The Knowland Retribution (12 page)

“How much?”

“Two hundred and fifty.”

“Half now. Half when it's done,” Maloney said. “I'll have two hundred and fifty thousand ready for you in an hour.”

“Two hundred and fifty
is
double,” Wilkes said. Maloney couldn't be sure if it was the shock or a pang of moral conscience.

“I know,” Tom smiled, “but there are some things it's always best to overpay for. I think this is one of them, don't you?”

Gatlinburg

Floyd Ochs was one
of those small, wiry, middle-aged Southern white men who look twenty years older than they are. A woman who worked in his processing plant described him, within his wife's hearing, as “. . . the kind you
really
don't want to see naked.” Floyd was a man of few words and fewer smiles. Given the choice he'd rather be fishing. Ochs was born and raised in Lucas, Tennessee. After high school he fixed cars, pumped gas, worked some construction, and spent a couple of months carrying parts around a Memphis motorcycle engine warehouse. Then he joined the Marines. Germany and Korea failed to broaden Floyd's ambitions. After the service he bee-lined for home and the processing floor of Knowland & Sons.

That same year he married Hazel Cummins, a heavy-set, plain-looking girl he'd met in church three weeks before. They enriched the community with three boys in less than five years. Floyd's good points stood out in his end of Lucas, Tennessee. Unlike most of his friends, he didn't drink much. He never hit his wife or made trouble with anyone else's. He enjoyed life at home. He loved his boys and did whatever he supposed a good father should. And Floyd Ochs showed up for work every day.

In the late 1970s the industry was transformed by a series of management consulting reports. One of these changed the way meat packing plants were run. Historically, plant managers had been company executives, ambitious, college-educated men eager to gain combat experience in the field. The company saw them as men on the move. Whether punching their tickets in Iowa, Michigan, Tennessee, or Nebraska, they were not local people. Locals correctly perceived them as outsiders arriving from someplace en route to someplace else, making their way up the pole. That began to change after 1980. The consultants suggested a less expensive way to run plants. And as suggested, meat packers began promoting local employees to responsible positions, to more than foreman and supervisor. To qualify, such men had to show up every day, sober and respectful. Floyd headed the line. Gradually, some of the chosen moved off the floor and into the front office.

By 1985 Floyd was an Assistant Plant Manager, one of six—many more than needed; corporate headquarters hadn't a clue as to how many would last. In 1992 he was Plant Manager, with only the two assistants he required. In less than twelve years Knowland & Sons had replaced its entire on-site management echelon at less than a third of its previous payroll cost. The new men managed efficiently and cheaply, did exactly what they were told, and were by-and-large accepted by the work force as exalted elder brothers. Headquarters called them “townies.” Best of all, neither Floyd nor his counterparts ever thought of leaving home, of becoming real corporate executives. They craved upward mobility even less than their bosses hoped they would.

Floyd and Hazel took the same vacation every year. In August they visited Gatlinburg for a week. When the boys were young, Floyd and his sons fished together. Nowadays, he fished alone. For one full day Floyd left Hazel to her shopping and drove to the Hiawassee River. This year was no different from last year.

As he always did, he parked almost a mile away, tramped through humid fields, and made his way carefully down a steep, heavily wooded, rock-studded incline to the river. From its edge, jutting twelve feet into the tumbling water, a whale-gray rock measured thirty-seven feet across, just about flat as a board. Floyd and his sons had taped it out, and knew every inch of its surface. This stretch of the Hiawassee was wild, which made for fine fishing because it was not navigable; no boats nosed about to disturb the underwater life. Standing at the edge, Floyd could see a quarter mile in all directions but behind. He reflected once again on his deeply held, immensely satisfying belief that he and his boys were the only ones ever to fish from this beloved rock—most certainly the only ones since far-off Cherokee times.

He listened to the steady sounds of river and forest, rushing water slapping rocks, summer air in moving branches; smiled at the arguing jays and austere hawks wheeling high then disappearing into and behind the sweet-smelling pines. Floyd Ochs set down his fishing rod and opened the basket of sausage and beer beside him. He took out a Bud and pushed down on the tab. He loved the snap of the can and the fizzy noise he'd been hearing since his Daddy showed him how. As he lifted the can to his lips and felt the cold, wet metal on the tip of his nose, he thought he heard footsteps behind him. He started to turn as the force of a spinning bullet took his head from his shoulders. The sound echoed through the river valley, scattering the birds. His car was discovered that evening, a few hours after Hazel reported him missing. His head floated downstream to a state camping area, and was found the next day. But it took three more days to find the rock and the rest of Floyd.

St. John

The old woman, Clara,
brought Walter a cup of beef bouillon. Walter liked the clear, hot broth after dinner. It complemented the sweet cool in the evening air. He'd tossed a creased and crumpled bit of paper onto the marble table. The names on the paper were smudged beyond recognition because he'd handled the thing like worry beads: Nathan Stein, Tom Maloney, Wesley Pitts, Louise Hollingsworth, Christopher Hopman, Billy MacNeal, Pat Grath, Wayne Korman, Floyd Ochs.

As Tom told it the day he and his gang were here, he and Stein developed a plan for Christopher Hopman's Boston-based company, Alliance Inc., to buy a sizable block of stock in another Stein, Gelb client company, Second Houston, which was owned by Billy MacNeal.

Second Houston would go public as an IPO. “So,” as Maloney put it, “when the dust settled, Second Houston would be publicly traded and Alliance would be the controlling shareholder.”

This was a billion dollar deal. “That's ‘billion' with a
b
.” Maloney had arched an eyebrow then. Almost a fourth of that was to go into Billy MacNeal's pocket.

Hopman's stock options in both companies would net him more than a hundred million dollars. Shareholders would come out ahead because Second Houston and Alliance would certainly soar on the news generated by favorable analysts' reports, and moves by some of the larger mutual funds.

“Wesley Pitts did a helluva job on the project,” Maloney said, nodding toward Pitts, whose round face suddenly hardened into a genuine smile. “And Louise Hollingsworth is the Senior Analyst. Her reports and the publicity they received were essential to the success of this effort.”

Maloney added that Stein, Gelb, Hector & Wills received sizable fees for facilitating this complicated transaction. “In all candor,” he said, looking Walter pointedly in the eye, “this deal meant a lot to us.”

“How much is ‘sizable'?” Walter had asked.

“Our fees and other compensation—warrants, options, and so forth—were absolutely in keeping with industry standards for a deal of this magnitude.”

Walter pressed: “How much?”

“All told, fees plus projected gains, in the midrange nine figures.” Maloney hung his head just a little. His voice went sorrowful. “It was a honey of a deal until the shit hit the fan.” That's how he'd put it hours ago, sitting right over there, across from Walter.

Walter picked up the list of names again, spun them around in his head, put them in order. Wayne Korman, first. He went to Floyd Ochs when he learned the processing line was dirty. He thought the meat might be dangerous and did the right thing. If he wanted to make a living he had to go back to work. Wife and kids. Car note. Mortgage. Visa bill each month. Ochs sent him back to work. He went.

Floyd Ochs next. He reported the problem to Pat Grath in Houston. Could he have done more? Halted production on his own? He didn't. Cost him his life?

Pat Grath told Billy MacNeal. The two weren't partners, Maloney said, but Grath was close to Billy. Everything he had, reportedly a lot, he got through MacNeal. He was not in charge so he went to Billy. What more could he do? Maybe that's why he's still alive.

That's when Maloney and Stein got into the act. Pat Grath and Billy MacNeal took it to Wesley Pitts. Fair enough. Hundreds of millions of dollars of Second Houston IPO money came through Wesley Pitts. That's why the guys in Houston went to him and not his bosses. Follow the money. It's always the money. Deep Throat
was
a deep thinker.

So, Pitts goes to Maloney, Senior VP, Director of Mergers & Acquisitions. He brings Christopher Hopman into the picture. That's what Hopman does: merges and acquires.

As far as Christopher Hopman's concerned, Stein laid out the plan for Alliance and Second Houston to follow—before the bottom fell out and people started dying. Stein and Maloney tell Hollingsworth to crank up the hype machine, manage the lie, put everyone off the smell of the thing.

Hopman goes first, then MacNeal, and now Ochs. And Grath no doubt pissing his pants, hiding behind a tumbleweed in Amarillo or somewhere. Three down. Six to go? Among them Stein, Pitts, Hollings-worth, Maloney? And then there's Ganga Roy. Dead two years by suicide. Really? She was the one he couldn't get out of his mind. According to Maloney she'd told them E. coli would make people sick, but nobody would die.

According to Maloney.

And if she really killed herself, why?

And why all this shooting now, two years after it was over?

Where's this guy been? Six out of ten still walking the earth. Why them? Who's next? And who the hell was he looking for? Walter knew where he had to start. He went inside and booked the morning flight, first class, from St. Thomas to New York.

New York

After reading the Times
for an hour each morning, Isobel Gitlin accessed the online editions of nearly fifty newspapers nationwide. She looked for flares of human interest, compelling hometown eulogies (the late mayor once jailed for smuggling parrots, the plumber who croaked fitting brass at ninety-six); little, sparkling, readable bits headed nowhere but for Isobel's keen, unquenchable eye. Amid the endless obits crossing her screen, Isobel noticed other things. Now, on the page beside the obits in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, she glimpsed five lines on the death of Floyd Ochs. When “Knowland & Sons” bounced up from the screen, she called Laticia Glover, the reporter at the Memphis paper.

Twenty minutes later she was storming the office of Ed Macmillan's boss, a man known mostly by his nickname, the Moose. She said, “I've got a triple connection on three murders, two of them very high profile. My information indicates a single killer for all three deaths. And I've got them all connected
to the big E. coli meat disaster
.” He nodded his head to confirm the seemingly impossible. Then she injected a bold, ironic note: “It practically wiped out the South?”

“Yeah, I heard about it,” he said.

“Nobody has this story yet.” The last part seemed to get his attention.

Waiting for a reply, Isobel noted with pleasure that she'd not strangled a single sound.

Mel Gold was twice her age, and, as everybody agreed, closely resembled a moose. His thick gray hair fell forward exactly as a moose's might. His pendulous chins obscured a brown necktie resting at half-mast on his mountainous paunch. A disconcerting forward thrust lent vigor to his tan, wrinkled, endlessly bumpy face. Gold was rumored to be ill-tempered and grim. She'd avoided him until now. “Close the door and sit down,” he said, in the street-tough rumbling voice that, in fact, sounded like that of a moose. “Exactly what the fuck do you think you have?”

Having done its heroic best when she needed it most, her stutter returned with moderate force. Gold, unlike others, did not seem to notice. She supposed he'd interviewed too many toothless people, and some, no doubt, without very much of their faces left in place.

Pacing herself, Isobel outlined the history: MacNeal's sale of Knowland to Hopman's gang, and the link created between those two and the great E. coli disaster. Then, hard on those killings, the Ochs affair and all that she'd learned from the Memphis reporter of Ochs's connection to Knowland & Sons, and the subsequent talk about who was asleep at the packing plant switch at the time, and all of them—Ochs, Billy Mac, and Hopman—blasted to bits out of nowhere, all gunned down and hooked up by corporate ties, all circling around a single, deadly drain. “If this is a supermarket story I'll be the first to s-s-say so,” Isobel ended, eloquently she thought. “There are no news people on this, are there?” His silence told her all she needed to know.

She asked for time and resources. Gold made another rumbling sound; one, she thought, if very much louder, might have attracted females of his persuasion. Moving that ponderous head to the side for a one-eyed view of the Fijian wonder (he'd heard all of that without interest), Isobel thought he might very well have smiled. She'd heard him called the Moose, and even once someone referred to Mel Gold as an ancient elk. She could not have known then, but now there was no mistaking it: he was no elk, ancient or otherwise. The elk, Isobel knew, was a herd animal. The bull moose walked alone.

He gave her a week and a barely adequate budget, assured her that she would get no other help, and declared himself a fool for fools and children.

“I need to report directly to you,” she said. “Otherwise this will get killed.”

It did not wash. “You give whatever you get to Macmillan. If he doesn't think you've got anything, that's what you've got.”

“Bu, bu, but—”

“No buts at all. You've got a week. Take it, and do not make me look like the asshole I probably am.”

By mid-afternoon she was on her way to Houston. Two days later she landed in Memphis, rented a car, and drove to Lucas. By week's end she was in Boston. She shuttled to LaGuardia late Friday and took
a cab to her office at the
Times
. Saturday morning she met with Ed Macmillan. The next day she saw her article situated two inches below the fold of the most influential front page printed in America, the Sunday edition of the
New York Times.

Killings May Be Connected to E. coli Disaster

By Isobel Gitlin

NEW YORK, Aug. 23—Law enforcement officials in three states have acknowledged the possibility that three unsolved murders may be connected to the E. coli outbreak of three years ago that left 864 people dead and thousands more sickened. Three men shot to death since June—Boston businessman Christopher Hopman, shot while on the golf course; Texas tycoon Billy MacNeal, gunned down in Houston; and Floyd Ochs, murdered in Tennessee—all have ties to a Tennessee meat-packing plant implicated as a source for the E. coli–tainted meat. Alliance Inc., where Mr. Hopman was CEO, was involved in a complicated buyout of Mr. MacNeal's company that counted among its assets the packing plant of Knowland & Sons. Mr. Ochs was the Knowland plant manager in Lucas, Tennessee. Police officials in charge of all three cases tell the
New York Times
they are now actively investigating the theory that these murders could be connected.

Isobel's story made the networks and cable news channels. Much of the old E. coli disaster tapes found new life on TV screens across the nation. She took calls from CNN, FOX, the network morning shows, PBS, and NPR. They all wanted her to tell her story on the air. Isobel refused, but did not say that her stutter was why.

There were plenty of other talking heads eager to analyze and dissect the story. The increasingly obvious fact that they knew nothing except what they'd read of Isobel's reporting (and frequently misunderstood even that) qualified them fully for the work. In a slow news cycle their ongoing blather gave the story durable legs. In her absence from the screen, Isobel's name was mentioned often, and was almost always praised. At Isobel's request, the
Times
did not issue a photo of her, and holding that line required a good deal of bellowing from the Moose. Without having made a single appearance, Isobel Gitlin became—for no more than the allocated fifteen minutes she hoped—a media personality.

Isobel's story and her insistence on personal privacy caused a stir at the
Times
. So many of the paper's reporters fantasized about breaking a story like this one. In daydreams they saw themselves on
Hardball
and
Crossfire
or sitting next to Woodward or Bernstein at Larry King's desk. Isobel had won the lottery, they thought, and refused to collect the prize. People who previously had nothing to say to her went out of their way to greet her. Others looked upon her, and the story of the triple murders, with more than a little skepticism. It was highly unusual for anyone's byline to go from the obituary page to the front page overnight, and even more unusual for it to stay there. One thing particularly puzzled her: Why hadn't other, more senior, reporters tried to muscle in, push her out? She asked Gold and the Moose told her bluntly, “They wouldn't touch it with tongs.”

“Wh-what the hell does that mean?”

He looked at her and for a long moment tried, with his tongue, to loosen a piece of food stuck between two of his upper teeth. In that brief time Mel Gold realized he needed to protect Isobel against the reality of her chosen profession. “A lot of people think it's bullshit,” he said with as fatherly a tone as he could muster. “The whole thing is crap, and not the kind of crap that belongs in the
New York Times.
”

“Oh,” said Isobel, shrugging her shoulders, a hint of a smile across her lips. “Wh-wh-what about you?” The Moose rolled his eyes and plunged the last half of a glazed doughnut into his mouth.

“If you're worried somebody's going to horn in and steal your story—don't. Believe me, it's all yours.”

“Thanks,” she said, and her smile told him she knew it was she riding the tiger and him holding the whip and chair.

She went back to Lucas to write a
Sunday Times Magazine
cover piece. The story played out across two pages with grainy photos of three dead men layered above an eye-catching shot of ground beef, and behind it was a black and white mural photograph of the one story, brick-sided, Knowland & Sons meat-packing plant. The article began:

Who Is Seeking Revenge?

By Isobel Gitlin

The Knowland & Sons processing plant sits on fertile flatlands next to the Smoke River, dominating the landscape as well as the economy of this small Tennessee city. According to town
fathers, pioneer hunters once roamed the Smoky Mountains' foothills looking for deer, bear, and other commercial game, and settled in Lucas in the early 1820s. “Meat made this town,” says Ezra Combs, a city councilman with twenty-three years seniority. “Still does,” he adds with a good-natured wink. Like everyone in Lucas, Ezra knows that meat packed in this plant may have caused the deaths of 864 people and made more than seventeen thousand ill three years ago. “There's good people living here and working hard every day at the plant,” Mr. Combs insists. “I know the folks at Knowland, known them for years. And each and every one of them is doing what's humanly possible to find out just exactly what happened over there and make sure it don't never happen again.”

Despite Mr. Combs's assertion, someone, it appears, is seeking revenge. Whoever it may be is still unknown, and authorities have little to show for their efforts to identify him.