A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

I tried to prepare an expression that would fall somewhere between amazement and enthusiasm, but I felt my true feelings setting like plaster across my face.

“The Vagabond Club!” he whispered, his voice trembling with hysterical joy. “Lawrence is taking me!”

The Vagabond Club was Kiwi’s most cherished fantasy, as everyone knew. He would have slashed his wrists if he thought that, in the hereafter, such a sacrifice would gain him entry to the hallowed halls of the Vagabond Club.

In San Francisco, a city that boasted more private, male-only clubs than any other in America, the Vagabond Club was a luminary. It was neither the oldest men’s club in the city nor the most exclusive. But more high-powered deals were cut within the ivy-covered walls of the Vagabond Club than in all the boardrooms of all the banks in America put together. It infuriated me that when women had finally gotten the vote, a paycheck, and a seat at the round table, they’d moved the whole game behind closed doors. In fact, the bank paid for executive membership in such clubs, whose policy was to treat other executives (myself, for instance) like scullery maids to the stars. And they were using shareholders’ money to do it! At the Vagabond Club, there were guards posted outside the door, to ensure that no woman was permitted to enter and sully the conversation—or grab a piece of the pie. Mother Nature still called the shots. Brains were not the right equipment to join this coven.

I complimented Kiwi on his luck, which was due to an inarguable asset: he was a man.

“Since Lawrence is recommending me for membership,” Kiwi was gushing on, breathless as a schoolgirl, “I can’t very well upset him. Couldn’t you throw Karp some sort of bone till this blows over? If you must have this Tavish, then find Karp another body that will do as well. I leave it to you, Banks; you’re a good man—woman, that is. I’ll phone and tell him we’ve found a mystery candidate. Someone wonderful. I leave it to you to ferret out who it will be.”

I left Kiwi’s office clutching my papers for New York. I felt fortunate to have come out as well as I had. After all, I’d be able to hang on to Tavish for at least another day—till I came up with a plan to keep him—and by Friday I’d be in the Big Apple. Once I had Tor on my side, there wasn’t much that could stop me. And tossing around a few million dollars, even if only for a short time, would assuage the complaints of any disgruntled employee.

At least, so I thought at the time.

I’d invited Tavish to dine with me that night at my own club—Le Club, my favorite restaurant in San Francisco. If I were leaving for New York by the weekend, I wanted the quality circle in full operation before then. And I knew exactly what they had to do.

Tavish—an honorable, forthright teckie—might be squeamish about a few things I had in mind. On the other hand, if I didn’t give him some guidelines, they’d still be looking under the wrong rocks when I returned. I was only trying to be helpful. After all, they’d be breaking into the very systems I had managed for the last ten years.

When I pulled up before the restaurant, I saw Tavish loitering under the dark green canopy. He was wearing a suit, necktie, and sneakers. His shoulder-length blond hair had been freshly trimmed, making him look nearly as old as his twenty-two years.

“Gee, I hope you didn’t buy that suit just for dinner tonight,” I told him when I’d parked and come down the block. “Where’s your T-shirt? I thought it was your only uniform.”

“I’m wearing it beneath my dress shirt, like Superman,” he told me. “I feel it gives me a sort of closet panache.”

Though Tavish might have seemed boyish and ingenuous, he’d cut his teckie teeth on some impressive number crunchers.

The oddity of the data-processing business is that many teckies, regardless of their age, earn more than most powerful executives do. According to the figures in Tavish’s file, he had exceeded my current income when he was barely eighteen. So impressive were his credentials that I wondered why he was here at the bank working for a bozo like Karp; he could write his own ticket thirty miles away, down in Silicon Valley. I wanted to know more about what did motivate Tavish; that’s why I’d asked him to dinner. And I didn’t wait all five courses to get to the point.

“I like this place,” Tavish said half an hour later, surveying the warm, cozy room where we were seated in a deep green velvet banquette. The waiters were delivering a beautifully prepared meal and replenishing our champagne in unobtrusive silence. “And I’m happy to have the chance to thank you, for getting me out of the clutches of Karp.”

“I’m afraid you’re not quite out yet,” I told him, following my blanquette de veau with some terrific pouilly-fuissé. “Your pal Peter-Paul phoned Kiwi today—just after I thought I’d hired you—and said the deal’s off. In a sense, I thought this might be your farewell dinner; he seems to think you’ll see things his way. Says you owe him some sort of favor.”

“I owe him, all right,” Tavish said grimly, “but not what he thinks. It’s no secret, at least not with you. I’ve worked with Karp before, you see, down in the peninsula. He hired me to develop copyrighted software that his firm would market. I’d get fifty percent of the royalties—or so he claimed—and something else that I wanted even more.”

“And what was that?”

“He said he’d sponsor my green card: a permanent resident visa. Without it, as a foreigner, I can’t work in this country, unless it’s under the table. But Karp’s business went belly-up, owing me half a million in royalties. All my profits went up his nose, but I couldn’t turn him in,