Fiduciary Duty (17 page)

Chapter 11. Endgame

Two nights ago, around midnight, I stopped by Gordo’s house. When I woke him up, he blubbered but he meekly put on a pair of handcuffs and followed me into my van. Barry O’Connor I simply tazed and dragged into the van. His doubtlessly long-put-upon wife never even woke up. I pulled my back moving Barry, but it would have been much worse if I had to drag Gordo.

Back at the farm, I had Gordo and O’Connor sign and thumbprint the long, rambling, and senseless manifesto I had written up over the past few weeks. The manifesto was a suicide pact between the three of us. Having taken our revenge on shareholders, and with the fascist police closing in, the three of us vow to kill ourselves to avoid giving up the names of our comrades under torture. We exhort the workers of the world to follow in the leadership of Francisco Fernandez who still leads The Organization in the heroic fight against oppression and worldwide domination. It was all drivel, of course, but it gave the press and the authorities the terrorist network they had been so actively seeking. Of course, that terrorist network was paper thin and Gordo and O’Connor’s involvement wouldn’t withstand much scrutiny, but then I only need that fiction to last a few more hours.

I didn’t give either a chance to read what they were signing, but Gordo cooperated willingly. He simply didn’t have any fight in him anymore. O’Connor, on the other hand, started mouthing off. It was a mistake. The moment he called me “hotshot” I put a .22 in his crotch. After that he didn’t give me any problems.

Then I added my own signature and thumbprint. Once the manifesto was ready to go, I herded Gordo and O’Connor into the van and shot them each in the head.

Yesterday I mailed out copies of the manifesto to every news organization I could find in Ohio and most of the big national ones. They should be arriving today. That was after I drove Gordo and O’Connor, their bodies anyway, to a spot I had prepared in the woods. Their corpses are currently in a pit, marinating in gasoline.

You keep fading out. But this next part concerns you so you really should pay attention. See, I need you. I need you for two reasons.

In a few hours, I’m going to start making anonymous phone calls telling reporters where they can find the bodies of the three members of the Northeast Ohio cell of The Organization, charred to a crisp. But I only have two bodies, so I need a third. You’re the third.

Yes, I know you aren’t a very convincing me. You’re twenty years older, five inches taller, and a lot softer than I ever was. I also have to admit you have much better hair. But like the manifesto, your charred corpse only has to play me for a few hours. After that it won’t matter to anyone.

Are you still paying attention? I know, you’ve lost a lot of blood but this will only take a few more minutes. Come on. Stay with me, we’re almost done.

There’s a second reason I need you here, though. I know Gary Whitaker, the vice-chair of the board, was trying to convince you to cancel today’s board meeting because he was worried about security. Yes, I’ve been listening in on your calls. I don’t even need Smith’s people for that. I am an electrical engineer, after all, and I know my way around the switching system.

Once the news breaks that all the conspirators in Ohio are dead, the threat is gone. There will be no reason to cancel the meeting. But the news is definitely going to put a crimp into your schedule. As CEO and Chairman of the Board you’ll be with the FBI all day. You probably will even be a touch late for the meeting, as you’ll explain in an e-mail to the other board members.

Of course, you won’t send the e-mail. I will, but I’ve been reading your correspondence – that comes courtesy of Mr. Smith – and I’ve been practicing. I’m pretty sure I can imitate your style convincingly enough. You’re also going to e-mail both division presidents and every executive vice president and ask each of them to present something at the meeting. Sure it’s unusual, but these are unusual times for the company, wouldn’t you say?

It’s almost too bad you won’t be there to see what happens. But of course, I will.

Well, there’s the pit, and there are your companions. I guess I better finish the story and get a move on it because I still have a lot to do today.

But before I go, there’s something I want you to know. I understand that what you did to me, to H and Jeremy, it wasn’t on purpose, it wasn’t personal, it was just business. No, don’t apologize now. We’re too far along. At this point it won’t help either of us. You made big decisions that in turn generated smaller decisions, and those decisions percolated all the way down. What happened to people like H and Jeremy and me didn’t even figure into your thought process.

So I want to put this in terms that might mean something to you. You failed in your fiduciary duty. You failed by creating the sort of conditions that led me to strike out at the shareholders. And still, you took a two million dollar salary, plus who-knows-what in stock options, to ultimately generate a lot of harm against your shareholders. Other executives and the board also failed in their fiduciary duty. Nobody provided oversight. Nobody pointed out the potential consequences of your actions, or how the consequences you imposed on people like me could come back to hurt the company. And you all paid yourselves very well to miss something so obvious. I’ll never understand it.

But who knows, maybe with new shareholders, a new CEO, a new executive suite, a new board, and without people like Gordo and O’Connor, M & O might actually be a good company one day. I certainly hope so. There are a lot of good people whose livelihoods depend on the company.

Whatever happens, though, you won’t be there to see it. And neither will I. My job is almost done. I’ve been away from H and Jeremy for far too long. You can’t imagine how much I miss them. After the board meeting I’m going home to be with them again. Tomorrow we’re having leftover lasagna for lunch.

Notes

I read somewhere that Stephen Vincent Benet wrote
The Red Badge of Courage
to understand what it was like to be in a war. The idea for
Fiduciary Duty
came to me after reading one of the too-frequent news stories about a seemingly normal person shooting a number of other citizens with little apparent reason. That made me curious about serial killers and spree killers, how they think, and what they do. However, if I was going to spend that much time in the mind of such a person, I wanted a landscape populated by more than just dark thoughts and reasonless urges. I wanted a character who was likeable, plausible, and who thought he was doing the right thing.

When I started writing the book, I was re-reading Neville Shute’s
On the Beach
. I believe that explains why John Reynolds ended up sharing some of the same character traits as Dwight Towers, commander of the USS Scorpion in Shute’s classic. Towers and Reynolds are both family man with a strong sense of right and wrong. Both have lost a lot, and both are unable to let go of their loved ones despite knowing full well that they are dead. Beyond that, however, the characters are very different, in part because I purposely pushed Reynolds beyond the limits of his endurance. Towers lost his family, his country, and faced the end of the world, but circumstances allowed him to keep his responsibility and his dignity. He also had an emotional support structure in part because of the approaching fate he shared with everyone around him. Reynolds, on the other hand, was truly alone.

Like Reynolds, the rest of the characters in this book are entirely fictional, the only exception being Antonio Torrimpietra who is discussed later in this essay. The employees, executives, and shareholders of M & O are not based in any way on employees, executives, or shareholders of any real organization. Likewise, M & O is a completely made-up corporation and is not based in any way on any real company. Other businesses mentioned in the book – including GDH Fortress, Hover Anselm, TR2 Nexis and Bannerman – are also completely fictional and created in such a way as to bear no resemblance to any other organizations with which I am familiar, whether real or imaginary.

Some of the events associated with M & O’s merger as described in the book were based on a number of high-profile mergers widely reported in the media. Several of the quotes attributed to M & O executives, government officials and agencies are, likewise, based on statements made and documents produced by similarly situated individuals in the real world, again, as reported in the media.

On the other hand, there are times when the real world can be hard to fictionalize. In early drafts of the book, the difficulties the Reynolds family has obtaining COBRA were based on my own family’s misadventures after I left one employer. However, what happened to us was so bizarre and convoluted that it cannot be described in a way that is simultaneously easy to understand and credible. Thus, it makes for poor fiction. After umpteen rewritings, the Reynolds family was left with a post-employment health insurance experience that is far less unpleasant than the one with which I am familiar. However, the episode in which Reynolds was classified (for insurance purposes) as having two spouses, one of whom was his son, did in fact happen to me at one point in my career.

In terms of geography, the towns of Fortune, Iowa, as well as Ternos, Passarinho na Mão, and Pedra de Atiradeira in Brazil, are all fictional. The latter two names come from “Aguas de Março” a song written by Antonio Carlos Jobim, best known in the US for “The Girl from Ipanema.” All other cities, towns, and neighborhoods described in the book are real and rendered as accurately as I am able.

Of the two Torrimpietra Castles mentioned in the book, the one in Italy is real and does indeed bear the name Castello Torrimpietra. The one in the fictional town of Ternos is modeled loosely on Castillo Pittamiglio which sits on the waterfront in Montevideo, Uruguay. The exterior of the real Castillo Pittamiglio does, indeed, resemble a centuries-old sailing ship breaking out of a Victorian castle’s battlements, and is, as described in the novel, hemmed in by other buildings.

Humberto Pittamiglio, on whom Antonio Torrimpietra is very loosely based, was the structure’s designer and builder. He was an accomplished architect, scholar, politician and businessman. He also considered himself to be an alchemist. The Castle’s interior contains oddly shaped rooms, blind doors, stairways that lead nowhere, and a secret chamber. The Castle presently houses, among other things, the Montecristo restaurant, where the food is truly excellent and the ambiance is, to say the least, unique.

Pittamiglio left the Castle to the city of Montevideo upon his death in 1966, stipulating that part of the building be used as a museum… until his return.