Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 01 Page 14

  Travis shrugged. “Is this the wisdom that comes with age?”

  “Crap. Wisdom is overrated. Every old fart in a rocking chair thinks he’s a font of wisdom. Usually it’s just mellowed prejudice. Old people invented revisionist history, by the way, not academicians. We remember selectively and sometimes foolishly, making our lives more heroic, or more meaningful. No, what we really get from living a long time, if we’re honest with ourselves, is not wisdom, but perspective. We can measure things and place them in space and time. Remember that, the next time some old guy wearing a dorky tee shirt offers you advice.”

  “And me? What advice do you have for me?”

  “Well now, what shall I do with you? I meant it when I said I wanted you to take over the reins. You must learn patience, Travis. You’re good, but you’re in too much of a hurry. That could spell trouble for the company. I’ve worked too hard and too long to see it crash and burn because you couldn’t hold your water.”

  Travis leaned forward.

  “That said, you will stay on. Beginning July 1, you will be named president and CEO of Earth Global. At that time, I will assume the chairmanship of the board. Do not be deceived. You will feel my heavy hand on your shoulder every day until I’m sure you’re ready to run it on your own or I drop dead, whichever comes first. If you’re smart, you will not pray too hard for the latter.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Serious as a heart attack. Oops, bad figure of speech. But there is one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “I want to develop some small projects, here and there, through the real-estate division. Principally, I want to build a lodge-casino on the Chobe. I think I can persuade the government to let me build the lodge. I’m not so sure about the casino. But, I’m a patient man. That’s why I brought in the Russian wheeler-dealer. He knows people.”

  “I’m overwhelmed.”

  “And you should be. Now go back to your room and kick that tramp out of your bed. Get some sleep. We will be meeting with Yuri Greshenko first thing in the morning to help set up the deal locally.

  CHAPTER 31

  Leo ushered Travis to the door. It closed behind him and Leo sat down. It was time to call Farrah. That conversation would not take as long. He called Henry on his Blackberry and got his voice mail. He tried his room and had no luck there, either. He finally tracked down his errant legal advisor in the main bar.

  “Henry, I need to speak to you on a matter of some urgency. Please come to my room as soon as you can.” He hung up before Farrah could make his excuses and sat back to wait. The phone rang.

  “Henry…oh, sorry it’s you, Robert. What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you about something pretty important, Leo.”

  “I can’t talk now, sorry. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  “No, like, it’s about the shares.”

  “That’s all taken care of. If you want the money I promised, it will have to wait until we return to Chicago. Besides, you don’t want that on your books until after you divorce Brenda.”

  “Well, I’m not too sure that’s what I should do. Brenda is, like, okay in her way.”

  “We’ve been over this already. You think about it some more.” There was a knock at the door. “I have to hang up now, there’s someone here I need to speak with more than I need to talk to you.”

  “Listen, this is really important. Can you meet me at the Sedudu Bar?”

  “The what?”

  “It’s that bar where we went for a sundowner. You walk out that path away from your room past the campgrounds. They’re empty now, and the bar is, like, this little building on the river.”

  “Wait for me there. I’ll be along when I can.”

  Leo hung up and promptly forgot the conversation. He had Farrah at the door, and his heart was not behaving. He slipped a nitro under his tongue and answered the door. Henry Farrah swayed in the entryway and then stumbled into the room.

  “Henry, you’re drunk. I asked you to stay sober at least long enough to have a meeting.”

  “I am unsteady, Leo, but not drunk. There is a difference.”

  “I see. Well, sit down. I won’t offer you another drink, however.”

  Farrah collapsed in a chair and looked balefully at his employer. “So, what’s so important we have to meet in the middle of the night?”

  “Nine-thirty scarcely qualifies as the middle of the night, and you are drunk. Very well, I will ask you a question. Why did you refuse the retirement package I offered you three months ago?”

  “I thought I should be treated better than to be unceremoniously shoved out the door without so much as a fare-thee-well.” Farrah waved his hand vaguely in the air and looked smug.

  “It was a very generous package and as for the ‘fare-thee-well?’ We don’t do that.” Leo withdrew the sheets of phone calls. You’ve been very discreet in your attempts to cash out on the IPO, but not quite enough, I’m afraid. Your friends on the board were able to force the decision to create it, but the landscape has changed lately. I offer you the same package as before, but this time it is a final offer, Henry.”

  “You can’t stop the IPO, Leo.”

  “There will be no IPO, at least not right away. Final offer, take it or leave it. As of this moment you are fired.”

  “You can’t fire me. The board won’t permit it. They want the IPO and they will support me.”

  “There will be some significant changes in the board’s make-up when we return to Chicago. I have recently come into sufficient voting shares to replace some key members, your friends, to be precise. So I can fire you and I just did.”

  Farrah blinked. His mouth fell open. Any thoughts he may have had about a financial windfall evaporated. He was suddenly very sober.

  “Leo, you can’t. We go back…help me out here.”

  “Game’s up, Henry. Some disloyalty I can abide, if it is in the company’s interest to do so. In your case…well, you have not been earning out of late, and you had your chance to exit with some measure of grace earlier. Now, you’re out of chances.”

  Farrah stood and walked to the door.

  “I gather there is a bar down near the river. Why don’t you go there and have a think. Not a drink, Henry, a think. We’ll talk again in the morning.”

  Henry left without a word. Leo slouched back in his chair and took some deep breaths. His angina seemed a bit more painful. He popped another nitro and closed his eyes. He would rest for a while and then, when the pain subsided, he’d get to bed.

  ***

  Sanderson had her talk with the pretty David Mmusi and then another with her daughter. David assured her he was not that sort of man, an affirmation which she doubted, and Mpitle said she wasn’t that sort of girl; one which she hoped was true.

  “So, Michel, What must I do about these two young people?”

  “Mma, you must trust Mpitle. She sees how it is with me. She saw our father waste away. She will be very careful. David? Well, I don’t know about that boy, but Mpitle will be careful.”

  “I wish she would be more than careful. She says to me, ‘Mma I am not that sort of girl,’ but I don’t know.”

  “You will never know. It is the hormones, I think. They sometimes will muddy up the river of your mind.”

  Sanderson thought back to the time when she was her daughter’s age and nodded. “Yes, that is so. If it were not so, there might not have been a Michael for me to weep over this night.”

  Michael smiled. “It is not weeping I wish to have. I made a mistake and that is that. I cannot take it back.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “I am ready to die, Mma. I have done what I can and,” he attempted a grin, “and now you have your bakkie. It is enough.”

  “It is not enough, Michael. I would give a hundred trucks to have you back and healthy. I pray to the Lord God every night. I ask this of him, ‘Jesus, you say, ask and it shall be given, and I want to know why this is not being given to me.’”

 
“And I ask him, ‘Please let me go so my mother may not cry so much.’ You see, we are at odds. How can God answer both of us? I think He has decided to listen to me.”

  Sanderson wiped her eyes. “You must not ask Jesus for that any more, Michael.”

  “It is too late to change it now, Mma. So be at peace.

  CHAPTER 32

  Henry Farrah was not as sober as he had appeared when he stormed out of Leo’s room. As with many of his generation, he’d grown up in an era that partied hard, played hard, and blew off the potential consequences. He thought he’d developed a high tolerance for alcohol. In fact, as a young man, he had. He could drink many lesser men under the table. But age plays tricks on one’s body. The ability to metabolize alcohol decreases inversely with the years, which is why there are so many old people diagnosed as alcoholics by their families. It’s not that they drink more, or even to excess. Two martinis before dinner might have characterized a couple’s preprandial drinking for years with no untoward effects. Then one day the roast burns to a crisp, or they miss dinner entirely, or…worse.

  Henry would have been over his limit even if he had been twenty. He staggered from Leo’s room and headed down the path that led to the Sedudu bar. His intent was to get thoroughly blotto and then he’d have a few things to say to that bastard, Leo. It was very dark and the path was uneven and he stumbled a lot. He had to pass by a copse of trees whose hanging branches hung over the narrow walkway. As he came abreast of them, he could just make out the bar’s dim lights ahead. A figure stepped in front of him.

  “Take some advice from someone who knows, don’t sell your soul to the company. It’ll kill you,” he mumbled to himself and paused, peered into the darkness in an effort to make out who stood in his way.

  They were the last words to leave his mouth, for at that precise moment he experienced the most excruciating pain he’d felt since he passed a kidney stone. It quite literally took his breath away. The pain centered in his abdomen just below his breastbone. In the fraction of a second between the onset of the pain and his reeling away, he wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like. The image of his wife and daughter flitted through his mind. There was the life insurance. In the seconds before the damage to his left ventricle caused by Brenda’s spear point resulted in a massive hemorrhage into his cardiac cavity, he managed to stagger forward, arms flailing. His thought, which he never completed: seek help at the Sedudu bar. Instead, faculties fading, he careened across the campground and collapsed in the scrub at its edge.

  The last thing Henry Farrah saw before he departed this life was the enormous maned head of the lion. Its golden eyes seemed soft and strangely sympathetic, as if it, too, faced death and understood his anguish.

  ***

  The sound of the struggle had aroused Sekoa, that and the metallic scent of blood that quickly wafted across the space between him and the sounds of distress caused by Henry’s death. He listened to the pounding of feet going away in one direction, the crashing about in the bush closer in. He heaved himself up on quivering legs and cautiously padded forward toward the inert man. He stood over him, poised and ready to give chase if by chance it should try to rise. He sniffed and snorted. The thing was dead. He would not have to kill it. He closed his jaws on the man’s shoulder and dragged him a dozen meters farther into the bush. This small effort so exhausted him he dropped to the ground next to his prize, panting. His starving body told him he must feed but he could not summon the energy to do so. He would rest.

  Back along the trail he’d made dragging the corpse, the spear point had come dislodged and lay partially hidden in a clump of grass. Sekoa huffed and dropped his head on the man’s chest and closed his eyes.

  There is some evidence, mostly anecdotal, that animals anticipate their deaths. Tales of elephant graveyards, cats who wander off to die, a dying bull who charges one last time. Who can be sure? It is equally uncertain if humans have that same sense. If so, the evidence for it is even scanter. So, one cannot say whether Sekoa knew his time had come. Henry Farrah certainly did not. The only certainty was that the two of them would be found together the next day by the hotel’s employees who’d been sent out to search for the missing Henry Farrah.

  ***

  Brenda sat by the bed, obviously angry, her face flushed and her foot tapping a staccato beat against the floor.

  “Where’ve you been?” she demanded of Bobby as he slithered in through the sliding glass door.

  “I could ask the same thing about you, only I already know. You’ve been with Parizzi.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Why would I be seeing him? He’s a jerk.”

  “He’s a jerk now? Woo-hoo, what happened to the hot financial deal he was going to do with the stocks? My stocks? Weren’t you supposed to be his partner or something?”

  “The deal’s off and it’s your fault. You had to go and tell Leo about how Travis had bought them and now Leo has them and Travis doesn’t need us any more.”

  “He dumped you, Brenda? Gee, I’m so sorry.” Bobby’s grin only infuriated her even more. She launched into a tirade that made all of her past efforts pale by comparison. Bobby cracked a beer and waited until she wound down.

  “You got what was coming to you, Brenda, so stop your bitching.”

  “What was coming to me? Listen, I busted my ass to put this thing together. And what about you? You’re out in the cold, too. Didn’t you tell me Leo fired you? So what do we live on now?”

  “We? What’s with we? You and me aren’t a we anymore. It’s, like, just me.”

  “Yeah? You thinking about cutting me out? Let me tell you, it can’t happen, Buster. You’ll end up losing the farm. See, I know things about you—a certain thing. I have alternatives, and I’ll hire me a lawyer.”

  Bobby giggled and then composed himself. “You’ll need a good one, maybe local at that?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. But you’d better believe I am not going to suffer, now or ever again. That company? I figure its going to be mine soon.”

  “Yours? That’s a laugh. Leo thinks it’s his company. Travis says it’ll soon be his, and now you say it’s yours? How do you figure that?”

  “Let’s just say I fixed it.”

  “Fixed what?”

  “All you people, even my own wife, you all think I’m stupid. Well, I am not the stupid one here. You want to stick around, Brenda, you’d better be real nice to me from now on. Calling me stupid could be, like, hazardous to your health.”

  Brenda studied him closely, weighing her options, all of which had been drastically reduced in the last hour, and calmed down. She thought she knew how to manipulate him.

  He giggled again. She was stuck, and he was going to enjoy this, it seemed.

  “Nice, how?”

  “What, I have to spell it out for you? Go take one of those long showers you like so much. You need to wash Travis off so take your time and make sure you do it right. Then, come out. You know what I want.”

  She hesitated, seeming to weigh her chances one way or the other, shrugged, and did as he asked. When the shower door closed he slipped her bloody glove in the trash can under a supply of tissues she’d deposited earlier. He noted that some of the blood oozed onto two of the tissues, her tissues, with her DNA.

  Sweet.

  CHAPTER 33

  Dawn brought back the birds yammering in the trees. Farther away, toward the park, an elephant trumpeted, ushering in the rising sun. Mist drifted across the river, and the day broke fresh and new. Near the river, the herbal scent of the river seemed to rise with the mist. David Mmusi considered himself a very lucky fellow. He had a beautiful girlfriend and a part-time job at the Safari Lodge. Each morning before school, he would walk to the Sedudu bar and straighten up. His job was to remove the empty bottles, empty the dust bins and ash trays, and sweep up. In the afternoon he would return and help fill the ice buckets, place the tables and chairs in order, and set out the bottles of
liquor for the evening’s consumption. It did not pay well, but it would serve as a foot in the door for the future after he finished his education. Jobs at the lodges in Kasane were difficult to obtain. He had a head start.

  He quick-stepped down the path from the main lodge, humming along with the latest song from America that he’d downloaded to his MP3 player. At the turning in the path, where tree limbs hang over, something bright and colorful caught his eye. He stopped and looked into the deeper shadows against the tree trunks. A leopard patterned scarf apparently dropped by a guest fluttered weakly in the freshening breeze. He picked it up and folded it carefully. It will be a very fine present for Mpitle, he thought. He put it in his pocket and continued on his way to the bar. He had work to do and a long walk after that to school. He would present this fine scarf to Mpitle during lunch break.

  ***

  Travis saw the dawn. He had not slept. Too much had happened in the last few hours, and his excitement had kept him as alert and wide awake as a triple shot cappuccino. Getting rid of Brenda Griswold had been easier than he’d expected. Once she realized she no longer had anything with which to bargain and therefore he had no further use for her, she’d left, but only after making some very explicit suggestions as to what he could do with himself in the future, several of which were neither gracefully stated nor anatomically possible. He guessed he’d gotten off easy. He hoped she would find her way back to her husband and former life. She certainly seemed capable. She’d hooked Bobby once, she could do so again.

  Candor was not a virtue in the circles in which Travis moved, but he had to concede he felt no remorse. Schemers like Brenda always landed on their feet. She would this time as well. He turned his attention to the papers he’d brought from Chicago. He didn’t need half of them anymore. They dealt with a now no-longer-operative, the who, what, and how of his take-over plan. The rest were detailed performance ratings of the company, its divisions, and subdivisions. He’d need to memorize the figures. If he and Leo were going to work together, he’d need to know as much as he did—no mean feat. Leo might not have the benefit of an MBA, nor, Travis believed, a baccalaureate, but when it came to the company and its myriad pieces and parts, he was a walking encyclopedia. Whether or not people thought Leo was over the hill, they conceded he knew his company—all of it.