“About that amount,” Sherman muttered, no doubt knowing that the actual number was closer to seventy million.
“In order to do the work I have to do, we can’t be seen talking, and I can’t be sitting in my office in Human Resources.” He pulled a paper from his briefcase and handed it to Sherman. “You are going to hire the consulting firm of Carter & Associates. The retainer will be an initial one million dollars and two hundred thousand dollars per month for expenses. A wire of twelve million dollars will be sent to my attorney trust account. This money and additional funds I might need will be used to compensate Matthews’s victims.”
“Why do you need that much when we only know about a few victims?” Sherman demanded.
“Do you want me to come back to you every time I learn about a new victim and say I need more money?”
Sherman saw his point. “That is a lot of money you’re expecting me to make available without explanation.”
“You’re the CEO. I leave that part to you.”
Carter reached into his briefcase and pulled out two bags containing the items he had purchased that morning. He had exercised an abundance of caution. Every 7-Eleven and Rite Aid had security cameras recording visual images of customers and their purchases. Buying six phones in one store might raise questions; buying one phone in six different stores would not.
“If something goes wrong, it will be in both of our best interest to have zero record of the contacts between us. No emails, no use of office phones, cell phones, nothing. Do you know what a burner phone is?”
“Are those the ones that got Samsung in trouble because they kept catching fire?”
Carter almost burst out laughing, but then realized the CEO might not be joking. “No, that was something different. Burner phones are completely untraceable. Each phone has a memory capacity of about thirty minutes. When we talk, we’ll keep it short and sweet. A quick update on what I’ve concluded and what I’m working on.”
“How do I get more memory when it runs out?”
“You don’t. You throw it away and move on to the next phone. I bought each of us three phones to start. I’ll get more later if necessary. I have your three numbers. The numbers of my phones are written on this paper,” he said as he handed over a sheet.
“Carter, you were pretty confident that I was going to go along with your plan, weren’t you?”
“Honestly, I didn’t know what you were going to decide. But if you were going to say yes, it made a lot more sense for us to be able to get started after one meeting instead of two.”
Sherman stared straight ahead, feeling the rage inside him build. I have no idea who this guy is, but I have to trust him, he thought.
“All right, Carter, we’re going to play ball together. Give me until Tuesday or Wednesday to get the money flowing your way.”
“I’m not quite finished,” Carter said smoothly. “There’s an outside chance someone could start listening in on our conversations. To protect ourselves, we talk in code. Each victim will be a car model, a Ford, a Chevy, a Mercedes, etc. When talking about money, each million dollars will be a bushel. This code is on the same paper with the burner phone numbers.”
“Is that it?”
“Three last things. First is a copy of the resignation letter I’ll submit on Monday. Next, as I find out the names of the victims, I’ll need access to their personnel files. Call somebody in IT and make access available to Carter & Associates. You’ll make a phone call to confirm that my exit package includes keeping my family on the company health-care plan at company expense for two years.”
If I ring this jerk’s neck and throw him in Long Island Sound, I wonder how long it will take to find his body? Sherman raged to himself. “And the last thing?”
“The only person who knows for sure how many victims there are is Brad Matthews. You, or I, or we have to talk to him to find out. And while we’re at it, ask him to kindly stop adding to the list. Think about how you want to handle that one.”
“All right, I’ll call you in a couple days on one of these damn phones. Now, get out.”
Sherman watched Carter exit the car and walk toward the front doors of the station. He thought about the value of the stock that would be awarded to him when the company went public and slammed on the gas pedal, sending the car barreling from the parking area.
32
It was an act of will for Sherman to keep close to the speed limit as he drove the three miles home from the Greenwich train station. He needed to get on his computer. He cursed himself for the way he had screeched the tires in the parking lot. A moment after he slowed, a police cruiser had come around the corner. He was in no mood for a confrontation with a cop.
I’m placing my whole career in the hands of this Carter guy, and I don’t know a damn thing about him, he thought. He remembered the name of a detective agency a friend had used when he suspected, correctly, that his wife was having an affair. Caught in the act, she had agreed to a much more reasonable divorce settlement in exchange for keeping the affair quiet.
But if I have them investigate Carter, what am I hoping they’ll find? Does it really matter if he was the smartest or dumbest guy in his law school class? He must have a clean background or he never would have been hired by REL. I’m stuck with him, but can I trust him?
Sherman pulled into his garage and clicked the door closed behind him. He hurried through the den, where his wife was on the couch reading a magazine. “Are you finished exercising already?” she asked without looking up.
Not wanting to bother with her questions, he did what he found himself doing more often. Without answering, he just kept going into his office and closed the door behind him.
Please be different from the way I remember it, he pleaded as he searched for the emails sent to him by Frederick Carlyle, Jr. He scanned past the more recent ones until he landed on the one he was looking for. In the subject line Carlyle had written: Just between us.
Sherman tapped it open.
Dick, A young associate producer spoke to me today. She claims she had a me-too encounter with Brad Matthews in his office. Her description was graphic. I told her I’d look into it. How do you want to handle? Fred
Sherman clasped his fingers together behind his head. He looked at the date of the email to confirm what he already knew. It had landed in his inbox when his attorney was completing the negotiation on his latest contract. His retirement severance would be thirty million dollars. That number could double if a rumored IPO ever came to fruition. Sixty million dollars. Mega-rich! Even if he dumped his wife and gave her half of it, he’d still have plenty to live the way he wanted to in retirement.
But now everything was up in the air. Three months had elapsed since he had received the email from Junior. The age-old question: What did he know and when did he know it?
They’ll crucify me for letting so much time go by, he told himself.
33
Michael Carter was barely aware of the gentle clacking of the train on the tracks as he rode back to Grand Central Terminal. He glanced down at the legal pad in front of him. His To Do list filled the top sheet. It all felt surreal.
It would have been wrong to say he’d been confident Sherman would approve his plan, even though there were good reasons for him to do so. What Carter hadn’t expected was the rush of exhilaration that he was experiencing knowing that the CEO of REL News had put the fate of the company in his hands.
The toughest case is always the first one. If he reached a settlement with Lauren Pomerantz—when I settle with Pomerantz, he chastised himself—he could use the lessons learned from that negotiation to help with the subsequent ones. There would be more. How many, he had no way of knowing. Sick puppies like Brad Matthews didn’t do this every once in a while, he thought. Matthews had power and access to so many vulnerable young women. With a little luck there’ll be plenty of victims, Carter thought, and plenty of work for me.
His time in the military had taught him that most out
comes are decided before the first shot is fired on the field of battle. The side with superior intelligence, the opponent with the knowledge advantage, almost always prevails. There was no doubt in his mind that Pomerantz, with that recording of her Matthews encounter in her back pocket, had the stronger hand to play in their upcoming negotiation. My best shot, he thought to himself, is to prevent her from realizing that she holds all the cards.
He opened his gym bag and removed Pomerantz’s personnel file. Glancing around, he could see that no one was within earshot on the mostly empty train.
After beginning to dial her cell on one of the burner phones, he paused, then clicked the phone off. She was already on edge. Why spook her by calling on an unavailable number?
Switching to his iPhone, he punched in her number. Midway through the third ring she answered in a soft, almost fragile voice.
“Lauren, this is Michael Carter. We spoke in my office last night. Before I say anything else, how are you doing?”
“What are you looking for me to say, Mr. Carter? That I’m doing great? Well, I’m not. I’m sure you’re not calling on a Saturday afternoon to inquire about my health. What do you want?”
Carter was not accustomed to young women speaking rudely to him. It took effort to keep any hint of irritation out of his voice. “All right, Lauren, let’s go right to the reason I called. The first time you reported an incident at the company nothing happened. In the less than twenty-four hours since you came to my office, I have been granted authority to arrange a confidential settlement with you. Part of that settlement will include the guarantee that you will be offered a comparable position in the news business in the city of your choosing.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Carter thought for a moment he might have lost the connection. “Lauren, are you still there?”
“Yes,” she answered quietly.
“Good. I’ll need tomorrow and Monday to finish some things at my end. Are you free to meet on Tuesday? I’ll text you the where and the when.”
“Mr. Carter, I want to bring a friend with me. She’s not a lawyer. I’d just feel better if—”
“Lauren, listen to me. The authorization I received to settle with you specifies that I deal directly and only with you. I can’t change that. Look at it this way. We should have our meeting. Just the two of us. There won’t be any pressure on you to sign anything on Tuesday. Let’s try to identify what both sides need to reach an acceptable agreement and go forward from there. Does that make sense?”
“I guess so.”
“Perfect. Lauren, I believe I’ve demonstrated that you can trust me. Promise me that you won’t talk about the incident with anyone before we meet on Tuesday.”
“I won’t” was the reluctant answer.
“I’ll be in touch. Goodbye.” Carter ended the call as the train slowed to a stop in Grand Central Terminal.
34
Dick Sherman had had a lousy weekend. Over time he had learned to tune out his wife’s inane comments and not let her idiotic suggestions about things they should do together bother him, but he found himself snapping at her. The Carter-Matthews situation was never far from his mind. He was about to take his first step to contain the situation, and he was experiencing an emotion that was foreign to him. He was nervous.
The buzzer on his desk sounded. “Mr. Sherman, Mr. Myers is here to see you.”
“Send him in,” he barked.
For the past eleven years Ed Myers had been the chief financial officer of REL News Corporation. He was the perfect complement to Sherman’s skill set. Where Sherman was a genius at picking the types of programs and on-air personalities that drew in audiences, when it came to the dollars, Myers knew how to make the numbers work. Time and again the Wall Street Journal and Forbes had commended REL News for the bargain prices they had paid as they acquired regional cable systems and built a national powerhouse.
When it came to keeping expenses under control, no one was better than Myers. It was only a slight exaggeration to say that without looking at a computer, he could remember how every dollar in the company was spent. That was Myers’s greatest strength; today it might also be Sherman’s biggest headache.
“Come in, Ed. How are you? Sit down,” Sherman said as he came around the desk to shake hands.
Myers appeared taken aback. As if he couldn’t recall Sherman inquiring about how he was doing and thought something was clearly up. “I’m fine, Dick. Thanks.”
“Ed, you and I have worked together for a long time. We’ve faced a lot of tough challenges, but we always found a way to make things work.”
“Yes, we have,” Myers said, wondering why Sherman, who never told anybody they were doing a good job, was so full of compliments. The thought went through his head, Is he about to fire me?
“Ed, do you trust me?”
“Of course I do. Have I done anything to make you think otherwise?”
“No, you haven’t. It’s important we trust each other, because I need you to do something and not ask a lot of questions.”
“Do what?”
“I need you to wire twelve million dollars to this account,” he said while handing him a sheet of paper. “I want it to be there in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
The look on Sherman’s face revealed that he was dead serious.
“That’s a lot of money to just let slip through the cracks. I have to classify it as something. Can you at least tell me—”
“Ed, I wouldn’t be asking you to do this unless it was critically important to the company. Believe me, you don’t want to know why. Nobody will question this if you sign off on it. Can you make this happen?”
Myers exhaled as he glanced at the wiring instructions.
“All right, I know better than to ask who Carter & Associates are.” Myers took off his glasses, pulled a smooth cloth from his pocket, and began to wipe them. He stared without seeing out the window. “I’m finalizing the numbers the investment bankers will use to calculate the valuation. Twelve million dollars is a lot. Is this a onetime charge or will there be more?”
It was a question Sherman had not anticipated. It was not the time to appear uncertain. “Just this once,” he answered, trying to sound confident.
“Then I can bury this in the M and A budget.”
“How?” Sherman asked, knowing that Myers was referring to Mergers and Acquisitions.
“I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. When we buy other cable systems, we spend a lot of money on due diligence. Most of it goes to outside entities, investment bankers, law firms, and consultants. They scrub the numbers to see if the company is as profitable as it claims to be, check out any legal hurdles, and then make a recommendation regarding how the acquisition would fit into REL.”
“You could add the twelve million dollars as an expense incurred in buying those companies?”
“Actually, just the opposite. Sometimes, we do all the homework, kick the tires, and decide XYZ company is not a good fit. Even when no purchase results, a lot of money is spent on due diligence. As long as nobody digs too deep, I could bury it there.”
“And if the Street finds out we spent a lot on companies we didn’t acquire?”
“Most of the industry analysts are clueless. If they say anything, they’ll probably praise us for being cautious with our acquisitions.”
“I knew I could count on you, Ed. Get it done.”
35
Michael Carter glanced at his watch. 10:50. Lauren Pomerantz, assuming she was on time, would arrive in ten minutes.
The five days since Pomerantz had come to his office had unleashed a whirlwind of activity. An hour earlier his broker at Schwab had called to confirm the arrival by wire of $12 million into the coffers of Carter & Associates. Sherman had been true to his word. He had figured out a way to get the money.
Carter had hoped to spend a few days searching for office space suitable for his n
ew level of responsibility, his new station in life. There hadn’t been time. Instead he had gone online the previous morning to a supplier of temporary space, visited the Midtown location an hour later, and signed a one-month lease. The dim office was smaller than he would have liked, the furniture modern and a little on the cheap side. His view out a small window in the corner was of a skyscraper that kept his office permanently in shadow. He had chosen one of the larger offices that had enough room inside for a small conference table. Only two of the four chairs would be needed. Among the shared services was a very attractive, young receptionist, Beatrice, who would phone him when Pomerantz arrived.
It might be just as well, he thought to himself while looking around, to have the meeting here. If Pomerantz saw him in an opulent setting, her financial demands might go up. It was human nature. There was another advantage to keeping the expenses low, at least at the start.
He had reached out to two military buddies he kept in touch with. Both worked in security; one at a credit reporting agency, the other at Verizon Wireless. The information they had provided would prove invaluable, but it didn’t come cheap. And when he signed for the space yesterday, he had put forward his personal credit card for the deposit.
A sickening thought had occurred to him as he submitted his resignation letter to REL and committed to the expenses. Suppose Sherman changed his mind and backed out of their deal. Sherman could deny they had ever met. Carter had gone to great lengths to assure there was no record of their meeting. He’d be the one on the hook for the research and office expenses, and he’d have to go begging for his old job back. The arrival of the wired money had put his fear to rest.
On the way to the office he had stopped at a bakery, bought some pastries, and had them sliced. The receptionist, for a fee, had agreed to bring them coffee upon request.
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry Page 9