The Lesser Evil

by Jim Magwood

  Westing looked up as he heard a rumbling coming from the building across the street. He watched in amazement as the building— his building—began crumbling in on itself and collapsing, floor by floor, into the underground parking garage.

  Goodbye, Mr. Westing.

  CHAPTER 7

  Henry Baxter always spent considerable time each day reading several newspapers and watching news broadcasts. He was reflecting on the broadcasts he had picked up this morning and wondered how they might fit in with what he was hearing from his contact with the vigilante group.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Cynthia, I have to tell you, the message I’m getting from the man in the street is to just leave them alone. I can’t say it’s right, but that’s what I’m hearing.”

  “But, Rollie, how can we justify allowing people to go out and take justice into their own hands. What these people—

  these vigilantes, they’re being called—are doing is just not right. They’re bypassing the courts, deciding guilt by themselves, and taking action that’s supposed to be left to the law enforcement agencies and the courts.”

  “Yes, I know. But, if the agencies aren’t doing their jobs, are we supposed to sit around and do nothing? We have families to protect. These criminal companies are taking work and food out of the hands of good folks and giving support to the criminals. You know that’s not right.”

  “But, how can you be sure they’re doing that? There’s no proof of wrongdoing, Rollie. And what about the families of all those executives at that company that got closed? How can we hold them responsible for claims against the company that haven’t even been proven yet? Society has a responsibility to live peacefully, and we can’t go around deciding someone else is wrong and running them out of business. We need more compassion, Rollie, and to let people live their own lives…”

  “Cynthia, we need to break here for a message from our sponsors. But, don’t go away, folks. We’ll be right back with more from Cynthia Harper of Justice League discussing the social phenomena taking place around the world—Vigilante Justice.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Tommie Sands back here with you again. We’re talking with you about the food shortages being reported. And what do you have to say, Frank from Atlanta?”

  “Tommie, I just got back from my local supermarket and the shelves are half empty. I went for bread, milk, potatoes—

  you know, the staple stuff. And the shelves are almost bare.

  My wife wanted to get some rice and beans…”

  “Frank, I have to put you on hold. Stick with us. We’ve got a lady on the line all the way from Leeds in England. This is Sally on the line. How’d you find us, Sally?”

  “Well, a friend called me and told me about the show today—it being about food shortages? So I just decided to call.”

  “Okay, Sally. Welcome to the HotLine. What’s your situation over there on food?”

  “Mr. Sands, it’s getting desperate. If you have the money, we have lots of the pricey foods—the steaks and roasts. And we have lots of frozen stuff still around. But for staples and fresh foods, things we need for daily living, we’re down to bare shelves. I haven’t been able to get any fresh fruit for weeks. No bananas or melons. And the canned goods are going fast for anything like the fruits."

  “Does anyone say why this is happening, Sally? Is it those vigilant people doing this?”

  “Well, I read something about all the supposed shortages around the world. People who used to export things like rice—

  Thailand and India and Vietnam—they’ve all shut off trade.

  And then countries like China growing by, what, 5 or 600

  million in the next few years. It’s all going to feed them and it’s not getting exported. I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “Sally, we have to take a break again, and Frank, if you’ll just hold on…”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Marcus, what are you hearing from the UN on these food crises?”

  “Jennifer, a lot of what’s going around these last couple of days—especially since that big food company collapsed—is rumors of a conspiracy to wipe out food supplies. I heard talk yesterday of some new pesticides being used in some of the big producing countries that are actually decreasing production instead of increasing it. They’re talking about the new chemicals giving better cost controls and more profits but causing smaller crops.

  “And the head of a farming co-op that wants to remain anonymous told me he’s even heard of crops going down the rivers instead of onto ships. He meant being dumped, Jennifer.

  Apparently, someone’s been sneaking onto docks during loading operations at night and turning the loading machinery to dumping raw produce like rice into the water. Authorities have suspicions about several local groups that might be involved in this. He said one shipmaster came out in the morning to move the ship out and it looked like he was stuck on a sand bar. Most of the rice, I think he said, was piled in a mountain in the water around the ship instead of being in the holds. The thing that made it all stranger yet was that most of the crew had disappeared, so nobody knew it was happening.”

  “But, Marcus, why would those vigilante people want to destroy food crops and shipments? That seems so counter-productive to making things better in the world.”

  “Jennifer, I agree. But what we are hearing is that a lot of people are taking things in their own hands and doing these things themselves. The authorities caught some people at a railroad loading station a few days ago soaking the grain in the cars with fire hoses, and it turned out they were just some local folks trying to get back at the railroad. They said the shipping prices were too high and they weren’t going to put up with it anymore.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Henry knew he had some serious questions for his ‘vigilante’ contact. His mind said the vigilantes couldn’t possibly be powerful enough to be causing events like these, but what if…?

  CHAPTER 8

  Henry was deeply involved in his analysis of the reports he had gathered with incriminating information against Senator Walter Korman, information that, if proven correct, would likely sink the five term Senator. It had taken Henry almost two years to gather the information, but it now looked like the material was good—not for Korman—and Henry was considering how to put it together in order to start breaking the stories he had in mind.

  Senator Korman had looked squeaky clean until about five years before, but rumors started spreading quietly that he was definitely not in the clean category. It appeared that for at least fifteen years he had been in the pocket of not only several large real estate developers and large manufacturers in his home state, but that he was almost certainly tied into the mob.

  Henry received several of Korman’s internal financial reports from unnamed sources that showed Korman couldn’t possibly have gathered his personal wealth from just his government salaries or any reasonable investments. Matching several copies of bank statements, also received from anonymous sources, to the financial reports showed huge discrepancies between deposits and expenditures compared to what the financials disclosed.

  Henry also received several copies of Korman’s tax returns, and the amounts reported in no way matched the financial reports. In addition, he got his hands on copies of bank transfer documents to and from a couple of Cayman Island banks that definitely did not show on any other records. One, for instance, showed an anonymous deposit to a special Cayman account of exactly $963,000, and then nine transfers over the next two days to Korman’s accounts in the States totaling the same amount—$963,000. True, Henry thought, it could be a coincidence, but along with all the rest of the information, where do you draw the line on coincidence?

  Korman was known for leading crusades against various crime statistics over the years, yet Henry had copies of three agreements between Korman and Julius Sanderson, a notori-ous, but still unindicted mob boss out of Louisiana, that showed just about $8-million being “loaned” to Korman fr
om a Sanderson bank. Funny, though, thought Baxter, with no interest rate stated in the agreements, and no repayment dates, and with the fact of Korman suddenly being able to put major amounts of his own money into a couple of his re-election campaigns, the loans appeared to be quite unexplainable.

  Korman had also built his huge mansion just outside Baton Rouge those same years with money borrowed from a certain bank rumored to have certain close ties to certain unsavory persons. In addition, the loans were received for amounts totaling more then three and a half million dollars, completely unsecured, and with interest rates below the banks lowest lending rates, and again, with unspecified repayment dates.

  How in the world, Henry thought, could Korman think he could do all this and never be found out? Henry knew that Korman had friends in extremely high places, including the Justice Department and the White House, but still, did no one in the fourth estate have any inkling that this had been going on, or no interest in bringing it into the light? True, the news industry had fallen on it’s own sword in recent years and Henry knew there were few media organizations, and fewer reporters, that anyone trusted today. But was no one digging anymore? Did no one care? Or was everyone so afraid of the big brother system that they simply wouldn’t take on contro-versy or the power brokers? Presidents and governors and businessmen had fallen in the past. Were they simply too powerful to be challenged anymore?

  As Henry was writing a summary of his upcoming story, his desk phone rang. Thinking it was his assistant announcing a call, he simply punched a button and answered, “Yes, Darla?”

  The voice on the other end jerked him up immediately.

  “Mr. Baxter, do you have a few moments to talk with me?”

  said the voice from Hamburg.

  “Oh…it’s you. Uh…yes. Yes, of course. I was wondering if I’d hear from you again,” he stuttered. “I haven’t heard anything in over a month. Yes, I can talk.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Baxter. First, I want to thank you for how you handled the Hammershed event. Your reports were excellent. Your readers were able to see the reasons behind the collapse, and to see that the rumors of Hammershed’s activities were true. They got a good look behind the events and into the illegal activities that should not have been tolerated by any investigative or law enforcement agencies. You do have our gratitude. With how you handled that event, I can assure you there will be more of the same, and we’ve decided to continue using you as our sole reporting contact. Will that be acceptable to you?”

  Henry cast a quick thought of his inflating bank accounts, and the rumor of investigative journalism awards coming his way, and replied immediately, “Yes, that is quite alright. I really don’t know why you chose me for this, but I appreciate this opportunity. However, I have serious questions about all this. I don’t know if you’ll answer them or not, but the answers might be a story in themselves and could likely ensure the public becomes more aware of what’s going on, and why.

  Would you be willing to share information with me as to the Why questions? For instance, who are you? Who’s the organization you’re with? Why are you doing this?” Henry really didn’t expect answers for such incriminating questions, but he figured, Might as well try.

  “Mr. Baxter, I won’t be able to share any information that will allow you to identify us, but I’m happy to give you a lot of answers as to what our purpose is and so on. I won’t use any actual names, of course, but you can call me Randall Johns. I will be your only contact with our group. You won’t be able to trace us, though I’m sure you’ll try.” Johns gave a little chuckle at that, but Baxter could hear no animosity or displeasure in his tone. It sounded as if they were sharing a small joke between friends.

  “Our organization is a group of old friends who have simply become very tired of the evil in the world, and with it being ignored by most of the authorities and governments. The world has gotten to the point where tolerance of anything and everything has become simply the way of life. Nothing is wrong anymore, unless you get caught at it. The bottom line is the only important thing in the business world now, despite the advertising by so many of their desire to be of service to humanity. We give a billion dollars over here to help in some hunger crusade, but turn around over there, behind all the curtains, and produce goods that are destructive to that same humanity. We ship weapons out our back doors to countries that cannot feed or educate their people.

  “Ambassadors or presidents or sheiks make grand proc-lamations as to their efforts to promote world peace and goodness. At the same time, they’re secreted and protected behind closed doors having meetings with other country heads to fa-cilitate stealing the assets of their respective countries that could be used in good, honest trading to bring about the real betterment of their people. Some of the new leaders seem bent on destroying everything good their country has ever done.

  Purely criminal activities take place in every country, between people who are known to be criminals, yet they are unable to be touched. Either they’re too powerful or they have powerful friends in high places, or they’re too dangerous, or they’ve actually been made to appear beneficial to their countries in some way.

  “A major drug baron, for instance, who happens to give a lot of money to his church and who goes to services once every few months, is still a major drug dealer and should not be tolerated. Why is he even allowed in that church simply because he’s bought or stolen an image of being a great man?

  A country that doesn’t have the courage to call drug dealing a crime and apply every asset of that country to wiping out that crime does not deserve to be called good. And the people of that country who won’t stand up and demand that goodness and decency be brought back to their land do not deserve goodness at all. They deserve to get what they have allowed.

  “Think about the economic crises taking place all around the world, and caused by what? Greed, Mr. Baxter. Pure and simple. Investors, bankers and politicians are making laws, or ignoring them, to enable them to package loans to people who have no business trying to get loans of those amounts. People are not being held to any form of discipline in managing their money and assets. The loan brokers are allowed to move funds so quickly between themselves that they never actually hold the funds themselves and cannot be held accountable for them.

  Then, when the worst takes place, they all go sneaking to their political benefactors to be bailed out of the messes they have caused.

  “Okay,” Baxter broke in. “I can understand what you’re saying. Something along the line of reaping the rewards of what you’ve planted. But, the question is going to be raised in every country in the world, how can you justify judging, or declaring war on, people or companies that you accuse of doing wrong without giving them the benefit of their given, human legal rights? You are destroying people outside the law of their lands. And they don’t have the ability to face their accus-ers, and so on and so on. Am I making sense, Mr. Johns?”

  “Of course you are. And I agree with everything you’ve said. What we are doing would normally be absolutely wrong and should never be tolerated itself. However, we do justify our activities very easily by one simple test: None of the people or businesses we will be directing our activities against have any business calling themselves innocent. As you will see if you continue with us, every one of the subjects is already identified by the general public as criminal, such as the typical Colombian drug czar. No one would ever consider Alberto Escobedo as anything but an illegal drug czar, and no one would ever truly weep for him if he suddenly came to an unfortunate end. He is simply an evil man, and evil should not have rights in any decent land. It should simply not be tolerated to start with, or it should be eliminated whenever it does gain a foothold.”

  “You mentioned Escobedo. Do you mean the fellow from South America?”

  “Yes. Do you know of him, Mr. Baxter?”

  “Well, I know the name and the rumors.”

  “You will shortly know much more about him, but…”

&
nbsp; Baxter jumped in, “I, personally, do agree with what you just said. However, how are you going to justify your actions to people who disagree with you, or with law enforcement groups or the courts? There are people all over who’re going to say you’re wrong in what you’re doing and that you should be brought to justice yourself. I can imagine if your actions go on, and especially if they affect large numbers of people, or anyone in high places, that they’ll come after you and will hold you to the same fire you’re applying to the ones you go after.”

  “Mr. Baxter, we’ve asked ourselves that same question and have come to a simple answer: We simply do not care about those who will say we are wrong and who will cast their lots with the criminals of the world. We do agree, for instance, that people have the right to be immoral or decadent themselves. They have the right to drink or drug themselves to death. They have the right to participate in every kind of filth in their own private caves. They have that right. They do not, though, have the right to ever export their filth into the hands and minds of children, for instance. They do not have the right to use weapons in their country to take the rights of people in another country. Or to threaten the existence of another country or people group simply because they decide the other people are some kind of ideological or religious affront to them.