Letters From The Ledge (26 page)

His father shook his head. “You already are.”

Nate looked over. “What do you mean?”

Wilson knocked on the door and was admitted with a tray of fresh coffee and a few small pastries. “Daria says you forgot your dessert.”

Nate looked at the tray and smiled. There were two of Paige’s favorite Ukrainian pastries wrapped in a small package to go. “Thank her and send her my love, will you?”

Wilson nodded and left quietly.

Nate poured himself another cup of coffee and listened as his father listed off the company names of some of Nate’s clients.

“These are all your accounts, am I right son?”

“Yes. So what?”

His father tapped the desk with his pen. “Sometimes not knowing is better than knowing. It certainly helps you to sleep better at night.”

Nate blinked back his surprise. His father had named no less than four of his top accounts. “Are you saying I’ve spent the last several years legitimizing the image of men just like Frank without even knowing it? And you waited until
now
to share this with me?”

His father leaned back again in his huge black leather office chair. “Calm down, Nathan. What good would that knowledge have done you? They want reputable companies to help them prove they’re viable businesses. And they
are
viable businesses, regardless of who owns them or how they’re run. Dirty deals go on all the time, from Wall Street all the way to the White House, so take off your rose colored glasses and get used to it.”

“How can you
say
that?”

“What gives you the right to judge the affiliations and motivations of your clients’ business models? You’re a service provider, plain and simple. You do a job for them and they pay you. Why should you care where the money comes from?”

“I don’t know why I should, but I do!”

“When you’ve been in business as long as I have, you see a little bit of everything. You learn not to judge.”

“Well, I don’t think I can do that.” Nate grabbed the pastries and started to walk out.

“Nathan!”

He stopped and turned to face his father. “What?”

“The only thing worse than your self-righteousness is your temper, and together they’re a lethal combination. You’re not invincible–you’re disposable. Don’t be stupid. Don’t play with these boys. It’s not worth it.”

“And that’s what you have to say to me? That I’m disposable? I came to you for help!”

“That’s the best advice I’ve got.”

“Well it’s not good enough!” Nate turned back toward the door and walked out, straight past Wilson, who tried on old, stiff legs to hurry and reach the door before he did. Nate waved him off without even glancing his direction. “Don’t worry about it Wilson. I can show myself out.”

"My dad used to play this game…

I never really understood what it was until after he was gone.

The game was to make me smaller than he was.

Smaller. Always smaller."

-
Life as a House

Blackmailing Frank was definitely not part of the original plan, but suddenly the answer to Nate’s question was staring back at Paige from a folder in her briefcase marked "Confidential". A stunt like this would put her solidly in the ranks of the jerk that skipped off with a huge chunk of Frank’s assets.

Unfortunately, it was the only leverage she currently possessed–that and the element of surprise. Frank would never see it coming from her. The assumption that he possessed ultimate control over everyone and everything in his life was his only weak spot, and therefore her only shot.

She made a copy of the folder’s contents and stuck it down under the hanging files in her desk drawer, then put some other information on her flash drive, and emailed a few attachments to an address that wasn’t attached to her professional life. Even that felt slimy, but she had to cover her ass or it’d be strung up on a flagpole like a banner to every other sane person with a shred of integrity who dared to cross Frank Evans.

Nate called just as she was closing the drawer and she jumped about a foot in the air.

"What!?"

Nate was laughing on the other end. "I’m sorry. Did I catch you at a bad time? How are you doing?"

"Ok I guess, considering I’ve just done the one thing I swore I’d never do in my entire life."

"Get a perm?"

She was silent. “This isn’t funny.”

"Sorry. Bad joke. What’s up?"

Paige did her best to keep it vague. "I uh… found that thing you and I were discussing the other night. I’ll have to show you when I get home.” She closed the door to her office. “What’s up with you?"

"My father and I just had coffee. And Daria sent you some pastries.”

Paige sighed audibly. “Does he still hate me?”

"He loves you and you know it!"

“He thinks I’m after your money.”

Nate chuckled. “Little does he know you’re really just using me for sex.”

"Stop playing with me Nate. I don’t need comic relief right now; I need Tums, for God’s sake! This is serious."

"Sorry. You’re right."

"Thank you."

Nate hesitated. "I can’t really go into the specifics of what we discussed. What do you say we talk about your stuff
and
my stuff later tonight?”

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“Just sit tight and keep doing what you’re doing."

"Sitting idly by as my stomach digests itself in a pool of its own acid?"

Nate laughed. "Dinner later?"

"Sure. Where?"

"How about the Italian place right down from your office?"

"Actually I’ll be at Frank’s office later this afternoon. I have to bring him the finals and wash my hands of this whole deal. I can’t wait to have this thing over and done with."

“So you’re done? As in, really done?”

“I think so, unless he wants to come up with some other bogus reason for me to keep doing his books.”

Nate thought about that for a minute. “I wouldn’t put anything past him at this point. Just be careful.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Just keep your cool. No matter what he does, don’t let it rattle you, ok? Power mongers like Frank prey on easy targets. Don’t be an easy target.”

“Yeah. You don’t have to tell me twice.”

"You want to pick another place?"

"For dinner? No, that’s fine. I should be done in time. Unless of course he decides to ask me for a detailed, line-by-line explanation, but I highly doubt that. He likes that someone else does most of the thinking for him."

"So you’ll be there?"

"Plan on me for 5:30, and I’ll call you if it changes."

__________

Frank hit the intercom and asked his secretary to shut the door and hold all his calls. Paige sat down across from his desk wearing a pantsuit and a plastic smile.

"So, this is it? The conclusion of our business together?" His sardonic smile told an entire story between the lines.

"Assuming you’re happy it is."

"Well, let’s just see how things go, shall we?"

"Fine by me. Let’s get started.” She opened up the folder in her hands.

Frank stood up. “Let’s have a drink.”

“No thank you. I’m fine.”

“Well then, you don’t mind if I partake, do you?”

“Go right ahead. As I was saying–”

“You know Ms. Hadley, it’s been an interesting time, these past months.”

Paige sat back and sighed.

“I don’t mind telling you, I had rather hoped this would turn out differently.”

Paige remembered what Nate said, and didn’t dare play into his hand, so she just kept quiet.

“Are you sure you won’t consider a more permanent arrangement?”

She shook her head. “Thank you, no.”

Frank sighed audibly and sat down at his desk with a rather large rocks glass filled nearly a third of the way with what looked like scotch. “Well then, fire away, Ms. Hadley.”

Paige leaned forward and clicked into business mode. “I know I’ve given you bits of information as we went along through this process, but I'll give you the overview once more just to make sure we didn’t skip any of the steps."

"How very thorough of you." He was deliberately mocking her, trying to get her to engage. She ignored him.

"It took a fair amount of digging and cross-referencing and double backing to even uncover this guy's tracks. He knew exactly what he was doing. On paper everything looked fine and yet the numbers didn’t add up. This much we knew going in, right?"

He eyed her suspiciously. "Go on."

"My guess is, he’d been planning and scheming for a couple of years–bleeding off smaller amounts, mostly unnoticed, building up a bit of a nest egg, because he knew that when he pulled a large chunk it would eventually get audited and he’d be found out. He knew exactly what would happen, and he knew exactly when to leave. He pulled it and he disappeared."

"Yes.” He tapped his fingers together and watched her with open curiosity. “One of the downfalls of hiring brilliant accountants is the possibility of being double-crossed."

He was watching her intently. She thought about the files she’d extracted and tried to keep a straight face. Sweat began to bead up along her back and drip down into her pants. "Exactly."

Frank leaned back in his chair contemplating the situation. "It'd be interesting to know if the amount of money he saved me over the years equaled the amount he left with."

"My guess is you’ll never find him, and if you really wanted to you’d have called out the FBI instead of us, so I’m going to leave it there. But as to how you’re going to prevent this in the future–that’s a different story, and that's what we're here to talk about."

"No use crying over spilled milk, right Ms. Hadley?"

"I don't know, Frank. I've never owned this much milk."

Frank smiled. "I must say–I am going to miss your fire."

Paige focused on the reports she laid out in order on his desk. "Basically, you need more checks and balances. You can’t have the same person reconciling the bank statements as you do making the deposits. People just aren’t that honest. This guy had too much power, and once he realized it he started taking advantage of it."

She amused herself with the double entendre while Frank sat listening to her assessment. "In a multi-million dollar corporation no one is going to miss a few thousand here and there, especially if there are invoices to back up the bogus purchases and acquisitions."

"Bogus acquisitions?" This seemed to interest him excessively.

"It seems he created a fictitious corporation, complete with invoices for products and services that of course were never rendered, then started billing Evans and Associates. Since he did the accounts payable, it was easy to write the checks, which he was technically making out to himself as owner of the fictitious corporations. From there I can only guess it was easy enough to draw off them seamlessly."

"Depositing them overseas and in accounts no one knew about." Frank sighed heavily and shook his head.

Paige pointed her finger in Frank’s direction. "Bingo. The Swiss operations may have had the paper records, but they have even less checks and balances than here. They also don't have much oversight, so it was fairly easy to launder through that side of things and make it look legit."

"How so?"

"Well, at least two European companies were created and then verified by the US office. For example, here we’ve got a copy of an email they sent requesting verification of Evans and Associates’ affiliation with these two companies they’d never heard of before. Standard procedure–they did everything right."

"What's the problem then?"

"Your office, a.k.a. your former accountant, sent back a positive confirmation, right here."

"I never signed that."

"Ah, the beauty of email and electronic signatures. He was somehow able to bypass the identity verification system and set up his own user name and password so it looked just like you were approving these affiliations."

"So what you’re saying is, in reality I
authorized
him to embezzle all that money?"

She smiled apologetically. "What’s worse is, the cancelled checks themselves seem to have disappeared along with him, so now it just looks like poor management on your part."

Frank sat rubbing his temples and shaking his head. "He'd better hope we never find him."

"Anyway, I’ve spent the last two weeks preparing detailed reports and it’s all spelled out here. I’ve listed the names of the suspicious corporations, a list of accounts that didn’t add up, and every other number you’re more than happy to pay other people to evaluate for you. What you do with it from there is your call."

Frank sat there calculating and counting the costs on the sheets in front of him. "So what are your recommendations?"

"You need to staff with at least two accountants on each continent–preferably ones that don’t like each other–and split the responsibilities as I’ve outlined here. I'd also suggest paying for voluntary quarterly audits from an outside source for the next couple of years. I’d make them public too, in the interest of keeping everybody honest. Your reputation improves along with your numbers.”

"You've certainly uncovered a lot of information here." He leaned back and tapped his fingers together under his chin. "Did you find anything else peculiar? Anything that didn’t add up?"

A good old-fashioned game-face came in handy during times like these. She even put a coy little smile on the end of it so he’d think he had the upper hand. "Everything I could find is sitting in that folder." She was lying through her teeth, but it was clutch time, and she couldn’t afford to blow it.

"Well, what can I say then? Thanks for your expertise. I’ll consider your recommendations and we’ll take it from here."

"No problem." She started to stand but Frank held up one hand.

"Where’s the fire, Ms. Hadley?”

Panic rose from some untapped place in her heart. He took the news a little too well. There was an evil in his eyes that she hadn’t expected. The air was caustic with it, and when she took a breath in, her lungs burned with it. She wondered if his secretary was still on the other side of the far door.

Frank got up and came around to her side of the desk and stood behind her. He took a lock of her soft, blond hair and rubbed it between his fingers, inspecting it, and let it drop back onto her shoulder. "Surely you could re-consider my offer."

She stiffened. "I'd rather be gagged and tied."

His voice took on an otherworldly quality–a deep growl tinged with a slight vibrato.

"That could be arranged."

She shivered involuntarily and watched Frank breath deeply through his nose and smile, as if he could smell her fear and it gave him some sick pleasure.

She stood up and tried to put some distance between them. "I don’t want to play games Frank. I just want to conclude our business and leave it at that." Accountant was a term she used loosely. Whoever had been cooking his books had double-crossed him and was likely at the bottom of the river and she didn’t want to be next.

A commotion outside in the hallway cut their conversation short. Paige glanced at the clock and saw that it was not quite five-thirty.

"Sorry to interrupt you two!" Nate wore a huge grin as he opened the door and strolled across the threshold. He held one hand up in front of his face. "Now, don’t fire your secretary Frank. She did try to hold a gun to my head, but I told her I just had to steal this woman away from you. It’s our anniversary today, and it took no small amount of begging to secure a reservation at– Well, now I can’t even say it out loud, can I? That would ruin the surprise!”

The look of contempt on Frank’s face could have melted uranium and caused birth defects in their future children, but Nate didn’t miss a beat. “You understand, don’t you Frank? I mean, it’s not Barbados, but we have to be allowed to at least celebrate with a nice dinner!"

Frank just stared as he pulled Paige into his side. She could feel the moisture wicking through her blouse and his hand tensed against her skin.

"I really am sorry for interrupting, but if we’re not there for our reservation they’ll give away our table to the first guy who slips them a Hamilton. Were you just about done?"

He looked at Paige, who nodded affirmatively. "Yeah. Really done. Just finished actually."

"Great! Then I’m just in time. I’ve got a cab waiting downstairs."

Nate reached out to shake Frank’s hand. "Have you seen the website yet?"

Frank shook his head in the negative. "No, can’t say as though I have."

"Well, I think you’ll be really pleased. We’ve got things pretty well set up and I’ve given the run-down to your IT guys. They’ll handle the actual maintenance and technical interface on your end, but if you have design or content issues I want you to call us directly. So far your marketing people love the new logo but they’re going to run it by the board before making the appropriate changes to business cards and letterhead and whatnot."