Morrissey said, “Jericho’s right. This is what we’re going to do. We’ve been practicing for five years while we’ve been running Last Chance. If anybody can beat The Shark at this game, it’s one of us. And only one of us has to beat him. We can sign a side contract between the four of us that if one of us wins, the holdings stay within Last Chance, Inc. And if one of us wins, Last Chance gets an infusion of a hundred million dollars of capital. That way, we can save the company we’ve been pouring our blood and sweat into. We can do this.”
Kingston slapped his knees and stood up. “Deal. I’ll call Last Chance’s contract attorney and have them draw up a side contract for the four of us. We can keep working on Last Chance as usual, and then each of us will have the side project to make sure that at least one of us beats The Shark.”
They all shook hands, but as Jericho clasped each one of his friends’ hands in turn, the hangover sweat on his skin turned icy. The Shark would stop at nothing to win, and the four of them had little chance of defeating him.
If Jericho Parr lost a hundred million dollars in a stupid bet, especially to Gabriel Fish, his father would take it as the final nail in Jericho’s coffin that he was a royal fuck-up.
Even though Jericho held an MBA from an Ivy League school, even though he’d run a successful venture capital firm for five years, his father had worked his way up the social ladder from nothing. His father never let Jericho forget that he’d had every opportunity that his father hadn’t.
Nothing was ever good enough to satisfy Jericho’s father, but losing this bet and putting himself millions of dollars in debt, maybe having to declare bankruptcy, would be bad enough to make it the sarcastic topic of his father’s every conversation for the rest of their lives.
Newcastle Golf Club
Jericho
Jericho Parr coasted his Jaguar F-Type convertible into the parking lot of the middle-class golf club in Newcastle, Connecticut, a month behind schedule.
The wooden sign at the club’s entrance read Newcastle Golf Club, which lacked imagination. The trees were a little skinny, maybe malnourished from being ill-kept, and the golf holes he’d seen while driving down the road had bald patches. The greens appeared yellowed in some places and overgrown in others. The clubhouse looked large, but its white paint was rough and peeling in places.
Jericho wasn’t looking for perfection, however. He was looking for potential.
Match, Morrissey, and Kingston had been skulking around the office, hinting they’d made “offers” and were “making progress.”
Jericho felt behind. He didn’t like feeling behind.
Not that they were helping each other or communicating. That would cause them to forfeit the bet.
Granted, Gabriel The Shark wouldn’t know if they talked about it. He lived in California, and he wasn’t psychic. He probably didn’t have listening devices hidden in the corporate offices of Last Chance, Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut.
Probably.
But they’d all agreed it was unchivalrous to collude on bet specifics, that it bordered on the unethical, especially since it was four against one. For venture capitalists, the four guys at Last Chance, Inc. were strangely concerned about ethics. It had kept them out of trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission at least a few times, maybe a lot.
But Newcastle Golf Club? Newcastle was a working-class town in England known for its shipbuilding industry. Maybe Jericho would rename it Knightsbridge Golf Club after the tony neighborhood of London.
No, the name should be Knightsbridge Country Club, not merely golf club. He could raise the membership dues thirty percent with that name change alone, increasing the club’s value by the same amount immediately.
Yes, this place might have promise.
Jericho grabbed the warm, oversized cup of his matcha chai latte out of the cup holder and unfolded himself from his sportscar.
Gravel skidded under the soles of his leather shoes. Black stripes of tar painted black lightning bolts over the asphalt.
Tires would throw those loose stones, and they’d hit other cars. Jericho didn’t like the liability. The parking lot would need repaving, which would be an expense with very little return on his investment. He needed to buy a place where cosmetic improvements and advertising would increase its membership rolls and thus its value.
Essentially, Jericho needed to flip a golf course like real estate investors flipped houses.
And after this stupid bet with Gabriel Fish was over, Jericho was absolutely going to divest himself of the golf course in question with all possible haste. There was no reason to have even one golf course, let alone four freakin’ golf courses, on the books at Last Chance, Inc., dragging down their return on investment.
Jericho walked around to the back of his Jag carrying his super-large matcha chai, and he was seething about being conned into this stupid bet in the first place. As he turned the corner around the rear of his car and thumbed his key fob to release the trunk, a blond kid high on testosterone and driving a golf cart zoomed past him.
The kid’s elbow knocked Jericho’s hand that was clutching the cup.
When his arm was slammed, Jericho’s hand involuntarily squeezed the flimsy barrel of hot, creamy tea.
Over-sweetened bright green sludge erupted from the collapsing cup, blasting the lid aside and fountaining over Jericho’s golf shirt and trousers. “Hey!”
As the kid careened away in the golf cart with its tires crunching on the pavement, he yelled, “Sorry about that!”
Thick, sticky matcha tea saturated Jericho’s shirt and pants. Green milk froth slid down his shirt. He looked like an alien who had been gored and was gushing chartreuse tree sap.
He’d worn his golf clothes to the course, so he didn’t have an extra set of clothes to change into. At least he had an extra set of socks in his golf shoe bag because the hot latte was seeping into his shoes and squishing around his toes like warm vomit.
His house in Stamford was three hours away, and his tee time was scheduled for an hour from then. He’d called the club the week before pretending to be interested in a membership. The head pro had arranged a preview round with some of the club’s members.
If Jericho were interested in buying the club, he couldn’t meet his potential members smelling like sour milk.
Jericho grabbed the small bag with the socks and his golf shoes, slammed the trunk of his car, and stalked into the pro shop, where a confused blond teenybopper tried to insist that the shop was not open to the general public and only members were allowed to purchase clothes from the club.
After trying to explain to the ditsy young thing that he was a guest and potential member, Jericho finally called the club pro from his cell phone and asked him to intervene.
The head pro of the Newcastle Golf Club appeared to be in his late sixties but could have been anywhere north of forty. His rough, ruddy complexion testified to the damage that decades of sunshine wreaked on Caucasian skin. Maroon freckles sprayed over his tanned nose and cheeks right up to a distinct line in the middle of his forehead. Above his hat line, his pristinely white scalp shone under the flickering tube lights—those horrid lights would have to go—like a pile of road salt under a blanket of the winter’s first snow. The pro wore a light blue shirt with the club’s logo, a stout tree sprouting white flowers and the words Newcastle GC in unreadable cursive on the left side of his chest.