Chapter 28

Thursday, January 3, 2002

"I guess I don't quite get it," Carlos Gutierrez said as he rode with Randy in the pickup toward Three Pines not long after dawn on Thursday morning. "I'm not sure why you want me here. I don't know anything about this project."

"You get right down to it, I don't either," Randy told him. "And to top it off, most of the people we're going to be talking to don't know much about it. This Tom Cornplanter guy seems to know what he's talking about, but unless he's the world's fastest architect, it's going to be a race every step of the way to get the plans done, or even part of them, before we have to build something. I can't spend all my time up there this summer, and the superintendent is going to have his hands full just building the damn thing. Your big involvement in this is going to be my eyes and ears up there, just so I can work on other things, too."

"That seems kind of open-ended," Carlos commented.

"It is, mostly because we don't know what wheels have to be greased yet," Randy smiled. "We've gotten along pretty well with these people in the past, mostly because they always want the damn thing done yesterday and we've always come in ahead of schedule. That means we have to be on our feet about foreseeing problems and dealing with them before they slow us down. You may not be able to contribute much to this meeting, but you'll start to get a feel of who you have to work with and what we're going to be up against."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Carlos replied, looking out the pickup's window at the snow-covered landscape.

Randy took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at Carlos. He liked the guy, and was impressed with him. He seemed to know his stuff; it wasn't like he was a guy right out of college with his head filled with book stuff. Book knowledge was what was supposed to happen, as opposed to what really happened in real world construction practices. Carlos had a pretty good background of practical experience to go along with the book knowledge, and had dealt with things like construction delays because of personnel or material shortages. Randy thought that it was worth a lot.

The day before, Randy had taken Carlos around the yard, which was largely quiet and buried in snow, although a couple of the guys from the excavating crew were out there with a loader and a dump truck trying to clear the place out. They'd spent more time in the office, going over some of the projects Clark Construction had done in the past, and plans of what was to come in the future. Brent had come in later in the day, and between him and Randy they put Carlos through a rather wide-ranging interview. Brent had seemed impressed with the guy, and agreed that they ought to make him an offer. Carlos said that it sounded pretty good to him, but wanted to hold off on committing for a little while yet.

Still, Carlos had been quick to agree to come to the series of meetings on the ski resort, especially after Randy told him that he'd be paid for those he attended even if he didn't take the job offer. Actually, Randy had some ulterior motives for bringing the young man along with him. Having Carlos there put another marker on the Clark Construction side of the table, to keep Randy from looking like he was being overwhelmed. It was a good marker, too; though nothing had ever been said about it and Clark Construction had a long history of working at Three Pines, Randy had occasionally felt some resentment that the company management was too white. Carlos, although a fifth-generation American, looked as Mexican as his name sounded, so perhaps his presence would ease that resentment a little. Finally, Randy hoped that getting Carlos a little involved in the project would increase the chances of him accepting the job. Randy wanted him badly, mostly because he was far and away the most qualified person he'd found to fill the position. If nothing else, Carlos represented the best chance for Randy having a summer that included having a life, something he hadn't managed since early college years.

The meeting was held in a large room in the office section of the main casino building, close to Norm's office. There was a bit of introducing around – Randy didn't know everyone himself, as there were a couple people there from Tom Cornplanter's Denver office. While they went through the introductions, Randy realized that his initial observation had been correct – while there were to be some basic decisions made at this meeting, it was also a dog and pony show, with drones brought in, like Carlos, to make everyone look important. He also knew it led to being easy to get stampeded into a decision you couldn't deliver on – and that was just as true for the architects and the tribe as it was for Clark Construction.

After a few formalities, Cornplanter handed out several copies of a packet of preliminary drawings. "We've been working on this for a while," he said. "And while I agree that this is nothing like a blueprint, this is the general idea of the building that we propose." At this point, he put slides of each page up on a computerized projection. The first few drawings were not much more than renderings – they were not very detailed, but looked pretty. There were views of each of the sides of the building, floor plans of the various levels, even a rendering of the main lobby. Randy thought they looked very good, but they didn't actually give him anything to work with.

The presentation went on for a while. It was all very pretty and would be a striking building if built as pictured, but Randy thought this was a pretty ambitious project compared to what had been discussed a few weeks before. Something was going on here that Randy didn't like, and he thought he could put his finger on it, but now was not the time to say it.

The time came very soon. As Cornplanter wound up his presentation, he put Randy on the spot by saying, "All in all, we're of the opinion that this project can be brought in within the tribe's budget of five million dollars. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Clark?"

As Randy got up to speak, he heard Carlos mutter under his breath, "Horseshit." Randy smiled at that. He knew there was a reason he liked this guy, and he'd just proved it.

"Well, Mr. Cornplanter," Randy started. "Given that you've had weeks to work this up and I've only had minutes to study it, I can't support that. My gut feeling is that five million is a very low-ball figure for this project. Again, I haven't had any chance to study this proposal, but just based on the size of the structure, five million is on the low side considering the obvious amount of detail work that would be involved. I really don't see much site development here, and my understanding is that this proposal was to include the development of the ski area and other supporting projects. When we did our site tour a few weeks ago, it was pretty well agreed by everyone concerned that the road into the place was inadequate for a resort of this size. Again, there are no prints or specs yet, but based on work we did last summer, that's going to involve a minimum of a million just for road and parking-lot work, and that's just an off-the-cuff guess. It might be a little less, but probably will be more, considering that as long as we're rebuilding the road we might as well realign some areas to remove some hazards. I can point out several other places where I just don't see the figures adding up. If you want a completely unsupported guess as to the size of the project, I think you're probably looking at twelve million at least in real terms. Again, that figure might be low."

"There are some areas that could come in higher than projected," the architect pointed out. "But I think that you're overlooking a few costs savings as well. For instance, the tribe has offered to provide all the logs for the structure in a construction-ready state."

"Maybe so, but I'm not seeing it," Randy said. "From what I can see, you're counting the cost of that item as zero, but it's still a cost to the tribe and a considerable one. Every log that they truck over to the site for free represents a log that could be sold on the open market for a dollar value. This is a nice-looking building, but there's a lot of logs in it. There are probably a few other discrepancies like that, but as I said, I've only had minutes to study it. I'm certainly not ready to give anyone a firm figure for either cost or construction completion date based on what I see here. I realize that we're trying to do this on the fly, but I don't have enough here to give even an educated guess."

"Mr. Clark," Cornplanter replied in a huff. "Have you ever built a ski resort before?"

"No, I haven't," Randy told him. "I did investigate buying one once, so I have some idea of the hidden costs. Moreover, I've done a lot of building here at Three Pines and my company has done more over many years. To do this building and the supporting construction for the ski resort for five million is all smoke and mirrors. It can't be done. I don't think it can be done if you cut every corner possible to come up with a very substandard result. We believe in quality construction, Mr. Cornplanter. Perhaps it can be done for five million, but it won't be done by Clark Construction. We wouldn't want our name on the result. Now, let's cut the horseshit and talk about real figures, or else my assistant and I can head back to Spearfish Lake and get there in time to get some useful work done today."

Randy could see that Cornplanter was boiling by now; he was about ready to head outside and settle things with fists. If he wanted to, that was fine; Randy hadn't been doing martial arts for years without a purpose. "Mr. Clark," he snorted, "I'll have you know that I don't do what you call 'low-ball' work. I grant you that these are renderings and all the possible costing hasn't been done, but my estimate is that this project can be brought in around that figure. I resent your saying that my people or I are incompetent."

"Let's pack up, Carlos," Randy said. "We're not going to get anything useful done here today."

"Settle down everyone," Norm spoke up. "Randy, could I talk with you in private for a moment? Maybe with your assistant?"

"Sure, Norm," Randy said. "But I'll tell you right now that I'm not going to back down on what I said."

A couple minutes later the three of them were in Norm's office. "Randy," Norm said. "You really got your back up about that. What's got a hair up your butt?"

"Just what I told you out there," Randy told him. "He low-balled you big time. Remember that he gets a percentage of the job and he's trying to sell you on it. I can't prove my suspicions, but there's no way it can be brought in for that figure unless the building is an empty shell. Yeah, you could probably cut a corner or two and do a little funny bookkeeping and bring it in for ten million, but maybe not. On a quick build job like that, there's all too many ways that the plans can't keep up with the building. That means delays, and delays cost money. By the time everything is said and done, you could be looking at fifteen million, just because you let him stampede you."

"Do you think someone else could build that for five million?"

"I have no doubt that if you set that proposal down in front of Solkow-Warner that they'd say they could. They might be willing to take a hit to get their foot in the door on other work up here, but you'd get crappy construction that you'd continually have to be maintaining at extra expense."

"Randy, I don't quite understand you. I thought you liked Tom."

"On a personal level, he was great, especially out at the site a few weeks ago. On a business level, I wouldn't want him doing work for me unless I was maintaining a much higher degree of control than you allow us because of our long history of knowing each others' expectations and capabilities. Now, I could be wrong, and this could just have been an exercise in who talks the talk and who walks the walk. I may be young, Norm, but my father and my grandfather went out of their way to make sure they didn't raise a young fool."

"You realize, Randy, that this could put the whole project in jeopardy?"

"What do you want, a quality project done on time and within a known realistic budget, or a piece of shit with tons of cost overruns? I thought right from the beginning that it was unrealistic to do a project like this and have it open in eleven months. It could be done if the architect was square with you and I had some decent plans to make some estimates on, but doing it on the fly? Based on what I saw today, it'd be three months before I could give you decent numbers and we'd have to already be breaking ground. Frankly, Norm, you'd be better off to stretch this project out over two years. We could get the slopes and lifts and site work done this year, and the main lodge another year. Hell, you could even open the ski area next winter by shuttling people over to the ski area from the casino area. We could throw together a temporary warming shelter and concessions building just to make it a little more customer friendly."