“I have no such recollection Jeffrey. What are you talking about?”

“The night that I asked you to help me out really was to get me out of a bind Maxine, but you went into it with your eyes wide open. You knew what we were doing could backfire but you wanted to put Phillips out of business as much as I did.”

“Jeffrey my memory of that evening is that you had an appointment conflict and asked me to step in to interpret for some Chinese clients at a cocktail party with a business partner. You never revealed who the business partner was. I was going through a divorce and child custody battle with my husband. I was distraught and thought the distraction would do me good so I agreed.”

“That’s all true Maxine, except you knew that the party was at Phillips’ house. I was closing another deal and couldn’t be in two places at once. The Chinese clients were only in town for a couple of days so Phillips’ didn’t want to reschedule. Caroline didn’t know I was doing business with Phillips so I couldn’t ask one of our associates to attend on my behalf and besides that our Chinese speaker was out of the country on another deal.

I was stuck Maxine. I needed someone there to represent JMC but more importantly it was legitimate business that would have passed Caroline’s scrutiny provided Phillips stayed in the background. I was trying to get from under him and this deal was the beginning. When I told Phillips I couldn’t make it and that I didn’t have an interpreter available he suggested that maybe you could help out. When I asked him why you of all people he said that he knew you were fluent in Chinese and he knew your reputation for having many successes in the Asian market. When he mentioned your name it appeared out of the blue but then it made sense. Maxine you were well qualified and I knew that you wouldn’t want to see our business fail.”

“That might be true Jeffrey but you had to also know that I would never involve myself in anything underhanded, and certainly not anything to do with Phillips.”

“That’s exactly why I approached you Maxine. I told you everything that was going on. I promised you that I would come clean to Caroline if you’d just do me this one favor. I didn’t want to lose the clients in the deal when we could have found other investors. We even talked about maybe presenting it to Melvin’s firm as a peace offering to maybe soften his stance on the child custody.”