Dark Voyage Winter JenningsChapter 10
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One of Phillip Montgomery’s assistants called me to say the restoration on The Globe is on schedule and that she’d confirmed my reservation in Freeport. Money talks. The rest of us walk.
Ellen Conmy’s political cause which captured Bulldog’s attention was similar to the one that made the state of Kansas a national punchline. People voting for people who voted against their best interests.
This particular event is in Missouri. But it’s also a national argument since it involves Congress continuing to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act without having any viable replacement.
I’m no expert, maybe ObamaCare should be repealed and replaced. But these assholes are so eager to deliver on unrealistic campaign promises that they want to yank coverage out from under millions of people without having an alternative plan in place. A viable one anyway.
Enter Ellen Conmy. She’s 22-years old, petite, fierce, committed. Rather than protest marches and office sit-ins, she started a recall drive. Against each of the six Missouri Republican House members who voted for repeal.
Bulldog knew it was a quixotic gesture at this point. Maybe it would gain some traction if the Affordable Care Act were actually repealed. Without some sort of safety net.
But he liked Ellen’s idea because it was the poorer people of Kansas City who would suffer the most. When Medicaid was cut. When preexisting conditions were no longer covered. When insurance companies pulled out of the marketplace.
So Bulldog quietly spread the word through his three Dragon Ladies. Volunteers were to help obtain signatures for Ellen. I later learned that he thought the recall drive coupled with the growing discontent when the reps dared to hold town hall meetings might get their attention.
And that could have ended it. Ellen Conmy would end up with several thousand more signatures on a recall petition that would lead nowhere.
Except the forces of political mischief came out of the woodwork. Four of Ellen’s original volunteers were actually working for financial backers of the Republican politicians who were under siege.
What these faux reformers did was copy the names and addresses of the petition signers and then began turning the screws on them. Business licenses became difficult to obtain. Permits were delayed. Fines assessed. In a few cases, actual IRS audits on personal income returns were somehow ordered.
A mistake.
Mr. Bannerman learned of the dirty tricks almost as soon as they began. He would, he hears dog whistles when others can’t. And, he made a couple of classic Bulldog moves. He generated, from his own databases, thousand of conservative recall petition ‘signers.’ Who were initially unaware of their having signed. Republicans signing petitions to recall Republicans.
That was all under the surface, but had a longer term effect in confusing the fuck out of the right wing. Why were their own people signing recall petitions? And then denying it so vehemently?
The public face of Bulldog’s retaliation was ... revenge. He had mics installed. Hidden cams where possible. Lines were tapped. The targeted Republican operatives chatted openly, sometimes gleefully, about the quiet mayhem they were causing, the business and personal problems the mostly Democratic and Independent recall signers were having.
Without Bulldog’s having personally contacted a single media outlet, the well-coordinated PR campaign exploded across the state of Missouri. Leaks were dispersed on an equal basis, medium by medium. Television, newspapers, underground pubs, radio, the Internet.
The outraged cries of ‘Illegal!’ ‘Unconstitutional!’ ‘Criminal!’ ‘Un-American!’ were drowned out by the roars of disapproval at the underhanded tactics of the Republican politicians. Ellen Conmy’s little protest army grew tenfold. Voters, now many of them Republicans, were going out of their way to sign recall petitions.
Bulldog sat down with Ellen. She had never heard of him. Most people haven’t. He counseled her, “Keep getting signatures.”
“We already have enough to force a recall election. On four of them anyway.”
“I understand. But you won’t prevail. nothing has happened in DC yet. Hold off until they actually pass something. If they don’t, then use the petitions at the midterms.”
Ellen asked around, learned who Bulldog Bannerman is, and decided to agree to his suggestions. She is currently apprenticing under the guidance of the three Dragon Ladies. If she sticks with Bulldog, there’s a chance she’ll go from being a firebrand to an effective one.
When Walker and I flew back home, from Tunis to Kansas City, we changed planes in Dulles. As we walked to our gate, we passed a magnificent specimen, male variety.
He had a blazer worn cape-style over his shoulders. A look I usually find pretentious. But those shoulders! He was tall with a confident stride. I like confidence in a man.
He glanced at me, I’d just refreshed my face in the ladies’. Took in Walker, checked me out again. Skinny white jeans and a white, no-bra tee. Looked pretty okay with my golden tan.
He gave me a small smile in passing. Nodded. I nodded back. Two healthy people, full of life. But passing in opposite directions. Other circumstances, other places ... maybe.
Walker said, “I saw that.”
Vanessa and I flew to Milwaukee early Sunday morning. Euforia was dark Sunday, Monday and Tuesday so we had time to look up a pedophile. The one who had purchased young Sasha Andrushchenko. Vanessa’s grandmother back when she lived in Kiev. Arthur Flanders. In his 80s but still around.
We didn’t have a plan, didn’t contemplate revenge or police involvement or ... anything really. It was partly curiosity. But also, as I told Vanessa, “It’s just better to know. Usually.”
I was wading through the ashes of what had been a very posh house. Difficult to imagine now.
Allstate had written the homeowner’s policy in 1998, the year the house was built on one of the last remaining vacant lots west of Brookside. West of Wornal. Brookside is upper middle class. Go a street or two west toward Ward Parkway and the size and value of the homes increase steadily.
This house, the arson house, was in the 6500 block of Summit. One of the better addresses in the city, not counting mansion territory.
It had been constructed of quality materials. Kiln-dried lumber. Stone fireplaces and chimneys. A slate roof which the Wrigley owner, Gene Austin, told me costs about $20 a square foot. The structure itself was solid enough to carry the heavy weight of the roof, but not solid enough to withstand the intense heat from the flames.
I photographed the ruins from every angle, shooting close-ups when Gary Jamison pointed something out. Gary is the lead arson investigator with the KCFD and a friend of my father’s. Which is why he agreed to return to Summit and walk an amateur through the process.
Allstate hadn’t hired me to sift through the wreckage and discover a miraculous clue that experts like Gary had missed. No, Don Brooks had told me, “Look at everything with fresh eyes. At the people. The police are looking at motive, means, opportunity. Our own investigator is trying to get court orders on bank accounts, stocks, anything financial.”
He didn’t know about the Sullivan twins. Who didn’t wait for the legal process to wend its way through the bureaucratic channels. I knew about Jessie and Jesse however. We’d have the financials before Allstate would.
Don explained that they would probably pay the claim once the official arson report was in. And digested. Although the final report would take weeks. “Even when we’re convinced the homeowner set the fire we might still pay.”
“Why?”
“Juries are unpredictable. If they believe we’re acting unreasonably, they can nail us for ‘bad faith.’ Then we could be liable for compensatory damages in addition to our contractural obligations. And worse, a jury could tack on punitive damages.”
I thought, but didn’t mention, that Allstate, like most insurance companies, was doing just fine.
Gary Johnson and I were wearing knee-length boots and surgical masks. The ruins were no longer smoldering, but ashes and microscopic debris were in the air. There hadn’t been any fatalities, the Harrison family had escaped in plenty of time. So I didn’t have to worry about breathing in something particularly icky.
Gary pointed out where the fire had begun, in the attached 3-car garage. Where the gas tanks from two Honda SUVs, a Harley, a John Deere lawn tractor and a Nomad dune buggy had exploded. The vehicles were mangled, melted, warped. Gary said, “We know it started here because it’s where the fire burned the longest.”
Parts of the opposite side of the house were still standing. The KCFD responds rapidly, especially so in a neighborhood like this one. But Allstate would total the house -- it would be cheaper as a teardown, rather than trying to salvage and rebuild.
Gary talked fire talk, most of it over my head. Radial glass fracture. Hydrocarbon fuel. Flash point. Fuel load.
Red flames, blood red. Should have been yellow or orange.
Coal black smoke. Should have been gray or brown.
No CO asphyxiation. The Harrisons made it out with time to spare. Time to grab electronic devices, the contents of a wall safe, one Roy Lichtenstein original.
If I remember Gary’s strolling lecture correctly, fire wants three things -- oxygen, heat and fuel. He put the emphasis on fuel that morning on Summit.
I would put my emphasis on the Harrison family. Mother, father, two teenage girls. Arson made sense only when there was a connection to one of the homeowners. Or both.
I sat down with the Sullivan twins. Jesse said, “Jim Harrison, structural engineer. Lockston Industries. He’d know how his house is built.”
“What about the wife?”
Jessie took up the narrative, “Jill. She’s a buyer at Macy’s. Oak Park Mall.”
Fucking Johnson County. Fucking Kansas.
So, a two-income family.
“The kids? The girls?”
“Jennifer is 14, typical. Whitney is 13, typical.”
“No angry boyfriends?”
“Nope. It has to be one of the parents.”
“You’ll keep digging?”
“How deep?”
“Until you solve the case for me.”
“Winter.”
“Walk.”
“Um. Gary and Paulie.”
“Yes?”
“Um. We ... um. Compared. You know, sizes.”
Straight face, “And?”
Rushing, “I know it’s a small sample, not scientific. But I was like the...”
“Longest?”
“Yeah!”
“Thickest too?”
“By a little.”
“I trust you guys were erect? For verisimilitude.”
Grin, “Yeah.”
“Gimme a hug.”
I imagine most of the rumors about Bulldog Bannerman are just that -- rumors. He is so quiet, so private, that people become eager to fill in the blanks.
One thing that is on the record is how he made his first fortune. Well, first pile of serious money anyway.
He was a young man back in 1960. He was maybe still a teenager when he bought his first paper route. Back then newspapers were still important. The Kansas City Star had a morning edition, the Kansas City Times.
What was unique to the publishing business here in town was that the newspaper carriers owned their own routes. Not the Star, but the carriers. It wasn’t a hugely profitable enterprise, delivering papers, but it was steady. Back then many families subscribed to both the morning and evening editions.
In a way it was an insidious system of individual carrier monopolies, corridor by corridor.
Bulldog bought his first route in a mostly black neighborhood on both sides of The Paseo. Daddy told me it wasn’t so desperate, wasn’t so desolate back then. After a couple of months Bulldog bought a second route. He was slowly taking over more and more of the Northeast and expanding his routes southwardly as well.
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