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company’s chief executive was looking for a speechwriter, and Lay got the assignment, winning the chance for a close-up view of life at the top of the corporate world. He liked what he saw.
    For many young American men, the late 1960s were a time for putting plans on hold. The Vietnam War was escalating, deferments were running out, and the draft loomed. Lay did his best to avoid the military, keeping the job that gave him a deferment and studying nights for his doctorate. Still, he found the arrangement distasteful and wound up attending the Navy’s officer candidate school in Rhode Island starting in January 1968. From there, it was on to the Pentagon, where he was hired to apply his economics knowledge. Lay soon found himself assembling econometric models and later analyzed the economic effects of military spending for his doctoral thesis.
    When his time in the military was up, Lay was eager to return to the corporate world. But then Pinkney Walker, his old economics professor, was named to the Federal Power Commission, and he persuaded his star student to join him as his technical assistant. After eighteen months, Lay was asked to serve as deputy undersecretary of energy for the Department of the Interior; he accepted and was named to the post in October 1972 at the age of thirty. In a little more than a year, he was ready to move on.
    He latched on to a senior-level position at Florida Gas, a sleepy pipeline company in Winter Park, thanks to an old acquaintance, W.J. “Jack” Bowen, its chief executive. Lay found the smaller company suited him. But the following year his pal Bowen left for Transco Energy, a pipeline giant in Houston, turning the top job over to Selby Sullivan, his second in command. Over the next seven years, Lay moved up the corporate ladder until he was president.
    Still, at times he chafed under Sullivan, whose management style he found unnervingly erratic. One night Lay received a phone call at home from Sullivan, asking him to handle an early-morning meeting in Orlando. Lay agreed, and the next morning attended the meeting. But when he called into the office, a panicked assistant told him Sullivan was pacing the halls, screaming, “Where’s Lay?”
    Sullivan’s frequent explosions were always followed by long apologies, a habit Lay began to exploit. When important decisions needed to be made, Lay would anger his boss on purpose, then wait for the inevitable mea culpa. Only then would he present the issue that needed a decision, making clear how he wanted things to go. More often than not, the contrite Sullivan agreed, not knowing he had been manipulated by his young president.
    In Washington, D.C., the group of energy-industry executives milled about the hallway of the Capitol Hill office building, grabbing refreshments between meetings of the American Gas Association. Ken Lay scooped up a couple of hors d’oeuvres and noticed his old pal Jack Bowen. They chatted a few minutes, with Bowen asking about life in Florida. It was the spring of 1981, and Lay intimated he didn’t plan to hang around Winter Park much longer. While he didn’t mention it, Lay was tiring of Sullivan’s antics and was eager to run his own show. He also had personal issues; his marriage was troubled and was on the verge of falling apart. Bowen walked away convinced he might be able to steal his former colleague for Transco.
    Two weeks later, Bowen called, asking Lay to join Transco as his number two and heir apparent. Lay agreed and, days before his departure, filed for divorce.
    It seemed a glorious time to live in Houston. The oil shocks of the 1970s had pushed energy prices through the roof, levitating the town in a bubble of economic growth. Throughout the industry it became a matter of faith that oil prices, which had already tripled, would do it again, surpassing one hundred dollars a barrel. But just after the thirty-nine-year-old Lay arrived, the good times stopped rolling. Oil prices cracked, and soon