He picked up the telephone and dialed the offices of the Charleston plant. What he needed, he told himself, was something to occupy his mind again.
“Get Will Jurkins on the line,” he replied to his secretary’s polite greeting.
“Yes, sir,” she said at once.
A minute later, a slow voice came on the line. “How’s the vacation going, Mr. Lombard?”
“So far, so good,” Kane said carelessly. “I want to know why you’ve terminated that contract with the Coastal Waste Company?”
There was a pause. Jurkins should have realized that his superior would fax that information up to Kane Lombard. Sick or not, Ed Nelson was on the ball, as many plant managers were not. “Well…uh, I had to.”
“Why?”
The word almost struck him. Jurkins wiped his sweaty brow, glancing around from his desk to the warehouse facility where dangerous materials were kept before they were picked up by waste disposal companies. It was considered less expensive to hire that done rather than provide trucks and men to do it. The city could handle toxic substances at its landfill, but Lombard International had contracted CWC to do it since its opening.
“I believe I mentioned to you, Mr. Lombard, that I noticed discrepancies in their invoices.”
“I don’t remember any such conversation.”
Jurkins kept his head, barely. “Listen, Mr. Lombard,” he began in a conciliatory tone, “you’re a busy man. You can’t keep up with all the little details of a plant this size. You sit on the board of directors of three other corporations and the board of trustees of two colleges, you belong to business organizations where you hold office. I mean, how would you have the time to sift through all the day-to-day stuff here?”
Kane took a breath to stem his rush of temper. The man was new, after all, as chief of the waste disposal unit. And he made sense. “That’s true. I haven’t time to oversee every facet of every operation. Normally, this would be Ed Nelson’s problem.”
“I know that. Yes, I do, sir. But Mr. Nelson’s had kidney stones and he had to have surgery for them last week. He’s sort of low. Not that he doesn’t keep up with things,” he added quickly. “He’s still on top of the situation here.” That wasn’t quite true, but the wording gave Lombard the impression that Nelson had agreed with Jurkins’s decision to replace CWC.
Kane relaxed. Jurkins was a native of Charleston. He’d know the ins and outs of sanitation, and surely he’d already have a handle on the proper people to do a good job. “All right,” he said. “Who have you contracted with to replace CWC?”
“I found a very reputable company, Mr. Lombard,” he assured his boss. “Very reputable, indeed. In fact, two of the local automotive parts companies use them. It’s Burke’s.”
“Burke’s?”
“They’re not as well-known as CWC, sir,” Jurkins said. “They’re a young company, but very energetic. They don’t cost an arm and a leg, either.”
Kane’s head was hurting. He didn’t have time for this infernal runaround. He’d ask Nelson when he got back to the office the following week.
“All right, Jurkins. Go ahead and make the switch. I’ll approve it, if there’s any flak,” he said. “Just make sure they do what they’re supposed to. Put Jenny back on the line.”
“Yes, sir! Have a good vacation, sir, and don’t you worry, everything’s going along just fine!”
Kane made a grunting sound and waited for his secretary to come back on the line. When she did, he began shooting orders at her, for faxes to be sent up to his machine, for contract estimates, for correspondence. He hadn’t a secretary here and he hesitated to ask for Jenny to join him, because she had a huge crush on him which he didn’t want to encourage. He could scribble notes on the letters for answers and fax them back to her. Yes, that would work.
While Kane was debating his next move, a relieved Will Jurkins pushed back his sweaty red hair and breathed a long sigh, grinning cagily at the man standing beside him.
“That was a close one,” he told the man. “Lombard wanted to know why I made the switch.”
“You’re getting enough out of this deal to make it worth the risk,” came the laconic reply. “And you’re in too deep to back out.”
“Don’t I know it,” Jurkins said uneasily. “Are you sure about this? I don’t want to go to jail.”
“Will you stop worrying? I know what I’m doing.” He slipped the man a wad of large bills, careful not to let himself be seen.
Jurkins grimaced as he counted the money and quickly slipped it into his pocket. He had a child with leukemia and his medical insurance had run out. He was out of choices and this cigar-smoking magician had offered him a small fortune just to switch sanitation firms. On the surface, there was nothing wrong with it. But he was uneasy, because Burke’s sanitation outfit had already been in trouble with the environmental people for some illegal dumping.
“Burke’s is not very reliable,” he began, trying again. “And I already made one major mistake here, letting that raw sewage get dumped accidentally into the river. If they catch Burke putting anything toxic in a bad place, it will look pretty bad for Lombard International.”
“Burke’s needs the business,” the raspy-voiced man said. “Trust me. It’s just to help him out. There’s no way it will be traced back to you. You need the money don’t you?” When Jurkins nodded, the man patted him on the shoulder and smiled, waving the cigar around. “Nobody will know. And I was never here. Right?”
“Right.”
Jurkins watched the man leave by the side door. He went into the parking lot and climbed into a sedate gray BMW. A car like that would cost Jurkins a year’s salary. He wondered what his benefactor did for a living.
Clayton Seymour had gone down the roster of Republican representatives over a new bill which affected cable television rates. He and his legislative committee—not to mention part of his personal staff—were helping his friend, the minority whip, gather enough representatives together for a decisive vote on the issue. But he was going blind in the process. He looked out his window at the distant Washington, D.C., skyline and wished he was back home in Charleston and going fishing. He maintained only two district offices, whereas most of the other House members had anywhere from two to eight.
Each of those offices back home in South Carolina had full-time and part-time staffers who could handle requests from constituents. In addition, he’d appointed a constituent staff at his Washington office, along with his legislative, institutional, and personal staff. It sounded like a lot of people on the payroll, but there were actually only a handful involved and they were eminently qualified. Most had master’s degrees. His district director had a Ph.D. and his executive legislative counsel was a Harvard graduate.
He was ultimately satisfied with the job he’d done. During his term in office, he’d remained within his budget. It was one of many feathers in his political cap. In addition, he had seats on the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Ways and Means Committee, among others. He worked from twelve to fourteen hours a day and occasionally took offense at remarks that members of Congress were overpaid layabouts. He didn’t have time to layabout. In the next congress, over eleven thousand new pieces of legislation were predicted for introduction. If he was reelected—when he was reelected—he was going to have to work even harder.
His executive administrative assistant in charge of his personal and constituent staff, Derrie Keller, knocked on the door and opened it all in the same motion. She was tall and pretty, with light blond hair and green eyes and a nice smile. Everybody was kind to her because she had such a sweet nature. But she also had a bachelor’s degree in political