A Short Story
By Joel Thurtell
The Old Man sat slouched in a tall-backed leather chair. He looked across his glass-topped desk at an array of toys that usually took his mind off anything that might trouble an octogenarian trucking magnate who happens to be a billionaire. There was a model of a truck with a long trailer. There was a little plastic diesel locomotive. His favorite was a blue-and-white striped railroad engineer’s hat that he sometimes would put on his head and pretend he was driving a big diesel from one end of his property to another, a distance of a couple hundred yards.
But The Old Man’s favorite toy was a big model of the bridge that connects Detroit in the United States with Windsor in Canada. The Old Man owns that bridge. The model was big enough that when he felt like it, he could run little toy trucks and cars across it, pretending they were making their way from Detroit to Windsor, or from Windsor to Detroit. And, of course, the vehicles had to pay his tolls, and so when he played this game, he was sure to pass real U.S. dollar bills or Canadian loonies to imaginary toll-takers.
Beside the model of the real Ambassador Bridge, he’d had his engineers build a second “twin” bridge. It was a lot more fun to push cars across the new bridge, because it was bigger and took more vehicles and so he could pass more dollar bills and loonies to his pretend toll-takers. Now, though, there was no joy in playing with the new model.
For this was the day when the United States government’s Coast Guard had wrapped The Old Man’s request for that new twinned bridge in brown paper and shipped it back to him with a nasty note saying he ought to buy the land for his second bridge before he tries to build it.
The Old Man was not happy with the Coast Guard. Since when do petty bureaucrats tell a billionaire what he can or cannot do? The Old Man was really out of sorts. He felt so angry about what had happened that he was about to kick his toys over. Who were those bureaucrats to tell him what to do?
The door to The Old Man’s executive office opened and his favorite Puppy Dog cavorted in, carrying a steaming hot cup of coffee and wearing a great big smile.
“What’s to be happy about?” said The Old Man.
“Plenty,” said the Puppy Dog.
“Let’s hear it,” said The Old Man.
“Okay, let’s go over the bad stuff first,” said Puppy Dog. “The feds have nixed your twin bridge. That is bad news, I grant you, Boss. But while everybody is looking at the bridge, I’ve been working on another one of our scams. Okay, right now, we can’t build a bridge to monopolize and control a quarter of the freight that runs between Canada and the United States. We thought we could build our bridge and nobody would figure out we didn’t own the land for it. For years, the newspapers let us have a free ride. The government was pretty much in our pocket. Then the truth dribbled out that we were squatting on public property for our bridge. Nobody cared, once upon a time. Now it’s a big deal. We fought and lost in court. We can keep on fighting, but now is a good time, while everyone is looking at the bridge, for us to pull out another little magician’s trick. Know what I mean?”
The Old Man looked puzzled. He sipped his coffee.
“Hint: 18 stories tall,” said Puppy Dog.
“Aha!” said The Old Man. “My train station! Yes! Good thinking! What about it?”
“Well, Boss, you know how locally, the Detroit Free Press has been very loyal to us through all our troubles with the governments of Canada, the United States, Michigan, Oakland County and now even the City of Detroit. The Free Press has been willing to pretend all sorts of things didn’t happen. No “shotgun totin’ goons” made it into their pages, bless their little ink-stained hearts. They have been willing to act like all sorts of shenanigans by us just plain didn’t happen, and we are eternally grateful to them for the role they have played in benighting the public. But let’s face it, Boss, the Free Press is strictly small potatoes. They are a newspaper in deep trouble with a voice that is getting softer all the time. What if I told you that another newspaper is feeding from my hand? What if I told you I’m spooning to a newspaper with far more reach, far more clout, far more authority, far more stature than the Free Press ever dreamed of?”
“Puppy Dog! We’re buying the Metro Times?”
“No, Boss. Think global here. Real scope.”
“Crain’s? They’re in Chicago, I hear.”
“No, Boss, I’m talking The New York Times. I’ve got a reporter on the line who obviously doesn’t know beans about recent Detroit history. She’s gonna write something called a “Detroit Journal.” It’s a column. And it’s beautiful, because she won’t have time or space to get into real issues. You know, like all the smoke we blew at everybody trying to get our twin span off the ground, all the lawsuits against practically everyone who blinked. The sorts of things a billionaire trucking magnate with no civic conscience can do when he can hire legions of lawyers to keep everyone tied up in court for a millenium or two and shotgun-totin’ goons to hassle anyone who blinks. Well, this Times reporter doesn’t know jack about all that. And if she did, it wouldn’t matter. Her format’s gonna tie her writing in knots. Her bosses won’t give her space to get into our misanthropic behavior.
The beginning of a smile began to play at the edges of The Old Man’s mouth. “You mean, Puppy Dog, we’re gonna get a Trial Balloon? Free of charge in The New York Times?”
“You got it, Boss! The Times is tossing us a lifeline. No sooner did we lose our shirts on the twin bridge than we get this free ad for our plan to sidetrack billions of federal stimulus money to rebuild your train station. Of course, there are plenty of people out there who think this is a dumb idea, but they won’t appear in the Times story. The pitch will come at the end of the story. It’ll be the kicker, and no writer worth her salt would qualify the kicker with a bunch of finger-pointing negativity. It would detract from the story’s flair, you know, style. The editors in New York will be very pleased to read this story over their cups of Starbucks. It’s a story with Hope, Boss. Hope that we can con the feds this time into paying us a few billion to take that 18-story white elephant off our hands.”
“And now for the REAL kicker, Boss — the grand prize in the Times’ Cracker Jack box. The reporter DOESN’T KNOW YOUR NAME! Believe it or not, she thinks the train station is owned by CenTra, Inc. and she’s gonna quote me, not you! You will be INVISIBLE, just the way you like it, and NO MENTION OF THE AMBASSADOR BRIDGE! Ain’t that cool?
Look at it this way, Boss — it’s like a real estate deal. Okay, we don’t own the land for our bridge, granted. But we do own the next best thing — the kicker in a New York Times story.”
“I get it,” said The Old Man. “And when everyone is looking at how we’re scamming on the train station, they’ll forget to watch what we’re doing at the bridge.”
“You got it, Boss! It’s bullshit — 18 stories deep!”
