13
The next day, Miguel strode past the startled secretary, opened the door to Ramon’s office, and shut it firmly behind him. “Tell me all about your good friend Sidney Green in St. Louis,” Miguel said, with sarcastic emphasis on the word friend.
Ramon, who was leaning back in his chair, engrossed in some legal documents he was reading, glanced distractedly at Miguel. “He is not a friend of mine, he is merely a man who knew a friend of mine.” Returning his attention to the documents, he said, “He approached me at a cocktail party at this friend’s house nine years ago, and described a new formula for paint that he had worked out. He said that using his formula he could produce paint that would wear better and last longer than any other paint on the market. The next day he brought me an analysis of his paint, which was performed by an independent testing laboratory, and proved his claims.
“He needed three million dollars to begin to manufacture and market it, and I arranged for Galverra International to lend it to him. I also put him in touch with several of my friends who owned companies that bought paint for use on the products they manufacture. You will find the information in a closed file somewhere. It was as simple as that.”
“Part of the information was in the file, I got the rest from the treasurer of the corporation this morning. It was not quite as simple as you think. Your father had Green investigated, found out he was a small-time chemist, and decided as such, he would never have the business acumen to market his product, and the the three million would be wasted. Being the ‘kind, loving father’ that he was, your father decided to teach you a lesson. He instructed the treasurer to advance three million dollars into your personal account and make the loan from you personally to Green. One year later, when the loan was to be repaid, Green wrote and said he wanted an extension. According to the treasurer, you were in Japan at the time, and he took Green’s letter to your father. Your father said to ignore the letter, and not to make any attempt to collect the loan; collecting it was your problem.
Ramon sighed irritably. “Nevertheless, the loan was repaid. I remember my father telling me that it had been.”
“I don’t give a damn what that devil told you—it wasn’t. Sidney Green told me so himself.”
Ramon’s head snapped up, his jaw clenched in anger. “You called him?!”
“Well . . . yes . . . you told me not to waste any more time going through the files, Ramon,” Miguel reminded him, flinching under Ramon’s furious glance.
“Damn you! I gave you no authority to do that,” Ramon exploded. Leaning back in his chair, he briefly closed his eyes, obviously struggling with his rampaging temper. When he spoke again his voice was controlled. “Even when I was in St. Louis, I did not call him. He knew I was in trouble; if he had wanted to help he would have contacted me there. He will interpret your phone call about an old loan as a pitiful ploy on my part to try to get money from him. He was an arrogant bastard nine years ago when he had nothing but the shirt on his back; I can imagine what he must be like now that he is successful.”
“He is still an arrogant bastard,” Miguel said, “And he never repaid one dime of the money. When I explained that I was trying to locate the records of the repayment of the money you loaned him, he said that you are too late to take him to court over it.”
Ramon listened to this with cynical amusement. “He is right, of course. It was my responsibility to see that the money was repaid, and when it wasn’t, to take appropriate legal action within the allowable time limit.”
“For God’s sake! You gave the man three million dollars and he is refusing to pay you after you made him rich! How can you just sit there like that?”
Ramon shrugged ironically. “I did not ‘give’ him the money, I loaned it to him. I did not do it out of kindness or charity, I did it because I felt there was a need for the superior product he could manufacture, and because I hoped to make a profit. It was a business investment, and it is the investor’s responsibility to look after his money. Unfortunately, I did not realize that I was the investor, and I assumed the corporation’s auditors would oversee it. To Green, his refusal to repay it now, when he does not have to, is nothing personal—he is merely looking out for his own interests. That is business.”
“It is theft!” Miguel said bitterly.
“No, it is merely good business,” Ramon said, regarding him with dry amusement. “I suppose that after telling you he would not repay the money, he sent me his regards and his ‘deep regrets’ for my sad state of affairs.”
“Like hell he did! He told me to tell you that if you were half as smart as everyone always said you were, you would have demanded your money years ago. He said if you, or anyone else representing you, contacted him again to try to collect it, he would have his legal staff file suit against you for harassment. Then he hung up on me.”
All of the amusement vanished from Ramon’s expression. He put his pen down. “He what?” he asked with deadly softness.
“He—he said those things, and then he hung up on me.”
“Now that was very bad business,” Ramon said in a silky, ominous voice.
He leaned back and was thoughtfully silent, his mouth quirked in a faint, ironic smile. Abruptly, he reached over and punched the intercom button. When Elise answered his buzz, he gave her seven names and seven phone numbers to call in seven different cities all over the world.
“If I recall the terms of the loan correctly,” Ramon said, “I loaned him three million at whatever interest rate was being charged on the day of repayment.”
“Right,” Miguel said. “If he had repaid the loan in one year, the interest rate then was eight percent, and he would have owed you about $3,240,000.”
“Today the interest rate is seventeen percent, and he has owed it for nine years.”
“Technically he owes you more than twelve million dollars,” Miguel said, “but it does not matter. You cannot possibly collect it.”
“I have no intention of trying,” Ramon said affably. His gaze shifted to the telephone on the desk, waiting for the first of the transatlantic calls to go through.
“Then what are you going to do?”
Ramon’s brow lifted with amusement. “I am going to teach our friend Green a lesson he should have learned long ago. It is a variation on an old saying.”
“What old saying?”
“The saying that when you are climbing up the ladder of success, you should never deliberately step on anyone’s hands, because you may need them to help you when you are on your way down.”
“What variation are you going to teach him?” Miguel asked, his eyes beginning to gleam with delighted anticipation.
“Never make unnecessary enemies,” Ramon answered. “And the lesson is going to cost him twelve million dollars.”
When the calls came through, Ramon pressed a button on his telephone that activated a speaker system so that both sides of the conversation were clearly audible to Miguel. Several of the conversations took place in French and Miguel struggled desperately to follow them, hampered by his rudimentary knowledge of a language Ramon spoke fluently. After the first four calls, however, Miguel had gathered enough of what was taking place to be utterly staggered.
Each of the men Ramon talked to were major industrialists whose companies either used or had used paint manufactured by Green’s company. Each man treated Ramon with warm friendliness and listened with amusement as he briefly explained what he was trying to do. When each call was completed, Miguel was a little surprised to hear everyone of them ask if there was anything they could do to help Ramon in his “difficult circumstances,” and in every case Ramon politely declined.
“Ramon!” Miguel burst out when the fourth call was over at four-thirty in the afternoon. “Any one of those men could bail you out of this financial disaster you are in, and they all offered to help.”
Ramon shook his head. “It is a polite formality, nothing more. They offer to help, and it is understood that I will decline their offer. That is good business. You see,” he said with a shadow of a smile, “we have all already learned the lesson Mr. Green is being taught.”
Miguel could not suppress a chuckle. “If I followed those calls correctly, tomorrow the Paris press is going to report that their major automobile manufacturer had a problem with Green’s paint fading on their test car, and has decided to use something else.”
Ramon went over to the liquor cabinet and poured drinks for himself and Miguel. “It is not quite as lethal to Green as it sounds to you. My friend in Paris had already told me he’d decided against using Green’s paint because it was too expensive; I was the one who had put him in touch with Green nine years ago. The problem with the fading paint was because it was incorrectly applied by his factory personnel, but of course he has no intention of mentioning that to the press.”
He carried the glasses over to Miguel and handed him his. “The farm-equipment manufacturer in Germany will wait one day after the Paris press announcement before calling Green and threatening to cancel his order because of what he saw in the Paris press.”
Ramon shoved his hands in his pockets and grinned at Miguel, a cigar clamped between his white teeth. “Unfortunately for Green, his paint is no longer superior; other American manufacturers have since produced an equally good product. My friend in Tokyo will respond to the Paris press announcement by stating to the Tokyo press that they have never used Green’s paint so they have no trouble with their automobiles’ finish fading.
“On Thursday, Demetrios Vasiladis will call from Athens and cancel all orders for marine paint for all of his shipyards.”
Ramon took a swallow of his drink, sat down behind his desk and began loading papers into his briefcase that he would go over tonight after he left Katie.
Intrigued, Miguel leaned forward on the edge of his chair. “And then what?”
Ramon glanced up as if the matter had lost its interest. “Then it is anyone’s guess. I expect that the other American paint manufacturers who make an equally good product will take up the sword and do their best to demolish Green in the American press. Depending upon how effective they are, the adverse publicity will probably drive down the value of Green’s stock on the stock exchange.”