Slate laughed. “It’s easy if the proper vice president calls down from upstairs and says do it.”
“We need to be clear about this,” Mankin said. “You want me to go out to that big Four Corners oil patch in New Mexico, look it over, see if I can find out how the pipeline system out there was used—and maybe still is being used—to bypass paying royalty money into the Interior Department’s trust fund for the Indians. Does that about summarize the job?”
Slate nodded.
“That’s a big part of it. The most important information of all is the names of those switching the stuff around so the money for it goes into the right pockets. And who owns the pockets.”
“And the senator understands that this is likely to produce nothing. I presume it is one of a whole bunch of ways he’s looking for some way to pin the blame, or the corruption, on somebody for that four- or five-billion-dollar loss of royalty money from the Tribal Trust Funds. The one the
Slate was grinning again. “Was that intended as a question? What do the press secretaries say to questions like that?” He slipped into a serious, disapproving expression. “We never comment on speculation.”
“The newspapers say that this ripping off the four billion or so of Tribal royalty money has been going on for more than fifty years. And they’re quoting the government bean counters. Right? I can’t see much hope of me finding anything new.”
“It’s not a mere four billion dollars,” Slate said. “The Government Accounting Office estimated the amount not accounted for may be as high as forty billion. And the law firm for the tribes is now claiming the U.S. gov has stacked up a debt of a hundred and thirty-seven billion bucks on royalties dating back to 1887. I guess what the senator wants to know is if the stealing persists.”
“And he bets somebody’s fifty grand that I’ll be lucky enough to find out.”
“His friends in the State Department tell him you did a great job finding out how Iraqi oil people switched pipelines to avoid those United Nations’ sanctions on exporting their oil. I guess he just wants you to do it again.”
“It’s a very different story out there,” Carl Mankin said. “In the Middle East oil patch you had a small bunch of greasy old pipeline experts surrounded by various groups of Arabs. The Arabs weren’t really members of the Brit- American petroleum club. Which I was. Everybody knew everybody’s business. After twenty years in and out of there, I was just another one of them. People talked to me. I got sneaked into pipeline switching stations, got to see pressure gauges—all the technical stuff. Out in New Mexico, I’ll just be a damned nosey stranger.”
Slate was studying him. He grinned. “In New Mexico, you’ll be Carl Mankin. Right? All this making apologies in advance for not finding anything useful means you’re signing on?”
“Oh, sure. I guess so,” he said. He folded the deposit slip into his wallet, took out the Carl Mankin Visa card, signaled to the waiter, and then handed the card to him when the waiter came to the table.
“A symbolic action,” Slate said, and laughed.
“One more thought I want to pass along,” he said. “What little chance I have out there of picking up any useful information would be multiplied many times over if I had a clearer idea, a more specific idea, of what he wants.”
“Just the truth,” Slate said. “Nothing but the truth.”
“Yeah,” Carl Mankin said. “But I’m entertaining all kinds of thoughts. For example, why connect me directly with this Texas construction outfit? Seamless Weld. Sounds like something in the pipelining business. Does the senator own it?”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t,” said Slate. “It will be owned by some corporation that is part of a conglomerate in which the senator has a substantial interest. If he actually owned Seamless Weld on any public record, he’d be way too sly to get it involved.”
They were on the sidewalk now, hailing a cab, a warm breeze moving dust along the street, the smell of rain in the air.
“So why stick me with that company? And don’t tell me it’s to make my expenses tax deductible. What’s the reason?”
A cab stopped for them. Slate opened the door, ushered Mankin in, seated himself, gave the driver the bank’s address, settled back, arid said: “Looks like rain.”
“I’m waiting for an answer,” Mankin said. “And it’s not just out of curiosity. “I’m going to be asking a lot of questions, and that means I’ll have to answer a lot of them myself. I can’t afford to be caught lying.”
“OK,” Slate said. He took a little silver cigarette box out of his coat pocket, opened it, offered one to Mankin, took one himself, looked at it, put it back in the box, and said: “Well, I guess you know that everyone in this town has at least two agendas. The public one, and their own personal causes. Right?”
Mankin nodded.
“OK, then. Let’s say you called your broker and asked him who owned Seamless Weld. He’d call you back in a few days and tell you it was a subsidiary of Searigs Inc. And you’d say, who owns Searigs, and after the proper period for checking, he’d tell you the principal stockholder was A.G.H. Industries Inc. And the answer to your next question is that the majority stock holder in A.G.H. is a trust, the affairs of which are entrusted to a Washington law firm, and the law firm lists four partners, one of whom is Mr. Rawley Winsor of Washington, D.C. End of answer.”
“I’ve heard that name. But who is Rawley Winsor?”
“No genuine Washington insider would have to ask that,” Slate said. “Nor would anyone on Wall Street. Rawley Winsor is ... How do I start? He’s a many-generations blue blood, echelons of high society, Princeton, then Harvard Law, famous Capitol deal doer, fund-raisers, top-level runner of lobby campaigns, and might make the top of
“So if I was free to speculate, I might guess that your senator is either doing a deal for this Winsor plutocrat, or seeking a way to link him with evildoing. For example, maybe finding how to prove this guy is getting a slice of the suspected rip-off of tribal royalty funds. Or maybe a way for the senator to get his own cut of that graft.”
Slate laughed. “I am not free to comment on speculation.”
“But if he is so incredibly rich, why go to all this trouble for what must be just small change for him?”
“Joy of the game, maybe,” Slate said. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe Winsor just can’t stand seeing some other power broker getting easy money that he’s not sharing. Right now, for example, everybody knows he’s running the lobby against a bill to legalize medical use of marijuana. Why? Because he’s afraid it would lead to legalizing drugs—making them government licensed, taxed, et cetera. Why is he against that? Lot of people are, because it has proven to be a counterproductive waste of public money. But that wouldn’t be Winsor’s motive. Nobody knows what that is. Not for sure. But we Washington cynics think it’s because he has a finger in the narcotics import trade. Legalizing and licensing knocks out the profits. Government sells it at fixed prices, grows it in the farm belt, taxes the hell out of it. No more recruiting of new addicts by your teenaged salesmen, no more knife fights and gun battles for market territory.” Slate sighed. “Not that any of that matters.”
“Come on, now,” Mankin said. “This guy is a multi-billionaire. Dabbling in the drug trade isn’t just a fun competition. I can’t believe he’d be that dumb.”
“Probably not,” Slate said. “Maybe it’s psychological. My wife has three pet cats. One of them will eat all he can hold, and then stand guard at the bowl to keep the other two from having their dinner. Snarl, and claw to fight ’em off. Are humans smarter than cats?”
Mankin nodded. “You know any farmyard French?”
“Just English for me,” Slate said.
“Anyway, French farmers have a phrase for the boss pig in the sty—the one that would guard the trough and attack any animal that tried to steal a bite. Translate it to French and it’s
“ ‘Sinister pig,’ right?” Slate asked. “But isn’t it
That lunch and conversation had been on Monday. The newly named Carl Mankin called his wife to tell her he’d be going to New Mexico for several days. Then he took a taxi to the Department of Energy, called on the
