False Profits

by Patricia Smiley

  On the other hand, maybe Polk took the stuff himself. He’d been in my office on several occasions. He could have slipped in when I wasn’t around, found the NeuroMed file between the Ms and the Os, and made off with it. The receptionist wasn’t supposed to let people wander around unescorted, but Polk was a client, and receptionists weren’t infallible. I just hoped Eugene hadn’t screwed up and was afraid to tell me.

  “Okay, let’s eliminate Cherry as the culprit,” I said. “Call her in the mail room and see if she remembers taking the documents.”

  Eugene paused. His face was the color of alabaster. “I can’t. Cherry got an acting job. Friday was her last day.”

  I sank into my chair and propped my head in my hands. “Damn actors. This can’t be happening.”

  Eugene leaned against the wall. His breathing was becoming quicker and more irregular. “What are we going to do?”

  “I have to talk to Dr. Polk,” I said, “and find out what he knows about this.”

  “Look,” Venus said. “No one wants you to get out of this mess more than I do, but if the doctor is behind this, he’s not going to tell you anything. And if you accuse him without any evidence, you’re just gonna piss him off. Let Gordon and the lawyers handle it.”

  I tuned her out and dialed NeuroMed’s number. The line was busy. I tried the number several more times to make sure I’d dialed correctly. Same annoying blare. That was odd for a business. I tried Polk’s home number. A machine answered. I left a message.

  I grabbed my purse from inside the desk drawer and threw the disk with the report I’d just copied into its place. A computer file wasn’t worth much without the signed hard copies.

  “I’m going to NeuroMed,” I announced.

  “Tucker, what you’re doing is dangerous,” Venus said. “If you go charging into Polk’s office like Dirty Harry, believe me, it’s not gonna make his day. Yours, either. Shit, what if he calls the police? I know you. I’m gonna flip on the six o’clock news and see a thousand cops chasing you and that yuppy car of yours down the 405.”

  “Oh, come on, Venus, don’t get yourself all worked up. I can handle Milton Polk.” My tone carried a lot more confidence than I felt.

  She shook her head in frustration. “You’re making a mistake.” She held out the bag of trail mix. “At least take this. I just hope it’s not your Last Supper.”

  There were one or two coconut swirls left in the bag, and a few dried-up old raisins. The chocolate chips were long gone.

  I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow. “You ate all the good stuff.”

  “I thought you liked that health food shit.” She gave the bag one final appraisal and threw it in the wastebasket.

  “I’m so sorry, Tucker,” Eugene said. “This is all my fault. I should never have gone to lunch. I should have watched your office more carefully, should have locked the file cabinets.”

  Eugene’s hands were pressed against his chest. He seemed disoriented—a look I knew all too well. I saw snoods in my future. His angst seemed over the top to me, but it kept his therapist busy counseling him not to “should” all over himself.

  “Relax,” I said, gently patting his back until his breathing slowed. “I’m going to straighten everything out. You’ll see. I’ll drive over to NeuroMed, pick up the documents, bring them back here so our lawyers can show them to Mo Whitener and get me out of trouble.”

  I cracked open the door to make sure no one was standing outside. I didn’t want Gordon to see me leaving the building, especially since at that moment I was supposed to be in his office with the NeuroMed documents. Obviously, I couldn’t produce them just yet, and I didn’t want to give him an opportunity to ask me why not.

  “If anybody asks,” I went on, “you don’t know where I am.”

  I didn’t want to worry either Venus or Eugene, but if Polk had those NeuroMed documents and wouldn’t give them back, or worse yet, had destroyed them, it would be a disaster. Without the doctor’s signature on the original business plan, the contract, and the Terms & Conditions Agreement, there was no way to verify that he’d approved a more conservative expansion strategy. No way to authenticate for Whitener’s lawyers that the profit projections I’d calculated were much lower than the ones mailed to investors. No way to keep Whitener from filing a civil lawsuit to recover his money. He’d go after everybody but especially the deep pockets, and that was Gordon, but I’d be dragged into the long and costly legal battle as well. The firm would probably survive, but I’d be ruined both professionally and financially.

  And that was the good part. If Whitener chose instead to report me to the FBI, I’d be investigated, maybe arrested, and maybe sent to prison. And while I was making license plates and eating off metal trays, Aunt Sylvia would find some way to get her hands on my house.

  Okay, so I should have gone to Gordon when the problems with Polk first surfaced, but somehow I’d gotten the notion early in life that asking for help was a sign of weakness. Now what I’d always seen as strength—my independence—Gordon saw as a character flaw.

  Charging off to confront Milton Polk was probably another one of those big mistakes Gordon had just warned me about, but I was convinced that Polk would respond better to me than he would to a pack of snarling lawyers. Besides, I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. I had to find out who was setting me up. If it was Polk, and he’d gotten his hands on those original documents, he was going to give them back, or I was going to take one of his cheesy polyester ties and wring his devious little neck.

  4

  moments later, as I left my office and headed for the parking garage, I tried to remember what, if anything, I’d done differently with Polk than I had with my other clients. It didn’t take long to come up with an answer: everything. I’d babied, cajoled, compromised, and placated him far more than I had anybody else, because I wanted us both to succeed. So what had I done to make him angry enough to set me up for federal fraud charges? Unfortunately, I could take a stab at answering that question, too.

  Gordon had just asked me to tell him everything about Milton Polk, but I’d spared him a few of the gorier details. The truth was that shortly after I started working on Polk’s business plan, I realized that his vision for NeuroMed wasn’t feasible, even with the money he hoped to raise. The equipment cost millions, and the major insurance companies had, so far, refused to reimburse patients for testing fees. With clever marketing, Polk could bring in some patients on a self-pay basis, but that wouldn’t be enough money to interest investors.

  I had advised Polk to scale back his plans, ask for a smaller amount of money, and concentrate on improving the existing facility before opening others. He refused. So by the time the final report was written, the singular NeuroMed Diagnostic Center had become the decidedly plural NeuroMed Diagnostic Centers and looked less like Cinderella and more like her ugly stepsisters. I tried to talk to Gordon about the situation, but he was too busy with his own clients. In the end, his input didn’t really matter, because nothing was going to put a better spin on the data.

  I had known Polk would be livid when he read my conclusions. He might even refuse to accept the plan. If so, all my hard work would end up as a freeway pileup. Richard Hastings would gloat, and why not? He’d be partner, and I’d be wallpaper. I couldn’t let that happen, so I decided to make one last-ditch effort to persuade Polk to listen to reason. It was against my own rules, but I was going to let him preview a copy of the final business plan. I thought that when he saw the truth laid out in front of him on twenty-four-pound bond, he’d finally listen and agree to change his approach. If so, he’d succeed rather than fail. I’d look like a brilliant strategist. Clients would clamber for my services. Oh—and one more thing: I’d be the newest partner at Aames & Associates. At least, that had been the plan.

  I arranged for Polk to join me at what had become our favorite meeting place, a small coffeehouse in Venice with thrift store tables, Toulouse-Lautrec posters, and a series of teenage counter clerk
s who looked like dropouts from the same cut-rate drug treatment center. Luckily, the coffee was bitter, so we generally had the place to ourselves. Polk was in good spirits when he arrived, but, as I suspected, when he read the business plan his pleasant expression turned into an angry scowl.

  “What the hell are you trying to pull here?” His tone had been quiet but menacing. “This makes me look like a loser.”

  “None of this information should come as a surprise to you. We’ve been discussing it for weeks. Listen, there’s still time to downsize your short-term goals. If you give investors a healthy return on their money in this first phase, it’ll pique their interest for the next—”

  Polk interrupted. His face was flushed, and his voice was taut with righteous indignation. “Slow growth makes sense if some schmuck is running the show. But this is me we’re talking about. I have the energy of ten tight-assed CEOs getting five-million-dollar-a-year bonuses for doing nothing but screwing over stockholders. You know that.”

  “Look, I admire your confidence and your energy, Dr. Polk, but investors want more than—”

  “Profit projections are estimates!” he roared. “I paid you to estimate in my favor. Instead, you’re trying to destroy me, to kill me. That’s what you want. You’ve already stabbed me in the back. So go ahead. Finish the job.”

  He held his arms out in surrender, as if he expected me to pick up a plastic stir stick and lunge for his carotid artery. I’d never seen him so angry. I kept my hands clasped in my lap under the table because they were trembling. He ranted for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the clerk came out from behind the counter and shouted, “Hey, man, chill, okay?”

  That distracted Polk long enough for me to say, “I’m sorry. Obviously, you’re not happy. I’ll ask Gordon to waive my fee. You can go to another firm.”

  Polk stopped shouting, but I could see that he was still seething inside. He threw down a ten-dollar bill that he’d pulled from his wallet, and stood to leave. Paying for the coffee without our usual skirmish unsettled me more than anything. I sensed that an important balance had been upset that would never be made right again.

  His eyes looked angry and wounded. “You screwed me over, lady,” he said. He stared at the NeuroMed plan lying on the table. A moment later, he picked it up and stormed out the door.

  It’s always bad news when you make a client angry, but even worse news when someone as important as Wade Covington refers that client. I knew Polk couldn’t make a case against the research or conclusions in my report. They were both solid. But he could cause problems by complaining about my attitude to Gordon, or worse, to Covington.

  But as I’d just explained to Gordon, Polk had backed off. In fact, he called me the following day, calm, almost chipper, and told me he’d decided to accept my slow-growth proposal. I was to revise the plan and send him a hundred copies as soon as I could get them printed. When I asked why he’d changed his mind, all he said was, “I thought about what you said, and you were right.”

  His sudden flip-flop smelled fishy, but it wasn’t the first time Polk had made me feel like a yo-yo on a string. I figured, why look a gift horse in the mouth? I gave the guy some good advice, and he took it. So I retooled the plan to make the goals and financial projections more reasonable, printed a hundred copies, and had Cherry deliver them.

  Now I wondered if Whitener knew about that draft report and had somehow misconstrued it. Maybe he thought I had kept revising and revising until I came up with the phony Internet idea. Whatever. There was no time to speculate about that now. I had to get to NeuroMed and talk to Polk about those missing documents.

  It took only minutes to get from my office to the parking garage. At ten o’clock I slid into the front seat of my Boxster, still feeling a twinge of guilt for leaving Eugene in the middle of one of his panic attacks.

  I put the top down to get some air. Polk had always given me a bad time about the silver Porsche, accusing me of overcharging him in order to pay for it. He was joking, but he’d gotten under my skin a few times. In reality, the car had been a surprise gift from my then-husband, Eric Bergstrom, who’d thought that my ten-year-old Toyota Camry wasn’t sending the right message to my clients. I’d been upset when I found out what he’d paid for it, but after a cooling-off period, I had to admit, my heart melted. I was in love. Not with Eric, of course—with the car. Eric and I lasted a couple more months before calling it quits, but the Boxster and I were in it for the long haul. Besides, if the Milton Polk fiasco meant the end of the road for my career, at least I’d have gotten there in a zippy car.

  The wind was surprisingly chilly as I jockeyed my way through the downtown traffic onto the 10 Freeway toward L.A.’s Westside. My problems aside, it was a beautiful fall day. The sun beat down on the Hollywood Hills, making the houses dazzle against the hillside greenery. A half hour later, I pulled into the hospital’s parking garage.

  NeuroMed was located in a back wing of Bayview Medical Center, just north of Venice Boulevard in West Los Angeles. The hospital had a sterling reputation, but because of stingy insurance reimbursements from HMOs and PPOs, Bayview had begun to suffer from a corresponding number of IOUs. So for a modest cut of the gross, the hospital leased space to Polk and allowed him full use of the facilities. Access was through the main hospital lobby, so few patients suspected that the two weren’t one and the same. Polk felt that gave NeuroMed a symbiotic credibility, a competitive edge. I agreed.

  The hospital’s lobby was permeated by dueling odors: acrid disinfectant from a mop bucket and sweet carnations from the nearby gift shop. A half-dozen people waited in uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs, some watching television, others reading or staring into space. When I got to NeuroMed, the door was locked. First the busy telephone line earlier, now the locked door. Not good signs. I knocked.

  “Hello. Is anybody in there? Francine. It’s Tucker Sinclair.”

  Francine Chalmers was Polk’s office manager. I’d interviewed her briefly for the business plan. Around Polk her behavior fell somewhere between schoolgirl crush and hero worship. With me she’d been helpful but distant. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months, but I was sure she’d remember me. I knocked harder on the heavy wooden door, calling her name again.

  Finally, it opened a crack, and Francine’s face appeared. She was an attractive woman in a 1950s kind of way. Her fine blond hair was salon teased and sprayed; I wondered how she kept the shape between appointments. She was a tad on the plump side, but I could see through the crack in the door that the drape of the lavender silk jacket she was wearing camouflaged any serious flaws. The overall impression was flattering.

  “What do you want?” Her voice was brittle.

  Not exactly a hale and hearty hello, but I could work with that.

  “I have to talk to Dr. Polk,” I said. “I called earlier, but the line was busy.”

  “He’s not here.” Her hands were pushing against the door, and her periwinkle blue eyes seemed focused on keeping me out. I wondered why.

  “Then where is he?” I said. “It’s important.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Yeah, sure, I thought. I pushed gently on the door and pressed my face to the opening to get a better look. She pushed back. If she slammed the door on my mouth, I knew I’d end up with a permanent case of fish lips.

  “Francine, let me in,” I demanded.

  She was strong, but my flat shoes gave me better traction. I shoved until the wedge widened enough to accommodate my foot. One last push, and I was inside.

  I scanned the office, starting in the waiting room, traveling across the reception counter to the front office. “Holy shit! What happened in here?”

  Office supplies and medical charts were strewn about, nearly concealing the linoleum floor. It looked as if a minitornado had blitzed through the room. Either that or someone had been looking for something. I sure hoped it wasn’t the NeuroMed documents. I had visions of Mo Whitener on a search-and- destroy mission, trying to
get to them before I did.

  Francine followed close behind me as I walked through the open door that separated the waiting room from the front office. Inside, on a nearby desk, a telephone button blinked on hold. The receiver lay on a chair. When Francine saw me eyeing that, she became defensive.

  “I just couldn’t talk anymore. When I came in this morning, this . . .” Her arms flailed helplessly, jangling the gold bracelets on her wrist. “I canceled patients and sent everyone home.”

  “Anything missing?”

  “I can’t tell yet.”

  The break-in at the Center was one more banner headline in a bad-news day. I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to stay calm and objective, because I didn’t want to believe that this mess had anything to do with Milton Polk or the missing NeuroMed documents. I walked into a small storage room off the front office, where the patient medical charts were kept, and set my car keys and purse on top of a file cabinet. I used my foot to flip over several files on the floor, hoping to see that familiar maroon envelope. No luck.

  “You think somebody was looking for drugs?” I asked hopefully.

  “We don’t keep drugs here,” she informed me. “There’s nothing to steal except the equipment, and it’s too heavy to move. It was probably one of the doctors looking for a chart or something. Some of them have short fuses.”

  “A doctor would do this?” I asked. Visions of that kindly TV doctor, Marcus Welby, flitted through my memory. It was an image I couldn’t quite reconcile with the mess in front of me. Francine must have it wrong.

  “Talk to a few nurses,” she said defensively. “They’ll tell you. Sometimes anything—even a misfiled patient record—will set them off.”