Sharp Teeth and Claws
The next day, I headed to the hotel right on time for our appointment.
The hallway outside Caroline’s room in the hotel in Garden Queens was quiet, the kind of quiet that made every footstep feel louder than it should have. I’d arrived about fifteen minutes early.
……Ding-dong! ……Ding-dong! ……Ding-dong!
When I rang the bell, a frantic voice called out from inside.
“Just a moment!”
I heard hurried footsteps, and then the door opened.
A wash of warm steam and lavender scent spilled out as it did.
Caroline stood there in a white hotel bathrobe, as if she’d just finished showering. Her hair was still slightly damp and falling over her shoulders, but for some reason, her face was already fully made up.
“You came a little early, didn’t you?”
“Not at all, Boss! Come in! Let’s sit and talk. Oh, my, there’s a lot of luggage on the table and chairs. You should sit on the bed for now—”
“I don’t need to go in. Just contact the legal team and accounting.”
“Attorney Vito and Tax Accountant Soren?”
“Yeah. Tell them to meet me in the business meeting room next to my room in an hour.”
“Uh… understood. I’ll contact them right away!”
“Good. Thanks.”
“Then I’ll get ready quickly and head over too!”
The moment business came up, Caroline’s expression sharpened, growing serious.
I nodded and moved past her room to the one farther inside.
Creak—
When I opened the door and stepped in, I found the other person already there.
Ethan Locke.
He had also arrived ahead of schedule.
He looked as if he’d aged several years in just a single day.
His once neatly arranged silver hair was disheveled, and there were dark hollows beneath his eyes.
I shook his hand.
“Thank you for trusting me and coming.”
Ethan himself didn’t know it, but today’s decision would decide his future as well.
He would soon become the chief executive of Black Bog.
……Because I was going to make it happen.
To do that, I needed to review the materials Ethan had brought.
Ethan opened a black aluminum security case.
……Click. ……Click. ……Click.
The dial turned. Before long, every lock had been released.
Inside the case were thick bundles of yellowed documents and cassette tapes with labels stuck onto them.
Ethan took out the thickest leather-bound ledger and spread it open in front of me.
“This is the original copy of the double books Black Bog has been keeping for the past five years.”
With a bitter smile, he added, “Lawrence’s faction came by the headquarters vault for their final cleanup before pushing me out. I still had access rights then.”
On every page Ethan pointed to, the actual expenditures sat beside numbers that had been corrected in red ink.
////////
- Account item: Capital investment / Actual use: Lobbying funds in Washington, D.C. - $1,200,000
- Recipient: Senator P. / Payment method: Routed through a Cayman Islands shell company
- Account item: Environmental consulting fee / Actual use: Gifts and entertainment for EPA officials - $120,000
- Recipient: Unknown (cash payment) / Payment method: Split through petty cash at the Houston branch
- Account item: Legal consulting fee / Actual use: Campaign contribution to a Texas state representative - $350,000
- Recipient: Campaign headquarters of Representative D. / Payment method: Routed through a Delaware ghost corporation
- Account item: Overseas technical partnership fee / Actual use: Concealing executives’ personal assets - $3,100,000
- Recipient: Lawrence Vanderbilt and three others / Payment method: Wire transfer through a secret UBS account in Switzerland
.
.
////////
“On the surface, these were booked as investments or expenses, but in reality they were used for political lobbying and slush funds. It’s decisive evidence of cooked books. And these aren’t the only ones.”
I flipped through the ledger.
The list contained figures so large they looked almost absurd.
Ethan then pulled out another battered file folder, and on the cover were two red stamps that read Confidential - For Destruction.
“This is the internal investigation report on the Texas refinery explosion three years ago.”
I narrowed my eyes.
The Texas refinery explosion.
At the time, the news had reported it as nothing more than a simple gas leak.
Ethan opened the conclusion section of the report and showed it to me.
////////
- Cause of accident: Delay in replacing aging valves (budget cuts) / Casualties: 3 dead (covered up on site), 12 severely injured
- Action taken: Paid settlement to the bereaved families and obtained nondisclosure agreements. Publicly announced only 5 minor injuries.
.
.
////////
“At the time, the company announced that there were no deaths, but in reality three workers at the site were killed. This report contains their names and the settlement payments that were used to keep them quiet.”
Finally, Ethan picked up a small cassette tape.
“And this is the most damaging piece of all.”
The tape had a date written on it in rough black marker, along with the initials L.V.
“Lawrence Vanderbilt. It contains the recording of Black Bog’s current CEO speaking during the emergency meeting about the Gulf oil spill.”
Ethan slid the tape into the worn portable cassette player sitting on the table.
……Click!
When he pressed play, the tape began to spin.
Static…… crackle…… crackle-crackle-crackle……
Through the noise, I could hear the murmur of several voices recorded in the background.
Then a man’s voice came through clearly.
[……We need to clean this up before the EPA bastards get to the site. What’s the leak rate right now?]
[Current estimate is about 500,000 gallons, sir.]
[Five hundred thousand? Then put five hundred thousand in the report for now. Understood?]
[B-but, sir, that’s……]
[Shut up. And get the Coast Guard on the line. Tell them to block access to the site. Don’t let a single reporter or environmental group within five hundred meters of the shoreline. If they want money, give it to them. This is a matter of the company’s survival.]
[……Understood.]
The filthy conversation went on for several more minutes.
Then the tape ended.
Ethan said, “The order to report only one-tenth of the actual spill volume, and the instruction to bribe the Coast Guard so they’d block access to the site—both are captured here, in his own voice.”
“Violation of the Clean Water Act, violation of OSHA regulations, and criminal penalties under the RICO Act… one by one, they’re all federal crimes that can carry prison time.”
“The moment this material goes public, every member of Black Bog’s management will be unable to avoid arrest. The company will come apart at the seams.”
“With evidence like this, you could’ve crushed Black Bog long ago. Why didn’t you use it until now?”
At my question, Ethan let out a deep sigh.
“I couldn’t do it alone. Releasing this evidence required massive legal costs. Filing a complaint with the federal prosecutors is easy enough, but Black Bog has dozens of lobbyists in Washington. It would only take them a week to sabotage the investigation, bury the evidence, and turn around and sue me instead.”
“So you were worried the evidence would become a double-edged sword?”
“That too… that too is true. I’m one of the executives who signed off on these books, after all. Of course, I never knew where the money was really going; I only approved what I was told to approve. But would that hold up in court? An excuse of ignorance is either proof of incompetence or proof of conspiracy. Either way, I’d be finished.”
“So that’s why Lawrence’s faction could push you around. If you blew this wide open, they wouldn’t die alone—you’d go down with them.”
“Exactly. But not anymore. If you stand with us, Chairman, I’m prepared to face court. Under the Whistleblower Protection Act, I can be exempted from criminal penalties or have them drastically reduced. And more than that… I don’t want to be on that ship anymore. I gave them twenty years, and all I got back was humiliation and betrayal. I’m sick of living by selling out my conscience.”
There was a quiet resolve in Ethan’s eyes—the kind that belonged to someone who had already accepted everything.
“This is our last chance. My colleagues and I… we’ve staked everything on you, Chairman.”
“I promise you, Ethan Locke. You’ll soon be the president of Black Bog. I’ll make sure of it.”
“……I believe you, Chairman.”
We shook hands again, harder this time.
* * *
An hour passed.
After finishing my meeting with Ethan, I went up to another meeting room on the floor above.
Three people were waiting there.
My lawyer, Vito Hamilton.
My tax accountant, Soren Hamilton.
And the intermediary between Vito and Soren, distant relatives though they were, and a member of the Hamilton family.
“Long time no see, son! No, wait—I decided to call you nephew, didn’t I? Hahaha—”
It was Wolfman Hamilton, the father of my friend Victor.
A few days earlier, I had contacted Wolfman separately in preparation for the all-out war with Black Bog.
Black Bog’s stock collapse was a foregone conclusion, but I still needed to secure my own profits from it, didn’t I?
Short selling.
Short means “lacking,” and selling means “selling.”
The term came from the idea of selling stock you didn’t actually own.
In simple terms, it was an investment technique where you borrowed someone else’s shares, sold them first, and then bought them back later after the price fell, pocketing the difference. Put another way, it was betting on a stock’s decline.
While ordinary investing meant buying low and selling high, short selling reversed the order: sell high first, then buy low.
……The problem is that I couldn’t touch it directly myself.
Insider trading.
Buying or selling stocks based on nonpublic information was a serious federal crime.
I had received Black Bog’s corruption evidence directly from Ethan, and that information had not yet been made public.
If I personally went in on the short sale now?
They’d probably have the SEC breathing down my neck.
If I were prosecuted for market manipulation using inside information, I’d be inviting a whole mountain of annoying trouble.
I could probably defend it legally, but… I’d still have to worry about public perception and my image.
Besides, I was the head of a company that aimed to acquire Black Bog. If I were also accused of artificially driving down the stock price of the company I wanted to buy, that could trip me up in court no matter how solid the evidence was.
And the shareholders wouldn’t look kindly on it either.
So I’d tipped Wolfman off well in advance.
I told him that a major piece of bad news would hit Black Bog soon.
He was my dedicated trader, so he would make proper use of that information.
And most importantly, I planned to open my short position only after the evidence had been made public through the press.
Once the information was in the market, anyone could trade on it.
That wasn’t insider trading, but a lawful, rational, market-based judgment.
Of course the profit margin would be a little lower, but that didn’t matter.
It would still be far better than having the SEC harass me.
Wolfman burst out with a hearty laugh and said, “I know what you’re worried about, nephew. Don’t sweat it. How many years have I spent on Wall Street, and you think I can’t keep that line straight?”
Wolfman and I first talked through the short-selling operation.
After that, he said he had a lot to prepare and headed straight back to his office in the financial district.
“When this is over, I hope you’ll officially join Lee Energy. You still can’t be an insider yet.”
“Right. Then I suppose this is the end of you calling me nephew. From then on, I’ll have to call you Chairman. Hahaha—can you believe this? My son’s friend, and I’ve got to treat him like my superior. Fate really is a strange thing.”
“Superior? I’m the one who’ll be doing the treating.”
Wolfman gave me a wink, then got on the elevator and disappeared.
Before long, only Vito, Soren, and I were left in the meeting room.
I spread the materials I’d received from Ethan across the table.
“Read it. It’s Black Bog’s death certificate.”
At once, Vito’s eyes widened.
“Good Lord! Is this real? Double books, internal whistleblower reports, all of it? Are these people actually Americans? They don’t seem to fear the government at all. How could they be so sloppy in 1992… what is this, the 1930s during the Great Depression?”
“These are the originals Ethan Locke brought me.”
“Hold on, Boss. If the evidence comes from an internal whistleblower, we need to check a few risks first.”
“What risks?”
“First, we have to consider the possibility that Black Bog will move to destroy the evidence. If they realize these materials have leaked, they’ll clear out the headquarters server and document archive immediately. Then we won’t be able to authenticate the originals in court.”
“I see. I’d only been thinking about Ethan Locke’s safety, but if you look at it more carefully, that could definitely be a problem.”
“That’s the second issue you just mentioned, Boss. Under the Whistleblower Protection Act, he can be protected from retaliatory dismissal and civil suits, but that only applies if we follow the formal process. If his identity is exposed before the complaint is filed, they could counterattack instead.”
“What’s the countermeasure?”
“It’s a race against time. The moment we file the complaint, we need to request emergency search-and-seizure warrants from the SEC and the EPA. If we don’t raid Black Bog’s headquarters within forty-eight hours, we won’t secure the original evidence. With evidence this strong, multiple federal agencies should be able to move at once.”
“What about the RICO Act?”
The RICO Act—Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—was originally written to crack down on organized crime like the mafia.
Its core principle was that it punished not just individual crimes, but a pattern of criminal behavior. In other words, when bribery, fraud, evidence tampering, witness bribery, and the like weren’t one-off acts but repeated systematically as part of an organization, the penalties became far harsher.
At my words, Vito nodded.
“That depends on how we frame it. If we do this right, we could tie the entire current Black Bog management team together as a mafia-grade criminal organization and land them with more than twenty years in prison. All criminal proceeds would be confiscated, of course.”
“Then this tape makes that possible?”
“That’s the key, yes. Lawrence’s own voice gives us instructions to offer bribes, manipulate evidence, and obstruct the investigation.”
“Would we be able to get a search warrant as soon as tomorrow?”
“Most likely. With that, we can probably get warrants on the strength of this alone.”
“What about a class action?”
“Of course. If we add punitive damages, Black Bog will be finished beyond recovery. But timing is crucial. The press and the legal action have to hit at the same time for maximum effect.”
“Good. Set up the legal team immediately and draft the complaint. Also put media outlets under embargo and prepare to distribute the materials.”
“Leave it to me, Boss! I’ll prepare everything without a single gap and wrap this up perfectly.”
“Soren, analyze these ledgers and organize the materials to hand over to the IRS.”
At my words, Soren adjusted his glasses and drew the ledger toward him.
He scanned a few pages, then pulled out a calculator and started tapping in numbers.
“Hmm. Just this one capital investment item alone shows $1,200,000 diverted into lobbying funds. That’s fully nondeductible. Applying the corporate tax rate of 34 percent, the assessed tax alone would exceed $408,000.”
Soren’s fingers moved quickly over the ledger.
“These payments routed through the Caymans will be classified as overseas slush funds, so there’s a forty percent penalty tax… and these items disguised as consulting fees, all of them look like sham expenses. Roughly speaking, the tax evasion total is over $6,000,000. And that’s a conservative estimate. If we analyze all five years of books, it could reach $10,000,000.”
Millions in tax evasion—if Alfie Solomons’s IRS team leader heard that, he’d probably run here barefoot just to get the case.
If I handed this over to the IRS, Black Bog would be weakened and left in exactly the state I wanted to swallow whole.
And, as a pleasant side effect, the friendship between the IRS and Lee Energy would only grow stronger.
We’ve already arranged to have dinner with Professor Cromwell soon… that’ll be the perfect time to tip him off.
And just like that, all the preparations were complete.
I would expose Black Bog’s filthy corruption to the media and citizen groups, turn over the tax-evasion evidence to the IRS, and strike a lawful short on the collapsing stock.
With plenty of leverage on top of it all.
I’d make money, strengthen my allies, and if I went one step further and took over Black Bog, everything standing in the way of developing the Garden Queens oil field would disappear too.
With teeth that sharp and claws that dangerous, what was there to hesitate over?
All that remained now was to tear them apart.