by J Jordan
“An afternoon in Cresdale. Just you, Kedro Kyro, and fifty thousand notes from a bogus account. There’s no telling where the money started. But it was clearly laundered.”
She produced four more photographs and fanned them out in front of Romney. One showed Romney shaking hands with Lorna Reymus, another showed them surrendering to the Partisan of the People. The third showed Romney and Victoria surrendering on either side of a burning Humvee. The fourth was a telescopic shot of four people hiking their way out of an ancient temple. Oddly enough, one was clearly seen in business casual.
“Andar. Eyewitnesses say you drove a Humvee through military checkpoints, trespassed onto a military installation, evaded capture, destroyed that very same military installation, and somehow started a coup in the process. And all of this to convince Victoria Costa to guide you up to a holy site, so you could strip it for treasure. Stealing from the dead. That’s a pretty big jump from stealing other people’s retirement, Balvance. And it’s the lowest low I’ve ever seen. There should be a law against that.”
“Now I know what happened here,” said Agent Kinsey, returning the four to their place in the folder, “and I have a good idea of what happened at the bank. But this one here is a mystery. So, you’re going to help me put all these pieces together.”
Agent Kinsey stood from her chair, moved to other side of the table, and sat on the edge. She continued staring at Romney. A whoosh of air conditioning came from above, roaring like a gale in the insular silence of the room. Agent Kinsey cocked her head to the side, then crossed her arms, as if she were focusing on a single pore on Romney’s forehead. This was a tactic to build tension, Romney decided, but he wasn’t going to let it get to him. He leaned back in his chair. The uneven leg made a defiant thump.
“Let’s start with a simple question,” said Agent Kinsey. “Where does an unemployed accountant get fifty thousand notes on a bank account he never opened?”
Romney grinned at this. She was already on to personal attacks. Typical bully stuff. Agent Kinsey was getting angry again“You said it was laundered. Check the transfers. Follow the money. Anybody with half a brain can read bank statements.”
“The source account belongs to an abandon factory in rural Queensglade. Yours, Queldin’s, Vandesko’s. Nothing coming out or going in for twenty years. But somehow, this abandoned plant made $200,000 ON last week. One fifty, if you withdraw your payment to Mr. Kyro.”
“Interesting bit of history about that factory,” she continued. “It belonged to the Smoak family. You know the Smoaks, don’t you, Balvance? You hear about them on the news, read about them in the papers, see their faces on the TV, just like everyone else. Isn’t that right?”
She presented a plastic binder. On its front cover, the logo for Hulgrad and Co. She opened it to reveal an old picture of Romney clipped to a long list of personal information. Then she began to turn the pages one by one.
“Any of this ring a bell?”
“Not sure I follow,” he said.
“How long did you work for Hulgrad and Company? It was just shy of eight years, wasn’t it? And how many accounts did you work with in that time? About a hundred or so? A thousand, maybe? Who keeps count after eight years?"
Romney couldn’t hide the surprise on his face, but then again he didn’t make an effort to. This sparked his curiosity. It was in danger of burning down the rest of his brain. He tried to compose himself before taking the bait.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he stammered. “What does my old job have to do with robbing a bank?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Don’t you know?”
Romney tried to laugh it off, but shook his head part way through. He hadn’t the faintest.
“Your first gig wasn’t the First Ontaran,” said Agent Kinsey. “It all started here, at a fake investment firm, Hulgrad and Company. The biggest money laundering operation in the Smoak family syndicate.”
“They burned hundreds of thousands off their books. And nobody batted an eyelash because nobody cared. It was all bad notes. And you were their maestro.”
She produced a dog-eared sheet from a ledger. Romney recognized the grid lines crisscrossing the page. He had spent a portion of his life staring down at them, writing in figures and crossing them out. He could see notes scribbled in the margins in red ink, but the handwriting was too frantic to be legible at a glance. Agent Kinsey ran a finger down a line of figures.
“Half of a bank robbery in Central Lanvale, right here. This one, the Smoak family share of a jewelry heist, the biggest in Tambridesian history. We’re still looking into this one, but signs point to assault weapons smuggled into a foreign country. Andar, to be specific. Funny coincidence. You being there, on the same plane that was supposed to fly them in.”
Romney shook his head. It was nonsense. He had done a lot for Mr. Hulgrad, but he never cooked the books. It was legitimate work. Agent Kinsey seemed put off by this reaction.
“Is it all coming together now?” she said, though the tone of her voice was unconvincing.
Romney wheeled around, searching the room for an answer that wasn’t there. A dark, abandoned sluice in the deepest corner of his mind opened up. The old days of the musty office building began pouring in. The numbers, the long hours, the overtime, and all the feelings of self-doubt, piling one on top of the other. His head was submerged in offices of Hulgrad and Co. Romney began gnashing his teeth again.
Old faces rushed by his periphery, rarely making eye contact, asking him how his day was going and never listening to the answer, never quite getting his name right. It was criminal what they did to their employees, but they never committed any crimes. All of the money came from somewhere. He had checked the numbers, again and again, and they always had clean sources. He didn’t hear Agent Kinsey snap her fingers. She tried again, closer to his face.
“Any of this ring a bell, Balvance?”
“It was real money,” he stammered. “People’s savings, their kid’s college funds, their retirement. It always had a source.”
“Like hells it did. That place had nothing but bad dry cleaning. Every single note.”
Romney was silent. He was sinking deeper into the cold, grim office building. It couldn’t be true. There were people in the front office every day, meeting with their specialists to discuss diversifying portfolios and short-term versus long-term gains, volatilities and where to avoid them. At least, that was what the consultants did. They did what Romney had strived to do since he started his degree in finance at Lanvale Prime. He wanted to help people make money. So they could realize their dreams. But that dream had died on year four, when promotions were out of the question.
Agent Kinsey returned to the opposite chair. She was sorting through the folder, plucking out more ledger pages and spreadsheets and dropping them in front of Balvance. Each was a laundry list of criminal enterprises. Theft, embezzlements, illegal goods and services, bribes, each a line item on Romney’s old spreadsheets, marked for a college fund or an early retirement. Romney was still leaning back in his chair, looking down at the mess of spreadsheets, trying to distance himself from the crimes on paper. He looked up to Agent Kinsey, but his gaze was lost in memories. Agent Kinsey was incredulous.
“Come on. You don’t remember any of this? The books looked good because you were cooking them. You were their numbers guy, Balvance. Their maestro. You oversaw every single transaction on these sheets. You knew what these were. You had to. How could anyone be that oblivious?”
Romney’s mouth was a thin line. His world had become the old investing firm, from the first years when the office was clean and the lights still worked. And now it was all in place.
There was always something wrong with the numbers, and he had meant to bring it up. He looked to Agent Kinsey, his expression deadpan.
“I didn’t talk much.”
Romney Balvance and his Checkered Past
It all started with a job offer.
Romney Balvance, twen
ty-one, the fresh and bright-eyed graduate with his newly printed bachelor’s in finance. He was an up-and-comer, a star pupil, a go-getter ready to take in the world and shape it to his liking. It was a time full of possibilities. The markets were strong. There were new opportunities around every corner, an infinite number of chances to make it big, to realize dreams. Romney’s dream was to build a better tomorrow for families all across Ontar, by helping them manage their finances. Yes, even at its best, the world of money was a scary place. But they would have nothing to fear, because Romney Balvance would be their navigator. He would chart the oceans of the stock market and plot courses through their turbulent water, guiding each of his clients to his and her financial goals. Teachers and firefighters and small-business owners, and everyone who walked through his door; they would all have their dreams in safe, nonvolatile investments. And they would all have Romney to thank.
Before he could chart the market tides, he would have to climb up from the ground floor. It was the nature of the business. Romney’s first job in the financial sector began at Hulgrad and Co. He would be part of their accounting team. His first day would be a Monday in April.
This was all right.
He always had plenty to do when he arrived at work every morning, and it was always enough to carry him through without interruption. Hulgrad and Co. was the newest investment firm in Lanvale, with new clients coming in every day. Romney and his fellow accountants kept track of the firm’s day-to-day dealings, every purchase and sale, every deposit and withdrawal, along with the various fluctuations of a living market, and tracking every expense to keep the firm in balance. There were a lot of numbers involved. A scary amount, even. But Romney was up to the task.
On a given day, he would sort through portfolios and record their various ups and downs on a spreadsheet, then go through business receipts and record the various expenses for the day. And then he would tally up the entirety of his sheets and record that onto another spreadsheet. By week’s end, he would compile all of the spreadsheets, tally all of their numbers, and file everything into a report. The report would go to Mr. Hulgrad’s secretary, Isolda, who would pass it on to Mr. Hulgrad. This was how the first four years of Romney’s job played out. Riveting stuff, we know.
And this was fine.
Sure, he never had time to talk to anyone. And his coworkers still had trouble remembering his name or what he did there. And, okay, so there was that time he was escorted out of the building because no one could remember that he actually did work there. Luckily, it was a Friday and Isolda had been looking for him. That day, he had finished the weekly report in record time and had it on her desk before lunch. Mr. Hulgrad was so impressed by this, he bought Romney a thank you card.
“There’re great things in store for you, Remi. Keep up the good work,” he’d said.
Romney never had a chance to correct him after that. But it was fine. Mr. Hulgrad would learn his name in due time. They would all know him.
There were promotions in those four years, but they never seemed to happen to Romney. Certain people were picked over him for raises, promotions, awards for excellence, and for employee of the month. And there were birthdays with cake in the break room, although it never seemed to happen on his birthday.
But that was fine. Really, it was.
Everyone did great work at Hulgrad and Co. It just wasn’t his time yet. The big day would come when he would move to his new desk in consulting and start his true career. He just had to keep working hard. It was always important to keep your head high in times like these, Romney’s father would say. Optimism and hard work forged the path to success. It wasn’t always easy to see the bright side of things, but it was always right.
Year five would test this slogan to its limits. In February of that year, the other accountants had stopped showing up to work. This meant that Romney would now have to do the work of four accountants.
But that was fine.
This was his big chance, to prove himself to Mr. Hulgrad. He would rise to the occasion and shine brighter than any accountant ever did. Romney stayed late every night and was sometimes in the office during the early morning. He compiled the spreadsheets, updated them with figures, day in and day out. The report would be on Isolda’s desk every Friday morning, and then another report by three that afternoon, and then a third combined report by close of business. Romney met every deadline, like clockwork. He got a small raise at some point in late May. By early December, it was clear that Mr. Hulgrad had no plans of hiring another accountant. His relationships suffered. There was no cake for his birthday.
But, you know, that was fine.
Year five wasn’t all bad. Romney had moved into his new apartment in Cresdale Heights. It was more expensive than his last place, but it was much closer to work. It had a kitchen, a working bathroom, hot water, even a full cable package. Romney would bask in the glory of this new abode every other weekend, so long as he wasn’t falling behind on the numbers.
Year six was better. In that short amount of time, Romney had mastered the art of working four jobs at once. He had become the authority on crunching numbers, Hulgrad and Co.’s only “numbers guy”. Romney could look at new figures, determine which ones had changed, calculate the sums and differences in his head, and record them, all without error. By the end of January, he was coming home at decent hours again. He could go out on Friday nights and spend his weekends venturing around Lanvale. This was how he met Haley Burroughs in a twenty-four-hour coffee bar. By March, Haley had moved into his apartment. Romney was happier in those months than he could ever remember.
In June, there was a birthday cake in the break room. The top read “Happy Birthday, Jerrick, Tamara, Kira, Remnei, and Carl.” It was vanilla, with cookies-and-cream filling. It tasted like sweet success.
But then came year seven. It started with a terrible surprise one Friday afternoon, when he turned in the final report for the day and found no Isolda there to accept it. He stared at it for a good minute, trying to piece together a desk without a secretary sitting at it. Then he stepped into the main offices, his mind still wheeling around the conundrum. Maybe she was somewhere else. Or, maybe she was taking a break? Did Isolda take breaks? He had never noticed it before. As he searched, Romney passed more empty desks, like neat rows of desolation, until he found one occupied by a man with sleepless eyes. The man wore a homemade name tag pinned to his cornflower-blue dress shirt. It read “Jerrick: the only consultant left.” His smile held no joy.
“Congratulations, Blavence. You made the cut.”
And just like that, on a Friday afternoon, Hulgrad and Co. was down three-quarters of its workforce. When asked why everyone was gone, a general manager would say something about unforeseen losses and that a bear market was here to stay. Romney knew what the term “bear market” meant and decided that the general manager had no clue.
Romney was asked to do new jobs. He became supervisor of the vacuum, the dustrag, and the trash bins in his area. He was expected to greet people at the door on Thursdays and to keep Mr. Hulgrad’s calendar.
This was fine, really.
This diversified his role at Hulgrad and Co. It made him a valuable asset to the firm. A promotion would be in order. Any day now.
His new tasks left him just enough time to speed-read through the portfolios, rush through the receipts, and cram everything into the spreadsheets. And one afternoon, he saw the problem. The numbers were in the black. Hulgrad and Co. was not losing money. In fact, they were running a hefty surplus. There were no losses. So, why were they cutting everybody? The numbers for the following week were the same as before. The firm lost a little here and gained a little there, but everything always ended up in the black. There was still plenty of money in Hulgrad and Co. So, where was it? Romney never had enough time in the day to ask these questions. But they were beginning to worry him.
Romney would work late in August. This time he would be careful with the numbers. He examined each portfolio line
by line, checked each purchase and sale against the internet, until each number checked out. Then, and only then, would he write them down on the spreadsheet. This meant his reports were later than usual, but always, always on Mr. Hulgrad’s desk before closing time.
At this point, the problem was clear as day. There was no problem.
Each stock was legitimate. Every Ontaran note was accounted for on the stock market. And worst of all, the firm was looking at record profits for the year. Yet they were still cutting expenses. The firm only bought pens on clearance. Employees were told to reuse paper clips and to never, under any circumstances, turn them into little stick figures. This was meant for Helga in HR, the sole survivor of the eastern corners of the office. Romney was told to use both sides of the paper for his spreadsheets. This made the Friday reports more difficult, and once more cut into his weekend time. There were no more cakes in the break room. In September, they removed the toaster. They were told to wear extra layers in November.
And all of this was fine, for the most part.
There were people all over Lanvale who didn’t have steady paychecks, some who didn’t have jobs or a place to call home at the end of the day. Romney kept his head high, despite the shady practices. He had seven years of finance experience under his belt. That would count for something.
And before they knew it, year eight was upon the firm. Job cuts decimated the meager workforce down to Romney, Helga, the consultant named Jerrick, and Tamara from customer service. They became HR, the consultant, customer service, and the accountant of Hulgrad and Co. Each received a 3 percent raise. Mrs. Hulgrad was brought in for answering the phones and general housekeeping.
Mr. Hulgrad was outside of his office more often, always wandering aimlessly about the building and mugging at each of his five remaining employees. His long, dour face would often turn to Romney, and he would shake his head in dismay, before moving on to the next part of the office. These events always put Romney into overdrive. Did he know that his firm saw its highest profits last year? Did he know where all that money was?