What can I say? Consider it corporate welfare.
He went back to his next trade, dumping a few hundred thousand shares of a blue chip stock that he had a hunch was going to miss its earnings expectations. Then the IM popped up again, from the same guy:
The great white is up to something.
Having already gone the modest route, Whitely kept with it:
Just trying to make you look good. And I might be willing to do it again. How about Mickey D’s at 60?
Having tossed out the bait, he waited to see if the guy would bite. Sure enough, he did.
You’re nuts. But sure. How much?
Whitely wrote back quickly.
350?
The man would know he meant 350,000 shares. And he didn’t hesitate.
Done. Easiest money I’ll make today. I still think you’re nuts.
Whitley was considering if he should try to lure the guy into one more supposedly-too-good-to-be-true deal, but he became aware that Theodore Sniff was lurking in his doorway again. Ordinarily, he would have just ignored the accountant. But since he had given Sniff a specific errand, he might as well get it over with.
Whitely looked up. Sniff was wearing a suit that looked like it had been balled up and stuffed in a trash can for several days before he put it on.
“Teddy, did you sleep in that suit or something?” Whitely asked.
“No, I… It just came from the cleaners,” Sniff said. He was always at a loss to explain his various deficiencies to his boss. Of course, only so much of it was Sniff’s fault. It was as much Whitely’s incomprehension as anything. Men with perfect hairlines could seldom understand balding.
“Well, tell them to actually press it next time,” Whitely said. “Or maybe switch dry cleaners? I’m just trying to look out for you, buddy.”
“Thank you.”
“By the way, did you get anywhere with that girl from Match dot com?”
“We met for coffee and now she doesn’t answer any of my messages,” Sniff said. “I winked at her three times, but she just ignored me.”
“Well, look on the bright side: It’s better than that girl from quote-unquote ‘Ridgefield, Connecticut’ who turned out to be a Slovenian prostitute,” Whitely said. “Anyhow, what’s up?”
“It’s… it’s the Fulcher margin call.”
“What about it? We ready to deliver? He needs the money by three.”
“Yeah, about that…” Sniff said, and suddenly he couldn’t look at his boss. The carpet in front of him had gotten far more interesting.
“What, Teddy?”
“We don’t have it.”
“So you keep saying. But how is that even possible?”
“Well, that donation you just made didn’t help,” Sniff said.
“Still, I… I just don’t understand: My trades are good. My trades are great. I can count on one hand the ones that go bad in an entire month. I’ve got to have one of the best win-loss records in the business. How is it possible we don’t have the money?”
“I’m just telling you what the books are telling me,” Sniff said. “The books don’t lie.”
“Yeah, well…” Whitely said, running his hands through his perfect coiffure, actually mussing it slightly.
“So what do we do about Fulcher?”
Whitely stared into the distance. He tented his hands, brought them to his lips, and held them there for ten seconds.
“His margin call is at First National,” Whitely said at least. “We know some people there. Call them up and convince them to hold off on the margin call for a week or two. We’ll make sure Fulcher knows we did him the favor and tell him to just rest easy, that we’ll have the money when the time comes. And by then, we will.”
Sniff mumbled something that Whitely couldn’t hear. Only the sensitive microphones picked up the words and piped them straight to the eighty-third floor.
And the words were: “I doubt it.”
CHAPTER 15
WASHINGTON, D.C.
onny Whitmer had been up all night.
Normally, that meant drinking booze and chasing tail — the preferred pastimes of powerful men the world over.
But this time was different. Donny Whitmer had discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that even after all those years in Washington, he still had a conscience. And that conscience was in something of a crisis.
It ate at him, what he had done. Threatening his best donor with exposure like that. It was actually making his stomach hurt — to stoop that low after a lifetime of honorable public service. It was so unbecoming of a senator. He tossed and turned in bed until Sissy made him sleep in the guest room.
Somewhere after midnight, the thought occurred to him: In the morning, he’d call the guy and tell him he didn’t mean it. It was a bluff. It was said out of anger or out of fear. No, better yet, it was a joke. Ha ha, good one, right, buddy? Because ol’ Donny would never do something like that.
The next morning, before Donny even finished his coffee, Jack Porter was back in his office. They had done some more polling. There were more charts and graphs. The Tea Party sumbitch had much better name recognition than anyone had realized, much lower negatives than seemed possible, and what’s more, there were fewer undecided than there should have been six weeks out.
In other words, the problem was worse than Donny had thought. Yesterday had been a little dreamlike — nightmare-like — but today the reality was setting in. He might really be done. He found himself ignoring Porter and looking around his office, at the view of the Capitol that he commanded from his corner office, at all the knickknacks and plaques and commendations he had collected over the years, and he just didn’t want to pack them up. He wasn’t ready to be done.
More than that, the people of Alabama couldn’t afford to lose him. All those pork barrel projects he shoveled their way meant jobs. And jobs meant everything. This neophyte Tea Party jerk wouldn’t have a clue how to work the levers of government to get that sort of thing. The sumbitch would probably sell his political soul trying to back a long-shot Supreme Court pick who had promised to overturn Roe v. Wade. How many paving contracts would that provide to the constituents? None. The thought bothered Donny even more than the thought that he wouldn’t be able to boss around lobbyists anymore.
Eventually, he had booted Porter from his office, closed his door, and told everyone not to bother him. He needed to think.
Five million dollars. And, really, only one place to get it. All his other top donors had Alabama ties. They would have sniffed out that Donny was in trouble and therefore would know he was desperate and therefore wouldn’t give him a dime. The Birmingham News had not done any polling yet, but it had written some flattering stories about his challenger and about the grassroots devotion he seemed to be engendering.
Donny had to put more pressure on his best donor. That was his silver bullet. He had threatened exposure of the rider. That was a good start. What if he also…
The phone rang.
It was his donor.
The donor who was the senator’s last chance to change all that red on Jack Porter’s charts to lovely, luscious green.
“Hello there, young man,” Donny said.
He listened.
“No, no, you’re not interrupting anything. And, besides, it’s a plea sure to hear from you. Always a plea sure.”
As if Donny hadn’t just threatened the man the day before. The man was talking, and Donny realized he was holding his breath. Why couldn’t the guy just cut to the chase, say he was giving him the money, and end it there? Or maybe he could just say he wasn’t giving him the money and Donny would accept… Hang on. Did Donny really just hear that right? Yes. Yes, he did.
“Well, that’s mighty generous of you,” Whitmer said. “ ‘The Alabama Future Fund.’ That sounds mighty fine.”