Page 10 of Nash Falls

During a break in the rain, he ran to the covered stone entrance, where he was greeted at the cathedral-size double oak doors by an authentic English butler named Herbert or Harold, or something like that. The man had been brought over from the Savoy Hotel in London and looked wide-awake at two in the morning. Rhett assumed the quarter million the gent was paid annually plus benefits, along with free five-star food provided by the live-in chef, and luxurious accommodations, justified losing some sleep.

The liveried British robot eschewed the elevator and led Rhett up a series of staircases wide enough to accommodate a semi, then knocked on a door at the end of a hall that was so long Rhett had nearly gotten all his steps in for the day. The servant received authorization to enter from the deep voice inside and he opened the door, nodded at Rhett, and marched back to his upscale hidey-hole.

Rhett fixed his shirt cuffs, adjusted his jacket, smoothed down his hair, and entered the room feeling like a truant summoned to the principal’s office.

His father was sitting in a chair by the window wearing a luxurious white cotton robe with his monogrammed initials woven into it. As Rhett approached, he caught the image of a young, blindfolded woman clad in a tight black minidress being led away through another door by a member of his father’s security team.

“Missus Number Three not home tonight?” observed Rhett.

Barton Temple had two inches on his six-one son and about a hundred pounds, none of it muscle. His curly silver hair implants seemed to quiver with amusement.

“Mindy took one of the jets somewhere. Cannes maybe. She used to be in the film business, you know.”

“Yeah, as a hair and makeup artist.”

“Which means she knows how to make herself look good, boy,” his father shot back. “Only reason I married her. She looks good onme.”

“Yousummonedme,” said Rhett. “And I’m here. So what’s up?”

“The funeral?”

“What?”

“How did the funeral go?”

“Who died?” said Rhett, dipping his head as the pulse of the coke pop wore off.

“Christ, boy, when are you going to get a simple message through that tree stump you call a brain? Walter Nash?”

“Walter is very much alive.”

“I meant hisfather’sfuneral.”

“What about it?” Rhett asked.

“I told you to attend.”

“Hell, I thought you were joking.”

His father shook his head in frustration, turned to a fully stocked bar against one wall, and mixed himself a whisky soda without asking if his son wanted anything.

“Walter Nash is the best damned hire I ever made, and that includes you. He is the only thing standing between you and that sinking ship you call a company. Which, by the way, was a great business until I let you run it. Into the ground.”

“Come on, we’re doing fine.”

His father turned to face him. “I don’t call profits and revenue being down fifteen percent eachfine, especially when your industry benchmarks are all the other way. And on top of that your free cash flow is for shit. But for the success and savviness of Nash’s acquisitions, you’d be down fifty on both, and your cash flow would bepennies instead of dollars. Bottom line, the man is carrying your water, and a dozen other firms would do anything to poach him. So you go to his father’s fucking funeral.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”

“Youaresorry, but not in the way you mean, boy.”

Barton lit up a cigar pulled from an inlaid walnut humidor. Rhett saw that it was a limited edition Montecristo that cost over $500.

Barton Temple had been to over 120 countries. He was intimately acquainted with kings and dictators, titans of industry, and the monied generational wealth from all four corners of the globe that shaped much of life for the other eight billion people on planet earth. He’d dived off Mexican cliffs in his younger and fitter days, and shot bull elephants and lions on savannahs in Kenya while Rhett was still in diapers, or so Barton liked to brag. He’d made shady fortunes in Africa and South and Latin America and parlayed that into even greater wealth in European corridors. There had also been rumors of his doing deals with Middle East arms dealers when they were still a thing. He’d bought up skyscrapers in New York and oil refineries in Texas and a ton of land and businesses in between. He was a welcome visitor in the homes of other billionaires as well as in the power corridors of world capitals, because he greased palms with the best of them. The carried-interest tax loophole in the U.S. tax laws still survived principally because of his lobbying efforts, allowing the super wealthy to pay even less in tax than the staff they employed to change their kids’ diapers, or theirs, when they became too aged to do it themselves.

But he was one bloated SOB now. And he didn’t look so invincible to his son.

He can’t last much longer.