White Collar Blackmail

by Peter Ralph

  “What’s a few minutes between friends?” Becker responded. “He’ll be here soon enough, and you’re not flying out until tomorrow morning, so it’s not as if he’s holding you up, is it?”

  “I think you’re scared of hi−”

  “Scared of who?” Brock Borchard asked as he took the chair at the opposite end of the table to Becker. He was thirty-five and the only director without academic qualifications. He had approached Becker about joining ACME after he found them sniffing around a business in Chicago that he too was interested in buying. It had been difficult and cost tens of thousands of dollars to get a handle on Borchard. Even now the unknowns far outweighed the knowns. Born Bratislav Bozovic on a small farm on the outskirts of Belgrade, his mother had died bearing him. Serbia was experiencing severe economic problems as a result of its history of wars and skirmishes. His father was a brute of a man with a violent temper who, despite severe food shortages, could always find a drink. Raised by his uncles and his father’s male friends, young Bratislav rarely saw or spoke to a woman while he was growing up. He later made up for it in a prolific way. Little was known about how he entered the U.S., but private investigators had discovered the foundation of his wealth was collecting debts and pimping in Chicago while still in his mid-teens. It had provided him with the seed capital to get into drugs, illegal gambling, loan sharking, and the construction of high-rise buildings. He was the only builder in Chicago without union problems. He employed three compatriots as bodyguards, union organizers and standover men, who along with him were known as the Serbian Mafia.

  “Hello, Brock,” Becker said, eyeing the younger man. His jet black hair was pushed back in the style of the old-time Chicago gangsters, and his eyes were cold and expressionless. His lips were thin and cruel and a fine almost perfectly straight scar ran from the right side of his forehead to his jaw. “Arthur was just saying that he thought I was scared of the newly appointed police chief. I was about to disagree, but only a fool underestimates his enemies. I’m wary of him but so long as he stays away from our businesses he can do what he likes.”

  “Is the bum on our payroll?” Borchard asked.

  “Not yet. We still don’t know if he’s receptive,” Becker replied.

  “Christ, everyone’s fuckin’ receptive,” Borchard replied. “Ya just gotta get the size of the bribe right. Don’t haggle or penny pinch. I can tell ya from firsthand experience that having the police chief in our back pocket is worth a shitload. We’ll get back what we pay him a hundredfold.”

  “I thought this meeting was about new projects,” Harry O’Brien interrupted. “Can we get on with it?”

  “Harry’s got a hot date.” Becker laughed. “Lydia, do you have anything new on the drawing board?”

  Five years earlier, she had been a dorky actuary, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and clothes from the Victorian era. Laser-eye surgery and the skills of the best plastic surgeon in New York had enhanced her face, upper deck, and confidence. Add a designer wardrobe and visits from a personal trainer every other day and you had a hot, assertive woman in her prime. “Nothing new,” she said, “but I’m expecting to foreclose on those three new exploration wells in the next ten days.”

  “How’d they perform?” Arthur Ridgeway asked.

  “The first two are gushers, and they’re drilling the third now. Because of their success, they’re going to expect us to extend the finance package. They’re going to be in for a shock,” Lydia responded.

  “You lent them just enough to ensure they’d fail,” Ridgeway said.

  “Exactly, and I didn’t release the loan monies until after they’d drilled the first well and struck pay dirt,” Lydia said.

  “Well done, Lydia,” Becker said. “Those wells will add nicely to our energy portfolio. Okay, Harry, you’re in such a hurry, you’re up next.”

  “I’m making sure that our transport business wins a major tender for the delivery of milk in the south.” O’Brien grinned, pushing his chair back so that the table didn't confine his ample girth.

  “And how are you doing that?” Becker followed up.

  “The current contractor, Webb Transport, is having all sorts of difficulties.” O’Brien laughed and his jowls jiggled. “Their drivers are blowing up engines, backing into loading docks and smashing rear tail lights not to say anything of delivering late and leaving retailers stranded. They’ll be lucky to survive, let alone be competitive with the current tender.”

  “What’s it costin’ and what are we gettin’ out of it?” Borchard asked.

  “About two million to our friends at the Transport Employees Union to ensure their drivers wreck Webb’s tractors and trailers. The contract’s worth a hundred mil and will add ten mil to the bottom line,” O’Brien replied.

  “Good stuff,” Borchard said. “Well done, Harry.”

  Murmured congratulations went around the board table before Becker asked Arthur Ridgeway if he had anything new to report.

  “Nothing new, but as you know our spare parts business, Trailer Parts, has been incurring losses because it’s under severe pricing pressure from Superior Spares. I’ve got one of our people into Superior’s head office. He’s an accountant. We’ll soon have their price lists, costs and know where they’re buying their parts. If I find our suppliers have been supplying them at better prices than us, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “How long’s our spy been on the job?” Becker asked.

  “Two weeks. It’ll be a month or so before we have anything. I told him to be careful. He’s no good to us if he gets caught,” Ridgeway said.

  “I like it,” Borchard said. “I’ve got nothin’ new, but I’ll have something juicy to report at our next meeting. I can report that that fuckin’ weirdo, Frampton, is no longer a problem.”

  “Did you have to kill him?” Ridgeway asked.

  “Fuck, Arty, you were at the last meetin’ when I was told to fix the problem. Once he found out that he had incurable cancer there was nothin’ to stop him blowin’ the whistle. Do ya think he was still worried about us tellin’ the world he was a fuckin’ sicko? He was about to come outta the closet and confess that he’d been leakin’ inside information. Jeez, he only had six months to live.”

  “I don’t like it,” Ridgeway said. “We’re not murderers.”

  “Really? Dermott, why don’t ya tell Arty about Valerie Gibson?” Borchard said.

  “Unfortunately the drugs have got her. It’s only a matter of time before she’s outed and then we won’t have any hold on her,” Becker replied. “She’ll soon blab to the SEC that she leaked inside information about her employer.”

  “Yeah, she’s a crackhead,” Borchard said, “and when she’s outed she’s gonna sing like a canary.”

  “You-you’re gonna kill her too?” Ridgeway said, shaking his head.

  “We’re gonna give her one final shot.” Borchard smirked. “She’ll die happy.”

  “It has to be done, Arthur,” Lydia Coe said. “If she talks, the SEC will be all over those stock transactions.”

  “Dermott, I know you’re busting to tell us about your latest convert,” O’Brien interjected. “He’ll more than replace Frampton and Gibson.”

  “We’ve had our eye on a young accountant who’s an audit manager with Montgomery Hastings & Pierce. He gambles on the horses at one of the betting parlors on the edge of Chinatown. He’s been having an incredible run using some convoluted, self-designed betting system,” Becker said.

  “He’ll end up losin’,” Borchard said, “they always do.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, so we’ve made sure that his credit’s been extended to half a mil. When he starts losing we’ll own him,” Becker said.

  “Half a mil’s not much,” Ridgeway said, “surely he’ll be able to get the money from somewhere. Is his family poor or something?”

  “On the contrary, and that’s the beauty of it.” Becker smiled. “His father’s a surgeon; his mother’s a doctor, and he has a sister and brother who are bo
th surgeons. He’s the black sheep, the failure of the family. He went to the best schools, the same ones his siblings went to and ended up as an accountant and major disappointment to his father. The betting system is his way of proving that he’s as smart as, and can make as much money as anyone else in the family. He’ll never ask them to cover a gambling debt. Can you imagine the shame?”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s all very interestin’,” Borchard said. “Whatta we get out of it?”

  “I’m getting to it,” Becker responded. “Montgomery Hastings & Pierce is a very prestigious firm, and the big four have been trying to take them over for years without success. But what’s most appealing about them is that they audit forty public companies listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ.”

  “What’s the big four?” Borchard interrupted.

  “The four biggest accounting firms in the world,” Becker said. “Can you save your questions until I’m finished? This guy will have access to the sales and profits of those companies before they’re reported to the market. When he’s in our pocket, we’ll also have that information. It’ll be like reading tomorrow’s newspapers today.”

  “Fantastic,” Ridgeway said.

  “Brilliant,” Lydia Coe chimed in.

  “I’ll ask ya again. Whatta we get out of it?” Borchard said.

  “The return could be north of fifty mil for an outlay of two,” Becker replied.

  “It sure makes my milk deal look puny,” O’Brien said.

  “Yeah, looks okay, Dermott, but so did that deal ya had Elliot do with the Italian stockbroker. The prick who fed us bullshit inside information,” Borchard said. “Didn’t we end up payin’ him and losin’ millions?”

  “We paid Giovani a million dollars for the information, and he invested it in the same stocks he recommended to us,” Becker said. “This is different. We’ll be dealing in facts, not rumors, and if it works, we’ll be able to infiltrate other accounting firms using the same or similar methods.”

  “For a fifty mil return it’s worth a try,” Borchard said. “Whatta ya gonna to do about Giovani?”

  “Do? I’m not going to do anything. What do you expect me to do?” Becker replied.

  “We lost millions, and you paid him a mil for bullshit! Did ya at least get that back? Because if ya didn’t, it sends a terrible message to others who deal with us. It says we’re soft, we can be ripped off, and we’re gonna do nothin’ about it. It’s a bad message. Next thing you know we’ll have stooges linin’ up at the door to feed us bullshit,” Borchard said. “Dermott, you've got a good man in Jack Elliot workin’ for you. Get him to take care of it.”

  “He can’t pay us back. Didn’t you hear me? He put the million into the same stocks he recommended to us. I told you when you joined us that the only people we prematurely terminate are those who might pose a threat. Giovani’s not a dying weirdo or an out of control drug addict. He’s no threat to us. We’re not the Mafia, you know.” Becker laughed. “And, unlike the weirdo and the addict, he has a large family. If anything happens to him, there’ll be a lot of questions asked.”

  Borchard sat at the end of the table massaging his goatee with his thumb and forefinger. He was an intimidating presence, lean as a greyhound with a swarthy complexion and piercing black eyes. “Prematurely terminate! You fuckin’ silver tongues make me laugh. Why don’t ya call it what it is? Murder. If ya don’t do something about Giovani, I will,” he said.

  “Whoa, right there. Brock, we’re not Murder Incorporated,” Ridgeway said. “Giovani can’t and won’t hurt us. His killing would be pointless.”

  “I’ll second that,” O’Brien said.

  “Perhaps Brock’s right,” Becker said to the astonishment of the others. “Leave it with me. I’ll need a month or so, but I’ll take care of our little Italian friend.”

  Borchard stood up and walked to the door. Becker thought the bastard hadn't smiled once, but that wasn’t unusual. He never smiled. “I gotta get back to Chicago,” Borchard said. “Gentlemen and lady, you have a fucked up enforcement policy. I’m relyin’ on you to fix it, Dermott. Don’t let me down.”

  As Borchard closed the door behind him, Ridgeway said, “Who the fuck does he think he is? Why do you put up with that shit, Dermott?”

  “He’s just flexing his muscles,” Becker said. “Don’t worry about him, Arthur. He’s a big man in Chicago. He’s nothing here. He just doesn’t know it.”

  Chapter 3

  Montgomery Hastings & Pierce had offices all around the world with each national firm being a separate legal entity. With more than fifty thousand employees, it was large but not a behemoth like PWC or EY. The US arm of Montgomery Hastings & Pierce had offices in every state and was overseen nationally by a democratically elected eleven partner committee. Two members of that committee came from the New York office. The firm was highly respected, private and abhorred any form of publicity. It had been held up to ridicule after the committee declined the audit of Enron and annual fees exceeding fifty million. After Enron collapsed and took huge accounting firm Arthur Andersen with it, the wisdom of the committee’s decision was recognized.

  Todd Hansen was glad to see that he hadn’t been missed when he got back to the office. He had three supervisors who reported to him. Two were out on audits, but the third, Wendy Abbott, whom he’d asked to cover for him, gave him the thumbs up as he entered his tiny, eighty square foot cubicle. It had taken six years to achieve this status, and he’d previously occupied one seat at a long desk that would accommodate thirty. He could see the rows of desks from his cubicle, and they reminded him of the production lines of the many factories he’d tromped through. To say that he hated accounting and audit was an understatement, but with good luck and good horses he’d soon be saying farewell to this environment.

  He had barely sat down when the intercom buzzed and his boss and one of the national partners, Doug Lechte, asked him to come down to his office. When Todd entered the large corner office, Vanessa Hodge, another audit manager, was sitting opposite Lechte enjoying a joke. “Grab a seat, Todd,” he said, unbuttoning the top button of his shirt and removing his tie. “I was just talking to Vanessa about a reassignment of audit clients between you two.”

  As Todd sat down, Vanessa crossed her slender legs and gave him a brilliant smile.

  “There’ll be a little bit of interchange between members of our teams,” she said. “It might be fun.”

  Todd looked at her and thought I’d kill to have some physical interchange with you. He had dreamed about asking her out but had always become over-awed and chickened out. Besides, as far as he knew, she was so determined to make partner, she didn’t have time to date. It crossed his mind that she might be gay, and he thought what a waste. She was African-American with the looks and body of a supermodel. Her wavy, shoulder length hair glistened. If that wasn’t enough, she had been blessed with a humongous IQ and was as smart as a whip. “Sounds good,” he said. “When’s it going to happen, Doug?”

  Lechte rolled his sleeves up exposing his brawny arms and ran his hands through his cropped gray hair. He was naturally untidy. Some of the partners didn’t like it but dared not say anything. He was the firm’s rainmaker and could converse with cleaners and senators with equal ease. Never one to talk about himself, it was rumored that he had been a champion college football player who could have played NFL had he not torn his ACL. Todd thought himself lucky to work for Lechte. “I think we should aim for the first of December. That’ll give you a few weeks to organize things between yourselves. Does that work for you, Vanessa?”

  “That’ll be fine,” she responded. “Todd will have no trouble picking up the status of the audits from my client files.”

  Todd had no doubt that was true but wondered how Vanessa and her team would do working on his client files. His work had been deteriorating for over a year, ever since he had started developing his betting system. He wasn’t worried, though. If all went well, the life of being a boring auditor would soon be behind hi
m.

  “I’ll leave it with you two to organize, but, Todd, I want you to handle the Marks & Spender and the Hallstrom audits, and Vanessa you’ll handle Crisco and Homewares. You’ll need to coordinate and work together during the overlap period,” Lechte said. “Now get out of here, I’ve got an appointment downtown, and I’m running late.”

  As Todd strolled back to his cubicle, he smiled. Doug Lechte was a great guy, but he could be tough, too, and was certainly no one’s fool. There were six audit managers, and Lechte could have selected any one of them to switch assignments with, but he’d chosen the brilliant Vanessa Hodge. Todd suspected that this wasn’t the interchange and reassignment that Lechte had said it was, but rather an internal review by Vanessa of his work and working papers. When he’d entered Lechte’s office, Vanessa had been laughing. Maybe the joke had been about him.

  Still, it wasn’t unexpected. He had been devoting more and more time to horses and less to work. Now the chickens were coming home to roost. He had hoped to have a stake of a million before quitting work and becoming a full-time gambler. He hated that description, though, and saw himself a systems analyst exploiting the foibles of bookmaking that others hadn’t been smart enough to decipher. If he had to make a start with just under three hundred thousand, then so be it. He’d proven that his system worked, and now it was time to increase the stakes. If all went well, he’d have a mil within six months.

  Todd spent the rest of the day mulling over his future. At exactly five o’clock, he left his cubicle and headed for the elevators. It was the official finishing time of Montgomery Hastings & Pierce, but no one left at that time, well not anyone who wanted to progress, that was. The main office was abuzz, and the long desks were crammed with recently qualified graduates trying to impress their immediate superiors. Managers aspiring to make partner would not leave before eight o’clock, and some of the more ambitious would still be toiling away at midnight. The street lights were already on when Todd left the building, and he walked briskly toward Park Street, little clouds of condensation forming in front of his face.