Naked Ambition

by Rick Pullen

  The room was silent as everyone on the newspaper side looked over the documents, written entirely in Spanish. Beck sat stunned. Did Woodard’s stringer screw up? He was too good for that, Beck assured himself. He’d seen the paperwork.

  It was difficult to tell if the documents were legitimate. They looked similar to the faxes Bobby Woodard had sent from the stringer in Caracas, but extra pages made it appear Capo Mining was the company’s owner and not Lamurr Technologies. Could there be two XAX companies owned by two different parent companies? What were the odds?

  Spanish or not, Beck noticed something. He stood, walked behind the others, then leaned near Curtiss and whispered.

  Curtiss looked at page two of the documents and nodded, picking up on his tip immediately. He turned and faced the lawyers across the table again. “Do you really expect us to believe two subsidiaries of two totally unrelated companies, both of which have the exact same name, have the same five corporate officers? This is an obvious forgery,” Curtiss said.

  Even though he couldn’t read three words of Spanish, Beck had remembered the officers’ names because he had spelled them out for Nancy back when he was in Grand Cayman. Thank god he couldn’t pronounce them. He might not have remembered how they were spelled. Maybe it was a good thing he never learned Spanish. Score one for the good guys, he thought.

  “Mr. Kelly,” Vandevelde said, “you found these documents yourself, is that not true?”

  “Yes,” the young lawyer said.

  “And you went to Caracas, directly to Capo Mining and to XAX and to the local government offices, to obtain these documents?” “That’s correct.” “Are these forgeries?”

  “If they are, then they were forged by the companies themselves in an attempt to deceive me.”

  “So it’s our position, Mr. Curtiss, that these documents are not fraudulent, but certified copies of legitimate corporate filings from Venezuela that prove there is no tie whatsoever between Lamurr Technologies and Senator Bayard,” Vandevelde said. “If you should print any story saying such, you will be knowingly and maliciously printing an egregious error of fact, and we will use whatever legal means at our disposal to expose the Post-Examiner’s irresponsible behavior. Are we clear on that?”

  “ Very clear,” Curtiss growled in a low, deep voice.

  Beck couldn’t believe it. Bayard’s sleazy lawyer might get away with it. How could Curtiss let this happen? He was supposed to be the newspaper’s First Amendment tiger. Beck cringed. He wondered if those documents scattered across the conference room table, which no one could really decipher, were his story’s epitaph.

  The meeting broke up immediately, no handshakes this time. Cunningham spoke as soon as Curtiss closed the door behind the campaign attorneys.

  “So, if there is even the slightest hint of truth to these documents, they have a good chance of winning a libel case against us,” Cunningham said, looking directly at her lawyers. “No matter how dubious these documents might be we can’t afford a lawsuit like this, especially if we have been warned ahead of time. However small the possibility is, they could nail us.”

  Oh great. Here it comes. The end is near, thought Beck.

  Nancy burst forward. “But if we take the time to check these out, it could take us days, maybe a week or more,” she said. “Either way, unless we can work extremely fast, it appears they will get what they want—no story before the election.”

  Here we go again, thought Beck. Cunningham is wimping out.

  “Financially, if we lose, it would be a tough hit,” Cunningham said. “But if we are wrong on a story of this size, we could take a much bigger hit to our reputation.” She paused and looked at her fingers splayed on the table. A large ruby ring sparkled on her right hand. Beck looked around the table. They all sat in silence, their eyes on Cunningham, waiting for her to speak.

  “Pat,” Katherine Cunningham practically screamed for Patricia Wade, her secretary in the adjacent room. “Have the foreign desk find Bobby Woodard. I want him on a conference call in twenty minutes. Nancy, grab the copies of the documents the stringer found in Caracas. Charles, you and Roby have fifteen minutes to examine those documents and compare them to the ones Nancy has. Grab Garcia in the newsroom. He is fluent in Spanish. Beck, make a half-dozen hard copies of your draft. I want everyone at this table in twenty minutes.”

  Whoa, thought Beck. Where did that come from? Was he wrong about her? He hurried off to make copies.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Bobby Woodard was on a satellite phone from a small village high in the mountains of Peru. The reception was scratchy. Beck leaned forward and listened intensely to the speaker-phone in the middle of the conference table.

  “Bobby,” Katherine said, “I need you to get to Caracas by tomorrow.”

  He explained it was a day’s ride down the mountain.

  “Then get there in two days . . . Pat, talk to the travel office and get him the first flight to Venezuela. Bobby, Nancy will e-mail you scans of the documents that your stringer found along with the documents the lawyers dropped in our laps today. Get all you can find on their origin.”

  Bobby said he’d try, but his remote location made travel problematic.

  “Bobby, Beck here. How credible is your stringer? Could there be any truth to what Bayard’s lawyers are tossing at us?”

  There was silence over the phone. Finally Woodard talked. “I think he’s a good stringer, but he’s a stringer. He could have made a mistake.”

  Beck held his head in his hands. He hated uncertainty.

  Garcia interpreted the documents for the lawyers. He found no clues to help their cause. Again, more uncertainty. Curtiss and Roby checked the wording of several paragraphs in the story to see if any verbiage could be changed to write around the issue. There was no way. Bobby needed to find more evidence two thousand miles away.

  “Let me go down there,” Beck said, turning to Nancy.

  “There’s no time,” she said, slowly shaking her head. “We’ve got to rely on our people there. But stay in touch with Bobby’s progress so we can move as quickly as possible.”

  Beck felt uneasy. He was losing control of his story.

  He left with Nancy and waited for the elevator to the newsroom. “Wow. I’ve never seen Cunningham like that before.”

  “You just need to give her a chance,” Nancy said as the doors opened. “I know these aren’t the old days, but even in this new style of journalism, she can be pretty impressive at times.”

  “Maybe I’m wrong about her. But I’m still not happy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fate of my story. It’s in the hands of a freelance newspaper stringer—a writer who couldn’t get a full-time job here.”

  “Don’t be so disdainful of the underclass. Remember, you were there once.”

  If she only knew how close he still was, thought Beck. They stepped into the elevator.

  “We’re racing to make a deadline,” she said. “We have no choice in the matter.”

  Beck looked at Nancy as the doors closed behind them, leaving them alone. He knew she was right. Damn it. She usually was. All he could do was stay on top of this. He had no choice.

  41

  Beck talked to Woodard the next day while he was stranded, awaiting his flight after missing yesterday’s plane to Venezuela by more than two hours. Beck could feel the clock ticking.

  They set up a time to talk each evening. Woodard told Beck his stringer was working overtime trying to trace the second set of documents. He searched all of the government offices and found nothing. Woodard worked the phone too, calling the different companies to figure out what was going on. It was a slow slog. With three weeks left in the presidential campaign, Woodard still had no answers.

  He told Beck all of the corporate officers whose names appeared on the subsidiary corporate documents all turned up missing. He also ran into a brick wall trying to interview XAX officials. It appeared everyone had been ordered not to talk with them,
Woodard said.

  After four days, Bobby caught a break. He found a disgruntled former XAX midlevel manager at home on a Thursday evening who agreed to talk, but not for attribution.

  “I’ll take anything,” Beck said. Beck wondered if Woodward caught the desperation in his voice. They all knew the importance of the story not only to their careers, but to the newspaper’s reputation.

  Woodard told Beck his source handled many of the company’s investments and some of its financial affairs, and was familiar with the payments to Sunrise Meridian. He confirmed Lamurr owned XAX. Sunrise Meridian was a shell company XAX used for various real estate investments, not just in Grand Cayman, but throughout the Caribbean. It invested in various currencies, while scouting for deals on different islands. He even showed him some paperwork, proving his point, but refused to let Woodard have it. He did, however, allow Bobby to take photographs of the documents with his cell phone. At last Beck had his paper trail.

  Then Woodard dropped the A-bomb. He asked the XAX worker if he knew Jackson Oliver. “And guess what,” Woodard said. Suddenly there was static on his phone, and the call went dead. Beck couldn’t believe it. Woodard was about to tell him Oliver was somehow connected. But how?

  Beck quickly punched the number in his cell phone. Nothing. Beck tried again. Shit. What had happened to Woodard’s phone? He dialed again. And again. He stopped. Waiting. Woodard would surely call back. Beck grew impatient and dialed again. Finally, it was ringing.

  “Beck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Something wrong with your phone?” “Tell me about Oliver.”

  “My source told me they tried to do several deals with him in Costa Rica. It was Oliver who introduced Sunrise Meridian to Bayard.”

  Woodard was on the next flight to Costa Rica, and Beck was making final edits to his story.

  LATE ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, three weeks before the election, his story was ready. Beck’s byline sat at the top, and Bobby Woodard’s name was tagged at the end of the story as a contributor. Nancy did a final review. The copydesk did its job.

  “You checked in one last time with Bayard and Lamurr?” Nancy asked.

  “Just got off the phone. Told them what we had, and they still refuse to comment.”

  “Good enough for me. Baker wants us in his office.”

  Charles Curtiss sat with Baker in the managing editor’s office with the final document.

  “You’ve got a solid story, but I’m axing the Oliver connection. We need more proof,” Curtiss said.

  Shit, thought Beck. This was why he hated lawyers. But he knew it was the weakest part of the story. Woodard had not been able to find anything so far in Costa Rico with Oliver’s name on it.

  There was a long moment of silence as everyone looked at Beck for his reaction.

  “I can live with that,” he said. At this point, Beck told himself, it wasn’t worth jeopardizing his entire story for one small piece. He could always follow up on Oliver later.

  “Then it’s good to go.” Baker held another unlit brown cigarette between his fingers.

  “It’s still a solid story without the Oliver connection,” Nancy said.

  GENEVA RECOGNIZED THE CALLER on her cell.

  “Beck, how are you?”

  “It goes tomorrow.”

  “Congratulations. That’s wonderful. You must be feeling good right now. And you’re publishing on Sunday, your big news day.”

  “Yep. Gonna even make the marketing people happy. Am I good or what?”

  “I’ll stick with what.”

  Beck smiled. He loved her sense of humor. “I just got home and opened a beer. Care to help me celebrate?” “Love to. See you in an hour.”

  Geneva hung up the phone and immediately called Serodynne legal counsel Sue Nijelski at home. “Sorry to disturb you on a Saturday night, but the Post-Examiner is running a story on the Lamurr contract tomorrow.”

  “That’s great news. What’s it all about?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, but it’s along the lines of what I first told you. I’m pretty sure it exposes Lamurr bribing a US senator. I don’t have the details. I just heard it’s finally running. We’ll have to wait for tomorrow to learn more.”

  “I’ll be checking online early tomorrow,” Nijelski said.

  “You may want to pass it on to the officers—and remind Dymon about my bonus.” Geneva heard laughter on the other end of the line.

  “You bet I will, girl. Let’s hope this not only turns out well for you, but the company too.”

  Geneva was feeling good for a change. Her next call was to Amtrak. She got one of the last tickets on the early Monday morning Acela train to New York. Then she called Keith.

  “The wheels are in motion. Keep an eye on tomorrow’s news,” she said. “Did you buy all of the new stock options?”

  “Yes. Everything’s ready. I did as you told me. Let’s hope this goes the way you think it will.”

  She felt relieved. Her little seduction was working. But she also felt weary. There was still plenty to do, even if the stock market went her way. And she’d been wrong about Keith. He was a trooper—and a cute one at that.

  And then there was Harv. What was she going to do about him? She cared for him, but she couldn’t go on like this. And finally, there was Beck. Her feelings for him were stronger than ever, but she was deliberately avoiding dealing with him because Keith was too important to her right now. Her life was too complicated. This was still a balancing act, she reminded herself.

  She turned her attention to her plan. She now had to wait for Wall Street’s reaction on Monday. It could change her life forever.

  But first, she had Beck to tend to.

  42

  Beck picked up his newspaper in the downstairs lobby of his building early the next morning. “Bayard Receives Millions from Firm that Won Air Force Contract,” read the headline.

  Yes, he told himself, this was better than sex—and he should know for he and Geneva were going at it until after midnight.

  He rode the elevator up to his condo to find Geneva standing in the doorway in her normal state of undress, unconcerned should a neighbor step into the hallway.

  “It’s a good thing my neighbors aren’t early risers on the weekend.”

  “Let’s see if you can be the exception,” she said. As he crossed the threshold, she grabbed his crotch and kissed him.

  But Beck pushed back. “Hang with me for a few.” He wasn’t expecting a passionate early morning, and right now his story needed his attention more than his libido. He walked to the dining room table and laid the newspaper out in full. “I need to read this.”

  He felt a warm glow as he read the lead out loud to Geneva. “The Justice Department is investigating more than eight million dollars in financial payments to vice presidential nominee, Senator David Bayard, a Republican from New Jersey, from Lamurr Technologies, which recently won a multibillion-dollar air force contract overseen by Bayard’s Senate Armed Services Committee. The money was funneled through a series of Lamurr subsidiaries.”

  He stopped and looked at Geneva. Even this early in the morning, with tousled hair and no makeup, she was still alluring.

  “If your grin were any wider, I’d say someone split your face in half,” she said.

  He opened the newspaper to a spread inside. Two full pages of story and photos showed Bayard’s oceanfront mansion, XAX headquarters in Venezuela, the developer’s sign on Grand Cayman, and Lamurr’s corporate headquarters in northern Virginia.

  Kindred’s office in the Cayman shopping center was shown and described as the home of the shell company Sunrise Meridian as well as Bayard’s Jersey Shore corporation. Man, he thought. The production and design staff really played this up nicely.

  Beck finally sat down and read every word. He liked the rhythm. He liked some of the edits Nancy had made to ease the story flow. She had a light touch with his copy.

  He got up to get a cup of coffee from the kitchen. Geneva sat
in his place at the table and read the story. When he returned, he took the rest of the paper, strolled into the living room, and flopped on Red. He reached for the reading lamp and immediately knew something was wrong. Red had moved. Or his lamp had.

  Geneva looked over at Beck who was bent over looking at the floor under his chair.

  “What?” she asked.

  He didn’t say a word, but stood and turned to look at Red. Both front legs were off the rug indentations. But he remembered putting her back in place after their recent collision. Had he moved Red for any reason since then? The maids? No. They were due this week. They hadn’t been here.

  Geneva, perhaps? But they were rarely in the living room, spending their time on the balcony or in bed. “Hey, have you done anything with Red lately?”

  “Ah . . . no.” Geneva gave him a curious look.

  “That’s funny.” Beck looked behind his chair, then studied the tall bookshelves next to Red. He got down on his hands and knees and looked under his chair. He then stood up and pulled Red out of her corner. His reading light was plugged into an electrical outlet on the wall.

  He pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and used it to unscrew the outlet cover.

  Geneva got out of her chair. “Beck?”

  He turned and signaled silence.

  Something was not right with the outlet. Wires were connected to a small object that had nothing to do with the electrical plug.

  “Beck?” Geneva called again from across the room.

  He heard the concern in her voice. Again he turned to her, putting his finger to his lips a second time. “Let’s get dressed and go out for breakfast,” he said, loud enough that he could be heard in every room.

  Geneva nodded. They were dressed in less than two minutes and out the door. They rode the elevator in silence.

  When they hit the ground floor, Beck said, “Let’s walk.”