The Gold Club: A White Collar Crime Thriller

by David Haskell

  The director looked ready to say something. Instead, he relented, slumping in frustration and nodding his permission for her to step away and collect herself.

  * * *

  A few minutes had passed. Til had taken refuge in a neutral corner, trying hard not to lose it, wondering if she should just call for the fifth take and get it over with. The director, in his own corner across the room, was seething in silence. He glared at his watch every few seconds, but otherwise did nothing to rush her.

  That’s when the star of the movie, a teen idol who went by the stage name of Jake McCray, a kid who’d not given her so much as the time of day since they met, was the only one to approach her with a mild expression and a cup of cool water.

  She sniffed back her emotion and tried to look somewhat presentable in front of the lead. “Thanks.”

  “No worries,” he said, meeting her gaze and offering a gentle smile. “Listen, you wanna come back to my trailer for a few? I can call a break.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said, inwardly hopeful.

  “Naw, it’s cool,” he looked around, motioning to one of the stage hands to join them. “I could use the time myself. Let’s go.”

  He said a few words to the flunky, and she heard the director behind them calling for “A ten, that’s it. And no more!” as they turned the corner and stepped up into Jake’s plush trailer.

  “Coke?” he asked, flopping into one of his couches and kicking off his shoes.

  “No, thanks,” she replied, “I’m trying to cut back on caffeine.”

  He laughed, pulling a baggie out of the inside pocket of his Beaver OK jacket. He shook the white powder in her direction and winked.

  Oh. Excitement and fear hit all at once. She’d never done anything like that before, nothing so hardcore. Never even seen the drug, though she was familiar enough with friends sneaking off somewhere to do it and coming back happy. She fought back her initial feeling of reluctance, going with her wild side instead. The situation and the company that were practically screaming for her to go for it. She slid down beside him and moved in close, smelling a strong, exotic fragrance on his neck when she put her hand on his shoulder. “You first,” she said. She would try it, just this once, but she needed him take the lead.

  He smiled, tapping the blow onto a small square on the table. She realized it was a mirror only when she caught the reflection of the little white rocks. Next to it was a razor blade. She knew then, with some trepidation, that this was nothing unfamiliar for the much younger, much more famous star.

  He must have caught her reluctance. Looking back at her with those deep eyes, he said, “It’s cool. Once you have a bump or two, the lines’ll come easier.”

  She nodded, not sure if he meant lines of coke or lines of dialogue, but dismissing the thought as she sank deeper into the moment. This is nothing to worry about, she remembered thinking as she leaned down to watch how he was doing it. A few minutes later her worries had melted away, like snow in springtime.

  ~ 28 ~

  Confrontations

  “I’m not sure I heard you correctly.” Behind the words, Marge’s eyes lit and her lids narrowed. Her voice, though low and measured, shook slightly. All of this served to caution Ted, make him aware of her simmering outrage. A woman scorned. Funny that image would spring to mind, Ted thought to himself, even through his life of bad relationships and pissing off women he’d never actually scorned one of them til now. “I don’t think I heard you right. Did you just give me an ultimatum, Ted? Did you actually just threaten me?”

  Ted put his hands up in a calming gesture, realizing too late that she meant business. “Now, Marge, I didn’t make any threats, I just said there would be consequences. I’m not—”

  “After all I’ve done for this club? For you, Ted!”

  “Look...let’s not blow this out of proportion, okay?” He tried a half-smile, which only provoked a heavier scowl out of her. He reverted back to a neutral, hopefully sympathetic expression. Looking over at Phil for some hint of support, his partner simply ignored the glance, hunkering down in the corner and trying to look small.

  “Out of proportion?” she went on, “I have been sick, physically sick over this disaster of a situation, ever since you dumped it in my lap!”

  “Come on, Marge. Be fair now, you did agree to handle the clients,” he tried to keep his own voice from shaking. Confrontation was hardly his strength. Marge seemed to have developed a taste for it, though.

  “You didn’t give me much of a choice, Ted. And you either!” she spat, turning her blazing gaze onto Phil’s instinctively shrinking form. He gulped hard, but otherwise stood up to the challenge.

  “Marge, please, will you just, for a minute?” Ted was stammering out the words now. He thought about trying a different tack, throw some of that confrontation back at her maybe. He might have done just that, had the still-rising anger of Mt. Marge not been re-directed back at him in a full-bore fiery stare. He gave up and went silent too.

  “You want consequences? I’ll give you consequences. I’m out!” She let that notion sink in hard, then she turned and stormed out, muttering to herself; “Now let’s see how easy it is for them to...gonna tell me what I can and can’t...lot of nerve...”

  When she slammed the door it cracked on impact, then swung halfway back, a few stray splinters falling to the floor beneath.

  Phil looked at his partner, willing to speak now that she was gone. “Now what? We’re pretty screwed without her.”

  Ted said nothing, fearful of jeopardizing his one remaining friendship. Besides, Phil was absolutely right.

  * * *

  Henry Fangue Jr., Director of Operational Security. In a space designed to intimidate, this nameplate was the one flaw. Unhappy though he was with it, Hank had long since given up any hope of change. He hated ‘Henry’, never went by it when given the choice—but all that red-tape? Any attempt to force a name change through the system was just, by the thinest of hairs, too much to bother with. Besides, he reasoned, anybody unlucky enough to be summoned here addressed him as Mr. Fangue anyway.

  The room was sufficiently messy to indicate his lack of interest in such things, and appropriately adorned with citations and awards from police and other assorted organizations. He kept it dark, both in lighting and with his choice of color scheme. It all served to disorient and scare people. The man across the desk from him looked sufficiently frightened by it all, just like the rest he’d been grilling all week.

  He tapped lazily at his keyboard as the lame excuses grew increasingly desperate. The guy had been in the hot seat for a while, and Fangue was beginning to feel a twinge of sympathy, or more likely boredom disguised as emotion. Still, he was nothing if not thorough, and this one had sent up a red flag and landed him on the list. C’est la vie.

  "So you claim you haven’t accessed any outside sites, or done any non-business related work on your terminal?"

  "No,”—the man shook his head violently—“definitely not!"

  "Never?" Fangue resisted the urge to lick his lips.

  "Never. I swear!"

  "So, you’re saying you definitely didn’t do it within the last month, then?"

  Just the slightest hesitation, but he shook his head again, stubbornly maintaining his innocence. Hank found that admirable for some reason, though he chuckled inwardly at the futility of it all. "Of course not!” the man railed on, digging in deeper, “Not ever. I wouldn’t risk my job over it!"

  Enough rope to hang with. "So you claim you haven’t accessed any outside sites, or done any outside business.” This prompted another vigorous nod. “Then I’m a little bit confused about something. It looks like you accessed an outside server two weeks ago Thursday." He pointed at the terminal and spun it around for the guy to see for himself. “Almost forty-five minutes, according to your own desktop records.”

  The guy went pale as he stared at the evidence Fangue had shoved in his face. He began to stutter out an excuse, but w
as stopped with a cold palm.

  “All I want to hear right now is ‘I did it, Mr. Fangue’,” said Fangue.

  “Oh, Jesus,”—more stuttering—“I was just shopping. For my wife. Her birthday—”

  “I did it, Mr. Fangue...” he said with more of a drawl, a waving motion of the hands towards his body, and just enough sarcasm to crush any remaining hope.

  The man slumped and gave up. “I did it.”

  He waited a second for the honorific, but decided to let it go. He had what he needed. “That’s better,” Fangue replied.

  Funny thing was, Fangue had been considering letting this guy off the hook with a warning. He wasn’t one of the targets, the grilling had proved that much. And even though the infraction was worthy of termination, he wasn’t looking to bust people unless they might lead him higher up. But one thing Fangue hated was being lied to. The man in the hot seat had no way of knowing he’d sealed his own fate, simply by trying to cover his ass. What they never stopped to think about was the fact that, once they were in this office, there was no talking their way out.

  “Unfortunately, company policy is clear on this—”

  “Oh Jeez, come on man. I’ve got a family! Can’t you...?” His request hung in the air, trailing off under Fangue’s withering stare.

  “My hands are tied.” He allowed the implication of sympathy to enter his tone, just a little, mostly to keep the guy from going postal. He’d dealt with such situations before, was confident in his ability to handle any resulting confrontations, but that didn’t mean he needed to go around inviting problems.

  “You’ll have to stop off at personnel to sign some things.”

  “Wait! Stop just a second...”—the man sat up straighter—“You said you were looking for hackers, right?”

  “Something like that,” Fangue, copying the man, sat up straighter as well. This mirroring technique, used to encourage suspects to elaborate, seemed to be working quite well.

  “Well, I haven’t seen that, not exactly.” His eyes went saucer-wide when Fangue yawned and looked away. “But! But, I did catch something shady going on though...”

  Fangue let a beat pass, then turned back to face the man.

  “I seen this Infotech guy, someone who has no business talking to customers and clients mind you, but this guy has been doing a lot of talking to customers and clients. It’s nowheres close to his job description. He and one of the V.V.C.R. coordinators are always sending out messages and making calls.”

  Neither encouraging nor dismissing, Fangue nodded the story along.

  The man hesitated, gulped some air, and continued, “So anyways, these guys think nobody’s paying attention, that’s why they’re so out in the open all the time. They even work out of an empty office sometimes, act like it’s their own place or something. And they’ve got a bunch of Sahara people reporting to them, too, only they do it all through go-betweens. It’s a real racket, I’m telling you.” The silence that followed caused the man to groan in anguish. “Oh, come on, man. That’s got to be worth something!”

  He was obviously telling the truth, he was practically begging at this point, and desperate to be taken seriously. Even so, Fangue was about to dismiss the whole thing, except for one detail about the job title that gave him pause.

  “Okay, you’ve got my attention,” Fangue said, “who did you say the coordinator’s name was?”

  “I didn’t,” the man replied, looking confused. Then it dawned on him what Fangue was after. “Oh, right! Ward, that’s his name, I think. Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. Ted Ward, from V.V.C.R.”

  Fangue nodded somberly. “And his friend from Infotech, tell me more about that one...”

  The sobbing employee left the office a tedious twenty minutes later, beside himself with relief for getting to keep his shitty job. Fangue couldn’t decide if the scene was pitiable or just pathetic. He felt his stomach churn as he watched the man go. Shaking his head, he returned to his desk and tapped out two antacids from an industrial-sized bottle. He returned the bottle to its place, spying an equally large bottle of Jim Beam stuffed down low in the back of the drawer. His old boss Evans must have left it behind ages ago. He eyed the liquor but dismissed the urge, turning his attention to the human resources database instead.

  A dorky image filled the screen, kicking his predatory instincts into overdrive with such impact that he actually shivered. Hello, Philip Caldorian. Fangue suddenly felt more upbeat than he had in a long time. Since before this whole affair had taken over his attention, in fact. He finally had a bead on someone who wasn’t a bit-player—and with it, the key to breaking this operation wide open. Not to mention figure out what that idiot Hamm was doing protecting this coordinator. He knew there was something about that guy. Ted Ward—boyfriend of the pop star, always underfoot whenever trouble cropped up. Fangue’s hunches were rarely off the mark, and this time had been no exception. It promised to be a highly enlightening investigation from here on out.

  * * *

  Marge needed to remove all traces of her handiwork from the system. For that she needed access, and privacy; neither of which were easy to come by. She had to go back to the loft.

  It was the last place she expected to run into anyone, but a shadow on the wall stopped her dead in her tracks. She raised hand to mouth, stifling a gasp—someone was using the terminal. Instinctively, she ducked behind a file cabinet and held her breath, her mind racing. She had no idea what to do. If she left without checking the surveillance monitors, she risked being spotted by anyone passing through the corridor. She might not be able to talk her way out of that, not with the ‘Security Personnel Only’ sign plastered right on the door. She couldn’t just sit here until whoever it was passed by, either. She’d come off as even more guilty if she were caught skulking around where she didn’t belong.

  She peered around the cabinet and tried to get a look at the monitors above the workstation, but they were too small to make out. All she could see was the stranger, and flickering images on the main terminal that might be security files, though she wasn’t entirely sure. The stranger was a short haired woman, and looked vaguely familiar. One of my girls? Examining all the detail she could from her rather distant vantage point, she ventured a guess that it might be Judy Schott. Why does she need to be here? The question rattled around in her mind, and she struggled to determine some hint of reason behind this.

  Was it possible that Judy had been sent here? Maybe Phil had done it for whatever reason, but she couldn’t imagine why. And as far as she knew, the two of them weren’t close anyway. In any case, she had to find out if this was a threat, so Marge steeled herself and emerged from behind the cabinet. “What are you doing?” she demanded, hoping her sudden appearance might throw Judy off.

  Judy paused, lifted her fingers from the keyboard, and turned slowly. The creak of the chair joints pierced the musty air, forcing a wince out of Marge. Stepping to one side, she peered over Judy’s shoulder for a better look—the display contained a summary of logins and time differentials, the names easily recognizable. She was keeping tabs on club staffers. Judy noted Marge’s interest, glancing over her shoulder to look at the screen for herself. When she turned back, there was no indication of concern on her face. “Oh, I think you know perfectly well what I’m doing,” she deadpanned, “and I don’t need any help from you, so if you don’t mind...”

  “I don’t know what kind of a busybody you think I am,” Marge protested, “but I’m sure I don’t know what you’re driving at.”

  Judy rolled her eyes.

  Marge took offense at the dismissal. “And I’m sure I don’t appreciate the insinuation.” As she stared into the face of the younger woman, an adversarial instinct came over her, and she allowed the feeling of distain to well up.

  Judy clucked and pulled her long fingernails across the arms of the chair. She seemed to enjoy causing discomfort, like a casual sadist. “Really, Marge?” she said, “You’ve never been in here before? Never done any obs
ervations? Never checked up on your peers from on high?” Rolling her eyes, she turned back to the computer.

  Marge crossed her arms tight. Defensive, sure, but it stopped her from shaking, which was the main objective. Who has she been talking to? Tamping down the urge to lash out, instead Marge held back and softened her tone, trying to switch up and play the reasonable one. “No, Judy. I’ve never done any such thing. And I don’t think I’m being unfair in asking for a simple explanation. Can’t we both just calm down and talk like civilized people?”

  This time Judy didn’t even look back from her work. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said, scrolling through the list. “There’s nothing for us to talk about. You’re just as culpable as everyone else I’m going to expose.”

  Expose? What on earth is she planning? “I don’t really think that’s a good—”

  “And I really don’t care what you think. We’re done here.” She went silent. Only her mouse clicks and the soft green glow broke the stillness of the room.

  Marge took a breath, the familiar scent of damp mold bringing her back to reality. There was nothing she could do if Judy wanted to betray them, and that seemed to be her intent. The only thing left to do was warn the others, and hope it wasn’t too late. She turned without another word, and walked out.

  * * *

  After checking the local feeds to make sure Marge wasn’t still lurking around nearby, Judy felt comfortable enough to access the real data she’d come for. Calling up protected files that could only be accessed from a security station, she pecked out a backdoor password she’d lifted from Infotech, then began sifting through the disorganized mess until she found the ones marked ‘banking’. She already had an idea of what she might find, based on cryptic messages that had been sent out to all the club staffers, but when she opened up the accounts spreadsheet she almost screamed for joy—all the proof she was hoping for was right here in this document. Too perfect, she thought, laughing inwardly as she soaked in all those numbers. They were closing down all the club accounts, in all the banks, except for one trust into which they were funneling every penny. It looked like they were trying to gather everything together, perhaps to parcel off and disburse everyone’s cut before putting the brakes on the club. Unless I get to it first. Smiling widely, she fought to contain her excitement as she wrote down the account details.