Everything that I had been doing thus far depended on the maintenance of a shared pretense: Sid and I were both outwardly pretending to play the corporate game, while behind the scenes we were each maneuvering. According to the rules of the outward game, I couldn't simply blow off a meeting scheduled by an HR manager with my departmental manager. I accepted the meeting on Lotus Notes, knowing that nothing good would come from it.
I showed up in the meeting room that Anne Hull had scheduled at 8:15 sharp. Sid Harper and Anne were already there and waiting for me. Sid was seated on the side of the table opposite the door, his arms folded across this chest. Anne sat on the adjacent side, a manilla folder—the Frank Joseph file, no doubt—opened before her.
Anne gestured for me to sit. Then they launched into me, without preamble.
“When I first told you about your personal improvement plan,” Anne said, “your issues were mostly personnel-related. Now Sid informs me that you have major work-related issues, too.”
She removed three printed pages from the Frank Joseph file and slid them across the table to me.
“Sid brought these to my attention yesterday. Apparently you haven't been doing your work.”
I picked up the pages and skimmed through them. What Anne had produced was the most recent open items report for our purchasing group.
The report, created more or less on a weekly basis, detailed which items were open, and which were closed. It covered everything from the supplier quotes we were supposed to process, to the purchase orders we had to issue. Typical corporate paperwork, in other words.
The thing is, I was always at the top of the group, leaving Donnie and Bethany to eat my proverbial dust. That was why I was promoted to senior buyer ahead of them.
Since my troubles had begun, I hadn't stopped submitting my paperwork in a timely manner. You might reasonably ask why I bothered.
I suppose that I harbored a belief, bolstered by my stubborn refusal to completely yield to cynicism, that all of this would come out fairly in the end. The situation would be righted and my job would go back to normal. My relations with Sid were permanently broken, needless to say; but I was still grateful for my job at Thomas-Smithfield Electronics—not to mention my paycheck.
The report now in my hands, however, showed a different picture. Almost all of my items were marked “incomplete”.
I couldn't believe it. But then, I could believe it. There was a perverse kind of logic here. Sid had used his management override permissions to cook the data.
Somehow that was even more incredible—and offensive—than what he had done in North Carolina, than the beating I had taken last night. I had been proud of the effort I had put in to make senior buyer. And now Sid was stealing that from me, too.
“This report has been altered,” I said.
“Come, Frank, you can do better than that,” Sid scoffed.
Anne, on the other hand, completely ignored my objection. HR managers at big companies are like traffic cops: They’ve heard it all before.
“This doesn't bode well for your future with the company, Frank,” Anne said. “And you won’t be able to say that you weren't put on notice, that you weren't given an opportunity to improve.”
There were a few closing remarks to the meeting, though they aren’t worth recording here in detail. Mostly HR-speak designed to prevent me from suing the company when I was inevitably fired. I sat there while Anne talked, and I thought about my next moves. Sid was accelerating the game against me, and he was assaulting me from multiple angles. I would have to accelerate my own game, too.
Finally Anne adjourned the meeting. I thought we were done, but Sid held up his hand in a “hold on” gesture and said,
“Thank you for your time, Anne. Frank, I want you to stay. I’d like to talk to you alone.”
Chapter 56
Sid waited until Anne had closed the door behind her, and would be well out of earshot before speaking to me:
“You’ve been very, very foolish about all of this. Two weeks ago you were my star buyer. I had promoted you. You were on your way to an eventual management track.” He shook his head, as if in disbelief at what I had done. “You’ve brought all of this on yourself, Frank.”
“Actually, Sid, a Russian man named Sokolov—whom I assume is a friend of yours—brought a pretty nasty beating down on me last night. But you already know that, don't you?”
Sid smiled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But if anything like that has happened to you, you could have avoided it. You could have been long out of Thomas-Smithfield by now. No one would have come after you.”
He was trying to play the manager with me, as if he could have the best of both worlds. I wasn't going to let him have that.
“Here’s what it comes down to, Sid: I’ve got a good thing going here, and now you want to take it away from me. You think I ruined your plans, well, you ruined mine. That’s what this is about.”
Actually, it was about a lot more than that, but Sid was smart enough to connect the dots.
I knew that there were two major factions involved in this on the other side: There was the primary collusion between Sid, Donnie, and Bethany—which included Ellen Watson in some secondary role. And then there were the Russians.
I didn't know how closely these two groups were coordinating their actions; but I assumed that Sid was at least aware of what the Russians were doing.
“Be smart, Frank: Back off while you still can.”
He paused then, as if thinking to himself. Then he made me another proposition:
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that matter of the letter of recommendation. Maybe I could reconsider that. Would that help you make the right decision?”
I have to admit that I was tempted. But Sid knew that I knew too much. The Russians knew that I knew too much. I might be safe for a little while, possibly even a few years. Sooner or later, though, someone would come after me.
Moreover, I still believed that they were planning to “eliminate” Ellen. But now “Ellen” was Ellen Trevor—the Brown-Eyed Girl—rather than Ellen Watson, our surly group admin.
The truth was that I couldn't back off now, even if I’d wanted to.
I stood up to leave.
“I think I already told you, Sid: I like my job here. I intend to keep it. And this meeting is over.
Chapter 57
I had pieced together, more or less, how the embezzlement scheme worked: There was a group of suppliers that were mere shell companies—business entities on paper only. The Jones Company. The Peters Company. Et cetera.
Donnie and Bethany, with Sid’s help, were issuing Thomas-Smithfield purchase orders to the shell companies. The shell companies were issuing invoices back to Thomas-Smithfield against the purchase orders.
Then Thomas-Smithfield was issuing payments to bank accounts set up for the nonexistent firms.
Complicated, yes; but also deviously simple. Once the money was in these accounts, it could be transferred and redistributed among Sid, Donnie, and Bethany. They could easily bilk our employer for hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of dollars.
Ellen Watson was in on it, too. As our group admin, she was responsible for issuing every purchase order. She maintained our supplier database. The plan wouldn't work without her collusion, or her acquiescence, at the very least.
That didn't tell me why Sid would become involved with something so risky in the first place, or why he would want to throw in his lot with Donnie and Bethany. And I couldn't figure out why any of them would want to have anything to do with the Russians. But I thought I had the basics of the scheme down.
I had also learned a bit more about Ellen Trevor. She worked in accounts payables. This was the group in accounting that was responsible for issuing payments to Thomas-Smithfield’s suppliers. The accounts payables group paid Thomas-Smithfield’s bills, in other words.
Ellen must have grown suspicious about one of the invoices. She had either brought t
he matter to Sid’s attention, or she had raised it up to her own management.
And more likely than not, someone had threatened her, told her to keep quiet. She had persisted, thereby putting her own life in peril.
With these sundry conclusions in mind, I stood outside the area of the first floor that was occupied by the accounting department, where Ellen Trevor’s cubicle was located. It was 12:02 pm, and Ellen Trevor had not yet left her desk for lunch.
Two minutes later I stepped just inside the accounting area and I saw Ellen Trevor slip on her overcoat. She was walking in my direction.
I fell back. I didn't want to approach her inside the building. Luckily, she didn't notice me. For better or worse, I was becoming skilled at these stealth maneuvers.
Ellen stepped out of the main entrance and into the parking lot. I was right behind her, still unnoticed.
“Excuse me,” I said, coming up behind her.
I had learned in recent days to assume that no conversation in the Thomas-Smithfield building was truly private.
I had discovered this, first of all, when I overheard Sid talk about eliminating Ellen. Then I had learned the same lesson again when Donnie had overheard the gist of my conversation with Claire, regarding the Ohio Winter Days Festival. That cliche about the walls having ears—in some cases, it’s true. So unusual as this was, I had to make my initial approach in the parking lot.
Ellen Trevor turned around, startled. I stood there, a little unsure of how much I could or should say before we were alone in a completely secure setting.
“Hi, Ellen,” I began.
“Oh, hi.” She was not exactly alarmed at my presence. But her face had a what-is-this-about? look on it.
She probably assumed that I was just another guy hitting on her, as was reasonable, given my less-than-smooth approach.
“We need to talk about the fake suppliers, Ellen.”
“What?”
“I know all about them.”
“How did you—”
“They’ve threatened me, too.”
Understanding finally dawned on her face.
“Oh.”
“Turn around and keep walking, as if you’re going to your car.”
She did as I said. I fell in behind her. If someone had seen us, he would have assumed that Ellen and I weren't walking together, that we were only walking in the same general direction.
“I know all about the suppliers,” I repeated, without looking directly at her. “We need to talk, but we can’t do it here. Are you good at memorizing numbers?”
“Yes.”
I recited the number to my personal cell phone. Then I recited it again.
“Do you have it?”
“Yes,” Ellen said.
“Text me your number,” I said, “and we’ll set up a time to talk. But not here at work.”
With that I peeled away from her, and walked in the direction of my car.
I went to a fast food restaurant and ate lunch—by myself.
While I was eating, my cell phone chimed with an incoming text message. It was from a local number:
“This is Ellen. Yes, I want to talk. I know things, too. And I’m scared.”
Chapter 58
At roughly seven o’clock that evening, Ellen and I were having dinner in a Thai restaurant on the opposite side of Cincinnati. We picked a corner table that afforded a view of the entire dining room. And while both of us had recently learned how fragile the concept of certainty can be, we were reasonably certain that no one would be able to eavesdrop on us.
“I knew something wasn't right one day when I was issuing a payment to a supplier for a purchase order originated by Bethany Cox,” Ellen said.
She was explaining how she had reached many of the same conclusions that I had reached.
“The supplier was a firm called the Roberts Company. To begin with, the bank was in the Cayman Islands. I found that very strange. I don't know how much you know about the accounting side of things, but no legitimate supplier of Thomas-Smithfield would have a bank account in the Caymans. When a person or an entity in the U.S. opens an account in the Caymans, it usually means one thing: The money is being laundered, or hidden.”
“That was a stupid mistake for them to make,” I suggested. “Rather obvious.”
“I suppose. But Thomas-Smithfield issues so many payments to so many suppliers. A lot can slip through. But yeah, I guess the Cayman Islands bank account was a mistake, because that’s what tipped me off.”
“The conspirators have made plenty of mistakes,” I reflected. “That doesn't necessarily mean that they won’t get away with what they are doing.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“So what did you do?”
“Rather than issue the payment immediately, I took a closer look at the supplier. Accounting has access to most of purchasing’s files, both paper as well as electronic, as you probably know.”
I nodded. I did know that.
“And as you saw, the file for the Roberts Company is a pretty obvious fraud. There was no engineering data. The part names and numbers looked made-up. And the address for the company was a post office box.”
Again I nodded. The Roberts Company was one of the shell firms that had flagged my attention.
"So did you confront Bethany?"
"I did. And she became extremely confrontational—right off the bat. But I could tell that she was also scared. So I knew something was up. I went directly to Sid after that. You see, my original suspicion was that only Bethany was involved in the foul play. I wouldn't have dreamed that a manager would become involved in something like that.”
The rest of Ellen’s story was more or less what I would have expected. In response to her inquiries, Sid became immediately defensive and hostile, too. Rather than providing a satisfactory explanation, Sid went directly to Ellen's manager.
"That's when it really got ugly," Ellen said. "Sid told my manager that I was making very insulting implications. He shouted. My manager could have stood up to him, but he didn't. Sid has a way of steamrolling people. My manager basically rolled over for him."
"Did you challenge your manager over the decision?"
Ellen sighed. “I did. But it quickly became apparent to me that my manager had no interest in pursuing the matter. You know how it goes: anyone who rises to the level of manager in a big company learns that you have to go along to get along."
"But wasn't your manager concerned about his own liability? There are the Sarbanes-Oxley rules, after all. Under that framework, accounting departments have oversight responsibilities."
"Sure. But sometimes it's easier to play dumb. Taking on a manager like Sid Harper is not something that you do casually, even if you're a manager yourself. Besides, I don't think that my manager really thought too far into the worst-case scenario. I don't think he wanted to.”
"But you didn't let it go."
"No." Ellen frowned; and I knew that over the past few weeks, she had been feeling many of the same resentments and frustrations that I had felt. "I didn’t let it go. My job isn't the most important job in the company, but I take pride in what I do. Why should I allow Sid to bully me into compromising my principles?"
She looked down at her plate, a trifle embarrassed. "At least that's what I thought."
It occurred to me that Ellen didn't yet know how far Sid was willing to go in order to compel her into compromising those principles. I had a responsibility to tell her.
"I want you to brace yourself. Because I have to tell you something that will disturb you. But you have to know about it."
I then told her about my eavesdropping on the original conversation. I told her what Sid had said about “eliminating” her.
“Oh, no,” she said. She dropped her fork onto her plate. I would have been willing to bet that she had never been told that she was the target of a murder conspiracy.
“Are you going to be all right? Do you want me to stop talking about this for a while, to give
you a chance to absorb it all?”
“No, I want to hear everything. I’m sorry. I’ll be fine. Tell me the rest.”
I gave her a rundown of the physical threats that I had endured. The beating by Sokolov. Sid pointing the gun at me.
“Wait. There are Russian mobsters involved, too?”
I detailed my encounters with the Russians. I filled in the larger backstory, including my visit to the office of the sham Peters Company.
“This is—worse than I thought.”
“Well, the good news—relatively speaking— is that I don't think they want to ‘eliminate’ either one of us. At least not if they can help it.”
“You really think so?”
“I do. Sokolov would gladly have killed me. I know that. I could see it in his eyes. And I’d be willing to bet that he’s killed before. But he suggested that he wanted to avoid killing me—at least for now—as it would bring down additional scrutiny.”
“It seems that what they want is a nice, quiet embezzlement operation,” Ellen said. “And that’s what they had going—until we got in the way.” She shuddered. “But I still can’t believe that Sid said that—about ‘eliminating’ me.”
“Trust me; he did.”
I then explained to her that that was how they found me out: I had thought that “Ellen” referred to Ellen Watson, our departmental admin. Then Ellen had turned out to be in cahoots with the conspirators.
Ellen Trevor, aka the Brown-Eyed Girl, was surprised again: “You mean that it’s more than just Sid and Bethany who are involved, inside the company?”
“As far as I know, it’s Sid, Bethany Cox, and Donnie Brady. Ellen Watson is also cooperating with them. I’m sure they’ve cut her in for something, but she doesn't seem to be one of the ringleaders.”
Ellen paused, a strange look on her face—as if I’d just informed her that her mother or her best friend was involved.
“Donnie Brady, you said.”
“Yeah, Donnie Brady.”
I recalled that day on the elevator, when Ellen had seemed to react to Donnie’s presence with extreme alarm, how she’d suddenly disembarked from the elevator.
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