The Insiders (14 page)
When Wilson finished reading the journal notes, he sat in the corner of the closet and cried—mourning the death of a murdered great-grandfather he’d never known, but who had shaped his life. It all made such tragic sense. His father had been preparing him all along, without telling him the ugly details. It was like finally uncovering the cause of an ancestral curse—or blessing. Only time would determine which was the case.
He finally left Fielder & Company a little after midnight, resolved to confront his mother first thing in the morning. A new mantra had taken hold of him: revenge and redress are now mine to pursue.
Looking out at the East River and Governor’s Island from his downtown Manhattan office, Wayland Tate mulled over the Musselman stock-manipulation plan he’d received from Jules Kamin. After convincing Musselman’s Board of Directors that Wilson Fielder was unstable and incompetent, the twelve directors agreed that the Kresge consulting project had been mismanaged from the beginning. A unanimous vote terminated the project. Now the stage was set to begin manipulating Musselman’s stock, but the plan needed tweaking.
Jules Kamin, and John Malouf from Fielder & Company, who’d also worked on the plan, were recommending six successive events designed to maximize the peaks and valleys in Musselman’s stock price over the next several weeks. The first event called for a leak to the business press that Kresge & Company had been fired because it concluded that the J. B. Musselman Company had no viable future as presently constituted. The second event to follow two weeks later would come in the form of an announcement that Musselman was hiring the number two man at Costco or Sam’s Club to launch a new discount retailing strategy. Four weeks after that, a third event would create a scathing criticism of the America’s Warehouse campaign, quickly followed by a spectacular fourth event launching the advertising campaign and grand opening for America’s Warehouse. The fifth event called for another leak, six weeks later, this time about merger talks with Wal-Mart executives. At that point, the partnership would cash out its shares of Musselman stock and exit the picture, unless a profitable merger could be executed as a sixth event.
During the three months it would take to execute these six events, Musselman’s stock price was expected to fluctuate between an estimated low of twelve dollars and a potential high of ninety, giving the partnership multiple opportunities to sell short and buy long. Prior to the events designed to drive the stock price down, the partnership would short the stock, meaning that it would borrow stock from a brokerage firm and sell it before buying the stock back at a lower price to replace the borrowed shares. Prior to events intended to push the stock price up, the partnership would simply buy long, meaning that they would buy low and sell high. The plan projected that the partnership would net over ten billion dollars in profit without ever letting Musselman’s stock price drop more than thirty percent in value during a single week of trading. No red flags would be raised at the SEC or with plaintiff lawyers looking for their next shareholder lawsuit. It would be the most money the partnership had ever plucked from a single client company in a three-month period.
But Tate was concerned that the plan was too tame, and he didn’t like the sequence of events or the timing. He attributed the error in judgment to John Malouf, who would never know David Quinn the way Tate did. Conceptually, Malouf was every bit as strong as Charles Fielder, but his perspective favored the inanimate—systems, structures, and strategies. He lacked Tate’s sensitivity to human frailty and Kamin’s political savvy. Tate asked one of his administrative assistants to get Malouf on his secure line.
When Malouf came on the line, Tate picked his words carefully, “I have some concerns about the stock-manipulation plan.”
Malouf was a tall imposing man with a habit of using his words sparingly, especially when it made the other person feel uncomfortable. Like his mentor Charles Fielder, he relished the aura of enigma that surrounded him and he rarely explained himself to anyone. But Malouf had proven his loyalty to Tate on more than one occasion.
“I’m listening,” Malouf said now.
“David Quinn needs to be pushed to the brink. I don’t think this plan will do it,” Tate replied, getting straight to the point.
“He’s your client, Wayland. I defer to your judgment.”
“Can I run a few suggestions by you?”
“Go ahead,” Malouf said.
Gazing at the Brooklyn docks across the river, Tate slowly and precisely communicated his suggestions to Malouf.
“David Quinn will suffer through the first event of Kresge’s recommendations getting leaked to the press. It will force him to tell more lies, which is good because it will help deepen his resolve. However, I don’t think event two should be designed for an upswing. And if the event is used later, the new head of merchandizing for America’s Warehouse must come from inside Musselman, one of Quinn’s protégés, who can then hire the rising stars he needs from Costco or Sam’s Club. Events three and four should pose no problem as long as the sequencing and timing are modified. Event five has to change. There can be no merger talks, only acquisition talks. Musselman must do the acquiring, keeping Quinn in control. Possible acquisition candidates might include Star Warehouses or Hardware City, but I’ll leave those details to you and Kamin. Event six will pose no problem, as long as it occurs as an acquisition.”
“I have no issues with your suggestions. In fact, I told Jules that events two and three were questionable. Rest assured, we’ll make the necessary changes,” Malouf said.
“Thank you, John,” Tate said, suddenly concerned about Kamin. Was he still obsessing about the scuttled merger? “Keep me in the loop.”
“Absolutely.”
“I assume you’ll be ready to execute the first event during the Banff retreat?” Tate asked.
“Yes. Just as you specified,” Malouf said.
“Perfect,” Tate said. “I’ll give you any additional thoughts I have on events two and three by tonight.” There was still something else missing from the plan, but for the moment he remained uncertain as to what it was. It would come to him. It always did.
Several hours later, after dealing with a dozen needy clients, Tate breathed deeply as he returned to pondering the Musselman stock-manipulation plan and David Quinn’s psyche. Even if the strategy to make America’s Warehouse a new leader among mass discounters didn’t work, he thought, the marketing campaign alone would drive the stock price up to ninety dollars in less than three months. After that, the business press could assert that Kresge had been right about breaking up Musselman into smaller more manageable pieces, but it wouldn’t matter. The partnership would be cashed out, and Boggs & Saggett would continue to be praised for a brilliant advertising campaign. Only Quinn would be blamed for failing to deliver.
On the other hand, if the strategy did work, and Tate still believed it would, there would be much more than ten billion dollars to be made from David Quinn and the J. B. Musselman Company. And that’s why the stock-manipulation plan needed something else to lock Quinn into the partnership long term, Tate concluded.
After the plan’s first event, when the stock had dropped because of a press leak, Quinn would feel distraught and vulnerable. That would be the time to add another event. An imminent hostile takeover of Musselman by Hardware City would push Quinn from feeling distraught and vulnerable to the brink of utter despair. Musselman didn’t have a poison pill to ward off a hostile takeover, and it would never be able to borrow enough money to buy back its own shares because the company already had too much debt. A public stock offering would not only take too long, it would merely exacerbate the problem. And of course selling the company to a friendly suitor would never be acceptable to Quinn, because he’d lose too much control. Quinn’s only option to remain at the helm of Musselman, Tate mused with a smile, would be to accept an offer that he and the partnership would devise—an offer that would force Quinn to do something illegal.
Tate picked up the phone and ran the idea past Bob Swatling. Swatling assured Tate that such a maneuver could be successfully orchestrated. It was a manipulation scheme that Charles Fielder would never have allowed, but things were different now. Tate grinned as he stroked his slightly jutting chin, satisfied that this plan would take Quinn to the brink and provide enough leverage to keep him loyal to the partnership for years to come.
Tate called Malouf to tell him about his final modification. Malouf had no objections, assuring Tate that it fit perfectly with their own modifications. He promised to prepare a final draft of the plan and distribute it by encrypted hush mail within the hour. Sixty minutes later, Tate called Kamin to review the final plan. “Do you anticipate any problems with orchestrating the hostile takeover?” Tate asked.
“Not with Hardware City involved; they owe us big time,” Kamin said.
They both laughed.
“The only concern I have is David Quinn. Are we pushing him too hard, too fast?” Kamin said.
“I know Quinn. He won’t like this, but he’ll do it,” Tate said.
“What does Swatling think?”
“He’s on board,” Tate said, put off by Kamin’s questions. First he let the KaneWeller situation get out of control, then he ignored Malouf’s input on the plan, and now he’s questioning my judgment. Is Jules getting soft? Time will tell. Tate shifted gears. “What’s happening with the Fielder & Company acquisition?”
“It hasn’t died yet, but it will soon,” Kamin said.
“It’s better this way.”
“I’m there, Wayland,” Kamin said.
“Good.”
After disconnecting, Tate called Swatling to arrange a meeting with Lester Pickering, CEO of Hardware City Stores. Kamin was right. Pickering would jump at the opportunity to make a quick killing in the market, but, more importantly, he would jump at Tate’s request, because of past favors. Leverage was such sweet currency.
Manhattan’s Upper West Side was bustling with activity when the taxi dropped Emily Klein at her apartment a little before ten o’clock in the evening. The endless comings and goings had always been one of the main reasons she felt safe living alone in the city. As Emily entered the lobby of her apartment building, she noticed at once that the night security guard was not at his usual post behind the reception desk. Before she had time to become concerned, someone slipped through the door behind her. When Emily turned around, she let out a scream, dropping her shopping bags to the floor. She backed up slowly.
A man with a gun stood in front of her. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a tan T-shirt, and blue jeans. His expressionless eyes and close-cropped hair were dark brown. In a low gruff voice with a British accent he said, “I’m only here to deliver a message, Ms. Klein. Tell your boyfriend to stay out of any investigation into Daniel Redd’s death or what happened to his father in Sun Valley. Both of you will live longer that way.”
Emily took another step backward until she felt leaves from a planter brushing against her back. She stood motionless.
The intruder stepped toward her until he was literally breathing down her neck. He raised his gun to her left ear and then slowly ran the barrel along her chin to her right ear.
“Convince him not to do anything stupid.”
Although Emily started shaking like a leaf, every fiber of her being strained to prevent him from seeing it. With his eyes glued on Emily, the intruder stepped backward toward the entrance door.
“Goodnight, Ms. Klein. Please forgive the intrusion.” And then he was gone.
Emily didn’t move for several seconds as her body uncoiled. There was still no sign of the security guard. Composing herself, she gathered her shopping bags and took the elevator to her sixth floor apartment where she threw her bags against the wall in utter frustration. She immediately called Wilson’s cell phone, but there was no answer. After leaving a message for him to call as soon as possible, she poured a glass of Shiraz to calm her nerves.
When she called the security guard who’d returned to his station in the foyer, she discovered he’d been called to the eighteenth floor on what turned out to be a false alarm. He apologized and asked if she’d encountered any difficulties during his absence. Reluctantly, she said no, deciding to wait until she talked to Wilson. She tried Wilson again. There was still no answer, so she called Brattle House and got Anita, the live-in house manager. She left a message for Wilson to call when he arrived, no matter how late.
For the next hour while waiting for Wilson to return her call, Emily sat in her living room with the bottle of Shiraz, deconstructing her day and its disturbing end. The first thing she’d done was drop off her completed manuscript,
The Psychology of Illusion: Perception, Bias, and Assumed Truths
, at Random House a week earlier than planned. Then she did some last minute shopping on Fifth Avenue. After grabbing a bite to eat at Café Europa on Fifty-Seventh Street, she took a cab to her office at Columbia University where she packed up her remaining personal items, saw a few long-standing clients, and said good-bye to colleagues. In between these preparations to leave for Boston, she reminisced and obsessed about Wilson. No matter what happened in their lives or how many other people they dated, it seemed they kept coming back to each other. Their physical chemistry had been apparent from the first day they met, but it was a deep emotional and spiritual connection that bonded them, despite their very strong-willed natures. They were both fiercely independent people who didn’t want anyone telling them what to do. The consequence, not surprisingly, had been an on-again, off-again relationship with some rather painful arguments. While packing items from her office, she began recounting their last big argument eight months earlier, the one that had led to postponing their wedding.
Wilson had flown to New York City for the weekend. During dinner at a trendy Upper West Side restaurant, they began commiserating about how little time they spent together. Several minutes later, after having fully vented their relationship woes, Wilson had asked his dispiriting question.
