Read Online The Almanac Branch by Bradford Morrow - Free Book Online Page A

cracked Neden.
    And another voice came in, which was del Russe’s. “What we’re doing here is that 2 or 3 percent of profits of all the Geiger entities will be donated every year to this trust. It is an amount that is not unusual and should not attract any attention if someone is going over the books. Given that all the Geiger companies are incorporated in the state where the individual technology for each of the products is located, where the manufacturing base, or the warehousing base, say, is set up—like say, we make those baseball bats and the bowling pins with the limited edition star signatures out of upstate New York ash, turn them up there, both those companies are New York limiteds, you see—there’s no reason for anyone to connect them, the different companies, in any kind of interstate way, you see. It’s all generally legal.”
    â€œGenerally?” again Neden pushed.
    â€œThe purpose of the trust is to honor mariners who have given their lives in the interest of trade. And about this I’m very serious”—I wanted to laugh, knowing my father as I did, but no one laughed, and I bit my cheek—“and so as one of the outreach programs, missionary program as it were, we’re raising money to salvage derelict vessels from the Gulf Stream gyre and save them for posterity, making a contribution to the history of international trade—because these guys were the pioneers.”
    Pannett—or Neden, their guttural voices were similar, then did laugh, and said, “Absurd.”
    â€œYou know what the Gulf Stream gyre is?”
    â€œCan we skip ahead to the point?”
    Faw continued, “The Gulf Stream gyre is a circle—”
    â€œThis whole thing sounds more like circles than points—”
    â€œâ€”or it’s shaped more like the outer edge of an amoeba or a squash or something, but it’s a circular path in which the warm water runs through the cold water of the Atlantic. It’s about a ten-month loop. You with me? So, historically, ships get hit by high water and storm-waves that are created by when this cold and warm encounter each other, just like storm systems when you get a thunderstorm because of cold air and warm air colliding. And the crew abandons ship, sometimes they’re saved, as often not. It’s all in the history books. And your ship is abandoned, and as often as not if her frame and skin are of decent wood and she’s still basically seaworthy, she’ll get pulled into the Gulf current and go round and round—”
    â€œA ghost ship, now, the point being?”
    â€œSo, well, we’ve got this church, set up as a 501(c)(3) I think is what del Russe and his friends over at Internal Revenue call it, but whatever, it’s a nonprofit tax-exempt foundation, and in the charter there is this outreach program so that part of the organization’s activities can run something like this. To salvage antique vessels of historical importance from the Gulf Stream gyre, bring them if possible to port, dry dock, and undertake to restore, and then donate to museums to the Christian memory of the international community of pioneers and traders.”
    â€œUnutterably ridiculous, all right?”
    Someone else said, “For the final time, the point is what?”
    â€œWe have an account in North Carolina, we have an account in the French West Indies, like I was saying earlier, the latter takes project outreach program funds from the donations given to the former—goes through our banks in the city—the latter moves monies into another account overseas, you know, like for holding funds for capital as investment against the costs of repair, which would of course have to be contracted out to specialists in the field, of which I have already put one or two on the payroll, a couple of brothers who live in Gustavia, on St. Barthélemy—Bartholomew being a mariner, by the way, and so