Actually, he makes great. The e-mail, sent from a personal e-mail address—not the state government server—also includes several attachments and a short note.
Hope this is helpful.
When I open the attachments, I nearly fall out of my chair. He’s included a copy of the check stub written from Associated Polymer, Optimal’s parent company, to the Campaign for Pulaski, as well as several e-mail exchanges between an Optimal employee and a campaign aide. The e-mails are carefully crafted, but the subtext is clear.
The most damning of them, sent from someone in Gifts, expresses hope “that our support will spark a new era of cooperation and mutual support between the nominee and one of Indiana’s most successful homegrown businesses.”
On Wednesday, Joe, the snake charmer, works his magic on the local superior court. Unbelievably, our petition passes, and after we nudge Optimal’s legal counsel by dangling the threat of a much bigger problem down the line, we float an unofficial list of document requests. Now that we’ve gone ahead and filed, a deposition will be coming soon enough. After some hemming and hawing, Optimal agrees via their ancient-sounding lawyer to provide five years of financial records related to any third-party payments before the week is out.
Not totally ideal. I was hoping to go back further, ten years, to the complaint the Mitchells, Allens, Baums, and Dales dropped, and for bigger scope—investments, subsidiaries, the whole deal. But I know better than to say so to Joe. Still, he reads it on my face.
“You should be kissing my feet right now,” he says.
“I’ll let Raj do that for you,” I say, and he smirks in a way that doesn’t quite hide a genuine look of happiness. I feel a sharp stab of jealousy, and then another of disgust. When did other people’s happiness start feeling like assault?
But the answer comes quickly, and brings a bad taste to my mouth. Always. I didn’t ever stop feeling excluded. I just started to wear it and pretend it was my choice. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to the law of poisoned things, and hurt people, and scabby chemical earth. Maybe toxic is the only thing I really understand.
—
More good luck: that very afternoon, less than twenty-four hours after Agerwal directed me to her, Lilian McMann returns my call. I get out a hello and half of an introduction before she interrupts to suggest we meet in person.
Her office is about forty-five minutes out of town. Locals call this “uptown,” even though there’s nothing “up” about it. This is Anytown, strip malls and chain stores, and as a kid this is where we would come to hit the big grocery store when we wanted to buy in bulk. The storefronts have turned over but the structure is the same.
I get lost, circling several times around the address she provided before giving up and phoning again.
“There’s nothing here but a sports equipment store and a Chinese restaurant,” I say. “I must have written the address wrong…”
“You didn’t. We’re behind the restaurant. Just circle around to the back and you’ll see a sign.”
Inside, she’s done everything she can to smooth the cheap edges into something elegant and professional. She’s almost succeeded.
Lilian comes to greet me herself. The secretary, if there is one, has abandoned her post. There is no other word for Lilian than manicured. She is practically uniformed in an earth-tone pencil skirt, blazer, and kitten heels. Her makeup is flawless, albeit a little heavy on the eyeshadow, her nails are done, and her hair is sleek despite the heavy must of the office, which is chasing the heat by means of a whimpering window A/C unit.
Her office is small but very orderly. She takes a seat across from me and I look for something to compliment—a kid, a husband, a dog—but find nothing personal at all. It’s bare.
“Thank you for seeing me,” I say. “I know you must be busy.” This is so obviously untrue, to both of us, I feel immediately embarrassed.
“You’re looking at Optimal?” she says, with careful politeness. And with those simple words, I understand she has given me permission to short circuit at least a half hour of painstaking bullshit.
I could kiss her feet.
“I’m with the Center for Environmental Advocacy Work, based in Illinois,” I tell her, and explain what brought us into town in the first place. “Before Optimal moved to Indiana, the company had to settle a case that involved chemical leaching. It seems to us like they’ve bought their way out of trouble several times—and not just to skirt environmental regulations, either.” She doesn’t blink. “The county prosecutor’s office dropped an investigation they were planning—for labor violations—after Optimal cut a check. I don’t like the pattern.”
Still, she says nothing. She doesn’t act surprised, either. I can’t tell how much of this she already knew.
I clear my throat. “You were the compliance branch chief at IDEM, is that right?”
“Co-chief,” she corrects me immediately. Then she smiles. Even her smile is deliberate. “There were two of us. Colin Danner was my partner.”
I can tell she has more to say. But again she just sits there. I try a different tack. “What brings you to the private sector?” I ask. “That’s quite a shift—going from public policy to contracting for the private sector.”
“You mean quite a downgrade,” she says calmly—and though that is exactly what I meant, I feel another rush of embarrassment. “It’s all right,” she says. “I’m happy enough.” She uncrosses her legs and leans forward, practically pouring her words in my direction. “Look, I didn’t choose to leave. I was forced out. I’ll say it, and they would say it, too, though not for the same reasons. One day I was co-head, and the next day I couldn’t take a step that wasn’t crossing some kind of line or violating public policy or abusing my position. They buried me under an internal audit—I had to dig up duplicate receipts for all my expenses for the tenure of my time with IDEM. Random monitoring, they said. Bad luck.” She shakes her head and allows a look of rage to surface before she harnesses it. “I got shut out of all the big projects. Then, when I missed deadlines—deadlines I didn’t know existed—I was threatened with termination. I left instead.”
“What happened?” I say.
“Colin sold me out,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m not sure exactly what he said, or what complaints he filed, but I’m sure he was the one who launched the audit.”
“Why would he do that?”
Now she looks at me as if the answer is so obvious she hates to have to point it out. “Optimal,” she says. “Of course.”
A buzz of excitement notches up my pulse.
“We butted heads almost from the start on how and when the environmental review should take place. I thought it was just his usual shit. He didn’t like that they appointed a co-head. He especially didn’t like that they appointed a woman.” She says this with no inflection at all, not even a catch of anger in her voice, as if it had nothing at all to do with her. A true pro.
“So he steamrolled you?”
“That’s what I thought at first—he always challenged my recommendations, questioned my reports. But this was different. It was as if he didn’t want to look at all. But that didn’t make sense. The compliance branch of OWQ had done an inspection, several years earlier, before I arrived. An inspection every two years is standard, unless issues of permitting or expansion make it necessary to test even more. So he wasn’t against it in principle. But when I checked the report, I knew something was wrong. Plastics manufacturing uses some of the most toxic chemicals in the world—and a lot of them. But there wasn’t a single fine. Not a single notice, zero safety concerns. No infractions at all. That never happens.” Her voice hangs there, climbing toward a peak. “There’s always something. I’ve never seen a report that clean, in my whole career. It isn’t possible.”