“I strongly disagree, Harley,” said Green. “His actions are the epitome of conduct unbecoming a member of the Senate, and that’s our mandate.”
“It seems to me we hold the hearings and let the matter find its own course,” said Adams. “The hearings will be behind closed doors, no press coverage. What’s the harm?”
“The harm,” Stinson objected, “is ever’body will know the hearin’s are goin’ on. There will be inevitable leaks of information, and we could be tarrin’ a man who doesn’t deserve it. That’s the harm.”
“It’s obvious the vote in here is two to one to hold the hearings,” said Adams. “Hugh, you have any idea where our counterparts stand on this?”
“I gather they’re unanimous against, but Frank Hopper is on the line. I don’t think he’d raise strong objections. He hasn’t much use for Marshall, either.”
“Can we bring him over?” Adams asked.
“Converting Frank Hopper isn’t on the floor at the moment,” said Green. “Our position investigating Harold Marshall is our only business right now. Do we vote?”
“Do we have to?” asked Adams.
“I don’t want anybody saying I forced him into this,” Green answered.
“But you did, didn’t you?” Stinson said with a nasty edge in his voice.
“No! I did not,” Green objected. “You had your say, Harley. And I offered to stand aside. I don’t know how it could get any cleaner. We agreed in the beginning the Democrats would stand united in whatever decision we made and the majority opinion would rule. What the hell is stuck in your mountain craw?”
“You wanna know, I’ll tell you,” Stinson said, using his elbows to heft his considerable bulk more upright in his chair. “Ah think you’re doin’ this outta loyalty.”
“To whom?” Green demanded.
“To that purty little gal that’s your AA,” said Stinson. “Ah hear she’s sleepin’ real serious with the Chronicle reporter who’s been breakin’ all these stories.”
Green shook his head as if to rid it of cobwebs. Then he came out of his chair and around his desk toward Stinson, a vengeance in his eyes that caused Adams to rise to restrain him.
“You goddamned hillbilly sonofabitch, I ought to kick your ass,” Green snarled. “I’ve never done anything official for personal reasons in my life, and you know it. My AA will have no role in these hearings. For you to suggest I would do otherwise is below contempt.”
“You want to hit me, Hugh?” Stinson asked calmly, not moving from his chair. “You mad enough to take a swing at me?”
“You’re damned straight I am.”
“So how do you suppose Harold Marshall felt when he was subjected to even greater provocation from a herd of goddamned media with cameras rollin’ and flashes poppin’?”
Green went suddenly slack. He looked at Stinson for a long minute. Then he returned to his desk.
“Point taken, Harley,” he said, sitting down heavily. “Point well taken. The assault is off this committee’s agenda.”
The clerk in the public-records room at the Securities and Exchange Commission was very helpful, a particular comfort to Steve Pace because he felt out of his element amid the jargon, acronyms, and esoteric concepts of the securities world.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “We do have a filing for a Harold Marshall.”
Pace sat down beside her at the microfiche machine and stared at the pictures of the document. “Tell me what I’m looking at,” he asked. “This is a brave new world for me.”
She smiled in an accommodating way. “This is called a Schedule Thirteen-D. You have to file it if you acquire more than five percent of the outstanding shares of a publicly-traded company.”
“I’m with you that far,” Pace said. “What do these numbers mean?”
“Harold Marshall bought 50,000 shares on this date, and at the time of purchase they amounted to five-point-three percent of the outstanding shares in the company. Then he shows here that this was a block purchase—I mean he bought it all at once; the holdings didn’t build up over years. And here where it asks his intention in making the purchase, he says it was an investment.”
“That’s a strange question.”
“In theory, if you buy a big percentage of a company’s stock because you intend to take over the company, you’re supposed to report it. Obviously, that could have an impact, good or bad, on other investors’ interest in the company.”
“Is there a way to find out if Marshall still owns the stock?”
“If there’s a change in status, he’s supposed to amend this statement to show that, but there’s no amendment on file here.”
“Then as far as you can tell, he bought 50,000 shares on this date, and he still holds exactly 50,000 shares.”
“Right, unless he filed an amendment recently and the paperwork isn’t here yet.”
“Is there a way to check?” Pace smiled at her sweetly.
“I could make some calls.”
“I’d appreciate it. Should I wait?”
“It won’t take long.”
It didn’t. The clerk returned in twelve minutes. “There is an amendment,” she said. “It’s a good thing for you we checked.”
“How significant is the change?”
“Pretty significant. He sold all of the stock last month.”
Pace sat bolt upright. “All of it?”
“Every last share, on April 17th.”
Pace felt his heart slam into his ribs. “The same day as the crash,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“A copy of the amendment is being sent down,” the clerk said. “I assumed you’d want to have it.”
“Indeed I do. And a copy of the original filing, too,” he said.
The clerk leaned over and pressed a button on the microfiche. A copy slipped out the bottom of the machine. The clerk smiled at him.
“I never was mechanical,” Pace explained.
“There you are, Pace! I hoped I’d find you.” The voice came from behind the clerk, but Pace recognized it.
“George, hi. What brings you here?”
“Looking for you. Find anything interesting?”
The clerk excused herself. “I’ll bring you that copy as soon as it gets here,” she said.
“Thank you,” Pace replied. Then he told Ridley what he’d found.
“I shudda been a reporter,” Ridley said. “I got all the right instincts.”
He opened his thin briefcase and pulled out a dog-eared copy of The Wall Street Journal, open to an inside page, and a yellow pad with a lot of numbers and notes on it. “I also read this rag cover to cover,” he said. “I had more than a hunch what you’d find here.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Pace said.
“Look here,” said Ridley. “This is a story on April 18th, the day after the ConPac accident, about the impact on Converse stock. It says all the shit you’d expect about the stock taking a beating. But here, look at this one paragraph: ‘NYSE officials say a single investor sold 50,000 shares of common stock just before noon. They attributed the subsequent steep slide in the stock’s value in part to the uncertainty created by that sale.’ “
Ridley pointed at the 50,000 figure in the story and then at the 50,000 figure on the paper in Pace’s hand. “He bought in when the price was good, but when the accident happened, it was ‘Fuck you, Charlie.’”
“Let’s talk this through. Since Marshall dumped the stock, what motive would he have left to carry water for Converse? He didn’t have to stick his neck out with the NTSB. He was out of it and probably richer for it.”
“He still had a constituent to protect. And he had the opportunity to make another killing. After he sold, the stock’s price went right into the toilet, right?” Pace nodded. “Say he buys back in again at bargain-basement rates, all the while he’s scheming to get the C-Fan exonerated from blame in the accident. If he’s successful, the stock goes right back up. It’s ingenious.”