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Roger Ganley excused himself from the dining table where he and Jeremy Spak were having lunch at the convention center with some foreign dignitaries. He walked up to the lobby and checked with the front desk to see if there were any messages before he went outside to get some fresh air. He took a slow relaxing walk around the circular fountain that was in the middle of the curved driveway in front of the convention center. With the early afternoon sun beating straight down on him, Ganley opted for the cover of a nearby shade tree and he pulled out his cell phone and made a call.
Inside the dining room, Spak and the others left the table to freshen up before the first meeting of the afternoon. Spak walked out into the main hallway and hoped to hear the thundering voice of his boisterous boss who he figured was talking on the phone with someone. As he walked down toward the lobby, Spak caught sight of thick white hair on a short stocky frame out in front of the convention center. Spak walked outside to move his boss along and to see if he needed anything before the afternoon meetings started. He walked past the gurgling fountain and over to Ganley who was facing the other way and talking to someone on the phone.
“I thought you were going to see this through to the end yourself?” Ganley asked his caller.
Not wanting to startle or interrupt his ill-tempered boss, Spak stood to the side to wait until Ganley caught sight of him or finished his call.
“Well you’d better be right, we have a lot of money riding on this,” Ganley said, “I know you have other work to do, but we’ve been planning this for a long time.”
Spak felt somewhat uncomfortable as he stood there trying not to eavesdrop, and he thought about leaving as Ganley continued talking on the phone with his back to him.
“If I thought for a minute that you were going to do something like this, I don’t know that I would have risked it at this time.”
Ganley was silent again as he listened to his caller speak for a moment.
“I don’t want to hear it, I don’t give a rats ass about him. You told me you were going to take care of all of the details, and now you tell me that you have to leave the area, what the hell’s with that.”
After Ganley listened again for a few seconds he said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you twenty-four hours to take care of whatever the hell it is that you have to do. But if you don’t call me tomorrow and tell me that you are personally overseeing every single detail of this project, I’m pulling out. Do you understand? You’d better.”
Ganley turned around as he hung up the phone and was somewhat surprised to see Spak standing there.
“Unbelievable,” Ganley said, “If you want something done, you have to do it your damn self.”
“Was that about the oil consortium,” Spak asked before thinking that maybe he should have minded his own business.”
“Uh, yeah,” Ganley said as he looked at his watch and they started walking back into the convention center.
“If I didn’t have to be here, I could have been there to handle things.”
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