If you knew how to read it.
I didn’t, but I knew someone who did.
Fifteen minutes later, Festino entered Starbucks, looked around, and found me in my comfortable chair in the back corner.
“You didn’t invite me here for an Iced Caramel Macchiato, I assume,” he said grumpily.
“Go ahead and get one,” I said. “On your nickel.”
“Yes, boss. Hey, thanks for lunch, by the way. We landed the deal.”
“Good to hear,” I said, although I really didn’t care at that moment.
He returned after a few minutes with his drink, then pulled up a chair next to mine. “Jesus, will you look at this seat cushion? Can you imagine how many filthy asses have been on it?” He inspected it suspiciously and sat down slowly, reluctantly. “So what’s this?”
I told him about the fraudulent bake-off.
His mouth came open, and his face reddened. “Those bastards. The whole thing was a cruel hoax?”
“So it appears.”
“So in a month I’m going to be standing over a Frialator in the back of some McDonald’s? They couldn’t have told me this in June, when McDonald’s was hiring? Hand me your laptop.” He squinted at the screen for a moment. “How’d you get this?”
“I think they call it ‘social engineering.’”
“From the ghoul squad themselves?”
“The merger integration team? Sort of.”
“Hey, this is the term sheet for the Meister deal. Coolio.”
“Yep.”
“This is supposed to be under lock and key. Double-secret probation. You really do know how to get stuff, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
He was silent a while longer. Then he started muttering words like “consideration” and “exchange ratio” and “closing price,” and he said, “Man, this is some complex deal. But the boot’s less than twenty percent. That’s standard.”
“The boot?”
“Cash. Investment banker talk. And there’s a soft collar in the deal.”
“Now it’s a collar?”
“See, if the price of Entronics stock goes down by closing date, they have to pay Meister more. If Entronics stock goes up, they pay less. A lot less, it looks like. Okay, now…I have a theory. Let me…” He was on the Internet, searching. “Yes. Here we go. Look at this-since the day the Meister deal was announced, Hardy’s given exactly three interviews. In Japanese.”
“In Japanese?”
“I mean, to Japanese newspapers. One in English, to the Japan Times. One to Asahi Shimbun. Another one to Nihon Keizai Shinbun. All of them upbeat, bragging about how Entronics U.S. business in flat-screens is taking off.”
“So?”
“Why do you think he only talked to Japanese journalists?”
“That’s simple. Entronics is a Japanese company. He figured his bosses would read the interviews and be impressed.”
“Come on, Jason. His bosses knew the numbers before Nihon Keizai Shinbun did. See, when you’re going through a merger or acquisition, the SEC’s always on your ass about talking to the press. But they can’t stop you from talking to foreign journalists in foreign countries. And who reads Japanese newspapers? In addition to Japanese-speakers?”
“I’m not following you.”
“The Japanese offices of some of the biggest American hedge funds, okay? They pick up a morsel of news about Entronics, figuring they got a jump on the rest of the world, and they start buying. Next thing, the program traders kick in. Pretty soon Entronics stock starts jumping.”
“So Dick Hardy was helping Entronics save a bundle on the Meister deal.”
“Exactly.”
“So he lights a fire under us, gets us to sign deals all over the place so we can save our jobs, but in reality all we’re doing is helping Entronics do a little bargain shopping.”
“Exactly. Evil, huh?”
“But we don’t know whether Dick Hardy did this at the direction of the MegaTower, or whether this was his own idea.”
“Who cares? Either way, he’s going to get a gold star,” Festino said. He took out a brand-new miniature bottle of hand sanitizer, unwrapped it, and squeezed out a big dollop onto the palm of his left hand. “And we get screwed.”
“Aha.”
“You can’t do anything about this, you know. In case you were planning something. This is all far, far above your pay grade.” He began feverishly rubbing his hands together. “Look at the stains on this arm-rest. It’s disgusting. I don’t think it’s coffee either.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s nothing I can do.”
“Anyway, I always liked McDonald’s fries. Even after they stopped frying them in beef tallow. You coming tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow night?”
“The softball game. Remember? You haven’t played in two weeks. And now that I’m coach, it’s all on my shoulders. We’re down two players.”
“Festino.”
“Sorry. But we are.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
54
I pulled into the Entronics parking lot at just before five-thirty. A black Mustang pulled in the space beside me with a loud squealing of brakes, and Kurt jumped out.
I sat in the car, waited for him to keep going. But he opened my passenger-side door and got in.
“How goes the battle?” he said.
“Tough day. Weirdest thing happened at home. We found a rattlesnake in our bedroom.”
“That right,” he said. “I didn’t even know there were any rattlesnakes in Massachusetts. Live and learn. But I thought you were going to California.”
“Missed the flight,” I said.
“That’s a bummer.”
“Yeah, well. It happens. So, congratulations on your promotion.”
He nodded, smiled. “It’s good to be king.”
“I’m impressed. Dick Hardy must think highly of you.”
“Dick Hardy wants me to be happy. He’s decided I’m invaluable.”
“You got something on him, huh?” I smiled, nodding, as if I appreciated his cleverness. He could have been a wholesaler bragging to me about some clever way they’d scammed Best Buy into paying for shipping.
“He even invited me on his yacht. Ever been on his yacht?”
“He invited me,” I said. “But I couldn’t make it.”
“It’s an eighty-foot Lazzara, I read. A bargain at 2.3 million. But it sure seemed out of his league, given his salary. So I did a little digging. Turns out Hardy has been doing a little stock trading on the side. Set up a Channel Island trust in the name of something called the Samurai Trust. Samurai being the name of his yacht, you see. And the Samurai Trust has been buying and selling out-of-the-money options on Entronics stock on the Australian Stock Exchange. Every time an Entronics press release goes out, every time there’s another blip of good news, the Samurai Trust cashes in. Making a fortune. Of course, if there’s bad news, he makes money, too, on shorts. Very clever-just about impossible to get caught. And all to pay for his yacht. Man, he could buy ten yachts by now.”
Finally, I understood. Dick Hardy might have been trying to save Entronics a bundle on the Royal Meister deal, but that wasn’t his sole motive. He was lining his own pockets at the same time.
“He’s a clever guy,” I said.
“Clever enough to do his personal banking business using an encrypted Hushmail account. Not clever enough to realize that whenever he did e-mails on the company computer, I could access his hard disk remotely.”
“Wow. Very cool.”
“Everyone’s got a secret. You’ve got your secrets too. I just happen to know them. And there you are, you and your Band of Brothers, working your butts off to try to save your division. When all you’re really doing is paying off his yacht. Or his new house in the Highland Park section of Dallas.”
“Dallas?”
“Choke on that, buddy. Wonder why he’s moving to Dallas.”