Chapter 8

Tuesday, November 20, 2029... (continued)

Steve met us at the airport. After collecting our luggage, we headed to the parking lot. When we arrived at Steve’s car, the first thing Steve did was to unlock the trunk and give Gary his Sig Sauer. Once it was in place and covered by his sports coat, Gary relaxed.

I recalled asking Gary which was better, his Sig Sauer or a comparable Glock. Gary said they were both good weapons, but he preferred his Sig Sauer. It fit his hand better than the Glocks he had handled, the Sig’s heavier weight negated the severity of the recoil, and he felt the most important difference was the Sig had a heavier trigger pull when firing the first round. Gary said he looked on that as a safety feature, since he would be less likely to accidently fire a round in a tense situation. He had to consciously pull the trigger for that first round.

Once Steve had us headed north on Highway Five (the Five) to Rancho Santa Fe, he and I talked about what was happening at the office. The main interest was the office rumors going around about my relationship with Tam. He laughed and told me that depending on whom he talked with, Tam and I were just friends, dating, engaged, or secretly married. Jason, Gary, and I had to laugh about that. Steve said a few people thought Tam was pregnant and we had to get married. That really set us off laughing for I had been in Atlanta for less than a week.

Steve said, “We have a meeting scheduled tomorrow at SIMC with Vic about the law suit and restraining order. He wants Mary, Karen, me, and you at the meeting. He also wanted Mary’s Team 1 and my reporters at the meeting. I told him Team 1 was in Atlanta and couldn’t be there. Vic said he would schedule a second meeting once Team 1 returned, so he could personally speak to Team 1 and the reporters at the same time.”

I said, “These meeting can get expensive for us, Steve. When we win the lawsuit, we will bill our costs to the Eye Witness. I’ll have SIMC’s Accounting Department set up two charge numbers that we can use to document our in-house costs, one for the hearing and the second for the lawsuit.”

Steve said, “Okay, Carl. One thing though, Mary, Karen, you, and I don’t get paid on an hourly basis, so we don’t have an hourly rate for our time. We will have to come up with a rate for each of us that can be justified.”

“You’re right, Steve. This should be interesting. I’ll get with the head of the Accounting Department and set up hourly rates for us and charge numbers for the costs we incur. I think we will have similar instances in the future when we will each need an hourly rate.”

Traffic had slowed to bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Five, so we had to stop our conversation so Steve could pay attention to driving. Twenty minutes later, we pulled into my driveway. After removing our luggage from his car’s trunk, Steve left to return to our office.

I would be following Steve to the office, so Jason and Gary took their bags to their cars, while I took mine upstairs to my bedroom. While coming down the stairs, I met, Molly Brinkmann coming the other way. I had given Molly and the rest of the housekeeping staff time off with pay while I was gone. I called her yesterday to let her know when I would be home.

In addition to Molly, who served as my majordomo, my housekeeping staff included my cook, Erma Christie, and a maid. I’m not sure why, but we seemed to have a different maid every couple of weeks.

I said, “Molly, I need to let you know that I will be having houseguests starting this coming weekend. It will be a lady friend of mine and her two children, and I expect them to stay for about two weeks.”

“Thank you for the advance notice, Carl. I’ll make sure that three rooms are ready for them in the main house. I’ll also let Erma know that you are having guests so she can arrange for additional food for meals. I wanted to check and see if you would be here for dinner tonight or if there was something you needed.”

“I’ll be home for dinner at the usual time, Molly, and I don’t need anything at this time.”

I joined Jason and Gary out front and we left for the office. When I got off of the elevator and headed to my office, my secretary Myra buttonholed me.

Myra was an elderly married woman who was past retirement age, but wanted to continue working. Her husband was the same way. He once told me that retiring was the process of climbing into your grave before your death and he planned to keep working until he was no longer capable of doing so.

Myra asked, “Okay, Carl, who is the mystery woman in your life that we have been hearing about?”

I knew Myra was hooked up to the SIMC grapevine. Telling her what was happening between Tam and I would result in the details getting to everyone in the building. I decided that would be easier than everyone asking me about Tam.

“There is not too much to tell, Myra. I met Tamerlane about a year ago when she interviewed me for her paper. I was interested in her back then, but I learned she was happily married. She lost her husband about six months ago, so I decided to visit with her to see if she needed help. I asked her out for dinner. That date led to several dates while I was there and we started a relationship. Now we are more than friends, but not lovers. I suppose you could call her my girlfriend.”

Myra seemed happy with that, so she let me continue making my way to my office. Yes I know I’m slow, but not totally stupid when it came to women. I knew Tam and I were more than boyfriend-girlfriend, but I called her my girlfriend because I wasn’t certain how to define the current status of our relationship.

What I was really dense about was, how the women in the building would react to the news that I had a girlfriend. Yes, you probably guessed that by the end of the day almost every woman in the building stopped me to congratulate me on having a girlfriend and wanted to know all the details of our relationship. I was even asked if she was a good kisser, but I drew the line at talking about the personal details of what had transpired between Tam and me. Of course, I didn’t recognize that holding back the details would just fanned their curiosity; maybe I am totally stupid when it comes to women.

Steve, Karen, Mary, and I met in my conference room to talk about the status of our activities. We primarily focused on the series of articles that we planned to publish during the coming weeks.

I said, “I know our primary concern right now is the Celebrity exposé, but I want to put that off until we discuss the other activities we have going on.

“Mary, what is the status of the God’s Spokesman exposé?”

She said, “Team 1 was close to wrapping up their field interviews when they learned Jiles is a pedophile. Carly and Rodrick will catch a flight home tomorrow. Briana and Trent will remain in Atlanta and work on the remaining interviews until we get the information on the two women Jiles seduced.

“If what they were told pans out, it will make our writing the exposé a lot easier in some ways and harder in others. What Jiles was doing doesn’t seem like two isolated incidents to me. During the interviews Briana and Trent will conduct with the two women, I hope the women will identify additional women for them to talk to. If we get additional names, then Briana and Trent will remain in Atlanta to do additional interviews.”

I said, “I hate contemplating the number of young teenage women a powerful man like Jiles might have seduced. The next time you talk with Briana, tell her to see if she can get the time frame in which the women were seduced. If there are any seductions within the statute of limitation, have her find out if any of the women might be interested in filing charges against him. Jiles may have used his wealth and power to persuade the authorities to ignore an isolated complaint from time-to-time, but if the women go in as a group, the authorities will be forced to pay attention. Regardless of when the seductions took place, I think all of the women who are willing to step forward should instigate a civil suit against him. They may want to do that as a group, so they can support each other. We will publish the exposé as soon as it is ready to publish, but the civil suit court cases brought against him will probably hurt him and his newsletter more than anything we can publish.

“Anything further, Mary?”

“The only thing I have to add is, I am training Team 3, and they should be ready to start their first assignment in about three weeks.”

“Karen, do you have anything for us?”

“We have been pushing hard and The Scorpion is ahead of schedule. I think we will be ready to start publishing our first articles within the next two weeks. My reporters are preparing articles on a number of topics. Do you want me to run these articles by Vic before we publish them?”

“If the articles mention a specific person, company, or organization, then yes. If it is a general opinion piece without names and okay with Gina, then I don’t see a problem with bypassing Vic.”

“All right, but I do have a question. With all the work we will be sending to Vic, will he be able to support what we are doing, especially when we add the third on-line paper?”

“I hadn’t thought about that, Karen. Let’s discuss it with Vic tomorrow. Anything else?”

“Nothing I can think of, Carl.”

“Steve, ignoring the Eye Witness for the moment, do you have anything to mention?”

“We’re doing well, Carl. My reporters are working on a variety of short articles relating to the media and a few opinion pieces.”

“Okay, let’s address the Eye Witness situation. Timing will be important regarding our publishing the exposés’ remaining articles. Publishing a single article each week will not allow us to publish all of the articles before the hearing on the tenth of December. We can publish multiple articles each week so we can get them all published before the hearing or we can continue as we are. What does everyone think we should do?

“Steve, since you are in the Eye Witness’s crosshairs, what do you suggest?”

“I thought of publishing multiple articles each week so we could get them all published before the hearing. It was tempting, but I think that would be a bad idea. We asked for a reasonable delay for the hearing, and if The Rattler publishes all of the articles before the hearing, we are likely to upset the judge. He will be the one who will hear the lawsuit. I think we should continue as we are and hope we don’t get a restraining order placed on us. If the judge slaps a restraining order on The Rattler, there will still be enough articles to warrant publishing them after the lawsuit is over.”

Mary asked, “Won’t the delay between our stopping and then restarting be a problem for our readers?”

Steve said, “I thought of that, Mary. If we have to wait until the lawsuit ends to get the restraining order withdrawn, our audience is likely to be much larger. That will justify us republishing the articles we have already published and then continue on with the remaining articles. If we do stop publishing the articles, can you imagine our reader’s response if we publish an apology for not continuing to publish the remaining articles because of a restraining order that The Celebrity Eye Witness had placed on us to prevent us from telling them about the Eye Witness.”

Mary said, “I hadn’t thought of that, Steve. I imagine our readers will be upset, but the apology will definitely draw their attention to the lawsuit. Especially if you do as you mentioned earlier, and you or Karen start reporting on the lawsuit. I think it would be best if Karen published those articles. What do you think, Karen?”

“I think it should be The Scorpion that publishes those articles. The threat of Invasion of Privacy by an outfit like the Celebrity Eye Witness has the potential of harming any family. I think my reporters can handle something like that, but I may need your assistance, Mary.”

After looking around the table and seeing everyone nodding their heads in agreement, I decided that was the way we should handle the situation; further opinions weren’t needed.

I said, “It sounds to me as if Steve’s approach is acceptable to everyone. Does anyone have what they think is a better way to proceed?”

No one spoke up, so I continued.

“Okay, that is our plan; which is subject to change, if necessary. Before we implement it, I want Vic to review it. Steve, since you and Karen will be the primaries in implementing the plan, please document the plan and who will do what, so Vic will have something read. We can also use the written plan as our guide as we implement the plan.

“Mary, if Steve has to put the Celebrity articles on hold, will you have anything Steve can publish?”

“Let’s see. Team 2 will be finish the Writing phase of its The Society Critic Magazine exposé, before the Spokesman’s articles are finished. If everything goes as I think it will, we should have the articles cleared by Vic shortly after he returns from the hearing in Boston.”

I looked at Steve. He was smiling and nodding his head in agreement with the timing Mary proposed, so I nodded back to him. If he was happy with it, so was I. Even if she were a week or two late, there wouldn’t be a major problem. We were expecting long gaps between the first few exposés, but that would change as Mary created and trained more Teams.

“I think we’ve covered all of the status items at this point. Does anyone have anything further to add?”

No one said anything until Karen said, “What about the status of your girlfriend?”

Everyone laughed until I said, “That is the next item on my agenda.”

I stunned everyone with that statement.

“What I am about to tell you is personal and I insist the information kept secret for now.

“I’m an idiot when it comes to what women think.”

“I got another laugh and Mary said, “We know that already, Carl.”

“Yeah, but what you don’t know is, I believe my relationship with Tamerlane will lead to a serious commitment between the two of us. I’m not sure what type of relationship she will want, but I’m open to almost anything.

Mary and Karen shared a long look. I continued, “As you know, Tam is a reporter. I told her that if she had any interest in joining me here in California that I could arrange for her to go to work for one of our two papers. I also told her that there is a possibility of her taking control of our third on-line paper.

“That is the main reason for her visit next week. She wants to check us out and I want us to check her out. If we all think a business relationship with her will work, I think she will move to the San Diego area.”

Mary gave me a dirty look and said, “And you expect Karen and me to just sit on the information without telling anyone else in the company. It’s unfair of you to expect us to do it.”

Karen said, “I agree with Mary, but I’ll do it if you invite me to the wedding.”

That floored me. I just looked at Karen with what must have been a stupid or blank look on my face, until Mary said, “If you invite me too, I’ll keep quiet.”

The two of them were just sitting there giggling. I just sighed and dropped my head before saying, “Okay, you got a deal.”

Poor Tam. I will have to call her tonight and brief her on the uproar our relationship has caused here at SIMC, and that I had been blackmailed into promising to invite Mary and Karen to our wedding.

The meeting was the final thing I wanted to complete while I was at the office; the rest could wait until tomorrow. I called Jason and Gary to let them know I was ready to head home.

When we got home, Gary’s relief was waiting for him, so he and Jason went home. Once I was home for the day, I almost never went anywhere. Gary and I had agreed that if I had to go somewhere when Jason wasn’t with me, my bodyguard would do the driving.

When I walked into the house, it was my intention to go upstairs and unpack my bag. As I closed the door, I thought of Tam. A quick mental calculation told me it was after seven back in Atlanta, so I detoured to my office. Once I made myself comfortable in my chair, I called her.

“Evening, Tam. How are you doing?”

“Missing you, Carl. How were things for you today at the office?”

“Not bad. The main thing was almost everyone is curious about my relationship with you, and they weren’t shy about asking. You know how I feel about personal information, so they didn’t get the details they would have liked to get.”

“I know what you mean. When I asked my editor about taking two weeks off yesterday, I mentioned that it was to visit my gentleman friend. This morning, I was swamped by my friends asking about my new boyfriend. I checked with the airline and I have reservations to fly out to San Diego Airport at nine Saturday morning. I eventually found the time to tell my editor I would be taking the next two weeks off. She was happy for me and agreed. She said that after the past six months, I needed something good in my life. I think you are good for me, Carl. What do you think?”

“I would like the opportunity to be good for you all of the time. I know you will be good for me.

“I told you about Mary, Karen, and Steve owning our two newspapers and writing group. Well, we met today so I could get the status of what has happened while I was gone. When we finished, I told them one of the reasons you were coming for a visit was, you might move out here and come to work with us. I let them know that I wanted you and them to get to know each other and see if a close working relationship would be possible. When I finished telling them to keep that information secret, Mary told me it was unfair of me to ask her to do that. She was just teasing, but Karen piped in and told me she would be happy to do that if I invited her to our wedding. Mary agreed to that and I don’t think either of them was teasing.

It took a moment for Tam to respond. She couldn’t stop laughing long enough to catch her breath. When she did, she said, “Oh, Carl ... it sounds to me like they will have us married before my visit is over.”