1 To Catch a Bad Guy

by Marie Astor

  “Thank you, Rosemarie, you’ve been most helpful.”

  With her heart racing, Janet walked back to her office. She had not exactly lied to Rosemarie, but she did not tell her the truth either, and the truth was that Janet was disobeying her boss’s instructions. In her employer’s eyes Janet was undoubtedly in the wrong, but her instincts had kicked in. Her conversation with Rosemarie had made it clear that there was a lot more to the accounts of Emperial, Creaton, Rigel, Gemini, and Sphinx than Janet had gleaned.

  “Busy day?” Dean Snider poked his head through the doorway of Janet’s office.

  At the sight of the unexpected visitor, Janet wished she had kept the door closed. She needed to get better at being covert.

  “Um, yes – just catching up on some work – preparing for an audit.” Janet hoped Dean would take the hint and leave. Under a different set of circumstances, chatting with the cute IT engineer would have been fun, but not when there were confidential reports piled up on her desk – reports she was not supposed to have access to.

  “Sounds serious.” Dean eased himself into Janet’s office. “Wow - just think of all those killed trees.” Dean clicked his tongue, eyeing the stack of reports on her desk.

  Janet blushed. Dean did have a point, but if he had any inkling about the kind of information Janet was looking for, he would understand that, although important in the grand scheme of things, environmental concerns were the least of her current worries. “I’ll be sure to recycle when I’m done.” Janet eyed the door pointedly, hoping that her insistent visitor would get the hint. With Lisa gone for the day, Janet wanted to continue with her reconnaissance.

  “You don’t look like you’re having a good day.” Dean flashed Janet a smile that was intended to charm her, but instead annoyed her. Ignoring her mute stare, he continued, “I think I’ve got something to cheer you up. There will be a company party next week.” Dean placed a color-printed leaflet on Janet’s desk. “And I was hoping that you would agree to be my date.”

  Janet picked up the leaflet Dean had put on her desk: it was an invitation to Lisa’s and Paul’s engagement party. “I’ll have to go: Lisa is my boss.”

  “And Paul is everyone’s boss,” Dean added. “So, yes, I think it’s a good idea to attend, but that still doesn’t answer my question. Will you be my date?”

  Janet lowered her eyes. She wanted to say yes, but she had already promised Lisa that she would talk to Tom Wyman at the party. Not that Janet was particularly interested in keeping her promise, but she knew only too well that when Lisa had her mind set on something, she never took no for an answer. But just because Janet could not say yes, that did not mean that she had to say no – at least not exactly.

  “I didn’t know it was necessary to have a date for a corporate party.”

  “Is that a no?” Dean’s fallen expression made him look even more endearing.

  “I didn’t say that.” Janet had to admit that she liked toying with him. “Tell you what – I am going to be there, and you are going to be there, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to have a drink or two, as coworkers.”

  “Coworkers.” Dean mulled the word over. “I’ll take that to start with, as long as you promise me a date in the future.”

  “The future is unpredictable,” replied Janet. Dean Snider was bringing out the flirt in her.

  “I’ll take the absence of a definite no as a possible yes. And now I will let you get back to your work. I’ll be looking forward to next Thursday,” added Dean before closing the door behind him.

  Me too, Janet thought. Dean Snider certainly was not nearly as dashing or successful as Tom Wyman, but there was just something about the guy that made Janet spark every time she saw him.

  Dennis Walker sat behind his desk with a smile glinting on his face. He had stopped by Janet Maple’s office for a casual chitchat, but when he noticed the reports on her desk, Dennis knew he had struck gold. Dennis considered himself to be in possession of many unique and valuable traits, but the trait that had proven to be exceptionally beneficial to him was a photographic memory. He could literally glance at a page in a book and be able to reconstruct the image in his mind afterwards. This quality had been most useful in his college days and in his career as a trader, but it became invaluable in Dennis’s role as an investigator.

  Now, as he pretended to look at his computer screen, Dennis reconstructed the details of the reports he had glimpsed on Janet’s desk. He had only managed to steal a few short glances without raising Janet’s suspicion, but even that had been enough. From the settlement records that Dennis had previously obtained, he already knew that the majority of Bostoff’s order flow came from Emperial, Creaton, Rigel, Gemini, and Sphinx. While the settlement data had been useful to Dennis in confirming the extent of Bostoff’s involvement with these questionable entities, it did not show the sequence of the trades sent to Bostoff by its clients. The report only showed the volume of transactions for each client’s account and revenue received from each account. However, the trade blotter report that Janet had on her desk showed the time sequence in which the orders were executed, and Dennis remembered with vivid clarity the cluster of orders from Emperial, Creaton, and Rigel. They were all short sales centered in the same security – the name of the company had been in the news lately in reference to increased volatility in its stock price. Dennis had only seen a snippet of the trading blotter, but he was fairly certain that the rest of the blotters would show a similar pattern.

  Dennis had been trying to get his hands on the trade blotter reports for a while. He had inquired casually with the head of the Operations group about how this data was stored, but had been politely told that the trade blotter report generating system was outsourced to a vendor and did not require support from internal IT. Dennis tried to break into the report system, but upon failing on several tries, he was at his wits’ end. Today he had stumbled upon a solution.

  Who would have thought that the firm’s legal department would have access to such nitty-gritty data? Normally, the legal folks sat in the ivory tower, deeming themselves too important to mar their hands with anything other than legalese memos. Janet Maple, however, did not mind getting her hands dirty, which made Dennis like her all the more. And now he had a valid reason to get to know Janet better.

  Chapter 15

  Janet surveyed her reflection in the closet door mirror. The hour of Lisa’s party was approaching. For as long as the two of them had been friends, Lisa had always had the spotlight. Not that Janet had any ambitions to outshine Lisa tonight. Even if she could, she would not want to, Lisa’s engagement being the reason for the festivities and all, but neither did she want to be fading into the background.

  “Hurry up, Janie, we don’t want to be late!” Janet heard her mother’s voice in the hallway.

  A few moments later, Christine Maple appeared in the doorway. “Almost ready?”

  Janet nodded. “What do you think?”

  Christine walked into the room. “Classy, yet sexy,” she proclaimed her assessment of Janet’s figure-fitting black cocktail dress, navy pumps and matching clutch. “Oh, this is so exciting! I can’t believe that Lisa is engaged. I still remember when the two of you were in grade school.”

  “That was a long time ago, Mom.”

  “I know, but as you get older time starts to fly. I’m so glad that the two of you remained friends. Wasn’t it sweet of Lisa to get you the job?”

  “Actually, Mom, I meant to ask you about that… Did you ask Lisa to get me the job?”

  Christine looked back to Janet, bemused. “Well, yes, I did. Didn’t she tell you? I ran into Lisa when she was visiting her folks, and I told her that you were between jobs… And like the good friend she is, Lisa came to the rescue. I thought you’d be pleased. I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to upset you. Well, I sure hope that you’re not mad at me now, especially since my plan worked after all.”

  “But next time, please talk to me first, okay?” Janet shook
her head. She might have been unemployed with bleak career options, but that did not mean that she needed her mother to go around asking her friends to give her a job.

  “Honey, what’s wrong? You sound awful edgy.”

  “It’s nothing.” Janet sighed. “Just nerves.”

  “I think I know the reason. It’s Lisa’s engagement, isn’t it?”

  Janet lowered her eyes, feeling petty. Lisa was Lisa, but they were still friends, and friends were supposed to rejoice at one another’s fortune. But in Janet’s defense, it was difficult to feel happy about something that was constantly being rubbed into one’s face, making one feel inadequate.

  Christine patted Janet’s arm. “Honey, it’s all right; it’s only natural to feel this way. “You’ll meet someone special soon, I’m sure of it.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. I’m twenty-nine years old; as they say, the clock is ticking. I thought Alex was going to be it… If I at least had a career, I could feel less of a failure.”

  “What do you mean, a career? Aren’t you happy about your current job?”

  “I loved my old job.”

  Christine shook her head. “Janet, honey, you’ve got to toughen up. I know you had all those dreams about bringing Wall Street to justice, but the truth of the matter is that you’ve got to keep your own bread buttered. You worked hard at the DA’s office, and how did they repay you? By firing you and promoting Alex instead. Now, Lisa has gotten you a good job, and a well-paying job, I might add. What more could you possibly wish for?”

  “Nothing.” Janet shook her head. “It’s a great job – I just need to get used to it.”

  “Honey, you’ve got to stop picturing the world as black and white. The truth is that it’s mostly gray. No one is ever one hundred percent right, nor is anyone ever one hundred percent wrong.”

  “What about the crooks who gypped Grandpa out of his life savings? Wouldn’t you say that they were one hundred percent wrong?”

  Christine nodded. “Yes, they were, but that did not stop them from taking off with their loot and hightailing to Mexico or Ecuador or wherever it was those crooks went. They never got caught, did they?”

  “No.” Janet sighed. It was idealistic to the point of silliness, but her grandfather’s having been a victim of a Ponzi scheme was the main motivation behind her pursuing a career in the DA’s office. She wanted to catch the bad guys who had taken away her grandfather’s earnings. Well, she had failed at that aspiration as well. By the time Janet started her employment with the DA, the case against the Ponzi scheme organizers who had swindled her grandfather and many others out of their lifesavings had already been closed, with all the guilty parties having made their escape to unknown locations. While at the DA’s office, Janet made it her mission to prevent similar crooks from hurting any more trusting grandpas, like her own; she had worked hard, but instead of being rewarded, she got downsized. And now, in an ironic twist of fate, she found herself employed by a broker dealer firm with suspect operations. Although she was fairly certain that Bostoff Securities was not out to rob widows and orphans, she had already gathered enough information about its operations to understand that they were far from kosher. She needed to figure out what to do next, and she needed to do it quickly.

  Her mother’s voice brought her back to the present, “Are you going to wear your hair like that?”

  Janet sighed. Both her professional and personal lives were derailed, yet she was supposed to care about her hair.

  Christine eyed Janet’s French twist critically. “Men like it when women wear their hair long and loose.”

  “Then how come you’re not following your own advice?” Janet looked at her mother’s practical bob that she had been sporting for as long as Janet remembered.

  “I’m married,” Christine countered. “Before I met your father, my hair was shoulder-length. Unless I was teaching a class, I always wore it loose.” Christine checked her watch. “Good, there’s still time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “To do your hair. Don’t you move – I’ll be right back.”

  “Come on, Mom. I’m really not in the mood for this.”

  Christine arched an eyebrow. “Young lady, how can you ever expect to find a man with such an attitude?”

  Janet fell back into a chair with a resigned look on her face. By now her mother’s incongruities had stopped to baffle her – having Ph.D. in English Literature and teaching Women’s Studies as part of her course load did not prevent Christine Maple from maintaining somewhat outdated views on life. Apparently it did not matter how smart or intelligent a woman was – if she wanted to find a man, she’d better wear her hair down or risk remaining alone for all eternity. Still, a part of Janet had to admit that perhaps her mother did have a point. After all, her mother had already been married at Janet’s age, and Janet had yet to find her match.

  “I found it!” Christine Maple returned, carrying a long object in her hand.

  “Oh, no – not that thing!” Janet shook her head after recognizing the alarming-looking contraption in her mother’s hands as a curling iron. It was not just any curling iron, but the same curling iron Christine had used on Janet’s hair the night of her high school prom.

  “I promise I’ll be more careful this time,” Christine added sheepishly. “Come on, that was just a one-time accident; you can’t hold it against me forever.”

  “You almost burned my scalp.”

  “Exactly, almost. But in the end no real harm was done, and your hair still looked beautiful.”

  There Janet had to agree. She had looked beautiful at her high school prom – a fact that would have been so much more worthy of remembrance if she had been accompanied to this crucial event by a date she actually liked instead of a jock, Ted Hunter. Yet another disastrous date Janet had Lisa to thank for, only that one had been during one of the most important nights of her life – or so it had seemed at eighteen years of age. But this really isn’t the whole story, is it? a tiny voice inside Janet’s head whispered. No, it isn’t, Janet admitted. Had she been more sure of herself, she would have gone with Justin Trenner: wonderfully sweet and witty Justin whom Janet had had a crush on her entire senior year of high school, which was the year she and Justin worked on the editorial staff of the school newspaper together. Oh, well, these days Justin was happily married to another girl, Valery Meehan, who had been confident enough to be Justin’s date that memorable night all those years ago. The past could not be helped, but that did not mean that it had to be given the power to take over the present.

  Janet took a decisive look into the mirror. She liked the way her swept-up hair accentuated her cheekbones and showed off the green amethyst earrings she had picked specifically to play up the green of her eyes.

  “Mom, I appreciate the effort, but I’m keeping my hair the way it is,” Janet said firmly.

  “It looks good this way too, baby; it shows off your long, lovely neck. You’re going to be the belle of the ball.” Christine shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry, honey, I got carried away. I just wanted to relive the past a bit. I miss my little girl, you know?”

  “I know, Mom.” I miss being her too, Janet thought.

  Chapter 16

  Janet followed her parents toward the fence of the Foleys’ house, which was only three blocks away from the Maples’ house, so they had chosen to walk the short distance. The familiar route reminded Janet of the countless times she had retraced these very steps in middle school and in high school, sometimes almost hopping as she rushed to tell her best friend some piece of exciting news, sometimes dragging her feet, aching for consolation. In her own way, Lisa had always been there for Janet, and if she had not always given Janet what she needed or wanted – well, Janet’s unwavering acceptance was as much to blame for the rift in their friendship as Lisa’s self-centeredness. But while their friendship might not be what it once had been, tonight was Lisa’s night, and that was important enough to put the old grudges aside.

 
; “Please hold this, honey.” Janet’s dad handed her the carton with the chocolate praline cake intended for Lisa’s party and rang the bell of the Foleys’ house.

  Janet twirled the carton strings. The cake, made by the local bakery, had been a staple at all the birthday celebrations she and Lisa had shared throughout the years. Not that Lisa was going to deviate from her strict pre-wedding diet and eat even a sliver of the delicious confection - Janet was willing to bet her life on it, but her dad had insisted on bringing the old favorite. Well, Janet just might have a piece or two herself. After all, she would not have to worry about fitting into a wedding dress any time soon. No sour grapes, Janet smiled brightly. Tonight was going to be just like old times.

  “Janet, dear!” Emily Foley answered the door. “Christine, Matt – come in, come in!”

  “Congratulations, Emily.” Christine extended her arms in a hug, which Emily reciprocated, air-kissing Christine.

  “You look wonderful, Christine,” Emily observed. “Any new beauty secrets you’d like to share with your friend?”

  “Not particularly. Simply good genes, I guess.”

  “Just wait till I show you the new cream that we’ve come out with. I’ve got samples for you.”

  “That’s very kind of you.” Christine nodded politely, but Janet could tell that her mother was annoyed. Why was it that friendship with the Foley women was a never-ending ping-pong of snide comments and comebacks?

  “Matthew, you suave devil! You’re looking as handsome as ever!” Emily made her way to Janet’s father and kissed him on both cheeks, leaving traces of her lipstick.

  “Why, thank you, Emily.” Matt grinned, wiping off the lipstick off his face. “You’d better not let your husband hear you say that or he just might get jealous.”