Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(29)

Carter was not accustomed to young women speaking rudely to him. It took effort to keep any hint of irritation out of his voice. “All right, Lauren, let’s go right to the reason I called. The first time you reported an incident at the company nothing happened. In the less than twenty-four hours since you came to my office, I have been granted authority to arrange a confidential settlement with you. Part of that settlement will include the guarantee that you will be offered a comparable position in the news business in the city of your choosing.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Carter thought for a moment he might have lost the connection. “Lauren, are you still there?”

“Yes,” she answered quietly.

“Good. I’ll need tomorrow and Monday to finish some things at my end. Are you free to meet on Tuesday? I’ll text you the where and the when.”

“Mr. Carter, I want to bring a friend with me. She’s not a lawyer. I’d just feel better if—”

“Lauren, listen to me. The authorization I received to settle with you specifies that I deal directly and only with you. I can’t change that. Look at it this way. We should have our meeting. Just the two of us. There won’t be any pressure on you to sign anything on Tuesday. Let’s try to identify what both sides need to reach an acceptable agreement and go forward from there. Does that make sense?”

“I guess so.”

“Perfect. Lauren, I believe I’ve demonstrated that you can trust me. Promise me that you won’t talk about the incident with anyone before we meet on Tuesday.”

“I won’t” was the reluctant answer.

“I’ll be in touch. Goodbye.” Carter ended the call as the train slowed to a stop in Grand Central Terminal.





34





Dick Sherman had had a lousy weekend. Over time he had learned to tune out his wife’s inane comments and not let her idiotic suggestions about things they should do together bother him, but he found himself snapping at her. The Carter-Matthews situation was never far from his mind. He was about to take his first step to contain the situation, and he was experiencing an emotion that was foreign to him. He was nervous.

The buzzer on his desk sounded. “Mr. Sherman, Mr. Myers is here to see you.”

“Send him in,” he barked.

For the past eleven years Ed Myers had been the chief financial officer of REL News Corporation. He was the perfect complement to Sherman’s skill set. Where Sherman was a genius at picking the types of programs and on-air personalities that drew in audiences, when it came to the dollars, Myers knew how to make the numbers work. Time and again the Wall Street Journal and Forbes had commended REL News for the bargain prices they had paid as they acquired regional cable systems and built a national powerhouse.

When it came to keeping expenses under control, no one was better than Myers. It was only a slight exaggeration to say that without looking at a computer, he could remember how every dollar in the company was spent. That was Myers’s greatest strength; today it might also be Sherman’s biggest headache.

“Come in, Ed. How are you? Sit down,” Sherman said as he came around the desk to shake hands.

Myers appeared taken aback. As if he couldn’t recall Sherman inquiring about how he was doing and thought something was clearly up. “I’m fine, Dick. Thanks.”

“Ed, you and I have worked together for a long time. We’ve faced a lot of tough challenges, but we always found a way to make things work.”

“Yes, we have,” Myers said, wondering why Sherman, who never told anybody they were doing a good job, was so full of compliments. The thought went through his head, Is he about to fire me?

“Ed, do you trust me?”

“Of course I do. Have I done anything to make you think otherwise?”

“No, you haven’t. It’s important we trust each other, because I need you to do something and not ask a lot of questions.”

“Do what?”

“I need you to wire twelve million dollars to this account,” he said while handing him a sheet of paper. “I want it to be there in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

The look on Sherman’s face revealed that he was dead serious.

“That’s a lot of money to just let slip through the cracks. I have to classify it as something. Can you at least tell me—”

“Ed, I wouldn’t be asking you to do this unless it was critically important to the company. Believe me, you don’t want to know why. Nobody will question this if you sign off on it. Can you make this happen?”

Myers exhaled as he glanced at the wiring instructions.

“All right, I know better than to ask who Carter & Associates are.” Myers took off his glasses, pulled a smooth cloth from his pocket, and began to wipe them. He stared without seeing out the window. “I’m finalizing the numbers the investment bankers will use to calculate the valuation. Twelve million dollars is a lot. Is this a onetime charge or will there be more?”

It was a question Sherman had not anticipated. It was not the time to appear uncertain. “Just this once,” he answered, trying to sound confident.

“Then I can bury this in the M and A budget.”

“How?” Sherman asked, knowing that Myers was referring to Mergers and Acquisitions.