Beneath the Worst
Under a broken streetlamp, cigarette butts and empty beer bottles lay scattered across the ground.
The smell of sewage rose from the wet asphalt.
Once I left Harvard Square’s polished shopping streets and turned into the back alleys where even streetlights were scarce, the world changed completely.
A faint neon sign flickered above a peeling wooden placard.
The Cello.
I pushed open the pub’s creaking wooden door and stepped inside, where the scent of damp sawdust, old oak barrels, and cheap bourbon all mingled together in the air.
During Prohibition in the 1920s, there had been secret bars that sold liquor in defiance of the police.
Those hidden places were called speakeasies.
This bar had recreated that atmosphere in perfect detail.
……Thud. ……Thud. ……Thud.
The lighting was dim, and in a corner, some nameless player was bowing a double bass.
Along one side of the bar, a few middle-aged men had shed their suit jackets and draped them over the backs of their chairs as they drank alone.
Loosened ties, bloodshot eyes—they looked like men who had had a very bad day.
Ever since Black Monday, Wall Street still hadn’t fully recovered, and in bars like this, you could find the occasional financier nursing the wound with alcohol.
The interior was thick with cigarette smoke, turning everything into a blur.
Through that hazy curtain, I spotted a man in a fedora seated alone at a table in the corner.
That was the man I had come to see: Emil Watson.
An investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal.
He was also a senior alumnus I’d been introduced to at the Harvard Alumni Association networking event before.
Class of ’62—a senior by twenty-seven full years.
I could still picture the smile with which he’d handed me his card and said, “Call me if anything interesting comes up.” Even through the cigarette smoke, it was unmistakable.
From what I’d dug up, he had worked at The Wall Street Journal for twenty years and had been named a Pulitzer finalist twice. A veteran, through and through.
It was said one article he wrote had even forced a major corporation’s CEO to resign.
I studied Emil’s face beyond the wavering smoke.
An old beige trench coat, its cuffs worn thin and fraying; hands resting on the table, callused from pressing a pen for years. The hands of a field reporter, unmistakably.
When I approached, he looked up.
“Oh.”
His eyes, sharp behind thick lenses, fixed on me.
“It’s been a while, junior to Chairman Lee Sanha.”
“Good to see you, Senior Emil. Thank you for making time for me despite your schedule.”
“Let’s skip the small talk. Wall Street’s been so quiet lately it’s almost boring.”
After a brief nod to my greeting, Emil glanced at his wristwatch.
I took a thick envelope from the leather bag I’d brought and set it on the table.
……Thump.
The envelope landed with a heavy sound.
It was only a tiny portion of the mountain of material Ethan Locke had brought me, but even this alone was sharp enough to draw blood.
It was an embezzlement case.
Complex environmental violations or technical defects were difficult for the public to grasp, but money stolen from a company—now that was something anyone could understand and be enraged by at a glance.
“You won’t be bored now. These are copies of Black Bog’s accounting books.”
Emil opened the envelope and pulled out the documents.
“Oh. Embezzlement and breach of fiduciary duty, huh? That’ll make the shareholders’ eyes pop.”
He scanned the pages I had marked with a highlighter at rapid speed.
I added an explanation.
“Take a look at the line item for Orion Consulting.”
I pointed to a specific page in the ledger.
///////
<Orion Consulting - Transportation Consulting Fees>
- March 15, 1989 / $1,200,000 / Cayman Islands P.O. Box #7742
- April 8, 1989 / $980,000 / Cayman Islands P.O. Box #7742
- May 12, 1989 / $4,200,000 / Cayman Islands P.O. Box #7742
- June 3, 1989 / $1,550,000 / Cayman Islands P.O. Box #7742
- July 21, 1989 / $2,100,000 / Cayman Islands P.O. Box #7742
.
.
///////
Emil caught the gist at once.
“So it’s the executives’ private slush fund.”
“Exactly. Black Bog’s management used a shell company called Orion Consulting to funnel work to its subsidiaries. The money paid out under the guise of transportation fees was three times above market rate, and the difference went straight into the executives’ Swiss accounts.”
“Hold on. Let me jot this down. I’m not as smart as you, junior, so I’ve got to hear it while writing it out.”
“If you check the remittance code at the bottom of the documents, you’ll see the receiving bank’s SWIFT code ends in KY. That means the Cayman Islands. And if you trace the corporate registration, all you’ll find is a post office box number. No office, no employees, no phone number—just a ghost company. What’s even more interesting is the date……”
I spread out the immigration record copy I’d prepared beside the ledger.
“May 12, 1989—the day $4.2 million was wired. And then the very next day, May 13, if you look at Chairman Lawrence Vanderbilt’s travel record, you’ll see he boarded a flight to Zurich. In other words, on the day the money disappeared, the chairman went to Switzerland. Coincidence? Well, that’s what I think, though other people may have a different opinion.”
This material didn’t take long to verify.
All he had to do was compare the remittance records with the immigration logs.
The faster the fact-checking, the faster the article came out.
Emil clapped his hands once.
“This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been waiting for. My blood’s up for the first time in ages. Ah, yes—this is what makes working on Wall Street worth it. Those Black Bog bastards have been having all the fun without me.”
“This is only the beginning. If you break this story, I’ll give you exclusive access to the much larger pieces hidden behind it.”
“Wow, there’s more? You’ve got a real talent for keeping a man on edge, junior. If I were a woman, I’d have fallen for you on the spot. I probably wouldn’t have gone home tonight.”
For all his flippant tone, Emil’s eyes were ice-cold as he flipped through the pages.
……Flap! ……Flap! ……Flap! ……Flap!
His gaze zigzagged rapidly down the columns of print.
It was the expression of a hunter tracking the footprints of prey.
“No question about it. A P.O. box in the Cayman Islands as a corporate address? So old-school it probably slipped past suspicion. And this immigration record…… there’s no getting around it.”
“Can you verify it?”
“With this, I only need two days—maybe one. Through my sources, checking the transfer records is nothing.”
Emil carefully tucked the envelope into the inner pocket of his trench coat and added, “The legal team at The Wall Street Journal will love this too. It’s airtight evidence, good enough to use without worrying about a defamation suit. Junior, would you mind if I ran this story solo? If I send it up the chain, they might kill it for no good reason.”
“Of course. That’s why I brought it to you. But there’s one condition.”
“A condition?”
“The timing of the article. Please break it this Friday, right before the market closes.”
“Friday afternoon……”
Emil thought it over for a moment, then murmured, “So you’re planning to beat them up all weekend and dump the whole impact on them the second the market opens?”
“You get the scoop, and I get justice. That sounds like a win-win, doesn’t it?”
“Fine. Friday afternoon it is. Black Bog’s name will be printed in huge letters on the front page of The Wall Street Journal…… and the headline will be the one our Chairman Lee junior personally picks. How about that?”
He was handing me the blade.
I considered it for a moment.
A headline was the first impression.
It had to stop readers in their tracks as they passed the newsstand.
No complicated financial jargon or legal clauses were needed.
Just words anyone could understand at a glance, words that would make them angry.
“How about Black Bog’s Black Money?”
“Black Bog’s Black Money…… nice alliteration, and it’s immediately clear. I like it. I’ll write the subhead myself: ‘Suspected Systematic Embezzlement Through Shell Companies’…… that should get the legal team to sign off.”
“I’ll look forward to it, Senior.”
I took his hand.
That was when the oil-soaked fuse finally lit.
* * *
Friday afternoon, the 45th-floor conference room at Black Bog headquarters in Houston.
Smoke from the tip of a thick cigar drifted lazily toward the ceiling.
The men who owned the company had gathered in this room, where the Texas skyline stretched out in full view beyond the windows.
Seated at the head of the table was Lawrence Vanderbilt.
Deep-set wrinkles, a sharp hooked nose, and the mouth of a man stiffened by power.
His custom-tailored British suit and the Patek Philippe on his wrist made it clear exactly what world he belonged to.
Surrounding Lawrence were the gray-haired executives of the old guard, each wearing a look of smug entitlement.
“So where was it again? Garden Queens’ Lee Energy? They refused the oil-field sale offer? Two hundred and fifty dollars an acre was more than fair for contaminated land.”
“Yes, Chairman. They said they’d never sell for a pittance.”
“Heh. Wasn’t it some immigrant family of Koreans who discovered the place while running a gas station? Country bumpkins, and they still managed to learn what money tastes like……”
“That’s how immigrants are. They make a fuss about the American Dream and all that, but without roots, they’ll wither fast.”
“Maybe we should squeeze their cash flow a bit? Call their main bank and tell them to hold off on extending any loans tied to them. Once their finances get tight, they’ll come to the negotiating table on their own.”
“Understood. I already have a golf appointment with the president of Texas Commerce Bank this weekend.”
“A bunch of slant-eyed beggars, the lot of them. How dare they refuse our offer? Oil should belong only to America—and to Americans. What business do those filthy monkey refugees have trying to gorge themselves on it……”
Just then.
……Bang!
The conference room door was flung open hard.
The chief of staff, usually known for his calm and silence, stormed in with a face drained of all color.
In his hands was a stack of freshly printed newspapers.
“Ch-Chairman! We’ve got a disaster!”
“What is it?”
Lawrence set down his cigar.
Instead of answering, the chief of staff spread the newspaper across the table.
The front-page headline was printed in bold Gothic type.
Black Bog’s Black Money: Systematic Embezzlement Through Paper Companies
Hot ash dropped from the cigar in Lawrence’s hand and burned through the fabric of his expensive suit.
His forehead broke out in clammy, fish-slick sweat, thick as crude oil.
“W-What the hell……?”
There it was in the article: the secret account details they had trusted absolutely, and the address of the shell company Orion Consulting, printed in black and white for the whole world to see.
And right beneath it—Lawrence’s own photo entering Switzerland!
At the same time, ringing sounds began erupting all around the conference room.
……Ring! ……Ring! ……Ring!
Paging devices on the executives’ belts buzzed wildly, and the phone in the corner kept screaming without pause.
One executive picked up the receiver, only to go pale.
“……Yes. Yes, I understand.”
He hung up and said in a trembling voice, “A brokerage called. They say sell orders are flooding in the moment the article hit. We’re down 12 percent in the first thirty minutes of the session…… and it’s still dropping right now.”
“What?”
“There’s only one hour left until the close, and we’re right on the edge of the circuit breaker.”
Another phone rang.
“……What? The U.S. Attorney’s Office? They’ve issued a warrant for a search and seizure?”
“Legal just called in an emergency! The SEC is opening an investigation too……!”
“Chairman, the FBI is in the lobby right now!”
.
.
The once-calm conference room turned into chaos in an instant.
Lawrence snatched up the newspaper.
How? Who? Why?
His mind spun at high speed.
The ledger featured in the article had been kept in the headquarters vault.
The key was held by himself, the finance executive, and…….
“Ethan! That insane bastard!?”
The former SVP of Strategy who had been run out at this week’s shareholders’ meeting.
There had been a report that, before he was expelled and before his access rights were revoked, he had visited the vault room.
At the time, they’d brushed it off without a second thought.
They’d assumed he was just there to collect personal belongings.
Lawrence shot up from his seat.
……Crash!
His chair toppled backward and slammed into the floor.
“It was Ethan Locke, that bastard! No doubt about it! He stole the ledger on his way out!”
“Chairman, the reporters are camped out in the lobby! They’re demanding a statement! CNN’s live truck is here too!”
“A statement? What statement!”
Lawrence’s face turned red with fury.
“Say absolutely nothing! Tell them to get lost! Say it’s all false! Say we’ll sue every last one of them!”
He grabbed the crystal ashtray sitting on the table and hurled it across the room.
……Crash!
The ashtray exploded against the wall, but nothing changed.
The situation was the worst possible.
……But they still didn’t know.
Beneath the worst, something even worse was waiting with its mouth open.
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