S2W5: “Shady Subsidiaries”

© 2021 Phylicia Joannis

Chuck’s mind wandered aimlessly as he stirred the watery mashed potatoes in his food tray. Three days had passed with no word from Simon Lowe. Their deal, shady though it was, was dead. The mayor was no longer an obstacle, so Chuck was no longer needed.

“Yo, Chuck!” One of the guards entered the mess hall and waved Chuck over. “Your lawyer’s here. Says he needs to speak with you.”

Chuck furrowed his brow in confusion. He was useless to Simon. Why would he want to see him now? Chuck followed quietly until they reached the no contact visitation room. The officer led him to a window facing a man Chuck didn’t recognize. Chuck sat slowly and picked up the telephone receiver. The other man did the same.

“Are you from Simon’s office?” Chuck asked.

“Yeah, Jim Smith. I’m new.”

“Listen, tell Simon if he can get me out of here, I’ll tell him everything I know.”

“Tell me everything now, and I’ll see what I can do,” Jim countered.

“Ok.” Chuck glanced briefly at the guard, then leaned in closer. “But Penny is out.”

“Penny is out?”

“I tried.” Chuck sighed. “She doesn’t want any part of this.”

“Focus Chuck.” Jim cleared his throat. “Tell me what you know.”

“Alright. About a year and a half ago, I came across the soil reports for the old tunnel routes.”

“Was something wrong with the soil?”

“No, everything was fine. What I found odd was the name of the company that conducted the research. For as long as I’ve been working there, our independent contractor was the Bilco company. But this report came from somewhere else.”

“How long had you been working there?”

“Eight years by that time.”

“Contractors change all the time, don’t they?”

“Bilco is a well-known environmental research company. I’d never heard of this other contractor.”

“So what did you do?”

Chuck shrugged. “I did some digging in between coffee breaks. The company’s name is SoliCo, which didn’t even exist under that name until about six months prior. Before that, the company’s name was Evitell and had been in business less than a year before being bought out. Guess who purchased it, for pennies on the dollar no less?

“You tell me.” Jim stared evenly.

“BioTech Group, which is a subsidiary of Mitchell Blume Industries.”

“BioTech?”

Chuck nodded. “They specialize in military grade biological weapons research. Why would they buy an environmental testing facility that no one’s ever heard of? And get this. Last year we received a $500,000 grant from the PilTech group to purchase train equipment that uses their technology.”

“Is PilTech a subsidiary for the mayor as well?”

“No.” Chuck shook his head. “But the grant stipulated that so long as 90% of the funds were used to make purchases, the other 10% could go towards other expenses or incentives. My supervisor took full advantage of that incentive clause and pocketed $20,000 from PilTech last year. Wrote it off as a performance bonus and bought a World’s Best Boss mug. My point, though? None of that equipment ever showed up.”

“You mean to tell me that this city’s transportation department purchased $450,000 worth of equipment that never showed up?”

Chuck nodded. “You’d be surprised how often that happens. They were marked as backorder items and forgotten. Train equipment isn’t cheap, and the person in charge had 20,000 reasons to keep quiet about it.”

Jim looked at his watch. “Looks like my time is up. Chuck, you said the PilTech group wasn’t a Blume subsidiary. Do you know who it belongs to?” Chuck shook his head.

“I was looking into it, but they limit computer time to 30 minutes. I’ll let you know what I find when you come back. You are coming back, right?”

Jim nodded. “We’ll be in touch soon.”