Graveland: A Novel (10 page)

It’s just after nine thirty when Ellen Dorsey rolls over in the bed.

Shit
.

She didn’t fall asleep until nearly five, her muscles knotty and aching, her head buzzing with facts—with the
fact
of these facts.

The weight of them.

And as her eyelids grind open now, these facts are first to greet the light. His name is Scott Lebrecht. He’s thirty-three. He’s from Philadelphia. He’s worth a billion dollars. He’s the CEO of Black Vine Partners.

He’s on a hit list.

He’s next.

She sits upright in the bed.

Or at least that’s how it all seemed last night.

She looks across the room, through the open door, her desk in the living room partially visible.

No matter how she spins it—that it was random, a coincidence, the kind of spooky but ultimately meaningless shit the Internet throws up all the time—there’s no escaping the key fact here: Two of the three people mentioned in that post are already dead.

Popped
.

So it’s only logical to assume that before long number three will be, too.

She slides off the bed.

She puts on a pot of coffee, tidies up, takes a shower, and gets dressed.

Through all of which she grapples with the central dilemma here.

Shouldn’t she be passing this on to the police? Isn’t she required to by law? If she doesn’t, and something happens, wouldn’t she be an accessory?

It’s a tricky one.

Because it’s not as if she’s protecting a confidential source and could be subpoenaed for discovery.

Who was your source, Ms. Dorsey?

The Internet, Your Honor.

Sipping coffee, she reads the comment again, more than once. Foreknowledge of a crime. Is that what this is?

She vacillates.

It is, it isn’t. It might be, it might not. The notion is plausible, the notion is ridiculous.

She massages her temples, to ward off an incipient headache. Outside, it’s overcast, dull and gray. Is it going to rain?

She looks from the window to the floor.

Actually, she decides, the notion
is
ridiculous. Jeff Gale and Bob Holland were killed twelve hours apart. This is four days on from that and Scott Lebrecht is still alive. There’s no discernible pattern here. So, seriously … who would
take
her seriously?

No one.

She looks up.

The thing is, she can talk herself out of this, no problem—but deep down she wants it to be true.

Not even deep down.

She gets up from the desk, walks around, stretches.

But then … let’s say it is true, that there really is a story here, what happens then? First, she’d have to bring Max Daitch in on it, and he’d have to run it by legal. Chances are that a fear of civil or even criminal liability would stop the whole thing dead in its tracks right there, with the lawyers advising Max to pass the info up the corporate chain or possibly straight on to the police.

So … what? She just hands it over? Before she gets a chance to work it, even a little?

Raindrops start pelting against the window.

She sits down again and reaches for the coffee. She’ll give it some thought. Go over her notes.

Fifteen minutes.

Black Vine Partners.

Scott Lebrecht …

He founded the company six or seven years ago with the assistance of two guys from a New York–based hedge fund called Reilly Asset Management. They provided Lebrecht with a substantial chunk of capital and a revolving line of credit, which he then very successfully used to focus on investments in the power and energy sectors. More recently, he has set his sights on Hollywood by creating Black Vine Media and signing a five-year production deal with Sony Entertainment. So far, this has only led to his involvement in a couple of poorly received mid-budget thrillers, but Lebrecht is said to be very determined and is busy raising cash for a third, considerably more ambitious project.

He also has a reputation for hanging out with the talent—dates with actresses, courtside seats with the boys, who-knows-what in the private jet. In photos, he comes across as something of a jock, blond and burly, not exactly good-looking—at least not preternaturally so, not the way some of his new A-lister friends tend to be—but he does have an energy about him, and a certain charm.

That’s what it says here, anyway.

In her barely legible 4
A.M
. scrawl.

She flicks forward to the next page.

Lebrecht has a ferocious temper, serious commitment issues, a severe nut allergy, and a “rad” collection of sports cars.

He has a two-year-old son in Florida he apparently refuses to acknowledge.

He has over ten thousand followers on Twitter.

Ellen stops.

She reads that last bit again. She swivels in her chair.

Hhmmm.

She reaches for the keyboard, logs on to Twitter, and finds him.

He appears to be an avid tweeter.

One thousand two hundred and fifty-seven so far. Been at it for about a year.

She scrolls down through some recent ones.

Awesome celebration last night with my Jenkintown brohims
.
#achingintheplaces

A leader leads for a reason
.
Try to jump ahead of him and all you’ll get for your trouble is lost
.

Tough negotiations on the Salertech buyout, including that ninth inning zinger, but we prevailed
.
Kudos to all concerned
.

She goes back to the top.

His last tweet. It was one hour ago.

On a panel soon at this year’s Global Equities Conference at the Herald Rygate
.
The things we do for love
.

*   *   *

Craig Howley wonders if Vaughan is going to make it into the office again today. He looks at his watch.

Nearly ten.

Isn’t that pushing it? Even for the old man?

He showed up yesterday, having pretty much thrown down the gauntlet the previous evening, but if Howley thought
Monday
was long …

Jesus.

The old man came in looking his normal self—back in a suit, groomed, dapper—but everything was painfully slow, his movements, his speech.

His reaction times.

It was a good thing they had nothing on, no visitors or important meetings.

Howley catches Angela’s eye through the glass partition, but she shakes her head.

He swivels in his chair and gazes out the window at midtown, and at his allotted shard, here on this side of the fifty-seventh floor, of Central Park.

Should he call Meredith? Show his concern? Not that that’s really what it is. What it
really
is, he knows, is impatience. Because ever since Monday’s early meeting, and the way he was approached afterward by the various group heads and senior managing directors—not to mention Vaughan’s quip later on about rearranging the furniture in his office—Howley has been in a sort of waking fever dream of anticipation.

He doesn’t have any illusions, though. He fully understands who and what James Vaughan is, and that no one can replace him or occupy quite the same space he has occupied in Washington and elsewhere for the past sixty years—more, in fact, in a
way
 … if you go back, if you include his old man, William J., and
his
old man.

Fuck.

But replace him as head of Oberon? Howley could do that, no problem.

The thing is, in a long and distinguished career, Vaughan has had many more strings to his bow than just the Oberon Capital Group. He worked under Jack Kennedy, fought with Johnson, switched to the Republicans, got into bed with Nixon, did a stint at the Agency under Bush. He was always there in the background during Reagan’s two terms, and it was the same again later, during Dubya’s two. Without once being elected or appointed to public office, the man has exerted enormous influence, and mainly by operating in the interstices between federal agencies, private contractors, consulting firms, lobbyists, think tanks, and policy institutes.

Not that the private equity side of things has been too shabby. After more than forty years in the business, Vaughan can boast that Oberon has achieved compound annual returns for its equity investors of something in the region of 57 or 58 percent.

Which is staggering.

Howley gets up from his desk and goes over to the window.

So keeping a show like that on the road would certainly be enough for
him
. It’s what he wants and knows he’ll be good at. He spent long enough at the Pentagon shaping the acquisitions program and influencing which weapons systems were bought, not to mention being one of the instigators of the great outsourcing land grab that saw contractors move in on logistics and support services. And now, on
this
side of the so-called revolving door, he has proved equally adept at wooing and acquiring these same companies.

But not just them, as it turns out. He has been phenomenally successful at parlaying his considerable political clout into hard equity across a whole range of sectors—pharmaceutical, energy, telecoms, real estate. Plus, Oberon has expanded, they’re everywhere now, in Africa, Asia, China, and with the company sitting on stockpiles of cash the prospects for deal-making have never been better.

It’s what Vaughan hired him for. The two men go back, they get along. It was a clear succession strategy.

But these things rarely go smoothly. Of the major buyout firms that are still run by their founders, most of them have no strategies in place at all for handing on the reins—which is fine, or will be for a while, because the CEOs in these places tend to be in their mid- to late sixties. But in Vaughan’s case, strategy notwithstanding, the situation has become critical.

Client confidence is key here. It’s not something you can afford to mess around with. The Global Equities Conference starts today, for example, and there are a lot of people in town, some of whom will be dropping by the office later on for a cocktail reception. And the Jimmy Vaughan of legend is one thing, but the Jimmy Vaughan of
yesterday
? That’s another matter entirely.

So he really needs to know what’s going on.

Howley turns and catches Angela’s eye again. He brings a hand up to his ear and makes a phone gesture.

She nods.

He’ll have a word with Meredith, try to get the point across. She’s not the only one who can speak in code.

*   *   *

Leaving the Melmotte Room on the tenth floor of the Rygate Hotel, Scott Lebrecht turns to his assistant.

“This interview, Baxter? Where we doing it again?”

“The Wilson. It’s uptown a bit. On Madison.”

“I know where the Wilson is.”

Baxter shrugs. They arrive at the elevators.

“So that went well.”

“No it fucking didn’t.”

“What. You got a great reception.”

“Nah.” Lebrecht shakes his head. “You know what it is? Most of these big equity guys are twenty years older than I am, more in some cases, and it’s like they think of me as the
kid
or something. They talk down to me. And I hate that.” He pauses. “What I hate is these events. I mean, a panel discussion? Come
on
. People here don’t think I have better uses for my time than a fucking panel discussion? Please.”

The elevator doors open, and they get in.

A lot of the delegates at the conference are from out of town and are staying for the full three days that it’s on. In between sessions, and over dinners, they’ll be discussing everything from how the industry needs to embrace change to the vexed question of going public.

Lebrecht can think of nothing worse.

Cutting out early like this, not sticking around, gives him some satisfaction. But now he has to face an interview with a business journalist.

In another hotel.

More convoluted questions, more evasive answers.

It’ll be a welcome distraction if she’s cute, but really, he has better uses for his time than that, too. Black Vine Partners is currently circling distressed European retailer Ballantine Marche, which fell into administration last month. Plus, they’re trying to raise capital for a new mezzanine fund.

He has stuff to
do
.

The elevator door opens, and they head out across the lobby.

It’s probably fair to say that Black Vine Media takes up more of his time than it should, but he’s determined to make it work. If this movie comes together, Shem Tyner or no Shem Tyner, they could have a valuable franchise on their hands.

Young Adult Post-Apocalyptic meets High School Gross-out.

As they approach the exit, Baxter puts a hand up to his earpiece. “You want to talk to Paris?”

Lebrecht stops. “Yeah.”

This’ll be Dan Travers, about Ballantine Marche.

“Okay,” Baxter says, moving off. “I’ll be out at the car.”

“Dan the Man,” Lebrecht says, leaning back a little to look up at the lobby’s soaring stained-glass dome.
“Comment ça va?”

*   *   *

Sitting opposite a line of nervous-looking Japanese tourists on the downtown A train, Ellen Dorsey—sleep deprived, but hopped up on java—is feeling pretty nervous herself.

It’s a different kind of nervous, though.

She’s decided to head down to the Herald Rygate hotel in midtown and then … assess the situation. She won’t get past the lobby, because she’s not registered, or accredited, to attend the conference.

So in all likelihood she won’t get to see Scott Lebrecht.

But even if she did, if she pulled some ballsy reporter moves and got five minutes with him, what would she say? I’m running a story about an Internet post that suggests you as a suitable candidate for assassination? I was wondering if you’d care to comment?

Yes, that probably is what she’d say. Except for one thing—she isn’t running the story anywhere. Because that’s all she’s got and it isn’t enough, and if she
were
to alert Lebrecht or the police, the story would get out at once and that’d be the end of any advantage she had.