“That’s the best sort of deal,” Chelan answered.  “I don’t have any names, but I suspect that Elaine Bell does.  In North California, we can even ensure, legally, that the person is a staunch supporter of the National Renaissance Party.  Are you agreeable?”

“I’m happy to support what you have asked,” Hughes said, “even if I turn out to be a bit disappointed with what I get in return.”

“Your Committee will subpoena our pay records, to see if the pattern Whitecloth unveiled repeats,” Chelan said.  “It does, except the employees formed a Political Action Committee that channeled really large amounts of money to Drummond-McLaren.  In fact, it funneled everything they were being paid, other than the skim by the prior owners. Now a riddle.  What were these people living on, in some cases quite well, for the past several years?“ 

Hughes’ lips pursed.  “Cedric’s campaigns were very lavish.  No one understood how he could raise so much money, though it all appeared to come from people and PACs . Was some of it diverted from someplace else?”

“Good question,” Chelan answered.  “It leads to another set of questions for you and your committee.  My lead attorney said we should divulge this promptly, and the letters to your committee members divulging it were in fact placed in the mail this morning.  I have part of an answer.  There was a mystery customer, who paid for 30,000 tons a shipment of nickel-iron, at a remarkably high price, the thirty thousand tons that were being stolen.  We know the ore was actually stolen because we have the flight records from our ships.  The mystery customer signed off as having received the ore at our harbor, so it did not appear to be missing.  However, the sales file, which mysteriously was not being reconciled with the ship bill of lading file or the bank records, looked correct to an innocent auditor.  That file showed 60,000 tons showing up in every shipment.  There was then a cancelling purchase of ‘legal services’ by Bulger, annotated as having been paid directly by the mystery customer, so the money never went through our accounts.  That’s a legal business expense.  This was all done with paper memos, so the Debtor in Possession analysis of the bank records didn’t see it. The paper records were reasonably well hidden.  The legal service firm does not exist.