Jack & Coke, page 15
It was about control. Not control of the company. That’s not why Jack was in this business. It was about control of something deeper. Jack took the last drink from his glass. Ceding control of his future was not an action that he took lightly. He had put it off as long as he could, but he knew the time was now.
“Hey, a smaller percentage of a bigger pie is usually a good thing, right?”
Jack didn’t enjoy that logic. It wasn’t about the size of the slice. It was more about the dilution of his dream.
“I’m never doing this again.” He’d made up his mind. eFettro was a great jumpstart for Flint Media, and it would soon become a necessary bridge, but he was never cutting anyone in on a deal like this again.
“We need to think bigger. We need to get to the point where we never take money…ever.”
Sean was, at this point, still lying back in the beanbag chair. His arms were hanging over the sides as if he were making the world’s laziest snow angel. “Well, Mr. Bigshot. How do you propose we do that?”
Jack sat up and pulled his phone from out of his pocket. He knew he would be making two phone calls tonight. He dialed Rachel. It was late, but she picked up. Jack couldn’t help but think that she was expecting the call.
Jack barely spoke.
Rachel sounded confident. “So, you’re in. Great. I’ll have my team draft up the paperwork.”
He hung up the phone and sat quietly for a moment.
Sean rotated his body to look at his co-founder. Jack looked over at him and took a prolonged breath before looking down at his phone and scrolling to the top of his contact list. He initiated the call and listened to the rings until a familiar voice answered.
“Jack?”
“Hi, Anton.”
CHAPTER 55
The two men shook hands. It was the first-time Anton had been to the Flint Media office.
Jack looked at his old boss. How long had it been? Two years?
For his part, Anton looked more or less the same. He looked around the office with bemused satisfaction. “So, this is what my understudy left me to build?” He put out his hands and clapped them together. How could his smile be so mischievous?
Jack gave him the tour of the office. He walked him to the writer’s bullpen, the conference rooms, the kitchen, and the game room. “You millennials do it differently.”
Jack missed the banter. “When we were designing this, I had one fundamental principle. Think of whatever the Tribune would do, and then do the opposite.”
Anton lingered in the writer’s bullpen. “There’s an energy here. I can feel it.”
He took a deep breath through his nose as if to take in as much of the office as he could.
“Can you feel that, Jack?”
Jack nodded.
“That’s what the freedom of press feels like.” Anton closed his eyes. “This is new, but you’re too young to know that this is old.” He held up his finger and bobbed his head like he was listening to a song. He was moved by the beat. Anton took his pointed finger and curled it into a fist. He brought it to his chest and tapped it twice.
“This is what it feels like when you have to power to change things.”
Jack’s former boss was smiling ear to ear. He reached out and hit Jack on the back of his shoulders.
Jack walked into the main conference room. “Come on in and grab a seat.”
Jack sat down and watched Anton. Memories of pain, torture, intrigue, and unfinished promises walked with a slight limp through the threshold of the door. Jack had invited him in.
Anton circled around the table and sat opposite of Jack.
“How have you been?”
“I’ve been keeping myself busy.” Anton had kept himself very busy. Consulting, writing, private investigations—he was a man of many connections and many talents.
Jack had a flashback to the countless hours he spent in the passenger seat of Anton’s car as they talked through the investigation. He could taste the bile in his mouth as he thought back to dry-heaving at the sight of Ronnie’s dead body. He could see the vivid crystalline white of the bags that showed up at his door with Samuel. The scar on his hand burned.
Anton leaned back and put his feet on the table. “So why am I here, Jack?”
There was a pause as Jack put his thoughts into words. He explained the situation at Flint Media. The success and the troubles. “We need to break this thing wide open, and I need the best people in the world to help me do it.”
Jack pointed across the table at Anton. “That story was huge. Murder, drugs, and corruption. Nothing we could do would be a bigger story than that.”
Anton laughed. “It still is huge.”
Jack hadn’t forgotten the laugh. Called for, or uncalled for, the laugh was always the same. Anton’s worldview was different than anyone else’s out there. But nevertheless, he was the ticket. He was the gimpy knight in shining armor who had just so happened to choose a pen as his jousting weapon. Sitting with his legs up on the conference room table was the man Jack needed to help fulfill his dream.
Jack got more serious. He leaned in over the table. “Anton, I need you to help me take Flint Media to the next level.”
Anton waved his hand. “Jack, I get it. This is about an excuse to finally get back at the people who did this to you.” Anton twirled his right hand in the air.
This was about Flint. This was about getting out from under the corporate thumb; this was about building something that could give the world what it needed.
“It’s about more than that.”
“Sure, Jack.”
And then Anton laughed again. He stood up and slapped the table. He was energized. “Let’s get started.”
CHAPTER 56
Bright natural light made its way into the fourth floor of the office building that housed Flint Media. Rays of the light slanted across the conference room table. Jack and the 15 others who were part of the core journalism team sat at the table. It was early in the workday and coffee cups still steamed with their morning warmth. This morning was the day that Jack was selling a new story to Flint Media.
“10x. That’s our mandate. I want each of you to be thinking about how we make Flint Media 10 times what it is right now.”
Enthusiastic nods affirmed his employees’ willingness to follow their CEO.
“We talk a big game, but what have we done? Sure, we’ve exposed some little scandals, and yes, we’ve set a few things right, but think of what else is out there.”
He paused. “Bigger. Bigger stories, bigger enemies, bigger impacts.”
It was an interesting pep rally. There were a handful of soft objections and two questions about what the company’s strategy would be. Jack needed his company to feel the vision. Bringing back this story wasn’t something that he took lightly.
Prior to this meeting, Jack had made sure to clear the idea with Sean. Jack was uncertain how Sean would react when he learned that Jack had never told him about the bulk of his work with Anton at the Tribune. But, it turned out that getting Sean on board was easy. The look on his face when Jack told him about the dead body he found in a car was proof enough that Sean was in.
Jack gestured across the table. “It starts with Anton.”
Until yesterday, there were 14 members of Flint Media’s core journalist team. Now, with Anton, there were 15. Anton stood and leaned over to hit the power switch on the projector that was sitting on the middle of the conference room table. He only had one slide to show for this presentation. It was a slide which contained no words. On the screen in front of everyone was a giant portrait of the Governor of Massachusetts. Anton looked around the room.
“Can anyone tell me who this man is?”
Hands were held loosely in the air.
“This is the man who has caused me and Jack over here—” Anton nodded in the direction of Jack. “A whole lot of trouble.”
Anton bent down to pick up a glass of water and take a sip before continuing.
“This is not a good man.”
Anton continued. “Corruption, drugs, murder. This is the story that you dream of getting.”
There was the start of a buzz. Anton was mostly an unknown to the group within the conference room. Jack suspected that some of his team would be skeptical of an outsider like Anton, but right now Anton was commanding a presence.
“I have records of known drug traffickers being brought in by the police and released after a day. I also have recordings of the chief of police giving orders that make him directly complicit in the cover-ups of murders and the distribution of hush money.”
These were dark words for a sunny room. Anton’s showmanship was alive and well. He knew where to pause, when to raise his voice, and when to look into the audience’s eyes.
“And I have seen, with my own two eyes, a murdered man whose assassination was not only scrubbed from police records but which was almost certainly meant for me as well.”
Murmurs.
Anton looked up. “If you don’t believe me ask your CEO. He was there, too. Go ahead. Ask Jack what it’s like to see a man slumped over his steering wheel with three bullet holes in him. Or ask him what it feels like to doubt that you would still be alive if you had been somewhere 10 minutes earlier.”
The group turned to Jack looking for a confirmation. He acknowledged without words, just moving his upper body back and forth. Now Anton reached into a briefcase and pulled out a collection of papers and files. He passed them around the room.
“Case files, police logs, transcripts from recordings. Merry Christmas, Flint Media, here is your jackpot.”
A shuffling of papers and some mild comments followed. One of the reporters spoke up. “What’s this have to do with the governor?”
Anton smiled. “What you have before you is a start. But here’s where it gets interesting. This isn’t some small drug running operation. I’m talking about the systematic distribution of cocaine throughout New England and the profits it makes. Millions of dollars, but the bulk of that money isn’t going to the police force. The police are getting some of it, but that is just “grease the wheels” money. The real money is going to the Democratic Party. Elections and campaigns are all being funded with this money. The governor and state legislators are fueling campaigns with dirty money.”
The room broke out in comments and questions.
“How do you know this?”
“Do you have a source in the police who can verify this?”
“Even if they could pull this off, how would they get the money clean enough for campaign funding?”
If Jack had been hearing this for the first time he would have felt similarly to each of his employees in the room. But this was not the first time he had heard the news. Last night Anton broke down the details of what he’d been up to during his absence from the Tribune. Anton laid out the flow of illicit money from the bottom to the top. Everyone’s hands were dirty.
“This is where I need your help.” Anton panned the room. “They are laundering money at some point between the drugs and the political donations. I have rumors and circumstantial evidence, but I need hard proof. Half the Massachusetts Democratic Party is getting donations from a single group. The ‘American Progress’ PAC.”
The elder reporter held up his hand to emphasize the importance. “This is the key. Crack this, and we’ll have the trail for dirty money.”
Jack asked the question that he hoped was on most of the reporters’ minds. Perhaps they would have asked it, or perhaps Jack was just too anxious to advance the conversation. “Since when is a super PAC funding campaigns unusual? That’s what they do.”
“Perhaps. But I’d be willing to bet that most super PACs aren’t run by ghosts. As near as I can tell, John Durston, the chairman of American Progress, is a ghost. For the figurehead of an institution that controls the flow of millions of dollars, John Durston keeps a remarkably low profile. You can Google him, you can find him on LinkedIn, but he doesn’t have a birth certificate, a house, a car, or even a lover.”
Anton’s face broke into a coy smile. “Trust me, I checked.”
He resumed, “My money says that he is a fictitious figurehead that serves a useful purpose. Can anyone guess what that purpose might be?” He appealed to the Flint team.
One of the reporters offered up her answer. “To move money around.”
Anton smacked his hand on the table. “Yes. A puppet with strings that makes it easy to funnel ‘donations’ wherever the true man behind the curtain wants.”
Anton reached for another piece of paper. He pulled it out and started reading off names. “This is a list of recent people and institutions that have benefited from American Progress’s generosity in the last calendar year. There’s one institution that I found particularly interesting to be on this list. It’s a company that Jack and I both know well.”
Jack finished the thought. “The Tribune.”
This point settled in and the team in the conference room digested the implications.
Sips of coffee.
Ruffled papers.
A question from the table. “So, what do we do?”
Jack posed his answer. “We start with what we have. There is enough to make noise and stir the pot. And while we do that, we dig. We dig until we can link the governor definitively to the drug ring he’s created. We dig until no one can deny the truth that Flint Media exposes to the world.”
Jack’s voice was rising. “This is how we 10x Flint Media, by bringing down the untouchables—by doing what no other news outlet on the planet can do.”
There was one more question directed at Anton. “If you’ve got so much, why didn’t you publish before?”
Anton nodded, acknowledging a fair point. “I did try to publish this before.” He extended his arms as if trying to embrace the room. “But here, with you, we have a much more interesting mountaintop to shout from.”
CHAPTER 57
Selling the story to the team at Flint was easy. Selling the story to Molly was more difficult. The two of them sat across the table from each other. The candle on the table shifted reflections on their wine glasses.
Molly was more cautious. “I don’t know.”
“Listen,” Jack pleaded, “We can do something great.”
“Haven’t you already?”
“Not like this. This is bigger. The Tribune fired me for this story. This story is about more than corruption and drugs. It’s a haymaker to old media.”
This point appeared to be interesting to Molly.
“The Tribune is propped up by the pocketbooks of certain groups. There are stories that they just can’t run. But WE can. We will run this story for the people. It will be funded by the people.”
Jack looked across the table at Molly. Why wasn’t she happy? Jack wanted nothing more than for her to be happy. This was the moment where Flint became the people’s best sword in their constant fight for truth. Flint was the model on which a new era of social accountability could be built. It would be an era where normal folk, bound by a single cause, could stand toe to toe with those who, prior to this, had no fear of the common man.
And yet, at this very moment, at this restaurant, Molly just leaned in closer and tried to read what was behind Jack’s eyes. The difference in understanding was pulling on Jack’s stomach. He put both of his hands on the top of Molly’s upturned palm of her left hand. “We’re changing the world. I want to do it together.”
Molly shook her head. “Together is what I want too, Jack.”
She continued, “You don’t need to move mountains to make the world better. You’re not doing this for ‘truth,’ Jack. You’re not doing it for me, and you’re not doing it for your brother.”
Molly moved her hand from under Jack’s. Biting and sarcastic. He hadn’t heard her voice like this before. She continued. “Don’t fool yourself. I know this about you, it’s about showing how unique and special you are. Don’t flatter yourself thinking this is for the greater good.”
It was a flash of truth.
Jack held still. His mouth anticipated the words he might say next. But Molly was the first to speak.
She looked shocked by her own self, shocked at her truth. She spoke softly as if the warmth of her next words would counter the chill of those spoken before.
“What you have is amazing. Don’t wrestle with things you don’t understand for a gain you don’t know. Flint is great; Flint will continue to be great. You’ve done more already than a lot of people do in their entire lives.”
She moved her hand to touch a tear below her left eye. Molly cared, that was easy to see now, but the pull-on Jack’s stomach didn’t go away. “I want to do this together, Jack. I just don’t want you to be so obsessed with trying to change the entire universe that you end up losing yourself in the process. It’s not so bad just being normal.”
She continued. “This all makes me uncomfortable.”
His response was simple. “I have to.”
Molly looked at him. “I know.”
CHAPTER 58
In the elevator staring at the doors. Waiting for the floor. Jostling the chicken Caesar salad in one hand and holding his stomach in the other. Late lunches make a hungry man. Feet tapping, why won’t the elevator move faster?
Second floor.
Third floor.
Finally, the fourth floor.
Doors receding and muted noise. Light emanating from the glass entryway shielding the office from the elevator lobby. Giant bold orange letters staggered along the wall staring down every visitor. “Flint Media”—the letters scream with the audacity of their purpose. Those are a nice touch.
Left hand on the door, pushing through the lobby and into the office. Noise. Conversations, ideas, dreams filling the air and finding their way into the consciousness of the room.
Nod to Janice. Half-hearted salute to Taz.
Time to say hello to the troops in the bullpen. Every step brings noise. Laughs, chirps, whispers. More steps, more noise. Bullpen is cleared—unusual—it’s past prime lunch time.
