Saltwater in the Bluegrass (7 page)

It was so close that both men could savor the taste of victory. It was going to happen. It had to happen. It was their time. Pocket Change was, in their words, “destined to win.”

On
e
week before the derby
at the Bluegrass Stakes, Pocket Change came around the number four turn leading by ten lengths, and as the tapes would show over and over in the minds of those watching, shattered his left front leg and quickly pulled up, the jockey hanging on for his life.

A freak but fatal misstep, and the horse had to be put down within minutes of the race being concluded. Not uncommon in the racing world.

Within hours of the race, Lamar quietly stepped away as CEO and president of the Syndicate. He was through. In his mind, he would never go back to the track.

Milford took over as president of the Syndicate, and Katherine settled in as the vice president, but once again, as in most functions, everyone knew who was really in charge of the organization. The next morning in
The Kentuckianna Tribune
newspaper, the front-page headline read:
Pocket Change Lost at the
Racetrack.

Below the headline in another article, also on the front page of the newspaper, a caption would read:
Man, can you spare a
dime.

The editor who allowed the headlines to be published was fired within hours of its publication.

Thomas was on his way home.
He had left the office and could see from the clock on the dash of his car that it was only nine hours now until his flight would leave from the Atlanta Fulton County Airport.

Thomas began to tear up again. He had just broken down not five minutes earlier while walking to the front door of his office from his desk, dropping down to his knees, and then gathering himself before turning off the lights. He had lost his oldest and dearest friend. Thomas had spent the last twenty years helping Lamar build the Ingram Empire into a strong and lucrative icon in the business world, and now he was crying like a baby. He started his car and pulled out of the parking structure, turning left onto Peach Tree Drive, and headed for home.

Usually when taking highway 393 towards Lawrenceville it would take him approximately twenty minutes to get home, but tonight he was in no hurry. He knew that he needed to resolve these emotions before he arrived back at his home. He would have to help Katherine with the company even more than in the past. He would have to leave in a few hours to bring Lamar’s body home from Brazil. Thomas knew that he was more than capable of running the business. It was Katherine and the direction she might want to take the company in that worried him. Could he trust her?

Thomas drove, taking the Stone Mountain Parkway, heading into Snellville. The drive would do him good. On the way, Thomas noticed the changes and how the area had grown since Lamar had first asked him to move to Atlanta with his family and run the southern division of the company. More lights, restaurants, stores, and a lot more traffic, even at this hour of the night.

Thomas turned left at the light in Snellville and headed towards Lawrenceville. It was getting close to ten o’clock when Thomas finally pulled into his driveway. It was good to be home. It was good being back in his safe zone, away form the world and all of its problems, and it was good being with his wife and kids, even if it was just for a short time.

Katherine was up
long before daylight. She walked from her bedroom, down the long hall, past the bathroom and guest room, and into the kitchen area. Once in the kitchen she poured herself a cup of coffee. Placing a new coffee filter into the coffee machine and setting the timer for four-thirty a.m. was Betty’s last assignment each evening before she left. It was, by far, the most important duty she preformed.

The morning sunrise was still some three hundred miles to the east of Louisville but closing in fast. It would be at least an hour before the outline of the city would be visible from the picture window. Katherine started her day in routine fashion. She stood in front of the large picture window, holding her coffee, still in her house robe, looking out into the darkness. Dawn was breaking, and pale light trickled in through the window. She seldom ate breakfast. Katherine watched her weight as closely as she watched the stocks, currency, and commodity markets. Soon she would turn the television on to CNN. She would watch and listen, getting the stock reports from the night before and listening to the morning speculations of today’s trading on Wall Street.

It was six a.m. when Katherine stopped her fidgeting. She turned away from the window and walked toward the phone.

It was time to attend to some immediate business, she thought to herself as she placed the call. The hour of the morning did not matter. It was time to close an account. It was an account that she had opened four years earlier.

Katherine picked up the phone and began dialing the long, thirteendigit international phone number. It would connect her with Senhor Balistko Gaveaira, deep within the interior structure of organized crime in Rio de Janeiro.

Katherine was well versed in all parts of the world, especially where her family’s company had been doing business for years. She knew the right people. She knew who to contact for certain favors. She knew people who could make things happen quickly and quietly. In her mind, it was an asset to know bad people, especially when it was necessary to close an account on somebody.

After three long rings the receiver was picked up on the other end.

“Se, alô. Bom dia, Senhor Gaveaira”

“Senhora Langston, oi, bom dia,” Balistko said.

“Eu tenho um trabalho para você,” Katherine said quickly with a surge of flair and adrenaline, her Portuguese fluent and direct.

“Se, Se, Senhora Langston. We can do the job.”

“Obrigada,”

“Obrigado,” Balistko said.

The order was placed, the call completed.

By ten o’clock the money would be wired to the Ocean Becarro Bank in Rio and the job would be complete. No signs would be left to find, no signs that could lead back to Katherine or to Ingram Enterprises. It was a professional hit. It was as though the account had never existed. It would be as though this person had just walked off the face of the Earth.

Besides, in Katherine’s mind, she could simply justify the fact that this man, this account, this waste of human life, deserved it. He had only a few days earlier killed her brother, and she hated him for that, even if she had given the order. Bowen had served his purpose. No longer would he be needed. This type of men were a dime a dozen. Katherine stood still for a moment. Once again she looked out through the window to the streets below. She would drink her coffee and then get ready for the day.

The account of Joseph Bowen was now closed and so was the subject.

News from the outside world
didn’t make its way into the correctional institutions of Kentucky while it was still fresh. Current events were actually yesterday’s stories.

By law, inmates were not allowed current newspapers or magazines. This was still one of the many big issues the inmates in Kentucky prisons and the ACLU had not been able to change. Books and visitors were the only source of the outside world except for the occasional guard gossip out in the yards.

In the Kentucky Men’s State Prison in LaGrange, the large majority of inmates were incarcerated for theft by use of a weapon, drugs or drug trafficking, assault and battery, or the occasional manslaughter charge.

However, in the women’s facility in Pee Wee Valley, the majority of the women were incarcerated for murder, plain and simple. The routine was simple: follow the rules, do as you were told, stay out of trouble, keep your cell clean and your bed made, and for the most part life was almost bearable for the large number of women housed there.

Beth Ann Ingram, inmate 34647, was housed in the high security block, cell number twenty-six, on the third floor of building three. She had now been in this particular cell for two years, eleven months, and thirty-one days. The only thing that she knew was that the inmates were reassigned to a new cell every three years. Moving inmates was standard procedure, and the moves were always quick and orderly.

Inmates were only allowed to take what they could carry in one corrugated 2 foot by 3 foot box. It was dropped off, and inmates had five minutes to be packed.

Beth Ann knew the three-year ritual. She had preformed this task many times.

In ten minutes she would make the move once again, this time to the fourth floor. Her only source of humor was to think that she must be moving up in the world.

Beth Ann unpacked her belongings and tried to make her new accommodations as nice as they had been for the last three years. She began to unpack all her worldly possessions: one brush, one comb, one toothbrush, one mirror, one wash rag, one towel, one pair of glasses, one clock radio, three posters, six books, two pens, one pencil, one pad of paper, and a ten inch circular fan that sat on her desk. This was it; this was all she had in material possessions to show for the 40 plus years of being housed like an animal in Pee Wee Valley.

The six hundred and forty-seven inmates woke every morning at six a.m., and the showers were turned on from six ten until six twenty. Inmates were expected to shower and be dressed by six forty and were then marched into the eating facility at six fifty where they had until seven fifteen to eat, at which time they reported to their work assignment.

They ate lunch at noon and returned to work at twelve thirty and stayed there until four p.m. At four, they had one hour in the yard. At five, there were educational classes. They ate supper at six o’clock and were returned to their cells at six thirty, and at nine thirty it was lights out.

Nothing ever changed.

Seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year for 42

years.

It had already been
a long day for Thomas by the time he made it through the first leg of his trip. He was now waiting in the Dallas International Airport. He shuffled through his briefcase for a mint as he waited for his next connection.

With his first flight leaving at five forty-five a.m. Eastern Standard Time, he had to get up and be gone by four. This meant his alarm went off at three fifteen. There hadn’t been much time for visiting or relaxing with the family.

Thomas looked at his watch. He moved the book he had been reading onto his lap and began rubbing his eyes. He peered across the room at the gate directly across from his at the two airline employees who were working a flight that was now beginning to board. According to the departure signs, his flight was still on time. Once again, he could only hope there would be no delays. Taking a moment, he noticed several children running around in the hallway area.

It was now going on noon back home. To Thomas it already felt like it had taken him most of the day just to get this far. He was now in a different time zone. His next flight would not be leaving for two more hours.

He needed something to eat, maybe a drink.

To Thomas it never was the time in the air that bothered him as much as it was the time waiting around the airport terminals, waiting for the flight to take off. Thomas had called home and talked with his wife Elle and checked on the kids. Elle had quickly discussed plans for the upcoming party. Thomas had then talked with Douglas overseas and then with Katherine up in Louisville.

Douglas had finally been able to get hold of Randy Traden, Chase Maxwell, and Terry Bolton. These were three men that Thomas and Douglas were unable to get hold of the night before when they had placed the conference call. Douglas now had them on speakerphone. Together all five men discussed their objectives in the change over from Lamar to Katherine. Each man needed to adhere to strict conduct in order to make certain that the company continued to function as an entity. There would be a corporate managers meeting after Thomas arrived back in the states, after he pick up Lamar’s body, after the funeral service and the burial.

Thomas’s next flight, from Dallas to Brazil, took most of the night, arriving at the Rio de Janeiro airport early the next morning. He then took a smaller plane to the São Paulo Airport. He had been in the air for fourteen uncomfortable, commercial charted hours, flying from one continent to another.

The sun was just
starting to come up when Thomas’s plane landed at his final destination. It was now six a.m.

Thomas was now feeling the trip more and more with each hour. He had been up now for close to twenty-seven hours, except for a couple of very short naps he had taken during the flight. Dusty Freedman was waiting outside the front doors of the airport entrance away from the tarmac.

Dusty was on his way back to the mines. He lived in São Paulo with his family during his time off. During the week, he stayed in a company trailer at the mining operation. Knowing that he had to pick Mr. Chandler up, he had made a quick trip home to shower and to get some clean clothing and a few hours of sleep.

Digging was still going on back at the mine. Rescuers were still trying to recover the bodies of the men who had been in the explosion.

Dusty had met Thomas on one other occasion, back when Lamar had brought him down to Brazil on a business and weekend golf retreat two years ago. Golf trips with a little bit of business worked in to help justify the time the trip took and make the expenses tax deductible.

Rio was a fun getaway from the mines and work. It was only fifteen hundred kilometers from the entrance of the Ingram Mines. Thomas and Lamar had taken a road trip one time through the eastern part of Brazil. They had traveled by car, from Porto Alegre back to Rio. It had taken them eighteen hours of drive time. They measured the distance by beer and by setting the mileage tachometer in the rented car.

Lamar had always felt that it was a good thing knowing how far you were from the beach, especially if your plane broke down, or in case you decided at any given moment that you might just want to swim in the ocean.