Millennium - 47. Chapter 47

January 2, 2000

 

“When were you planning to head back?” Kevin asked. I knew he needed to get back to campus: classes started tomorrow. But I wasn’t ready to go yet. For him it was “back”. Back to Palo Alto, to Stanford and his life at school. For me it was “away.” Away from my home and my family.

“I’d planned to fly out around 4:00,” I told him. It was only 1:00pm now. “Anxious to go?”

“Yes and no,” he said, gazing over at Cody. “I think we’ll go kill some time.” I chuckled and went over to sit next to Robbie on the couch.

“You coming up tomorrow?” I asked.

“I told you I was,” he said, irritated. I’d gotten rid of my massive hangover yesterday. His was still with him.

“Don’t be mad and cranky,” I said lightly. “I’m just looking forward to it. I’ll miss you.”

“It’s only one night,” he said defensively.

“And you won’t miss me?”

“You’re making my headache worse,” he groused. Rosa came up and stood in front of us. She had a really irritated look on her face.

“You have a visitor.”

“Who is it?” I asked, wondering who would make Rosa so mad.

“Him,” she said, and pointed over to the door. Lark stood there, looking so nervous I thought he’d shit a brick.

“Thank you, Rosa,” I said dismissively. I didn’t need her attitude. It wasn’t her place to make my visitors feel unwelcome. That was my job, if I chose to do it, and I had no intention of making Lark feel unwelcome. “Hey Lark! Welcome!” I said, being friendly and really surprising him. I gave him the requisite man-hug, while Robbie shook his hand in a gesture that was civil, but no more. “You come down here to surf?”

“Not this time. This time it’s business,” he said with resolve.

“Have a seat,” I said, motioning to the sectional couch. He waited for me to prompt him. “Go on.”

“I know you figured out my game with Dan in the City. You knew he was out to hurt you, and he thought you and I had all this unrequited love between us. I played it off; pretending like you could never get me even though you always wanted me. Of course, that’s easy for anyone to believe,” he joked to lighten the mood. I laughed to help him along.

“But he’s figured it out now, and he’s decided that he doesn’t need you anymore?” I asked.

“It’s not like that, B. He still wants me around. He just doesn’t want to support me like he did before.” He smiled. “I mean, if I’m going to be a kept man, I expect to be kept well.” Even Robbie laughed at that one.

“I knew that you’d only be able to bleed Dan for bucks as long as he thought I was pining away for you,” I confirmed.

“I feel so shitty about this whole thing, B. I mean, I wasn’t part of this big scheme to fuck you two up, or cause you problems. I was just there, riding the gravy train. I knew you wouldn’t give a shit if I showed up squeezing Dan’s ass.”

“If I thought you were, if I thought you were in on it, we wouldn’t be talking in my great room,” I said coldly. He nodded.

“I’ve got some info that might be useful to you. No, I know it would be useful to you. I’d give it to you straight out, but I can’t afford to. It’s about the only chip I have left to play.”

“I’m not opposed to helping you out, Lark,” I said. I felt Robbie tense up but he wisely kept his mouth shut. “Tell me what you’ve got, and what it’s worth to you.”

“Dan’s the chief financial officer for Omega. You know that. The reason he runs the show with Amphion is because Alexandra thinks the sun rises and sets on him. He’s put together some deals for them that worked really well. Leveraged buyouts, but I don’t know all the details.”

“So based on his past successes, and his hatred for me, she trusts him,” I summed up.

“Yeah. He’s got all the financials for Omega, everything, from cash balances to diagrams of their corporate structure, in his safe in his house in Hillsborough. I’m thinking that would be something you could use.”

Amazingly enough, I managed to avoid licking my lips. “It would be very useful.”

“I figured out the combination to Dan’s safe. Copies of all of the documents are in here,” he said, lifting his briefcase up onto the coffee table.

“How would I know if these were legitimate records? If he figured out that you were playing him along, he could have planted this stuff on you, planted the combination on you.”

He gave me a pissed off look. “Give me a break, B. I may be morally challenged, but I’m not an idiot.” Robbie snaughed at that, so I laughed to make it into a joke. I didn’t need those two fighting when there was a gold mine sitting on my coffee table. “I got the combination by planting a video camera in the closet. Dan went in there when I was in the other room. I taped his moves, and then when he was at work, I opened the safe up.”

“What about the documents?” I asked.

“That’s even better. I’ve been making copies for a couple of weeks now. So the only way for them to plant them on me is for them to make a series of phony statements and to keep them updated. I don’t think they’d do that.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“And there’s one more thing,” he said. I just waited. “They tried to plant fake ones on me.”

“I don’t get it?”

“They think I’m a fucking idiot. On the 30^th, Dan came home and then got called away on an ‘emergency’. He left in such a hurry he left his briefcase out and opened, along with a bunch of financial statements. I took them and copied them, messing them all up, so they would know I bit at their bait. But if you compare them to the others, they’re completely different.”

“That’s when you knew your usefulness to them was over. They’d use you to funnel false info to us, but that was it.”

“Yeah. I mean, I can probably pretend to milk this for a while longer, but I don’t want to. Shit, I don’t like Dan, I never have. I sure as hell don’t like fucking him. And I don’t want to play this game where I’m just pretending to pass shitty info on to you.”

“They’ll figure you’re making enough money from me, you won’t need any help from them,” I said, completing his thoughts.

“Yeah.”

“Alright. So you’ve convinced me that this stuff, even though I haven’t gone through it, is legitimate. What’s the price?”

He got up and walked around for a bit. “I want to be fair. I’ve burned all my bridges. I lost my brokerage license and I’m banned from that industry. The only thing I’m good at is surfing.”

“You are good at that,” Robbie said supportively. I squeezed his hand to thank him.

“Thanks, Rob,” Lark said, hitting him with a big smile. “I was thinking about opening a surf shop. I’d like to do it in Hawaii. I need to blow out of Cali.”

“You in trouble here?” I asked him. He smiled at the concern in my voice.

“No, B. I just don’t like the vibes anymore.”

“So you need money to move to Hawaii, buy or set up a surf shop, and buy a condo or someplace to live?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s that gonna cost?” I asked.

“Two million dollars,” he said boldly.

“Which island you going to?”

“Maui,” he said.

“Alright, I’ve got a deal for you. I’ve got a villa in Kapalua. You can stay there and start up your shop. I’ll give you a million bucks to do it. If this info ends up being worth what we both hope it’s worth, and if you keep your mouth shut about it, after I take these assholes down I’ll give you the other million and you can get your own place.”

“I guess I’ll have to trust you on that,” he said nervously. I stared at him coldly, reminding him that I’d always been the trustworthy friend, whereas he hadn’t. “It’s a deal, on one condition.”

“What?”

He smiled. “You come over, bring Will, and go surfing with me when this thing is all over.”

“It’s a deal,” I said. I stood up and held out my hand, and he shook it. Then he pulled me into a hug, a hug of desperation.

“Thanks, B.”

“You need to clean things up in the Bay?” I asked. He nodded. “We’re going up there today, but you don’t want to be seen with us, I don’t think.” He nodded again. “We’ll charter a plane on Tuesday night and fly over to Maui with you. Get you set up. You can set up a bank account there, and I’ll wire money into it.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Call me on my cell phone on Tuesday around 5pm. I’ll let you know where to meet us, OK?”

“You got it,” he said. “Good luck,” he said, motioning toward the bag, then left.

“I think you got raped,” Robbie said when he was gone.

“Let’s see,” I said. I opened up the case and was amazed at how organized it was. Lark had made copies of everything and filed it in perfect order, noting the date each new document appeared. In a separate envelope were the fake papers Dan had planted on him.

“Was Lark always this organized?”

I thought about his chaotic schoolwork. He certainly didn’t keep that organized. Then I thought about his surfing stuff. He even kept a detailed log of all the places he surfed and what the waves were like. “Yeah, with shit he cared about.”

“Maybe I was wrong,” he said. While Kevin was upstairs getting his brains fucked out, Robbie helped me make copies of all the papers I’d bought from Lark and organize them just as Lark had.

Kevin came down at 4:00, definitely ready to leave. I grabbed my stuff, including the documents, and gave Robbie a big kiss. “Sorry to leave you high and dry,” I whispered in his ear. “I’ll make up for it tomorrow night.”

“I know you will,” he said. “If I get really horny, I’ll see if Cody can help me out.”

Cody grinned. “Any time, big guy.”

“That means I get you,” I said to Kevin. He winked at me, and made that look really sexy, of course. I said goodbye to the kids and to Jeanine, then loaded my stuff into the limo for the trek back to Paly.

We got clearance to take off quite quickly, and found ourselves jetting to Paly in no time at all. I looked over at Kevin, who was just glowing.

“He’s amazing,” he said to me.

“Yes he is,” I said, with a smile. “So are you. You two are made to be together.”

“I hope so,” he said nervously.

“What’s wrong?”

“I watch you guys grapple with this relationship thing, with monogamy, and even though you get to fuck around with us, you’re pretty good at it. Neither one of us are.”

“You know,” I told him, “I’ve seen a lot of different men have a lot of different relationships. Don’t base what you do on what Robbie and I do, or what Stef and JP do, base it on what works for you guys.”

“That makes sense, but it’s hard to do,” he said.

“Not really. When Stef was with Greg, he was monogamous for years.” Kevin looked at me funny. “Hard to visualize, isn’t it?”

“No shit.”

“Greg wasn’t secure enough to deal with other guys. And in some ways, he was like Robbie. He wasn’t able to fully separate fucking from the emotional aspect of it.”

“He was worried he’d fall in love with someone else?”

“I think so. He cheated on Stef near the end of their relationship, and it seems that he had some strong feelings for the guy he was doing.” I thought of the letters Stef had seen, and had shown me, the letters that Greg had written to Zach, professing his love. “Now Stef is with JP. They’re both secure enough to not worry about it.”

“So does that mean you and Robbie aren’t secure?” he asked, really probing.

“I think we both get more jealous. It drives Robbie nuts if he thinks I’m fucking someone else. The sex doesn’t bother me that much, but it really bugs me that he might develop feelings for another guy. So for us, we have to be careful that he doesn’t get jealous of me fucking around, and I don’t get jealous of his emotional commitments.”

“So how come we fit in? We’re not hot enough to get jealous over?” he teased.

“You know better than that.” I paused to consider how to say it without hurting his feelings. “You both actually remind me a lot of Stefan.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.

“You should. He’s my hero,” I said, and realized I was being completely honest. “For Stef, sex is how he expresses love, and not just romantic love, but also friendship. So he fucks a guy, and it could mean that he loves the guy romantically, or that they’re just buds.”

“You think I’m that shallow?” he asked defensively.

“There’s nothing shallow about that at all. It’s about how you express love. You and Cody do the same thing. You fuck Cody, and it really means something, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning.

“You’re falling in love with him.”

“You’re changing the subject,” he said curtly. I laughed.

“If I fucked you right now, would it be the same as when he fucks you?”

“I get your point,” he said.

“When I had sex with him in DC, did it bother you?”

“A little bit,” he lied. It bothered him a lot.

“Why?”

“Because you guys are so close,” he said.

“We are. We’re very close. He’s one of my best friends. But I’m not going to go run off with him. Even when Robbie and I weren’t exclusive, our relationship, my relationship with Cody, was still just a really good friendship.”

“So you’re telling me that there are limits to how far that friendship goes, and because of those limits, you guys fucking isn’t a threat to me.” He was sharp, sharper than most guys.

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes sex can be a catalyst to move a relationship to another level,” he said. “That’s what worries me.”

I thought about that, and he seemed to appreciate that I didn’t blow him off or just dismiss his thoughts. “I can see that. I guess if Robbie weren’t in the picture, I’d think you might have a valid point. I’m not sure if my relationship with Cody could or would go there, but I see what you’re saying. But I’m not trading Robbie for anything. That’s the anchor that keeps that relationship firmly in place.”

“Makes sense.” He paused. “Did it bother you that Robbie fucked me?”

“No,” I said.

“Because I’m just some twink, some toy to get him off?” he asked bitterly. Where did that come from?

“No, because I know he loves me, and I know that while he cares about you, he doesn’t love you.” I moved over and sat next to him, pulling his mouth up and kissing him gently. “I was in DC with Cody and we were both lonely. We missed you guys. It was a dull pain. When we fucked each other, it eased the pain. I figured it worked the same way for you.”

“It did. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be an idiot. He’s the first guy I’ve really fallen for, and I’m trying to figure it out.”

“All the tricks, all the games you learned, they didn’t prepare you for love, did they?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“You want some advice?”

“Why not,” he said fatalistically. I almost laughed at his tone, the tone of a cocky, irritated teenager. With that attitude, he reminded me of Darius.

“Be careful with the games. You are both so good at that, it would be easy for you to hurt each other and not mean it. Neither one of you is very good at love, but you’re both very good at the game.” The plane started to descend and he looked at me sadly.

“We missed our chance to fuck.”

“You’ve never heard of a quickie?” I asked. I pulled my pants down and grabbed his head forcefully, pushing it toward my dick. He resisted enough to make it hot, and then started sucking on me. He got me really hard, slipped on the condom and some lube, then pulled his pants off and sat in my lap. As the plane descended, Kevin rode my cock and brought us both off in time to fasten our seatbelts for the landing.

“That did the trick,” he said, grinning at me.

“It did. You’re important to me. Shit, you’re family,” I said, getting a grin. “I’m here for you if you need me.”

“You mean to fuck?” he joked.

“Yeah, or to talk, dumbass.” We got to Paly and Rafael was there to meet us. He dropped Kevin off on campus, and then took me up to Escorial. I got there just in time to clean up for dinner.

This was Sunday and usually everyone should have been here. Not tonight. I guess it was because of the big party we’d just had, but tonight it was just Stef, JP, Frank, my mother, and I. Everyone else was off doing their own thing. I walked into the dining room and greeted them warmly.

“I did not know you had arrived,” Stefan said, hugging me.

“That’s because you were in bed when I got here,” I teased.

“So what’s new,” Frank joked.

“I will probably end up back there as soon as dinner is over,” Stef said, leering at JP and making him uncomfortable.

“I have other plans for you,” I said.

“I am much better at resisting your incestuous charms now that I am older,” Stef joked. Frank just shook his head.

“Why don’t you pretend for just a minute that you have no sexual organs at all,” I teased. “We have some business to go over.” Frank snaughed.

“You are no fun these days,” he said.

“I think you will find that I am, and that I am full of surprises.”

“Indeed?” JP asked. I’d piqued his curiosity.

“Lark came to see me. He sold me copies of Omega’s financials. The real ones. The ones that show all the offshore companies, all the limited partnerships, all the hidden cash, everything. I’ve got details of their corporate structure, how they’re laid out, who owns stock in each of the subsidiaries, and who the real control people are.” They all stared at me.

“How can you be sure these papers are real?” JP asked. I explained to them what Lark told me. “Still, they could be a plant,” JP persisted.

“Lark said that they planted statements on him on the 30^th. That’s when he knew the game was up. I have copies of them, and they’re simplistic nonsense, exactly the kind of thing we’d draw up if we wanted to throw off someone looking at our company.”

“That could be a plant too,” JP said.

“It could, but I don’t think it is. I’m trusting my instincts here, but I think Lark was legit.”

“How much did he want for them?” Stef asked.

“Two million dollars,” I said.

“If they are accurate, they are a bargain,” he said.

“I didn’t pay him that much. He wants to open a surf shop in Maui. I told him I’d give him one million now and let him stay in my house there. After we take these assholes down, I told him I’d give him the other million, and he could move out and get his own place.”

“How did you pay him?” Stef looked at me carefully. “We have to make sure nothing is traceable.”

“I don’t know if we have to be that paranoid, but we can be. I told him that I’d charter a plane on Tuesday night to take him, Robbie, and me to Hawaii and get him set up in the villa. Then I told him he could set up an account in Hawaii and I’d wire him the money.”

“What are you worried about?” JP asked Stefan.

“I am worried about what they may do to Lark if they find out he sold information to us.”

“Surely they wouldn’t hurt him,” Frank said. “You only fired the rats they had spying on you.”

“They might,” I said. I could see them doing it. “But they expected Lark to do it. They planted that stuff, that pabulum, on him. Why would they hurt him if they wanted him to do it in the first place?”

“We are assuming that they do not find out how much information he has given us. And we are assuming that they are fine with him passing even this summary stuff on to us,” Stef said.

“So how do we protect Lark?” I asked.

“We will have to talk to our attorneys tomorrow. In the meantime, we can spend our evening as you have laid out, reviewing financial documents,” Stef said. “What a boring man you have become.”

“They tell a story, and I’ll bet it’s an interesting one,” I said.