Of the assorted thoughts which whirled in my mind at this news, only one stood out.
“Do the police have computers?”
“Not of this quality or capacity.” He favored me with a smug, tight-lipped smile. “Civil services don’t have access to the same financial resources that banks do . . . Ah! Here we go.”
He leaned forward and squinted at the computer’s screen, which I couldn’t see from where I sat. I wondered if it was coincidence that the view was blocked from the visitor’s chair, then decided it was a silly question. “Impressive. Very impressive indeed.” He shot a glance at me. “Might I ask who handles your portfolio?”
“My portfolio? I’m not an artist. I’m a magician . . . like I told you.”
“An artist. That’s a good one, Skeeve . . . you don’t mind if I call you Skeeve, do you?” The banker laughed as if we shared a mutual joke. “I meant your portfolio of stocks and investments.”
His original warmth had returned . . . and then some. Whatever he had seen on the screen had definitely improved his opinion of me.
“Oh. That would be Bunny. She’s my administrative assistant.”
“I hope you pay her well. Otherwise some other outfit might be tempted to swoop down and hire her away from you.”
From his tone, I could make a pretty good guess as to which outfit might be interested in doing just that.
“Among other things, she holds stock in our operation.” I said pointedly.
“Of course, of course. Just a thought. Well Mis . . . Skeeve, I’m sure we can provide you with adequate financial support during your stay on Perv. What’s more I hope you’ll keep us in mind should you ever want to open an office here and need to open a local account.” Pervects have an exceptional number of teeth, and Malcolm seemed determined to show all of his to me without missing a syllable. I was starting to get impressed myself. I had known our operation was doing well, but had never stopped to assess exactly how well. If the banker’s reaction was an accurate gauge, however, we must have been doing very well indeed!
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163