Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

The old woman, Clara, brought Walter a cup of beef bouillon. Walter liked the clear, hot broth after dinner. It complemented the sweet cool in the evening air. He’d tossed a creased and crumpled bit of paper onto the marble table. The names on the paper were smudged beyond recognition because he’d handled the thing like worry beads: Nathan Stein, Tom Maloney, Wesley Pitts, Louise Hollingsworth, Christopher Hopman, Billy MacNeal, Pat Grath, Wayne Korman, Floyd Ochs.

As Tom told it the day he and his gang were here, he and Stein developed a plan for Christopher Hopman’s Boston-based company, Alliance Inc., to buy a sizable block of stock in another Stein, Gelb client company, Second Houston, which was owned by Billy MacNeal.

Second Houston would go public as an IPO. “So,” as Maloney put it, “when the dust settled, Second Houston would be publicly traded and Alliance would be the controlling shareholder.”

This was a billion dollar deal. “That’s ‘billion’ with a b.” Maloney had arched an eyebrow then. Almost a fourth of that was to go into Billy MacNeal’s pocket.

Hopman’s stock options in both companies would net him more than a hundred million dollars. Shareholders would come out ahead because Second Houston and Alliance would certainly soar on the news generated by favorable analysts’ reports, and moves by some of the larger mutual funds.

“Wesley Pitts did a helluva job on the project,” Maloney said, nodding toward Pitts, whose round face suddenly hardened into a genuine smile. “And Louise Hollingsworth is the Senior Analyst. Her reports and the publicity they received were essential to the success of this effort.”

Maloney added that Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills received sizable fees for facilitating this complicated transaction. “In all candor,” he said, looking Walter pointedly in the eye, “this deal meant a lot to us.”

“How much is ‘sizable’?” Walter had asked.

“Our fees and other compensation-warrants, options, and so forth-were absolutely in keeping with industry standards for a deal of this magnitude.”

Walter pressed: “How much?”

“All told, fees plus projected gains, in the midrange nine figures.” Maloney hung his head just a little. His voice went sorrowful. “It was a honey of a deal until the shit hit the fan.” That’s how he’d put it hours ago, sitting right over there, across from Walter.

Walter picked up the list of names again, spun them around in his head, put them in order. Wayne Korman, first. He went to Floyd Ochs when he learned the processing line was dirty. He thought the meat might be dangerous and did the right thing. If he wanted to make a living he had to go back to work. Wife and kids. Car note. Mortgage. Visa bill each month. Ochs sent him back to work. He went.

Floyd Ochs next. He reported the problem to Pat Grath in Houston. Could he have done more? Halted production on his own? He didn’t. Cost him his life?

Pat Grath told Billy MacNeal. The two weren’t partners, Maloney said, but Grath was close to Billy. Everything he had, reportedly a lot, he got through MacNeal. He was not in charge so he went to Billy. What more could he do? Maybe that’s why he’s still alive.

That’s when Maloney and Stein got into the act. Pat Grath and Billy MacNeal took it to Wesley Pitts. Fair enough. Hundreds of millions of dollars of Second Houston IPO money came through Wesley Pitts. That’s why the guys in Houston went to him and not his bosses. Follow the money. It’s always the money. Deep Throat was a deep thinker.

So, Pitts goes to Maloney, Senior VP, Director of Mergers amp; Acquisitions. He brings Christopher Hopman into the picture. That’s what Hopman does: merges and acquires.

As far as Christopher Hopman’s concerned, Stein laid out the plan for Alliance and Second Houston to follow-before the bottom fell out and people started dying. Stein and Maloney tell Hollingsworth to crank up the hype machine, manage the lie, put everyone off the smell of the thing.

Hopman goes first, then MacNeal, and now Ochs. And Grath no doubt pissing his pants, hiding behind a tumbleweed in Amarillo or somewhere. Three down. Six to go? Among them Stein, Pitts, Hollings-worth, Maloney? And then there’s Ganga Roy. Dead two years by suicide. Really? She was the one he couldn’t get out of his mind. According to Maloney she’d told them E. coli would make people sick, but nobody would die.

According to Maloney.

And if she really killed herself, why?

And why all this shooting now, two years after it was over?

Where’s this guy been? Six out of ten still walking the earth. Why them? Who’s next? And who the hell was he looking for? Walter knew where he had to start. He went inside and booked the morning flight, first class, from St. Thomas to New York.

New York

After reading the Times for an hour each morning, Isobel Gitlin accessed the online editions of nearly fifty newspapers nationwide. She looked for flares of human interest, compelling hometown eulogies (the late mayor once jailed for smuggling parrots, the plumber who croaked fitting brass at ninety-six); little, sparkling, readable bits headed nowhere but for Isobel’s keen, unquenchable eye. Amid the endless obits crossing her screen, Isobel noticed other things. Now, on the page beside the obits in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, she glimpsed five lines on the death of Floyd Ochs. When “Knowland amp; Sons” bounced up from the screen, she called Laticia Glover, the reporter at the Memphis paper.

Twenty minutes later she was storming the office of Ed Macmillan’s boss, a man known mostly by his nickname, the Moose. She said, “I’ve got a triple connection on three murders, two of them very high profile. My information indicates a single killer for all three deaths. And I’ve got them all connected to the big E. coli meat disaster.” He nodded his head to confirm the seemingly impossible. Then she injected a bold, ironic note: “It practically wiped out the South?”

“Yeah, I heard about it,” he said.

“Nobody has this story yet.” The last part seemed to get his attention.

Waiting for a reply, Isobel noted with pleasure that she’d not strangled a single sound.

Mel Gold was twice her age, and, as everybody agreed, closely resembled a moose. His thick gray hair fell forward exactly as a moose’s might. His pendulous chins obscured a brown necktie resting at half-mast on his mountainous paunch. A disconcerting forward thrust lent vigor to his tan, wrinkled, endlessly bumpy face. Gold was rumored to be ill-tempered and grim. She’d avoided him until now. “Close the door and sit down,” he said, in the street-tough rumbling voice that, in fact, sounded like that of a moose. “Exactly what the fuck do you think you have?”

Having done its heroic best when she needed it most, her stutter returned with moderate force. Gold, unlike others, did not seem to notice. She supposed he’d interviewed too many toothless people, and some, no doubt, without very much of their faces left in place.

Pacing herself, Isobel outlined the history: MacNeal’s sale of Knowland to Hopman’s gang, and the link created between those two and the great E. coli disaster. Then, hard on those killings, the Ochs affair and all that she’d learned from the Memphis reporter of Ochs’s connection to Knowland amp; Sons, and the subsequent talk about who was asleep at the packing plant switch at the time, and all of them-Ochs, Billy Mac, and Hopman-blasted to bits out of nowhere, all gunned down and hooked up by corporate ties, all circling around a single, deadly drain. “If this is a supermarket story I’ll be the first to s-s-say so,” Isobel ended, eloquently she thought. “There are no news people on this, are there?” His silence told her all she needed to know.