As much as he liked to position himself as a man of honor, the Lead Soprano was also a man of business. Fortunately for him, the two men embodied within his own singular self were frequently in agreement with each other.
It was a good idea to honor contracts because that made people more likely to sign them in the future, to say nothing of upholding their own ends of the agreements.
It was better to deal with family and with people with whom he had an established relationship. It meant he had history with them. It meant he had shared in their life’s experience. It meant that he knew where they lived.
It was generally in his interest to deal with people of honor with known allegiances to standing organizations and not with proven traitors who stood for nothing and no one but themselves.
But sometimes, such an individual came to him and made him an offer he would be unwise to ignore… and that left him divided… and while he hated to choose one over the other, he could hardly call himself a man of honor if he was not able to meet the commitments he’d made to his business partners and to his family, which meant that business had to come first.
There was nothing for him to do but shop around for a better offer.
“Fifty percent you offer me,” he told the commissioner.
“Actually,” Commissioner Krautmick said, “that was your offer, Don Cham…”
“Fifty percent,” he said. “While this, uh, this honorless jackal you would have me oust is offering me seventy-five. Seventy-five. I think I know when a person values my friendship, Commissioner.”
“Seventy-five percent?” the commissioner repeated. “That’s insane!”
“Yes, it really is… a man who, uh, makes that kind of offer should have a caretaker or a guardian ad litem or something to manage his affairs,” Don Chamaeleontis said. “A fiduciary agent with power of attorney. Something. But he doesn’t, and he’s come to me and he’s offered me seventy-five percent of all profits. What are we going to do about that?”
“Lead Soprano, I’ve just been authorized to accept your offer of fifty percent…”
“Well, that’s unfortunate… my heart, it, uh, breaks for you. Truly unfortunate. If you had been a little bit quicker on the draw, then maybe you and I would already have come to an agreement, but we haven’t, and what kind of a man would I be to take the low bid? I’m not some government agency, you know. That’s not how we do things, my French-Canadian friend.”
“Listen, we’re practically giving the station away as it is,” Krautmick said.
“Well, now you’re just insulting me,” the Lead Soprano said quietly. “Now you’re being very disrespectful, because you’re lying to me. I am a tolerant man, Mr. Commissioner, but I won’t tolerate a man who lies to my face, even over a viewscreen. If the station were yours to give away, you’d keep it. What you’re doing here is buying it back, with the blood of my men and with your damned money… and if I don’t see enough in column B, you can forget about column A. Capisce?”
“Respectfully… I can go as high as sixty percent,” the commissioner said. “But that’s sixty percent, guaranteed by contract and by ironclad bonds, not the word of a crazy, vendetta-driven egomaniac.”
“I’m going to show you the same courtesy you showed me and take your offer under consideration,” the Lead Soprano said.
“But we need an answer! Things are happening…”
“All things happen in their own time, Mr. Krautmick,” the Lead Soprano said. “You’ll get my answer when it’s ready. Make sure you have those contracts and those bonds ready, just, uh, just in case.”
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