The Man from Lisbon, page 9
The problem that confronted him now was that while the illusion remained, the reality of his situation had gone straight to hell. He had looked up one day from his ledgers and with a depressing shock acknowledged to himself what he’d feared. Incredibly, he was going broke.
While it was Angola that had been the making of him, he could ironically look to the African promised land for the wellsprings of his current predicament. His unbridled faith in the future of the colony and in its presumed mineral deposits had led him to invest his cash reserves in the South Angola Mining Corporation. Not a ton of iron ore had yet issued forth, and the prospects were less hopeful by the day.
The financial pages made for grim reading. By late summer of 1923 Angola’s economy was approaching the dropping-off place, and daily he read the bad news in the pages of O Seculo. He watched with dismay verging on panic as the Ultramarino Bank of Portugal continued issuing specifically Angolan escudos at a rate that finally inflated them to the point where they were almost worthless in Angola and absolutely nonexchangeable anywhere else on earth. Currency could no longer be transferred by individuals or corporations from the colony to the mother country. Taken together, these two turns of events had delivered him to the brink of disaster.
Finally, fed up with the worry, he left the office and went walking along the harbor, watching the great ships riding at anchor. He could almost smell Africa on them. It set him longing. Maybe Maria had been right in the first place. They had always been happy in Angola. …
Director Chaves, his old benefactor from Luanda, had come to Lisbon well aware that history and time had reversed their roles. He still moved with the bullish rush, stared out from beneath the jutting gorillalike brow; he still gestured with thick-fingered, hairy fists. But his voice was that of a supplicant as he arrived unannounced and indifferently barbered at A. V. Alves Reis Lda.’s gleaming, polished, most deceptive office. The flower in his lapel was yesterday’s, brown-edged.
He hugged Alves impulsively. The faint aroma of brandy hung about him like shaving lotion. Alves, who practiced his English by reading the exploits of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, decided that Chaves had found himself in need of bottled courage. After a smiling exchange of pleasantries, remembrances from old friends in Luanda and a report that the mighty American locomotives were flourishing atop the bridges, Chaves slumped into a deep leather club chair.
“And now,” Alves said from behind his vast tycoon’s desk, gently inquisitive, “what has brought you all this way, Director?” Chaves’ face drooped glumly. “You’ve come to buy some new bridges!” Alves’ accompanying chuckle went unappreciated.
“Things are not good in Angola, Alves,” he growled characteristically, hunching forward in the chair. “It’s worse than you may have heard. … It touches us all, me and Terreira even, and that speaks for itself.” He sighed as if the reality was even now having difficulty sinking in. “And the railway …” The thought was too much for him to remain trapped in the chair. He bounded to the window and looked down at the carefully symmetrical pattern of the sidewalk tiles below. Goldsmiths lined the street, and after the openness of Luanda’s topography he felt as if he could reach out the window and across the way and steal a watch.
“I’ve read about that too, of course,” Alves said. It was true. The difficulties of his old employer, known officially as the Royal Trans-African Railway Company of Angola, known in the marketplace as Ambaca, had been recounted in tortured detail in the daily press. With the economy in shreds and tatters, Ambaca stock had fallen to a few escudos—literally pennies—per share. The shares he had bought before returning to Lisbon were symptomatic of his current predicament: they were worthless. Foreign investors who owned substantial blocks of stock and held large notes sensed either bankruptcy or a takeover opportunity or both. They were impatiently demanding money—unpaid dividends and interest on the notes.
Chaves ran through the brutal details as quickly as possible, huffing and puffing as if he were fading fast on the uphill slope. “What we need,” he concluded abruptly, spinning back from the window, hair on the wild side from anxious wanderings of his sausage-shaped fingers, “is some new blood! New investment, someone with vision and skill in putting off our creditors—someone with capital who can step in, take a firm hand, give us back the confidence we’ve lost. …” His dark eyes seemed to swell, pleading, pathetic.
“It is a difficult situation, Director,” Alves allowed sagely. He took a cigarette from an ebony box on his desk, offered them to Chaves, who was distractedly picking his large nose. “What’s your next step?” Chaves popped a match on his thumbnail and applied it with some vigor to the fragile Egyptian smoke.
“My associates and I met just before I left for Lisbon and we agreed unanimously … I have come all the way from Africa, Alves,” he said, his voice growing weighty, as if he were conferring an honor, “to find help for Ambaca. We agreed that you are the man to save Ambaca. You have the resources, the knowledge, the experience. …” He shrugged his huge shoulders.
“My God.”
“Aha, you may say ‘my God,’ but what can I say to my associates?”
“But my capital is … well, I have other investments, you understand.”
“You mean to say that it is a matter of liquidity?” Chaves threw the cigarette at a standing floor ashtray, narrowly missed.
“More or less.” Inwardly Alves cringed. Could such an opportunity be passing him by—the chance to control the Royal Trans-African Railway, the place he’d gotten his start? The poetry of it quickened his pulse. But of all times, why now? Chaves was applying for capital, precisely the ingredient Alves was searching for himself. The irony of it was indescribably painful. Only last week the Ultramarino Bank had done everything but laugh aloud at his loan application.
“You might be well advised to liquidate another investment in order to take advantage of this one. Ambaca is not all that sick a company. … To being with, there’s the hundred thousand dollars in the treasury—my God, billions of escudos the way things are going these days!”
“What hundred thousand dollars?” Alves asked. Chaves, taken by surprise, slid down in the club chair. Alves was now up and coming around the desk, a gleam in his eye. This, it occurred to him, must be the way real money men are struck by an idea.
“Why, the hundred thousand lent to Ambaca by the government here in Lisbon … to pay off the interest on all those notes, to keep the creditors from foreclosing. I thought you’d know of that.”
“How would I know about that? Believe me, there’s been nothing in the press about that.” Alves smashed out the cigarette stub and quickly fumbled another into his mouth. Be calm, he told himself, take your time. “Well, then, there is life in the firm. … That may change my opinion of it, as an opportunity for sound investment.”
“When will you know, Alves?”
“It depends, Director.” He forced himself down into a chair that matched Chaves’. He studied his manicured nails for a moment, running over his lines. “One of my guiding principles has been never to entrust my money to the possible mismanagement of others. No offense, Director, but … but if I am able to control matters, then a situation may look considerably more attractive to me. Just between the two of us, you do see my point?”
“Of course, certainly.” Chaves wriggled in discomfort, tried to work up a conspiratorial nod. “You have a plan?”
“Were I to find this opportunity sufficiently tempting, what would be required to gain control of Ambaca? So that I might feel comfortable, you understand. Remembering that I am the fellow who may be throwing the rope to the drowning man.” He squinted at Chaves. His ash fell on his very expensive suit.
“Forty thousand dollars,” Chaves said.
Alves smiled, rose, consulted his watch.
“Let me sleep on it,” he said, enigmatic. “Now I must excuse myself. I’ve called a meeting of the board of one of my interests.” He took Chaves by the elbow and propelled him to the heavy oak door. “Meet me here tomorrow at noon. I expect you to respect our confidences, Director.”
“I will speak with no one else before we meet tomorrow, in any case.”
Alves slapped Chaves’ back. Encouragingly.
That evening the illusion was in full flower though the audience of two knew too much to swallow any of it. The lamp hanging over the billiard table moved in the breeze from the open window; shadows flickered across the green baize; a pale-blond cue drew back from the circle of light, drawing tension with it. Alves miscued. The ball leaped as if victimized by a rude gesture, clattered away on the floor. “Shit!” He slammed his cue into the rack and glared through the darkness surrounding the table like a jungle night. “What do I know about billiards?”
Arnaldo sighed. “Alves, billiards should make you relax—that’s the point.”
“Why should doing some idiotic thing I know nothing about make me relax?” A match flared in the darkness. “What matters is Chaves’ suggestion. I’ve got to get my hands on that hundred thousand in the Ambaca treasury. … It’s the answer to all our current problems, the answer to my prayers.”
Arnaldo leaned over the table and executed a neat bank shot with the two remaining ivory balls. He watched the slow, steady trajectories. The clear-cut parameters of the game appealed to his conservative nature. “Where can you possibly raise the forty thousand you need to get the hundred thousand? And why in the world do you want to control a nearly bankrupt African railway? You mystify me, Alves.”
“For the last time,” he croaked, “I do not want to run the railroad! I want the bloody hundred thousand!”
“Please, Alves, the veins in your neck—”
“Well, then, don’t excite me! Listen carefully—I need to control the company to get the money.”
Alves made a strangled sound, coughed on cigarette smoke. He was finishing the day’s fifth pack. Arnaldo made another shot. Alves read his face, knew what it meant. He could always depend on Alves to think of something. …
“If—I say if—there were some way to use the hundred thousand in the Ambaca treasury to buy Ambaca itself … I need forty thousand of it to buy Ambaca.”
“That makes no sense. A riddle.”
“Sherlock Holmes tells me that if all possibilities are exhausted but one, then that one, however improbable, must be the solution.”
“Well, I don’t see it.” Arnaldo leaned on the upright cue, chin on the backs of his hands, staring at Alves.
“Slow boats, fast checks. Voilà! The forty thousand.” Alves broke off chuckling to himself.
“Not with such a large amount, Alves! What if something went wrong?” Arnaldo’s shock, mingled with a wise man’s trepidation, gleamed in the dark like a warning beacon.
“Wait,” Alves cautioned him. “Think. Arrange the perspective. Now, just when things look darkest, along comes salvation by way of Luanda. The money exists. I am being begged to take it! But there is one small obstacle, the need for forty thousand dollars … and only for a short time, when I will then as the man who controls the railroad have access to the hundred thousand, out of which I can make up the forty thousand I have used to buy the railroad! Do you follow me? Well, then, why not by the means of our special system?” He waited for the logic of it to dawn on Arnaldo. “Chaves would not have been provided in our time of need if we were not meant to use him. He has thrown us the rope!”
“But such large sums—”
“Has anything ever gone wrong before?”
“No.” Arnaldo shrugged, muttering.
“Well, then. There is no time to lose. A bold stroke now will bring it all right. And who will be hurt? Eh, tell me—no one! Listen to me, Arnaldo!” He shook Arnaldo’s sleeve. Sweat beaded on Alves’ forehead.
“I am listening.”
“We are in the materialistic world.” Alves spoke very quietly now. “We have chosen it, we are suited to it. And in our world there are neither honest men nor rogues—only victors and vanquished. I know which I choose to be. … It’s the law of the jungle.”
Eventually the faithful Arnaldo saw the light.
Alves was rather pleased with the notion of slow boats and fast checks.
Owning a Nash dealership—an American-based operation in a European country—had made it useful for A. V. Alves Reis Lda. to open a checking account at the prestigious National City Bank of New York. Knowing full well the value and protean uses of money, Alves issued checks in special circumstances “on our New York bank.” It went down well with provincial creditors who had never dealt with a New World financial firm before. More importantly it allowed him the free use of the National City Bank’s money for a week or more at a time, counting for an average eight-day sea crossing, Lisbon to New York. Write a check on a Tuesday, have the money working all week—during which time a killing might wisely be made to cover the check and provide for a generous profit—and cable the appropriate amount to New York the following Monday. And if the plans took longer than anticipated, the bounced check would not reappear in Lisbon until the sixteenth day at the earliest and more likely on, say, the twentieth day. At which time one professed astonishment to the creditor, cursed slovenly American clerical errors and confidently suggested he need only redeposit the check, assuring him the National City Bank would be written a stern letter of reprimand. Another eight days’ use of the interest-free money had been granted, a month in all to raise the money to cover the check. Eventually the check was good; it was a foolproof system. He knew that: he’d tested it repeatedly, though not on so grand a scale.
When Director Chaves turned up at the office the next day, a chipper, nattily turned-out Alves greeted him with a broad smile and the news that, having slept on it, he had decided to help his old friends out of their difficulties. The shares of Royal Trans-African Railway stock were already being purchased. Within twenty-four hours Alves Reis would have control and in another few hours would institute the move to vote himself chairman of the company. After all, he voted the majority of the shares himself. Director Chaves was so relieved he nearly collapsed.
Within a month the firm of A. V. Alves Reis Limitado was considerably revived. Unopposed in his lunge at the chairmanship, Alves covered his check and used the remaining sixty thousand dollars in the Ambaca treasury to buy outright control of the South Angola Mining Corporation. Having grown wonderfully adept at touting whatever he was interested in at a given moment, he went to work pushing the mining stock. The shares rose on cue, even in the face of the company’s continuing lack of productivity. New investments were lured to both Ambaca and the mining operation. He was diversifying. His next enterprise was the exporting of German beer to Angola. But when he returned to Lisbon from Munich there was a surprise in store for him. He was going to jail. …
Alves screamed as if bitten by a rabid dog. “You tell me I am wanted by the police! Have you completely lost your mind? What do the police want with me, Reis of Reis Limitado?”
It was the fifth of July 1924, and the sun was turning the office into an oven even with the windows thrown wide open. Arnaldo stood before him in a shirt that clung wetly to his back, in trousers that had lost their crease, reminding Alves of no one so much as his late undertaker father.
“Let me speak, Alves,” he said softly.
“Stop mumbling, then!” Alves paced across the carpet, took a limp cigarette from the ebony box and lit it, inhaling deeply. “All right, all right. I am perfectly calm. See, my hand is like a rock.” He held out his right hand. Both men stared at it. It quaked as if the catastrophe of 1755 that destroyed most of Lisbon was repeating itself in the streets outside. Arnaldo looked up from the chair Alves had pushed him into. “Stupid test,” Alves declared, jerking his hand away. “It proves nothing.” He puffed hard on the cigarette, yanked the silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped his face. “Why isn’t this fan turned on? It just sits there. …” He gestured imploringly to an unjust deity and turned the switch on the base of the heavy black oscillating fan, which hummed slowly to life. “That’s what fans are for, Arnaldo, they are for when it’s hot. Are you going to tell me what’s going on here?”
“The Ambaca deal,” Arnaldo said, his voice too high, catching in his throat. “Two of the directors, not Chaves, but two here in Portugal, have gone to the police with the charge that you embezzled the Ambaca treasury, one hundred thousand dollars American, for your personal use. … The police were here yesterday with a warrant for your arrest.” The words came hard, and Alves strained to hear them over the racket of the fan. Impatiently he jabbed at the switch, turning it off.
“I am simply appalled. … To be perfectly frank, it smacks of a vendetta. Or jealousy. Or politics.” He groaned. “A dastardly attempt to discredit me.” He marched to the window and rested his head against the pane of glass, eyes closed, sweat dripping from his face. “Ah, fuck! What do they want from me? I’ve dealt with their creditors, bought time. … The company is better off now than when Chaves came stumbling in here like a lost soul looking for salvation—and now the miserable bastards turn on me! Christ, what am I supposed to do?”
“Alves?”
“Yes, yes, yes. What else? Maria has run off with the butcher? Oh God, poor Maria, she’ll die of humiliation. …”
“They are coming back today. They’ll be taking you to … Oporto.” He gripped the arms of the club chair to steady himself.
“Oporto!” Alves shouted, livid again. “Oporto? A city where I am unknown, without friends—”
“The two directors are also directors of an Oporto bank. As far as I can tell they simply pulled some strings to have you brought to the Oporto jail. …”
“Oh my God,” Alves said mournfully, “I am in the hands of my enemies. … Is there no justice, Arnaldo, after all I have done for Portugal?”
Arnaldo blinked helplessly.
A heavy, insistent knock came at the door.
The Oporto jail was worse than he’d expected.
