Voor degenen die nog willen weten hoe mijn 'sloop een shady bedrijf' eruit is komen te zien:
Citaat:
Hardison explains with a sunny grin: ‘Liam Leeman (de evil CEO in kwestie), lady and gentleman, is an aspiring writer. Very much aspiring and also very very bad at it. Here, look at this.’
The text is displayed loud and on the screen, but of course Hardison has to do a dramatic reading, complete with voices and arm gestures:
Mr. Fitzpatrick had fiery dark blue eyes, as deep as a summer’s lake. His hair was black as a raven’s wing and cut perfectly. He was tall, dark, handsome, rich and the CEO of a multi million dollar company. In short: he was every girl’s dream guy and he was pretty sure even some guys were in love with him. Not that he would ever sleep with a guy, because that was just gross. He liked girls.
He walked into the office and greeted his secretary, Helma. She was Swedish and hot. ‘Hello,’ he said.’
‘Hello,’ Helma greeted back. Fitzpatrick would probably sleep with her tonight, he thought. She was really into him, he could tell.
‘And he hasn’t managed to publish this?’ Eliot asks, shaking his head. ‘That’s… yeah, alright, it’s bad. But he’s a CEO, he could’ve easily paid his way to publishing, right?’
‘Yeah, but he doesn’t want to,’ Parker says before Hardison can get there. ‘I think? He doesn’t want to make people publish his book, he just wants them to publish it because they actually think it’s good.’
Hardison nods. ‘Exactly. Which is why he’s been sending it to publishers over and over and over, all under different pseudonyms in the hope that one of them will say yes eventually. I mean,’ he shakes his head. ‘You gotta admit, the guy’s persistent.’
‘Yeah, and he’s also hurting kids while waxing poetic about cerulean orbs,’ Eliot points out. ‘Let’s take this wannabe Hemingway down.’
Hardison blinks. ‘Hemingway? Really? That’s who you’re going with?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Just saying man.’
‘Shut. Up.’
---
‘Mr. Leeman? Your three o’clock is here.’
‘I don’t have a three o’clock.’
‘Mr. Leeman, good afternoon. My name is Leopold Penn and I represent Olsson and Penn Book Publishers.’
‘Oh, that three o’clock. Stacey, could you please call off my other meetings this afternoon? Just tell them that something’s come up and I have to reschedule, terribly sorry, can’t be helped, hello, Mr. Penn. Please, do sit down. Would you like some tea? Coffee? Something stronger? Stacey! Get Mr. Penn something to drink, now!’
‘Don’t worry about that, please, Mr. Leeman.’ A slow, reassuring smile and a pair of twinkling blue eyes behind some wire-framed glasses. The man looks a bit scruffy for a literary agent, that’s true; his hair is a bit longer than Mr. Leeman usually approved of and his complexion is a bit more rugged than that of the dozens or so publishing agents he had seen to date. But all that is disregarded and forgotten completely when the man continues in that same southern drawl: ‘I’m here to talk about your book and to ask you: do you have any plans for a sequel yet?’
---
Mr. Leeman did not have any plans for a sequel yet. Which was great, because it meant that Eliot/Leopold Penn could really drag this meeting out: discussing the ‘first draft’ so far, heaping praise on to the plot (‘I’ve never seen such twists and turns in my life. The way Fitz rescues his secretary Helma from those thugs? I cried. Real ters man, I’m tellin’ ya), the characters (‘Just how did you come up with the character of Fitzpatrick, man. He’s… he’s a dream guy. That’s what he is), and the prose (Scintillating dialogue, honestly. Sparkling. Just. Sizzling on the page right there) until the haples Mr. Leeman was so thoroughly flustered that he could barely utter more than two words at once, both of those words being ‘Mr.Penn.’ When Eliot finally left his office again, shaking his head and swallowing a satisfied snigger, it had long gone dark and Hardison and Parker were waiting for him outside with Pippa Pig’s safety test results. The real test results.
---
A week later, the news breaks that Oink Oink Inc. CEO Liam Leeman has been arrested on counts of fraud, embezzlemend, racketeering and money laundering. Quite the catch for the FBI, as special agent McSweeten is only too happy to tell his drinking buddy, Agent Hagen, when he meets her at the bar later that night.
‘It was the strangest thing,’ McSweeten says. ‘We got an invite to a private reading of this man’s debut novel. An hour later, we received a tip that that reading it might be of particular interest to us. And so me and my partner, we weren’t sure what to make of it but we had nothing better to do, so we went ahead. Figured it couldn’t hurt, at least and you know. Perhaps we’d get some literary scoop or something.’
‘That sounds weird,’ Agent Hagen says, sipping her mocktail. ‘But what happened next?’
McSweeten pauses. Lifts his glass, puts it down again and grins. ‘He just… I don’t think he was reading his novel, because I don’t think his novel is about safety reports. Or how to move money you’re your company around, or how to set up multiple shell companies in the Cayman Islands.’
Agent Hagen’s eyes go wide. ‘He just told you? Like that?’
‘I don’t think he planned to,’ McSweeten says. ‘I think someone tricked him. Or something. Or made a mistake and gave him the wrong papers to read. But it still counts as a confession, so we took him in, along with pretty much everything we could find on his company’s servers. And…’ he whistled. ‘Ho boy. Turned out Mr. Leeman has been very, very naughty.’
Agent Hagen nods sagely. ‘It’s a good thing you caught him, then.’
McSweeten smiles and raises his glass before finally taking a sip. ‘Cheers to that.’
Het is iets korter door de bocht dan ik van tevoren gepland had, maar toch ben ik er best blij mee 
(En nee, dit is niet het hele verhaal. Mocht je dat willen lezen, en het niet erg vinden dat het fanfic is voor een show die niemand kent, pb me dan even 
)
Geplaatst: 08-04-19 18:24 
