Family Blood by Marvin J. Wolf

Author:Marvin J. Wolf [Wolf, Marvin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Antenna Books
Published: 2013-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

A FISH IN THE DESERT

Jumbled heaps of colossal sandstone boulders, the Santa Susana Mountains shimmer and bounce through the lens of bone-dry air, faded to palest beige by eons of sunshine. Straddling the line between Ventura and Los Angeles Counties, the Santa Susanas made an ideal backdrop for Hollywood horse operas, a purpose they served through sixty years in hundreds of movies starring such screen cowboys as Tom Mix, William S. Hart, Hopalong Cassidy, and Roy Rogers.

Emerging from a tunnel through the Santa Susanas into the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley are the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad. These rails, a spur on the line connecting the cities around San Francisco Bay with those of Southern California, drop down from the mountains, then curve south through Chatsworth, a community in the City of Los Angeles, then southeast to downtown, some forty miles distant.

The low white building used by Manchester Products Co. to extrude plastic panels is on black-topped Mason Street, dead-ended on the north by the railroad. In Manchester’s lunchroom, on October 13, 1981, Neil and Stewart Woodman played table-stakes poker with four other men. Tens of thousands of dollars were on the table.

The gamblers were interrupted by the arrival of a stranger. Daniel Raiskin was in his mid-thirties, trim, dapper, of above average height, with a head of thick, prematurely gray hair. An attorney specializing in tax planning and corporate law, Raiskin was a partner in Boren, Elperin, Howard and Sloan. He was there to answer an SOS from Neil and Stewart Woodman.

The game broke up and the brothers took Raiskin, whom they were meeting for the first time, to a conference room. They showed him their subpoenas and expressed annoyance that they had been served on the night after Yom Kippur. They explained that their father wanted to dissolve the company. Gerry had been threatening to do just that for many years, almost every time things got tough. He’d said it so often that his sons had come to believe it was only a bluff. But the papers they handed Raiskin were no bluff.

Raiskin was blunt. “I think your father holds most of the cards,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you should just roll over. I’ll need to research the law in this area, and if there is anything that suggests a better way out of this, we can go to court, if necessary, to stop your father.”

The brothers told Raiskin more about the company, and about their situation. They dared not admit that over a million dollars a year was skimmed from the company. Instead they said that Manchester was selling $3 million worth of plastic a year; if it were to go on the market for the usual high multiple of annual earnings, they would expect bids of no less than $6 million—and perhaps far more.

Dissolving the company, however, meant selling off all its tangible assets and dividing the proceeds among shareholders. That would mean selling idle machinery and used fixtures, not a thriving company, a process that would surely yield far less than $6 million.

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