15
Meg took another swig of her brandy, and, her tongue thus loosened, she began.
“Gino and I met at Stanford and had what, for that time, would pass as a torrid affair. He was more attractive then—less bullish-looking, slender, and at times, quite funny.
“He got me through my coding courses, being something of a prodigy, where I was klutzy. I had good ideas for what the software should do, but I was not good at telling it how. Gino sort of came behind me with a broom and a dustpan and made my ideas work. We were a good team, two sides of the same coin.
“I also took a lot of business courses, and I was way ahead of him in that regard. I planned for several years to do a start-up, and when I was getting ready I finally told him about it. He went nuts, accusing me of shutting him out of the profits that should come from his work. I took a hard line. I told him I would give him five percent of the company and he could buy another five percent, and that if he objected to that he could pay for the whole ten percent. He borrowed money to scrape up the investment. What I didn’t know was that he borrowed it from a guy who was a loan shark.
“By the time we got the company operating smoothly, I had to loan Gino the money to pay off his lender, and his investment ended up costing him twice what it should have. I saw that his debt to me was paid from the proceeds of the sale, and I made sure that in the transaction, he didn’t get to keep any of his stock, whereas I hung onto forty-five percent of mine.
“By the time of the sale I had managed to shunt him aside from the self-driving car to another product with much less promise. After the sale, my new partners insisted I drop development on that product, and Gino was just sitting at a desk, doing not much of anything. I hadn’t cheated him, but I hadn’t been very kind to him, either. Our affair had ended a couple of years before, and he had married Veronica, a very sharp cookie who brought out the worst in him. She’s certainly a partner, or even a moving force, in any criminality he’s involved in.
“Finally, I made it impossible for him not to resign, and he did. What I didn’t know was that he took copies of all the software on the car project, and although I had changed all the passwords, he managed to hack into our system and steal them.”
Stone interrupted: “That’s when you should have called the police.”
“I couldn’t do it,” Meg replied. “Not because I didn’t want to or didn’t have the guts, but because I was in hot negotiations to sell the company. The kind of news we would have made in Silicon Valley would have blown that for me, and I didn’t have the development money to continue the project without a sale. So I didn’t call in the authorities, and my lawyers tell me it’s too late now, that Gino could make a case for at least partial ownership of the software, thus having the right to access it. Now I’m stuck with Gino lying in wait around every corner, metaphorically speaking.”
“Not entirely metaphorically,” Stone said. “He’s already made two attempts on your life, and the last one came very close to success. If Dino hadn’t had the presence of mind to interfere, and the weapon, you and I would both be food for the gulls on Loggerhead Key.”
“That was very timely of Dino,” Meg agreed.
“And not for the first time,” Stone said. “He and I have a history of his pulling my fat from the fire, not to mention my ass.”
“That’s a good friend to have,” Meg said. “I wish I had one like him.”
“Stick around,” Stone replied.
GINO SAT at his computer in his and Veronica’s hotel suite. “Meg is in New York,” he said, pointing at his screen.
“Where?” Veronica asked, looking over his shoulder. “A hotel?”
“Let me try Google World,” Gino said, then watched as the satellite shot zoomed in on the signal from Meg’s cell phone. “I can’t figure out what this is,” he said. “It’s not marked as a hotel—it must be a house, a town house.”
“Well, after we’ve looked at apartments today, let’s see if we can find it. The desk just called—the car is waiting for us downstairs.”
Gino grabbed his jacket. “Then let’s go find a place to live.
IT WAS a condo on Park Avenue, in a new building. Gino had steered the agent away from a co-op, since the board would do a background check and demand tax returns, an area where his background was spotty.
This condo was promising: around four thousand square feet on two floors, high up, if not quite the penthouse. The views were up and down Park Avenue, west to the park and east to the river. It was the show apartment for the building and was, thus, nicely furnished.
“What do you think?” he asked Veronica.
“I think it meets our current standards,” she replied. “We can always move up later.” Gino haggled for the furnishings, then signed a sales contract. “When can we move in?” he asked the salesman.
“The minute your check clears,” the man said.
Gino wrote a nine-million-dollar check, signed it, and handed it over. “Walk this to your bank and get it cleared,” he said. “We’ll wait here.”
“I should mention that there are no linens included—sheets and towels—if you’re planning to sleep here tonight.”
Veronica spoke up. “While you’re clearing the check, I’ll run over to Bloomingdale’s and stock up. Do we need pots and pans, too?”
“Yes, and small appliances—toaster, coffeemaker.”
“Bloomie’s has it all.” She rode down in the elevator with the salesman.
“Is his check really going to clear?” he asked her.
“You bet your ass it is,” she replied. “He’s an impatient man, so be quick about it.”
He introduced her to the man on the desk and the doorman, then shook her hand and hailed a cab. Veronica got into their rented Mercedes and headed for Fifty-ninth and Lex.
GINO STROLLED around the apartment, taking another look at it. There was a nice study with bookcases filled with some books-by-the-yard; they each had a dressing room and bath; he liked the mattress. Home, sweet home.
Half an hour later, the agent walked in, handed him the ownership documents, the rules of the building, and a fistful of keys. “Nice doing business with you, Mr. Bellini,” he said, and got out of there.
VERONICA GOT hold of a personal shopper at Bloomingdale’s and roamed the store while the shopper made lists of her purchases. When she couldn’t think of anything else to buy, she wrote a check for her goods, extracted a promise of immediate delivery, and left for their hotel, where she quickly packed their bags and checked out.
Back at her new building, she asked the concierge to find her a housekeeper, then went upstairs, where she found Gino, opening boxes from Bloomie’s.
“Everything go okay?” she asked him.
He tossed her a set of keys. “We’re in business, babe, and Miss Meg will soon be out of business.”