Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

Tom Maloney’s job as Senior Vice President of Mergers amp; Acquisitions meant he would be the point man for such a deception. He hadn’t reached these lofty heights by being stymied by bad news. He calculated the odds of success in his mind, looked at Nathan, and nodded in agreement. Wesley Pitts watched Tom’s eyes and immediately signaled his support. Only Louise, whose analysis led to the third option in the first place, seemed to hesitate. “Dr. Roy said ‘people will die.’ People will die,” said Louise.

“People die every day, Louise,” Tom said.

“Like this?” she asked.

Wesley Pitts said, “Remember the natural gas deal we had two years ago? They had a labor problem that held the whole thing up for weeks. When they sent me their plan, do you remember what it said?” He was talking directly to Louise and he waited for an answer. He knew she remembered, but he wanted to hear it out loud. Finally, she said, “Yes, I remember.”

“Two million dollars and two lives,” Pitts said. “Two million and two lives.”

“There’s a budget for everything, Louise,” said Nathan.

“I know,” she said, “I know. But what if Dr. Roy’s worst case scenario emerges from this? A lot of people could die. What do we do then?”

“Not going to happen,” Nathan said. “And what about our people? What happens to all the people who depend on this firm? We get hurt. We get hurt bad. What do you say to the guy in our Seattle office who’s got two kids in college? Or the young hotshot in Chicago who just turned down a job at Merrill or Morgan Stanley because he’s confident his future is here, with us, with Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills? We have people all over the country like that. For more than seventy years our people have trusted their management. That’s not going to change on my watch.” Nathan stood and waved his arms around as if the act of doing so enabled him to take the entire company and hold it to his breast. “What about all these people right here in New York, right here in this building, on this floor, outside that door? What do we say to them if, today, we make a decision in this room that brings the kind of results Wes talked about?”

Tom Maloney, much to his surprise, choked up. He hadn’t heard Nathan talk like that in years. He was reminded of how he once admired the man. Wesley Pitts paid no attention at all to what Nathan just said. It seemed he’d heard that kind of crap from dozens of coaches all his life. He did, however, sense the thrill of victory. “The kind of results Wes talked about.” Those were Nathan’s words.

Louise Hollingsworth looked at Nathan Stein. She knew he trusted her, relied on the opinions she offered, and demanded unanimous consent for a move like this. Option three was hers. She felt the pressure to support it like rocks stacked on her chest.

“Okay,” she said. And with that simple, single word, all doubt vanished from her mind. Her energies were already concentrated on success.

“Sell this,” Nathan demanded.

“I’ll call Billy Mac,” Tom said.

“Call Hopman too,” said Nathan.

Billy MacNeal was an OTO: a golden boy among those energetic, innovative Houstonites who owed their wealth to ventures Other Than Oil. As a kid he’d been called by two names: Billy Mac. When he grew up (in his mind becoming a millionaire in his twenties qualified him as a grown up) he decided to add the final note. Thereafter, most folks called him Billy MacNeal-emphasis on the “Mac.”

He was a handsome boy: tall, slim, blonde, Texas to the core. He had an engaging way about him. People just naturally loved Billy Mac. At twenty-three he started a company called First Houston Holding. Using practically no cash, he bought undeveloped land no one else seemed to want. His very first purchase included a commercial parcel that he sold to Wal-Mart forty-eight hours after buying it. That, as he enjoyed telling newly-met admirers, really got him started. In the following months he bought a small fishing fleet in the Gulf, two restaurants in Dallas, and a charter bus company connecting Houston, Oklahoma City, and Phoenix, Arizona. In the following year he bought a record company in New Orleans and five radio stations in Louisiana and Mississippi. He didn’t care what the company did as long as he could buy it cheap, find a way to inflate its numbers, and sell it for twice (more or less) what he paid.

While attending community college he took up with one of his teachers. They fell in love and got married. Billy Mac was twenty-two. She was thirty-one. She left him three and a half years later, taking their baby son and too much of First Houston Holding for Billy’s tastes. That’s when he started Second Houston Holding, which in less than eight years accumulated nineteen businesses, including golf courses in Florida, ski resorts in Colorado, a shipping company in the Philippines, textile producers in Central America, half a dozen television stations in the central plains, and several U.S. food processing concerns. The largest of Billy’s companies, Knowland amp; Sons, operated five meat packing plants in the Midwest and southeast.

It was Tom Maloney’s idea to make Billy MacNeal a billionaire. He and Wesley Pitts worked out the details with Billy Mac and his top man, Pat Grath. It took only ninety days to reach a substantive agreement, and Tom told Billy to expect a successful IPO within six months. They planned to take Second Houston public and structure the deal so that another, larger holding conglomerate, Alliance Inc., would act as the major buyer. Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills Securities would sell Billy MacNeal’s company to Alliance and others for a total of $1.85 billion. Maloney’s meticulous plan allowed for Billy himself to bank four hundred million dollars while retaining a substantial stock position in Alliance Inc. Billy MacNeal’s net worth would then exceed a billion dollars.

Getting married again was Billy Mac’s idea. Carol Ann Cheetham stood five feet ten, with big tits, a small waist, a pretty face, and the longest, reddest hair you’d ever want to see. Her physical gifts pleased Billy almost as much as her gentle, accepting nature. She had not, in the two years they’d been seeing each other, refused him anything. Nor had she been the one to suggest that every billionaire should have a wife. That was entirely his idea. And so, at nineteen, she became his.

The wedding took place at his home just north of Houston, and for months conversations throughout the state focused on how much it cost. Did Willie Nelson really get a half million, or was it more?

There was no honeymoon. Billy Mac was a workaholic, as Carol Ann imagined most thirty-three-year-old billionaires must be. She sensibly considered her entire life a honeymoon, and waited only for Billy, in one of his many special ways, to grace the towering sundae of her good fortune with a fat, sweet cherry.

Aside from her, Billy’s only recreation was diving. Every morning without fail he’d brush his teeth, put on his Speedo, and head for the pool. He’d had it and its three-level diving board apparatus designed and built by the best he could find. The ladder was padded. Most days he’d stand at the midpoint of the second board, twelve feet above the water. He’d breathe as his high-school coach had taught him to not that many years ago: slow and calm to smooth the muscular fibers and settle the jelly in the brain. He’d take three measured steps, bend his right leg at the knee, extend his arms upward, step down, and spring. Once airborne, he’d flip, twist, lay out, and float until he hit the water-long legs straight, feet joined at the ankles, toes curled in. Then he’d swim in one easy stroke to the edge, haul himself out, and do it again and again. His mantra, Pat Grath called it.