Friday Night Jamie

by Bren Christopher

  Just then, Emily returned. She glared at me as if it were somehow my fault that her boss felt ill. I told her that I was just passing by and saw Brooks didn’t look well. She shooed me away, saying she would take care of him. I left Brooks in her more than capable hands.

  * * *

  After a long day, I headed home later than usual due to a last-minute meeting. Trying to decide the quickest thing I could make for dinner, I almost ran into the two figures lounging outside my apartment door. I looked up at the ginger-haired man and his smaller companion, a sharp-eyed woman with short black hair.

  “Can I help you?”

  “James Morgan?” the woman asked.

  “Yes.”

  The man pulled a badge from his pocket. “Adam Nash, FBI, and this is my partner, Colette Swenson.” Swenson pulled out her badge, and they both held them out for me to examine until I lifted my eyes to stare at them.

  “What’s this about?”

  Nash asked, “You work at Brooks and Stillman, right? You’re a CPA there?”

  I nodded, feeling nervous. Of course I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I think it’s a natural reaction when the FBI shows up at your door.

  “Can we come in, Mr. Morgan?” Nash gestured toward my apartment. “We have a few questions to ask you.”

  I unlocked the door, and we all took seats in the living room.

  Nash seemed to sense my nervousness, or maybe it was just an expected reaction. “Relax, Mr. Morgan. It’s just a few questions about your accounting firm. Nothing you’ve done.”

  “At least as far as we know,” Swenson added, giving me a suspicious look.

  “You’re not helping, Colette. I think our goal was to get him to talk to us, if I recall correctly.”

  Swenson replied, “I never said I thought that was a good idea.”

  Nash ignored her. “Mr. Morgan, it has come to the Bureau’s attention that all may not be quite as it seems at the prestigious public accounting firm of Brooks and Stillman.”

  “What’s this all about?” My nervousness was starting to turn into irritation. Why didn’t they just get to the point?

  “Damned impatient, isn’t he? I mean, considering how much trouble he’s in,” Swenson observed.

  “What do you mean trouble? You just said I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Nash said, “Oh, not from us, Mr. Morgan. But possibly from whomever at your firm has been involved in suspected illegal activities, including, but not limited to, such fun things as money laundering and fraud.”

  I shook my head in denial. “At Brooks and Stillman? You’re crazy.”

  Swenson leaned forward and said in a bit of a mocking tone, “Are we, Mr. Morgan? Are we really? Or are you the one who’s crazy, making those phone calls about the Tapman account, trying to investigate the error you detected on your own? You don’t know what you’ve stumbled into.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “We don’t have enough evidence yet on Brooks to tap the phones there, but we do have taps on some businesses that are well-known to be fronts for an organized-crime money-laundering operation. You called one of them in your attempt to track down the error you saw.”

  Nash took over again. “And who did you tell about the error, James? You don’t mind if I call you James, do you?”

  I was being tag-teamed by a couple of professionals and having a hard time processing everything they were saying.

  “James? Who did you tell?” Nash repeated.

  “A lot of people. My boss, John Eckland. Sanderson—he’s the senior CPA who has the account now. Keith Brooks, the VP of marketing. He brings in the accounts. Ethan Brooks knows; he’s the one who told me I did a good job catching it. Then he took the account away and assigned me one of the new, major accounts we just got…”

  Nash didn’t say anything, just raised an eyebrow while Swenson let out a rather unprofessional snort of disgust.

  I stood up to pace restlessly around the room. “Believe me, I know how it looks. Do you think I haven’t been wondering the same thing, thinking that the new account, along with the promise of a big bonus, might be some kind of reward for looking the other way?”

  “Is it?” Swenson again, using her suspicious tone. I suspected good cop, bad cop, but I was too rattled to accuse them of it.

  I turned on them. My voice came out low and tight. “That’s bullshit. I’m good at my job, and there was nothing strange about the reassignment. Anyway, it’s not like I just let it drop because of the new account. I told you. I reported it to my boss. He gave the account to Carl Sanderson, a CPA with a lot more experience than me who’s done work for the SEC. He said there wasn’t enough there for an investigation, so what else was I supposed to do?”

  I glared at them, feeling like they had accused me of something when I had done my best not to ignore the problem.

  They both looked at me for a long time, and then Swenson relaxed. “Okay, okay, maybe it wasn’t a deliberate bribe, maybe just a distraction and a way to get the Tapman account away from you.”

  “Great, I’ve gone from being a criminal to being a sap.”

  “No, James,” Nash said. “How could you know? It’s only because you are good at your job that we have any kind of connection between Brooks and the organized crime syndicate. We’ve had our suspicions for a long time but nothing concrete.”

  I took a seat again. Trying to calm down, I pointed out in a reasonable tone, “You still don’t have anything concrete. Just because the money from one account moved through a holding company, that doesn’t mean anything. A lot of money moves through those types of holding companies, most of it from very legitimate accounts.”

  “You’re right about that,” Nash told me. “We have our own forensic accountants backtracking the money now, but a little more information would help.”

  “You want me to spy for you? No way. I’m not getting in the middle of this. If Brooks goes down, we all lose our jobs, and I can’t handle that.”

  “You’re a CPA with an excellent resume. You’ll find something else. Anyway, we’re getting way ahead of ourselves here. I don’t want you to spy or to do anything that might make anyone think you’re still doing any investigating. Just keep your eyes open. That’s all. Not just for anomalies in the data, but for anything suspicious.”

  Suddenly I felt my stomach knot up. Distractions… Was Keith just another distraction? The timing—he hadn’t hit on me until right after I got the new account. I took a deep breath. That didn’t have to mean anything. Maybe I just hadn’t come to his attention until the party. The party at the boss’s house, where I had never been invited before. I felt a little sick.

  Swenson’s said sharply, “Morgan, what is it? You’ve thought of something. Tell us.”

  I thought about the previous Friday night, the sex, and the offer of drugs and felt dizzy. I had absolutely no proof that Keith was in on any of this. If there was even anything to be in on. All the FBI had were suspicions; they said so themselves. Still, he had kept me out all night while someone broke into my apartment, and the only thing missing was my computer…a computer I hadn’t used in a year, not since I’d gotten the laptop. But they, whoever they were, wouldn’t know that…

  “James! Are you okay?”

  Another deep breath and I said, “I’m fine. Sorry, just tired and hungry.” They didn’t look like they believed me, so I tried frantically to think of something else to say. “Anything suspicious… Well, there were these three guys I ran into outside of Brooks’s office the other day. Maybe they were clients, but they didn’t look like it.”

  Swenson was frowning, still suspicious that I was covering up something, but Nash said, “Why don’t you think they were clients? What did they look like?”

  I blinked, trying to focus. “They just didn’t look like our usual clients. The one guy I almost ran into in the hall was very tall, blond, big, and muscular, with a broken nose like a boxer or something. The second guy was a lot like him, big b
ut with long black hair. Then there was a shorter man, with light brown hair and a little mustache.”

  They got very alert when they heard the description of the shorter man. Swenson almost hissed the name, “Rastin.”

  “Maybe.” Nash sounded cautious. “Listen, I want you to come down to the Bureau office and look at some pictures, see if you can identify these guys. Will you do that?”

  I was reluctant to get more involved. “I’ve already told you everything I know.”

  Nash said with exaggerated patience, “James, it wasn’t really a request.”

  I thought for a moment. “Okay. Call me when you want me to come. I’ll take a cab after work. Not tomorrow night, though. I’ve got a date.” There was only so much disruption to my schedule I could take.

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to go out until this is resolved,” Swenson told me. “We don’t have any reason at all to believe that anyone knows you’ve been talking to us, but you never know.”

  “I’m going out,” I repeated. “It’s Friday night, and I’ve got a date.”

  “Okay. Who with?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  “Do you want us to assign someone to follow you all the time? I don’t think that’s necessary, and we don’t really have the manpower, but if you don’t cooperate, I’ll find somebody to do it.”

  “That’s crazy. You know, I can’t be the only one who saw those guys at Brooks’s office. Others can probably identify them too.”

  “We’ll look into that, but we don’t want to contact anyone else right now. The fewer who know about this investigation, the better. So who’s the date?” Swenson asked again.

  I gritted my teeth. “Keith Brooks.”

  Swenson stared at me. “Keith Brooks? The VP of marketing? How long have you been going out with him?”

  I stood up again, going to the window to gaze down at the busy nighttime street for a moment before I turned back to them. “We’ve only had one date. He hit on me at a party at Ethan Brooks’s house, the one I was invited to right after I got the new account.”

  They didn’t say anything. At least they didn’t feel the need to point out the obvious possibility; they could see I already suspected that by the sick look on my face. I took a deep breath. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, does it? Maybe he just noticed me for the first time at the party. It doesn’t mean he…”

  “No, it probably doesn’t mean anything,” said Nash. “There is no evidence at all that he is involved in any illegal activities at your firm. But that was the same night your apartment was broken into, wasn’t it?”

  I stared at him. How long had they been watching me?

  “That’s when we decided that you probably weren’t in on it,” Swenson said. “They took a computer, didn’t they? Was there anything on it?”

  I shook my head, spooked at the thought of someone watching me like that, maybe even following me around. “No, I don’t use it much. Do you really think it’s related to this? There have been several burglaries in this area lately.”

  “Can’t say for sure.”

  They didn’t ask me about the details of the error in the Tapman account or the data I had downloaded. Was it because they didn’t realize I had it or because it wasn’t valuable? I just didn’t see how anyone could know about it. Although taking work home was not uncommon, I had never mentioned to anyone that I had saved the information and taken it to my apartment to analyze over the weekend. A slight possibility still existed that the data had nothing to do with this mess, but I needed time to look at it again.

  Besides—and I felt a little guilty at the thought—did I really want to hand over information that could potentially bring down the firm and cost everyone their jobs? I thought of Sheila, about to get married, and Ed and his little family.

  Nash looked thoughtful. “Maybe it is a good idea to go on the date after all. Keep your eyes and ears open.” I started to protest, but he held up a hand. “Don’t go snooping where you shouldn’t be. Don’t do anything you wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

  “And Jamie, be careful of him,” Swenson added. “He has a reputation for getting things done, no matter what it takes, for working hard and playing even harder. Whether he’s involved in this or not, still—be careful, okay?”

  It was an echo of the warning Ed had tried to give me at lunch a couple of weeks ago, and I realized it had to do with the partying that Keith did with his clients. Well, that was expected of him; it was just part of the business.

  As they got up to go, I told them, “I still say you’re barking up the wrong tree. Ethan Brooks started that firm from scratch, and he would never do anything to jeopardize it. If there is something going on, it’s coming from outside, a security breach or something.”

  “That may be. But in the meantime, you know not to talk about this with anyone, right? No one at all.”

  Chapter Five

  Lydia was there again at Keith’s condo on Friday night. She looked great but already seemed a bit out of it. Whether due to drugs or alcohol, I couldn’t tell. Definitely in a friendlier mood than the last time I had seen her, she put her arms around me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I hugged her back perfunctorily and then looked at Keith. He could tell I wasn’t happy.

  We walked over to the bar. He had a drink ready for me there and handed it to me. “Here you go. I know you need to relax after the week we’ve had. You okay? Freaked out by the break-in?”

  I held my drink tightly, annoyed but trying not to show it. “I’m fine. The mess is cleared up, and I’ve already got my new computer.”

  “Great. I know, you’re wondering what Lydia is doing here. We’re just giving her a ride to the club. She’s meeting a couple of other friends there.”

  I relaxed. “Okay. Sorry, I don’t mean to be difficult. I just want to spend some time alone with you. That’s all.”

  He moved closer and stroked a hand down my chest. “That’s what I want too. We’ll have a little fun, and then we’ll come back here, just you and me.” His thumb rubbed over one nipple as he kissed my neck. I ran my hand through his fine hair and wondered why I didn’t have the same shivery reaction to him that I did to Matt. He was just as good-looking, much more sophisticated and charming.

  The three of us finished our drinks and headed out. To my surprise, there was a limo waiting. Keith said he didn’t want to worry about driving, just wanted to relax and have fun.

  I ran my hands over the leather seats and looked around while Keith fixed me a drink from the fully equipped bar in the backseat. He handed it to me and said, “You like it? I figured if I didn’t have to drive, we could make out on the way there.” He leaned over and kissed me, running his hand up my thigh.

  “It’s great, Keith. But if you keep the drinks coming like this, I won’t even be able to dance once we get to the club. Where are we going, anyway?”

  “I thought we’d hit a couple of different places. Don’t worry. You get as blasted as you want. Lydia and I’ll take care of you.”

  I suddenly realized I was sitting in the middle. Lydia had moved up to sit on the other side of me, and I hadn’t even noticed. How had that happened? She had her hand on my thigh too, rubbing it up and down.

  “I know you’re not into girls,” she whispered into my ear. “But I can still make you feel good tonight.” Her hand moved up to stroke the bulge in the front of my pants, and I wondered where that erection had come from. Her hand felt incredibly good holding me, and Keith was kissing me, running his hand up my shirt and playing with my nipples and lightly tugging at the ring. I arched my back and moaned into his mouth. Everything felt so intense yet far away at the same time.

  When Keith finally let go of my mouth, I reached down to grab Lydia’s hand and move it away so I could try to think. Breathing hard, I looked at Keith. “What did you do, damn it? Something isn’t right. I didn’t have that much to drink. What did you do?”

  “I just wanted us all to have a good time t
onight. God, you and Lydia look so hot together.”

  “Shit!” I said. “Damn it. I told you I didn’t want anything.” The problem was, I just couldn’t be mad, not right then. I felt too mellow and aroused at the same time.

  “I didn’t give you much. You can give me hell tomorrow. That is, if you still want to, after the great time you’re going to have tonight.” He started kissing me again, and Lydia snuggled up close, hands wandering.

  We arrived at the club before we got any further than kissing and heavy petting. I figured I would just dance it off. I felt like dancing, cool and light. I knew I was going to be really, really pissed off in a little while, when whatever he had given me started to wear off. But not just yet.

  I didn’t feel the need for another drink, but Keith got me one anyway. We stood near the bar and swayed to the music. I eventually recognized where we were: Sparklers on a Friday night. I immediately wondered if Matt would be there or if he had finally given up on me.

  Only a few minutes later, a slightly drunk Art came up from behind and slapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, man, good to see you. How’s it going?”

  “Hey, Artie!” I felt glad to see him, but I didn’t want him to give me crap for my current state. Even though it wasn’t actually my fault, so why did I feel ashamed of it? Should I have known better? It hadn’t been my usual drink. How would I know if it didn’t taste tight? And why would I ever suspect Keith of doing anything like that, anyway? Maybe I should just get Art to take me home. But I felt like dancing too. It was still Friday night, after all…

  Art bumped my shoulder hard with his. “Earth to Jamie! What’s up, man?”

  I blinked and smiled at him. Keith leaned forward and said, “Jamie, you know this guy?”

  I introduced them, and Art said, “Glad to meet you, Keith.”

  “Yeah, good to meet you. Come on, Jamie, let’s go dance.” He took my arm to pull me out to the dance floor. Lydia followed. I smiled at Art again as we left. He looked worried, and I felt the need to reassure him. “I’m fine. See you later.”

  We went to the dance floor, all three of us dancing together, and I wondered what had happened to the friends Lydia was supposed to meet. I didn’t want to ask. If I did, then Keith would just have to lie to me again or else tell me she had never had any intention of meeting anyone.