Call Me Joe by Steven J Patrick Read Free Book Online
Authors: Steven J Patrick
with?"
"It's the nature of the beast, my friend," Art sighed. "The development game, at least on this scale, is about partnerships, investors, financing. Hell, even in something as small as a single apartment building. Modern building costs money, honey, and you don't curl your lip at a ready source. Pembroke & Hawkes has something akin to a 'co-signed by god' credit rating, the reflected glow of which shines brightly off an O+O like PPV. My guy did his due diligence on them. They're solid. Problem is - and this is amazingly common - the reasons for old-money companies like P & H spinning off something like a P.P.V. sometimes come down to trivia: The nephew or eldest son of a partner needs a job, that eternal quest to diversify, corporate boredom, you name it. To paraphrase a famous American, 'Management is as management does.' Just because P & H is sound as Fort Knox, that don't mean P.P.V. is above shenanigans."
"Well, the fishiest thing, to me, is that nobody's heard about this," I mused. "When has a resort development ever been bottled up that tightly? Selling that kind of property is all about promotion."
"Exactly," Art agreed. "Hell, P.P.V. insisted that we and the Wrights keep a lid on it, which is what set off the alarms in the first place. My guy is a freakin' genius at marketing. Has a glowing track record. And he does it by spreadin' the word. Presumably, that's what would make him attractive to somebody like P.P.V. and they're insisting he not do it."
"Fishy," I chuckled dryly.
"Yeah," Art murmured. "Fishy."
I did a bit of online research into Pembroke & Hawkes and P.P.V. for a couple of hours on both Google and Nexus. Google was actually more helpful, burping up articles from the establishment press, builder/developer's trade magazines, and the English tabloids indiscriminately.
The window dressing was profuse, the actual facts scant. Pembroke & Hawkes was, of course, even in the tabloids, revered as the most stable and respectable of old line companies, jointly owned by the two families, even after 150 years. The most junior member of the board was Simon Hawkes, an excitable 58. Nary a whiff of any scandal, controversy, or even a minor disagreement.
P.P.V. was launched quietly, as a management company for the firm's land holdings in Scotland, Germany, and the western United States. They were also charged, according to the London papers, with acquisition of new land, negotiation of new timber rights, and a vague tag-on about "future possibilities for land development and speculation."
The more I looked at it, the less I could grasp how their involvement in the Colville thing might work into their mission statement but, more so, how it could possibly work in practical terms. The only logical reason for the choreographed secrecy was that something was in the new development that P.P.V. felt couldn't stand scrutiny or something shifty going on in the money end of things.
The president of P.P.V. was, predictably, a Pembroke: Anthony Ahrend Pembroke II, great-great grandson of the founder and eldest, at 44, of the current managing partner of Pembroke & Hawkes, Anthony I.
Junior was, by all accounts, a smart but vanilla Eton grad, former V.P. of marketing of the parent firm, and the big thinker who originally came up with the idea of aggressive land acquisition, vis-à-vis an entity that evolved into P.P.V.
He played polo, like any good, upper-crust English boy, owned a big farm in Scotland that produced world-class wool, and was married to what appeared to be a blue-ribbon trophy wife; a tall, blonde, blue-eyed, tanned bowl of ice cream, clearly chock-full of some high octane Scandinavian genes, who effectively erased her merely handsome husband from any photo that contained the two of them. Her name was Annika Pembroke and she had that glint in her eye that says, "I don't miss much and what I do miss ain't important."
I made a note to
"It's the nature of the beast, my friend," Art sighed. "The development game, at least on this scale, is about partnerships, investors, financing. Hell, even in something as small as a single apartment building. Modern building costs money, honey, and you don't curl your lip at a ready source. Pembroke & Hawkes has something akin to a 'co-signed by god' credit rating, the reflected glow of which shines brightly off an O+O like PPV. My guy did his due diligence on them. They're solid. Problem is - and this is amazingly common - the reasons for old-money companies like P & H spinning off something like a P.P.V. sometimes come down to trivia: The nephew or eldest son of a partner needs a job, that eternal quest to diversify, corporate boredom, you name it. To paraphrase a famous American, 'Management is as management does.' Just because P & H is sound as Fort Knox, that don't mean P.P.V. is above shenanigans."
"Well, the fishiest thing, to me, is that nobody's heard about this," I mused. "When has a resort development ever been bottled up that tightly? Selling that kind of property is all about promotion."
"Exactly," Art agreed. "Hell, P.P.V. insisted that we and the Wrights keep a lid on it, which is what set off the alarms in the first place. My guy is a freakin' genius at marketing. Has a glowing track record. And he does it by spreadin' the word. Presumably, that's what would make him attractive to somebody like P.P.V. and they're insisting he not do it."
"Fishy," I chuckled dryly.
"Yeah," Art murmured. "Fishy."
I did a bit of online research into Pembroke & Hawkes and P.P.V. for a couple of hours on both Google and Nexus. Google was actually more helpful, burping up articles from the establishment press, builder/developer's trade magazines, and the English tabloids indiscriminately.
The window dressing was profuse, the actual facts scant. Pembroke & Hawkes was, of course, even in the tabloids, revered as the most stable and respectable of old line companies, jointly owned by the two families, even after 150 years. The most junior member of the board was Simon Hawkes, an excitable 58. Nary a whiff of any scandal, controversy, or even a minor disagreement.
P.P.V. was launched quietly, as a management company for the firm's land holdings in Scotland, Germany, and the western United States. They were also charged, according to the London papers, with acquisition of new land, negotiation of new timber rights, and a vague tag-on about "future possibilities for land development and speculation."
The more I looked at it, the less I could grasp how their involvement in the Colville thing might work into their mission statement but, more so, how it could possibly work in practical terms. The only logical reason for the choreographed secrecy was that something was in the new development that P.P.V. felt couldn't stand scrutiny or something shifty going on in the money end of things.
The president of P.P.V. was, predictably, a Pembroke: Anthony Ahrend Pembroke II, great-great grandson of the founder and eldest, at 44, of the current managing partner of Pembroke & Hawkes, Anthony I.
Junior was, by all accounts, a smart but vanilla Eton grad, former V.P. of marketing of the parent firm, and the big thinker who originally came up with the idea of aggressive land acquisition, vis-à-vis an entity that evolved into P.P.V.
He played polo, like any good, upper-crust English boy, owned a big farm in Scotland that produced world-class wool, and was married to what appeared to be a blue-ribbon trophy wife; a tall, blonde, blue-eyed, tanned bowl of ice cream, clearly chock-full of some high octane Scandinavian genes, who effectively erased her merely handsome husband from any photo that contained the two of them. Her name was Annika Pembroke and she had that glint in her eye that says, "I don't miss much and what I do miss ain't important."
I made a note to
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