Old Poison (10 page)

“Thanks, Sam. You really are good.”

His face lit in an almost mischievous smile.
He was actually enjoying all this. “I haven’t gotten to the good
part yet. The good part is I was able to get a trace on the
outgoing signal from that Big Brother chip. You will never guess
where that signal went.” He didn’t wait for me to guess. “The
executive floor of Heartland and Home Insurance Corporation,
biggest damn insurance conglomerate in the country.”

He waited as I processed this incongruity.
Bewildered I asked, “What was he doing there?”

“The correct question is: What does he do
there?”

“Okay, what does he do there?”

“His real name is Nathan Niedlemyer, a.k.a.
Nate. He is the youngest vice president in the company, came up
through the accounting end of things, does master programming and
planning in things like actuarial tables, loss projections,
long-term planning for the health and wealth of his company.”

“Son of a gun! He
is
a bean counter.
I pegged him for that when I first met him. But how the hell does
that . . . it makes no sense. What was his connection to Evelyn, to
Mars and the red stuff . . . and to murder?”

“I don’t know, but tomorrow morning at eight
a.m. he will be conducting a training seminar for his regional
managers. I tapped into his computer and inserted an extra
attendee, Clara Shimmerhorn of Story City, Iowa. Here is your
badge, Ms. Shimmerhorn. I used my computer to fudge up your picture
a little bit. Richard is expecting you at Coiffeurs Americain
tomorrow at six a.m., so he can make you up to go with the picture.
See what you can find out at the training session.”

I smiled at him. “You are a real magician,
Sam. Great work as always. Thanks.”

“Yeah, well, I have a rather personal
interest in this son of a bitch. He’s the first person to get a
jump on me since I retired. I gotta know what cards he holds and
how he intends to play them. By the way, I won’t be any further
away than your lapel. That badge is wired.”

* * * * *

Monday morning I was up by five a.m. and
within minutes was on the way to Rick’s Coiffeurs Americain in
Beverly Hills. Owner Richard Barton is a diminutive Englishman who
has charmed his way into Hollywood and Beverly Hills society. He is
also the world’s greatest fan of the movie
Casablanca
. His
salon decor is a careful imitation of the set of Rick’s Café
Americain, and he often livens the place up by hiring impersonators
to appear as Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman or Sidney
Greenstreet and Peter Lorry. I don’t even know if Barton is his
real name. In casual conversations in the salon he often drops
hints that he has a mysterious past, but that could be just his
Richard Blaine act.

Four years ago a con artist ripped off
Richard’s entire retirement savings in a real estate swindle in
Palmdale. Like most victims, Richard soon learned that the police
simply referred him to a private attorney, and the attorney charged
him another small fortune to get a judgment. Nine times out of ten
a judgment in a fraud case like Richard’s is worthless. The con has
either spent the money or hidden it beyond the reach of the court
or legal investigation. I had seen it happen dozens of times, but I
liked Richard so well that I did something I had never done before.
I conned a con. Of course the operation called for unorthodox, if
not felonious, activities, so I try to refrain from such solutions
these days. But it did work slick. Not only did I recover all of
Richard’s retirement, but I gained myself a friend and disguise
master.

Working from Sam’s computer-doctored photo,
Richard gave me dark brown hair, brown contacts under horn-rimmed
glasses, and padding to round out my body to a size eighteen. Not a
complete disguise, but there would probably be hundreds attending,
and I didn’t expect to get too close to Borson, or, rather,
Niedlemyer.

On the way to the downtown Los Angeles hotel
where the seminar was being held, I bought an appropriately frumpy
suit for my Clara Shimmerhorn character. It wasn’t hard to find
one. If you want truly ugly colors, cheap fabrics, and styles that
would be unflattering to anyone, just go to the large-size section
of any store. The industry bias is so obvious it’s a wonder large
women haven’t started lynching the designers.

It was 10:45 by the time I got to the hotel,
but with an insurance seminar, I didn’t expect to miss much. I
displayed my Shimmerhorn ID, picked up my seminar packet, and
headed for the morning session in the River Room. Before I even got
the door open, I could hear a loud, angry voice echoing around the
cavernous hall.

“. . . half the folks are already out of
work because of those God damn tree huggers, and I haven’t seen any
of that bullshit proven. I’ll be damned if I’ll go back to Oregon
and raise insurance rates on my people because of some fairy tale
about global warming.”

Unlike most of the suited attendees, the
speaker wore a plaid shirt, jeans with suspenders, and a billed
cap. The woolen shirt was open, exposing a T-shirt that read, “TRY
WIPING YOUR BUTT WITH A SPOTTED OWL.” He was a huge man, six foot
five, over three hundred pounds, and very little of that bulk was
fat. His eyebrows and eyelashes were so blond that they were almost
white. I would have bet money that this guy should have been at a
logging tattoo, rather than an insurance seminar, and I wouldn’t
have been surprised if he’d had a large blue ox waiting patiently
in the parking lot.

“So you can take this shit,” he shook the
conference packet menacingly at Borson/Niedlemyer, “and shove it up
your ass, because I’ll quit and go on God damn welfare before I’ll
help this company screw over my people.”

Well, so much for my not missing anything by
arriving late.

* * * * *

The Oregon Paul Bunyan looked around the
conference hall, seeing shock and disapproval on many faces. Some
folks seated nearby were actually leaning away to distance
themselves from him. I liked him immediately. He reminded me of my
dad, rough, tough, independent, and incorruptibly principled. I
selected a chair just two away from him.

As he looked into the disapproving faces
around him, his tone changed from angry to resigned. “Hell,” he
said, “I’ve been there before.”

As he sat down, he caught the smile on my
face and did a double take. The look he gave me said he was ready
to take me on if I was laughing at him. I gave him a thumb’s up.
His expression changed, and he gave me a conspiratorial wink.

The audience reaction was mixed. At first
there were some audible criticisms of Paul Bunyan’s language and
opinions, then some loud and strongly expressed approval.

As Niedlemyer waited out the audience, he
was smiling affably and nodding his head in understanding. Only the
dark red flush of his neck and ears revealed that he wasn’t as cool
as he was pretending to be. His eyes moved from Bunyan to me, first
a glance, then he looked back and held me in his gaze for several
seconds. While being subjected to his close examination, I noticed
that the audience seated in a semicircle around his podium was not
as large as I had anticipated. Perhaps plopping myself down at the
center of attention was not the cleverest thing I could have
done.

When the audience quieted, he spoke in a
calm, reasonable, non-confrontational voice, dripping with empathy.
“I know you have been there before, Sven. I know that when
ecological concerns shut down your logging business in Oregon, you
had to go on welfare for a while to feed your family. I also know
how hard it was for a man like you to do that. The important thing
is that you did it so you could survive. Then you adapted. You
learned a new business, and you adapted and survived.” He paused,
and there was quiet throughout the hall.

“I sincerely hope you do not quit, Sven,
because you have the qualities your people and all of us will need.
Our neighbors, our states, our country, and, yes, our insurance
company, will need to adapt in order to survive. Will you hear me
out, Sven?”

Sven clenched his jaws as he considered his
answer. “I’ll listen, Nate, but I won’t promise anything.”

“Nate.” That was a more fitting handle for
this tidy little man than Borson. He had won a momentary truce with
Sven and had quieted the fractious audience, but I doubted he could
really win hearts and minds in this crowd. Though they might have
disapproved of Sven’s earthy language, most of the audience seemed
to agree with him in principal. They didn’t appear to be toting
Sierra Club cards.

“That’s fair enough. You’re right, Sven.
There is still debate about global warming, and I’m not here today
to tell you I have all the answers. I’m here to tell you what we
know for sure, what we think is possible, and how we propose to
prepare ourselves, our company, and our insured. First, let’s
examine what we actually know. What can we designate as fact?

“Fact one: We know the global mean
temperature is going up at an alarming rate, more than one degree
Fahrenheit over the Twentieth century. The thirteen hottest years
occurred since 1980.

“Fact two: We know there is a natural
greenhouse effect. That is, the gasses of our atmosphere, such as
water vapor, CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide, trap heat and radiate
it back to the Earth, keeping the Earth warmer than it would be
from just the sun’s rays.

“Fact three: We know that man’s activities
have greatly increased the greenhouse gasses. With the burning of
fossil fuels, CO2 has increased thirty percent. Right now we are
dumping seven billion metric tons a year into the atmosphere, and
it stays up there for a hundred years. Methane has increased five
times as fast. Those extra gasses add extra heat to the planet. The
hotter it gets, the more water evaporates. The more water vapor in
the air, the more it heats up. In short, the hotter it gets, the
hotter it gets. Every year more emerging nations–”

“Wait a minute! Whose fact is this?”

The interruption came from a gentleman to my
left who sported a thousand-dollar suit, a beautifully coiffed head
of gray hair, and an East Texas twang to his speech.

“Every time one of those flower sniffers
comes on TV like Chicken Little to claim the sky is falling, some
more sensible scientist comes on and gives a very different
interpretation of the ‘facts.’ We don’t know that it’s humans doing
this. This old world has warmed and cooled lots of times before.
You start shutting down oil wells and cattle ranches, you’ll see
what real disaster is.”

There was a general hubbub as the audience
mumbled their agreement or disagreement. Before Nate regained
control, Sven rose again and chimed in.

“That’s right. All those damn hippies have
to do is claim some rat or bird is endangered, and the next thing
you know the whole damn town is outta work. It’s not enough they
wrecked the loggin’ business, now they hafta start in on oil. Guess
next they’ll want us to go back to horses.” He paused and added
with a grin, “Now that could cause some real pollution that you
city folks might not be familiar with.”

An uneasy laugh tittered through the crowd.
Nate let it play out, then, ignoring Sven, he turned to the Texan
and asked, “David, why are you so sure that this scientist is more
sensible?”

“Well, because he’s not just some nut out
there burning for a cause. He’s not a politician or a government
mooch just trying to save his own job. He doesn’t have an axe to
grind.”

“I see. Are you sure he has no axe to grind?
Please turn to page seven in your conference packets. This is a
list of ‘scientists, organizations, and think tanks who are
supported directly by the oil and coal industry, and the amounts of
cash they receive annually. Their job is to make sure that any
information contrary to industry interest is countered by an
opposing view. If the scientists you are listening to are like
these, they do have an axe to grind.”

The expression on David’s face made verbal
response unnecessary. Nate smiled and said quite affably, “David,
you look like you don’t believe me.”

“Well, if you want to be frank about it, no,
I don’t. You’re trying to tell me that the oil industry can buy off
every newspaper and TV station in our country, and I’m sorry, but I
don’t believe that. We still have a free country here.”

This drew enthusiastic applause.

“Exactly, David. We do have a free country
and a free press, and that is precisely how it’s done.” He paused
to allow his audience to chew on that one.

“One of the best traits of our free press is
that its members usually try to present both sides of an issue. But
in this case, that very quality of fairness in reporting allows oil
interests to use a few key spokesmen to present their side of the
issue against the opinion of more than two thousand international
scientists. The newspapers and television news give equal time to
both sides, making it look like an even argument, but it is
not.”

David folded his arms across his chest and
closed his eyes. He might as well have stuck his fingers in his
ears.

“David, don’t take my word for it. Research
it for yourself. Of course, you will have to read something besides
Lyle Gorman’s editorial in the
East Texas Times
. Get on the
Internet and read world opinion. You will learn that there is
virtually unanimous agreement by every other industrial country in
the world that we are facing a crisis in global warming. Europe is
even considering trade embargos to make the United States join in
reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

That was definitely the wrong tack. The East
Texan shouted back, “That’s exactly why we should quit dumping
money into that damned UN to support those commie bastards. We are
the most powerful and richest nation on Earth, and nobody has the
right to tell us how to run our country. We been doing just fine by
ourselves. How the hell do you think we got to be numero uno,
huh?”