The Clerk

 The Clerk

The money man was not in front of me. A friend once told me that those at the table were concentric circles removed from the principals. The clerks came to the table with a checkbook and instructions.

The tell was the handkerchief sprouted from an Italian blazer over a v neck t-shirt. The picture of gaud did not square with the reputation of commercial savvy.  The mauve handkerchief reminded of the social elite photographed in mid pose over cocktails and canapes. It was not so much of a showing but a flower trying to escape the embarrassment of the display. 

He was the front end of a global laundry for the born right who presented well. His father had been the best friend of a front desk clerk in a colonial hotel who would rise to be the proprietor of 33 hotels around the world. His father ran the first travel agency in the country and a printing press for the first family of the country's politics.

We had met before with a group of real estate bandits that were helping themselves to whatever they could installing him as a tenant in a property. One year later the clerk got off a plane in Colombo, Sri Lanka accompanied by a colleague unneeded except that the clerk always needed company or an audience to which his attention could be diverted if the conversation became inconvenient, and because the colleague was acquainted with the extortionist who would appear later and is central to our theme. 

The visit to Colombo was intended to execute an agreement away from Native curiosity where the extortion supply chain had burrowed inside a real estate deal that had occupied courts and courtiers for generations. He came with documents but without the checkbook. 

The trip turned into a search for the best crab restaurant in town. Dinner was seafood but not crab. The conversation turned to recount my 66-month vacation for losing twenty million dollars of other people's money selling option premium naked into the night and lying about it. My past was not subject of mystery it could be viewed for free in that contemporary virtual library that occupied most handphones. Maybe the clerk just wanted to hear it from me.

The search for crab ended with shrimp for lunch the next day at a crab restaurant. The crab had run out because the Chinese construction crews taking over the island had beaten us to it while we were occupied with a line-by-line examination of a document I had insisted be signed for his protection. 

We signed the agreement, mused about the capital schedule that would remain unfulfilled, lamented the crab, and parted. 

In these deals the extortionists get paid first.