Then he turned the computer off, took the half bottle of single-malt scotch left over from the night before, and went back to his lookout spot on the couch.
Reggie’s windows were dark now. She’d gone to bed.
Justin decided he’d better do the same.
His visitors would be arriving at nine in the morning. It was going to be a long and interesting day. He had to stay sharp. He’d have to be alert because he was going to need to absorb a lot of information.
Yes, he decided. Definitely time for bed.
One last look across the street.
Nothing but darkness.
Everything’s muddy.
He went to his computer, clicked on an illegally downloaded version of Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine,” and cranked it up. It was the perfect song.
A half a bottle of scotch and three-quarters of a thick, hand-rolled joint later, Justin Westwood was sound asleep.
19
Nuri Al-Bazaad liked driving American cars.
They were so quiet. When you rolled up the windows all the way, you couldn’t hear a thing. It amazed him every time because it was like being in a small room shut off from the rest of the world. You could see what was going on in that world, you could sense the mayhem, the corruption, the evil all around you, but you couldn’t hear any of it. And it couldn’t touch you. You were sealed off and removed. Safe. Protected.
Everything was soft and spotless inside American cars, too. It must be very similar to being in heaven, Nuri decided. So clean, so far away from the pain of the world, so comfortable and relaxing. He couldn’t wait to go to heaven. Nuri did not like it very much on earth where everything was so filthy and rough and corrupt. Where women exposed themselves and tried to be like men, and nobody had respect for anything or anyone, and everyone was in so much pain. So much awful, awful pain.
Nuri turned up the volume on the car radio now. Not too much, just a little. Just enough so the gentle strings washed over him like a soothing bath. The sound systems in these cars amazed him. It was like having an orchestra playing in the backseat. You could hear the resonance, the timbre in the music. Nuri thought there would have to be beautiful music in heaven, too. He couldn’t imagine it more beautiful than the surround sound coming from the four speakers in the rented Buick.
Nuri was never bored sitting in a car like the one he waited in now. How could you ever get bored? he wondered. As the music played, he slid the front seat back and forth. It moved so easily forward and back, up and down. He was parked now, he had to wait for the people to come out of their house, and he was becoming a little anxious. Not because he was worried about what he was going to do but because he was anxious to drive again. He was very impressed with the smoothness of the ride, the way this car barely felt any bumps, the way it seemed to glide over any obstacle in its path. He had to give credit to the American roads, which were paved and solid and built to last. Not at all like the roads at home, which were hardly even roads; they were ruts for wagons. They were filthy and ragged and bumpy. They were not like the road that led to heaven. That road would be like an American highway: long and straight and smooth and beautiful.
More than anything else, Nuri liked the heating system that warmed the car. He would turn it all the way up and blast himself with hot air until he would be dripping with sweat on even the coldest day. He still had childhood memories of his cold desert home, of lying awake at night shivering, of thinking he would never be warm again, of his father beating him when he had the temerity to ask for a blanket. “Men do not need blankets,” his father would say, and then slap, hard across the face. “Men do not fear the cold.”
Nuri told his father that he wasn’t afraid. But he was. He was very frightened of the cold. As a child, he thought it would freeze him in place, that it would make his blood a solid block of ice the way it did with water, and that he’d be unable to move. He told his father he didn’t need a blanket and he never asked for one again, but he was always afraid that one day the cold would come and take him. It’s why he kept moving. Why he was always running. He wanted to stay one step ahead of the cold.
It would be warm in heaven, he knew. Warm like a rented Buick, driving along strong, sturdy roads with beautiful surround sound music everywhere.
He slouched down behind the steering wheel now, lowering his chin to his neck, his shoulders hunching up tensely, his eyes peering over the top of the dashboard.
They were coming out of the house.
Moving to their car. All of them.
Holding hands and looking happy.
Yes, yes, they were leaving. They were finally leaving, all together.
Life was very good. The heat was blasting and the music was sweet and they were finally emerging from their home.
Nuri started the engine of his Buick, waited until the other car pulled out of the driveway, then he gently put his foot down on the gas pedal and drove carefully after them along the uncrowded street. He shifted into drive, pressed down harder on the accelerator, and stayed with them, always twenty feet or so behind. Always there but never seen.
As he made his way past the manicured lawns and the young boys playing basketball in their driveways and the occasional bundled-up jogger, Nuri Al-Bazaad was very pleased. He knew he’d be in heaven soon. He knew he’d be far away from the squalor and the misery that lurked behind these suburban doors. That lurked behind all doors everywhere. And as he adjusted the thick seat belt that went around his waist and swung over his chest and back, he knew, too, that soon everything would be warm. The explosion he was going to set off would blow warm breath all over him, blow hard enough to make sure his blood could never freeze, hard enough to make him rise into the air and carry him along the beautiful, straight, glimmering road.
All the way to heaven.
20
“So why don’t you start to tell me about EGenco.”
Justin was anxious to get down to business. The first thirty minutes that his father had been inside his house made him feel as if he were sixteen years old again. Jonathan Westwood didn’t say anything about Justin’s East End house. Nothing complimentary, nothing derogatory. He looked around, took it all in, raised an eyebrow and said, “How far away is the ocean?” When Justin told him it was a ten- or fifteen-minute drive over toward East Hampton and that the bay was just a five-minute walk in the other direction, his father went, “Ahh.” Justin didn’t offer to show the upstairs of the house and his father never asked to see it.
They spent half an hour in small talk. Justin said that he’d take him to the police station later in the day, if he wanted, and Jonathan nodded stiffly. Justin said he’d show off the town, they could go for a short drive, and Jonathan smiled noncommittally. Justin studied his father’s clothes while they sat and had coffee. And his demeanor. Jonathan was dressed casually, beige pants and a light green sweater, and yet somehow gave the impression that he was wearing a three-piece suit. His posture was relaxed and confident and yet he never slouched, never looked awkward in any way. In comparison, Justin felt grubby. He knew he gave off the faint whiff of scotch. And he probably should have shaved. His jeans weren’t pressed, his sweatshirt was expensive but still a sweatshirt.
Yup. Sixteen years old.
Justin realized that a lot of things were making him feel sixteen again these days. The combination of Reggie Bokkenheuser and alcohol, for one. He quickly shoved that thought away. And he shoved hard. There was too much at stake to allow any distractions. Not parental, not sexual, not romantic.
A bit more self-insight, Justin thought. He definitely believed in alternatives. He just didn’t believe in distractions. So he decided to get a big distraction out of the way as quickly and easily as he could.
“Look,” he said to his father. “I know this is hard for you. It’s different seeing me here than when I’m up in Providence. But this is the way I’ve chosen to live and this is what I do. I know it’s not what you’d choose for me but the choice has been made. And it was ma
de a long time ago.”
“I understand,” Jonathan Westwood said.
“I know you do. I just thought it needed saying. And I also want you to know I appreciate your coming here. I think it’s going to turn out to be very important.”
“There’s nothing to appreciate,” his father said. “You asked and I came.”
It was as intimate an exchange as the two had had in years. And it was followed by an awkward silence that lasted until Justin turned to the third man in the room, a man who was blushing furiously and looking in every possible direction but at the two Westwood men, and said, “Sorry, Roger. Family shit. But now it’s out of the way. So why don’t you start to tell me about EGenco.”
His father had flown in with Roger Mallone, at Justin’s request. Mallone was one of the elder Westwood’s key financial advisers and had been extremely helpful to Justin in the past. Roger wasn’t a redhead but he looked as if he should be, with his ruddy complexion and tousled hair. He had the aura of someone who’d once been a terrific high school athlete but hadn’t done much in the thirteen or fourteen years since other than pick up a tennis racket for an easy game of doubles. Softer than he should be, with a self-mocking demeanor that recognized his own lack of strength, Roger was no hero, he was a numbers man with superb connections in the business world, great insight into that world, and tremendous access to information. Right now, all of that was more important to Justin than heroism.
“The last time you were asking me for information,” Roger Mallone said, “you were pointing a gun at me.”
“Slightly different circumstances,” Justin said.
“No one’s trying to arrest you now, I assume.”
“That’s right.”
“Or kill you either.” Mallone smiled. But the smile faded quickly when Justin didn’t answer.
“Jay?” Roger said, looking to prompt an answer with a raised eyebrow. And when Justin just gave a little shrug, Mallone said, “Shit,” and then, quietly and grimly, “You lead a very interesting life.”
“Yes, interesting,” Jonathan said.
“I just hope I don’t have to be around it too much longer,” Mallone muttered.
“EGenco,” Justin prompted. “What can you give me?”
“I can give you days and days. You see the suitcase I brought? That ain’t clothes, pal. It’s filled with financial reports, corporate histories, Wall Street analyses, depositions, reports on various lawsuits. It’ll help if you can narrow things down. The company’s all over the globe and has twenty different divisions that are larger than most companies you’ve ever heard of.”
“Start simple. How about a general overview if you can? And remember, I’ve been out of the financial world a few years.”
Justin could see his father nod firmly at his last statement, as if to add some sort of emphasis.
“All right,” Roger said. “Let’s start with a little history. I’ll work my way forward, and, at some point, if I go off track you lead me back so I can try to focus on the areas you need to understand.”
“Perfect.”
“EGenco was founded in 1922. The founder was a Texan named James Merriwell. .”
The story Roger Mallone proceeded to tell was one of picture-
perfect American capitalism. As he listened, Justin tried to relate the story to anything in his own experience, realized that was an impossibility. EGenco’s past was one that paralleled and exemplified the country’s history: it was a tale of dedication to constant and obsessive expansion. Justin’s life was, he realized, the longer it went on, becoming one of gradual retraction. The boundaries of his existence had, for quite a few years, narrowed and gotten smaller. Something that could never be said of the business that started as an entrepreneurial Oklahoma-based company with the overly grand and self-important name of the Merriwell 20th Century Ultimate Oil Well Cementing Company. As the firm’s reputation grew, it was referred to simply as Merriwell.
For the first thirty-five years or so, James Merriwell was content to carefully expand from building to buying wells and making investments in wildcatters. As his fortune rose, so did his ambitions-or, at least, so did the ambitions of his third, and much younger, wife, Laylene. She pushed her husband, as he was approaching his sixty-fifth birthday, to broaden his business interests, which in turn would broaden their social, cultural, and political circles. Merriwell was only too glad to appease the latest Mrs. Merriwell, who could be rather sharp-tongued when she didn’t get her way. So, in the mid-1950s, Merriwell-as the company was now officially named, and of which Laylene had been given a hefty piece-acquired Green amp; Duggin, an engineering and construction company. G amp;D, as it was called, had been formed in 1918. After its acquisition by Merriwell, it was renowned as a road construction company, a general contractor, and builder of the world’s first offshore platform in 1947. In the mid-1970s, not long before James Merriwell’s ninetieth birthday, Merriwell GD, as it was now called, bought Windmer Industries, a project management company for the oil industry. Windmer had also prospered during the first half of the century. The founder, an inventor named Horatio Windmer, began the company during the country’s first oil boom at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1880, Windmer’s position in the oilfield products manufacturing business had been launched when he patented a cylindrical packer that revolutionized the industry.
The three giants of this industry, Green, Duggin, and Windmer, were all dead by 1960. James Merriwell finally died in 1978, leaving Laylene as one of the richest women in America. Within two years of her husband’s death, she had bought a professional football team, built an opera house in her small Montana hometown and paid Pavarotti a one-million-dollar fee to sing at the opening night ceremony, married a man thirty-two years her junior, with a prenup agreement that gave him thirty-five million dollars upon her death unless he didn’t fulfill his end of the bargain, which was to fuck her a minimum of three times every week, and she’d taken Merriwell public, earning several hundred million dollars more, and changing its name to EGenco. The E was for energy. The Gen was for Genevieve, the daughter she’d had with old man James. Six months after the company went public Genny was killed in a car accident. Laylene was driving but was unhurt. Rumors were that she was drunk as a skunk, but this was Texas so money changed hands, lips were sealed, and no charges were ever brought.
Justin interrupted Roger at this point in the narration to ask him how the hell he knew all these little details. Particularly the one about Laylene’s husband having to fornicate thrice weekly. Roger just raised one eyebrow and said, “When I do an investigation for your father, I make sure I’m thorough.” Then he went back to telling his tale.
In the late eighties the new management team of EGenco took over a corporation called F.X. Springs, an acquisition that expanded them into petroleum refining and petrochemical processing. Francis Xavier Springs had begun his business in 1902. Initially they were pipe fabricators; eventually he created technology that altered petroleum refining and petrochemical processing and, with the money that rolled in after that, he built his own facilities based on those techniques. When they were merged into EGenco, they formed the next-to-last piece of what the corporate report called “vertical and horizontal energy integration.” The final piece was a relatively new company called LecTro, a midsize utility company that was acquired in 1991. There were now five divisions that formed the base of EGenco’s production attributes: Merriwell, Green amp; Duggin, Windmer, F.X. Springs, and LecTro. Together, they offered an enormous array of products, services, and integrated solutions for oil and gas exploration, development, and production. And when they officially outgrossed their biggest rival, Halliburton, the company was able to rightfully call themselves the largest and broadest unified oil and gas services company in the world.
By 1997, EGenco’s worldwide revenues were somewhere around nineteen billion dollars. Then, according to Roger Mallone, they got greedy.
“Can we go back a minute?” Justin asked.
“A unified oil and gas services company. Put that in English.”
“It’s simple. There is literally nothing in the finding, development, and processing of oil and gas that they don’t have their hand in. They explore and develop, they produce, they handle maintenance for other producers, they convert and refine. They run plants and oil wells, build plants and wells, manufacture everything from drill bits to subsea pumps. And with LecTro, they actually even supply and sell electricity. So they literally are capable of controlling every aspect of the energy business.”
“Is that legal?”
“It’s legal if the government decides it’s legal. Would it have been twenty years ago? Well, let’s say pre-Reagan? Probably not. Today? Well. . would you want to be the government prosecutor that downsizes them and runs the risk of costing people tens of thousands of jobs?”
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