Phule made a face and shook his head ruefully. “It’s a long story, Colonel.”
Battleax waved for a waiter and signaled for another bottle of wine.
“I’ve got time,” she said, settling into her chair.
Again, I am handicapped in my account by a lack of specific knowledge of the details surrounding an event or conversation which took place in my absence.
I do, however, feel I can state with some certainty that some form of the following exchange took place roughly in the time frame I am recording it here. I base this conclusion on the simple fact that Maxine Pruet is said to be a decisive leader, and it is doubtful she would leave delayed long before implementing a decision once it had been made.
“Shit!” Laverna declared, tossing down her pencil onto the nest of work sheets and notes in front of her. Like many of her profession, she preferred the old, manual form of doodling and numeric experimentation when trying to work out a problem.
“I know you don’t want to hear this, Max, but my best recommendation is to throw in the towel and eat our losses on this one.”
“How so?” her employer prompted from the sofa.
Laverna tapped the table repeatedly with her finger, organizing her thoughts for several moments before she spoke.
“The time factor is the killer,” she said at last. “We might be able to put together something that would hurt Rafael financially, but not in time to keep him from paying off the note to you.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Well, we could try to burn the place down to keep him from turning a profit at the tables, but then you’d have to rebuild from scratch once you took over … and figure out how to offset the bad publicity from the fire. Besides, he’s probably got insurance for `interruption of business,’ so even that might not stop him.”