Kim Oh 1: Real Dangerous Girl

by Kim Oh

  “You’re right,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to deal with these things. I mean, with the numbers and all. I can help.”

  “I know you can. It’s just –” He slumped down heavily in the chair behind the desk. “There’s problems. Other kinds of problems.”

  My spine stiffened a little. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean problems with hiring you. Big problems.”

  “Please.” My facade started to crack, with my barely suppressed nervousness leaking through. “I know there are some difficulties.” I thought I knew what he was talking about. “I know I don’t have any kind of resume, and I don’t have a lot of references. Or any.” My hands knotted around each other, squeezing themselves bloodless, as I leaned toward him. “But I can do the job. You know I can –”

  “That’s not the problem.” He sadly shook his head. “The problems aren’t with you. They’re with McIntyre.”

  “I don’t . . .” His words had brought me bolt upright again. “I don’t know what you mean . . .”

  “It’s simple, sweetheart. Too simple. I can’t afford to piss the man off. I couldn’t afford to do that before, and I sure as hell can’t do it now.” The club manager leaned back and laid his own hands across the rolling mound of his stomach. “He fired you, right? I mean, really fired you. As in your ass landing out on the street. That means there’s like emotions involved, right? You know how angry McIntyre can get.”

  I nodded without saying anything. That was something I was more than familiar with. Especially now.

  “He hears I took you on to do my books, after the way he made it clear how he feels about you, and then that gets rubbed off on me. He gets annoyed at me. More than annoyed – he gets mad. And then I’m in deep doo-doo.”

  “I understand.” My voice dwindled down to its scared little schoolgirl whisper. “You’re right.”

  “Try to see it from my point of view.” He spread his hands apart. “I just can’t afford to get on the wrong side of your old boss, not with all that’s about to pop right now –”

  Something clicked inside my head. Numbers, earnings projections, purchase fees, a whole scrolling column of things like that. I had seen them in the ledgers back at my old job, and on some correspondence that McIntyre had me go over for him. I looked back up at the man on the other side of the desk, my gaze narrowed and level.

  “He bought you out.” My voice was level now as well, coldly unemotional. “He bought this place.”

  “Well . . .” The manager shifted uncomfortably. “The deal’s not final yet. But yeah, it’s happening.” A weak smile showed on his face. “It’s a lot of money – I mean, by my standards. McIntyre’s got a lot of plans for this place. Taking it upscale and all. Turning it into something really nice. And . . . you know . . . profitable.”

  “And if I’m here, keeping your books, then that’s not going to happen. He’ll drop the deal.”

  “Yeah. He’ll back out. I know he will.”

  I wasn’t looking at the manager – the owner, really – of some sleazy little strip club. That I could’ve kept operating in the black, just by keeping an eagle eye on the numbers. I was looking at a tired old man, who just wanted to get out. And who was scared, not so much of Mr. McIntyre, as he was of his last chance to unload the place evaporating in front of his eyes. So much for doing me a payback favor, if he ever could.

  Did I tell you already, that I feel this world kind of sucks?

  “I’m sorry I bothered you.” I watched my own hands gathering up my purse from my lap. Then I stopped before I stood up, to give him one more chance. “He wouldn’t have to know. I’d just be here in the back room. I’d stay out of sight, nobody would have to know . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” He looked really old then. “I just can’t take the chance.”

  “All right.” I stood up. “I understand. Believe me, I do.”

  “Look, uh, no hard feelings –” He called after me as I headed for the door. “Tell Ernie to set one up for you, on the house. Set up a couple. It doesn’t matter if you’re under-age . . .”

  I couldn’t hear the rest of what the manager was saying. I just kept walking until the padded rail of the bar door was against my hand. I pushed it open and stepped out into the street’s eye-achingly bright sunlight.

  * * *

  I mulled over what I had just found out, all the way home.

  A motorcycle is good for that sort of thing, as long you’re not letting your emotions dictate your thoughts. You can do some cold brooding when you’re leaned over the handlebars of a sportbike. Even if you shouldn’t.

  There had been a reason for my firing up the Ninja, out where I had left it at the curb in front of the apartment building, and using it to get around town rather than riding the bus. I had more places on my list than that one bar, to check into about getting a job. Most of them were on the less-than-seemly side, for two reasons. One, those were the kinds of places that I had learned about, and met the people who ran or owned them, while I had still being working for McIntyre. And two, with my nonexistent resume, I figured I had a better shot with those kinds of places than something respectable, a place big enough to have an HR department with interview procedures and a clipboard full of forms to fill out. The great thing about seedy places is that they’re more open to paying people under the table, and I had already set my mind to cutting whatever low-ball deal I had to in order to land any kind of gig.

  But now, all those plans had flown out of my head and were tumbling somewhere behind me on the road, in the dust kicked up by the motorcycle. It wasn’t that the bar I’d just been to had been my best shot, with the manager having said a while back that he owed me a favor, look him up if I ever needed anything, so forth and so forth. It was the realization that I’d probably get the same reaction at every place I went into, all over the city. I knew about McIntyre’s various business enterprises, every kind, from the shady to the legitimate. He had his wily little tentacles into places of every variety; I wouldn’t have had to stay so late every night, going over the books, if there hadn’t been so many revenue sources to track. The upshot of that being, as I realized now, that there were more people who owed McIntyre favors than would ever owe me. Or they would like to do him a favor and get something back in return from him. Let’s face it, he was a good person for a businessman to be on the right side of. And if things went wrong? Not so good.

  That’s what McIntyre’s pet thugs like Michael were useful for. There probably were plenty of business types who weren’t aware that a minor employee like me had gotten the boot from McIntyre’s company – why would they be? – and I might even have been able to talk my way into some kind of low-paid bookkeeper job with one of them. But at some point, and sooner rather than later, they would discover that about me, and I’d be out on the street again. Then what? Plus, I was risking the chance of bringing myself back to McIntyre’s attention, when I’d just as soon stay out of his mind, completely forgotten.

  So the stay put and stay out of sight strategy, of keeping it cool and finding a job – any kind of job – well, that was blown up, right in my face. In this town, I couldn’t get hired at McDonald’s.

  I kept on thinking, as the wind streamed past my helmet.

  That was a mistake. When you think, you come up with ideas. And not all of them are good.

  As I wove the motorcycle through the street traffic – I was already getting pretty good at this, or so I thought – an idea settled into my brain. A plan, what to do next . . .

  This one, I couldn’t blame on having taken a whack to the head when I’d gone down with the bike. Something this stupid, I had to have come up with all on my own.

  * * *

  The only thing this plan had going for it was that I didn’t have to go home to the apartment and change my clothes. I already had my business-lady outfit on.

  Which was what the plan revolved around. This is what I’d been wearing a couple of days before, when I’d come waltzing into McI
ntyre’s building, all set to start my new career as CFO of his company. Just as I expected – or at least hoped – the security guard in the lobby, the one who’d asked to see my ID card, remembered me. And waved me right on through. He hadn’t seen me get thrown out in the alley, and nobody had told him about it. There were a whole batch of procedures that McIntyre and his crew would have to tighten up on, now that they were going corporate. But they hadn’t yet.

  Late afternoon, between three and four, there weren’t that many people going in and out of the elevators. I was able to get one all to myself, heading up to the floor where I used to work.

  My heart was pounding in my throat when the elevator came to a stop. All it would take would be for the doors to slide open and have McIntyre on the other side, or Michael, or any number of other people who knew that I shouldn’t be there, and I’d be screwed. Second time around, I wouldn’t just be tossed out at ground level; Michael would probably try to go for yardage off the top of the building.

  I held my breath – the elevator doors slid apart – and nobody. I could feel my spine unclench like a boiled ramen noodle. I stuck my head out, looked in both directions down the hallway, and saw no one. My luck was holding out for the moment, even if my smarts had already departed.

  Also fortunately, my cubbyhole had been over on the other side, away from where Mr. McIntyre and the other execs had their nicely furnished offices. I scooted that way.

  Nobody saw me going into the cramped, windowless space where I had sweated away for so long. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that my desk was still there. If it had been moved out, it would have been Game Over for me, at least as far as this bright idea was concerned. I left the light off as I zipped around behind it – I knew exactly where what I had come for would be.

  I spun the dial on the bottom drawer’s combination lock – I could make out the numbers – and pulled it open. There it was. A black vinyl binder, filled with all the CD-ROM disks that I had burned over the last year. Fifty-something shiny silver disks, one for each week. My entire cumulative backup of Mr. McIntyre’s finances. All his business dealings, every dollar that came in or went out of all the intricately entwined and overlapping accounts, and all the funky things those dollars did in-between. Everything. That MBA putz who McIntyre had actually made his CFO was probably over in his corner office right now, going through page after page of ledgers and printouts, trying to pull all this information together. And here it was, in the big fat binder that I lifted out of the desk drawer with both hands.

  “This the one?”

  Crap. Voices at the cubbyhole doorway. I stay crouched down behind the desk so whoever it is can’t see me.

  “Yeah. We gotta get all this junk cleared out. Office services wants to turn it back into a broom closet. Janitors are tired of going to the basement to store their mops.”

  I could hear the two men clumping into the room. Holding the disk binder to my breast, I crawled under the desk. From below its edges, I could see their scuffed-up work boots on either side. The desk rose a couple of inches above my head as they grabbed it and lifted. They started carrying it toward the door, not noticing that I was scooting along underneath it.

  “Hold up –”

  They stopped.

  “We can’t get this out,” continued one of them. “Not with that in the way.”

  I realized what he meant. One of the emptied-out file cabinets was so close to the door, they wouldn’t be able to turn the desk around to get it out.

  “Okay, fine.” That was the other one, sounding all exasperated and put-upon. “Then let’s get the other stuff out first.”

  “Moron. You were the one who went for this stupid desk –”

  They went on bickering away as they set the desk down, its underside pressing against the back of my lowered head. I could hear them wrestling with one of the file cabinets, then dragging it out into the hallway.

  I waited another minute with my breath held, until their voices faded away. I crawled out from under the desk, went to the doorway, and looked out. Nobody. I ran for the elevator.

  When I got down to the lobby, I had to fight the urge to run again. With the binder under my arm, I headed for the street as nervelessly as I could . . .

  * * *

  I didn’t call ahead to the television station. Didn’t make an appointment or anything. I just went on over there, with the binder and my purse strapped to the back of the motorcycle seat behind me.

  You’d think that someplace like that would be more locked down, what with all the crazy people in the world who might get ticked about something they see on a news show. Maybe it was because I looked so harmless, or like I belonged there. Most people don’t seem to think that a tiny Asian girl in a business-lady suit is likely to do much damage. Maybe I’ve proved them wrong – but that all came later.

  I left the Ninja parked out by the vans with the big transmission antennas on their roofs. Inside the building, I managed to ask around and finagle myself up to the second floor where the offices and cubicles for the various producers and reporters were. Walking around, acting as if I was supposed to be there, looking at the name plaques outside the doors, I finally found the one I was looking for.

  “Can I help you?” The tall brunette pounding away at the keyboard didn’t even look away from her computer screen. She radiated deadline pressure. “If it’s a complaint about that zoning coverage we did on the three o’clock, you need to go talk to Dave Henderson. Wasn’t my baby.”

  “Miss Ibanez?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at me, then went back to typing. “That’s right.”

  The name plaque outside her door actually read KAREN IBANEZ. I had seen her a million times on the evening news. She did a lot of reporting on local politics. A year or so ago, she’d gotten some kind of award for a series that had wound up getting a city councilman bounced in a recall election. That was why I figured she’d be the best one to talk to.

  “I’ve got something you might be interested in.” I held the disk binder up in both hands. “Something that might be . . . you know . . . news.”

  She looked at the binder, then up to my face. “So who are you?”

  I told her my name. And who I used to work for.

  That got a raised eyebrow from her. “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “For how long?”

  “A year. And a little more.”

  “Huh.” She swiveled her chair around and leaned back in it. “You know . . . I’ve had to deal with some people before, who work for McIntyre.” She folded her arms, tilting her head to one side as she studied me. “As a general rule, they’re bigger and uglier than you are. And they don’t come around here, asking to talk to somebody like me.”

  “No. They wouldn’t.”

  “They don’t even usually talk to a grand jury. Not without a lawyer sitting on either side of them. At least –” She gave a shrug. “The ones who are still working for him don’t. The ones who used to work for him, they’re found floating face-down in the river.”

  I nodded. I had cut checks, to pay for things like that to happen.

  “So how come you’re standing here, still breathing and all?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I guess they didn’t think I was important enough to bother with. Or that I’d ever do something like this.”

  “That’s a little hard to believe. McIntyre has a reputation for being . . . kind of thorough. About that sort of thing.” She reached a hand out toward the binder. “So let me see what you got.”

  There was another chair in the cubicle, that I pulled over so I could sit down beside her. I opened up the binder, pulled out the most recent backup disk and fed it into her computer. A couple of pokes on her keyboard and a screenful of numbers appeared on the screen.

  “Okay –” I leaned forward and jabbed a forefinger at a row of digits. “These are the transfers between one of the front companies and a couple of banks down in the Bahamas. None of th
is ever got reported to the currency control agencies. And this –”

  I scrolled down. I was in my element now.

  “This is a shuffle between a wholly owned mortgage pool and a back-end money-laundering scheme.” My fingernail tapped against the screen. “You see, each one of these takes the monthly float off a union pension fund, and routing it through –”

  “Yeah, yeah; right. Whatever,” said the TV reporter.

  The tone in her voice brought me up short.

  “So is this your insurance or something?” She set back, looking at the screen. “Because you’re no fool, are you? The whole time you were slaving away for McIntyre, at the back of your mind you were thinking that maybe someday he might screw you over. Right?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Sure. And that’s why you kept all these records. So if something shitty happened between you and your boss, you’d be able to get back at him. Maybe blackmail him a little, huh?”

  “No –” I shook my head. “That’s not what I want.”

  “Or maybe – just get a little revenge?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t care about people’s reasons for doing things. That’s not my job.” She pointed to the screen. “You know what you have here?”

  Shrinking back into the chair, I shook my head.

  “You don’t have squat. That’s what you’ve got.”

  “But –”

  She turned the computer screen in my direction. “On-the-Spot News brings you – numbers!” She punched a key and the screen changed. “And now – more numbers!” She punched another key and the screen went blank.