by Tim Michaels
I walked back to the door of the lab, grabbed the “do not disturb” sign, carefully looked into the hallway, and placed the sign on the outside of the door before locking it behind me. It was time to tidy up. I grabbed the packages of Chinese food and looked around. In the tank, one of the sand sharks was taking its first small nibble. There was nothing left to do. I walked out of the lab, about three minutes after I first walked in.
Once outside, I left the lab, got on the bike and headed to Santa Barbara. Just past the campus was a wildlife refuge, a salt marsh that drained into the ocean. I dropped the pipe I had used to nudge Zhou into the water. By morning, no doubt, it would be covered by silt, obscuring it even from an observer who knew where to look. On the beach, I rinsed out the boxes of Chinese food. I wondered how the drugs might affect the small shrimp and tiny fish that lived in the stream, and for how long. I wondered – if a marine biologist had been watching that little body of water, would he or she see some odd behavior among the local crustaceans that evening?
Ten minutes later, I was changing out of his several-sizes-too-large-track-suit-and-washcloth ensemble and stashing it into my backpack. Thirty minutes after that, I was back in Santa Barbara. I dropped the now empty Chinese food containers into a dumpster behind a McDonald’s. After that, I returned to Dusty’s apartment where I stayed for a few days, gradually eliminating all evidence of the Zhou job and of my stay in the apartment. As a last step, I bleached down every surface either Dusty or I had touched.
Dusty arrived back in Isla Vista about the same time as the bulk of the student population. He had a story about several days passed in the company of two wild and insatiable young ladies from Cal State Long Beach. Dusty was very hurt that nobody believed him.
Meanwhile, news about Steve Zhou’s death had spread among the student population. The general consensus was that he was in the process of OD’ing – “the dumbass took a cocktail of crazy” was how it was commonly worded – when he fell into the shark tank and drowned. None of the news reports provided any real details, but there were hints that several of the sharks had taken bitefuls of Zhou’s corpse. Santa Barbara being Santa Barbara, there was a collective sigh of relief when one of the marine biology professors was quoted stating that none of the sharks had consumed enough of the drugs to be harmed. On Friday night there was a candlelight vigil for Zhou. Based on news reports, it was sparsely attended. I imagine nobody who actually knew Zhou showed up.
Dusty stuck around IV for another three weeks. One night, over a round of drinks, he told his roommates he was moving on.
“Hawaii beckons, yeah?” Dusty explained.
The next day, he gave away his few belongings and took the Greyhound to Los Angeles, where I caught a plane to Cleveland. In my carry-on I had the picture book for Jeremy and the collection of photos of Santa Barbara for H. I didn’t have my wedding band yet – I’d get it in Canton – but the stud was out of my ear.
On the flight back, I reviewed the Zhou job and thought about the rest of the mission. So far I was three and 0.
Chapter 5. The Mogul
As I was mentally poring over the dossier I had compiled for Dane Field, I had no way to know that after this job, everything would change. There was nothing about Field himself to tip me off. He seemed ordinary, at least relative to the types of people on my target list.
Field was a very typical all-American success story. He had started his career working for Jennings & Try, a private equity firm based in Memphis. After five years in Memphis, he was hired as a Vice President of Operations at Southeastern States Electric, a Fortune 500 power company based in Tulsa. Five years later, he was CEO. His meteoric rise could be explained by one simple fact – the company was started by Colonel Abbot C. Field, Dane Field’s grandfather, and the Colonel’s descendants owned the largest single block of shares in the company. The second largest block of shares was owned by Wilford Jennings, the senior partner at Jennings & Try. Wilford Jennings was also married to the sister of Abbot C. Field Jr., the second CEO of the company and, not incidentally, Dane Field’s father.
Dane Field’s tenure at Southeastern States Electric had lasted exactly eight years and five months. In that time, he engineered a leveraged buyout taking the company private. A few months later, he sold the now private company to Big Texas Power Corporation. During his stay with the company plus the six months that immediately followed, Field was paid 204 million dollars, of which 173 million came at the very end. The payday was boosted by the outright plundering of the company’s pension, which in turn was used to fund a substantial part of the buy-out.
Since leaving Southeastern States Electric, Field was involved in a variety of high profile boards and several religious organizations, having recently found God. The closest thing to actual work he did (and perhaps ever did) was going around the country (and, it should be noted, England, but apparently not Canada) giving speeches about the importance of entrepreneurship and the Protestant work ethic.
His website had a helpful list of upcoming speaking engagements. In a few days he was speaking to the University of Missouri at Kansas City’s branch of the “Future Business Leaders of America.” Dusty Klein was there. But this was a different Dusty Klein from the loser who hung around IV and went off to Hawaii. This was professional Dusty Klein who went by Klein and not Dusty. Klein could have lived in Santa Barbara, ridden around on a nice racing bike and perhaps worked as a stock broker or investment advisor with wealthy clients. Perhaps he drove a late model BMW, and if he was lucky, he had gotten close to Lisa. Like his ne’er do well counterpart, Klein had an ear stud, but otherwise, he was casually but expensively dressed.
Klein arrived early and walked into a third floor classroom which could hold 60 students. When the room was about half full, Field came up the stairs, flanked by several people. One was obviously a professor, and another, a student, probably an officer of the club. They were listening to Field speak. The others seemed to be Field’s people – a personal secretary (female, mid-30s, extremely attractive) and four bodyguards. Discrete bulges around their midsection indicated they must have gotten exemptions from the “no firearms” rule that normally applied on campus or, more likely, were simply ignoring it.
Field said something to the professor type who pointed toward the door of the men’s room. Klein knew it was the men’s room as he had just come out the same door himself ten minutes earlier. Field went off in that direction, and stopped when he reached the door. One of the bodyguards, a huge man with very short beard that failed to disguise a weak chin, stepped into the bathroom. A moment later, he stepped out and told Field, “Clear.”
Field walked into the restroom. The bodyguards stayed next to the door, no doubt to prevent anyone else from entering. They were at work and looked like they meant business. By contrast, the personal secretary put a blank look on her face and tried to enjoy her momentary time off. After a few minutes, Field came out, and, together with his waiting entourage, walked into the room where his lecture was to be.
From up close, Field resembled nothing so much as a frumpy, dirty blond ninny. Despite that, he spoke with a lot of assurance and authority about what it takes to start a business and work one’s way up to the top. If anyone in the audience saw any irony in the fact that the speech was being given by someone with Field’s pedigree, they didn’t show it. Klein made a point to behave the same as the rest of the crowd, displaying admiration, respect, and throwing in the polite chuckle when the occasion called for it.
Field’s bodyguards had taken up positions at all four corners of the room. They were so obvious and unprofessional, so unlike the Prince’s team, that it seemed clear someone else had to be watching. While Klein operated on the surface, I looked around. There was nobody in the room other than Field, his people, two professors who the students clearly knew well, a bunch of students, and me. Me or Klein. After a while I concluded that like the rest of
Field’s story, his security team was more for show and to stoke Field’s vanity than for any other purpose. They were not nearly as much of a threat as the Prince’s team. I faded out and let Klein take over for a while.
Field spoke for thirty minutes and took questions, most of which were little more than complements for his business acumen, for another fifteen minutes. Then he left, with another stop at the lavatory. That was twice in an hour. Either he had an unusually large amount to drink or Field might well have a weak bladder. Meanwhile, one of the students who had attended the lecture tried to enter the restroom while Field was in it but was prevented from doing so by one of the bodyguards. Eventually, Field, his four bodyguards, and his personal secretary trooped down the stairs and crowded into a limo. By now Klein was long gone. As I watched the scene, I was almost surprised the bodyguard with the beard didn’t break the car’s axle.
It occurred to me that Field’s weak bladder, assuming that’s what it was, could be used against him. The bodyguards were doing a fine job of creating a space around Field whenever he went to the bathroom, a space which I could use to limit collateral damage. Field’s schedule had him speaking to the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce at the ballroom of the Hilton the next evening.
Francisco Fernandez was waiting for him at the Hilton. Fernandez found a spot with a direct view of the restroom nearest the ballroom. He wore an impeccable suit and tie with a Windsor knot, as well as a nametag for a guest who had failed to show up at a conference for investors earlier in the afternoon. Fernandez was reading the brochures he had picked up with a fair amount of interest.
When Field and his entourage tromped up the stairs, they went straight into the ballroom. It was possible he had used the lavatory downstairs, closest to the entrance on the first floor, but of course, Fernandez had no way of knowing. However, Field’s first stop after giving his speech was the lavatory Fernandez was watching. This seemed to corroborate an important hypothesis: Field’s bladder was going to be an accomplice in his demise. Ten minutes after Field left, Fernandez, now without the nametag he had appropriated earlier, walked into the hotel’s steakhouse and ordered dinner: a Delmonico sprinkled with blue cheese and a Caesar salad. Fernandez had some Argentine wine, Malbec, though I myself never drink.
Back in Ohio, I downloaded a copy of Field’s speaking schedule for the next three months. Four weeks out there was an anomaly. Over a six month period, sprinkled in with the usual talks, Field was giving speeches at about thirty different spots in Iowa, often four to six in a day. My geography was pretty good, but I hadn’t heard of most of these towns. The speeches were often at small locations like the local Kiwanis and even a few coffee shops. I wondered whether he was planning to eventually run for President. This could be a dry run of the type of grand tour of Iowa people seeking the Presidency usually start with, and Field clearly had the time, money and complete lack of self-awareness necessary to do it.
The next morning, I hopped in my van and headed to Iowa. Fernandez would never traipse around rural Iowa in a van, but Dusty, slacker Dusty, certainly would. Dusty spent three days hitting up each spot where Field was going to speak. In the end, he found the perfect place. It was in the middle of nowhere, the first of five stops Field was making one night, all in small towns within a thirty-minute drive of a private airfield. Presumably that’s where Field would be arriving from, and later in the evening, departing from.
The venue was Big Ellie’s Restaurant, a small, old-fashioned diner located near the town of Fortune (pop 8,297). Big Ellie’s was an oddly-shaped place. It looked like it had started out as a farmhouse with a tool shed 50 feet to the north. At some point the shed had been attached to the building by a long hallway. The hallway ended at the emergency exit to the building – a large glass door with a conspicuous alarm fronting the parking lot. Just before the emergency exit was the door to the men’s room, which still retained the size and shape of the original shed. The lady’s room was in the main building.
Two things made Big Ellie’s attractive. The first was a clear line of sight from the emergency exit to a camping area about a football field’s length away. The second nice thing about Big Ellie’s was that the ceiling of the men’s room was made up of old-fashioned plasterboard panels. Dusty stood on the toilet and found he could physically move one aside, and, just like in the movies, there was a small space above the restroom.
Dusty found a couple of other locations which he put down as backup, but Big Ellie’s was definitely the first choice. Having made that determination, Dusty surprised me by flooring it out of state. Clearly something about rural Iowa didn’t agree with him.
Back in Canton, I put the Dusty persona in storage. To make a long story short, and I see that we are starting to run out of time, I did some experimenting and made a nice jellied gasoline bomb, kind of like napalm. At a spy shop in downtown Chicago, I picked up (for cash) a radio transmitter and a small receiver which together would be used to set off the bomb. More interestingly, I also built my own laser listening device after watching half a dozen instruction manuals I found online. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked, and it cost me only about thirty bucks plus my time.
Yeah, I kind of like to build things myself. I always have. My father wasn’t a tinkerer. I hope this habit I have of building things isn’t one that skips a generation. I hope Jeremy has it, too. There’s a lot I’d like to show him one day.
Anyway, a week before Field was due to speak at Big Ellie’s, I headed out. It would have been a nice trip for Dusty – hiking the trails and camping for a few days, but I was going to need to check into the campground with a car. Fake IDs were one thing, but fake license plates were bound to cause trouble.
When I got to the campground, I selected a spot with a view of Big Ellie’s back door. The outdoor season was still a few months away, so there were only a handful of other vehicles in the lot, mostly large RVs. I spent the days hiking. But I also made a point of stopping in at Big Ellie’s twice a day, once for breakfast and once in the late afternoon for an early dinner. After three days I was a regular.
The only glitch came the first time I walked into Big Ellie’s. The waitress recognized me from when Dusty had been reconnoitering. I mentioned I had been crossing the country on business, but that when I saw the campground I had immediately decided this was where I would spend my upcoming week off.
“So here I am,” I said.
“Here you are,” she said, “Welcome back.”
I nodded sheepishly and went back to my scrambled eggs.
The day before Field was due to arrive, I came to breakfast with my backpack. I ordered the usual then went to the bathroom. I locked the door behind me, stood on the toilet and moved the ceiling panel aside. I put the bomb above the toilet and flicked on the radio receiver. Then I slid the panel back into place, flushed the toilet and washed my hands. Inside my bag, I also had two small beach balls which I partially inflated and put back into the bag. The bag looked almost as bulky as it had ninety seconds ago, and should easily pass muster with the restaurant crowd. I looked at myself in the mirror, straightened my jacket, and went back to my table.
That day I also picked up a couple of souvenirs from the campground store. There wasn’t much to buy. I got a “Wish You Were Here” postcard featuring a greenish hill with an old stone cabin for H. While I did wish H was with me, I knew H wouldn’t have liked rural Iowa. She was a big-city girl, born and raised. Jeremy got a grinning ear of corn plush toy and a t-shirt that proudly proclaimed “Iowa.”
At a quarter to noon the next day, I was in my van with the darkened windows. I had my laser listening device set up. The laser was seated on a tripod, pointed straight at the glass on Big Ellie’s backdoor. The laser bounced off the glass and onto a photoresister in my van. The photoresister, in turn, was hooked up to my laptop and I had a headset plugged into the laptop.
Ten minutes later, a lo
ng black limo pulled up at Big Ellie’s, disgorging Field, his secretary, and his four bodyguards. Field did not use the restroom before giving his speech. I guessed he probably came straight from the nearest airfield and had used the facilities on his plane. So I waited, and listened to the speech through my headset.
When the speech ended, however, Field was once again predictable. When I heard “Clear” I gave it twenty seconds and then flicked the switch.
The bomb was a bit more powerful, or at least more incendiary, than I had planned. Flames burst through the bathroom windows and smashed the emergency door. As I would later learn from news reports, the bodyguard with the short beard suffered a broken leg and second degree burns. Two of his colleagues and three of the restaurant patrons had minor injuries, and several more had to be treated for smoke inhalation. I felt badly for that, and resolved to be more careful about collateral damage going forward.
The biggest surprise, though, was that Field himself survived the blast. He suffered third degree burns to his entire body. He lost the ability to stand, walk, and close his eyes. He also lost his hearing entirely in one ear and was 90% deaf in the other. We weren’t quite square, Field and I, but we were close enough to it that I was willing to let him keep the change.
Since not much happens in rural Iowa, the police reacted quickly and in force. Within fifteen minutes state troopers cordoned off the entire area. Eventually someone came by and looked around the campground. By then, of course, I had dismantled the equipment I had used in the job. But nobody questioned me or asked to see the inside of my van.