Popped.
So it’s only logical to assume that before long number three will be, too.
She slides off the bed.
She puts on a pot of coffee, tidies up, takes a shower, and gets dressed.
Through all of which she grapples with the central dilemma here.
Shouldn’t she be passing this on to the police? Isn’t she required to by law? If she doesn’t, and something happens, wouldn’t she be an accessory?
It’s a tricky one.
Because it’s not as if she’s protecting a confidential source and could be subpoenaed for discovery.
Who was your source, Ms. Dorsey?
The Internet, Your Honor.
Sipping coffee, she reads the comment again, more than once. Foreknowledge of a crime. Is that what this is?
She vacillates.
It is, it isn’t. It might be, it might not. The notion is plausible, the notion is ridiculous.
She massages her temples, to ward off an incipient headache. Outside, it’s overcast, dull and gray. Is it going to rain?
She looks from the window to the floor.
Actually, she decides, the notion is ridiculous. Jeff Gale and Bob Holland were killed twelve hours apart. This is four days on from that and Scott Lebrecht is still alive. There’s no discernible pattern here. So, seriously… who would take her seriously?
No one.
She looks up.
The thing is, she can talk herself out of this, no problem-but deep down she wants it to be true.
Not even deep down.
She gets up from the desk, walks around, stretches.
But then… let’s say it is true, that there really is a story here, what happens then? First, she’d have to bring Max Daitch in on it, and he’d have to run it by legal. Chances are that a fear of civil or even criminal liability would stop the whole thing dead in its tracks right there, with the lawyers advising Max to pass the info up the corporate chain or possibly straight on to the police.
So… what? She just hands it over? Before she gets a chance to work it, even a little?
Raindrops start pelting against the window.
She sits down again and reaches for the coffee. She’ll give it some thought. Go over her notes.
Fifteen minutes.
Black Vine Partners.
Scott Lebrecht…
He founded the company six or seven years ago with the assistance of two guys from a New York-based hedge fund called Reilly Asset Management. They provided Lebrecht with a substantial chunk of capital and a revolving line of credit, which he then very successfully used to focus on investments in the power and energy sectors. More recently, he has set his sights on Hollywood by creating Black Vine Media and signing a five-year production deal with Sony Entertainment. So far, this has only led to his involvement in a couple of poorly received mid-budget thrillers, but Lebrecht is said to be very determined and is busy raising cash for a third, considerably more ambitious project.
He also has a reputation for hanging out with the talent-dates with actresses, courtside seats with the boys, who-knows-what in the private jet. In photos, he comes across as something of a jock, blond and burly, not exactly good-looking-at least not preternaturally so, not the way some of his new A-lister friends tend to be-but he does have an energy about him, and a certain charm.
That’s what it says here, anyway.
In her barely legible 4 A.M. scrawl.
She flicks forward to the next page.
Lebrecht has a ferocious temper, serious commitment issues, a severe nut allergy, and a “rad” collection of sports cars.
He has a two-year-old son in Florida he apparently refuses to acknowledge.
He has over ten thousand followers on Twitter.
Ellen stops.
She reads that last bit again. She swivels in her chair.
Hhmmm.
She reaches for the keyboard, logs on to Twitter, and finds him.
He appears to be an avid tweeter.
One thousand two hundred and fifty-seven so far. Been at it for about a year.
She scrolls down through some recent ones.
Awesome celebration last night with my Jenkintown brohims. #achingintheplaces
A leader leads for a reason. Try to jump ahead of him and all you’ll get for your trouble is lost.
Tough negotiations on the Salertech buyout, including that ninth inning zinger, but we prevailed. Kudos to all concerned.
She goes back to the top.
His last tweet. It was one hour ago.
On a panel soon at this year’s Global Equities Conference at the Herald Rygate. The things we do for love.
Craig Howley wonders if Vaughan is going to make it into the office again today. He looks at his watch.
Nearly ten.
Isn’t that pushing it? Even for the old man?
He showed up yesterday, having pretty much thrown down the gauntlet the previous evening, but if Howley thought Monday was long…
Jesus.
The old man came in looking his normal self-back in a suit, groomed, dapper-but everything was painfully slow, his movements, his speech.
His reaction times.
It was a good thing they had nothing on, no visitors or important meetings.
Howley catches Angela’s eye through the glass partition, but she shakes her head.
He swivels in his chair and gazes out the window at midtown, and at his allotted shard, here on this side of the fifty-seventh floor, of Central Park.
Should he call Meredith? Show his concern? Not that that’s really what it is. What it really is, he knows, is impatience. Because ever since Monday’s early meeting, and the way he was approached afterward by the various group heads and senior managing directors-not to mention Vaughan’s quip later on about rearranging the furniture in his office-Howley has been in a sort of waking fever dream of anticipation.
He doesn’t have any illusions, though. He fully understands who and what James Vaughan is, and that no one can replace him or occupy quite the same space he has occupied in Washington and elsewhere for the past sixty years-more, in fact, in a way… if you go back, if you include his old man, William J., and his old man.
Fuck.
But replace him as head of Oberon? Howley could do that, no problem.
The thing is, in a long and distinguished career, Vaughan has had many more strings to his bow than just the Oberon Capital Group. He worked under Jack Kennedy, fought with Johnson, switched to the Republicans, got into bed with Nixon, did a stint at the Agency under Bush. He was always there in the background during Reagan’s two terms, and it was the same again later, during Dubya’s two. Without once being elected or appointed to public office, the man has exerted enormous influence, and mainly by operating in the interstices between federal agencies, private contractors, consulting firms, lobbyists, think tanks, and policy institutes.
Not that the private equity side of things has been too shabby. After more than forty years in the business, Vaughan can boast that Oberon has achieved compound annual returns for its equity investors of something in the region of 57 or 58 percent.
Which is staggering.
Howley gets up from his desk and goes over to the window.
So keeping a show like that on the road would certainly be enough for him. It’s what he wants and knows he’ll be good at. He spent long enough at the Pentagon shaping the acquisitions program and influencing which weapons systems were bought, not to mention being one of the instigators of the great outsourcing land grab that saw contractors move in on logistics and support services. And now, on this side of the so-called revolving door, he has proved equally adept at wooing and acquiring these same companies.
But not just them, as it turns out. He has been phenomenally successful at parlaying his considerable political clout into hard equity across a whole range of sectors-pharmaceutical, energy, telecoms, real estate. Plus, Oberon has expanded, they’re everywhere now, in Africa, Asia, China, and with the company sitting on stockpiles of cash the prospects for deal-making have never been better.