by Dan Arnold
A few hours later, as my research began to pay off, I figured I knew.
It seems when Walter had been working for the competing oil company up in Oklahoma, he had engaged in a little corporate espionage. At that time, doing horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of hard shale was a new use of an old technology. Whoever had the latest scientifically proven technology had a distinct advantage over the competition. Walter was fired for “mishandling” sensitive technical data. He must have shopped that data to Simpson. No wonder Simpson Oil and Gas Company got a technological jump on the industry!
Now the question was how Walter had approached Simpson, and why Simpson trusted Walter.
… After all, “Once a thief…”
Yet, Ted Simpson had told me he valued Walter for his loyalty. Why would Ted Simpson expect Walter to be loyal to him, when he had proven to be treacherous to others? Had Simpson really provided the start-up capital for WWSA? Why would he do that? Had he funded WWSA as a payoff for the stolen technical data? Had he bought Walter’s loyalty? Could Walter be loyal to anyone other than himself?
My phone rang. It was Tony.
“I just got a call from a friend in the Sheriff’s Department, J.W. You’re not going to believe this. After sitting in the County jail for the last several weeks waiting for his trial date, somebody just now bailed our friend Orlando Cruz, out of jail!”
“Really, who made his bail?”
“It was a local attorney. Apparently he’s been retained to represent the little peckerwood.” Tony indicated.
“That’s odd. I didn’t think he had anybody who would be interested in helping him.”
“I didn’t either, J.W. And, it’s no small amount of money. His bail was set at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Somebody had to come up with twenty five thousand dollars in cash, to bond him out. It’s even stranger, because he’s been sitting in jail for weeks. His trial is only a couple weeks away. If somebody was going to bail him out, why did they wait all this time to do it?” Tony wondered.
I thought about it.
“Thanks Tony. The bad news is he’s on the loose, here in Tyler. The good news is we know about it in time to warn the Murphys.”
Thirty-Three
In discussing the situation with the Murphy family, we decided that for Lori’s safety, she would move back into Christine’s apartment. She had her own car and she could commute to her new school, without Orlando ever knowing where she was.
“She’ll be quite safe at school; the private campus is hidden away back in the woods, behind security gates. To err on the side of caution, we’ll alert the staff and they’ll take extra security measures for her protection. They’ll make sure she has an escort to and from the parking lot. The school has very good security; no one comes on or off the campus without being observed. Visitors need passes, so there is little chance he could get to her, even if he knew she was there.”
“I can’t believe we’re going through all this again. You promised us Orlando wouldn’t ever be a problem again. Walter may be right; you people are starting to look like amateurs. Walter could probably do a better job of protecting her. He owns a professional security company; he and his staff are experts at protecting people. He even has armored cars to transport people. If Lori wasn’t insisting she’ll be safe with you, we’d send her with him.” Mrs. Murphy said.
I took a deep breath.
Was this his game? We had beaten him to the punch, just barely. If Walter had contacted the Murphys with the news about Orlando, before we did…
God is good.
“Mr. Murphy, I think taking advantage of Walter’s security service is a great idea. You don’t want to be worrying about Orlando showing up at your house again. You tell Walter you want him to provide constant protection for you and your wife, while we protect Lori.”
Christine looked at me like she thought I was crazy.
My idea was to protect Lori’s parents. I figured Walter would have to make absolutely certain they stayed safe, in order to make himself look and feel powerful, competent, successful and important.
It’s always nice to kill two birds with one stone.
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do. I’m glad to see you extending some professional respect and courtesy. We’ll call Walter right away.”
As we were leaving the Murphy house, I rode with Lori in her car, she was driving. Christine was following behind us in her car.
“Lori, I know you and Walter have become friends. I have to ask, why did you want to come with us, instead of going with Walter?”
She thought about it for a moment.
“I don’t know exactly. It just felt like it was the right thing to do…”
“His sheep know His voice.” I thought.
“... Besides, it was you who got me back from Orlando in the first place. Somehow, I can’t see Walter being able to handle something like that. I mean he talks big, and he boasts about things, but… I don’t know. Somehow you seem more solid. You don’t brag, you just get stuff done. I feel like I can trust you.”
“Yes, you can.”
She looked over at me and smiled. “I know.”
I smiled back.
“It was you who told me I could make it. You’re the one who convinced me God still loved me, even after…” She trailed off.
I nodded. “I haven’t ever lied to you.”
“No, you were right. Even when I didn’t believe you, or when I didn’t like what you said, you’ve never lied to me.”
“Has Walter lied to you?”
“I don’t know, maybe. He’s said some things that were… that seemed… wrong, somehow. Especially the things he said about you, and he was confusing when he talked about God.”
I was surprised.
“I wouldn’t have imagined Walter had much to say about God.”
“Walter said, God is in everything and everything is God. Because of that, there is no right or wrong. No good or evil, because everything is good. If it seems right to us, then it is right for us. I don’t know… Does that make sense?”
“Well, yes and no. It’s partly true and mostly wrong. It is true God is in everything, it is not true everything is God. Let me give you an example. A great artist puts something of themselves into their work. They even sign their name to the work. When you see their work you see some part of them, there is a little bit of the artist in all of their work. But, you wouldn’t look at the art work and say the art is the artist, would you?”
“No, of course not.”
“God is the Creator of all things, but the things He created are not Him. By looking at His creation, we learn some things about God, but we are not actually seeing God.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“So then right and wrong, good and evil, are not based on our personal opinions. They are part of the work of God. He has determined what is right and good, He has also determined what is wrong or evil. If you want to know what God has determined about those things, it’s all there in the Bible.”
We drove along in silence for a few minutes, each thinking our own thoughts.
Suddenly, Lori had something to say.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing “Tummy Tum-Tum!” She beamed.
When we got to Christine’s apartment, I caught her eye and she smiled with a little shake of her head. It told me we hadn’t been followed.
“Mr. Tumescence,” Christine’s cat, met us at the door. “Tummy” rubbed all over Lori’s leg and flopped down on his side to be petted. Lori’s room was exactly as she had left it. It had become her home, away from home.
“Ladies, it’s late in the day. I’m going to go by the office and check my messages. Tomorrow is Saturday, what will y’all do over the weekend?”
“Well, the pool is still open. This is the last weekend. We’ll probably take advantage of the pleasant weather and hang out at the pool, or in the clubhouse. How does that sound, Lori?”
“Super, I have som
e homework and a report that’s due on Monday, so I’ll work on it and catch a tan, out by the pool.”
“Alright, unless our plans change, Lori, next week, Christine will take you to school. After school, one of us will meet you in the parking lot, and you’ll come straight to the office for the rest of the day. You can do your homework there.”
“OK, Boss man, whatever you say.”
“I don’t know at this point, how long we’ll have to keep up this routine. I’ll find out for sure when Orlando is scheduled to stand trial. We’ll work it out.”
At the office, I found most of the phone messages to be requests for interviews or obvious ploys to get attention, especially the last one.
“Well played, Mr. Tucker. I’ll be in touch.”
I recognized the voice.
It was Walter’s.
Thirty-Four
I spent the weekend at my hunting lease, making minor repairs to my little trailer and my hunting blinds, cleaning out wasp nests and spiders, and fishing in the pond. I love the smell of the deep woods in the fall. I had some great pictures on my game cameras. There were hogs, coyotes, bobcats, raccoons and several deer frequenting the feeder areas and the pond. One pretty nice buck was seen in both locations. I was looking forward to wearing my camouflage into the woods, and watching the world wake up on some chilly morning in the not too distant future. During the season I would spend every weekend here, hunting ducks and deer.
Monday put me right back in the rat race.
I learned Ted Simpson had almost certainly provided the start-up capital for Walter’s new business venture. The timing suggested it had been payment for the stolen technical drilling data.
Walter had started the World Wide Security Agency, investing a huge sum of money in start-up capital. Initially it was a modest undertaking, fully funded. Then he had started spending and borrowing a vast amount of cash. He used the money to entertain various government insiders, to help land his contracts and to recruit and equip a small army of security agents. He purchased custom armored personnel carriers designed to withstand improvised explosive devices or IEDs as they are now commonly known. His first couple of contracts proved highly profitable, but he squandered the money on a corporate headquarters office in New York, for his Strategic International Corporation, expensive high profile advertising, traveling around the world to promote his company, bribes, and dirty tricks against his competition.
After talking with a number of creditors, bureaucrats, politicians, and former employees, I learned several things. Walter spent money much faster than he made it. He failed to properly service his debt, but worse was his inability to keep his elaborate promises and lies.
Powerful people began to realize Walter was lying to them. Soon, he was no longer able to get really lucrative contracts. He still had the same level of debt and overhead, but the revenues were decreasing. Walter had to close his fancy office in New York City. He had to let some of his people go. His last security contract had just been terminated. Most of his security people had quit. He had to sell off equipment he had paid top dollar for.
Today, his only real client seemed to be Simpson Oil and Gas Company. It appeared he had to take the Personal Assistant job with Ted Simpson, because he could no longer afford to pay himself his own salary. Strategic International Corporation was dead, and the WWSA was barely a shell of its former self.
Why would Ted Simpson continue to support him at all? If everyone he had ever done business with, including Christine and I, could see Walter for what he really was, why couldn’t Simpson? What hold did Walter have on Mr. Simpson? Was it some form of extortion? There must be something other than Ted Simpson’s belief that Walter was “intensely loyal.”
Mr. Simpson had offered me the job as head of security for Simpson Oil and Gas Company. Why? What did that mean?
It meant it was time for me to talk with Ted Simpson about these things.
He agreed to meet with me, later the same evening at his home in south Tyler. He had to give me precise directions, because the house was hidden and gated against uninvited guests. His home was only three or four miles from my office, on a busy feeder road I drove on frequently. I marveled that I had driven past the little driveway which disappeared into the forest, probably hundreds of times, and never knew it was the entrance to a magnificent estate. All of the neighbors surrounding them lived in huge houses in swanky, up-scale subdivisions, with grand, gated stone entranceways, with names like RAVENCREST or STONECLIFFE. The simple driveway entrance to the Simpson place was virtually invisible between those ostentatious outcroppings.
Mr. Simpson had his own security gates a few hundred feet up his driveway. I pushed the button on the intercom at the gates, and they swung open without anyone speaking to me. I saw the cameras, so I knew someone could see me. It was interesting that none of Walter’s security people were to be seen at the gates.
Ted Simpson and his wife of more than thirty years, Corinne, lived in a modest French château of about sixteen thousand square feet. It was three stories of granite and wrought iron under a verdigris copper roof with multiple chimneys. I wondered if they were looking forward to multiple fires, in multiple fireplaces. The Château Simpson sat at the edge of a three or four acre pond, with a fountain shooting a geyser, thirty feet into the air. The house was situated on about twenty acres of manicured landscaping, with a tennis court out back, just beyond the swimming pool. My view of those amenities was partly blocked by the six car garage, attached to the house by a Porte cache. Somehow, this magnificent minor castle was the only single family home in the area. All of their neighbors in those exclusive subdivisions had big homes too, of course, but they were mostly crowded together within the confines of their tiny one and two acre lots.
I parked in the circular driveway, rather than under the Porte cache, and walked up the wide sidewalk to the massive front doors. I figured the side door under the Porte cache was just for the family and the help.
As I pushed the doorbell, and listened to the chimes, I imagined there were probably very few times anyone ever rang the bell.
The door was opened by a servant whom I suspected might be called the butler.
The foyer I observed inside the front door had polished marble floors and was so huge that in another time it might have been called a ballroom. Sure, it had polished marble floors, but I doubted anyone ever danced there. I gave the butler my card.
“How do you do, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Simpson is expecting you. He’s in the library, please follow me.”
I was glad he hadn’t said “walk this way,” because he walked kind of slow and funny.
The library was in fact, a library. I estimated the number of books to be at least a thousand titles, most of them bound in leather and some of them rare or first edition. It was an oak panelled room, two stories tall, with books in shelves on three walls, both downstairs and upstairs. The fourth wall was mostly occupied by a massive stone fireplace. There were polished wrought iron and brass ladders at each end of the room, by which, I assumed one could gain access to the second floor of the library. It was part of the second floor of the house, but in the library, it was more of a balcony, about six feet wide running all the way around the three walls above. It appeared the floor of the balcony had been designed and engineered in such a way, the book shelves below provided the support for the floor above. I could see a door between bookshelves in one wall up there, which probably led out into the rest of the second floor.
Even though we were enjoying the balmy warm days of fall folks tend to call “Indian summer”, there was a gas fire going in the fireplace.,
I found Mr. Simpson seated in a massive, overstuffed, brown leather armchair, next to the fireplace. He didn’t stand, but rather pointed at the matching arm chair opposite his.
“Sit down, boy. Can I buy you a drink? I’m drinking single malt.”
I sat down as instructed.
“No thank you, sir. It’s a little early in the day for me.”
“Fine, what brings you to my neck of the woods?”
“Mr. Simpson, I need to ask you some questions about Walter.”
He nodded, and looked over at the butler.
“Henry, will you please ask Mrs. Simpson to join us.”
After Henry left, I started to say something, but Mr. Simpson held up his hand.
“Hold on, boy, I think we’ll wait for Corinne, before we start this discussion.”
“Mr. Simpson, I’m not sure your wife needs to hear what we’ll be discussing.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t care what you think she needs to hear.” He mumbled.
We stared at each other for a moment.
“Why would you want your wife to be a part of this discussion?”
“Does it have anything to do with my political plans?”
“I don’t know, probably. I need to talk to you about Walter.”
“Well then, she needs to be here.”
“Why?”
“… Because, Walter Farley is our son,” Corinne Simpson said, from the doorway.
Thirty-Five
As she came into the room, I stood up to greet Corinne Simpson.
“How do you do, Mr. Tucker, Walter has told me quite a lot about you.”
She was tall and slim, wearing black pants and a white blouse with long sleeves. Her hair was still blonde, though I suspected she used some form of chemical enhancement. I could tell there had been other enhancements as well. She was no stranger to cosmetic surgery. She had a Barbie doll body that didn’t match her age, and her face had the stiff, sort of polished look which comes from too much time under the knife. Her eyebrows were tattooed. Either as a result of the surgeries or the application of Botox, she was unable to show any facial expression. The whole effect was like talking to someone who was wearing a mask.
But then, we all wear masks, don’t we?
“I’m pleased to meet you, Ma’am.”