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Chapter 31
One of the things that went without saying was that Heather Sanford, like all the other members and staffers of the Defenders of Gaea, was unaware of the innermost financial workings of the group. Those were left to McMullen and Harper, and the latter managed to
fuzz and launder money so well that even a good auditing firm that regularly went over the books couldn't find the stashes where money had been hidden.
In the years that Heather had been a staffer for the Defenders, McMullen hadn't had to call on her special talent very often -- mostly, because Heather didn't like to feel used. McMullen's normal approach was to set a goal for Heather, something that needed to
be accomplished, and left it up to her how to accomplish it. Usually, he didn't ask about the details of how it got accomplished, but more often than not, she was successful, which suited McMullen just fine.
So, McMullen was a little surprised when Heather refused to deal with Knox again. "There are things that I just won't do, even for the good of the environment," she'd told McMullen, and he decided that he'd better not push her.
He brought the matter up with Harper at the next morning strategy session. "So, we're up the creek with that approach," he reported. "I think I'd have been able to talk her into it if I'd wanted to, but what would have happened the next time?"
"Yeah," Harper agreed. "No point in burning her out. We've got to tread a little lightly with her right now, anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, yesterday, I got a call from some gal in some state nature conservancy back east, checking references on Heather. It seems that she's got a resume in with them, for some sort of a field operative thing."
"Jesus, Harris, you're just full of good news today, aren't you? What does she want? More money?"
"No," Harper said with a head shake. "In fact, I got curious. We ran the job announcement in our magazine, so I looked it up. The top of their range is a little less than we're paying her now. I got the impression from this conservancy person that Heather is getting a
little tired of working in an office in L.A., and wants to get her hands dirty. Dale, I don't think we want to lose her, even if she didn't carry the ball on this one."
"We can't lose her," McMullen agreed. "She's brought in a hell of a lot of money. More than that, she's been a key player in a lot of our operations. But, I could believe that she thinks she's getting stale. After all, we've had her in pretty much the same spot for eight years."
"Well, if she wants to get her hands dirty in field operations, we ought to be able to find a place for her," Harper commented. "Maybe six months or a year out in some grubby little hole out in the field would make L.A. look pretty good to her. God knows, there ought to
be someplace that we could find for her like that."
"Can't think of anything right now, at least nothing that's going," McMullen said. "Maybe this snake thing with Jenny Easton. Maybe six months or snow of snow and dumb hillbillies will make her see the light."
"We don't have an operation there," Harper said. "We don't have any local support, and reading between the lines, I'll bet that anyone in that town that you asked would never have heard of that snake, and, if they had, would say that the fewer snakes in the world, the better."
"You're probably right," McMullen conceded.
"What's more," Harper went on, "It would cost us ten grand to fund the study, which has to go on or there's no proving that the snake is there. On top of that, it would cost us twenty or thirty grand to fund an operative there for a year, and it could take that long to
make something out of it. And, that doesn't count any legal expenses that might get wrapped into the matter, since if you ain't got squat for local support, your next recourse is lawyers. So, there's a minimum of forty, maybe fifty grand, and unless we get some sort of funding for
it, we just haven't got fifty grand for that sort of thing. Hell, that's a couple of good 30-second spots for this Jenny Easton ad, and you know what that'll bring in."
"That's only if we try to fund it straight ahead," McMullen protested. "Think of the bigger picture. If it's an operation that we can get Jenny Easton interested in, get her to become some sort of a spokesperson or activist, then fifty grand is a good investment. That'll
bring in some bucks."
Harris shook his head. "That leads us right back to the problem of getting to Jenny Easton."
"Yeah. That's the key."
McMullen and Harper stared at the ceiling for a moment. "Why not try the direct approach?" Harris asked. "Maybe write her a thank you letter. We owe her one, anyway. Maybe in it, we can say that there's a project in her home town that we're looking at, and we
can't find anyone else around this town from there, and we'd like to talk to her, just to get some background?"
"It might work," McMullen said. "The problem is, that you have to get through to her. Usually, mail to people like that goes through their studios or recording companies, and odds are something like that won't make it to her."
"I know," Harper agreed. It does make it tough." He thought for a moment, then leaned forward to his intercom. "Mollie," he said, "Did we send an honorary membership to Jenny Easton, in thanks for helping us out the other day?"
"I wrote it up myself," Harper's secretary replied.
"Do you happen to have her address out there, by any chance?"
"I don't know," Mollie said, "But it would be on the mailing list."
"Dig it out for me and bring it in here, please," Harper ordered.
In less than a minute, Harper had a printout in his hand. "How about that," he said to McMullen after Mollie had left. "A street address in Malibu."
"Son of a gun," McMullen said. "I never fail to be amazed at the information that we have that we don't know we have. I'll get a letter knocked out for her."
"What are we going to do about Heather?"
"I'd like to say that we've got a field operation for her, but right now, we don't. I'd like to get her satisfied as soon as possible."
"Me, too," Harper agreed. "Why not just send her off on vacation? Maybe treat her to tickets to Hawaii, or some place like that, just as a bonus."
"She's touchy about bonuses," McMullen said. "Let's look at the Hawaii files. Maybe there's something we can send her on that needs investigation without action."
"Just thinking about it, I can think of four or five letters I've gotten from Hawaii about that sort of thing in the last year," Harper said. "Maybe we just give her the list, and tell her we want an overview of each one, formal report, the whole business. That ought to take
her a couple of weeks. Maybe you can tell her to take some time off while she's there."
"Not a bad idea," McMullen said. "Who knows, there might be something there that'll need your and my personal attention, maybe this winter."
