The Key (14 page)

B
eating up Jake would have to wait until the next day. I’d read somewhere that the ability to delay gratification is a sign of maturity, and Peter and I were nothing if not mature.

We had been prepared to be unable to gain access to Thunderbolt’s premises, so our plan was to find the local hangouts frequented by Thunderbolt’s employees. There we intended to casually engage happy-hour patrons in discussion of Thunderbolt, Perry, the proposed buyout, and even Tiger Defense in a last-ditch attempt to track down Man of the People and to uncover any possible clues as to what, precisely, was so dirty about this deal.

As plans went, we recognized that it was fairly lame and that its odds of success were relatively low. It also relied on social skills that neither I nor Peter really had, but we hadn’t been able to come up with more attractive alternatives. I was becoming resigned to the ways in which being on the wrong side of the law, however unjustly, limited one’s ability to pursue justice effectively.

We still had a few hours to kill between the end of the workday and the beginning of our pub crawl, so we drove off in search of yet another pay phone and more Internet access. While State College had offered nothing but copy shops and Internet cafés, here the pickings were slim. We finally located a public library and pulled into its parking lot. The library’s architect appeared to be from the same school as the architect responsible for Thunderbolt’s plant, but the building compensated for its ugliness with a line of computer terminals inside and a pay phone in the back corridor near the restrooms.

I called Luisa first to see if there had been any new developments.

“Did you get the fax?” she asked. “Did any of the stories mean anything to you?”

I’d scanned the list she’d sent in the car, and nothing had struck me as particularly relevant. I told her as much, feeling apologetic because the list had clearly represented a lot of television watching and Luisa was unabashed in her conviction that television was directly responsible for the decline of Western civilization.

“You mean we watched all of those vile blowhards on Fox News for nothing?”

“But you got to see Anderson Cooper, too. He’s not a vile blowhard.”

She harrumphed her reply.

“What’s going on with Hilary? Has she found the guy in the suede jacket?”

“Last I heard, she was watching Jake and Annabel having a cozy-looking lunch and was pissed that she was skipping her own lunch to do so. But there was no sign of the man following Jake, and I doubt that Hilary would have missed him if he was there. She has a good eye for attractive mysterious strangers.”

I told Luisa about Jake’s e-mail, and she was appropriately incensed about his attempt to play the innocent. Then she gave me a new number to call for my next check-in. “The IT department here hooked me up with a temporary mobile phone. This number should be safe for a day or two.”

Peter was waiting, so I thanked Luisa and ended our call, assuring her that we’d get in touch later that evening. I left him loading quarters into the phone and went to one of the computer terminals to check my new e-mail account in the vain hope that Man of the People had reconsidered. But all of the e-mails that had accumulated since that morning were spam.

I closed out of e-mail and took a moment to scan the latest headlines on the Web. I seemed to be in luck, as a major earthquake had struck Kazakhstan just a couple of hours ago, completely eclipsing me as a story. It seemed wrong that an earthquake was working in my favor, but there wasn’t much I could do about it now. I made a mental note to donate to a relief fund as soon as I regained access to my bank account.

I stood up and stretched, still cramped from the long car ride. Across the room, I could see down the back corridor and Peter’s profile as he spoke on the phone. A fresh wave of gratitude washed over me. This couldn’t have been a convenient time for him to ditch work and go on the lam with his wayward fiancée. Peter glanced up and, catching my eye, gestured to indicate he needed a few more minutes before tipping the brim of his trucker’s cap in my direction. I hoped he wasn’t getting too attached to this new accessory. Gratitude aside, there was no way I was going to let him keep wearing something that silly-looking after all this was over.

I returned to my chair in front of the computer. My conversation with Luisa had made me wonder if perhaps I’d accidentally missed something important on her list of stories. I might as well use the downtime to take another look.

The items on the fax had been carefully grouped, probably by Luisa or Jane, who were the most structured thinkers among my friends. The first heading was International and included a long list of stories about events on other continents: armed insurgencies in the Middle East, political turmoil in Eastern Europe, and trade tensions among Asian nations. I was fairly confident that none of these stories had inspired Dahlia’s fateful call to me and had skimmed through this list rapidly in the car.

The next heading was National/Politics, and I’d skimmed through that section rapidly as well, focusing my attention on the category labeled Business, thinking that it would be the most likely to yield useful information. I looked over the stories in this category again, and I even pulled up a few related articles on the Internet, but nothing seemed connected to the mess I’d found myself in.

A quick visual check showed me that Peter was still on the phone, so for lack of anything better to do I turned back to the stories grouped under National/Politics to give them more careful consideration, typing relevant keywords into the search bar. But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t figure out why Dahlia would want to tell me about trends in student test scores, the death of a famed civil rights leader, drug use in suburban America, or Congressional debate regarding proposed health-care legislation. It seemed like Luisa really had had to watch those vile blowhards on Fox News for no good reason.

The final item on the list was about the progress of a new appropriations bill through the Senate Armed Forces committee. The futility of the entire effort made me sigh as I typed in “Senate Armed Forces” and “appropriations” and hit enter. With another sigh, I clicked on the first article returned by the search, a link to a
Washington Post
article from Tuesday’s edition with the headline: Senate Armed Forces Committee Debates Appropriations Bill.

I was already halfway through the article before I realized that there was a familiar name in the very first paragraph. I returned to the beginning and read it again, more carefully this time.

The man in the accompanying picture looked older than he had in the one Man of the People had sent me, but it was the same guy. I wasn’t sure that I’d want to be called Flipper rather than Philip, or even Phil, but nicknames aren’t always the result of personal preference. It was easy to see how Philip could morph into Flipper after a few keg-stands.

Dahlia must have seen a clip from the press conference on the news, and, as the official keeper of Gallagher’s Rolodex, she must have known that Brisbane was in it and added things up on her own. She may even have scheduled meetings or conference calls for Gallagher, Brisbane, and Perry, although it would have been unwise of them to leave a public record of any tête-a-têtes outside of the occasional Princeton alumni event. Perhaps she’d even watched the Tiger deal unfold and recognized a similar pattern.

The article continued, nicely clearing up some other matters for me:

The article went on to identify a number of companies by name and to discuss their lobbying efforts in greater detail. Thunderbolt Industries wasn’t on the list, but it didn’t have to be. There was no need for Thunderbolt to openly lobby the Senate Committee when its CEO went “way back” with the Committee’s chairman.

Everything about the deal that hadn’t made sense before now made complete sense. Thunderbolt’s revenues were in decline and its current stock price was languishing because it had lost out on an important contract, one that Brisbane had used his position and influence to steer away from Thunderbolt in order to depress the company’s performance. As a result, Perry could do his buyout at the depressed price, not to mention win concessions from the union. Then, once the appropriations bill passed, Brisbane could steer a few fat contracts Perry’s way. Thunderbolt would flourish, and Perry could sell the company at a handsome profit, generating equally handsome returns for his investors. The previous shareholders would lose out, but I doubted Perry and his investors cared.

And I had a pretty good idea as to who some of those investors might be. I wasn’t sure how they’d managed it—probably through an intricate tangle of trusts and front companies to mask their conflicts of interest—but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to learn that Flipper Brisbane and Glenn Gallagher both had considerable interests in the “investor group” backing Perry’s management buyout.

Meanwhile, the accelerated schedule for getting the deal done was undoubtedly a direct result of the heightened pressure the esteemed senator was under to finalize the appropriations bill. Once the bill was approved, the ways in which Thunderbolt could benefit would cause the company’s stock price to pop. If Perry didn’t get the deal done before this happened, he and his investors would lose out.

The scope of both the planning and the duplicity was breathtaking, but they’d had practice, after all. I was sure that if I did a little more research, I’d find that the Tiger buyout had followed the same pattern.

And then I realized something else. If Jake had worked on the Tiger deal, he’d had a chance to see Gallagher, Perry, and Brisbane pull their first scam. While it was unlikely that Gallagher had confided in Jake, much less cut him in on either deal, Jake must have figured out that Gallagher and his cronies were attempting a repeat performance of their first success.

This time, however, Jake had also figured out a way to get a piece of the action. Because the investment had been made during Gallagher and Annabel’s marriage, its proceeds would probably be fair game even under the most stringent of prenuptial agreements. If the investment generated the same sort of returns the Tiger investment had generated, it would mean enough money to set anyone up for life, even in the style to which Annabel was accustomed.

But neither Annabel nor Jake would be able to enjoy those proceeds if the deal didn’t go as planned.

I’
d found the key that unlocked the answers—or most of them, at least. But I still needed proof. And I needed it soon, ideally before Thunderbolt’s shareholders agreed to sell their company at an artificially depressed price the next day.

I was so deep in thought that when Peter placed a hand on my shoulder, I gave a startled yelp. A librarian promptly shushed me from her post at the checkout desk, her glare disapproving behind thick glasses. I mouthed a sheepish apology, even as I wondered whether the glasses came with the job or were a prerequisite to getting it. She continued to glare at me for a long moment before returning to stamping whatever she was stamping.

“Read this,” I whispered to Peter, tugging at his sleeve with one hand and pointing with the other to the
Washington Post
article on the screen before me.

He pulled up a chair and scrolled quickly through the article. It didn’t take him long to put the pieces together. “Unbelievable. They had the entire thing rigged.”

“But we still can’t prove it.”

“There’s got to be a trail, somewhere. Something that will prove what Gallagher and Perry and Brisbane were all up to.”

“They’ve probably covered their tracks pretty well. We really need someone on the inside, somebody at Thunderbolt who can help.”

“Well, if we’re lucky, Man of the People will be that somebody. Assuming we can figure out who he is. Which reminds me—I had an idea while I was on the phone. May I?” he asked, reaching out his hand for the mouse.

“Sure.” He sent a copy of the
Washington Post
article to the printer and then returned to the search bar. I watched as he typed in “Man of the People” and “Thunderbolt.”

“Oh. I should have thought of that.” Two heads were definitely better than one, especially when that one was mine.

“It probably won’t lead anywhere,” he said, pressing enter. A long list of results filled the screen, but they were for sites about Greek and Norse gods interspersed with a few for evangelical groups. “At least, not anywhere useful. I had a feeling it was a long shot.”

“But it was a good idea.”

He shrugged. “Ready to get going?”

I nodded and reached for my jacket. He moved the mouse to close out of the search engine, but then he hesitated.

“Maybe I’ll just try one more thing.” He added “Industries” to “Thunderbolt” in the search bar, pecking at the letters with his index fingers. Peter’s business revolved around computers, but he had never thought that sufficient reason to learn how to type.

I was expecting that the search engine would return with no results this time, instead of too many about things we didn’t care about, but a short list appeared on the screen. They were all links to the Web site of a Pittsburgh newspaper.

“That’s more like it,” I said approvingly.

“Unless it’s an exposé on Thor.” Peter clicked on one of the links and an article popped up in the browser.

“New union troubles?” I asked, momentarily confused. Then I checked the article’s date—it had been posted weeks ago.

“No, just the same old union troubles, I guess.”

“Well, we know how it ended. Perry and his executive team extracted some concessions on benefits, but not as many as they’d hoped. The union held pretty firm. On Monday Perry said that they’d wrapped up negotiations over the weekend.” I scanned the rest of the article. “I wonder why this even came up in the search results. There’s no ‘man of the people’ reference in here.” I pushed my chair back and stood to put on my coat.

I had collected the
Washington Post
article from the printer and was stashing it in my pocket when I heard Peter’s shout.

“Aha!”

This time the librarian’s shushing was even more emphatic, but when Peter gave her his own apologetic look, instead of continuing to glare at him she made a “don’t-worry-about-it” face. I knew from experience that Peter’s apologetic look was very convincing, but her easy capitulation seemed unfair. However, I had more important things to worry about than battling the librarian’s double standard.

“Aha what?” I asked.

“Here.” He pointed to the screen. A sidebar ran alongside the main article.

“Aha!” I cried.

This time even Peter couldn’t soothe the librarian’s ire.

It was nice to finally know who we were looking for. Unfortunately, while Frank Kryzluk may have been a regular guy and a real man of the people, his democratic leanings didn’t extend to listing his number or address in the local phone book, nor could we find it on the Web. This was probably a wise precaution if he was as much of a local celebrity as the article claimed, but it was a bit frustrating for our purposes.

So we were back to our original plan, albeit with far more focus than we’d had initially. Now we had a name, and even a picture from the paper. It showed a shaggy-looking man in his fifties. His expression was good-humored beneath a trucker’s cap.

“See,” said Peter, pointing to the cap. “Everyone’s wearing them.”

I left him making amends to the librarian and returned to the pay phone to call Luisa.

“Didn’t I just talk to you?”

“Yes, but I have a new assignment for you.”

“Goody,” she said dryly. “What do you want this time? Everything Oprah’s worn in the past month? The personal challenges facing the guests on Dr. Phil? Or how about that Judge Judy person? Do you want me to investigate her?”

“Close. Sort of.”

“You mean, you actually want me to do legal work?” she asked when I’d explained what I needed.

“You are a lawyer,” I pointed out. “If anyone can connect Gallagher and Brisbane to Perry’s investor group, it’s you, right? There have to be legal records of front companies and partnerships and stuff like that.”

“I guess it’s better than watching more television.”

Peter was surprisingly good at chatting up the librarian, and she turned out to be surprisingly useful once she got over the glaring thing.

“The Tick Tock Tavern,” she told us with certainty. “That’s where you want to go. They have a special on Fridays: two-dollar pitchers from five to seven. And it’s practically across the street from the Thunderbolt plant. You can’t miss it.”

Because I had formally relinquished my navigating responsibilities to Peter, we didn’t miss it. At exactly 5:00 p.m., we were standing in front of a low cinder-block building adorned with a neon sign welcoming us to the Ti k ock Tav rn. Another sign, which was either better cared for or more resilient, assured us that we would find Iron City beer on tap at this establishment.

“Ready?” asked Peter, settling his trucker’s cap more firmly on his head.

“I hate that hat.”

“Maybe it’ll grow on you after you have a few brewskies.” He pushed open the outer door.

“Brewskie?” I asked, following him inside.

The interior was dimly lit and furnished with the expected assortment of Formica tables with faux-wood finish and chairs upholstered in cracked and peeling vinyl. A man was perched on a stool behind the bar. He’d been reading but looked up as we approached.

“What can I get you folks?” he asked.

“Iron City?” suggested Peter, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Why not? With a Diet Coke chaser?”

The bartender closed his book and placed it on the rear counter next to the cash register. I made a mental bet—either
The DaVinci Code
or
The Illustrated DaVinci Code—
before stealing a glance at the title. It was Edith Wharton,
House of Mirth.

“How are you liking Lily Bart?” I asked as the bartender poured our drinks. He glanced over from the tap in surprise. The economics half of my double major may have proved more lucrative over the years, but the literature half occasionally came in handy.

“She’s something,” he said, his tone admiring. “I just hope she ends up with that Selden guy.”

Half an hour later, the bartender and I were debating Wharton’s use of symbolism, we were on our second round of drinks, and the place was starting to fill up.

Half an hour after that, the bartender was our new best friend, we were on our third round of drinks, and the place was packed.

And a half hour after that, our new best friend was personally introducing us to Frank Kryzluk. Apparently, he’d managed to come in and seat himself in the back without us even noticing, probably at some point between rounds three and four.