Chapter 34
I spent the weekend at my hunting lease, making minor repairs to my little trailer and my hunting blinds, cleaning out wasp nests and spiders, and fishing in the pond. I love the smell of the deep woods in the fall. I had some great pictures on my game cameras. There were hogs, coyotes, bobcats, raccoons and several deer frequenting the feeder areas and the pond. One pretty nice buck was seen in both locations. I was looking forward to wearing my camouflage into the woods, and watching the world wake up on some chilly morning in the not too distant future. During the season I would spend every weekend here, hunting ducks and deer.
Monday put me right back in the rat race.
I learned Ted Simpson had almost certainly provided the start-up capital for Walter’s new business venture. The timing suggested it had been payment for the stolen technical drilling data.
Walter had started the World Wide Security Agency, investing a huge sum of money in start-up capital. Initially it was a modest undertaking, fully funded. Then he had started spending and borrowing a vast amount of cash. He used the money to entertain various government insiders, to help land his contracts and to recruit and equip a small army of security agents. He purchased custom armored personnel carriers designed to withstand improvised explosive devices or IEDs as they are now commonly known. His first couple of contracts proved highly profitable, but he squandered the money on a corporate headquarters office in New York, for his Strategic International Corporation, expensive high profile advertising, traveling around the world to promote his company, bribes, and dirty tricks against his competition.
After talking with a number of creditors, bureaucrats, politicians, and former employees, I learned several things. Walter spent money much faster than he made it. He failed to properly service his debt, but worse was his inability to keep his elaborate promises and lies.
Powerful people began to realize Walter was lying to them. Soon, he was no longer able to get really lucrative contracts. He still had the same level of debt and overhead, but the revenues were decreasing. Walter had to close his fancy office in New York City. He had to let some of his people go. His last security contract had just been terminated. Most of his security people had quit. He had to sell off equipment he had paid top dollar for.
Today, his only real client seemed to be Simpson Oil and Gas Company. It appeared he had to take the Personal Assistant job with Ted Simpson, because he could no longer afford to pay himself his own salary. Strategic International Corporation was dead, and the WWSA was barely a shell of its former self.
Why would Ted Simpson continue to support him at all? If everyone he had ever done business with, including Christine and I, could see Walter for what he really was, why couldn’t Simpson? What hold did Walter have on Mr. Simpson? Was it some form of extortion? There must be something other than Ted Simpson’s belief that Walter was “intensely loyal.”
Mr. Simpson had offered me the job as head of security for Simpson Oil and Gas Company. Why? What did that mean?
It meant it was time for me to talk with Ted Simpson about these things.
He agreed to meet with me, later the same evening at his home in south Tyler. He had to give me precise directions, because the house was hidden and gated against uninvited guests. His home was only three or four miles from my office, on a busy feeder road I drove on frequently. I marvelled that I had driven past the little driveway which disappeared into the forest, probably hundreds of times, and never knew it was the entrance to a magnificent estate. All of the neighbors surrounding them lived in huge houses in swanky, up-scale subdivisions, with grand, gated stone entranceways, with names like RAVENCREST or STONECLIFFE. The simple driveway entrance to the Simpson place was virtually invisible between those ostentatious outcroppings.
Mr. Simpson had his own security gates a few hundred feet up his driveway. I pushed the button on the intercom at the gates, and they swung open without anyone speaking to me. I saw the cameras, so I knew someone could see me. It was interesting that none of Walter’s security people were to be seen at the gates.
Ted Simpson and his wife of more than thirty years, Corinne, lived in a modest French château of about sixteen thousand square feet. It was three stories of granite and wrought iron under a verdigris copper roof with multiple chimneys. I wondered if they were looking forward to multiple fires, in multiple fireplaces. The Château Simpson sat at the edge of a three or four acre pond, with a fountain shooting a geyser, thirty feet into the air. The house was situated on about twenty acres of manicured landscaping, with a tennis court out back, just beyond the swimming pool. My view of those amenities was partly blocked by the six car garage, attached to the house by a Porte cache. Somehow, this magnificent minor castle was the only single family home in the area. All of their neighbors in those exclusive subdivisions had big homes too, of course, but they were mostly crowded together within the confines of their tiny one and two acre lots.
I parked in the circular driveway, rather than under the Porte cache, and walked up the wide sidewalk to the massive front doors. I figured the side door under the Porte cache was just for the family and the help.
As I pushed the doorbell, and listened to the chimes, I imagined there were probably very few times anyone ever rang the bell.
The door was opened by a servant whom I suspected might be called the butler.
The foyer I observed inside the front door had polished marble floors and was so huge that in another time it might have been called a ballroom. Sure, it had polished marble floors, but I doubted anyone ever danced there. I gave the butler my card.
“How do you do, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Simpson is expecting you. He’s in the library, please follow me.”
I was glad he hadn’t said “walk this way,” because he walked kind of slow and funny.
The library was in fact, a library. I estimated the number of books to be at least a thousand titles, most of them bound in leather and some of them rare or first edition. It was an oak panelled room, two stories tall, with books in shelves on three walls, both downstairs and upstairs. The fourth wall was mostly occupied by a massive stone fireplace rising gracefully up to the ceiling, twenty five feet above. There were polished wrought iron and brass ladders at each end of the room, by which, I assumed one could gain access to the second floor of the library. It was part of the second floor of the house, but in the library, it was more of a balcony, about six feet wide running all the way around the three walls above. It appeared the floor of the balcony had been designed and engineered in such a way, the book shelves below provided the support for the floor above. I could see a door between bookshelves in one wall up there, which probably led out into the rest of the second floor.
Even though we were enjoying the balmy warm days of fall folks tend to call “Indian summer”, there was a gas fire going in the fireplace.,
I found Mr. Simpson seated in a massive, overstuffed, brown leather armchair, next to the fireplace. He didn’t stand, but rather pointed at the matching arm chair opposite his.
“Sit down, boy. Can I buy you a drink? I’m drinking single malt.”
I sat down as instructed.
“No thank you, sir. It’s a little early in the day for me.”
“Fine, what brings you to my neck of the woods?”
“Mr. Simpson, I need to ask you some questions about Walter.”
He nodded, and looked over at the butler.
“Henry, will you please ask Mrs. Simpson to join us.”
After Henry left, I started to say something, but Mr. Simpson held up his hand.
“Hold on, boy, I think we’ll wait for Corinne, before we start this discussion.”
“Mr. Simpson, I’m not sure your wife needs to hear what we’ll be discussing.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t care what you think she needs to hear.” He mumbled.
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We stared at each other for a moment.
“Why would you want your wife to be a part of this discussion?”
“Does it have anything to do with my political plans?”
“I don’t know, probably. I need to talk to you about Walter.”
“Well then, she needs to be here.”
“Why?”
“…Because, Walter Farley is our son,” Corinne Simpson said, from the doorway.