Transparency by Charles Royce (children's books read aloud txt) 📕

eight pink tables in front of him and a bar to his left overlooking Broadway, all empty except for one.

“You must be Josh,” says the woman in the back, coral polka-dot blouse and tan slacks. After she wipes her face with a napkin, she stands and shimmies forward, the girth of her body parting the table and chairs around her. The resulting scraping along the floors is accompanied by screeching noises, which seems to delight her, as she claps her hands in the air all the way toward him. “Oh my goodness, it’s so nice to finally meet you.”

Josh accepts her hug. “You too. I’m a hugger as well. Oh, wow, this is a good one.”

She squeezes once more before release. “Mmh. You are even more handsome in person.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Patsy Pillsbury,” she reaches her hand out. “But most people just call me Agent Pillsbury. Something about the alliteration bothers them.”

“Josh Harrison.” He shakes her hand. It’s sticky. “May I call you Patsy?”

“No.” She turns around, walks back to her seat. “Come. Sit. Talk. Did you get you some yogurt?”

“I don’t eat breakfast usually.” Josh wipes his hands on his suit pants. “Interesting place to meet, Agent Pillsbury.”

“It’s close, it’s delicious, it’s private.” She settles in, puts her elbows on the table, her hands underneath her chins. “Did you watch Mr. James West last night on the telly?”

“Yes, ma’am, I did. Disaster.”

“Oh, I beg to differ. You saw him trying to weasel his way out of some tough questions, as did I, but the general public and the media saw it quite differently.”

Josh cocks his head. “How so?”

“Élan’s stock is primed to open higher this morning. Most everyone on the socials is all about him sticking up for himself. They loved it. Some even felt sorry for him.” She pauses, lifts her head up in the air as if she’s just been possessed, flicks her two fingers up and down like she’s searching a rolodex. “CNN, FOX, Drudge, oh, here’s a Huffington Post video. Headline reads ‘West Sears Critics,’ subline reads ‘He’s not wrong. Allow us to debunk all the accusations and speculation in sixty seconds.’”

“Sonofabitch. You’re kidding me.”

“No, no. No cursing. Please. I know it’s common here in New York, but I loathe it. And wipe that goofy look off your face. This is good for us. We need West to keep doing what he’s doing. I thought y’all knew that.”

“Yes, but he needs to be put away.”

Agent Pillsbury laughs, ends with a soft snort. “Oh, please, we’ve had him in our sights for years. Cybercrime times—”

Josh watches her go into a trance again. This time she swipes in the air like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.

“—one, two, three, four, and with the evidence from your flash drives, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—”

Josh grabs her hand and pushes it down out of the air. “I get it.”

“Umm.” She jerks her hand away. “It’s how I keep track. You try having a photographic memory, see how you access the files.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We could put him away right now if we wanted to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s bigger fish to fry.” She grabs a spoon, scrapes it along her empty cup. “That’s where you come in.”

“Bigger fish than West? He runs the entire thing.”

“I beg to differ again. There’s an organization that has infiltrated Élan and taken over. Back when Élan was young—new, successful, up-and-coming, profitable—West needed the guidance, sold a chunk of the company to foreign investors. Now these new investors seem to be running the show. West caters to their every whim.”

“A company within a company.”

“Eh, kind of. It’s more like a company board. They have meetings and stuff. They even gave themselves a name.”

“Who are these outside investors?”

“That’s the question.” She licks the melted milk off her spoon. “The paperwork points to some shell company hidden under many, many layers that are impossible to untangle.”

“God.”

“We don’t know much about these investors or this organization-slash-board they’ve encapsulated within Élan, just some testimony from a former employee who was shipped overseas last month. Kayla. Lovely woman, lives in Barbados now with her two children, Max and Sloan, ages twelve and eight. They bought a pirate ship, started taking people around the island. Music at sunset, snorkeling, the works.”

“What’s it called?”

“Caribbean Something. Hold on, I’ll find it.” Her head pops up, her eyes shifting back and forth like a typewriter.

“Not the pirate ship,” Josh says. “What’s the name of the organization that took over Élan?”

“They call themselves CAAD, C-A-A-D, stands for Coalition Against Acquisitional Dominance. An oxymoron from what I can tell. Apparently, the foreign investors came in, planted their own people within Élan. These people then advised on what acquisitions the organization should take over based on empirical data and company fit. They painted themselves as experts in the field of mergers and acquisitions, outlining best practices so the company could increase their market share in key areas while never becoming too big to fail.”

“I thought too big to fail was a positive thing.”

“Federal oversight? Government breathing down your neck? Nobody wants that, especially an organization like CAAD, which has worked with West to break almost every law in the book. By using worst practices to buy up all these media companies, they’ve actually helped West achieve just the opposite of their goal—Élan is now too big to fail. They’ve all been in a mad dash to stabilize so the government doesn’t step in.”

“That’s why West agreed to Tracy’s interview so quickly.”

“Exactly. He’s out of control. So is Élan. Because stock in Élan has been so volatile, we think CAAD may be pushing West out. They may have given up on both him and the company, shifted to something much more sinister. They have ulterior motives; always have, if you ask me.”

“Like what?”

“In addition to financial motivations, like dividends and deferred profit sharing, which has stalled as of late, we’ve been hearing chatter about a plan. A plan that involves your grand opening. We can’t figure out the details, and the few