and a half mil before taxes was a boggling picture for the mind to behold.
"How soon does he get rich?"
"Their fiscal year ends the last day of this month. The national accounting firm doing the audit is Jensen, Baker and Company. They will apparently get a guaranteed underwriting through Fairmont, Noyes. I hear that it is a pretty clean deal and that SEC approval should be pretty much cut and dried after they get the complete audit report, the draft of the red herring."
I stared at him. "Red herring?"
"Do you know what a prospectus is?"
"That thing that tells you more than you care to know about a new issue of stocks or bonds?"
"Yes. The red herring is the prospectus without the per share price of the stock on it or the date of issue. And it is a complete disclosure of everything to do with the company, background of executives and directors, how they got their stock, what stock options they may hold, what financial hanky panky, if any, they've ever been involved in. Very interesting reading sometimes."
"Nice to see an old acquaintance get rich enough to afford a hell of a lot of alimony."
"When a company is in registration, they get very secretive, Travis. Loose lips can sink financial ships."
"What would he want Mary to sign? He said it was to protect his interest in SeaGate."
"I wouldn't have any idea."
"Can you find out?"
"I can try to find out. I suppose the place to go would be West Palm. That's where the Page 24
administrative offices of SeaGate are. That's where they are doing the audit, starting early so that they can close the books as of April thirtieth. It would be futile to try to pry anything out of the Jensen, Baker people. But maybe somebody in the SeaGate organization might talk. What did you do today?"
I told him. It was complicated and a lot of it was wasted time and effort, so I kept to the things that had worked.
Then I got to my big question. I had been bouncing it off the back of my mind for an hour, and it was going to be a pleasure to share the trauma with someone else.
"Here is this distrait husband, Meyer. He says he doesn't chase women. The Canadian girl was an exception, a big mistake. He wants me to tell Mary he wants her back. They'll go on a nice trip together. He is so rattled and upset he takes out his little gun and tries to kill me. Suppose he had. His two and a half mil would do him no good at all. And Mary could do him no good by coming back. Okay. He stashed his Canadian tail in apartment 61 at his Casa de Playa, and it was right there that Mary caught him. Harry got rid of the girlfriend. Mary gloomed around for a time, and then she left him. He wants her back. He's sending messages through me, he thinks, to get her to come back to him. Let's say she decides to go back. She goes to their house and finds it closed up. She knows he has the apartment. So she'd go there next, and she'd find him all cozied up there with a blonde named Betsy Booker. Draw me some inferences, please."
"Hmmm. We'll assume that the Booker woman is living in Broll's apartment with him, and the signs of her presence are too numerous to eliminate with short warning. Thus, when Broll came to see you, he either was very sure that Mary would not come back to him or that Mary could not come back to him. Or, possibly, if Mary could come back to him and decided to come back to him, he would have an early warning system to give him ample time to get the Booker woman out of the apartment and maybe even move back to Blue Heron Lane. This would imply that he knows where she is and has some pipeline to her. In either case, there would be considerable insincerity in his visit to you. Yet a man playing games does not pause in the middle of thp game to murder someone out of jealousy. So we come to a final postulate which is not particularly satisfying. We assume that he is and was sincere but is too comfortable with his current living arrangement to want to think it through and see how easily it could spoil his
"How soon does he get rich?"
"Their fiscal year ends the last day of this month. The national accounting firm doing the audit is Jensen, Baker and Company. They will apparently get a guaranteed underwriting through Fairmont, Noyes. I hear that it is a pretty clean deal and that SEC approval should be pretty much cut and dried after they get the complete audit report, the draft of the red herring."
I stared at him. "Red herring?"
"Do you know what a prospectus is?"
"That thing that tells you more than you care to know about a new issue of stocks or bonds?"
"Yes. The red herring is the prospectus without the per share price of the stock on it or the date of issue. And it is a complete disclosure of everything to do with the company, background of executives and directors, how they got their stock, what stock options they may hold, what financial hanky panky, if any, they've ever been involved in. Very interesting reading sometimes."
"Nice to see an old acquaintance get rich enough to afford a hell of a lot of alimony."
"When a company is in registration, they get very secretive, Travis. Loose lips can sink financial ships."
"What would he want Mary to sign? He said it was to protect his interest in SeaGate."
"I wouldn't have any idea."
"Can you find out?"
"I can try to find out. I suppose the place to go would be West Palm. That's where the Page 24
administrative offices of SeaGate are. That's where they are doing the audit, starting early so that they can close the books as of April thirtieth. It would be futile to try to pry anything out of the Jensen, Baker people. But maybe somebody in the SeaGate organization might talk. What did you do today?"
I told him. It was complicated and a lot of it was wasted time and effort, so I kept to the things that had worked.
Then I got to my big question. I had been bouncing it off the back of my mind for an hour, and it was going to be a pleasure to share the trauma with someone else.
"Here is this distrait husband, Meyer. He says he doesn't chase women. The Canadian girl was an exception, a big mistake. He wants me to tell Mary he wants her back. They'll go on a nice trip together. He is so rattled and upset he takes out his little gun and tries to kill me. Suppose he had. His two and a half mil would do him no good at all. And Mary could do him no good by coming back. Okay. He stashed his Canadian tail in apartment 61 at his Casa de Playa, and it was right there that Mary caught him. Harry got rid of the girlfriend. Mary gloomed around for a time, and then she left him. He wants her back. He's sending messages through me, he thinks, to get her to come back to him. Let's say she decides to go back. She goes to their house and finds it closed up. She knows he has the apartment. So she'd go there next, and she'd find him all cozied up there with a blonde named Betsy Booker. Draw me some inferences, please."
"Hmmm. We'll assume that the Booker woman is living in Broll's apartment with him, and the signs of her presence are too numerous to eliminate with short warning. Thus, when Broll came to see you, he either was very sure that Mary would not come back to him or that Mary could not come back to him. Or, possibly, if Mary could come back to him and decided to come back to him, he would have an early warning system to give him ample time to get the Booker woman out of the apartment and maybe even move back to Blue Heron Lane. This would imply that he knows where she is and has some pipeline to her. In either case, there would be considerable insincerity in his visit to you. Yet a man playing games does not pause in the middle of thp game to murder someone out of jealousy. So we come to a final postulate which is not particularly satisfying. We assume that he is and was sincere but is too comfortable with his current living arrangement to want to think it through and see how easily it could spoil his
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