“The numbers are that big?”
“Sure. They probably employ a hundred thousand people, maybe even more, full-time.”
“Worldwide?”
“Christ yes, worldwide. They’ve got bases in a hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty countries. I’d be willing to bet they’re in every country you can name and a hell of a lot you can’t. Over the years they’ve expanded both internally and through major acquisition. They’re sharks. They’ve bought engineering and construction companies, petrochemical processing plants, you name it and they’ve built it, managed it, or devoured it.”
“You said ‘the base of their production attributes.’ What other attributes are there?”
“This is where it gets a little complicated. And it’s where they got greedy, as I said. And my guess is, it’s also the root of their current problem.”
“The government investigation.”
“Investigations, plural. Right.” He glanced at Jonathan Westwood. “Do you agree with that?”
Jonathan nodded, so Roger went back to his dissertation.
“What happened is, about seven, maybe eight years ago, they were huge and successful. Particularly after they bought LecTro. And when they bought it, that company was a money machine. The energy business was being deregulated-the rate of returns, the caps-so cash was just flowing in. They decided to take advantage of that and began trading electricity.”
“Electricity trading? Is this remotely as complicated as NBA salary cap stuff?”
Jonathan Westwood groaned. Roger Mallone just shook his head and said, “Actually, no. It’s a lot simpler. Especially with deregulation. Think of electricity as something physical. A plant somewhere has excess supply and someone somewhere else doesn’t have enough. They need electricity-California power plants, for instance, a few years ago. At first, our guys just sold. No problem. Then they saw the profit margin and began brokering. If they didn’t have enough, they went elsewhere and acted as the agent. For both sides. They negotiated the selling and the buying price.”
“That can’t be legal.”
“Welcome to the twenty-first century and a government that’ll let big business do just about anything they want.” Roger snuck a glance at Jonathan Westwood and added, “Thank God.”
“Keep going,” Justin said.
“Electricity is traded very actively-because it’s unevenly used. So the geniuses over at EGenco decided they didn’t want to just broker. They wanted more. So they decided to buy, not just represent. They brought in a bunch of Masters of the Universe types who looked around and saw what was happening on Wall Street-remember, this is when the economy was at a record high-so they thought they couldn’t lose. And now what they were doing was buying from plants, holding on to the electricity, and then selling what they owned to other plants. The problem was they bought high. Very high. They bought everything at the top, and suddenly, as things began to turn, they were selling all of it at huge losses.”
“How huge?”
“EGenco probably wasn’t going to go under, if that’s what you’re asking. They had too many other assets. But from what I hear-and, again, all this is conjecture-LecTro was a fiasco. If I’m right, we’re talking billions of dollars of losses. If that’s true, I suppose it’s possible it might have sunk the whole thing.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, that’s the question. That’s what’s being investigated.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Look-at a certain level, you get so big, you have so many fixed assets, it’s almost impossible for anyone to know exactly what you’re doing. Again, if the losses are as great as I suspect, my guess is that EGenco management decided to hide a huge amount of debt. In essence, keep the stock high, fool the public and Wall Street, and hope they could keep things hidden until they figured out a way to right the sinking ship.”
“How?”
“How’d they cover up? Again, this is just a guess, but I’d say they’ve been screwing around with retirement funds, IRAs, and pension plans, a lot like Enron did. If that’s true, there are going to be a lot of angry, broke people. It’ll make the Enron thing look like small potatoes. I’ve also been hearing rumors about SPEs gone wild.”
Justin forced himself to think back to his business school days. SPE. . Special Something Something. . Special Purpose. . Entities! That was it. A way for corporations to hide money. They’d create a company within a company, make someone the CEO with signing power, and, like magic, you had a financial structure that could work outside of any corporate rules. That CEO could authorize salaries-including his own-and designate payments for board members. Without anyone else even knowing about it. Big business was a world where rules were something to be bent or broken. Another reason why Justin liked being a cop: you could play around with the rules but ultimately there were limits. Once you exceeded those, you had to pay the price.
“Special Purpose Entities?” Justin said now. “Good way to make sure someone’s taking out a lot of cash if the company’s going down the drain.”
Jonathan spoke up, a touch of relief in his voice. “I’m glad to see that Princeton wasn’t a total waste of time and money.”
“SPEs are a great way to hide a lot of crooked things,” Mallone said. “And to buy a lot of favors, which EGenco has certainly done. I mean, look at their presence in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. They don’t get there unless they’re paying a lot of people a lot of money. It doesn’t just happen that they get no-bid government contracts for billions of bucks to reconstruct an entire country.”
“You said something about lawsuits,” Justin said. “What’s that all about?”
Mallone tapped the suitcase. “You’ll have your reading cut out for you. There are several hundred pages of those babies in here. The two most interesting ones are from STE and New York.”
“Okay, you’ve lost me.”
“STE-Save the Earth. The ecological group. They had the suit that the Supreme Court just rejected.”
“Oh, right. About the energy policy, right?”
“About the meeting that set the energy policy. It got a ton of publicity and it’s all in the suitcase.”
“What’d you mean about New York being the other interesting suit?”
“I’m not a legal expert. You’re better off reading the filings. I also downloaded a bunch of articles off the Net that’ll help give everything some perspective. The thing you have to understand is that this country’s so politically divided, it’s hard to know what’s valid or not. I mean, half the people hate our vice president so much, they’ll do anything to harass him. And the other half will do anything to validate his actions. I can’t say if these suits are valid or if they’re politically motivated.”
“When was Dandridge involved with EGenco?”
“Involved? He was more than involved, Jay. He was their CEO from. . ohhh. . I’d say for about eight years, right up until he ran for VP. When he got the nomination, he resigned.”
“And ended his connection?”
“Hardly. I can’t tell you how much stock he still owns, but I guarantee it’s a hell of a lot.”
“It’s all in a blind trust,” Jonathan Westwood added. “Common practice for elected officials.”
“That’s his financial connection. And he certainly didn’t end his personal connections. Or his political connections, for that matter. Brad Collins probably raised more money for Anderson and Dandridge than anyone in the country. EGenco loaned them their private jets during the campaign, supplied a fortune to PAC groups under the guise of organizing nonprofit organizations, whatever they could do.”
“All this stuff. . the things that are being investigated. . the business irregularities. . happened under Dandridge’s watch.”
“That’s the question. Very little has been made public.”
“And the lawsuit about the energy policy. .”
“Same answer. These guys are so damn secretive. And no one’s
been able to force Dandridge to reveal a thing. Thus the lawsuits.”
“But what’s being thrown around as an accusation. .”
“What’s being thrown around is that Dandridge, soon after he and Anderson were elected, called a meeting of some of the top energy experts in the country. And that’s where they set the administration’s energy policies. Which were, obviously, extraordinarily favorable to the energy industry. The only irregularity, the only bump in the policy, was when they shocked everyone and went against the oil companies to protect that land up in Alaska.”
“The National Petroleum Reserve,” Jonathan put in. “It’s several million acres.”
“Yeah,” Justin said. “I read about that. Why do you think they did that?”
“Why do they do anything?” Jonathan’s dad answered. “Political expediency. They feel confident they’ve got big business and energy support no matter what they do. So I assume this was a nod to environmentalists, a way to stave off criticism that they’re in anyone’s pockets. Pretty effective, too.”
“So who was at the big energy policy meeting?” Justin asked.
Mallone shrugged. “No one knows. That’s part of what they’re refusing to release. All I’ve got are rumors.”
Now Jonathan Westwood shook his head and said, “Christ, everyone knows who was there. It was Dandridge’s cronies from EGenco and a few of the Saudis.”
“Why would they include the Saudis?” Justin asked his father.
“Why would they tell the Saudis about attacking Iraq before they tell their own secretary of state? Because the relationships between Dandridge and Anderson and the Saudis go way beyond anything political. They’ve all made each other rich. The Saudis don’t do anything that’ll piss us off-at least not when it comes to oil supplies and prices-and we don’t do anything to piss them off. We keep them in power-we’ve got military forces over there to make sure no one rises up against them-and they make guys like Dandridge and Anderson even richer. And you wonder why no one trusts politicians.”
Justin took a deep breath. What the hell was he doing? He was supposed to be investigating a rigged plane crash. Now he was talking about Saudi royalty and the vice president of the United States and oil prices and SPEs. He wanted a nice little shot glass of scotch. Maybe even two. Or, now that he thought about it, three. Instead, he gulped from a plastic bottle of Fiji Water and listened as his father took over the conversation, explaining what he knew-either personally or secondhand-about the past and present personalities that ran EGenco. Justin absorbed a crash course in big-money backroom political relationships and financial kickbacks and government contracts and the cost of money. And he’d never been so glad in his entire life to hear a knock at his front door because his head was spinning and he was overwhelmed at how all he’d meant to do was open a door just a crack and what he’d really done was let in a cyclone.
He had to smile when he opened his front door for real. The cyclone analogy was not a terrible one, because standing there was Bruno Pecozzi and a woman Justin thought might be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“Thought you might like to have some lunch,” Bruno said. “This is Connie Martin. She’s the star of the movie I’m working on. We’re hungry and I told her about you so she thought maybe you’d want to get a sandwich.”
“Nice to meet you,” Justin said to the actress. To Bruno he said, “How’d you find the house?”
“Very difficult,” Bruno told him. “But you know I have, how shall I put this? — contacts. So I made a few calls and asked around and then, ’cause I’m kind of a nut, I looked you up in the fuckin’ phone book. You gonna ask us in or what?”
Justin stepped aside and waved them forward. “We were in the middle of a business meeting, but I think we can use a break.”
“Mr. Westwood.” Bruno recognized Justin’s father, took a step toward Jonathan. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Bruno Pecozzi,” Justin said, as his father’s eyes narrowed and he moved his hand in Bruno’s direction so it could be shaken. “And Connie Martin.”
Justin turned to see that Roger Mallone’s mouth was agape and his jaw had dropped, cartoon-like, as far as a human jaw could stretch. At first Justin thought it was a not uncalled-for response to Connie Martin’s presence. Then he realized that Roger wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to the blonde woman in jeans and a midriff-baring T-shirt. He was staring at the huge man who was dominating Justin’s living room.
“Hey,” Bruno said, turning slowly to Mallone, “I know you.”
Roger didn’t say anything or make a motion to shake hands. He just swallowed deeply, and then Bruno said, “Where do I know you from?” When Roger still said nothing, Bruno snapped his fingers and said, “You were on the jury.” He turned to Connie. “Talk about your small world. I was on trial for somethin’. . not a big deal. . and this guy was on the jury.” Turning back to Roger, he said, “Right? I never forget the face of a juror.”
“That’s right,” Mallone said. He spoke as if the words were physically stuck in his throat.
Turning to Connie Martin, Justin added, “It was a little bit more of a deal than Bruno’s making it out to be. He was on trial for loan sharking and extortion, if I recall.”
“Yeah, somethin’ like that,” Bruno said.
“He got off because one juror refused to convict. Seems to me there was a decent amount of talk about jury tampering.”
“You musta been one of the ones voting guilty, huh?” Bruno said to Roger.
The financial adviser, as white as Justin had ever seen him, nodded stiffly.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bruno said. “I don’t hold a grudge. And the whole thing had a happy ending anyway, right? So forget about it.”
Bruno stuck out his hand and, with one more gulp, Roger shook it.
“So we gonna have lunch or what?” Bruno said. “My treat.”
21
Nuri Al-Bazaad sat in his Buick, in the parking lot of the fast-food restaurant, and used the cell phone he’d been given to make the call he’d been instructed to make. When the voice on the other end answered, all it said was, “How long?” Nuri had already calculated the time it would take to get out of his car, walk into the restaurant, and find what he needed to find.
“Two minutes and twenty seconds,” he said into the phone.
The voice said, “You have three minutes. Starting. . now.”
Nuri was already moving when he hung up the phone. Out the door, across the lot, past the five or six big American cars parked there. Through the heavy glass door. Step inside. He looked around, as he’d done during his test run, but things had changed. They had moved. No. Just two of them had moved. The third one was right where she’d been.
Nuri had to make a decision. He went for the two. They were standing in front of a small counter that held ketchup and mustard and napkins and plastic forks and spoons. He went up to the person he was supposed to go up to. They had said not to talk, just to stand there, but he wanted to speak, wanted to say something that might be comforting. So he walked right to her, leaned forward, and spoke into her ear.
“You’re very lucky,” he said.
She backed away from him and he saw a look of fear cross her face.
“You’re lucky,” he said again. “Soon there will be music everywhere. Like surround sound. And there will be great warmth. You will all be protected and happy.”
The woman looked at him like he was mad. Then she turned back to the table, back to the second child, who was smiling. The child waved to her mother.
The mother began to scream.
And then Nuri’s cell phone rang.
22
They got a table at Art’s Deco Diner, a casual place in the middle of town, decorated in black and white and chrome. It was on Main Street, tucked between the 1950s-style movie theater that usually showed artsy foreign films, and an equally old-fashioned five-and-dime. Art had owned the restaurant for years, periodically changing
its identity so it didn’t become as stuck in the past as his neighbors on either side. At various times he’d had a small art gallery, a Zen temple, a resting room for pets, and a video arcade at the front of the restaurant; for the past year he’d converted the space into a bookstore with a short rack of magazines and international newspapers. Art was in his early fifties and knew his way around a kitchen. Anytime anyone mentioned to him that he was a terrific chef, he always said the same thing: “Cook. Not chef. I’m a cook. Big difference.”
Bruno Pecozzi didn’t care about the difference. He loved the food at the Deco Diner, and to prove it, after everyone had given their orders to the waiter, Bruno ordered two complete pork chop lunches, including two orders of mashed potatoes, two mixed green salads, and two orders of spinach. While they were waiting for the food to arrive, he began to regale them with stories about life on the movie set. Justin couldn’t help notice that while he talked, one of Connie Martin’s hands was firmly planted on Bruno’s thigh.
Midway through the lunch, the front door opened and three of Justin’s police officers sauntered in-Mike Haversham, Gary Jenkins, and Reggie Bokkenheuser. As they headed for their booth, they all saw Justin, hesitated, unsure exactly what the social protocol called for, then continued on. As they passed by, Gary and Mike mumbled, “Hey, Chief,” and gave a half wave, but didn’t slow down. Reggie stopped to say hello, realized that Mike and Gary had left her behind, so she flushed red and started to hurry to join them. But Justin reached her, touched her wrist, so she slowed again, then stopped, taking a step back so she could face the table. Justin introduced her around. He saw the surprise on her face when he told her the older man at the table was his father, and she showed no reaction when he gave her Bruno’s name, except for her eyes, which couldn’t help but scan his bulk and widen a bit in awe. She smiled at Connie Martin and said that she was a big fan. Connie smiled graciously in return, then Reggie moved on to join her coworkers.
“Cops are definitely gettin’ better-lookin’,” Bruno said.
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