Chapter 27: A Forceful Delivery
“How are we going to do this, Davie?” Kaitlyn asked, looking over at me from the driver’s seat. Implicit in her question was an assertion: we can’t go into the JRE offices the same way I did last weekend!
“I think we’ll just walk right in, claim we have a meeting with someone non-specific, and walk up and slide the report under a likely looking office door. Somewhere on the top floor, I think. That’ll be someone important. If nothing comes of it, we’ll mail them a copy, if we have to. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll go back to the press.”
“Speaking of,” I continued, “that was a clever little gambit before the ride, Kaitlyn.”
“What’s this?” her mother asked.
“A reporter came up to me and asked what I was doing there, so I gave them a spun short version of the mission,” Kaitlyn replied proudly, staring in the rearview mirror at her mother.
“You did what?!” Mary answered, shocked.
“Yes, mother, I had a naked interview on TV about our family farm. I think you’ll be getting another call from Mrs. Johannsen,” she giggled.
“Oh, my,” her mother said, hand over her eyes. And just then her mobile phone rang, extracting a resigned sigh. “I am going to have to take this call, aren’t I?”
Kaitlyn and I just burst out laughing.
Kaitlyn drove us past the JRE building and past the parking garage we’d used last weekend on our recon mission. When I looked over at her, she said, “Change of plan, Davie,” I continued to look at her curiously, so she continued, “I brought along a nice outfit just in case. How about you?”
“I did. You asked me to, remember?”
“Right. We’re going to change into them. I want to be business presentable if we run into anyone in there. It’s a weekend, but who knows what we’ll find?” By this time, we’d parallel parked next to the block-sized patch of cultivated nature that Kaitlyn had retreated to that night, where I’d met her with her clothes. This time, Kaitlyn would be carrying her own clothes into the park.
We went into the public bathrooms and changed carefully into our business clothing, me still startled by my new mustache and beard, having seen it in a mirror only one other time, this morning in Robbie & Sandra’s bathroom while getting ready for the ride.
Kaitlyn came out some time after I emerged from the bathroom, looked me up and down critically, and adjusted a few things. I didn’t touch her; she was immaculate already. Then she gave a sharp nod of her head, and we strode back to our car, tossing our casual clothes in and telling Mary we’d be back shortly.
We took the crosswalk across the street this time, not jaywalking — starkers! — as Kaitlyn had done last week. We were as square and crisp as a #10 business envelope today.
When we walked into the JRE lobby, my fears were confirmed: there was a security guard on duty even over the weekend. His name tag said, “J. Miehoff.” Kaitlyn strode right up to him, looked him right in the eye and said, “We’re here for a meeting.”
The guard looked bored and said, “Go right up, madam, sir.”
Our outfits were just as much camouflage for us today as Kaitlyn’s invisibility bubble was for her the other night.
We got into the elevator, and Kaitlyn punched the top-floor button, saying not a word.
Her mission, I decided, so I took a subordinate position. Then my demon bit me, and I whispered into her ear, “The guard didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!”
She hit me on the arm, hard, but she was smiling. I was wincing. It was worth it.
Kaitlyn got off the elevator first, and we walked right up to a large reception desk where a young man was on duty. Kaitlyn bluffed: “I’m here for the meeting,” she said in a bland but definite tone.
“Yes, madam. Your name?” the desk man asked politely but firmly.
“We’re bringing a late report to Mr. Jurkovich. You wouldn’t have been told,” then she waved the stapled sheaf of papers at him. I just stood and looked serious but bored.
The young man looked us up and down, apparently judging Kaitlyn’s veracity by the condition of our clothing, then waved us in. He’d probably decided we were low-level functionary types. Definitely not C-level people in these off-the-rack outfits. Servants, beneath notice. Perfect.
Down the hallway behind the young man, we began to hear voices from the end of the corridor. Just down from the large single door at the end of the hallway, we found a set of double doors, and it sounded to me like that’s where the voices were coming from. Kaitlyn opened both doors and strode right in, bold as brass, as if she’d been walking into this room every work day for the past four years.
We walked in on what looked to be some kind of boardroom. Then I realized that was exactly what it was! All of the tailored suits around the table made that clear: this was a meeting of the company’s board of directors, probably held on a weekend so as not to interrupt normal business.
‘I hope you can swim in a pool this deep, Kaitlyn!’ I thought to myself.
Kaitlyn just tossed the report on the table, then barked, “Read it!”
I recognized the man at the head of the large table at the far end of the room from the company’s web site: the current CEO and descendant of the company’s founder, Mr. George P. Jurkovich IV. He imperiously waved one of the functionaries down at our end toward the report, not looking at it, just staring at us. The flunky picked it up and began flipping through it.
Jurkovich spoke while his flunky tried to speed-read the report. “How about you give me a summary, Ms…?”
“Gutierrez. You’ve been trying to buy my family’s farm,” she stated coldly. Then she went on to summarize the report’s contents as requested.
“Is that summary substantially correct, Mr. Forrest?” Jurkovich asked the flunky mildly. Mr. Forrest, a mousy man, just nodded rapidly.
Looking back to Kaitlyn, Jurkovich said, “What do you want, Ms. Gutierrez?”
“Convert your lowball land sales into first right of refusal earnest payments, and allow the prior landholders to return to their homes,” she emphasized this last, “and do not repeat your offers to buy the property again until they choose to sell. To those that do so choose, offer a fair market value for the minerals you’re also buying. Furthermore, we want you to hold off starting the mine until you have all of the land, not start early, nibbling at the edges.”
“And if not?” Jurkovich asked mildly.
“You’ve seen this movie before, Mr. Jurkovich,” she replied with a tight smile. “We’ve got copies of this report scattered around town, and the people holding them have instructions to mail them to various other interested parties, starting with the EPA, then branching out from there if that doesn’t work.”
A guy I judged to be an accountant of some kind sitting a few seats down from the head of the table objected, “That’s basically going to turn this operation into a write-off!”
“Too bad,” Kaitlyn replied with steel. “Deal straight next time.”
I stepped in, saying in as cool a voice as I could manage, “The report goes out if you keep strong-arming the farmers, too.”
“And also if the mines aren’t cleaned up within a year,” Kaitlyn added.
I nodded behind her, then put in, “We’ll be watching.”
“And what of next year, then?” Mr. Jurkovich asked, a bit of haughtiness creeping into his mild voice. “What will stop us from proceeding then?”
Kaitlyn waved her hand at the report, still in the mousy man’s hands, he still flipping through it to deeper understand its implications. “We gathered this information in just a few days. Do you suppose that your operations are so clean that we couldn’t put together just as damning a report next year, too?”
A man sitting next to the head of the table, which I inferred to be a COO, was eyeing Jurkovich meaningfully. I took this to mean, “She’s got us.”
Jurkovich just sat there and pursed his lips, stewing.
One of the board members sitting along the middle of the table, between the company’s C-level people at the far end and the functionaries down at our end, spoke up. “Didn’t I just see you on TV, Miss?”
Kaitlyn didn’t even blink, riposting with, “Yeah, we were raising attention to save the planet from people like you.” Then she turned in place and walked out. I followed.
After the doors closed again, a second board member turned to the first and asked, “What was this thing you saw on TV?”
“That naked bike ride. She was in it.”
“Fits. Damn hippie.”
“Nice ass, though.”
The table returned to silence after that, some contemplating the report summary we’d delivered, some thinking to their recent TV viewing.
Jurkovich spoke thoughtfully. “That intrusion last week…could it be the same woman?”
The COO spoke next to him, “Does it matter? She’s got us cold, and you know she’ll find what she wants if she comes looking again.” No one spoke to that. The COO raised his courage and said, “…unless we clean up our operations. I can prepare a plan that would ensure that there is simply very little for her to find, Mr. Jurkovich.”
The accountant type spoke sharply from across the table, “That’d ruin us! We’d be bankrupt inside a year! No, Mr. Jurkovich, I recommend that we cut our losses. It’s early in the project, and our current outlay is small on the scale of things.”
Jurkovich spoke again. “All right, then, I move that we put the Moab project on indefinite hold. All for?” A pause. “I count it as unanimous. The motion carries, then. Next item on the agenda…”