“At home. Last night.”
“It might be best if you removed everything relating to this matter from your hard disk. Copy it to one of ours. If you need computer time we’ll give you whatever you need right here. My office will call you to make arrangements. Let’s try to keep our work in the building.”
“But of course, Mr. Maloney,” she smiled again, theatrically. They shook hands and she left.
“Tom,” said Nathan Stein when Dr. Roy was gone, “what the hell was that? What do we need from her?”
“Loyalty. Silence.”
“Are we looking at a shithouse?”
“Could be, Nathan. Yes.”
“Then why not give her some real money? If we need to buy her, let’s do it.”
Maloney shook his head. “Nathan, you make too much fucking money. You got what, forty-three, forty-four million last year?” Maloney smiled. “You’ve lost all perspective. We just gave her a check for a hundred fifty-five thousand dollars. To normal people that is real money. And it’s money she is honor-bound to earn.” Nathan looked unconvinced until Tom said, “Take my word, she belongs to us.”
New York
Elizabeth Reid had lunch delivered to Nathan Stein’s suite at twelve thirty. She ordered from Cippriani’s because Nathan was especially fond of their fettuccini with clams. For Tom Maloney she ordered the salmon. Both men had taken a walk after their meeting with Dr. Roy ended. She was ready for their return. Ms. Reid had been Mr. Stein’s secretary for seventeen years. She eschewed the inflated title “Administrative Assistant” while gladly keeping the inflated compensation it carried. While she was only two years older than he, she looked upon Nathan Stein as a nephew or cousin who needed assistance. She was loyal beyond any question, privy to most of his secrets, and quietly instructed her sister in buying and selling stocks about which she had acquired some overheard knowledge. Perhaps, she thought, it might be questionable, although she never for an instant thought it might be illegal. Everyone in the higher reaches of Stein, Gelb benefited in some way, and she was content to consider such things part of her pay package. Of course, she never overdid it. Her sister’s account, maintained at a distance at Smith Barney, was worth hundreds of thousands, not millions.
She saw Wesley Pitts and Louise Hollingsworth leave the meeting, followed shortly thereafter by the lovely Indian woman, Dr. Ganga Roy. Tom Maloney had given Elizabeth an envelope with instructions to hand it to Dr. Roy as she left. She knew there was a check inside. “It has to be a large one,” Elizabeth thought. The envelope was sealed.
She arranged the lunch carefully on the table in front of Mr. Stein’s couch. When Nathan and Tom returned she told them the food had arrived. Then she left them, closing the door behind her.
“What is it we’re sure of, Tom? Actually know, not surmise.”
“We’re certain the Knowland amp; Sons plant in Lucas, Tennessee, has turned out beef, ground beef, that’s testing positive for E. coli and that it’s happening too frequently for them to disregard. They’re thinking of shutting down and recalling the meat.”
“How frequent is too frequent?”
“The problem seems to be that they’ve been cited for violations an awful lot. In and of itself, that’s not big news. Every meat plant’s got E. coli violations. It’s all part of the game. But now there’s so much bad meat going out, and they’ve got so many violations, they think they may push the inspectors too far, which is hard to do. Ordinarily, they might recall the meat, shut themselves down, get cleaned up. That costs money, but sometimes it has to be done. Except now, MacNeal is worried about the deal. He wants to know how bad it will hurt to shut down. He wants to know if we can put off the IPO or pull some other rabbit out of the hat. He’s scared and he’s looking to us for direction.” He stopped and listened for signs of progress.
“How can they turn out beef with E. coli? How does that happen?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Nathan, but you probably won’t eat beef anymore.” Tom laughed and took a forkful of salmon and spinach dripping in sesame sauce. He hoped the walk, the food, and the casual laughter would put Nathan’s mind at ease. For all of his faults, Nathan Stein had a keen sense of what to do in the trenches. “That’s where we are for sure,” thought Tom, “ in the trenches.” He wanted Nathan clear-headed and sharp as ever. He reiterated the process Billy Mac and Pat Grath had already outlined, complete with its potential downside effect. Tom had been sitting with Wesley Pitts when Billy Mac and Grath were on the conference call. Grath explained the concept of “captive supplies” and the money to be made speculating in live cattle. Knowland had done that, and the herd in question was, they thought, limited to the Tennessee plant. They were almost certain of that much. However, they had also been “mixing” more than usual-this on Billy Mac’s orders, which he freely admitted. By “mixing” foreign beef with their existing domestic supply they could increase profits dramatically in the short run. Billy Mac’s emphasis was now completely on the short run. He was selling the whole shebang and he wanted cash flow at the highest possible level in anticipation of the stock offering. The plant was also operating around the clock-three full shifts. Everybody in and around Lucas who could walk, crawl, or be dragged into that plant was working there, most six days, and some seven days a week. Almost all of them worked overtime because they always had trouble staffing the third shift. “Like it or not,” Billy Mac said to Tom and Wes, “we got drunks, junkies-amphetamines are real big around there-poorly trained incompetents, and men who haven’t had a night’s sleep in a week. Hey, look. you want the production, you get it any way you can. We got lines running three hundred cattle an hour!” Pat Grath had already talked about “operator fatigue”-a problem that haunted the industry-and he pointed out that the injury rate was now the highest in the company’s history.
“It’s a fucking time bomb,” said Billy Mac, “but who gives a shit. Soon as this thing goes down, we’re outta there.”
Very nice, thought Tom. However, Billy MacNeal conveniently overlooked the fact that another Stein, Gelb client, Alliance, would inherit his problems and pay a handsome sum to do so.
Grath had explained how the cattle are killed. Tom, obligingly, passed the information along to Nathan. One by one, he told him, the cows were herded into a chute, big enough for only a single animal. “Cows are dumber than shit,” Tom recalled Grath saying, with his usual, West Texas, semi-arrogant laugh. “But you’d be surprised how many of them get real antsy right about then, moving around, sort of trying to get out, you know, eyes all funny, squealing like pigs. Almost like they know what’s coming.” And what was coming was The End. The Knocker-that’s what Grath said they called him-used a handheld device that quite literally thrust a steel bolt in the cow’s head. “The cow goes down,” Grath had said, “usually dead. But when you’re running a line at three hundred head an hour, well, goddamnit, you’re pushing one through every ten seconds or so. Some of them don’t die. They’re still alive.” After the cow went down, it was hoisted, hung upside down with chains. Its throat was cut. Most of the animals that were still alive died then. However, a few didn’t. Federal law was quite specific on this point. The animal had to be “insensible” to pain before butchering was allowed. Grath had snorted at this point in his recitation. “What are they gonna do? Call Johnny Cochran?” The next stop on the line was the giant scissors. They looked like scissors, so that’s what Grath called them. Here the cow, dead or alive, had its legs cut off. As Tom told all this to Nathan Stein, he felt an irrepressible urge to laugh-the kind of laugh people have when something awful happens to someone else, the kind of laugh that says, “I’m so glad it’s you, not me.” He also saw that Nathan was queasy, visibly shaken by the image of anything hung upside down and having its legs cut off.