Article by WashingtonStateWire. Published on Sunday, April 03, 2011 EST.

“The Devil Cries Wolf”

© 2010

Chapter 1

Present day, Northeast Washington State

Bright Bear wondered which would become numb first, his feet or his hands? He was not prepared for the excitement, the rush he felt as he headed out into the green and white grave. The aromatic essence of a mostly pine forest and fresh snow worked its way up into his brain. He closed his eyes and his mouth and took it in through his nostrils. They flared. The Native American had chosen the “old way” to end his life.

I’ve enjoyed this time of consideration. Fifteen months to decide and another couple of months, quiet months, to prepare; months, time no one else shared with me, they couldn’t share, the time was mine and the creator’s…deep thoughts. Bright Bear intended to save face for his family and tribe.

Chapter 2

Suburban Seattle Washington, 1980, Fairway #8, Tri-Lakes Country Club development

Jay Michael will take to his grave the vivid memory of what happened to his father in that home office. He will keep asking himself, “Did I contribute in some way? What could I have done to alter the day that changed my life and my future?”

Jordan Michael wasn’t thinking about the order of death. He had had enough of both toxins that he wasn’t thinking of much at all. No one will ever really know. Did he just slowly lean forward, and gently come to rest face down on his desk? Or did the booze and the pills hit all at once before he fell forward? Maybe with a scrunchy noise, or a slam? Or was it very slow, like a slow motion slouching until his forehead gently, quietly, morbidly touched down on the surface of his office desk? Did his heart stop before his mind, or vice versa?

When Jordan Michael received his RIF notice, he thought he could work through it. He didn’t know that he was his job; its title, its status, the house it bought, the country club it provided, and the expense account. As much as he tried, he could find no existence outside of his corporate briefcase, the one with the company logo plastered on both sides. The same briefcase he had carried since graduate school. ARMACO had been his adult life. He acknowledged that layoffs were somehow tolerable for manufacturing line workers, teachers, and back office employees of financial institutions. But, corporate executives, in the prime of their careers? Never. They were needed. He was needed.

After only three weeks looking for a new job, trying to explain to his friends at the country club and in his fairway neighborhood that he thought, “things would be OK”, they weren’t. International consolidation had thrown Jordan under the bus. The merger meant only four regional vice-presidents would do the work previously assigned to eleven—four younger, brighter, loyal, kicking and clawing, aggressive regional vice-presidents.

Jay was in eighth grade that day he came home and headed directly for Dad’s office. He was hoping they could play some golf together. The natural wood-paneled office was a pretty fancy setup even for the early 1980s. A huge window overlooked the approach shot area of the eighth hole. If you stood on the far right-hand side of the room, you could see the golfers on the green and watch them miss putts. The room contained a Telecopier, a precursor to the fax machine. There was no desktop computer, no Microsoft, and no email. But Jordan had two phone lines, and an IBM 100-page memory typewriter.

Jay softly knocked on the thick wooden door. Per orders from the man he idolized. When there was no answer, Jay gently opened the door, slowly, in case his dad was in the middle of dictating a sentence. He wasn’t. He was slouched over his desk. One arm was tucked under his forehead, the other lay straight out to the side of the desk as if he were reaching for something. Jay’s first thought, a nap? His dad never took naps, they were for sissies, you know? Jay really needed this to be a nap from which his father would wake and come play golf.

“Dad!” Still no movement.

Jay noticed the fifth of bourbon on the desk. His dad never, ever drank before five o’clock. The bottle was three-quarters empty. Jay was confused. If dad had just hit a wall and needed to drink early in the day, that was OK, somehow. No golf for sure. The old guy is drunk, Jay thought. But Jay knew at his core something was wrong.

The month had been very difficult for the family; his dad had taken the RIF personally and was as morose as Jay had ever seen him. But he knew, he needed to believe, that like all other times when this pillar, this mountain of intellect and effort had pulled through adversity and taken care of his family, he would pull through this time too. Then Jay saw a little brown prescription pill container. It was lying on its side, and there were only two pills left on the desk. Jay’s tongue swelled, and he almost couldn’t breathe. He froze, thirteen years old and the floor was moving. The floor was collapsing.

9-1-1! I have to call 9-1-1. Where’s Mom? Jay’s head was spinning and he was on the phone before he knew it.

The eighth-grade golfer will always remember sitting with his father that day before the cops, the ambulance, and his mother came to the house. He will remember thinking too many things. How can he stop the choking in his throat, and the tears? The cops or ambulance people can’t see the tears. What if mom sees them? It would be bad enough to see her husband on the table. And then Jay started to wonder if his dad would be in the ambulance by the time his mom came home? Years later he still remembers the thoughts.

Bright summer sunlight shone through the window. They were alone, father and son. There were no sounds, nothing to hear except his shallow breaths. Then the scream of the sirens broke the ringing silence. He had checked his dad’s wrist for a pulse. Twice. Nothing.

An overdose is actually pretty boring, depending of course on the note. No blood. No body parts. All that is left is a corpse, usually in pretty good shape, some saliva on the table, and the note. A note that can forever free or burden friends, relatives, and associates? Bottom line? Someone dies. Some people feel horrible. Others are scarred for life.

Dad had fallen asleep and left Jay and his mom to fend for themselves. Jay read the note and prayed he would wake from this nightmare. For what seemed like eternity, the eight minutes until the cops came into the room were an emotional stew of anger, sadness, hope, prayer, fear, and reading the note. It had creases. Three times in and out of his pocket. He read it over and over and over. He never told anyone that he went outside and then went back into the office hoping for a different outcome.

The suicide was horrible. The neighbors watching the aid car was horrible. His mom’s arrival was horrible. The note was a bomb. The note made things even worse. Everything he had ever believed about his dad was blown up in those few minutes on that June day.

When you are thirteen years old, it is not good to have your dad kill himself. You have to tell people your dad has been dead since you were thirteen, the time when a young man needs a mentor. You can’t honestly tell them he died saving a family from a burning building, or in a dramatic car crash, or even after a heart attack on the golf course. A heart attack, a sign of striving too hard to do the right thing in the materialistic American society. No, you have to tell them your father killed himself. He didn’t even have the courage to shoot himself. He just took a bunch of pills and fell asleep. Jay felt the man he loved and admired had quit on his family. At thirteen he was free falling in a vacuum space of loneliness and fear, and there was no bottom.

That evening Jay and his mother sat in the living room, silent, sobbing at times, both trying to find some fiber, some strand of normal life to hang onto. Their pastor was there for a while, and friends brought food. His mom’s golfing group showed up, cried for twenty minutes, then left. The food sat alone on the table, untouched. It looked as lonely as Jay felt. He stood at the table, staring at the food. Jay reached into his back pocket three times just to make sure the note was still there. Each time he visualized his dad writing it.

The food was “store bought”. They did not have time to cook food. Their friends had run to the grocery store and picked up pre-made fruit plates and pre-cooked chicken and ham, before coming over to the house to say pre-thought words. No one used the word suicide. They talked about passing, and Jay heard them say, accident and tragedy. Seeds of bitterness were planted in Jay that afternoon. He wanted to ask one of the women, “just how it is that when a man acquires, plans, and intentionally swallows an entire bottle of pills it somehow is an accident?” Twice Jay walked into the office where there was no blood, no bullet marks, no forensic work being conducted. All he saw—and remembers—were the pens, and heavy crystal drinking glasses and a briefcase with “AMARCO“ proudly displayed for all the world to see. AMARCO had been acquired, merged, and it was gone. Jordan Michael had been “let go” and now he was gone too. Jay felt the burden of manhood, the need to provide for his small family, too early in his life. Too early in his life he had become the man of his house.

The note was folded in Jay’s back pocket.

Chapter 3

Present day, Seattle, Washington

Days in the making, a collection of valuable information can become a short, concentrated document that can lift or crush a person’s or firm’s reputation. The kind of information certain clients and businesses will actually pay for. Nothing created, nothing really new, just someone with time, contacts and know-how to pull it all together. Strategically juxtaposed, the dissimilar parts disclose strategies of opponents, and opportunities for clients. The documents were used as marketing tools and to scare targeted key businesses and industries about perilous actions of a legislative body, or more frightening, the long arm of state regulatory staff.

JayLex Public Affairs Incorporated had turned timing and teasing into an opus. “Clients and Friends” was typed behind the TO:. The memo should have read “Clients and Friends, and those we want to show why they should be our clients”. The enticing, intentional, and conspicuous printing of “Time Sensitive Information”, or “Insider Information”, was an art, not a factual explanation of the document or its contents.

JayLex Public Affairs was an information machine specializing in research, strategy, dissemination, influence, relationships with the right people, and a touch of obfuscation. The “Client and Friends” memos had industry specific sections. On rare occasions there was an intentional leak to the working media or bloggers.

Ron Sambino worked on a recycled wooden door that served as a desk top. He finished the pasting of an otherwise obscure news article from a Northeastern Washington weekly newspaper. A local Indian Tribe had announced construction of a residential development to diversify the investment of gaming revenue. (“Gaming revenue” is PR firm jargon for all the money folks lose at a casino.) The tribe would be both the builder and the lender. Proudly boasting of the first such tribal funded construction project in the state. The Umtampish Tribe had almost as many consultants as enrolled tribal members and was on a trajectory to dominate recreation, development, and politics in Northeast Washington State.

Jay Michael rubbed his forehead and encouraged Ron, “Let’s move the article to the first page and type our own headline: Banks Beware Self-financing Tribes. Let’s get personal email addresses of the top ten Washington mortgage bank’s marketing vice-presidents and get the marko in their hands.” One of the firm’s young contract writers had coined the term “marko” instead of “memo” when he realized that “Clients and Friends” memos were sixty percent marketing and forty percent information.

At the end of the paste-up, founder and Managing Partner, Jay Michael, as in a few other rare occasions, provided an editorial comment. Or was it marketing?

Financial institutions should take notice of tribal self-financing of residential and commercial development. This is not precedent-setting except it is the first financial institution type of service that has been offered by a Washington tribe. A few years ago, the Puyonish Indians partnered with Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) and opened their own “port facility” at the Port of Tacoma. The use of gaming revenues for construction finance money and purchaser loans could become a 21^st century phenomenon of real estate development in Washington and other Western U.S. treaty lands gaming states. -Jay Michael, Managing Partner, JayLex Public Affairs

The message inferred there might be something that could be done to slow down the sovereign actions of the tribes. Jay knew otherwise, but he could burn through a large monthly retainer for some time before leading the clients to their own conclusion. Then, often at the clients request, JayLex Public Affairs would help them form an alliance with the tribes for some piece of the action, as in this case: loan processing, collection, resale, or any number of lower profit aspects of financing.

The marko was ready, all tidbits of info lined up. Ron leaned back and looked over the marko for a last time. Spelling, grammar, attribution to the papers and blogs, all was in order. He peered at the laptop and pushed the mouse button; the marko was gone.

Jay reminded his partners, time after time, “Between the Internet and the hackers, there is no privacy in America anymore…get over it, live with it, work smart.” It took five minutes for one of the recipients to skim the marko and find, on the last page, the two lines about a rumor that some high level Washington State agency director was thinking about joining the staff of one of the companies he was supposed to be regulating! And ten more seconds for that slimeball to forward a copy of the marko to his old college friend, Sarah Tolt, the deputy director of that very state agency. The subject line of the divisively forwarded email read: “Is this news to you, Sarah?”

Sarah Tolt read it and watched her career melt on the screen of her computer. The director had confided in her, as he had many times in the twenty years they had worked together. She was now without breath and on the verge of regurgitating. How can words make a person perspire? She pondered, more as a nervous diversion than an analytical inquiry. I trusted Ron of JayLex with the news. It was confidential news that my boss might be changing jobs. Sambino should’ve known it was embargoed information! How could he do this?

She didn’t realize she was on her feet, and had locked the office door.

Chapter 4:

Ron timorously moved into the only office with a decent view, looked at Jay, and said nothing. Jay knew the look, though he had seen it rarely. Ron had been with him since the start of the firm.

What now? Jay thought, and he ordered his face not to disclose it. He needed Ron to know that whatever it was, he would be supported as he had been all along the slippery path of putting the impressive business on the books. “Que pasa, Ronaldo?”Jay tried to come in on a comfortable frequency by using his pathetic Spanish. Ron was Paraguayan.

“I screwed up, Jay.” When Ron was wound up (Jay’s term for a tad emotional), he spoke English faster than usual, and he needed about a three-foot radius clearance zone for his flying hands and arms.

“Hey, you know the rule here. When it is, then it is, and we don’t go being immobilized by what might be…OK?” Jay reassured his partners and supported them because he pushed them to try new technologies, research methods, strategies, and establishing relationships like no other in the industry. And it paid off.

“In the “Clients and Friends” marko we just sent out, I added a little comment that, I guess, was supposed to be confidential.” Ron ejected the words painfully. “Sarah Tolt, the director’s chief of staff, had talked to me about the director’s plans to move on, step down. He’s taking some private sector job. I’ve spent five years carefully fostering that relationship. Jay, I’ve destroyed the trust with one friggin’ email. Someone flipped it to her, and I’m sure they bragged about how I spilled the beans. I got an email from her just a few minutes after sending it out, sarcastically thanking me for putting her in a very awkward position.” Ron had turned pale.

“Wait a minute…wait…a…minute. Stop beating yourself up.” Jay tried to soften the mood. “Was there any way that any reader of the email could know the info came from her? She is assuming, Ron. Don’t confirm it. Don’t feed it.”

“No, but…for crying out loud man Sarah thinks that everyone will assume that she was out talking about her boss. She is convinced the director will think she belied a confidence with him. And she definitely feels I have stepped on her air hose. I’m done, Jay. The firm may be damaged. If we have to part company, I understand.”

And there went Ron, verbal pace picking up, chin dropping further after each third word. Oh Lord! For Ron the end was near; the apocalypse had begun.

“Chill, Ron…breathe. Call her and…”

“I called her, Jay; I emailed her; I texted her. I even used her personal email address we use to avoid freedom of information traps…nothing. She is avoiding me.” Ron had already started to think about where he’d have to move to avoid the fallout of the professional A-bomb. None of his options were outside the states of Montana and Wyoming. Then South America bounced into his mind. His dismal thoughts were interrupted.

“What message did you leave with her, Ron?” Strategies started developing. Not knowing the sources, Jay couldn’t answer questions about “where did you come up with that angle?” These little episodes that flew through his brain when trouble visited were his gifts. He often wondered if they were learned or if it was how he was wired? Ron looked up at the ceiling as if the answer to the question was neatly written on one of the tiles. He was thinking back, what did he say, write, text to her?

“I guess I just told her I was so sorry, that I never used her name. I told her I doubt anyone would know she was the source. But, Jay, the director probably only shared his plans with Sarah and a few others.”

“Exactomondo! Is that a Spanish word Ron? Exactly, only a few others.” Jay started to smile.

“How can you be so easygoing? I’ve destroyed my credibility and perhaps much of the good work of the firm and you sit there and smile at me. I’m dying here, Jay.” Ron was almost shaking, and then looked up. There was an eerie pause in the discussion. Ron was biting his lip and shaking his head. They both knew what was about to happen. “Jay, not a torpedo? Who would you hit?”

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