Our Thing, Inc.

By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

1/11/02

The coffee was too hot. Grimacing, I set the container down on the table, and wondered why I got coffee here. Coffee served that hot usually didn’t taste very good.

Paulie Five Fingers sipped at his tea, and gave me a broad, inviting grin. He called me out from the office in the middle of the work day to have foul coffee with him, and now he wanted me to open the conversation. Wise guy.

"You know, Paulie, I see you in this restaurant more often than I do any of my neighbors. Have you ever thought about just pulling up stakes and moving here?"

Paulie picked up his tea and deliberately sipped again, pretending to consider his answer. "It is true that your weather is glorious, and Mount Shasta is one of the most sublimely beautiful sights in the universe." He flung an arm out, encompassing what he described, and despite myself, I glanced over my shoulder. It was grey, cold, and sleeting. The mountain was invisible.

He made me look. The son of a bitch had made me look. I turned back just in time to see the last of a self-satisfied smile cross his face. It removed any question I had about this being a social call. When Paulie starts playing little games to keep you off balance, it means he’s up to something. And when Paulie is up to something, his business is involved. And if his business is involved, I’m probably not going to like it.

"However, I have my family to think of. They have been in New Jersey for many years, and would be unhappy in a land where the natives worship crystals and dolphins."

"Paulie, there’s a perfectly good Catholic church in town."

"And the priest. Is he a good Italian catholic?"

I considered that. The guy made the Lucky Charms leprechaun sound like a BBC announcer. "Um, nope. Not Italian, exactly."

"Not exactly Italian?" You have to throw a pretty hard curve to make Paulie’s eyebrow twitch like that.

I shrugged. "Starts with an ‘I’ at least. Paulie, let’s stop fencing. You want something."

Paulie blew on his tea, clasped his hands on his belly, and gave me a warm glance through his eyebrows. Imagine a full grown crocodile batting his eyelashes and blowing kisses. It was that look.

"How well you know me, Zepp. Yes, I come to discuss business matters. Does that mean we can’t be sociable. Are we not friends?"

"Be friendly, or use your negotiating tools. But Paulie, don’t do both at once. It’s annoying."

"Very well, For you, my friend, I will be ‘just Polo,’ a guileless boy from the barrens of New Jersey."

"That would be worth the price of admission right there. You know, I meant to ask: do your state’s residents really say "Joisey" like that?"

"No, that is a Brooklyn affectation. Indeed, everything the people of Brooklyn do is an affectation."

The papers had hinted that Paulie had reason to be annoyed with the City of New York. I tactfully kept my mouth shut.

"Zepp, I have a legal question."

"I’m not a lawyer, Paulie."

"I’m not seeking legal advice. I just need to know something about California corporation laws."

"This isn’t a privileged conversation, Paulie. If they subpoena me..."

Paulie waved away my objection. "This is a simple question from your innocent and guileless friend Polo. You incorporated, right?"

"Right. I’m a salaried employee, working for my own corporation. It limits liability and provides some tax advantages."

"Precisely so. And how much did you pay in order to do this?

I told him. His eyebrows shot up. "Is that all? I was told that California wanted several thousand for a simple LLC."

"I incorporated in Nevada. I have a friend who knows a member of the State Senate..."

"Nevada." Paulie said it in much the same way a dwarf might say "Mordor." He smiled at his tea, which did not smile back. He raised his eyes to mine, cold amusement, and clacked his teeth. "You understand that for me, Nevada is not an option."

"I’m better off not knowing, aren’t I?" At his nod, I continued, "Well, it’s not like you’re low on cash or anything. So what if it costs more here?"

"California has a Democratic legislature and governor. Worse still, the judges are reasonably honest."

"Ooooh, I really don’t want to know."

"What do you know about Texas?"

"Texas? You mean the state?"

An imperturbable nod.

"My plane sometimes lands there if Denver is snowed in. Then it takes off again. Um, it’s got good football teams and ugly hookers. People talk funny and get pissed if you call them Okies." Jesus, I wondered. Why in the hell are we talking about Texas? "The Bushes come from there, and so did Lyndon Johnson. It’s got a corrupt government, which gives Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower something to do. It’s got a lot of snake handlers and dunkers, and tent revivals and C&W with yodels is big down there. It’s got what’s called a ‘business-friendly climate,’ which is another way of saying..."

"Bingo!" Paulie jutted a finger at me.

"Um, bingo? OK, yeah, at the church socials, I guess they play bingo..."

"No. I mean, THAT’S the phrase I was looking for. ‘Business-friendly climate.’" Paulie licked his lips, savoring the phrase. Hang a leg of lamb in front of a starving hyena, and you’ll get the same facial expression. Despite the fact we were only six months from summer, I shivered.

"Paulie, why the sudden fascination with incorporating? You’ve got the most inventive methods of liability limitation this side of a banana republican dictator already."

"Do you not read newspapers?"

"Um, paper things, covered in black squiggles and pictures?"

Paulie pointed to the copy of the Redding Searchlight under my elbow.

"That? Oh, I don’t read the articles. I just get it for the lingerie ads..."

"Zepp, now you are the one fencing. You know about the Enron collapse, of course."

"OK. What about it?"

"You know that this was a corporation that, in essence, did nothing, produced nothing. It merely bought and seized control of businesses that did actually produce and sell goods and services. In so doing, it raised over $6 billion in stock, and artificially manipulated markets to gain an extra $13 billion in what is humorously known as ‘legitimate business profits,’ including about $3 billion it gouged from the State of California in the phony and contrived ‘energy crisis’ in the spring of 2000.

"In the end, it held its stock prices artificially high by falsely claiming $600 million in profits it did not have, and by forbidding employees from cashing in their stock dividends, thus simultaneously avoiding a big sell-off which would have alerted the markets to problems, while cheating their loyal employees in the process.

"While doing all this, they played an instrumental role in getting that disgraceful moron in the White House, and made certain that he and his Vice President, a lackey of theirs, staffed the White House and cabinet with people holding large quantities of their stock, and while they were forbidding their own loyal employees from cashing out, got word out a month before the crash, and all the White House people more or less simultaneously divested.

"They had the wife of a powerful Senator, Phil Gramm, on their board of directors. They contributed over two million to the Idiot’s campaign, and donated hundreds of thousands more to the inauguration as a sort of congratulations prize. They even belatedly tried to buy off the Democrats in the Senate who would be investigating their demise with a last-minute $100,000 donation. L’audace! Toujours l’audace! That was such an outrage that even the whorish swine that infest Washington were embarrassed, and gave the money to a Enron employees’ victim charity.

"On the way out, the directors gave themselves immense severance bonuses for a job well done. They will spend some of that on lawyers, but only a small amount, because between the incredibly forgiving laws America has toward corporate crime, and the fact that the White House will be pressing hard to help out their buddies, none of the directors will spend a day in jail, or have to return any of the money they stole.

"Zepp, forget all those movies about how organized crime makes money hand over fist and is considered an irresistible force. Compared to the American business community, crime is sadly disorganized. What certain bigoted and ignorant people insist on calling ‘the mafia’ would never try to pull off the swindle Enron pulled, let alone get away with it."

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. It was looking to be a long, hard day.

"So Paulie, are you telling me you want to personally incorporate so you, too, can be above the law?"

Paulie took a slug of his tea. I frowned at my coffee, decided it was my enemy and wanted to kill me, and let Paulie savor his moment.

"I don’t want to incorporate, per se. I mean, I’m already several companies now."

Paulie, in addition to elective office, was in the hauling business, the toxic waste business, and was rumored to own about half of the city of Moscow. He wasn’t hurting.

"No, my friend. I am not thinking of incorporation for myself. What I am beginning to investigate, on a preliminary basis, is the full and legal incorporation of . . . my other interests."

"You’re talking about incorporating, um, your family business?"

"That’s precisely what I am talking about. Close your mouth, Zepp. The flies will get out."

"You’ll never get away with it. Not in a million years!"

"No? Consider who is the President these days. You don’t get much more ‘business-friendly’ than the cabal that is behind him. We already have so many intertwined and interlocking interests that we joke that we are the New Jersey branch of the Republican National Committee."

"The Justice Department will never permit it, Paulie. Oh, this is insane!"

"My friend, you know that I am a very devout Christian. The attorney general and I, we see eye-to-eye on these matters, and he knows that, as a good Catholic, I would never do anything to offend in His Sight." Paulie actually crossed himself. "Then, too, we have the highest rate of return on investment of any business in the United States. A business that imports certain agricultural products, and after an inexpensive refining process, wholesales them at a markup of 10,000% is just about your ideal choice to handle the social security fund, and take the burden off the taxpayer."

"The taxpayer isn’t going to notice that because he’ll be passed out in a flophouse in downtown Fresno from his last fix."

"Zepp, you are talking about drugs. -I- was not talking about drugs."

"But you just said..."

"I was not talking about drugs. Now, I am talking about drugs. As you know, certain irresponsible elements sell drugs that do not meet stringent standards. We know who these people are. We know where they are. We know their procedures. We can wipe them out . . ." Paulie snapped his fingers "like that. All Ashcroft has to do is say the word."

I looked at Paulie, and reflected on how closely his less legitimate activities reflected the ideal business climate as envisioned by this White House. Paulie was right: Enron made the mob look like pikers, and all the people who pulled the financial swindle of the century would skate away, scott free. It was a mobster’s dream.

And now, Paulie was going to approach a regime ideologically disposed toward Paulie’s business style. It was a match made in heaven.

Still, there was one drawback Paulie had missed. "Paulie, it’s going to cost you a lot of money to swing this deal."

Paulie frowned. "How do you figure that, Zeppo? Taxes? Bribes?"

"No, something more expensive and annoying then that.

"You’re going to have to start making campaign contributions."