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“Wonderful for me. It gets him off the street and out of my hair.”
“But you told me, didn’t you, that even if he lost the Centurion fight, he would still want to do the hotel project, and you were supposed to run that, weren’t you?”
“I still will,” she said, “even if he can’t close on Friday-especially if he can’t close on Friday.”
Now Stone was puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
“When Terry lost the Centurion deal, he lost his Colombian and Mexican financial backing,” she said.
“Does he have the personal funds to close on Friday?”
“No. Eleanor Grosvenor is, or was, his backer on the hotel deal, and she will now back out, with pleasure. That will give her almost all the revenge she wants for what he did to Jim.”
“Then that means you’re out of the hotel development, too, doesn’t it?”
“No, Eleanor wants to proceed with the hotel. I’ll run the project for her, and I’ll have a lot more freedom than I would have had with Terry. Once she closes on the property I?
??ll help her find partners for the money required to design and develop the hotel.”
“You’re overlooking something,” Stone said.
“I don’t think so,” Carolyn replied, looking confident.
“Tell me, why did Prince make the initial payment from his personal account?”
“That was his money,” she said. “Eleanor was to provide the rest of the purchase price, in return for a share of the project. But now Terry is out of it, and it’s all Eleanor’s. And mine.”
“Ah, I see,” Stone said.
A cell phone rang, and she rummaged in her purse until she found it. “Excuse me, Stone. I don’t recognize this number, but I’d better take it. Hello? Yes, I heard,” she said. “All right, I can take care of that. Call me when you can.” She hung up. “That was Terry,” she said, “calling from Parker Center on a borrowed cell phone.”
“And what did he have to say?” Stone asked.
“He wants me to go ahead with the closing before noon on Friday. I’m to send him a power of attorney, so that I can sign the documents for him.”
“So he doesn’t know yet about yours and Eleanor’s plan?”
“No, and the D.A. plans to ask at his arraignment that he be held without bail, so he’s unlikely to get the full picture for a while.”
“So, you plan to close, but for Eleanor, not Prince?”
“Exactly. It’s poetic, isn’t it? Bad people always get what’s coming to them. Even if Terry beats this rap he’ll be ruined by the time the trial is over, and he’ll still have the Colombians and the Mexicans to deal with. They’re going to want their money from the Centurion deal back, and they’re going to insist.”
“Yes,” Stone said, “bad people always get what’s coming to them. Usually, anyway.”
“Can we close at ten o’clock on Friday morning?” she asked.
“Where?”
“I don’t think we’d better do it in Terry’s office. How about here? All we’ll need is a table to sign on, and I’ll bring a cashier’s check for two hundred twenty-five million.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Stone said, rising.
She got up, too, and suddenly emitted a loud sneeze. She groped in her bag for a tissue and blew her nose noisily. “Sorry about that; it seems to be getting worse.”
Stone held out a wastebasket for her tissue. “I hope you feel better,” he said.
Manolo led her toward the front door.
