It turned out that the Gary plant had upgraded eight of nine control units in 2019 and left the ninth in place because it governed a subsystem. Nobody wanted to shut down for a weekend. The new software was pulling that old unit faster than it could answer. The unit was not failing. It was being asked a question it had been built too early to hear.
They bypassed it at 4:00 in the morning and the line ran by 6:00. Evelyn stood in her own kitchen at 4:15 with her arms folded and looked at me as if a piece of furniture had spoken. You said you fix machines. Big machines are still machines. That was the first crack, not a large one.
But she went to her office that morning and pulled my file again, the one her lawyers had assembled. And she read it a second time and found that it said almost nothing. It listed my debts, my address, my late wife, my daughter, my lack of criminal record, and lack of press coverage. It did not say that I had rebuilt controller logic for three regional manufacturers, or that I read contracts the way other men read box scores, or that I had turned down a job in 2016 because the company wanted me to sign away the right to my own designs. Her lawyers had built a profile of a man's poverty and handed it to her as though it were a profile of the man.
Meanwhile, Harrison was accelerating. The transaction on the table was the sale of 51% of Blackwood Meridian to Crown Ridge Capital, a private investment group with a fondness for industrial assets and a reputation for stripping them for parts within 30 months. The headline number was $4.2 $2 billion and Harrison presented it in every meeting as the crowning achievement of the family stewardship, a phrase he had clearly practiced in a mirror. I read the public filings on a laptop at the kitchen island because I had nothing else to do in that apartment and because the merger documents were the only thing in the house that interested me. The numbers had a shape I did not like.
Crown Ridge was valuing the automation division at a multiple that would have insulted a company half its size and the real estate under three plants was carried on the books at values set in 2011. If you rebuilt the model honestly, Blackwood Meridian was worth somewhere near $6 billion and it was being sold for four. I brought it to Evelyn on a Thursday. I did not make a speech. I put two pages in front of her with the relevant lines marked and told her what I thought.
This deal was prepared by dozens of specialists. She said, "Bankers, two law firms, an independent fairness opinion. Then I hope every one of them is loyal to you." She did not respond. She picked up her phone, walked to the window, and did not call anyone.