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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Drew Id" data-source="post: 969826" data-attributes="member: 12175">Session 2 (5/14/2003) The CorporationSession 2 (5/14/2003) The CorporationHe was tall, white, strongly-built, and bald. He wore a conservative sunglasses and a sharp dark suit, like a lawyer or a game show host. He wore a thick ring on an off-finger, probably a school ring or a corporate anniversary present. He walked straight in from the door and over to the front desk without looking around.“I need help finding a book.”Taylor nodded without getting up, “You’re in luck. This is a library.”If he caught the sarcasm, he ignored it. He announced simply, “The title is Coin Collecting in the Southeast, 1900-1950.”Taylor winced, and blinked. Okay, don’t look surprised, don’t look shocked…damn, probably completely blown that by now… “Um…okay, I have…never heard of it. I will…see if we have it.”She rolled her chair over to the desk computer, glad that the man could not see the monitor from where he was standing. The prehistoric computer she had here could not actually access the card catalog, but this man probably didn’t know that. Hopefully. She typed a few characters into the computer. Specifically, she typed “if I get killed and someone finds this note on the computer”… but couldn’t figure out what to put next. After a moment’s pause, trying to pretend that the computer was searching, she turned back to the man.“Sorry, it looks like that book is checked out. If you want, I can get your name and contact y--”The man smiled ever so slightly, without showing teeth. He nodded and turned around. He was through the door before she was done talking. Taylor stood and just stared for a moment, trying to think of a plan. She heard a car start in the parking lot. Grabbing a pen and pad from her desk, she ran to the window, and as the car sped away, she wrote down a license plate number.. . .“Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. This is Lucille. How may I direct your call?”“Lucille? Hey baby, this is Willie.”Lucille actually stopped and set down the fingernail file. “Willie? Slick Willie Lamar? Boy, you got a lot of nerve calling me.”“Oh, now, come on baby. Don’t be like that.” His voice was smooth as silk.“Uh-huh. I talked to my girl Shantrice,” Lucille’s head involuntarily bobbled from one side to another as her attitude started to get going. “Uh-huh, don’t you be calling me baby and starting in with me. She told me all about what you was doing.”“Baby, please. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She swore she could hear Barry White playing in the background on the other end of the line. “Uh-huh. Don’t you even try to play those games with me Willie. She told me how you was out with her cousin and how you was saying you was out working---”“I was working baby. She’s crazy, now you know Shantrice’s whole family is crazy. They ain’t like your us normal folks baby. Not you know I ain’t lying, Lucille.”“She don’t have to be crazy to see you out with her cousin,” Lucille had to admit Willie was right. Shantrice’s whole family was crazier than a box of glue.“I wasn’t out with her cousin, Lucille. Now come on, baby. You know me better than that,” his voice never wavered. Lucille had worked in a police station long enough to hear plenty of guys pleading their case, and Willie sure did sound sincere. “Seriously, baby, I was working, and she was there at that bowling alley, and I don’t know why she was there.”“Uh-huh.” Well, Lucille though, it’s possible he really didn’t do anything wrong.“…and besides, baby. You know me better than that. I wouldn’t take a girl out to no bowling alley for a date. When I’m with a lady, I take her someplace nice.”“Uh-huh” That was true, from what she had heard. Willie did treat a girl nice on a date. He ought to know how, from how many girls she knew that he had been out with.“Now you know that’s true baby. Like if I was to take you out on a date? I would take you out for a steak dinner… then maybe some dancing”“You wanna take me dancing?” One thing she did know, was that Willie was supposed to be a good dancer…among other things.“Sure baby! I would love to take you dancing,” he crooned. “Come on, baby, let’s you and me go dancing this weekend.”She stopped, held her breath, and counted to five. No sense looking over-eager here. Finally, she answered him, “Okay, but it better be nice, and I better not end up hearing about you and my cousin. Oh, and you better have a car!”“Of course baby! Yeah, I’ll pick you up Friday night. It’s gonna be great baby,” he agreed. His voice did sound very sweet over the phone. It sounded even sweeter when he continued, “…say baby, as long as I got you on the phone, I got some license plate numbers here…” . . .The phone rang. A male voice picked up."Who is this?""Joe?" Willie was caught off guard."Don't say my name on the phone! Who is this? Ten seconds!"""Joe, how many six-foot-tall black men with a knife wound in their leg do you know?"“Oh… hi Willie,” Joe answered.“Look, Joe, I got some info from a friend of mine, and Crystal said you were looking things up on your computer for South-Medical, so I wanted to compare notes with you.”“Yeah, she can’t stop talking about me. Really, it’s kinda embarrassing.”“Huh?”“Nothing, Willie. Yeah, I do have some notes for you. You first.”“Okay, I had a friend run a background check on that detective, Rich Hall. He is clean. Good record. Been a police detective for ten years. Married. No kids. Two cars. Owns his own house, got an address here,” Willie read off a street address. “No criminal history. He looks clean, at least on paper.”“Okay, I’ll see if I can find anything else here. I can get to the network where… well, anyhow, I would like to know everything else I can about this guy… So what else you got?”“Okay, my friend also ran the plates from that guy that Taylor saw this morning. Ready for this? Name’s Jack Bolling. Ex-marine. House…no… make that a mansion in Mountain Brook. Has a license to carry concealed, and a federal arms dealer’s license. Job is listed as Director of Security for South-Medical.”“South-Medical?! Hang on!” Willie could hear Joe typing furiously on the other end of the line.About thirty seconds passed. Joe suddenly announced, “Got it. Jack Bolling. Started at South-Medical seven years ago…as a messenger. In seven years, he went from the mail room to director of security. He’s definitely on the list.”“What list?”“Oh, right. Get this,” Joe sounded like an excited kid talking about a new game he had found. “So Crystal did some research on that Church, with the vandalism, right? And it turns out that Dick Scorse, you know, from South-Medical? Well he donated a bunch of money for that Church to be built. Nothing strange there, right? But it also turns out that he donated a bunch of money to the library.”“Hmmm”“Wait, it gets weirder. So, I started looking at South-Medical, and I got records on a bunch of different guys that got promoted, like, way, way too fast. Basically, a bunch of guys that moved up through the ranks faster than they should have. And get this, the top four of them at least are all vice-presidents now, and they are all listed as card-carrying members in the rolls at the library.”“Hmmm… okay, Joe, I’m sure this all makes sense in conspiracy-land but-”“Wait, so then I called Taylor and she checked, and none of these guys have ever checked out a book. But they have all been members of the library it looks like since they started work at South-Medical. I don’t know about this guy Bolling but I can check on him.”“Okay…so what does that all mean in the real world?”“Um… I don’t know. But they’re all involved in it. They’re all in on it.”“Uh-huh… in on what?”“The conspiracy”“Okay, Joe, well, I’ll leave you to that. I just have one more question.”“Shoot.”“Do you know where I could borrow a car for Friday night?”</blockquote>

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