Key man, p.11
Key Man, page 11
“The patterns are a little stronger here. In fact, I’m kind of surprised some of these cases haven’t already been pulled out and sent to the task force you mentioned because I’d be pretty confident in saying someone’s been involved in several homicides on the West Coast over the span of the past ten years.”
“Have either of these hypothetical serial killers been involved with a car bombing?”
“No, I don’t remember there being any car bombings in the database.”
“That’s right! We had already pulled all of those cases because we looked at them separately when we were first analyzing the data.”
“So, there’s some data I didn’t have available?”
“Yeah, we found a pattern of car bombings that covered thirty-five cases, of which thirty-three seemed to involve victims with similar profiles. We pulled those cases out of the database before I ever contacted you about the seemingly random killings.”
“I certainly would like to look at that data. Integrate it into my analysis and see if it matches in some way.”
“Sure, Doc. I’ll e-mail you a file right away. But just based on what you have already, did either one of your hypothetical serial killers ever use explosives?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Do you think they’d be capable of using explosives?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Thanks, Doc. I’ll get that other data to you right away.”
Chapter 23
Fletcher’s head snapped back and then his whole body lurched forward. The impact of the steering wheel on his chin was like the short right hook Ali used on Liston. Just like Sonny, Fletch was down for the count.
Up until 1994, Fletcher had managed to operate freely, but now this freak accident put him squarely on the police radar.
Several blocks away, in the alley where he was sleeping, Arnie was oblivious to the sirens that were racing to Fletcher Pound’s rescue. As was usual after a Wings of Vengeance meeting, Arnie was oblivious to everything.
Arnie had finally stumbled onto another meeting. These were unfamiliar faces. But they had sandwiches. And while Arnie had to ask, a second bag of potato chips was provided, along with a full beer he didn’t even have to share.
They said they had been expecting him. They must hear the voices.
They said their ‘associates’ in San Francisco had said Arnie was headed their way. They said that Arnie was supposed to have been on a bus. That they went to pick him up at the bus depot, but he wasn’t there.
Arnie saw a glimpse of a beach. There was a bus. The voices said he should have stayed on the bus. No, the voices told him to get off of the bus. He couldn’t remember. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there.
Arnie was hungry and they gave him a second sandwich, another bag of potato chips, and another beer. Thank God he’d found the meeting. Thank God the voices had helped him find the meeting. Thank God the voices would help him remember what he had to do next.
II
What was supposed to have been a ten-hour bus ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles had turned into a three-and-a-half-week trek. The voices were asleep when the Greyhound pulled into the station.
As far as Arnie was concerned, there was no reason for him to be on the bus, no reason not to get off the bus, and certainly no reason to get back on the bus. So, Arnie had gotten off in San Luis Obispo.
When the voices woke up, Arnie was lost. They told him to start walking. And he did.
The voices told him to walk with the sun on his right and then keep walking in the same direction when the sun went down. Arnie would walk until the early hours of the morning and sleep past noon.
The voices kept directing him south. On the few occasions he rose before noon, by keeping the sun on his right, Arnie’d back-track until the sun passed overhead but then he’d resume his southward trek.
Arnie was constantly amazed during his walk-about. He’d get hungry, reach in his pocket, and find the wad of money. He didn’t know whose money it was. He didn’t know where it came from. He didn’t know how much there was.
All he knew was that when he’d get hungry, he’d reach in his pocket and find some money. He’d buy a burger or a sandwich, pick up a bag of potato chips, get one of those 64-ounce monster soda pops, and start walking.
Arnie got picked up by the cops several times. They’d invariably snatch him off the side of the freeway before he made it into town. Haul him to the station where they’d determine he wasn’t drunk but certainly wasn’t someone they wanted loitering about their town. So they’d drive Arnie to the southern boundary of their jurisdiction where they’d deposit him with a stern warning to keep heading south.
These were voices Arnie knew he needed to pay attention to, so he’d resume his southern march. Without the cops’ transportation, Arnie’s journey would have taken several days longer.
Arnie’s last ‘lift’ took him all the way from Malibu to the edge of Santa Monica. From there Arnie wandered down to Venice. That’s where the voices told him to stop, where the voices helped him find the Wings of Vengeance meeting, where the voices directed him to do what he needed to do and then find the alley and get some sleep.
And, that’s where Arnie Nugent was apprehended just as the emergency vehicles were converging on the scene where Fletcher Pound lay unconscious.
Chapter 24
Even though he was still slightly hung over from the night at Ted’s listening to Donny and his ‘short sale’ theory, Ski was so excited that he had to get to work. He arrived at his cubicle hours before the start of his shift.
Sam was already there. Sam never did go home. And now, he was asleep at his desk in a position he’d pay for when he woke up.
Sam had scattered files all around their office space. He had scrawled lengthy notes on a yellow pad, but Ski still couldn’t decipher Sam’s handwriting, so he had no idea if Sam had made any progress.
Not wanting to be associated with the pain that Sam would encounter when he unfolded from his awkward repose, Ski tried to be as quiet as possible as he fired up his computer. Sam stirred at the booting-up sound. Fortunately, he drifted back to sleep before the computer issued a series of chimes indicating Ski had e-mail.
Apparently neither Kate nor Donny had been particularly successful at avoiding Mr. Insomnia. There were seven e-mails from Kate, and four from Donny.
Kate started with a list of questions Ski and Sam should look into on all the cases. She quickly moved to information she had tracked down online, which she was forwarding to Ski. And then she indicated that she planned a crack-of-dawn visit to the stockbroker who handled her trust funds.
Donny’s e-mails, in various forms, all offered his assistance in tracking down trading patterns. He needed more information on the companies involved, which he asked Ski to provide.
After retrieving his online mail, Ski moved on to his main task. Retrieving one file at a time from the disaster that was Sam’s workspace, Ski quietly assembled a brief synopsis of the information he had on each of the companies managed by the bomb-blast victims. As he worked, he noticed for the first time that each of the victims was repeatedly referred to by employees, customers, friends and relatives as the “Key Man” in their particular organizations. He wondered why he’d never noticed that common thread before.
As he neared the end of his summaries, Ski began to make more noise as he moved about the cubicle. He didn’t want to startle Sam awake, but he knew he couldn’t send either Kate or Donny the information he had gathered without his partner’s OK.
Beginning to purposefully cough as he fussed about the work area, Ski finally managed to break through the fog in Sam’s head. It didn’t take long for Sam’s bloodshot eyes to fix on Ski as the probable source of the pounding in his temples.
Gathering himself, as he searched for the proper invective, Sam stumbled on fresh brain tracks laid down the night before and remembered that his current state was self-inflicted.
“Coffee,” Sam uttered softly with his face still hovering about two inches over his desktop. “Please sir, may I have some coffee,” Sam politely continued, realizing a comrade could be useful to him at that particular moment in time.
“Sure, Sam,” answered Ski softly. “Your normal cream and sugar or would black be better today?” Ski took Sam’s grunt, while he unkinked his neck, as an indication that black coffee would be in order.
Ski had always appreciated the fact that Sam never asked him to fetch coffee. As the senior member of the team, Sam could have invoked that privilege and Ski would have obliged. But, either Sam realized that particular request would have been hurtful to Ski, or he just didn’t mind getting his own coffee.
Given the current situation, Ski was more than happy to round up coffee – black coffee – for Sam. He wanted Sam as alert as possible, as quickly as possible, so he could show him the information he had compiled and get Sam’s blessing to forward it on to Kate and Donny. He also wanted to see if Sam had ever noticed the repeated “Key Man” reference they had overlooked.
Sam gave the go-ahead for Ski to provide Kate with the information he had organized on each of the businesses run by the bombing victims. He figured it was best to see what Kate’s investment advisor could come up with before involving Donny, another civilian, in their investigation.
They had been pacing their cubicle for a couple of hours when Sam hung up the phone, declared “This is bull shit,” and told Ski to call Donny and ask for help.
Apparently Kate’s advisor, Simon Bream, had just arrived at his office. It was only 8:45 in the morning, still reasonably early by most people’s standards, but to Sam, Ski, and Kate it seemed like mid-afternoon.
Simon had been just as gracious as humanly possible to Kate, but informed her that his talent was in managing the “client” side of the business and that all research was handled out of his firm’s New York office. Simon would fax off Kate’s list of companies to New York, and if the firm had any research reports or investment recommendations already available, he could have them back in a couple of days. If actual research was required, it could take a little longer, maybe a couple of weeks.
“Typically,” Simon explained to Kate, “the New York boys come up with their recommendations and we, out here on the front lines” — like there were battle lines separating Westwood from Beverly Hills — “we provide that information to our clients, or in the case of trust funds like yours where we have portfolio responsibility, we take action. Our clients expect us to decide which companies are worth analyzing. We’re not really used to having a client ask us to look into this company or that company.”
Vowing to have her trust fund yanked from that “condescending asshole” as soon as possible, Kate passed on the news to Sam that her broker wasn’t going to be any help.
Ski was surprised when the receptionist at Donny’s firm informed him that Donny was ill and that he could talk to one of Donny’s associates or leave a message. Given that they had been trading rounds at Ted’s the night before, Ski could envision Donny being a little under the weather. But he had received e-mails from Donny already that morning and assumed he was at work.
Ski decided to return the last of Donny’s e-mails and see if he was OK. Ski got an almost instantaneous response from Donny. “I’m really at the office. Told Sally to hold my calls — tell people am sick — so I’m clear to help you guys. Sally was supposed to put you through, but sometimes she forgets. Call me on my back line, 677-4426.”
Donny grabbed the receiver on the first ring. “Got some good stuff already,” announced Donny without even saying hello or checking to make sure it was Ski on the line. Donny had remembered a couple of the victims and a couple of the company names that had been tossed about the night before. Using that information, he was already “on the case.”
Ski jotted down Donny’s fax number and told Donny he would fax him the summary information he had compiled. Donny said that he’d work on it right away and suggested that everyone meet at Ted’s that evening to go over his findings. Donny then reiterated, “But I gotta tell ya, I got some good stuff already. Yeah, really good stuff ... OK, see you tonight about 6:30.”
At 3:20, Ski received a breathless call from Donny. Donny had plowed through the information supplied by Ski, and while there were a few loose ends he needed to tie up, he thought they should get together as soon as possible.
Sam and Ski had already arranged a 3:30 meeting with an important, reluctant, witness in one of their other homicide investigations. They did, after all, have another dozen or so open cases at the time. So Ski couldn’t promise Donny they could get away much before 6:00.
At 4:05, Sam declared their witness an official no-show. He handed the file off to Sizemore and asked him to interview the witness if she wandered in later that afternoon. Then he put in a call to Kate.
Kate had dropped out of school when she found she couldn’t concentrate on anything but her grandfather’s murder. She planned to return to the MBA program next term, but right now she was free to meet Sam, Ski, and Donny whenever and wherever they chose.
Even though his office was several blocks further away from Ted’s than the precinct house, Donny had already staked out their booth and ordered a round of beers by the time Sam and Ski arrived. It usually took Kate about 15 minutes to drive from her condo to Ted’s, but she arrived before Donny had finished telling Sam and Ski how he went about pulling information on Ski’s list of companies.
Donny had started with a general check of corporate records and SEC filings. He then researched his firm’s database of corporate analyses and stock recommendations. Finally, he ran the first cut of a report on market activity for each company’s stock.
He hadn’t finished the complete analysis of regular and short sales trading volume for each company’s stock; that would take most of the night. But he had enough.
As Kate slipped into the booth, Donny took a deep breath and launched into a description of what he had already uncovered. The previous evening – as Sam, Ski, and Kate listened to Stock Manipulations 101 – the general feeling was that, even though these cases spanned both Coasts, if they could tie a couple of the unsolved cases together through short sales activity, they would have a whole new way of looking at them. Now the three sat in rapt silence and listened as Donny revealed that there had been unusual market activity in the stock of all thirty-three companies just before, and then again after, the Key Men in those companies had met their untimely demise.
They were all speechless as Donny went on to say that, in every case, the companies involved had similar profiles. They were all up-and-comers. They had all created a profitable niche for their particular product or service and had grown beyond the initial entrepreneurial/venture capital phase.
In addition, all of the companies had gone through IPO’s and had publicly traded stock. But they were also thinly capitalized, with either the founder, a venture capitalist, or an investment banker still holding most of the outstanding stock. Public shares of thinly traded stock, Donny explained, could swing more wildly than public shares of stock in a company with a large number of shares outstanding and diverse shareholders.
None of the companies had yet reached market dominance or the mature phase of growth in which there is depth of management. Each and every company was still very much dependent on the vision, will, and energy of its founder. Its “Key Man.” Take the Key Man out of the picture and the stocks would drop, as Donny had said, “like a ton of bricks.” Which is exactly what had happened.
“Like I said,” continued Donny, “All I know so far is that there was heavy trading in all of the stocks both before, and after, each Key Man was removed from the picture. So far, I can’t tell if any of that activity involved short sales. I still have a lot of work to do tonight in order to piece that part of the puzzle together. But I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut that short sales are what I’m going to find!”
Donny folded his arms across his chest and sat back with a satisfied smile on his face. Sam was the first to break the silence, “Jesus, Donny! Great work! We’re gonna have to get you some kind of a ‘citizen detective of the month’ award or somethin’.”
Ski just shook his head. Kate, looking like she might cry, slowly reached across the table to shake Donny’s hand ... the proudest moment to date in Donny’s otherwise uneventful life.
II
The four met at the House of Pancakes for breakfast the next morning. No one had been sure what time Ted’s opened and, in any event, breakfast at Ted’s had sounded like a really bad idea. So it was breakfast at the IHOP… where everything, especially at 6:30 in the morning, was a little too plastic, a little too bright, and a little too cheerful.
Donny was the last to roll in. He looked like Sam did the previous morning.
Donny suffered from a middle-aged reaction to pulling an all-nighter, just as Sam had the previous day. Plowing through daily trading activity records for these small (in a Wall Street sense) companies had taken its toll, and it took Donny two cups of IHOP coffee to become coherent. “I’m sorry,” Donny started, with his eyes focused on his second cup of coffee. Sam, Ski, and Kate felt like they were simultaneously kicked in the solar plexis.
Now everyone stared at their coffee as Donny, after a minute, continued, “I’m really sorry ... I thought I’d get through everything by this morning ... but it’s just going too slow ... I’m sorry ... I just couldn’t get it all done.”
“That’s it?” exhaled Sam. “You’re sorry ’cause you didn’t get done?”
“Yeah, I’m really sorry. I thought I could do it. I hope you guys aren’t too disappointed.” Donny mumbled flatly still staring at his coffee.
“Jeez, Donny,” Sam continued, “There’s no timetable here. Homicide investigations don’t come with an expiration date. Sounded to me like you had a ton of paper to sift through. We – at least I – didn’t expect you to finish everything last night.”
