50. An Offer

50

An Offer

KINGSTON MOORE

Part of Kingston wanted to slap a closed sign on Sidewinder’s front door and have the locks changed overnight because he was a damaged, stubborn man.

If Nicole didn’t want Sidewinder to survive, Kingston didn’t need to work this hard to save it.

And jeez, she had written her whole set of papers in Old English, weird letters and double-flipped-p’s and crossed-d’s and all.

Nevertheless, Kingston walked past the crowd lining the hallway and into Conference Room Two at precisely eight a.m., finding Nicole Lamb sitting primly on her side of the table.

Two other women flanked her, all of them wearing business suits.

The same woman was down at the corner of their table, holding her camera flat but watching Kingston walk in.

Looks like Kingston was outnumbered this time.

He shut the door, but the long windows on both sides of the door showed the crowd of employees milling around out there. They weren’t plastered to the glass like zombie Halloween decorations, but they were out there, pacing, talking, waiting.

As he took his place across from her, she shrugged as if to say that she didn’t know how they got there, raising the shoulders of her black business suit jacket.

He’d worn a dark blue Dior suit, so both of them took the occasion seriously. Last time, she’d worn a sunshine yellow and white striped sundress, and he’d barely been able to concentrate.

He’d deliberately not tucked a pocket square into his suit jacket’s breast pocket.

She’d already looked at the empty space twice.

Let her make of it what she would.

“Okay,” Nicole said. “Let’s get started.”

The woman on the end raised her phone and touched something on her screen.

Nicole announced, “Fairways and Greens Un-Ionized and the management of Sidewinder Golf is now meeting for good faith negotiation and being video-recorded,” and she stated the date and time.

They did the identifying thing again. Kingston did not quibble on calling himself a partner.

After Nicole stated her name, the other two women on her side of the table declared that they were Gail Stein, attorney-at- law and Sidewinder legal department, and Becca Jamison, CPA and accounting department.

“Fairways and Greens Un-Ionized has a proposal,” Nicole started, reading from a prepared statement. “You have stated that Sidewinder Golf is insolvent.”

Kingston sighed. “Technically, yes.”

She looked up at him, her dark eyes serious. “And what does that mean, technically?”

“If you look at a simple balance sheet, revenue in, expenses out, EBITDA, etc., Sidewinder is deeply underwater and a foolish investment.”

“Then why have you been shoveling money into the money pit?” she asked.

“Because that’s not the only way to value a business. You will miss the best investments if you only look at red and black ink on a balance sheet. Growth is the most important indicator. I am always more interested in the product pipeline. Every company is only as good as its next product.”

She kept watching him with her dark eyes. “So you believe in the company.”

Kingston looked right back at her. “I believe in Sidewinder’s pipeline. I believe in the brilliance of its forthcoming products.”

“Tell me about the bet,” Nicole said, her voice flat and raspy.

He inclined his head and opened one hand, a gesture of embarrassment. “So, it all started last New Year’s Eve when my three best friends and partners at Last Chance and I got roaring drunk, and there’s this other guy named Gabriel Fish?—”

“I don’t want to know the tawdry details. I want to know the conditions and dates.”

His little engineer was nothing if not pragmatic. “All five of us are to buy a golf-related business.”

“And that explains Last Chance’s weird golf-related buying spree.”

She had done her homework. “We work to increase its value. Results will be tabulated this December twenty-eighth for reveal on New Year’s Eve. Winning will be based on a calculation of net increase in value.”

“And what do you win? Bragging rights? Have you done all this to us for bragging rights?”

“A hundred million dollars ante, each. Winner take all.”

All three women rolled their eyes as they should.

Nicole asked him, disbelief lacing her voice like poison, “And you made this bet?”

Their frustration was only a fraction of his own. “There was alcohol involved. A lot of alcohol. And a watertight, unbreakable contract that we all somehow signed.”

Gail Stein, the attorney wearing a conservative dark gray suit that Morrissey would’ve called a court suit, leaned forward. “If you were inebriated, no court would uphold the contract.”

Kingston held up one hand to stop her because they did not need to get into the weeds of this ridiculous situation. “We signed. There are no loopholes. Trust me on this one. We are on the hook.”

“And you can’t just go buy something else?” Becca Jamison the CPA asked. “Especially considering Joe Flanagan obviously committed fraud when he suckered you into buying us.”

“Unfortunately, the company for the wager had to be declared at the time of purchase. Otherwise, we all would’ve bought ten companies and put forward the one that did the best. At least, that’s how Gabriel Fish would have played the game.”

Gail the lawyer bobbed her head as she looked at the ceiling, perhaps admiring the trap Kingston had been caught in.

Nicole just shook her head like she was secondhand embarrassed for him.

Which was probably kinder than he deserved.

“Now that the situation is on the table, what are we here to discuss?” he asked.

Nicole read from the paper in her hands, “In exchange for a commitment from Last Chance, Inc. to fund operations at Sidewinder Golf through—” Nicole conferred with the lawyer and accountant beside her and then said, “—through the end of the year, we offer three things.”

“I’m listening.”

Nicole’s eyes flashed up at him again, less angry, more wide and honest. “I am ninety percent sure that I have a fix for the Excalibur driver. We will make the face of the driver even thinner?—”

Kingston winced at her idea as even he saw the problem with it. “But that will make it more bouncy, more outside of the PGA’s limitations.”

Nicole continued, “—and then we will craft an additional structure, like a strut, to be glued inside the club head to reinforce the face plate, which we can tune to exactly the PGA’s upper limit, making it the absolute springiest club on the market while increasing forgiveness for mis-hits. Every pro will rip off their left leg for it. It’ll win all the long-drive competitions.”

Air stroked across Kingston’s tongue and down his throat as he couldn’t repress a gasp. The brilliance of it was astounding. He wanted the club right then.

He could sell a club like that for whatever he wanted, any price he could name.

“The additional support is small,” Nicole continued. “For a very minor startup cost, we can manufacture it in-house. We could make a thousand struts in a week. The custom part would then be shipped to the final assembly plant where they glue the club head together in Texas.”

His little engineer was flipping brilliant. “Dali would never see the new part.”

“They won’t know it exists, and they certainly won’t have its specifications. I also formulated a new glue that integrates into the strut itself. If any other company tries to cut the club head apart to reverse engineer it, the support will disintegrate as they try to take it out. It should buy us at least three, maybe five, years as the magic golf club everyone wants.”

Kingston spread his hands on the table. “Amazing.”

“If they try to manufacture a generic version of the design of that driver head without the reinforcing strut inside, the club’s face will collapse after hitting about twenty shots. It will be like hitting a golf ball with an empty beer can on a stick.”

He could feel a grin growing on his face. “Devious. I like it.”

Kingston did like it. As a matter of fact, he loved it.

With the Rattler line of club sets already in transit for the big box stores, the Excalibur and Vorpal lines would be the cornerstone of Sidewinder’s turnaround strategy.

If Kingston could sell a thousand Excalibur-plus-Vorpal sets at ninety grand apiece, Sidewinder would add ninety million dollars to its bottom line.

Sidewinder would be highly profitable by the end of the year, a long black number for the profit-and-loss spreadsheet for Gabriel Fish’s wager.

His moon shot might work.

Nicole grinned back at him and looked back at her paper. “Second item: union members will pledge to remain with the company, barring unforeseen individual decisions.”

“Agreed,” Kingston said, the clause just like the previous contract.

“Third, if you lose the bet, on January first, the union will purchase Sidewinder for the amount of its operational debt from Last Chance, the previous purchase price Last Chance paid to Joe Flanagan, and a reasonable interest rate, becoming at that time an employee-owned business. We will assume all previous debt.”

“The purchase price was one hundred thousand dollars, plus assumption of debt,” Kingston told them.

“What?” Nicole yelled, half-jumping out of her chair. “Joe Flanagan sold us for a hundred grand? That’s it? I could have put that on my credit card!”

“That’s why Sidewinder was a moonshot. If we sell pre-orders for a thousand Excalibur and Vorpal sets, plus the expected Rattler profits from the golf retail stores, the expected return is thirty thousand-fold our initial investment. That should win the bet.”

“I can’t believe he sold us to you for such a pittance.”

“That’s how bad the debt is. Flanagan financed the retrofit of this building with your labs and bollocks amount of equipment, golf simulators, the million-dollar couches in the lobby, and all the other depreciating assets in here because he didn’t have the cash on hand. Just the interest payment every month is insane. He should have rented the equipment and re-invested profits.”

She lifted her hands off the conference table between them like it was fire, which it was. The table and every other piece of furniture and lab equipment were literally burning cash. “That’s crazy.”

“Sidewinder doesn’t own the building, either. This structure is rented. You’d be better off walking out en masse and starting a new employee-owned company without the debt.”

“But the non-compete and work-for-hire agreements in the contracts,” she said.

Kingston shrugged. “If Sidewinder goes bankrupt, there won’t be an entity to enforce them. You can do whatever you want.”

Nicole flopped back in her chair and tapped the notes before her. “We were making this deal, though. We already made you the offer.”

“Don’t make the deal. Reneg on it. When we write the contract I’ll take to Last Chance, add a clause that says the union can back out on January first for a one-dollar penalty.” He leaned in. “Let Last Chance finance Sidewinder through the end of the year before you back out.”

She tapped the papers in front of her again. “But if we buy Sidewinder, it will give you a lot of money to save Last Chance if you lose the bet.”

“It’s business. You shouldn’t take our position into account.”

“But you told Morrissey Sand that you were ruined if you lost the bet.”

Kingston barreled ahead. “Here’s your plan: if I lose the bet, or if all of us Last Chance guys lose, you should all quit. Walk out on this turkey. Let Sidewinder burn. The banks will repossess everything.”

“But everyone would lose their jobs.”

He kept talking. “In a month, offer the banks to buy Sidewinder’s lab equipment, inventory, and product lines for ten percent of what Flanagan owed on them. Ten percent. The banks will do it. They’ve already taken the loss in the repossession.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t sound legal.”

“It’s legal. Corporations do it all the time. The bank has insurance for failed loans, and those insurers have re-insurance. And if the re-insurers fail, the government bails them out. Your tax dollars at work.”

Her frown turned into a scowl. “That’s a racket.”

Now, she was understanding. “Negotiate with the building’s owner to take over the lease from that point forward, which will be a good deal on their end rather than trying to find a new tenant, costing them time and money. You’ll start your employee-owned business in a much better financial position. You could immediately rehire Caitlin Moffett, Rainbow-Supreme, and all the others.”

Nicole looked up at him, her dark eyes wide. “You didn’t have to tell us this. You could have taken our money and walked away.”

Kingston didn’t let his gaze waver, just looked into her eyes as if he were giving her his soul. “You didn’t have to devise a fix for the Excalibur. You could have let Sidewinder fail and offered a union buyout when it was in ashes.”

“Yeah, I know, but I didn’t want to watch it burn.”

“So we won’t let it burn, my little engineer. Let’s fix the Excalibur, win the bet, and rule the world together.”

Her slow smile was more gratifying than he’d had any right to expect. “Yeah.”

Kingston accepted the union’s offer, and they shook on it. Nicole’s small hand was cool in his, and their eyes met across the table.

Gail Stein said that she’d write up the contract for them to sign, the insinuation being no more sneaky clauses from Morrissey Sand.

The lawyer, the accountant, and the woman recording on her phone filed out first, grinning like their mouths were tied to their ears. The crowd of employees lurking in the corridor started cheering even before any details were divulged.

Nicole caught the door and closed it behind them, leaving just the two of them in the conference room.

Kingston leaned against the short end of the conference table and, aware of concerned faces peering in the windows on both sides of the door, assumed a casual expression. “Yes? Did you forget something?”

“No, you did,” Nicole said.

Where she was standing with her back flush against the door, the people outside couldn’t see what she was doing.

She reached under her suit skirt and wiggled her hips like a pouncing kitten, and her white lace panties dropped to her ankles around her stiletto heels.

Kingston held on to the table edge with both hands as all the blood left his brain.

She held them out to him. “You forgot your pocket square.”

He held out his hand for the crumpled ball of white froth and tucked it into his suit’s breast pocket, fluffing the lace without displaying what they were to the crowd outside. “Why, thank you. Very much.”

“My office, three o’clock,” she said, a naughty smile on her lips.

Kingston was not going to survive until then.