Christian Gillette - 02 - The Protégé by Stephen Frey

Author:Stephen Frey
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9780345480583
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2005-12-27T04:44:46+00:00

IT WAS THE THIRD TIME since Gillette had left Chatham that he’d tried Faith on both her cell phone and her private apartment line in New York. Still no answer, and no return call. She was getting the messages—she checked her phone religiously, every fifteen minutes when he was with her—she just wasn’t answering. He knew what was going on. She was trying to teach him a lesson. But he wasn’t guilty. As he sat back down at the table, Allison smiled and leaned toward him.

“Everything okay?” she asked, squeezing his arm.

Allison’s touch caused a shiver to race up his back and reminded him that it had been a month since he and Faith had made love. He looked over at her. She was wearing her hair up and looked pretty in an off-the-shoulders dress she’d changed into after they’d gotten to the hotel. “Everything’s fine. I’m going to Las Vegas next week to start that process we talked about.” She’d taken a helicopter from Manhattan down to Chatham to meet him, and he’d brought her up to speed on the casino during the flight to Pittsburgh.

“I want to go with you on that trip,” she said immediately.

“Well—”

“What do you have going on out in Las Vegas?” Jack Mitchell asked loudly. Mitchell was the CEO and controlling shareholder of Veramax. He was a big man who was nearly bald and wore large, unfashionable glasses.

Sometimes rich people did that, Gillette knew. Wore things that were out of style just to show everybody else that they didn’t have to care about fashion.

“A couple of days ago, the NFL awarded us the new Las Vegas franchise,” Gillette replied. He wasn’t going to tell Mitchell about the casino because he didn’t want other casinos in Vegas hearing about their plans yet. According to Allison, Mitchell was pretty connected, and you never knew who knew who.

Mitchell banged the table with his palm. The silverware and plates rattled, and two of the water glasses almost fell over. “Damn, that’s great. If we do a deal here, maybe I could get an invite to the first game.”

“If we do a deal here, you’ll have a standing invite to all the games,” Gillette assured the other man. “Tell me about Veramax’s products, will you, Jack?”

Mitchell cleared his throat and took a long swallow of Scotch. “Right now, our bread and butter is basic over-the-counter medicine. But we’ve got some hot new proprietary drugs just rarin’ to go.” A natural-born salesman, Mitchell used his hands a lot in conversation. “Dynamite stuff, but these FDA guys in Washington are dragging their heels.”

“What’s the problem?” Gillette asked. Allison hadn’t explained the FDA problem yet or how she knew of his connection to Senator Clark. He reminded himself to drill her on that after dinner. “Why are they dragging their heels?”

“Ah, it’s a long story,” Mitchell said, waving a hand in front of his face.

“We haven’t even gotten our salads yet, Jack. We’ve got plenty of time.”

Mitchell set his jaw. “It’s a damn personal thing with one of the senior people over there.

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