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Chapter 22
Half a continent away from Athens and Spearfish Lake, Harris Harper looked out of the office window of the Los Angeles highrise at the brown LA smog. Pretty bad, he thought. He remembered when it had been worse, but it still had been pretty bad. When the smog
was gone, it was a pretty nice view, but not today. He shook his head; there was work to be done. He went back to going through the mail.
It had been pretty carefully screened before the mail got to him, of course. The Washington office had gone through it for obvious checks; there was no point in losing money in interest while the mail was being forwarded across the country. Then Mollie had gone
through it, sorted out the time wasters and obviously routine stuff, as well as the odd check that had missed the efficient people at the E Street office.
Still, there were a couple dozen pieces that Harper had to go through each day -- some magazines and newsletters, the rest business items that demanded the attention of the Defenders of Gaea.
It took a while to get through the stack; the letters and newsletters and magazines that got this far had to be scanned carefully, in case inspiration were to strike. Some of their greatest successes had come from finding the right item in the pages of some Xeroxed
newsletter, but there wasn't anything here that struck him too forcefully. He reached for his coffee cup, and found it nearly empty and too cool to drink. Easily solved; he buzzed Mollie three times, the signal for another cup.
A few seconds later, the door opened -- not Mollie, but Dale McMullen, the president of the Defenders, carrying two cups of coffee. "I was coming this way, anyway," Dale said, allowing the door to close behind him. He set a cup of coffee down on Harper's
mail-cluttered desk, then found a seat on the couch by the window. "Got some good news," he said.
"A nice big donor, I hope?" Harper said.
"Next best thing," McMullen replied. "Fred Knox, Jenny Easton's agent, thinks he can get Jenny to do an endorsement for us. Hell, we can build a whole fund drive around that."
That was good news indeed. That was part of the reason that while the Defenders had their official national office in Washington, it was mostly a mail drop and a place for their lobbyists to hang their hats. The real national office of the Defenders of Gaea was right
here, in LA, for good reason. There were a lot of bubble-headed, undereducated people with more money than they knew what to do with running around this town, especially around Hollywood, and they needed favorable publicity whenever possible. You go hunting where the
ducks are, Harper had realized long ago. Besides, LA was a heck of a lot better place to be than DC, anyway. "How'd you get to this Knox character?" he asked.
"Sent Heather over to him, and she got his attention."
"You know," Harper mused, "We ought to send her after Willie Nelson for a donation some time. He once said he was looking for a woman that could suck the chrome off of a trailer hitch."
"Heather could do it," McMullen laughed. "That woman has got a mouth on her like nobody's business."
"Sure does," Harper agreed. He knew that from personal experience, and knew that McMullen did, too. "How big a fund drive are you thinking?"
"Big one," McMullen said. "Couple of the slick newsmagazines, some TV. Let's see if we can get past the little old ladies in tennis shoes this time. Jenny Easton, that's a name that will carry."
"It's going to cost," Harper said. McMullen's main job was to be the high-profile boss that could make the big hits; Harper mostly dealt with the nuts and bolts of the organization. It was a partnership that had been tried and proven over the years; both were
comfortable with their roles. "I don't want to say money is tight right now, but a big campaign is going to be reaching a bit." He paused, then laughed, "But, I have no doubt that the board will approve."
McMullen laughed, too. While the Defenders of Gaea had a seven-member board, he and Harper were the only two that counted. There were two other board members that had retainers big enough that they'd rubber-stamp anything, two big-name entertainers that
never showed up for meetings, and one other, a guy that had once had a big name in environmental circles, but now had Alzheimer's so bad he couldn't remember his name. As much as the board could be said to meet, it was meeting right now. "It'll be worth it, Harris,"
McMullen said.
"I know it will," Harper agreed. "The thing is, we'll really have to hold the line on expenses for field projects. I mean, even more than normal."
That brought a frown from McMullen. "We can't cut administrative expenses," he said, shaking his head. "For us, that would be missing the point."
"I know," Harper said. Neither he nor Dale drew large salaries, but there were a lot of perks hidden among the administrative expenses. It wasn't entirely for tax purposes, either; there were a lot of donors that would balk if they knew how large their salaries really
were, but things like McMullen's Mercedes and Harris' home in the hills overlooking Malibu were well hidden in carefully guarded bookkeeping. "But," he went on, "It would be nice to have some sort of new, high-profile project to pin it to. Something that would get us some
national air time." It was the sort of thing that the Defenders of Gaea specialized in -- high profile projects that got a lot of attention, preferably cheaply. Attention brought donations, and that's what the goal really was. He and McMullen had taken twenty years to build the
Defenders into the type of organization that could shake the can and really get results.
"Yeah," McMullen said thoughtfully. "It's been a while. How about that whatever it is owl, up in Oregon or someplace?"
"Not after this," Harper said, picking up a magazine and showing McMullen the cover."
"Shit," McMullen said with a glance. "Sierra Club, Sierra Club. All I hear is Sierra Club. Just once, it would be nice to be on point on an issue, and have the Sierra Club running along behind, saying `Me, too!' Me, too!', instead of us."
"My reaction exactly. Screw those owls."
"Any leads in the slush pile?"
"Nothing. We need a really high-profile project, either in the northeast, where the media is, or here on the coast, where the money is. But, what we're getting is like the one I got in the mail this morning. If it were either here, or maybe the northeast, we could get a hell
of a ride out of it. But where it is, nobody that counts would take notice."
"What is it?" McMullen asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.
"Some endangered snake species, living in some town's sewer system, and the town wants to rebuild the sewer system. Some professor wants some money for a study. A place called Spearfish Lake, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, some place like that. I didn't
really catch it."
"Well, screw that," McMullen agreed. "There's no profit for us there. Let's find something out here on the coast. People care about what happens here."
