left my limbs and my skiing rhythm changed to a liquid flow. But there was a clatter as two tree limbs connected in the breeze. My body flowed into readiness before my senses could classify the sound. I had not realized the body had to relax before it could fight.
I had to protect Tabitha. I had to protect myself. Damnit. I needed to learn how to do both. The puukko flew from my hands and stuck one inch into a tree trunk equal distance between two nuthatches who were watching me. The nuthatches didn't fly away or stop their watching. I skied to the tree and pulled the knife from the wood. The birds finally flew to the next tree when I got within arm's reach.
* * * *
Jones had spent two days with the bankers. Jones knew his actions had given them a breathing spell of at least a few months. His next meeting was with Finkelstien, Bradly and Associates. It was a small investment firm that Jones had worked with before. He had gone to college with Harry O'Bradly.
“Harry O. You really should put the O back in your name."
“Johnny, you know how Wall Street is. I had to leave Finkelstien's name on the company just so I could stay in business. No one except you would hire a firm named O'Bradly to do their investing.
“Enough small talk. You look worried Johnny. What do you need?"
“Raiders are going after my boss's companies. I think I might be a casualty of the take over attempt. I need to get my investments liquid enough so I can pull out without loosing too much money. Plus I would like to find out who is going after Blythe."
“Okay, Johnny. There are some short terms bonds we can use..."
“Now that is finished, what can you tell me about Coffee Klutch?"
“Coffee Klutch? How are they involved?"
“They started the problems by pulling out their investments in mass. Blythe's market value dropped 30 points in one day."
“You're in trouble. The Coffee Klutch started investing in the early 80s. They are a private investment firm but all the big boys started watching them closely in the 90s. They have never had a negative year. They are damn good. If they have lost faith in Blythe, there is a better than 50/50 chance that nothing you try will save you."
“Just who is Coffee Klutch? I've never heard of them and I can't find any details about them."
“They are a private investment club so not much is known. I do know that they started out with 10,000 dollars and their current portfolio is over 375 million. For years I thought the Coffee Klutch was a group of Ivy League graduates. You know what I'm talking about. A group of friends just graduating from college put up 1,000 dollars each and go into the market. But a few years back I was drinking with a friend I have in the FCC. A news program about investing on Wall Street come on the bar's TV and this being the financial district no one turned it off. The reporters had a monkey picking stocks. The monkey out performed most of the big firms. The monkey even outperformed me for three-quarters. The news show went on to a group of little old ladies investing in the market. That is when my friend whispered,
“The Coffee Klutch is the same thing.""
That is when everything fell into place for Jones. The downtown dinner with the name the Coffee Clutch. The side room reserved every Tuesday night for the ladies of the town. The town had turned against Blythe. With 375 million in the stock market, they could do what they wanted. It now made sense. The banker not following instructions. The problems getting the DA and police to do what he wanted. It was time to get out.
“Harry, Blythe is going down. He has maybe six months before he looses his companies. I want you to pull all of my stocks out of his companies. But I need it done slowly and quietly so he doesn't know that I am quitting. How long do you think it will take?"
“How much money are you willing to lose in the deal?"
“As little as possible."
“Give me four months. To make this work you will need to make sure he doesn't suspect you are leaving."
“He won't."
Chapter 9
Eyes
I finished an article on the affect of deforestation on local water tables. I encrypted the story and emailed it to the home office. Move-over was watching me from the top of the computer case. Since he had to have his head on the computer's cooling fan and the fan was in back of the case, he was trying a new method of lying on the computer. He was on his back with his head coming out from under his shoulder. I scratched his chin. The cat's rumbling was three times louder than the old muffin fan on the computer. Just audible over the purring was the thrashing of the computer's hard drive.
I wondered if Blythe had someone trying to hack into my files. What about my work on gravity? The best way to protect something is not to protect it. I decided to send copies of my equations to every college and lab that I had email addresses to. If everyone had it with my name on it, no one could steal the information.
The sending of the emails took the rest of the morning. I needed to get away from the computers. I had work to do on the Contraption. I bought a new reflector dish. The dish was the only thing that seemed to be broken beyond repair. To protect the dish during the next test, I was welding steel straps to the Dodge transmission case. The straps were long enough to reach the dish. I would bend each strap to form a harness around the outside edge of the dish. I lost myself in the blue arch of the electric welder. Tomorrow I would start assembling a frame to mount the electromagnetic transmitters on. I was going to use inch and a quarter galvanized steel water pipes. The pipes were overkill for the frame but my dad had a stack of them left from the waterlines we had for the stock tanks.