Chapter 20: The Cost of a Shell Company

"Is it true?" I asked.

We stood in the truck yard at three that afternoon, in the thin cold sun.

Every driver Kinsella Freight employed stood in a half circle by the diesel pump.

Nobody had told them to come.

They had simply come, the way people do when there is going to be a fight.

Tiernan held the youngest brother's phone in his hand and read the article through to the end.

He handed it back.

"Yes," he said.

Dean did not move.

The boxer's shoulders came up slowly.

"A dozen firms," Tiernan said.

"Over the past year, through shell companies, I made offers to a dozen family trucking outfits.

Nine of them took the price and went home richer.

Three of them did not want to sell."

"And?" I said.

"And I had my people cut them off from the freight brokers who fed them work.

I raised their fuel contracts.

I waited until they were short on payroll and then I sent the second offer, at a third of the first."

A gasp went around the drivers.

"I thought it was business," Tiernan said.

"It was a way to make a person tired enough to say yes."

A rusty semi turned in at the gate while he was still speaking.

It rolled across the gravel with its brakes squealing and stopped ten yards from us.

A heavy man in his sixties climbed down with a folded newspaper in his fist.

Behind him came two young men in matching jackets, both with their jaws set.

"Which one of you is Sterne?" the old man said.

Tiernan stepped forward.

"I am."

The old man looked at him for a long time.

"Eight months," he said.

"I drove my own truck for eight months because I couldn't make payroll.

My boys drove the others.

My wife sold her mother's ring.

Then you sent me a letter that said you'd give me a third of what my yard was worth, and I thought, well, I'll sign.

I'll just sign and be done."

His voice shook.

"And I did.

And I haven't been inside a truck since."

He threw the newspaper at Tiernan's chest.

It dropped to the gravel between them.

Tiernan did not pick it up.

He did not say it was a long time ago, or that the lawyers had advised him, or that nothing was personal.

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