by Jeff Buick
Scared.
Scared of being the one left without a chair when the music stopped.
11
Mike Anderson stared at the dark liquid in the glass, thinking of how vile it was. Worse than vile, perhaps. Who had thought of distilling wheat or rye into bourbon? It was like Newton and the apple. If an apple had fallen on his own head, he’d have sworn and chucked it away. Newton formulated gravity. And someone had looked at a sack of grain and wondered what would happen if they distilled it. Jack Daniel’s was the answer.
Mike wrapped his hand around the glass and pounded it back, the bourbon hot on his throat. The burn felt good, and some part of him thanked the heartless bastard who had come up with the concept of alcohol. Two drinks from now he’d hate them. He waved at the bartender for another round.
He pulled the bank draft out of his pocket and stared at the amount. Over five hundred thousand dollars. Leona’s fundraiser at her restaurant had gone well. On the heels of the evening’s success, he was now looking at another trip to Africa. Back through the nightmare that was customs and immigration, Kenya style. He was getting quite good at talking his way through the airport checkpoints, and every now and then recognized one of the guards. That made things easier. They tended to remember the travelers who tipped them well, and documents were never scrutinized quite as closely. But the trips were dangerous. Always.
The bartender dropped the drink on the wood, caught his eye and tilted his head slightly. “The woman at the end of the bar asked that this one be put on her tab. You okay with that?”
Anderson didn’t have to look. He’d already made eye contact with her a couple of times. She was about his age, reasonably attractive and thin. He liked thin. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
He toyed with the glass without looking over at her. A vision of his wife’s face—his ex-wife’s face, he told himself—flashed though his mind. Women and booze. Two of life’s most challenging obstacles. He pulled his cell phone from its hip holster and dialed Leona’s home number. She answered after a few rings.
“I got your e-mail with the electronic ticket,” he said. “Looks like I’m leaving on Friday.”
“That work for you?” Leona asked.
“Yeah. It’s okay. You know me, a couple of days to pack and stop the newspaper delivery and I’m fine.”
“Return ticket is for August fourteenth. That should give you some time with Kubala.” One reason Mike liked taking the money to Kenya was getting an opportunity to visit the villages in and around Samburu. She always booked his stays for at least two weeks longer than what he needed to deliver the money.
“Thanks,” he said. There was a moment of silence over the line, then he added, “I’ve got a feeling about this one.”
“What sort of feeling?” she asked.
“Not good. Like something is going to happen.”
“Women have intuition. If men had it they’d all be at the racetrack. God does things for a reason.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s nothing. Just a feeling.”
“Well, be careful. Kenya can be dangerous.”
“Really?”
“Anything else you need?” She ignored the sarcasm. “Money?”
“No, I’m fine. I’ve got cash. I’ll expense whatever I spend. Which is almost zero once I reach Marsabit.”
“Thanks, Mike. This wouldn’t work without you.”
“Then why don’t you pay me better?”
She laughed. “It’s a nonprofit. Nobody gets rich working for a charity.”
“I’ll talk to you when I get back.”
“Take care.”
“Of course.” He killed the connection and raised the glass to his lips. He sipped the JD, enjoying the slow burn as it trickled down his throat. He turned to face the woman at the end of the bar and smiled. She smiled back. He slid off the seat and walked the twenty feet to where she sat. A month in Africa was a long time to be away from American women.
A very long time.
12
Brilliance of the Seas departed Miami on Thursday, July 12 at seven in the evening. Scheduled ports on the twelve-day cruise were St. Lucia, St. Martin, Grenada, Barbados, Martinique and St. Vincent. Reginald Morgan and his wife, Amelia, watched from their balcony as the Florida coast slowly diminished to the west. Reginald Morgan was frugal in some ways, but not when booking a cabin on a cruise ship. They were comfortably ensconsed in an owner’s suite on deck ten, complete with a queen bed, an overstuffed sofa, two upholstered chairs and a bar area.
“I’m going to get some fruit,” Amelia said, kissing her husband on the forehead. “Do you want anything?”
“No, thank you,” he said. He watched her walk through the cabin, amazed at her poise and grace. She was four years older than him, yet still in fine health with a sharp mind. They were fortunate, in a world where Alzheimer’s was so common, to both be so healthy, physically and mentally. He looked back to the ocean, the coastline now a wavering glow of light in the thickening dusk.
The future of his company was foremost on his mind. Even the ambience of the cruise ship wasn’t enough to shake the office from his thoughts. Derek Swanson was a problem, had been for some time now. His president’s vision of where Coal-Balt should go was very different from his. He had been pushing for some time now for scrubbers and other environmentally friendly upgrades to the plant, but Swanson had concentrated on the bottom line, always focusing on profits over everything else.
It was time for it to end. Time for Swanson to leave.
The man wouldn’t go willingly, and that was going to pose a problem. It was difficult to fire a top executive without giving them a huge severance bonus. And that was not going to happen. Swanson didn’t deserve to collect millions as he got his ass booted out the door. It was going to get ugly.
Morgan picked up a book, a suspense thriller by a new Canadian author, and settled into the chair. Time to relax. The office would still be there when he returned.
Darvin sipped his rum and coke and watched the steady parade of passengers making their way to dinner. It was the first night on the ship and dress was business casual. He scanned the faces, seeing everything from trepidation to total relaxation. Rich people attempting to look average. Average people attempting to look rich. Studying people was his favorite pastime. It was the essence of his business. If you were going to kill someone, you needed to know them. Their habits, their weaknesses, their routine. Then the minute or two it took to kill them was so much easier.
There was a downside to watching strangers. He hated the happy ones, especially the spoiled kids who wanted for nothing and their doting parents who kept trying to give them more. A pregnant woman walked toward him and his stomach churned at the sight. Even from the moment of conception, the helpless child growing in the womb, women had the ultimate control. Simply by having a vagina they were empowered to destroy lives. His mind raced with hateful thoughts. She’s so small. Even the small ones can make life a living hell. Especially the small ones. His mother was small. But evil. Horribly evil. How can that much evil be packed into such a tiny package? She noticed him staring at her belly and smiled as she passed. He simply returned her smile, his thoughts locked behind the façade and unknown to anyone but him.
He spotted Reginald and Amelia Morgan as they strolled through the lounge toward the restaurant. A quick gulp and the last of his drink disappeared. He stood and stretched slightly, then melded into the crowd, his pace slightly slower than the rest. As Morgan passed him on his right side, he turned and they touched. His hand slipped into the elderly man’s jacket and pulled out a handkerchief. In the same motion he let it fall to the floor. He tapped Morgan on the shoulder and bent over. When he looked up, Morgan and his wife had stopped and were looking back.
“I think this fell out of your pocket.” He stood and offered the monogrammed piece of cloth.
Reginald felt his pocket. “Yes, thank you.”
“Not a problem.” Darvin locked eyes with the man. “
Enjoy your dinner.”
“Thanks again.”
Darvin let them go ahead, then fell in behind them. Cruise ships were wonderful places for people in his business. He knew exactly where his victim was for the next twelve days, and over the next week, he would occasionally run into the Morgans, striking up short, useless conversations. Building trust. They would remember him, but only vaguely. Not enough to generate suspicion.
And then one day, near the end of the cruise, Reginald Morgan would disappear. No clues. Nothing to suggest anything but a tragic accident at sea.
Darvin entered the Minstrel Dining Room and gave the maitre d’ his table number. He was hungry and cruise ships always had great food. So different from the world of his youth, when he wasn’t sure which was worse: the hunger pangs or the slop his mother served for dinner. Some of the tables were already full and the first course was served. Well-dressed men and women tucking prawns and crisp salads into their puckered lips. They had never known the horrors, the hunger, that he had. They probably never would. He despised them for that, and if he had his way, the body count on this cruise would be far greater than one.
He pushed the thoughts from his mind and followed the maitre d’ past the cascading waterfall to his table, wishing that all of his jobs could be this civilized.
13
Claire set her reading glasses on her desk and leaned back in her chair. Surrounding her were the trappings of power, DC style. The furniture was heavy oak, as were the window and door frames. The patterned carpet was firm underfoot and pictures of past presidents and other influential political figures graced the light brown walls. The only personal touches in the room were the pictures of Claire Buxton’s family. She gave the doorway a perfunctory look as a young man entered.
“I think we’ll get through committee.” His name was Bradley Smythe and he was fresh out of Princeton, spending the summer as a senior intern for Senator Claire Buxton.
“You sound confident. What do you know that I don’t?”
He held up a couple of sheets of paper. “These just arrived. Your brief on Section 406 of the Clear Skies Act has swayed Senators Watson and Grieve into siding with you. They came around once they saw the holes in the existing legislation. I think the part about Amanda Chisholm probably did the trick.”
Arnold Watson was a sitting Republican representing Nebraska and the chairman of the committee responsible for hearing Claire Buxton’s bill and deciding whether it held merit and should be sent ahead to the floor of the full house. Ralph Grieve, of Illinois, was the ranking member from the Democrats. Both men were pivotal to the success of her bill.
“And they responded well to terminating the twenty percent rule,” Bradley added, handing her the letters.
“Finally,” Claire said, her voice tinged with acid. “Allowing the older plants to keep producing unless they renovated their facilities, at which time they had to install new antiemis-sion equipment, looked good on paper. But if their renovations were less than twenty percent of the value of the plant they didn’t have to spend any money on scrubbers. And the scrubbers are crucial to substantially reducing the carbon dioxide and sulfur pouring out of their smoke stacks.”
“There have been a lot of eighteen-and nineteen-percent renovations since that legislation passed,” Bradley said.
Claire shook her head. “And those older, outdated plants are producing fifty percent of the country’s power. It’s ridiculous.”
“Well, Watson and Grieve are both looking at your take on Section 406 and the twenty percent rule a lot closer now.”
“They’ve been there from day one.” Claire shook her head. She scanned the letters from the two senators and nodded. “My latest brief is nothing new, with the exception of mentioning Amanda. Section 406 replaced a one-time automatic penalty with a graduated one for plants with ex cess emissions. It’s not rocket science. Under the old Acid Rain Program the bad guys were immediately accountable. Section 406 allowed them to burn dirty coal in plants with outdated technology for a longer period of time with smaller fines. So much for progress.”
Bradley nodded. “It’s the human touch that Amanda added. I’m sure you’ve got them.”
“It would appear,” she said, glancing again at the letters, short and to the point. They agreed with her bill, which modified the existing Clear Skies Act and shortened the time period for delinquent companies to clean up their acts. “Set up lunches with both of them. One at a time. Try for Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Pick somewhere quiet, close to here. Capital Grille is probably best. I want their attention over lunch, and a quick good-bye afterward.”
“Done.” Bradley spun on his heel and headed through the door into the anteroom.
Claire grinned at his youthful exuberance. She had been like that twenty years ago. Convinced that she could change the world. Now she was in a position to, and realized she couldn’t. It was all too big, too convoluted, too screwed up for one person to fix. Hell, it probably wasn’t even fixable. But one part of it was. The incredible damage the coal-burning plants were doing to the world’s air supply. And the devastation heaped on the surrounding countryside by the mining companies. They had to be held accountable, and her new bill would do exactly that.
She thought of Amanda—of the young life lost—and tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. The girl had never asked to be sick. Her parents hadn’t intentionally lived downstream from a leaking retention pond. No one wanted to see a young girl die, all her life’s ambitions unfulfilled. But in this case, there was a culprit. An easily identifiable one. Even Schumberg, the parent company that ran the Silo Six mine, was admitting they were culpable. Their solution was to throw money at the problem, but that wasn’t going to save Amanda Chisholm from an early grave. It would help ease the Chisholm’s financial burdens, but could never hope to compensate for the loss of their daughter. And the frustrating thing was, it never had to happen.
Under Clinton, the economy had grown and prospered. Environmental groups were encouraged to provide solutions to the nation’s problems. The pendulum was swinging in the right direction. But when George W. Bush took power, everything changed. America went to war, a conflict that cost billions of dollars and widened the gap between Republicans and Democrats. The environment faded as the country’s debt increased, to the point where no one wanted to talk about it. They had other things to worry about. Like keeping their jobs and their houses. Worrying about emissions from coal-burning plants was yesterday’s problem. Even if those emissions were causing global warming and melting glaciers.
Bradley stuck his head in the door. “Watson is confirmed on Tuesday, July seventeenth and Grieve on the eighteenth. They’re both anxious to meet with you.”
She entered the dates in her BlackBerry and thanked her intern. Everything was coming together. With the senators from Illinois and Nebraska behind her, the bill should easily pass through committee. Then on to the floor of the full house, to the Oval Office for a signature, and it would be law.
Then maybe children like Amanda Chisholm would stop dying.
14
Leona stopped by the restaurant on her way home from work. Tyler had been working on a new recipe for halibut in preserved lemon beurre blanc sauce and insisted she stick around for dinner. He overran her objections with a vivid description of his newest creation, and she finally gave in and found a small table in the back corner, away from the street. She pulled a handful of loose pages from her briefcase and settled in, alternating between people-watching and perusing the initial notes her team had prepared.
They still had two weeks before their final reports were due, but one thing was already painfully clear. Coal-Balt was not the golden boy on the block when it came to their environmental track record. Their coal mine near Valley Furnace, West Virginia, was a major contributor to the state’s pollution index. The retention pond, filled with over four hundred million gallons of slurry, was a disaster looking for a home. And their labor practices were abhorrent. Five o
f the labor unions that placed workers in the mine had outstanding grievances with the company. Serious ones, mostly centering on safety. Or the lack of it.
And Lombard II, their power-generating plant, forty miles to the south, made the mining operation look like a Boy Scout troop. The plant had been constructed prior to 1970, which meant it was exempt from emission controls unless it was renovated. But the government’s idea of renovating was anything in excess of twenty percent of the current value of the plant. Coal-Balt had undergone seven renovations since 1970, all less than twenty percent of value. And no emission-reducing equipment had been installed.
Leona spied Tyler on his way with her dinner and cleared a small space on the table. He set the plate down and brandished the pepper mill.
“This is how halibut should be served.” He twisted the top of the mill and lightly dusted the food with pepper.
“Not too spicy, I hope,” she said.
“I know what you like. It’s perfect.”
Leona watched her chef walk back to the kitchen. The man loved food. It excited him. He came alive in the kitchen. Her mind skipped back to the day he had dropped his application in the pile. It was a Saturday and she was sitting at one of the tables near the front of the restaurant going over the final touches with the interior designer. Gin House was slotted to open in a week and she had two major problems. The interior wasn’t finished and the chef she had hired decided to take a job with a competitor. Something about Tyler caught her eye and she excused herself from the meeting and pulled his résumé off the pile and quickly flipped through it. He had experience running a kitchen and had worked in a handful of high-end restaurants. She ran out the front door and called him back.