You’re a shareholder, my inner voice reminded me. Aren’t you?
* * *
“Now what?” H. B. Sutton asked.
“Your telephone manner leaves much to be desired, you know that, H?” I said.
“I have caller ID. I know who’s on the line.”
“So, it’s just me?”
“What do you want, McKenzie?”
“There’s a shareholders’ meeting being held at the KTech building this afternoon. I’m thinking of going.”
“Good for you,” H. B. said. “I’d be interested in hearing what the powers that be have to say myself. Will you tell me?”
“Sure, but I’ll probably need a pass or something to get in, right?”
“Haven’t you ever been to a shareholders’ meeting before?”
“No.”
“Please tell me you at least vote your proxies.”
“Umm…”
“God help me,” H. B. said. “All right, all right, no problem. What you need to do—I’m sure they’ll have people sitting at tables outside the venue. Just walk up to one of them and tell them who you are. You’ll probably need an ID. They’ll search their lists, find your name, and give you a pass.”
“Can I use your name?”
“No. Why would you even ask that?”
“I’m afraid they might not let me in.”
“Why not? McKenzie, what have you done?”
“It’s possible that I might have annoyed the King family.”
“How did you do that? Don’t tell me. The thing is, the King family doesn’t actually own KTech. The shareholders do. ’Course, they are the majority shareholders … Anyway, all shareholders have the right to attend the meetings. Berkshire Hathaway, the company owned by Warren Buffett? You don’t even need to own a share to get into their meetings. All you need is a pass and passes—shareholders who possess at least one share of Class A and Class B stocks can request as many as four meeting passes. A lot of them will then turn around and put the passes up for auction on eBay and other places. That’s how you get forty thousand people from around the planet traveling to Omaha, Nebraska, every May to hear Buffett speak. The event has become known as Woodstock for capitalists, I’m not exaggerating.”
“Have you ever gone?”
“Oh, yeah. Sitting in the shadow of the Oracle of Omaha—so very, very cool.”
“And people say that you don’t know how to have fun.”
One of the things about H. B. Sutton, you can actually hear her smirk over the phone.
“McKenzie,” she said, “in many cases, especially with limited liability companies, the bylaws can stipulate that attendance to meetings depends on holding a minimum number of shares. In KTech’s case—hang on…”
I hung on.
“Still there?” H. B. didn’t give me time to answer before she started reading. “The right to attend a general shareholders’ meeting shall accrue to the holders of at least three hundred shares, provided that such shares are registered in their name in the corresponding book-entry registry five days in advance of the date on which the general shareholders’ meeting is to be held and provided also that they present evidence thereof with the appropriate attendance card or share certificate issued by any of the entities participating in the institution that manages such book-entry registry, or directly by the company itself, or in any other manner permitted under law.”
“Wow,” I said.
“That’s in the KTech bylaws. My point—you have eighteen hundred shares. Legally, they can’t turn you away.”
“How much is that worth, by the way? My shares?”
“At the current price, which has gone up by the way, ah…”
“I thought the stock was going down because of the uncertainty surrounding Charles King,” I said. “Why would it be going up all of a sudden?”
“Because someone is buying it? Here it is—$155.74 a share. Do the math—just a sec—that’s two hundred and eighty thousand, three hundred thirty-eight dollars, and forty cents.
“That’s a lot of money.”
“About four-point-seven percent of your portfolio. Read the goddamn statements.”
“I will, I will, from now on, I promise.”
“Let me know what they say about King Charles, the sooner the better.”
* * *
The meeting was held at the KTech Tower, a ten-story building located just off I-394 near the Ridgedale Shopping Mall. Over four million people lived in the greater Twin Cities area and apparently a large percentage of them seemed to be at the event. I was surprised by the crowd. After all, the meeting had been scheduled during midafternoon, making it as inconvenient as possible for shareholders who had full-time jobs to attend.
The marketing staff of KTech made it clear from the moment I walked through the door that this would not be a typical shareholders’ meeting where directors would be elected, financial records would be reviewed, business practices would be debated, and corporate policy would be evaluated. Instead, it was labeled as “an informal get-together.” They even set up several bars that served free wine and beer and directed a waitstaff to move among the shareholders with trays loaded down with an enticing selection of desserts. The caramel and Chinese five-spice snickerdoodle and hazelnut chocolate mousse were both amazing. Okay, I had two desserts. I owned eighteen hundred shares, so …
Informal or not, the place vibrated with anxious energy. Standing in the reception area outside the auditorium with my fellow shareholders and members of the media, waiting for the doors to open, reminded me of attending the world premiere of a play with Nina and wondering what kind of show we were in for.
I have to admit, the meeting was nothing like I had expected. More about that later. First, I need to speak to some people …
* * *
Shipman thought there should be another page of notes, only there wasn’t. She scrolled up and down the document looking for something, anything that she might have missed and found, “Nothing. What again? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She scrolled some more.
“Is that it, McKenzie?” Shipman asked even though I wasn’t there to answer. “Is that’s all you’ve got? You are so lazy.”
The detective slumped in her chair and stared at the screen of her computer. She studied my last line scrupulously.
“You need to speak to what people?” Shipman said aloud. “Did you speak to them and just didn’t have enough time to transcribe your conversations into your notes before you were shot? Is that what happened?”
Shipman reached for her phone and punched the numbers that connected her with the Forensic Services Unit. Most of its members were covering the shooting on the Green Line. She ended up speaking to the same tech that she had spoken to earlier that day; the one who enjoyed flirting with her.
“Brian, the numbers on McKenzie’s cell phone, I need to know the names of the people he spoke to,” Shipman said.
“Yeah, about that, Detective…”
Shipman glanced at her watch and did the math.
“You’ve had almost six and a half hours since I gave you the phone,” she said.
“Oh, wow. Six and a half hours. That’s a long time.”
“Brian, I know you’re busy. So am I. Hell, we’re always busy. I need those names.”
“All right, I’ll squeeze it in. Speaking of squeezing…”
“Don’t go there, Brian.”
“What a dirty mind you have. I was going to ask about lunch. Again.”
“Tell you what—if those numbers give me what I need to close this lousy case, I’ll let you take me to lunch.”
“Actually, I was hoping you would take me to lunch.”
“Brian, I would like to see the names first thing in the morning, if not sooner.”
“I’ll do my best, Detective.”
“Thank you, Brian.”
* * *
Chopper studied the young African-American man sitting on the edge of his seat, both han
ds on top of the square table in front of him as if he was preparing to leap up and dash out of the bar at the least provocation. Herzog sat close beside him to make sure he didn’t.
“You seem nervous,” Chopper said.
“Herzog says you want to talk to me, how am I supposed to feel?”
“I’m not tryin’ t’ fuck with you, Jamal.”
“You fucked the Red Dragons, killed most of ’em.”
“Did I?”
“You maybe didn’t pull the trigger, but you pointed the gun, fuckin’ machine guns, two of ’em.”
Chopper found himself rubbing his face at the memory. The massacre Jamal was referring to was the result of a brief but bloody war between two rival gangs fighting over the heroin and OxyContin trade in Minnesota and he had nothing to do with it, although he might have nudged it along a bit and later celebrated the outcome. He would have corrected the young man’s assumption but reasoned long ago that possessing a reputation for terrible revenge might have its advantages down the road.
“You a Dragon?” Chopper asked.
“Not anymore.”
“You’re still dealin’ Oxy.”
“Man’s gotta make a livin’.”
Truth was Chopper looked more like a drug dealer than Jamal Brown. So did Herzog. Hell, so did I. For one thing, despite Jamal’s slender frame, he had the appearance of good health, like someone who included plenty of fruits and vegetables in his diet; who was accustomed to running and not just to catch a bus. For another, he dressed like a lawyer working for the ACLU, pleated dress slacks, starched shirt, suit jacket, black-rimmed glasses. But then Jamal catered to a mostly white, upper-middle-class clientele, the soccer moms living in Edina and the investment bankers in Golden Valley, and he needed to look presentable.
For a couple of decades, pharmaceutical companies had been bribing and otherwise convincing doctors and health clinics to overprescribe what they claimed were “nonaddictive pain medicines” but what were really the exact opposite. Perfectly legal drugs like Vicodin, OxyContin, Percocet, and others hooked over two million Americans on opioids; one hundred and thirty of them overdosed and died every day. A member of the Centers for Disease Control claimed that Big Pharma had addicted an entire generation.
After about a half million deaths, the government finally caught on and began monitoring the behavior of doctors and health clinics that prescribed opioids; regulations and insurance policies were established. As a result, the prescription market began to contract. Many in the white community were suddenly cut off from their supply—the vast majority of opioid addicts were white for the simple reason that they had greater access to traditional health care—and they had to seek their fix elsewhere.
Enter Jamal, who was happy to meet their growing needs at a cost of about five dollars for a single Vicodin that usually went for a buck twenty-five or fifteen dollars for a fifteen mg tablet of OxyContin with a retail price of six-fifty. ’Course no one ever bought just one pill. Usually it was in lots of one hundred or more.
While these prices were certainly steeper than they—or their insurance companies—had paid when they received their pharmaceuticals legally from the medical clinic or the corner pharmacy, Jamal’s customers were content knowing that they weren’t stooping so low as to buy fentanyl or, shudder, heroin, the opioids of choice in the poorer quarters, from some back-alley drug dealer working the North Side of Minneapolis. Oh, no. They were acquiring perfectly legal prescription drugs purchased from a polite, young, well-dressed African-American who would drop them off at their homes or offices or the coffeehouse near the mall when it was convenient and then tell them all to have a nice day.
“What you care if I’m slinging?” Jamal asked.
“I don’t,” Chopper said. “Was a time I’d probably be workin’ the trade with you. I just want some information and then I’m outta your life.”
“What kind of information?”
“I heard you’ve been buyin’ your shit at RT’s Basement off of Rice Street.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Nah, uh-uh. That’s just where I pick it up. Used to be I’d get it in the mail. FedEx, man. UPS. Now, my supplier, I don’t know if he thinks RT’s is safer or more convenient.”
“So, what do you do?” Chopper asked. “Knock on the back door, give a man your money, he gives you your product and you walk away?”
“That’s exactly what I do.”
“What man?”
“Who’s ever workin’ the door. I don’t ask no questions, ask no names. If the order is correct, and it always is, that’s all I care about.”
“Who’s your supplier?”
Jamal refused to answer.
“Who’s your supplier?” Chopper repeated.
“You gonna put a gun to my head, convince me you’ll squeeze the trigger if I don’t tell you?”
“That can be arranged,” Herzog said.
Jamal stared at him as if he could picture the scenario unfolding.
“Fuck, man,” he said. “C’mon.”
“Is it RT?” Chopper asked.
“No. Like I said, his place is just the drop.”
“Does your supplier hang there?”
“The fuck I know? Lookit, I don’t know where the Oxy comes from. I met a man while back, he hooks me up. Probably he’s a middleman just like me. Haven’t even seen him in months. I call him on a burner, place my order, he lists a price, and I do what I say I do—knock on the door, pay the price, and get my goods. Simple.”
“RT’s Basement,” Chopper said. “Is it just the distribution center or do the users hang out there? Maybe there’s someone sellin’ shit table to table.”
That would explain the unexpected number of white customers frequenting an African-American bar, he thought.
“Couldn’t say,” Jamal answered. “I’ve never been inside, not even for a taste. I don’t linger, man. I get my supply, I get out. It’s a job, not a life. ’Kay? This is not my long-term career goal, dealin’. Once I’m outta college and clear of my student loans, I’m goin’ basic.”
“Yeah,” Chopper said “I reached the same conclusion you did only I got there late. Way late.” He rolled his chair back and forth a couple of inches to emphasize his point. “It’s hard to give up ballin’.”
“Not me, man. I’m gonna be fuckin’ Bill Gates.”
“How you gonna do that?” Herzog asked.
“Stock market, man.”
“Gates be rich because he built something that never existed before.”
“No. Bill Gates be rich because he owned stock in the company that built something that ain’t never existed before.”
“His company.”
“My point, it’s the stock that matters.”
“You looking for another Microsoft to buy into?”
“Not the only way it works. Another way you go to a broker and borrow shares of a company. You sell the shares. You wait for the stock to go down. You buy back the shares at the lower price. Then you return the shares to the brokerage firm you borrowed them from, pay your interest, and pocket the difference.”
“Selling shorts,” Chopper said. “Dangerous when the stock don’t do what you want.”
“Huge rewards when it does.”
“How would you manage that, a black man in America not even got a college degree yet?” Herzog asked.
“I’m makin’ connections.”
That caused Chopper to raise an eyebrow.
“The investment bankers you sell to?” he asked.
“And others. Them rich soccer moms, sometimes they need more than their prescriptions filled, you know.”
“I know.”
“Not just a good fucking, either. Sometimes, they’re looking for a friend.”
“You that friend?” Herzog said.
“I’m a businessman. I’ll be whatever my customers need. Whatever gets me where I want to go.”
“I predict that you’ll go far, Jamal,” Chopper sa
id.
Jamal was excused, but only after Chopper admonished him to keep their conversation private.
“I promise,” Jamal said before leaving in a hurry.
“You believe what he say?” Herzog asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“So, whaddya think?”
“I think a white man in a nice jacket walks into a black man’s bar where Oxy’s on the menu, the clientele thinking he’s there to fuck with ’em, anything can happen.”
“Could’ve gone down that way, ’cept it don’t explain what McKenzie was doing there in the first place. Can’t see ’im chasin’ the opioid trade. Just not somethin’ he’d do.”
“You know, McKenzie. One thing always leads to another.”
“What we gonna do?”
Chopper looked at his watch.
“What say we run down to On’s Kitchen on University and get some Thai and then later see what’s happenin’ over to RTs Basement?”
* * *
Deese rapped on his sister’s front door and opened it at the same time, something that was not uncommon in the Deese family. He called her name, “T,” stepped into the foyer, and shut the door behind him. T was standing in the living room. She was dressed for her job as a marketing analyst for a cosmetics firm located in Blaine—black jacket, black skirt, black hose, black pumps, and red shirt—and Deese decided, my sister is a pretty woman, something he hadn’t really thought about until that moment, go figure.
“You’re early,” T said.
Deese shrugged in reply.
T pressed her closed fists against her hips.
“Well, David, what do you have to say for yourself?” she asked.
Deese’s mouth was so dry that he couldn’t speak even if he had wanted to. He told me later that all he could think of at the time was the T never called him David unless she was pissed off.
What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel Page 15