Offerings Read online

  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.”

&nbsp
; “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.

  But what Peter wore to work today and what he’d be wearing to work in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere China didn’t matter either. And neither did the fact that Kate’s day had started eighteen hours ago with Ed’s can-you-pop-into-my-office bullshit and then morphed into putting together a pitch book that probably would be too little too late. The only thing that counted at the moment was that her little boy was being run into the ground by monsters.

  “I tried to get Mack to sleep,” Peter said, “but he wanted you. Everything’s going to be okay now, Mack. Mommy’s here.”

  Peter handed Mack a small red Lego car they’d been playing with. Mack and his Legos. When he was thirteen months old, he swallowed two of Sarah’s. Peter had called Kate from the ambulance and told her to come straight to the hospital when her plane landed. She was fogged in at O’Hare. She refused to get on a plane until she heard from Peter that the doctor in the emergency room had made everything right. When she called her mother to tell her what was going on and said she was going to quit her job at Greene Houseman on the spot to spend all of her time with her children, her mother laughed, said Mack would be just fine, children survive far worse. Kate had been the most competitive kid in everything she’d done since she was about six, and it would take a whole lot more than two Lego blocks to get her to drop her career.

  Kate led Mack into the solarium. They nestled into the soft beige love seat.

  “I can’t stop crying, mommy.”

  Kate pulled the brown fur throw blanket that was jumbled over the arm of the chair around them. She kissed Mack’s fingers. She stroked his hair and pressed him against her as hard as she could. His hair had the lemon scent of his shampoo. Mack was her quiet child, her second, her last, her baby. His fears were much closer to the surface than Sarah’s.

  “You’ve nothing to worry about, Mack. We’ll be safe here for a long, long time.” Kate found a blue Kleenex in her pocket, wiped Mack’s nose, and then her own.

  “So many stars above, so many cities at the bottom.” Kate began singing “Ach Spij Kochanie,” the song her grandmother had always sang to her, and th
at Kate’s mother had sang to Sarah and Mack when they went to bed. “Stars are giving signs to cities that children must go to sleep...”

  Mack’s head was still against her chest. “That song makes me think of Grandma.” Mack inhaled and said he missed her. Kate missed her too. Until a couple of months ago, she’d had the luxury of flying her mother in to be around the children during times when her work demands were too great. Now would have been the perfect time to call in the cavalry, but with her mother gone, Kate had to create new ground rules. Whining quotas. Time limits for tantrums. Frequent flyer points on Brewster Air (redeemable for ice cream, movies, video games, and extra TV time) for self-discipline. It was like house-training two new puppies.

  “I don’t want anybody to take me out of my house.” Mack’s voice was growing softer.

  Kate looked around the room. The Chippendale desk. The Persian carpet they bought in Istanbul. The early nineteenth-century poplar corner cupboard stocked with Meissen porcelain. There was an original oil by Fernand Leger above the mantel. Peter had outbid a Saudi prince at the Langley Spring auction in London the year before. Kate always thought the story of how he came to own the painting gave him more pleasure than the picture itself; three women, distorted the way all Cubists slice up their figures, sitting nude on red stools on a checkered tile floor.

  Mack whispered his fear again. Kate wondered if it was more than a demon-in-the-closet sort of fright. The house had been through two bankruptcies and one divorce since a stock trader named Cameron Dortmund built it for his wife Lucille and their boys Martin and Simon. They lived in it exactly nineteen days before he was wiped out by the crash of 1929. Peter laughed at the supposed curse. The day Kate and Peter took the title, Ascalon closed at thirty-seven and a half. He thought the price would rise forever, so instead of selling any of his shares, Peter pledged two hundred and fifty thousand to get the cash to buy the house and another two hundred thousand to buy the Leger.