What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel by David Housewright (most read books txt) 📗

“Of course.”

“I will contact you as soon as I can.”

“Thank you again.”

“Good-bye, Mr. McKenzie.”

“Good-bye.”

After I hung up I thought, This should work. Only it didn’t. I waited and waited some more. I had a late lunch and waited again. Perky Voice didn’t call back. ’Course, she might have been too busy to reach out to Porter, so I decided to call her again and give her a nudge. Before I could even say hello and identify myself, Perky Voice, speaking in a very non-perky manner, said “Who do you think you are? More to the point, sir, who do you think we are that we would reveal personal information to any liar who calls us on the phone?”

“Miss…”

“You are not a freelance writer, Mr. McKenzie. Nor are you employed by the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal. As far as we are concerned, you are nothing more than a criminal engaged in a fraudulent activity. Do not call this number again. Have a nice day.”

I was laughing as she hung up the phone. Have a nice day; even while telling me off she had to be polite. Minnesota Nice. Oh, well. At the same time I laughed at myself because of my own carelessness. What I should have done was taken a name off an article that had appeared in the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal and used that.

If you’re going to lie, you need to commit to it all the way, my inner voice said.

Words of wisdom, I told myself.

Now what?

It was becoming increasingly obvious that I had exhausted pretty much all of the options available to me by personal computer and phone. I would need to leave the comfort of my condominium if I was to learn anything more about Dave Deese’s second family. But where would I go? What would I do? March down to KTech or AgEc and demand that Porter King or Marshall Sohm receive me? After the security guards escorted me off the premises, then what? Stage a sit-in?

I glanced at my all-purpose watch, the one that monitors my heart rate, counts the steps I walk, the calories I burn, the minutes I sleep, and only incidentally tells the time. One forty-four P.M. I reminded myself that Perky Voice said that Porter King would be answering questions concerning the absence of Charles King at two thirty P.M. in the company’s auditorium for members of the press and interested shareholders.

You’re a shareholder, my inner voice reminded me. Aren’t you?

“Now what?” H. B. Sutton asked.

“Your telephone manner leaves much to be desired, you know that, H?” I said.

“I have caller ID. I know who’s on the line.”

“So, it’s just me?”

“What do you want, McKenzie?”

“There’s a shareholders’ meeting being held at the KTech building this afternoon. I’m thinking of going.”

“Good for you,” H. B. said. “I’d be interested in hearing what the powers that be have to say myself. Will you tell me?”

“Sure, but I’ll probably need a pass or something to get in, right?”

“Haven’t you ever been to a shareholders’ meeting before?”

“No.”

“Please tell me you at least vote your proxies.”

“Umm…”

“God help me,” H. B. said. “All right, all right, no problem. What you need to do—I’m sure they’ll have people sitting at tables outside the venue. Just walk up to one of them and tell them who you are. You’ll probably need an ID. They’ll search their lists, find your name, and give you a pass.”

“Can I use your name?”

“No. Why would you even ask that?”

“I’m afraid they might not let me in.”

“Why not? McKenzie, what have you done?”

“It’s possible that I might have annoyed the King family.”

“How did you do that? Don’t tell me. The thing is, the King family doesn’t actually own KTech. The shareholders do. ’Course, they are the majority shareholders … Anyway, all shareholders have the right to attend the meetings. Berkshire Hathaway, the company owned by Warren Buffett? You don’t even need to own a share to get into their meetings. All you need is a pass and passes—shareholders who possess at least one share of Class A and Class B stocks can request as many as four meeting passes. A lot of them will then turn around and put the passes up for auction on eBay and other places. That’s how you get forty thousand people from around the planet traveling to Omaha, Nebraska, every May to hear Buffett speak. The event has become known as Woodstock for capitalists, I’m not exaggerating.”

“Have you ever gone?”

“Oh, yeah. Sitting in the shadow of the Oracle of Omaha—so very, very cool.”

“And people say that you don’t know how to have fun.”

One of the things about H. B. Sutton, you can actually hear her smirk over the phone.

“McKenzie,” she said, “in many cases, especially with limited liability companies, the bylaws can stipulate that attendance to meetings depends on holding a minimum number of shares. In KTech’s case—hang on…”

I hung on.

“Still there?” H. B. didn’t give me time to answer before she started reading. “The right to attend a general shareholders’ meeting shall accrue to the holders of at least three hundred shares, provided that such shares are registered in their name in the corresponding book-entry registry five days in advance of the date on which the general shareholders’ meeting is to be held and provided also that they present evidence thereof with the appropriate attendance card or share certificate issued by any of the entities participating in the institution that manages such book-entry registry, or directly by the company itself, or in any other manner permitted under law.”

“Wow,” I said.

“That’s in the KTech bylaws. My point—you have eighteen hundred shares. Legally, they can’t turn you away.”

“How much is that worth, by the way? My shares?”

“At the current price, which has gone up by the way, ah…”

“I thought the stock was going down because of the uncertainty surrounding Charles King,” I said. “Why would it be going up all of a sudden?”

“Because someone is buying it? Here it is—$155.74 a share. Do