Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Double Cross
We weren't really friends. Cohorts maybe. Thrown together in a small town, with no other boys our own age, we got into mischief together.
Nothing unusual, just ordinary kid trouble that we always faced together, thus cementing our relationship.
Now, forty-some years later, I find that Tom has siphoned off our income, leveraging the winery, and the vineyard, for increasingly bigger "improvement" loans, $300,000 of which went to his private account in Belize.
His part in our business was to run the winery and accounting, whereas my responsibility was the vineyard operations.
I found out about this because being in serious personal financial trouble, I was unable to sleep last night. I got out of bed, went to the office, and for once, really looked at the books to see if we were healthy enough that I might beg Tom to let the company bail me out. As I found item after item where he had siphoned off the $300,000 leaving our company broke, my shock turned to fury.
I waited for him to arrive in the morning.
Upon confronting him, we fought, and as usual I lost. He trussed me up; the man never could tie a decent knot, but had plenty of rope to make up the difference, and cleared out what was in our safe. One item I could see was a plane ticket, no doubt to Belize.
"You always were a weakling, and a little slow, physically and mentally," he said. He gave me a two fingered salute, and headed for the door. "Goodbye, brother, have a good life."
He was right. He was always stronger and quicker than me. But one thing about me that he didn't know was that I am a compulsive gambler. I don't know how I got that way, it just sort of crept up on me over the years. I've gambled away every cent that I've ever owned, and I owe the "people" from New York serious money.
Earlier last night, a seedy little guy from whom I sometimes buy gambling tips approached me with literally the tip of my life. New York had decided that I didn't have the ability to repay their money, so had issued a contract out on me. Plans were for the execution of the contract to take place this morning, as I left the office for my usual Wednesday morning workout at the local gym.
Let's see, according to the clock on the wall, that would be about right now.
Well, what are identical twins good for anyway?
Gee, he sure used a lot of knots.
