“Gordon, don’t you think the question we should be asking is, who stood to gain the most by tampering with that data?”
“Unfortunately, Whitener has already answered that question, Tucker. He thinks it’s us.”
My breathing felt thin and shallow as I organized my thoughts and tried, but failed, to suppress a growing feeling of doom. I placed a high value on loyalty to friends, which made what I had to say next even more difficult. Milton Polk and I hadn’t exactly locked pinkie fingers and sworn to be best buds forever, but we had developed a friendship of sorts, based on mutual respect. I hoped my hunch was wrong, but at that moment, it was the only one that made sense.
“Look,” I said, “I didn’t tell you before, Gordon, because I thought it was handled. Polk wasn’t happy about my report at first. In fact, he was pretty upset. He didn’t think investors would be interested if the projected profits weren’t higher. He asked me to add a few zeros. I refused, and he backed off. He finally signed off on the report, but I’m wondering if maybe he decided later to go back and do the math himself.”
Gordon’s lips looked pale and dry as they slowly parted. “My God, Tucker, what have you done?”
“I told you. I didn’t—”
He interrupted. “A client asks you to falsify financial data, and you don’t tell me? Why didn’t you come to me for help? Don’t you understand that Whitener’s lawyers can twist that information, make it seem like you were bargaining with Polk?”
I felt as if I had a two-ton hippo sitting on my chest. My mouth was dry and my tongue felt boggy as the words clicked against my palate. “I don’t see how anybody can twist anything, Gordon. The point is, the report I wrote—the real one—was well researched and professional. No one could have mistaken the data or my conclusions. Look, I should have told you about Polk. I’m sorry. But when he backed down, like I said, I thought it was handled.”
I realized how foolish that explanation sounded now. Obviously, Gordon did, too. “It always amazes me,” he said. “People know they can’t turn back the clock, but they still make the big mistakes, don’t they?” He closed his eyes for a moment, as if he was drawing from some inner strength. When he spoke again, his voice sounded old and defeated, and that frightened me more than anything. “I don’t have to remind you who sent Polk to us.”
“No, Gordon, you don’t.”
Wade Covington had been labeled both saint and sinner, depending on who was doing the labeling. I thought of him more as a sinner, especially since I’d discovered that he was lobbying for Richard Hastings to make partner over me. Covington controlled SBI International, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate that relied heavily on consulting services. Our company had just bid on a contract to get some of that business, and like every other consulting firm in the country, the partners would gladly have canonized Covington themselves if they thought it would help their cause.
“If Covington gets wind of any FBI investigation,” Gordon said, “we’ll lose that bid. Not only that, but we’ll lose other clients, too. You know the climate out there, Tucker. It’s open season on consultants. Nobody is going to stick by us if we’re accused of fraud. The vultures will pick at us until there’s nothing left but bones. Reputations, livelihoods—everything will be destroyed.”
I thought about my administrative assistant, Eugene Barstok, and my friend and fellow consultant Venus Corday. Both could lose their jobs because of me. Venus would find other work, but Eugene was fragile. What would happen to him? I felt sick.
“Gordon, believe me, okay? I didn’t change that report. Not for Polk. Not for anybody.”
After a moment, he dredged up a smile, but it wasn’t convincing. “I do believe you, Tucker.”
I could see he was trying to make me feel better, but the truth was, Whitener’s threats could be devastating to all of us. And no one had more to lose than Gordon—except me.
He turned toward his computer and began tapping on the keyboard, searching through what appeared to be an address database. I sat numbly, listening to the click of the keys and staring at an antique pocket sextant he kept on his desk. I’d given it to him for Christmas my first year at Aames & Associates. I’d heard that Gordon’s greatest passion, aside from the firm, was a powerboat he kept at a yacht club in Marina del Rey. I was trying to make a few brownie points, I suppose. Right now I wished the thing could navigate me out of the mess I was in.
Gordon’s tone was all business now. “Our insurance company won’t come near this if the FBI starts breathing down our necks. We’ve got to meet with our attorneys, this afternoon if we can. You check in with Marsha later. In the meantime, bring me all the NeuroMed documents ASAP. If we have a little luck, we should be able to head off a crisis. We have to stick together on this, Tucker, convince Whitener and his lawyers that this isn’t your work.”
The intercom buzzed. Gordon picked up the phone and listened intently before saying, “Let me know the minute he gets here.” When he looked up, I saw that a deep crevice had formed between his eyebrows.
“Wade Covington wants to talk to me,” he said. “He’s on his way over.”
I felt a sudden flip in my stomach. “You think he knows about Whitener?”
“I guess we’re about to find out. Those documents, Tucker—I need them now.”
I turned to leave, but Gordon stopped me.
“By the way, let’s keep this Whitener business to ourselves. The only people who need to know are you and I, and the lawyers.”
I nodded, but what was Gordon thinking? That I was going to send engraved announcements to the members of the promotion committee? Then it dawned on me. The promotion committee. This meeting was supposed to be my final interview with Gordon before he made his recommendation on my promotion. As I headed back to my office, I tried to stay calm, but all I could think about were leg irons, chain gangs, and cell mates named Spike. Things couldn’t get any worse. Not even a chocolate-covered clam could help me now.
3
my administrative assistant wasn’t at his desk. In fact, Eugene Barstok wasn’t my personal administrative assistant. I actually shared him with three other consultants. But they’d all been in Arizona on a job for the past two months, and during that time he’d adopted me as his personal project. According to office scuttlebutt, the team might stay in Phoenix to open a branch office when their project was finished. If so, Eugene would soon be all mine.
In a way, I was relieved he wasn’t around. He always sensed when I was upset, and right now I didn’t need any mothering. His absence would give me time to find the NeuroMed documents before he came back and started applying cold compresses.
I was walking toward the file cabinet when I spotted a pink message slip propped up next to my telephone. It was a call from my father’s sister, Sylvia Branch. Just what I needed, more trouble. There was only one thing Aunt Sylvia could want: my house.
My beach cottage had been in my father’s family since the forties. In the early days, it had been used primarily as a summer getaway, but for the past ten years or so it had been rented out, which is why it had never been remodeled.
Neither my mother nor I had had any contact with my father’s side of the family since he died, two months before I was born. My mother is an actor. The Sinclairs never approved of that or her, so when my father passed on, they made it clear that she and I were on our own. Fine. We survived.
My problems began when Grandma Sinclair died eighteen months ago and left the beach house to me. Maybe she felt guilty about all those years of neglect. Maybe she just forgot to ax my name from her will. I guess I’ll never know. In any event, Aunt Sylvia apparently couldn’t stand the thought of my name on the deed. At first, she’d claimed that the will was invalid because one of the witnesses was underage. When that proved to be false, she said my father had borrowed money from the family that he’d never returned. She argued that I was obligated to repay his debt to the estate, which, with thirty years of interest, turned out to be—surprise—
just about what the house was worth. She couldn’t prove that bogus debt theory, either.
The sad thing was, she didn’t care about the house or its history. What she cared about was the sand that the house sat on, which was worth a couple of million dollars, maybe more. I didn’t care about the value of the land, because I never planned to sell the place. For me, the house was hallowed ground because it was my only concrete link to my father.
“That came to my voice mail by mistake.” The voice startled me. I looked up to see Venus Corday leaning against the doorjamb, eating chocolate chips from a bag of trail mix. Venus is a foodie and a chocoholic. We’d been friends for five years, ever since the firm recruited her for her expertise in manufacturing. She’s in her late thirties, has long, tightly coiled black hair and expressive round eyes the color of French-roast coffee. Men love her, but she’s commitment-phobic. However, that didn’t stop her from occasionally lecturing me about my own failures with men.
“New client?” she said.
“No. Old aunt.”
I didn’t know what Aunt Sylvia was up to, and frankly, I didn’t want to know. Probate was closed on my grandmother’s estate. There was nothing she could do to get the house back now, so I fired up the shredder and made pink confetti.
Venus sat down and draped her arm across the back of the chair. “I heard about the Serrano P and L,” she said. “That chocolate clam’s going to give Ross and Hastings a bad case of indigestion.”
I didn’t have time to chitchat, so I headed for my computer. “Yeah, I got lucky.”
“Luck?” she said, followed by a hoot of laughter. “Don’t play humble with me, honey. You raised Lazarus from the dead. If the Serranos want you to make partner, the committee better listen or somebody is gonna wake up with a horse head in his bed.”
I wanted to believe her, but I wasn’t the safest choice for partner, even before I had the FBI breathing down my neck. I had the requisite MBA, not from Harvard or Wharton but from UCLA, which was good in a West Coast kind of way. And even though I had a string of successes and happy clients, the race was going to be close. I reminded Venus of all that. What I didn’t mention was that if Gordon couldn’t fend off Mo Whitener, the race would be over, at least for me.
She just said, “Ha!” and then, “Here, want some?”
I glanced over my shoulder. She had the package of trail mix in her hand, and as she opened the bag wider, a couple of raisins rolled onto the carpet.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll pass.”
I copied the final version of the business plan from my computer hard drive onto a disk in case Gordon needed it, and then shifted my focus to the file cabinet, relieved to find the NeuroMed folder in its proper place. That relief quickly disappeared when I realized that the sealed envelope containing the signed report, the contract, and the agreement wasn’t in the file. I dumped the file contents on my desk and thumbed through each page. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I took a deep breath. Okay, I thought, don’t panic. The envelope could be misfiled. Only I didn’t think so. Eugene was persnickety about keeping things organized.
“I went out with Anthony last night,” Venus said.
I rolled my eyes, making sure she didn’t see, and then mumbled, “Who’s Anthony?” I didn’t listen for her answer, because I was too preoccupied searching through my In basket. I didn’t think the NeuroMed documents were there, but I looked anyway.
“Can you believe the first words out of the guy’s mouth? ‘You must be a parking ticket, cuz you have fine written all over you.’ If I’d had a gun . . .”
I tore through the paperwork cluttering my desk, while Venus rambled on. I vaguely remember hearing “chocolate soufflé,” or maybe it was “chalk it up to foreplay.” I wasn’t sure, and didn’t have time to ask. I’d been in my own thought bubble for what seemed like an eternity before Venus’s voice finally broke through.
“Excuse me, Tucker, but you’re digging around this office like some dog burying a bone.”
Without thinking, I whipped around and blurted out, “I don’t have time for one of your date-from-hell stories, Venus. Can’t you see I’ve got problems of my own?”
Her eyes got bigger and rounder, and her face took on that familiar stony pay-attention-or-pay-the-consequences look.
“Sorry,” I said, softening my voice, “but a file’s missing, and I have to find it—now.”
Venus rustled in her chair as if fidgeting would help her decide whether to forgive me. Maybe she would, but not just yet, because her tone was tepid. “Well, I’d love to stay and watch you do that all day, but I’ve got work to do.”
“NeuroMed’s business plan,” I said, “and the agreement, the one with Milton Polk’s signature. Venus, they’re missing.”
“So?” She cocked her head and studied me intently. “Oh, I get it. You’re hiding something from me. You’d better confess, Tucker, before you see my dark side.”
“I can’t.”
She leaned her body toward me. “Let’s put it this way: If something bad has happened to you, and I have to find out at the watercooler, your ass is grass and I’m the mower.”
I couldn’t tell her about Whitener’s letter. Gordon would be furious. Then I asked myself, which one would I rather have mad at me: Gordon or Venus?
“Okay,” I said, “but you can’t tell a soul. Swear?”
She raised her right hand. “On a stack of Bibles, honey.”
I closed my door and gave her the abridged version of my meeting with Gordon. She whistled when I told her about Whitener’s fraud accusations.
“I hope you didn’t do it, girl, because you’re not getting any promotion from some cell at Lompoc.”
I shot her a look. She held up both hands in defense.
“Ease off. I was just funning you,” she said. “But just between you and me, Tucker? If Eugene’s filing system is as screwed up as he is, you’ll never find that report. I say, tell him to get his bony little ass in here and find it for you.”
Venus and Eugene were classic examples of how opposites don’t always attract, but she was right. He’d set up the files. He’d know where to look. As I headed for the intercom button on my telephone, the door burst open and Eugene came bustling into my office, wearing a charcoal sweater-vest he’d knitted himself.
Eugene was in his mid-twenties, five feet five, and as thin as a bedsheet in a cheap motel. He had a low tolerance for stress, which sometimes made him prickly, so his therapist suggested knitting as a way to unwind. Unfortunately, her suggestion had made me the beneficiary of an assortment of lumpy bedroom slippers and dozens of snoods, which I suspected would never make a comeback.
Eugene’s lips were pursed. He wore a frown aimed directly at Venus as he scooped up her spilled raisins in a tissue he pulled from his pocket, and dumped the whole mess in a nearby wastebasket. He opened one of the file cabinets and ruffled his finger along the plastic tabs.
“Uh, Eugene?” I said. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “You’re right. I listened on the intercom. Let’s move on.” He prodded me gently with his elbow. “Stand back. I’ll find it.”
Venus raised a disapproving eyebrow, but I always weigh grumpy Eugene against good-secretary Eugene and find that his willingness to dust the tchotchkes on my lowboy always tips the scales in his favor.
“So how long were you listening?” I said.
“Long enough.”
Gordon had warned me not to tell anyone about the fraud accusations, but at the rate I was going, the whole office would know by the ten o’clock coffee break. Under Venus’s disapproving eye, Eugene looked through every file in every cabinet before finally giving up.
“I can’t believe it’s not here.” His tone was flat and full of failure.
“Um-hum.” It was all Venus said, but the message was definitely “I told you so.” Eugene wasn’t confrontational, but I didn’t want to test him, so I decided to move things along.
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound positive.
“I remember when the printer delivered the reports. I compared them with the original document just to make sure that everything was in order, and gave you the master copy to file.”
“That’s right. A few minutes later you went to Gordon’s office for a meeting.”
I thought for a moment. “You’re right. The Amsterdam project.”
The firm had been hired to evaluate the operations of the Juliana Health Clinic and Spa, a chain of resorts in the Netherlands that catered to wealthy Europeans who wanted to stop smoking and get a peppermint foot soak all in the same weekend. The clinics were packed, but they were losing money. The owners wanted to know why.
Gordon was introducing me as the project manager at that meeting. The assignment was a big coup. Secretly I thought of it as my reward for surviving two months of Milton Polk. Either way, being chosen was good for my career. I’d even gotten my own company Visa card for travel to Amersterdam—platinum, no less—a privilege reserved only for partners. The gesture seemed prophetic, and I’d been distracted.
“I called the mail room just like you told me,” Eugene continued, “and got Cherry to deliver the box of reports. I went to lunch, and when I came back, the box was gone.”
An alarm went off in my brain. “Could Cherry have accidentally sent the original documents to Polk?”
“I don’t think so, Tucker,” he said. “I distinctly remember filing them.”
Venus rolled out of the chair and stood. “Tell you what I’m thinking, Tucker. You suck up trouble like a Hoover.”
I looked at Eugene. “Has anybody asked to see the file lately?”
He thought for a moment and then shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
“Are you sure? What about Dr. Polk?”
He frowned. “No, I’d remember that.”
One of the other consultants could have borrowed the file for some reason, but that seemed unlikely. They would have asked my permission. I wondered if Milton Polk had manipulated Cherry into bringing him the originals. Maybe, when she’d delivered the box of reports, he’d told her the originals were supposed to be included and sent her back to find them. Only, that didn’t make sense. She wouldn’t have taken documents from my office without telling somebody.
False Profits Page 3
