Chapter 110: Johnson at the Door

After reading The Wall Street Journal for a while, William picked up the local newspaper. Most of what he could learn from The Wall Street Journal concerned broad macro-level changes, which were not of much use to him at the moment.

Local newspapers, by contrast, could provide him with important information and help him understand local changes more quickly.

For example, several more plants had closed, and large numbers of unemployed workers had flooded the streets, making an already unsafe public order situation even worse.

For example, the tomcat in one family had somehow become pregnant, its belly swollen as if it might give birth at any moment. The cat’s owner was even said to have hired a dedicated nurse to look after it.

For example, a milker on a farm claimed he had been abducted by aliens. The aliens had taken a tuft of hair from his leg and then released him. With the help of an artist, he had even drawn the alien spacecraft and the aliens themselves.

And then ... William glanced at the index and turned to the middle section of the local news page. There was a small item there. It said that Michael, the former team leader of the IRS Investigation Unit who had recently been transferred to another county jail to serve his sentence, had admitted that he had asked his own child to bear certain responsibilities on his behalf in order to escape legal punishment.

Now, he had recognized his mistake, surrendered to prison administrators, and the court had handed down its ruling yesterday.

Young Michael had been released without conviction, while Michael’s sentence had been increased by forty months, three years and four months. Added to his original sentence, even if Director Johnson wanted to use the Special Talent Requisition Act to get Michael out, there was probably no chance anymore.

Seven years from now, no one knew where Director Johnson would be. Perhaps he would still have the ability to do it, if, for example, he had been promoted into the state office as a consultant.

But it was also possible he would no longer have that ability. Everyone knew a warehouse superintendent could not invoke such a provision, even if, nominally, he had been promoted into the IRS state office.

This was a “deal” whose worth was hard to judge.

Perhaps it had different value in different people’s eyes. In the eyes of Michael and his wife, at least, the transaction was worth it. Young Michael had gotten out of prison several months early, and had also received that crucial ruling: not guilty.