Delicate Chaos

by Jeff Buick

  In retrospect, taking the CEO out on the cruise ship had been a bad idea. Throwing people overboard from a deck on one of the floating hotels was being touted in the papers as a possible way to commit the perfect murder. But while the jurisdictional issue made it attractive, the profile it raised was exactly the opposite.

  The phone rang and he checked the caller ID. This one was important. He picked up the receiver and said, “Give me good news, Jack. Tell me you shut her down.”

  “Not good news.” The tone in Jack Dunn’s voice was anything but optimistic. “It looks like her bill will pass through committee. I can’t get the support I need to kill it.”

  Swanson’s hand trembled slightly and his voice was shaky. “When will it go through? How long do I have?”

  “About ten days at the committee level, then it gets tough to estimate. Another couple of weeks in the Senate, then Congress. Things are moving quickly these days once they hit the house floor. I’d say a month at the outside.”

  “Are you sure you can’t sway them?”

  “Ninety-nine percent. Claire Buxton has a handful of other senators riled up about some terminally ill young girl in Kentucky. The only way you’re going to stop her is if she’s out of office, but she still has two years left on her term so that’s not going to happen.”

  “Okay,” Swanson said. “If anything happens to change things, let me know.”

  “Immediately.”

  The line went dead and Derek Swanson leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. Buxton’s bill was at least a month from becoming law, which might be enough time to have the conversion in place. Unless there was an overzealous watchdog somewhere in the system who recognized the danger in the upcoming legislation, he should have time to dump a good portion of his stock after the price peaked, but before the impact of the new laws was felt. It would cut into the bottom line, but forty or forty-five million in his pocket was still possible. And that was worth the effort. Definitely worth the effort.

  He glanced at the calendar. Wednesday, July 25. DC Trust was the last hurdle, and they should be onside very soon now, which would allow them to proceed with the conversion. The effect of Claire Buxton’s bill would be disastrous, but only to the shareholders who held on to their stock. The ones in the know, like him, would be long gone.

  With the money.

  Derek Swanson closed his eyes and his office faded to black. He would be retired soon. A lot quicker than he had imagined, but what did he care. His motivation had always been money, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d be in the big leagues. Well out of the multimillionaire slot, on his way to billionaire status. It would take time, but with a few smart investments, he could do it. A hazy vision of Reginald Morgan floated through the darkness, but he pushed it away. The man was old, ready to go anytime. He hadn’t sped things along all that much. Simply helped nature take its course. No more getting old with all the aches and pains that went with age. No more worries.

  “You can thank me later, Reggie,” he said quietly.

  20

  “What are the chances the unions will settle?” Leona asked.

  She and her team were entrenched in the boardroom at the bank, piles of paper stacked on the polished wood. It was shortly after lunch on Friday, July 27, deadline day for their reports on Coal-Balt. All four of her team were ready. The mood in the room was anything but upbeat.

  Sean Grant shook his head. “Two of them may, but the other three are going to walk unless management puts something better on the table. And it’s not just wages. CoalBalt has been screwing these guys on their pensions for a long time and it’s coming back to haunt them. The plans are only forty to fifty percent funded. And unless the markets take some sort of huge surge and push their investments way up, they’re in trouble. Coal-Balt won’t be able to cover the pension checks.”

  He took a drink of water and pulled another file from his stack. “The Teamsters move the coal between the mine and the plant. And they’re not happy. A couple of their members were fired and the company ran roughshod over the grievances. There’s absolutely no way they’ll settle when their contract is up.”

  “When is that?” Leona ran her fingers through her ringlets.

  “Nine months.”

  “So it’s about ready to hit the fan.”

  “Big-time. The Plumbers and Pipefitters are a couple of steps behind the Teamsters. And the electricians always want to earn more money than anyone else. So they’re going to be pretty militant when their contract comes due for negotiation.”

  “All right, labor troubles are massing on the horizon,” Leona said, then turned to Angela Samarach. “What about their accounting practices? Any Enrons in the mix?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I can see. They’ve been aboveboard with all their income reporting and have been depreciating their equipment at a reasonable rate. Profits are good and appear to be legitimate. There aren’t a lot of warning lights going off on the financial end.”

  “What about taxes?” Leona asked. “They owe the government anything?”

  “A few million in current taxes, but nothing in arrears. They’re right up to date. Like I said, financially, they look good.”

  “Well, they owe us some money. That’s why we’re doing this.”

  “I factored in all their loans. Their loan-to-asset ratio is fine.”

  Leona nodded. “Jarrod, what’s up with the regulatory end of things?”

  Jarrod cleared his throat and pushed back a strand of long hair from his face. “Right now, Coal-Balt is within the federal emission guidelines, but that could change soon.”

  “Why? What’s up?”

  “There’s a new bill being drafted that is an extension of both the Clean Air Act and the Clear Skies Act. It closes loopholes in the Acts and gives them real teeth. And if it passes, Coal-Balt will be greatly affected.”

  “How?” Leona asked, chewing on the end of her pen.

  “Right now companies that generate electrical power by burning fossil fuels can sidestep installing new technology to cut down pollution if they renovate less than twenty percent of their facilities at a time. It’s a no-brainer that every renovation is pegged at eighteen to nineteen percent of the value of the plant. Claire Buxton’s new bill would stop that in its tracks. Lombard II would have to comply with the current emission standards, which means a complete overhaul, including adding new scrubbers and other antiemis-sion equipment.”

  “Do you have a dollar figure on what that would cost?”

  “An estimate, but probably within ten percent.” He checked his notes. “Eight hundred and thirty million dollars.”

  Leona let out a long breath. “That’s a lot of money. And they would have to implement those changes in some sort of set time period?”

  “One year.”

  “Now that’s interesting,” Leona said. “You said the bill hasn’t passed yet. How did you find out about it?”

  “I have some friends working as interns for a couple of senators. They let me know it’s pending.”

  “I hope you did nothing wrong when you had your friends get this information for you,” Leona said. “Like insider trading in Senate secrets?”

  “No,” Jarrod laughed. “No secrets compromised in the investigation.”

  “What are the chances of this bill becoming law?”

  He shrugged. “Fifty-fifty. Might happen. Might not. It has some key support, but these things are always a bit of a crapshoot until they actually get through the house. There’s a lot of influential people who don’t want to see this become legislation.”

  “I can imagine.” She turned to Tracey Mendez, the final member of the team. “So what did you find that falls outside what everyone else was looking at?”

  “Quite a bit,” Tracey said, referring to her notes. “Straight off the top, Coal-Balt is involved in six litigation suits, all as the defendant. None of them are huge, but altogether they total almost sixteen million dollars.”

&nbs
p; “Why are they being sued?” Leona asked.

  “Two of the suits are from former workers who allege that the company provided them with unsafe working conditions. One was a miner, the other worked in the plant on the retention pond. The other four are all environmental.

  Property owners suing because the company’s operations destroyed the land surrounding their houses or damage to their water supply. Coal-Balt is fighting all of them, but they’ll probably settle out of court for about half the cost of the initial claim.”

  “So about eight million dollars, give or take. That’s not bad.”

  “No, it’s not. Litigation isn’t a major concern. But they’ve got other problems.”

  “Like?”

  “Well, one that recently ironed itself out. The company CEO, Reginald Morgan, was opposed to the conversion. But with his death, that’s a bit of a moot point now.”

  “What are you talking about?” Leona asked, leaning forward. “There was dissension in the ranks?”

  “Big-time. At least that’s the rumor. Derek Swanson wanted the change, but Morgan was looking to oppose it.”

  Leona was quiet for a few seconds, then asked, “Who would have come out on top? Did the people you were talking with have any idea?”

  “Morgan was the CEO, and his family founded the company. But it’s now a publicly traded company, and the shareholders hold the trump card these days. Swanson’s appeal would have been to sell the shareholders on the prospect of huge financial gains in their stock portfolios. But Morgan had a lot of clout with the longtime shareholders. I’d say the consensus was in Morgan’s favor.”

  “Now that’s interesting,” she said. “Management on different pages. Doesn’t make for smooth sailing.” She mulled over the information for a few moments, then asked, “What else?”

  “I’m not an expert, but from what I’ve been able to piece together, the whole operation is shaky. Straight off the top, the mine is running out of coal. They’ve got a very low Demonstrated Reserve Base, which is calculated on anthracite or bituminous coal beds a minimum of twenty-eight inches thick, or subbituminous coal beds greater than sixty inches that occur within a thousand feet of the surface.”

  “What’s anthracite?” Leona asked.

  “Coal is broken down into grades, and anthracite is the highest. It’s very hard, has lots of fixed carbon and burns well with little residue. Bituminous coal is the most common grade of coal in North America and is used by power plants to generate electricity. It doesn’t burn as clean as anthracite. Ninety percent of the coal the mine produces is bituminous.”

  “That’s not a bad thing, is it?”

  “No, it’s common. But the industry sets an Average Quality of Coal based on trace elements, moisture, ash and fixed carbon among other things. Coal-Balt is producing low-quality bituminous coal from a quickly depleting supply.”

  “Which means they’ll have to find another source of coal soon or they won’t have any fuel for their power plant.”

  “Exactly. And the ten percent of the coal the mine is producing that isn’t bituminous is lignite. And lignite is an extremely low grade of coal that burns dirty and pumps a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

  “So without the new antiemission bill passing the operation is in trouble. With it in place, they’re dead in the water.”

  Tracey nodded. “Five years and they’re out of business. Unless they come up with another source of coal.”

  Leona was silent for the better part of a minute. She shuffled a few papers about, reviewing the high points. Her staff straightened their papers and began refiling their reports in briefcases and file folders.

  “Each of you has a full copy of the reports you submitted today,” she said, and they all nodded. “Thank you for a job well done. Everyone.” She looked up from the stack of paper. “There’s one more thing. Everyone knows about the CEO of Coal-Balt, Reginald Morgan, disappearing from a cruise ship. As his company is a major client of ours, we’ve been asked not to talk about it outside the office, but among ourselves we can certainly acknowledge what happened. Mr. Morgan has been a client of DC Trust for almost forty years. He’s a well-respected businessman and philanthropist. That his company is experiencing some bumps in the road does nothing to detract from his character.”

  “I met him numerous times at different functions around the city,” Angela Samarach said. “He was a true gentleman.”

  “Yes, he was,” Leona said. “I had the privilege of meeting him once. Both he and his wife, Amelia, were wonderful people.” She glanced around the table. “So let’s keep any comments about Mr. Morgan, even to friends, to what a warmhearted man he was.”

  The group split up, Leona heading for her office down the hall, the other four retreating back to the eleventh floor. She stopped in the staff room and grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge. A noise from behind her caused her to turn. Bill Cawder was entering the room, coffee cup in hand.

  “Hey, Bill.”

  “Leona. How’s life on the twelfth floor treating you?”

  “Love it,” she said, lifting the can. “There’s never a shortage of the good stuff.”

  “I think you’re the only one up here who drinks that,” he said, then asked, “What was the meeting all about? Saw you and a few others sequestered in the boardroom for a couple of hours.”

  “Coal-Balt. The results of a feasibility study for their conversion to an income trust.”

  “How’d it go?” He filled his cup and added a touch of sugar.

  “I’d rather not say anything until I submit my report to Anthony Halladay,” she said. This was her first assignment as vice president and the last thing she needed was for her findings to hit Halladay’s desk before her report.

  “Whatever you say,” Cawder responded. He stopped for a second, then said, “You junior or senior vice president?”

  “Just a run-of-the-mill VP, I think. Why?”

  “Well, if you were senior vice president, I’d have to call you sir, or ma’am.” He grinned and disappeared into the hallway.

  Leona stood in the staff room, with its plush rugs and teak table and chairs, and thought about Cawder’s comment. All her life she had pushed her way to the top, trying to be the son her father had always wanted. Why couldn’t she be the one looking for help? Just once. Why did she always have to be the strong one? The one with the answers.

  For once, she didn’t have an answer to the question.

  21

  Derek Swanson watched the ball arc toward the green, then land within twenty feet of the pin. He smiled and gave the rest of his foursome a wave, slipped his seven iron back in the bag and walked toward the eighteenth green. Even with a two putt he was still only six over par. A damn good round for a twelve handicap. The summer grass felt spongy under his feet and he had a renewed confidence ebbing from his pores. His mind wandered from the last hole on the course to the office.

  Senator Claire Buxton wasn’t going to derail his plans. Her bill would never pass fast enough to kill the conversion and he would start dumping stock in the weeks before it became law. The real obstacle to his forty-or fifty-million-dollar windfall was Reginald Morgan. And the old man was shark food. They had never found his body, probably never would. Amelia was doing all right. She had her family and a hundred million dollars to help her grieve. Not that the money meant anything to her. She and Reggie had been filthy rich for so long she didn’t know any other way to live.

  Swanson reached the green and waited for the rest of the group to putt out. He had this for a birdie and his best round of the season. There was a slight left to right break and the hole was downhill—not an easy putt. He lined it up from a couple of different angles, then tapped the ball with an even stroke. It appeared to be too far left, then as it slowed the slope took over and the ball broke to the right. A foot from the hole it didn’t seem to have enough speed, but the slight downhill angle gave it enough to reach the hole and drop. Swanson pumped the air with his fist, Tiger
style. He shook hands with the rest of the foursome and headed for the clubhouse. What a way to spend a Saturday morning. He dropped his clubs off for cleaning, then opened his locker and changed out of his soft spikes and golf pants and shirt. He had finished changing when another man came around the corner and leaned against the lockers. The space around them was deserted, save for the two men.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Swanson asked, his voice low and threatening.

  Darvin stared back at him with dark eyes. His light brown hair was slicked back and sprayed and he had a double chin that Swanson had never noticed before.

  “Needed to talk with you,” he said in a dry voice.

  “I have nothing to say to you. Our business is concluded.” Swanson snapped his locker shut and spun the combination lock. He hoisted his tote bag and started for the door. The killer fell in behind him.

  “You shouldn’t treat people so poorly, Derek. Especially when they know stuff that could send you to jail.”

  Swanson stopped in his tracks and spun about. “You’ve got nothing on me. There is no paper trail linking me to you, or to Reggie’s death. Nothing. Go back to whatever it is you do when you’re not killing people and leave me alone.”

  A smile spread across Darvin’s face. His eyes danced with darkness. “Tying you to Reginald Morgan’s murder is easy.” The smile disappeared and the eyes turned cold. “We need to talk.”

  “All right,” Swanson said. “We can stand out by the driving range.”

  He pushed through the doors and walked briskly past the putting green to a bank of trees that bordered the practice range. Two men and one woman were hitting balls, but they were a hundred yards or more from the trees. Swanson glanced about to make sure they were alone and hidden from sight by the foliage, then turned to face the killer.