God, I want a drink. I say, “ODS looks very interesting. I had never even heard of it before.” Conspiracy Grrl knew about it. I pull up her post on the Internet and read about the faulty night-vision goggles. I don’t mention this. “I see it’s headquartered in D.C. I’d like to go back there and meet people.”
“What right do you have to do this?”
“You’re a public company, for one thing. And you’re making news. The 13-D filing is real. What about this Animal Spirits LLC?”
“What about it?”
“They’ve taken a stake in your company. Who are they? What do they want? What are you going to tell your shareholders?”
When her voice comes back it’s trembling with rage. “We have no comment! I’ve never seen such shoddy, yellow journalism in my life! We have a great story to tell!”
“So talk to me.”
“Never. I intend to call your publisher to complain.”
I’m tempted to tell her that her boss has beaten her to it. But I give her Sterling’s extension. I offer to transfer her, but she’s gone. With the new phones, you can’t hear them slam down like in the old days.
The business editor breezes by with a “Good column. They said nice things about you in the ten o’clock.” That would be the morning news meeting, where the editors sit around and critique the paper. I go back to my email and open one with no name on the sender slot, just a subject line: “About Olympic International.” I open it and read: “You made a good start. But you’re missing the big story. Dig deeper.”
I hit reply and type: “Tell me more.”
It immediately bounces back from Yahoo. “Undeliverable.”
Chapter Ten
Friday, October 22nd
Friday morning I am in the newsroom early, working on the Sunday column. Sunday is the biggest circulation day. The job cuts have begun. The film critic is taking early retirement. He’s one of the most respected in the country and he won’t be replaced—we’ll use wire copy. The reporter covering transportation was pink slipped on Wednesday. She left the building in tears. She is my age. The top editors spend hours in meetings in the fish bowl, the glassed-in conference room on the fifth floor. We walk by and pretend not to notice. Rumors and gossip flood the newsroom.
There’s much to write about in the world: the continuing banking fiasco, more layoffs at Boeing, the potential for a new rise in energy prices, a classic Seattle fight over declaring an old Denny’s a historic landmark. I decide to focus again on Olympic International. James Sterling’s old buddy Pete Montgomery has not returned my call. But my cell phone rings as the system is booting up and I am brought back to the lethal centrality of my recent days.
“I hear you were meeting with Troy the morning he died.”
I might ask how he heard such a thing, but the voice belongs to one of the richest men in the city, in the world in fact, and of course he has myriad ways of knowing. He’d make a hell of a reporter if he were willing to take the pay cut and the aggravation. I tell him I was there.
“That must have been a shock. I never would have seen Troy killing himself, but I guess you never really know, do you?”
“I guess not.”
So much I’d normally want to ask about his business or philanthropy ventures. So often I would let the conversation find its way into the real reason he has called. But I’m on deadline, so I just blunder ahead, seeking an easy payoff.
“Were you in his hedge fund?”
“No,” he says.
“Was his fund in trouble.”
“No way,” he says. “Troy was one of those guys who made money in the bubble, and then he made money from the rubble.” He doesn’t laugh. “Troy was quick to see the equation had changed. For years borrowing costs were so low and asset appreciation so high that everybody looked like a genius. Now it’s going the other way. Lots of hedge funds and private equity suffered. Not Troy.”
I usually have trouble getting good cell reception when I’m deep in the newspaper building, but his voice is sitting-right-next-to-me clear. I ask if he had invested with Troy.
He just laughs. Then, “There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. Lot of bad bets. I just thought the columnist knew everything.”
I laugh briefly. He can command the top research in the world, so he doesn’t need me. Unless he wants to know what Troy and I talked about that morning. I leave that alone. I ask if there’s any reason the feds might be interested in Troy.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you know everything.”