“For me, it’s easy,” Jenkins smiled conspiratorially, his eyelids becoming heavy. “It’s sex. If they please me sexually. Especially young boys, I provide them a lifetime of luxury beyond their wildest dreams. If they don’t, well, they don’t,” he concluded, then turned back to stare at Adam Jr. He licked his lips profanely and rubbed his swelling crotch in a readjustment sort of way as the jet began to scream down the runway at full thrust. “I love this part!” he said sleepily.
Tommy had decided before he had even stopped talking that the grave was plenty deep enough. And it wasn’t because the jet was soaring higher into the deep blue sky and he was being pulled by an invisible hand to his left.
“What about your wife, Lenore? What does she say?” Tommy asked as if truly interested. “I just got married,” he added as justification for his interest.
“Wives are nothing but arm candy and a place to ejaculate in. That’s all. Their opinion is irrelevant. We make the money, they spend it. Plain and simple. After a while they aren’t even good for sex! So, pay ‘em off and trade ‘em in on a newer model. You’ll live forever with variety. Trust me,” he slurred, drifting off to sleep. His chin rolled onto his chest and began to wobble with the vibration of the aircraft as it leveled off at altitude.
Tommy wondered if he would have confessed these things had he been wide awake. He doubted it. But then again, true evil and selfishness knew no shame. So, it wasn’t out of the question. Who knew, perhaps it was like Adam Jr. had said; Adam Sr. felt he was untouchable. So, what he said in private was sacred. All he had to do was deny, deny, deny. Then set about destroying and silencing his accuser.
Tommy got up and moved to the table. He took the chair beside Adam, then leaning in close he began to explain how Adam Sr. had basically made a full confession.
“Yeah, he’s quite proud of his proclivities. He would never deny it to an individual when there are no witnesses. He knows it would be his word against yours. He feels safe, so why deny anything?”
“We’ll see how safe he truly is this time tomorrow, if you can get Lenore to safety.”
“We can. We will. And just for the record, I’m not gay and Marty and I are not lovers. He,” Adam indicated his father with a jut of his chin “says things like that to hurt me. It doesn’t work anymore.”
“Okay, then. Are you sure about the money going to charity?”
“It would be the very last place he would want a cent of it to go, believe me.”
“We touched on charities during our conversation. Consider it done, then,” he said, and then moved back to his place on the sofa to stretch out and think.
When the Lear touched down at Tulsa International Airport, Tommy’s eyes opened. He felt refreshed, but knew immediately that he needed a shower, bad. He felt gritty from the non-stop sweating in the jungle. He couldn’t wait to get home and remedy several pressing problems.
When the Lear rolled to a stop and the engines began to whine to a stop, the captain came out of the cockpit, unlocked and opened the door. The steps floated to the ground as the door opened.
They were inside a large, private hangar. There were several other aircraft parked around the inside, as well as a baby blue stretch limousine. All sported the JP emblem somewhere on their body.
“Sleep well?” Tommy asked, noticing that Jenkins was awake and moving. “Yes, thank you. It’s a sign of a clear conscience,” he laughed as he stood and started for the door.
“Mister LeSade, the Rolls there, is a gift of appreciation for a job well done. The paperwork is inside. It’s free and clear. Enjoy it with my gratitude. Goodbye,” Adam Sr. said, then disappeared inside the limo. When the door was closed the driver got behind the wheel and the stretch pulled out immediately.
“The pilot radioed ahead for him with his instructions. You were asleep,” Adam Jr explained.
“What am I supposed to do with a Rolls?” Tommy asked bewildered, looking from the maroon and black Rolls Royce and back at Adam. ‘It actually glows!’ he thought.
“Drive it. It’s a classic Silver Cloud. Worth about a half-a-mil or so. Sell it. Store it for your kid. Hire a chauffeur for your wife. Do whatever you want to with it. It’s yours. Enjoy it!” he smiled. “One thing about the old man, he doesn’t give cheap gifts to people he admires. And once you drive it, you’ll love it! Why do you think they named it Silver Cloud,” he added, love and appreciation for beautiful things in his voice and eyes.
“I don’t feel right taking an expensive gift like this from a man I intend on destroying, literally,” Tommy said, as he walked around the beautiful car. “It is beautiful, though,” he admitted, gently brushing the swept back gleaming black front fender with the tips of his fingers. “I’ll admit that.”
“Mister LeSade thanks for coming to my rescue. I owe you my life. If there is ever anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask. It will be my pleasure,” Adam said, extending his hand to Tommy. Tommy took it firmly.
“My pleasure, Adam,” he said seriously, shaking the young man’s hand. “Do you need a lift somewhere? I’ll play chauffeur.”
“No thanks. Marty has his ‘vette here. I’ll ride with him.”
“Adam, other than delivering the money, what was Marty’s part in this?”
“He’s my brother. Actually, half-brother,” Adam replied. “Lenore’s son. Her only child. Why?”
“Oh, just curious is all.”
“We’ll see you later, Mister LeSade. It’s been a pleasure knowing you. Keep your promise to me, okay?”
“Count on it, Adam,” Tommy promised, opening the trunk of the Rolls, placing his equipment and weapons inside, then walking around to the front door and got behind the wheel.
With the door closed he didn’t hear the Corvette start and roar from the hangar. It made a sharp left and disappeared around a far corner of the building. He started the Rolls Royce and followed them out of the airport. He was in fact, riding on a silver cloud that seemed to float him along his way home.
He found it hard to stay awake. The Rolls Royce seemed to be trying to rock and float him gently to sleep as it glided along the highway. He fought the desire to give in to its relentless, siren’s beckoning call and soon found himself entering the city limits of Tahlequah.
The Rolls attracted much attention and wide open curious stares. He was relieved when he pulled into the driveway beside Lisa’s Lexus and parked.
He was met at the door with hugs and kisses from Lisa. He also got quite a scolding for the one-sided decision to go on the mission. She felt he should have at least consulted her. After all, she was his wife and she was carrying his child. She had a right to know and voice her opinion. He should think of her once in a while, and not just himself.
He listened patiently to her list of grievances then went to take a shower and get some sleep. He was on the verge of exhaustion. He wouldn’t last much longer in his present state. And, he decided, he wasn’t going to win this argument, so why stick around and feed into it?
The shower seemed to revitalize him. The hot, steamy water relaxed his tense exhausted muscles, so that by the time he had the hot water tap off and just the cold water on, he was feeling like a new man.
After he dried off and got dressed, he returned to the living room. Lisa was nowhere in sight. After a few minutes of searching he heard a faint squeaking noise from the front porch. He recognized the sound and went to it.
Lisa was on the swing, slowly rocking back and forth. He sat beside her. She ignored him. He didn’t speak either. He was content just to set beside her; in her presence, as it were.
“Birds,” she said suddenly. “I hope we have a lot of birds on the ranch. I love to listen to the birds sing. Especially, early in the morning.”
“There will be birds, I’m sure,” he replied with a smile.
“I want lots of birds! Like trees! Millions of them!”
“We can put out feeders to attract them. Bird houses to nest in. It’s easy to attract them and ke
ep them around.”
“Can we buy some? Ducks, geese, peacocks, swans? Birds like that?”
“As many as you like. Honey, you can have anything you want. As much as you want. Just buy them.”
“You won’t get mad if I spend your money?”
“I’d give away all the money if that’s what it took to make you happy. I love you Lisa. Your happiness is all that matters to me. Nothing else.”
“Not even the money?”
“Especially the money.”
“I love you, Tommy,” she said, leaning over against his shoulder gently.
“And I you,” he replied, as his lips met hers. Inside the house the phone rang.
‘Just my luck,’ he thought, breaking the kiss and standing up. “I’ll be right back,” he promised. But, he wasn’t.
He answered the phone in the living room on its fourth ring.
“Tommy LeSade,” he answered pleasantly.
“Mister LeSade, its Adam Jenkins, Jr.,” the youthful, excited voice said.
“Adam, is everything alright?”
“Yes, we have Lenore with us. We’re going to Marty’s house. Dad had to go to Houston. One of his oil wells in the Gulf blew. So you can do it. Whatever it is. Okay?”
“Are you sure this is what you want, Adam?”
“Positive, Mister LeSade. Just do it.”
“Okay Adam. There’s no turning back. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then, consider it done.”
“Thanks Mister LeSade.”
“Thank me when it’s all over. You may feel differently, then.”
“I’ll feel the same as I do now, only better.”
“Okay, then. Bye.”
“Bye Mister LeSade.”
Tommy hung up the phone and walked into the den. He booted up his computer. As it came on and warmed up, he constructed in his mind what he was going to do and how he was going to do it and in what order.
“Oh, my god!” he heard Lisa exclaim from the living room.
He went to her immediately. She stood in front of the TV watching a ‘breaking’ news story on CNN. It looked to him as if a large bomb had gone off somewhere in the jungle. He began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He began to hold his breath, waiting for the commentator to resume speaking and describe what Tommy was seeing. Then he did...
“...To recap this breaking news story that you are seeing live footage of as we speak...a U.S. bomber, flying maneuvers off the coast of Belize, in the Gulf of Mexico, just a few hours ago, accidentally dropped its full complement of armaments on a small fishing village, twenty miles west of the Guatemalan boarder. How the aircraft flew so far off course is unknown at this time. It is feared that there are no survivors in the village of two-hundred-and-seventy-six inhabitants. I repeat two-hundred-and-seventy-six men, women and children are feared dead in this massive bombardment of a small fishing and farming village twenty miles west of the Guatemalan border with Southern Mexico and Belize...For further updates on this breaking news story stay tuned to CNN News...”
Tommy felt his stomach turn as he remembered the children running and playing in the flickering firelight the night before. He could still hear their exuberant, joyous, excited childish laughter as they pursued and evaded each other in the night.
He felt his anger begin to rise beyond control. He knew perfectly well who was responsible for this travesty. He also knew what he was going to do about it. He turned and reentered the den and his computer. He seated himself at the terminal and began to type furiously, non-stop for two minutes straight. When the code was in and accepted, he sat back and waited for the doors of the massive vault to hell on earth to open wide and invite him inside. He went without hesitation or regret.
The fall of a mighty financial empire is akin to a whirlpool in the heart of hell. Everything even remotely touching it is sucked down into the raging vortex and consumed as the superstructure fights for survival. In the end it fails as it consumes itself totally from within in a futile effort to escape its unavoidable fate.
Such was the near instant demise of Jenkins Petroleum. Once the fall began there was nothing anyone in the highest positions, in the highest offices of the Jenkins Skyscraper in downtown Tulsa could do except pray the collapse would stop before it was dead and in ruins.
By five o’clock the following afternoon, all was lost. Including, but not limited to, Adam Jenkins, Sr. Several presidents, vice-presidents, and one chief financial officer went with him as a result of his insane rampage with a fully loaded, pearl handled, gold plated, diamond studded, .45 Colt Model 1911 that had served him well during two tours in Viet Nam. The last round in the clip reserved for himself and his own infected brain via the roof of his mouth.
Amazingly, exactly twenty-four hours to the minute later, everything was completely restored exactly as it had been, with the exception of lost lives, prior to the announcement that the mighty petroleum empire had inexplicably gone belly up.
No one could explain it; the chief financial officer was dead. The best anyone could do was blame it on a computer glitch that had miraculously repaired itself.
Numerous analytical checks were ran on the hard-drives and software of the financial programs and not a bit, byte, or bytes, was found to be responsible. Everyone agreed it was a shame the recovery could not have happened eight hours sooner to avoid the unnecessary bloodshed and death of the nine top officers of the corporation. In his Last Will and Testament, Adam Sr. had left everything to his one and only beloved son. Adam Jr. sole heir to the Jenkins fortune was rumored to be worth near one-trillion dollars in assets.
After two weeks of flip and flap about the death of one of Tulsa’s greatest pillars, everything was back to normal. The deaths gone and forgotten as everyone returned to business as usual.
Everyone agreed, especially those who couldn’t explain it and should have been able to, that with the trillions of gigabytes floating through the world wide web, and the airways, it was in fact feasible that a certain alignment of X number of random bytes could potentially trigger an anomaly such as the one experienced by Jenkins Petroleum, which would lead to a potential temporary erasure of all business transactions for a brief period of time. Should such an anomaly occur again, the experts urged CEOs to be patient and give the system time to repair itself. Perhaps it would.
Tommy however, knew otherwise. Had he wanted to erase Jenkins Petroleum permanently he could have done so with a simple click of a button. He had decided against it when he thought of all the innocent people who would ultimately be affected by the financial destruction of such a major corporation. He had explained his decision to Adam Jr. following the funeral of Adam Sr. when Adam Jr. inquired as to what had gone wrong with Tommy’s plan. Adam Jr. had understood and agreed with Tommy’s reasoning.
In a press release following his decline of the President and CEO position, Adam Jr. had announced he was giving the employees of the corporation a one-time chance to purchase equal amounts of shares in the corporation.
He had explained to reporters that he would take the number of employees, multiply that number by one-thousand, and then sell each employee one-thousand shares in Jenkins Petroleum for one-thousand dollars. What he didn’t say was that for the employees that did not have, or could not afford one thousand dollars, the purchase price would be paid by himself as a gesture of thanks for their loyalty to his father and the corporation.
In effect, the employees would own Jenkins Petroleum lock, stock, and barrel. He was through with it. He had all the money he could spend in several lifetimes and had no intentions of trying to make more.
Tommy had congratulated him on his wisdom and charity to his father’s employees and wished him well in the future. He also invited him to visit the ranch in Tahlequah. His door would always be open to the young man, Marty, Lenore and any future family he may have.
Now, two weeks later, standing at the corral looking at the ne
w Appaloosa stallion that had just arrived that morning on Jacob and Terri’s new custom Peterbilt, Tommy explained to Adam that he had one more fish to fry before he could consider retiring to enjoy his ranch and family.
“Who’s the fish?” Adam asked, watching the stallion prance around the paddock proudly.
“I don’t want to call any names. But, he is at the very top of his chosen field. And he authorized the bombing of the village in Guatemala a month ago.”
“You’re kidding, right? You wouldn’t really go after him would you?” he asked incredulously, looking wide-eyed at Tommy.
“He authorized the wanton murder of innocent men, woman and children. He is guilty of crimes against humanity. He’s not above the law and must answer for his crime, same as anyone else,” Tommy replied simply.
“And you’ll be his judge, jury and executioner?”
“Someone has to,” Tommy replied. “Can you name anyone else willing to do it, who can, without repercussions?” he added invitingly.
“No,” Adam replied after a few seconds thought. “But, to have that kind of power, it could be easily abused...”
“Yes, it could,” Tommy agreed. “But I’ve had it for over a year and I haven’t desired to become ruler of the universe.”
“Yet.”
“I never want that kind of responsibility,” Tommy smiled.
“I can’t think of anyone that I would trust with that kind of power; except someone who didn’t want it!”
“So, that leaves me, right?”
“Yeah, I guess it does, Tommy,” Adam said sadly. “But, I hate to see you go up against someone like him. He’s evil. Like my father was evil. Only the President is a lot more dangerous. And evil with power is a very dangerous enemy.”
“Not if he doesn’t know who, or what, hit him. Or why. Or how for that matter.”
“Are you sure he won’t know?” Adam worried, concern for Tommy’s safety and well being evident in his strained voice.
“Well, Adam,” Tommy smiled. “Let’s hope not.”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Tommy said, turning to the eighteen-wheeler. “For now, let’s worry about unloading those mares,” he added, walking toward the trailer.