Fatal Attraction (Dark Desires 4)

Chapter 10: Conner

My best friend and boss, Reed Helstrom, breezed into my office like he owned the place, which, as a senior partner at the investment banking firm of Price Bean & Whitlock, technically he did. A small piece anyway.

I was sitting behind my oversized glass desk with my shoes off and feet up on the credenza, staring out the twenty-seventh floor window at the New York skyline across the way.

There wasn’t a cloud in the bright blue sky. It was another beautiful spring day in New York City. Too bad I couldn’t get outside to enjoy it. It was only four o’clock on the east coast, and I had conference calls with investors booked until at least half past seven, then a client dinner at eight.

By the time I was set free of my obligations the daylight would be a distant memory.

That was the downside of being me: I made millions of dollars every year, but had very little time to spend them; which was probably a good thing.

I was on a conference call on speakerphone, but had lost interest in anything they had to say nearly an hour ago. It was a venture capitalist firm in Silicon Valley, trying to convince Reed and I that PB&W should soak a few hundred million bucks into their latest and greatest find, some dating app for senior citizens called Gray Date.

Reed had been on the same call from his office. Obviously, he had gotten as bored as I had and decided to come into my office to hang out for the rest of the call. Or he had run out of liquor in his office and was looking for something to drink. It turned out to be a little of both.

He went immediately to the bar in one corner of my office and poured himself a tall scotch. He held up the crystal decanter to ask if I wanted one. I gave him a nod and held up two fingers.

He poured us both two shots of scotch and came over with a glass in each hand. He set my drink on the desk in front of me, made sure the mute button was pressed on the speaker phone, and plopped

in the leather wingback chair on the other side of my desk.

“Remind me again why we’re even listening to this pitch,” he said, eyes rolling, head shaking. Reed was a good-looking guy in his early fifties, with short salt and pepper hair, a Kennedy jawline, bright blue eyes, perpetual tan. The women in the office loved him and he loved a few of them right back. So far without his wife, Gloria, finding out.

He took a sip of his drink and sighed. “Gray Date? Really? Do old people date?”

“The more important question is, do old people even know what an app is?” I asked, picking up my drink to take a sip. The scotch burned going down my throat. It made me all warm and tingly inside. “I know my folks wouldn’t have a clue.”

“No, the most important question is why should we give a shit about old people fucking?” he asked seriously. “Why should we give a shit about old people at all? Most old people are fucking broke and have one foot in the grave. If anything, we should invest in nursing homes or hospice care facilities, not dating apps.”

“You’re a cold son of a bitch, Reed Helstrom” I said with a smile. “You’ll be old someday. You’ll wish you had an app to help you get laid.”

“My money is the only app I need to get pussy,” he said. “Fuck old people. And fuck these guys if they think we’re going to invest one red cent in their hair-brained idea.”

“So, why are we wasting our time listening to their pitch?” I asked, a little confused. Reed was normally not a guy to waste a second of his time, which he claimed was more precious than money because he could get more money, but only had a finite amount of time. I always called bullshit on that one. Nothing was more important to Reed than cold, hard cash.

“We are listening to this pitch because that’s the old man’s great nephew speaking,” he said. He lifted his glass to me. “Try to pay attention because there will be a test afterward.”

The old man was Henry Wilson Price, the eighty-five-year old founder and senior partner of Price Bean & Whitlock, the Wall Street investment firm that paid Reed and I tens of millions of dollars every year to find and close deals that made the senior partners hundreds of millions of dollars. Gray Date was not going to be one of those deals, but the old man told us to listen, so that’s what we were going to do.

“So, guys, what do you think?” Price’s great nephew asked. I looked at Reed and held out my hand.

“You’re the senior partner,” I said. “You jack him off.”

Reed licked the scotch from his lips and tapped the mute button. “Very interesting concept guys. Why don’t you send over your financial and market test data and we’ll get with the powers that be here to talk it over next week.”

“Uh, okay, we can do that,” the great nephew said. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he expected a warmer reception than he was getting. “I was under the impression that we were already a go and this call was just a formality.”

Reed put his fist to his mouth and worked it back and forth, mimicking a blow job. He said, “You’re a go to send the financials and market data. We’d be happy to take a look at that and get back to you in a few weeks.”

We heard muffled voices on the other end of the line, then another voice came on the line. This one older and deeper, with an air of impatient condescension. “This is Oscar Patterson. I’m the senior partner here. Who are we speaking to again?”

“Senior partner Reed Helstrom,” Reed said with a sigh that was purposefully loud enough for the others to hear. “And Senior Vice President of Acquisitions Conner McGee.”

“Well, Helstrom, I was under the impression that this was a done deal,” Patterson said. “At least that’s what I was told before sitting through this long call.”

Reed gave me an evil smile. He ate cocksuckers like this for breakfast. He leaned his elbows on the desk and pulled the speaker phone closer. “Well, Patterson, old boy, there’s no such thing as a done deal when it comes to investing a hundred million dollars in unproven technology.”

“Unproven technology?” It was the great nephew’s voice again. “Dating apps generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year.”