The Assignment 4 (4 page)

“Aaron Lally, the owner of Atlas Lake, and Mayor Elijah Gibbons, are both members of the Club. I’ve seen them both at the mansion. They fucked me and another call girl, Chloe. Gibbons is a brand new member. They had a welcome ceremony for him. If you notice some new bronze horses being anonymously donated to the city, that’s in recognition of the mayor’s membership of The Club.”

Sandra was listening intently. “Go on,” she said.

“Lally and the mayor are having meetings. The mayor is going to push the proposal through City Hall. He’s going to make sure there are no objections from the Comptroller or any other civic office.”

“And you think he’s doing that because they made him a member of The Club?”

“Yes. I also know that Lally’s going to manipulate the federal process, too.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet, but two former members of Atlas Lake are members of Congress now. And you saw who’s on the board of Atlas Lake. They’ve got the money and the connections to get what they want.”

Sandra looked at Gretchen. She was quiet for a minute. She thought long and hard about what she’d just heard. Lacey looked from Sandra to Gretchen. She couldn’t tell from their faces what they were thinking.

“Okay,” Sandra said at last. “You’ve got possible bribing of the mayor to get this through City Hall, and you’ve got possible corruption at Congress.”

“Yes,” Lacey said, eagerly.

“Can you get those possibilities to become certainties? We’re going to need proof before we print anything.”

“I’ve also got the owner of Atlas Lake giving his daughter to the chairman of the stock exchange.”

Sandra smiled at Lacey. She was impressed. “You’ve got a good instinct for what sells magazines,” she said.

Lacey nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She looked at Gretchen, who couldn’t have looked more proud of Lacey.

“We’ll meet up here again soon,” Sandra said. “If you can get me a clear corruption link between Lally, the mayor, Congress, and Mark Wolf, then you’ve got your story. In the meantime, Gretchen, you make sure the social page does a big spread on this wedding between Wolf and Lally’s daughter. Don’t mention anything about all of this, just make it clear that Wolf has married a twenty-nine year old. Mention her by name but don’t talk about her father. I don’t want them to get a hint that anything’s going on.”

V

L
ACEY WENT STRAIGHT FROM THE
cafe to the New York Public Library building on Fifth Avenue. She was determined to get the information she needed to nail Lally and the mayor. There was no way she was allowing this story to be reduced to a mere sex scandal. If Lally was breaking the law, she was determined to expose him. She had to get revenge for the way he’d treated her and Chloe.

She hurried from the cab up the grand marble steps of the entrance. She was always amazed by the beauty of that building. She’d once read that its marble facade was over three feet thick. She went to the research room and found a free computer terminal. She loved being in that room with its reassuring shelves of reference works lining the walls. The rows of oak tables, sturdy chairs, and brass reading lamps comforted her. The atmosphere in there never failed to remind her of the importance of her job.

She took a deep breath as she got to work. She needed to get enough information to convince Sandra that there was more of a story than what was covered by the waiver she’d signed in Washington.

She started by typing Mark Wolf’s name into the search box. Most of the results were about his role as Chairman of the Stock Exchange. Under his stewardship the market had grown aggressively, attracting lucrative new business from other global financial centers and emerging economies. It seemed he’d set up an innovative incentive system designed to attract major European companies away from their own national stock markets. Increasingly they were listing in New York. He was in the process of setting up a similar program from Asian companies. He was determined to make sure that New York strengthened its position as the world’s preeminent financial hub. There were photos of him all over the world promoting the city as the global financial epicenter.

Needless to say, among Wall Street traders his popularity was unassailable. They loved him. He threw spectacular parties on the top floor of his prestigious trading building on Wall Street. He also spent millions of dollars of his own money improving city parks and public spaces in Lower Manhattan. He had been very active after the September Eleventh attacks in restoring confidence in the area, personally pledging funds for the reconstruction of ground zero.

From what Lacey could see, he was popular, community spirited, and highly thought of. He was sixty-eight years old, which made him thirty-nine years older than his new wife, Claire Lally. That was strange but it certainly wasn’t unheard of, especially for a man as wealthy as he was. He was listed among the richest one hundred men in America. No one would think twice about his having such a young wife. Lacey had to admit that Wolf looked pretty impressive, at least on paper. He hosted all sorts of social and charitable events, raised money for worthy causes, and was working harder than anyone else to secure the city’s position as the world financial capital.

He was rich and entitled and privileged, but there was no evidence at all that he was evil.

Lacey began to wonder if she’d got it wrong. Maybe Wolf wasn’t as implicated as she’d initially thought. She hadn’t seen him at the mansion, she didn’t know if he was a member of The Club, she had nothing on him. Maybe Claire Lally had married him out of love. It was certainly possible. And maybe he wanted Atlas Lake to provide the security on Wall Street because they were the best contractor for the job. Lacey knew she had to dig deeper if she was going to get the information that Sandra wanted.

Using public records of financial contributions as a staring point, she dug into his political affiliations. It was not surprising that he’d donated heavily to certain conservative candidates. Lacey couldn’t have expected any differently from someone as rich as he was. Any candidate who’d spoken publicly in favor of reducing taxes on the rich had received his support. He’d also fought hard for a reduction in federal regulation of the securities markets. Again, this wasn’t surprising. It was his job after all to make New York as attractive a place as possible for global capitalism. It would have been more surprising if he wasn’t donating money to these types of politicians. She found out that he was strongly opposed to gun control, even though his hometown had been in the national news because of a school shooting that had taken place there a few years ago. During the furor that accompanied the school shooting, he’d even gone back to the town and donated money to the school, but also to the NRA to fund a public awareness campaign against gun control.

Lacey sighed. She had no love for the NRA, or guns, but America was still a free country and she certainly respected Wolf’s right to have his own views on the matter. His political donations and public appearances were all consistent with his business endeavors. Everything seemed to point to him being a perfectly respectable, consistent, conservative, billionaire. He’d been married before and had three children by that marriage, all three of them older than his new wife. The divorce hadn’t been particularly messy or acrimonious and Wolf had maintained a friendly relationship with his ex-wife. Everything checked out, it all added up.

The more Lacey researched, the more convinced she became that Wolf was exactly who he appeared to be. He’d even received honorary degrees from prestigious universities all over the world for his research into economics.

She clicked a few more links and read that he was a proponent of state minimalism, something a lot of very wealthy men were in favor of, and had written academic articles about the advantages of reducing state interference in many areas of life, including health care, education and even policing. That was a bit more interesting. If he was in favor of private policing that would support the information she’d managed to come up with so far regarding Lally and the mayor. It explained why he wanted Atlas Lake, a private security contractor, to provide security for Wall Street instead of the police.

But it was certainly nothing illegal. She did a little more research and found that there was an established and reputable school of economic theory that advocated the use of private companies to police citizens. In fact, many important contracts had already been signed between municipalities and private security firms in the United States. This was especially true in the seventies when municipalities in Arizona, Ohio and West Virginia had all signed high-profile contracts handing over police powers to private security firms. While this was less common now, there were still thousands of private security firms operating all over the country, doing security work for large corporations and other private interests. Many of these had been granted special policing powers by the municipalities they operated in. She read that in South Carolina for example, all private security officers were given special policing powers by state law.

When she’d first heard about the plan to create a private police force for Wall Street, she was convinced that it was some horrible, illegal conspiracy. Now that she looked into it in more detail, she was beginning to see just how normal and even reasonable the proposal seemed to be. Big corporations all over the country had their own private security forces, authorized by the law to take on special policing powers if and when they were needed.

It should hardly have come as a surprise to her that Wall Street and the financial services industry wanted to have the same privilege. Theirs was an industry that handled vast quantities of money, more than any other industry on the globe. Trillions of dollars in trades and investments passed through their computer systems on a daily basis. On numerous occasions, the Stock Exchange and other Wall Street landmarks had been targeted by terrorist groups. For months, protestors and anarchists had been demonstrating on Wall Street against the wealth and power that the few held, at the expense of the many. Given the circumstances, it seemed more surprising to her that Wall Street didn’t already have its own security force.

It was no wonder that Sandra and other prominent journalists had been invited to the senate hearings in Washington. Creating a private security system in downtown Manhattan was a big issue, it was certainly major news for the city, and even at a national level it was a big story. But it didn’t seem to be the sinister conspiracy that Lacey had initially thought it was. It was the way business was done these days. It was the way policing was done. Big corporate interests were taking over police work on a daily basis in America, and this was the logical next step in that process.

No wonder Sandra hadn’t wanted Lacey to continue looking into it. Not only was it a legal proposal being debated in the proper political forums, but she had signed an agreement not to publicize the issue until a position had been adopted by the government. It was certainly big news, but it wasn’t the story Lacey had thought it was.

She was disappointed, but worse than that, she was questioning her own judgement. The story had seemed like such a big deal to her just the day before. When she’d learned that Lally and the Mayor were pushing hard for this measure she’d thought it was the scandal of the century. Atlas Lake providing security services in Wall Street wasn’t a scandal at all though, it was normal business.

Maybe her judgment had been clouded by the way Lally and the Mayor had treated her and Chloe. Maybe being fucked so viscerally and aggressively by these men had caused her to see a story where in fact there was none. Maybe the only story she really had was the sex scandal story.

Unless she could get evidence of corruption, then the biggest thing she had was the mayor sleeping with a prostitute. It was a good story, but nothing earth-shattering. She had to find evidence of corruption to bring this story to the next level. She needed evidence of Lally bribing the mayor, or bribing members of congress, to get a story that Sandra Price could print. Only something on that level would allow Sandra to breach the waiver she’d signed. And only something on that level would allow Lacey to get revenge on Lally for all he’d done to her and Chloe.

VI

L
ACEY KNEW SHE NEEDED HELP
if she was going to get the story she wanted. She went out to the lobby and dialed Chloe’s number. She waited impatiently for Chloe to pick up.

She didn’t feel like she normally did when she was researching a story. She was nervous. She knew she shouldn’t be, it was important to remain calm. She needed to be objective and impartial and she wasn’t doing a good job at being either. She couldn’t help it. After all the things she’d seen Lally and the mayor do, after all the horrible things she knew about them, about the way they treated call girls at the mansion, she couldn’t remain objective and impartial any more. She wanted to nail them. She wanted to get revenge. She wanted to make them suffer and the only way she could do that was to nail the story. She wanted the story more than any objective reporter was supposed to ever want a story.

She prayed she hadn’t allowed her emotions to cloud her judgment. She was usually able to trust her journalistic instincts. She relied on them. This time she wasn’t so sure. She was too close to the story to be able to look at it rationally. Her judgment was compromised. She was too closely involved, emotionally. She wasn’t just researching a story in the logical, calculating manner she usually used, she was trying to nail Lally and the mayor for all they’d done to her and Chloe. She wanted there to be a story here so badly that she was afraid she might just be making it all up in her head.

Chloe answered.

“Lacey?”

“Chloe.”

“What’s wrong?” Chloe said.

“Nothing’s wrong. Why?”

“You sound tense,” Chloe said.

“I am tense.”

“Why?”

Lacey couldn’t help it. Right there in the lobby of the library she started to cry. She got a few curious looks from people walking by but she didn’t care. She was so wrapped up in the story, and she was so worried that her emotions were clouding her judgments, that the stress was getting to her. So much was riding on this story, not just for her career, but for her emotional wellbeing. She needed it so badly. She needed to get back at Lally and the mayor. She wanted it so much she thought she would burst. She sobbed into the phone.