Never Again, Seriously

by Forrest Steele

  Jake recognized a grain of truth in Malcolm’s criticism. Sometimes he found it hard to keep up with the crushing detail work, especially when he was feeling down. Malcolm’s truth was black and white, no allowance for circumstances such as the fact he had slashed too many jobs.

  The man knew nothing, had no idea about Jake’s war experience. Nobody knew. Once Jake overheard Malcolm saying PTSD was a sign of a weak personality, a bad soldier. Even though Malcolm never served, he claimed to have observed this.

  Jake thought it intuitively obvious that some people were more vulnerable to the horrors of war. Why did Malcolm twist this into an occasion for derision?

  Since the Persian Gulf War, Jake had struggled with a fog of anxiety. He had night sweats and lay half-awake, haunted by the smell of burning flesh, by images of bodies in still-burning uniforms, some of them women. Jake wasn’t even sure if his troubles rose to the level of PTSD. The VA never came through with any help, even after several appeals.

  His army decorations stayed wrapped in a pair of socks, unseen since his return.

  Jake brought his mind back to the meeting and forced his face into what he hoped was a blank expression. His simmering bile rose, caustic in his mouth.

  Screw this guy! I’m gonna enjoy bringing him down.

  When the meeting ended, Malcolm strode out. Everyone followed except Jake and Willis Turek, another department manager at Global Source Enterprises.

  “Coffee?” Willis asked.

  They stood at a table in a Starbucks lookalike named Beans.

  Willis blew on his coffee. “He’s getting worse, isn’t he?”

  “I think the pressure’s getting to him. Malcolm likes to put people down, but he’s the screwup. You’re aware he inherited GSE from his dad five years ago, right?” Jake leaned forward. “Hey, pay attention. You’re the one who suggested coffee.”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t ogle some of Miami’s best.”

  “Willis, you were drooling. I don’t think that will impress them. I was saying—”

  “I heard you. Malcolm’s been running the show for five years ago. I know the business is sliding, and the situation is worsening lately. The best customers are gone because the competition has better service and systems. Makes my job impossible. I mean, what can I do to get business except lie? I involve Malcolm in any major deal, once I have it on the hook. He’ll cut prices to bring it in.”

  Jake put another sugar in his coffee and furtively regarded a Latina swiveling past the window, shiny black hair in a long ponytail, royal blue tights stretched across the rippling muscles of her rear end, below a matching tank top. He was careful not to ogle. “Yeah, all that hurts profits. So then he keeps squeezing the expenses, including salaries. You’ll notice his lifestyle isn’t suffering. For the owner of a company with fifty employees, he’s trying to live like it has five hundred. He spends as much time on his boat as he does in the office.”

  He took a sip of the strong, sweet brew. “Some of our best employees have left too.”

  “Present company excluded.” The skin around Willis’s eyes crinkled above a wry smile.

  “Yeah, right. Weaver thinks he’s a modern manager who hires the best people and lets them do their thing. What a joke.”

  Willis leaned forward and spoke in a soft voice. “Have you heard any rumors about him being a fag? The kind who likes young boys?”

  “Technically, you’re talking about a pederast, someone with a disorder. Not the same as an adult homosexual.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Watch Dr. Phil or something. It’s common knowledge that being homosexual doesn’t equal being interested in children.” Jake sighed. “Willis, I served with some gay men in the military, guys who’d put their lives on the line for fellow soldiers. ‘Fag’ is outdated and bigoted. There’s no need to talk like that.”

  “I didn’t realize you were an expert.”

  “That attitude is why I almost didn’t say anything. Talk that way to the wrong person and you might get a knuckle sandwich.” Jake caught Willis’s eye. “Where’d you get that about Malcolm?”

  “Someone who left. I don’t want to say who. Said Malcolm keeps pictures of young boys in a locked desk drawer. I wouldn’t put a lot of store by it—this guy throws weird things out in conversation. I never know what to believe from him.”

  Willis leaned back. “It seems like Malcolm’s picking on you more often. What are you going to do?”

  “For now, I’m not going to do anything. I’ve got my resumé out. Maybe the company will downsize. If I got laid off in an austerity move, it could be a blessing. Might get severance and a presentable reason to be on the market. So I just try to keep cool.”

  After work, Jake pushed back in his recliner and marinated his day in the first of several scotches. Keeping cool was easier said than done. Every time he thought about Malcolm Weaver, anger bloomed in his chest. He quashed it by imagining Malcolm standing in the desert, stricken by a palsy of terror, frozen in place and blubbering while flames roared and people screamed. Yes, Malcolm, instead of SPC Alden Soder—who went into complete breakdown and was taken to the Evacuation Hospital even though he had no physical injuries.

  As the alcohol coursed through him, he exhaled and relaxed. He needed to get his head right and plan on putting up with the crap a while longer, keeping his attention on the details of his plan to scam the company.

  Chapter 3

  Saturday night, Jake lay on his side for hours, praying, in a half-awake dream state, to a god he didn’t believe in. The fraud plan was a loser’s fantasy.

  Please help me. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what’s wrong. Please.

  He turned over and remained suspended between sleep and wakefulness.

  A nearby siren jarred him, ending his mind’s windings through a gauzy ether, dipping and rising as it floated past shifting, enigmatic images. Fully awake, he couldn’t remember any of them, but he felt they had meaning.

  His mood had changed. He wanted this. He had the skill and knowledge to pull off a defalcation, and he wanted freedom. Wrong? He was tired of people telling him what was right and what was wrong. How could it be right to send young men and women off to be maimed or to die agonized deaths, based on fabricated information? It seemed a lot of Americans thought so.

  Time to claim a better life. His credo: avoid harming people who don’t deserve it, and don’t put up with any bullshit. He went to sleep.

  Jake awoke Sunday with a headache and a fuzzy tongue. To get his blood circulating, he took a walk through his unremarkable neighborhood. He saw no one. Along the sidewalk, six-foot concrete walls protected apartment complexes, gapped by driveways with heavy gates. Farther from the main drag, two-story stucco homes huddled together, also fronted by walls or hedges.

  His idea gripped him. The details of a fraud stood clearly in his mind. So did a vision of a carefree ending. Every time he tried to come up with reasons not to do this, a voice in his head said to stop dithering, reminded him this is the main chance, the one most people never get.

  Monday evening, Jake stayed at the office, reading reports and writing emails.

  At six p.m., he looked out his window at his car, sitting alone in the parking lot. He walked among the cubicles, finding no one.

  His chest tight, his breathing shallow, Jake couldn’t still his shaking hands. He took a deep breath, relaxed his shoulders, and blinked. Indecision was what had gotten him to this place in life, countless opportunities lost for failure to act. Not now.

  He had all the passwords and authorizations to access systems he didn’t have permission to use. This, of course, was security flaw number one. If anybody questioned him, he would say he found a list on the floor and decided to search for evidence someone was up to no good. Worst would be a reprimand.

  He chose a corner cubicle where one of the clerks worked a
nd started the computer. First, he set up fake supplier accounts in the company’s system.

  At the sound of a woman’s voice among the cubicles at the other end of the aisle, his heart galloped. He couldn’t make out all the words, but the woman sounded angry. She said, “So … where are you?” Then silence.

  After a moment, Jake released a breath he’d been unaware of holding. He strolled toward the exit with his car keys in his hand, as though he were leaving.

  Claire Joseph, a clerk in the Purchasing Department, burst out of a cubicle toward him, and they both stopped short of a collision, her ample breasts brushing him. Jake stepped back. She stared at him, wide-eyed. Her fresh, dark red lipstick glistened under the ceiling lights.

  “Hi, Claire. Sorry to startle you. I was just leaving.” He raised his keys and turned to the door.

  “Me too. I was in the bathroom. What are you doing back here?” She gestured at the cubicles.

  “Oh, yeah. I heard something. I came to investigate. There are no cars out there besides mine.”

  “My boyfriend is supposed to pick me up, but he’s late. He should be here any minute.”

  Jake moved around between her and the door, and she gasped. He pushed the bar and held the door open.

  “Claire.” He beckoned. “Come on. I’ll watch to make sure you’re safe.”

  He stood in the doorway as an old Trans Am pulled up and Claire hurried toward it.

  She stopped and turned. “Aren’t you going to lock up now?”

  “Forgot something in my office. See you tomorrow.” Jake forced a benevolent smile.

  Claire opened the heavy car door and peeked over her shoulder at him. She said something to the driver that Jake couldn’t hear. He hoped she was giving the guy grief about being late or not opening the car door for her.

  Back at the computer, he created phony account setup sheets, complete with bank information and payment instructions, for new fake suppliers. For one of them, Royal Trading, he entered bogus purchases into the computer. To complete the paperwork, he forged purchase orders and copied as best he could the initials of another manager. Fake invoices with forged receiving documents would be filed later when he entered payment requests into the computer.

  After a few weeks, checks from Global Source Enterprises began showing up in the post office box for Royal Trading. He deposited the checks and waited, fearing discovery.

  Another month went by, and no one at the company had asked any questions. Time to ramp up the theft.

  Jake kept going. He created additional fake supplier accounts and entered more purchases. Soon, he had a hundred thousand in accounts spread among seven different banks. The operation was going scary smooth.

  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he awoke, trying to fill his lungs with short, deep gulps, nerves jangling. Pulled in one direction by the treasure he was accumulating, prodded in the other by his cautious nature, he also feared his new identity. He’d become a criminal, someone he didn’t even recognize. He always came to the same conclusion. Through with being a victim, he’d be his own agent in a harsh and uncertain world.

  Besides, he was in too far to back out and cover up. If he tried, the evidence of his actions would remain in the company books, waiting to be discovered. Even the transactions he erased would still be on the computer somewhere, accessible to someone who knew how to find them. He needed to finish this and be ready to take off at the first sign of trouble.

  As more money rolled in from the company to his post office boxes, he deposited it into accounts at local banks. He kept a stash in his apartment, occasionally adding to it by making bank withdrawals under ten thousand dollars to avoid transaction reporting.

  Time passed uneventfully. Within another three months, the hoard had reached half a million dollars. He felt better, even cut back on his drinking. A bit.

  He thought little about how life after the fraud would work out, except for researching non-extraditing countries where he could live a rich man. The Maldives or Marshall Islands sounded interesting. An open-air, beachside tropical house, walk-up bar on the sand, lots of smiling young women to choose from. Or, with that much money, he could hide right here in the USA, under a new identity.

  Oh yes, a new life.

  The following Thursday, Jake ambled down the hall to the Willis Turek’s office. Jake stuck his head in and asked, “Lunch?”

  “Does a fat baby fart?”

  Jake frowned. Willis loved playing the redneck and was unjustifiably proud of his one-liners.

  Jake and Willis trod the broken sidewalk, past aging warehouses, to Charlie’s. Jake’s toe caught on a crack, and he plunged forward, knees bent, hands smacking the ground in front of him. He’d barely avoided a face-plant. He stood and brushed the grit off, his countenance daring Willis to say something.

  “That was athletic, the way you kept yourself from falling flat.”

  Jake waited. The Willis he knew wouldn’t be satisfied to stop there.

  “Of course, with that pigeon-toed walk of yours, I’m not surprised you trip over your feet.”

  Jake halted, forcing Willis to turn to him. “As a matter of fact,” Jake said, “I was an athlete in high school. You may never have noticed, but a lot of athletes walk with their toes turned in.”

  “Does that explain why you walk in a kind of shuffle, leaning forward?”

  Jake strode ahead, straightening his body. The shuffle disappeared. Over his shoulder, he said, “Must be a high school affectation I never got over.”

  Willis scurried to catch up. “The cool jock walk in your high school was a lurch?”

  “The word is ‘lope,’ not ‘lurch.’ I’m not talking about this anymore. Screw you.”

  “A lope. This is getting weird.” Willis flashed an evil grin.

  “Screw you twice.”

  He opened the restaurant door and let Willis pass. The small Cuban eatery served the best fried pork chunks and black beans in Miami, despite its American name. The room and fixtures were worn but clean. Odors of cooking oil and garlic clung in the air, even outside the door, and would linger on their clothing and hair the rest of the day. They squeezed by several patrons waiting at the counter for their take-out orders.

  As they ate, Willis said, “You had that young file clerk in your office the other afternoon. Rita? Was she crying? What did you do, knock her up?”

  Jake stared until Willis dropped his gaze to his plate. “What the hell is that? Of course I didn’t knock her up. She’s just having problems.”

  “Some of the other employees are unhappy with her because she’s not doing her share.”

  “Not that this is any of your business, Willis, but she’s not catching on as fast as we hoped. She works hard, but she struggles with English. Business documents intimidate her, although she’s okay in conversation.” Jake forked a chunk of pork into his mouth, talking as he chewed. “I told her I understood she’s the breadwinner for her kids and not to worry. She needs more time to learn, and I said I’d take care of her. I offered to have the company pay for some night classes, and she accepted.”

  “Jake, you don’t have the authority to say that.”

  “Hell I don’t. My philosophy is do the right thing, even if the right thing’s a little outside the lines. Rita’s a quality person. I can handle the boss. As cheap as Malcolm is, I can convince him the cost of night school is peanuts compared to the cost of employee turnover. When she makes it, and she will, he’ll have a loyal employee, and those are hard to find.”

  Jake replayed the words he’d said in his mind. Do the right thing. Said the crook. Well, these were two completely different things, were they not? Helping a struggling but deserving employee on the one hand, lightening the money pile of a wealthy, disgusting human being on the other. Besides, the company would survive—would just need to run lean a couple years. Be good for Malcolm. M
aybe he’d end up trading his big cruiser for a used outboard. What a mental image—Malcolm on the back seat of an outboard, holding the tiller, a faded bucket hat on his head.

  Willis was talking. “So, you’re looking out for GSE, the company you love.”

  “Okay, I wanted to help her. So what?”

  A tiny smirk crept on Willis’s lips and vanished in an instant. He shifted in his seat, signaling for more water. “To change the subject, the auditor from the bank usually takes two days, but she said she might need to spend some extra time. Do you think she’s run into a problem?”

  Jake coughed. A tickle of alarm in the middle of his chest thinned his voice as he spoke. “She’s asking more about the inventory and the accounts receivable. The bank got burned on another loan. I believe that’s why she’s being careful. I’m sure she’ll leave soon with no issues to report.” Jake hoped he appeared nonchalant.

  “Well, the boss sure acted like a bulldog chewing on a wasp this morning. What else is bothering him?” Willis put down his fork and eyed Jake from under his brow.

  “The explanation is simple. We pay seven-fifty a day for the auditor, plus her expenses. She’s an independent contractor, keeps it all; more time on the job means more money.”

  “That might be it. Malcolm has a big house and an expensive car, but he doesn’t like to waste money at the company. You’d think he’d pay more attention to the big picture, but all he does is pinch pennies. He’s so tight the bathroom has a pay smoke alarm.” Willis’s eyes crinkled. Receiving no reaction, he said, “I’ve got a notion something bigger’s going on though.” He set his jaw and narrowed his eyes. “Do you know something?”

  Jake composed a frown and shook his head.

  Willis’s tone was mock threatening. “You’d do better trying to cornhole a bobcat than trying to keep me in the dark.”

  “Give me a break. Let’s go back. I have a ton of calls to return.”