Freedom [109]
“Long story short,” Lalitha said, “he was using us for cover.”
“Keeping in mind, of course,” Walter said, “that Vin really does love birds and is doing great things for the cerulean warbler.”
“He just wanted his little gift bag also,” Lalitha said.
“His not-so-little gift bag, as it turns out,” Walter said. “This is still mostly under the radar, so you probably haven’t heard about it, but West Virginia’s about to get the shit drilled out of it. Hundreds of thousands of acres that we all assumed were permanently preserved are now in the process of being destroyed as we sit here. In terms of fragmentation and disruption, it’s as bad as anything the coal industry’s done. If you own the mineral rights, you can do whatever the fuck you want to exercise them, even on public land. New roads everywhere, thousands of wellheads, noisy equipment running night and day, blazing lights all night.”
“And meanwhile your boss’s mineral rights are suddenly a lot more valuable,” Katz said.
“Exactly.”
“And now he’s selling off the land he was pretending to buy for you?”
“Some of it, yeah.”
“Incredible.”
“Well, he is still spending a ton of money. And he’ll be taking steps to mitigate the impact of drilling where he still owns the rights. But he’s had to sell a lot of rights to cover some big expenses that we were hoping not to have, if public opinion had gone our way. The bottom line is, he never intended the true cost of his investment in the Trust to be as big as I’d originally thought.”
“In other words, you got played.”
“I got played, a little bit. We’re still getting the Warbler Park, but I got played. And please don’t ever mention any of this to anyone.”
“So what does this mean?” Katz said. “I mean, besides my having been right about friends of Bush being evil.”
“It means that Walter and I have become rogue employees,” Lalitha said with her strange glittering look.
“Not rogue,” Walter corrected quickly. “Don’t say rogue. We’re not rogue.”
“No, in fact, we are fairly rogue.”
“I like the way you say ‘rogue,’ too,” Katz remarked to her.
“We still really like Vin,” Walter said. “Vin’s one-of-a-kind. We just feel like, since he wasn’t entirely straight with us, there’s no need for us to be entirely straight with him.”
“We have some maps and charts to show you,” Lalitha said, digging in her briefcase.
The early crowd at Walker’s, the van drivers and the cops from the precinct house around the corner, were filling the tables and laying siege to the bar. Outside, in the durable late-winter light of a February afternoon, streets were clogging with Friday tunnel traffic. In a parallel universe, dim with unreality, Katz was still up on the roof at White Street, flirting purposefully with nubile Caitlyn. She seemed hardly worth the bother now. Although he could take or leave nature, Katz couldn’t help envying Walter for taking on Bush’s cronies and trying to beat them at their own game. Compared to manufacturing Chiclets, or building decks for the contemptible, it seemed interesting.
“I took the job in the first place,” Walter said, “because I couldn’t sleep at night. I couldn’t stand what was happening to the country. Clinton had done less than zero for the environment. Net fucking negative. Clinton just wanted everybody to party to Fleetwood Mac. ‘Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow?’ Bullshit. Not thinking about tomorrow was exactly