Without Warning

by Joanne Fox Phillips

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sunday

  It’s after one o’clock in the morning when I get home, and Rocky greets me with three sneezes and a yawn. I refill his dish with kibble, which he scarfs down in less than a minute. I reach into the refrigerator, getting him a piece of cheese and retrieving a bottle of Chardonnay for myself. Rocky knows the drill and is out the doggy door and waiting on the patio for me when I take my spot on the swivel chair. It’s late and I’m tired, but I still need to unwind. I light my cigarette and look up at the clear sky as I exhale, waving a mosquito away from my left eye.

  It’s been a rough few years for me after my divorce from Winston, but I am finally beginning to feel like myself again. I have a pretty good job, a decent house, a fantastic dog, and—most importantly—a cleansed soul. I do not have much of a love life. I tried the Internet dating sites, but I suppose I’m an old-fashioned girl.

  I think about work and how I can help Spiro. I’m low on the corporate totem pole, and I’ve planned to spend what limited vacation I get practicing for the club championship next May. Now, however, I wonder whether bad karma from not helping Spiro may result in me driving into lakes and chipping out of sand traps for the whole three-day tournament.

  I check my cell phone for flights. There are no economy seats available on Monday, and first class is over $2,700. The rest of the week looks equally bleak. It looks as if I’m off the hook—Spiro can’t possibly expect me to spend that much out of pocket just to get a head start with helping him solve his problem with the homeless shelter.

  But then a thought enters my brain, despite my renewed commitment to walking the straight and narrow. I consider it. On the plus side, I would be helping out Spiro, using my skills to better the world. On the minus side, I would be lying and probably cheating my employer. Would it really be cheating, though? I would be working—although perhaps overstating the urgency of the work.

  I decide that I’m a work in progress, as Spiro put it.

  I access CoGenCo’s website and look for the number in bold in the top right-hand corner. I down the rest of my wine and pour another glass, sipping my drink while considering my plan.

  After going over the details in my mind, I smile at my dog.

  “How would you like to spend some time with your buddy Bill?” I ask Rocky. Bill Matheson is a hotshot tort lawyer in Houston whom I have known for years. He had my dog for a while after my divorce, and even though I don’t particularly like spending time with him, Rocky, it seems, does. Bill has a two-acre estate in River Oaks on the bayou, which—along with his two chocolate labs—offers Rocky something along the lines of a doggy fun park, complete with pool and woods full of possum, armadillos, and other critters to chase.

  It only takes a moment, after I dial the number, for the line to pick up. “Integrity Helpline,” says the voice on the other end. “Would you like to make a confidential allegation?”

  “Yes,” I say. “The president of Westwind in San Francisco is involved in a bid-rigging scheme.”

  I slam down the phone and think, Oh my God! What have I done? I’ll have to consult Spiro when I see him again next week.

  After a fitful sleep, I wake up later that morning and calm down while I’m in the shower. I think about the fact that my plan is both genius and foolproof. I’ve called in a bogus allegation to the helpline about Westwind, our affiliate in San Francisco, which means that my company, CoGenCo, will probably send me out alone to investigate the complaint. That’s my job, after all. Will they ever know that I called in the complaint? No, they will not; the call center is completely anonymous. I know this, because part of my job is to perform an annual test of the helpline service.

  When I step out of the shower, the phone is ringing. I still get excited when the phone rings, a holdover from growing up in a large family with only one telephone. While I knew that the calls were never for me, I would pick up the receiver. I could usually identify who was on the other end and gain some shred of useful information that would translate into power over my sisters, something that was difficult as the youngest of eight.

  One would think that years of telephone solicitors would have tempered my enthusiasm. But it hasn’t, and I instinctively grab a towel and run naked into my bedroom to answer the phone call before it is sent to my voicemail.

  “Hello?” I say, cradling the receiver between my shoulder and ear while wrapping the towel around my torso.

  “Hi, Tanzie. It’s Lucy.”

  My sister Lucy and I are close. We’re just a year apart, but we couldn’t be more different. While I lean toward life’s comforts, she prefers the rockier road that comes with a purposeful life. Every decision she makes is for the end goal of planet sustainability, from shying away from plastics of all kinds to hand-weeding fifty acres of cotton and wheat crops in hundred-degree heat. Still, we have a sisterly bond that transcends our divergent political views and life choices. She calls like clockwork every Sunday at nine, and thanks to my routine being shattered by my late flight, I’d completely forgotten. I ask to call her back in a few minutes, so I can get situated with a cup of coffee and my morning cigarette.

  When I dial her back, I sense uneasiness in her voice.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Um, well …”

  “What, Lucy? Tell me.”

  “It’s Honey. She’s upset because you came to San Francisco and didn’t call her.”

  “I didn’t call you,” I say. “Are you upset?”

  “No,” she says. “But I’m surprised you were here yesterday! What for?”

  “I know it’s weird, but I flew out to go to confession.”

  “You’re kidding. Since when do you go to church, Tanzie?”

  “It wasn’t church, Lucy. It was confession.”

  “Don’t they have priests in Houston?”

  I wait. I’m not sure how much I want to tell Lucy about how lost I’ve been feeling. “Did you know Spiro Cosmo is a priest?” I say instead.

  “Yeah. He called Honey. That’s how she knew you were here yesterday.”

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I didn’t even know he was Catholic. I thought the Cosmos were Greek Orthodox. Can they just switch around like that?”

  “Maybe if you came out here more often, you’d keep up with things better. He got that scholarship to Notre Dame, remember? I think they did some sort of recruitment exercise. Anyway, Honey was hurt that you didn’t call. She’s in seclusion.”

  “Again?”

  My oldest sister, Honey, is a Catholic nun and somewhat of a drama queen. She occasionally lapses into a funk and goes into seclusion, praying and observing strict silence until others rally to solve whatever her particular issue is. To me, this is the ecumenical equivalent of holding her breath until turning blue.

  “She told me you may be coming out here soon. At least, that’s what Spiro told her.”

  “I thought priests were supposed to keep their mouths shut,” I grumble.

  “I don’t know everything that was said, Tanzie. All I know is that Honey called Bumby, Bumby called Blondie, and Blondie called me. They are all really upset that you were out and didn’t tell them.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! I was there for about four hours. I didn’t call ANYBODY.” But of course they knew, I think. That’s the problem with making a last-minute decision to leave the state for atonement: You forget about the O’Leary web of intelligence. That was a rookie mistake. What was I—fifteen and sneaking out of my room at night? This was much bigger. Airplanes had been involved.

  I do a quick emotion check and rein myself in. “I think I may be coming out again. Maybe tomorrow or next week, for work,” I say.

  “You’re kidding? Next week I’ll be in Sacramento working with some Green Party lobbyists, and then I’m off to Oregon. I’m the keynote speaker at the Black Sheep Gathering up there.”

  As the black sheep of my own family, perhaps I should be at the gathering, not Lucy.

  “Come on,
Lucy,” I plead. “Can’t you shift things around? I haven’t seen you since Tulsa.” Deep down, I know better than to try to persuade Lucy. She is a fanatic, and although I know she’d love to see me, saving the world from environmental ruin is more important. So I try a different tactic. “You’re not going to leave me to deal with Honey all by myself, are you?”

  There is desperation in my voice, but again Lucy won’t budge.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Be sure and let someone else know that you’re coming out, okay? You know how Honey is. She’s still upset about your divorce.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” I say, and I hang up the phone. There will be no sisterly help from Lucy on this. My path to redemption will have but a single lane.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Monday Morning

  My supervisor, Sandy, arrives just after seven o’clock and issues a loud “Hay there, Tanzie,” as she walks by. Sandy is an odd mix. She looks like a Dallas glamour girl: all hair, teeth, and boobs—none of it original to the owner. She is stunning to look at; a tall drink of water, as they say. But when she opens her mouth, Sandy sounds like a hillbilly. She’s a beautiful peacock that clucks like a barnyard chicken. Sandy’s told me she’s working on sounding more professional, and for the most part is fairly good when meeting with the upper crust muckety-mucks at CoGenCo. But when it’s just us—and especially after a couple of drinks—she sounds like something out of a Dukes of Hazzard episode.

  Sandy is an audit manager who supervises four of us in the department, including me. I’m something of an odd duck in Sandy’s group: I specialize in fraud, while the other three focus on financial compliance. When I was hired, I reported directly to Mark Salamasick, the Vice President of Internal Audit and Sandy’s boss. But some of the other auditors complained—I was neither a manager nor a director, they griped—and I was ultimately reassigned to work under Sandy instead. Under other circumstances, such a move might have been awkward, but Sandy and I hit it off immediately, despite our vast differences in opinion about what constitutes proper office attire. There is nothing on the racks at Brooks Brothers that would ever make its way into Sandy’s closet; she seems to be more of a Versace girl, if I had to guess, and her office attire is as colorful and daring as mine is subdued. Still, Sandy is smart. Having worked for complete idiots at my last job, I appreciate the opportunity to learn.

  Walking toward her office, I hear loud thuds, as she plops down her enormous purse, her gym bag, and another large sack containing her provisions for the week. They are always the same: two six-packs of Diet Coke, instant soup, some frozen Lean Cuisines, and a gallon jug of Ozarka water.

  “Lord have mercy!” she says. “It’s so dang humid out there! And I forgot my dang badge in my other purse again, so I had to get a temporary one at reception. Great morning so far, Tanzie!”

  I walk over to her office and stand in the doorway, watching her take off her commuter sneakers and slip on a pair of five-inch red Christian Louboutin pumps.

  “You shouldn’t eat this stuff, Sandy. It’s full of chemicals,” I tell her as I examine the soup’s cream of chicken powder, which contains neither.

  “I’m full of chemicals, so it’s probably all good.” She laughs, giving her double Ds a playful lift.

  “You have a good weekend?” I ask as she puts her nonperishables away in the cabinet above her credenza.

  “Dan and I got into a fight.”

  “Who’s Dan? I thought your boyfriend’s name was Dave.”

  “Oh, Dave’s history,” she says. “Dave—no, I mean Dan—Tanzie, quit confusing me. Anyway, DAN gets me so mad. He says I snore. Which I don’t. Fat people snore, and I’m not fat!”

  “No, you’re not,” I say, shaking my head at my boss’s impressive figure. The only fat on that body is concentrated on her world-class ta-tas.

  It is well known in our department that Sandy has an active love life. She explains that she wants to be very sure she has found her knight in shining armor before settling down. There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of men in Houston willing to audition for the role of her Lancelot. Dan is now the latest in a very long string of candidates.

  “I’ll take your food to the coffee bar for you. I need a refill,” I say, holding up my coffee mug.

  “Thanks, Tanzie,” I hear as I carry the sack of sodas and frozen lunches down the hallway.

  Each soda can and freezer package has been neatly labeled in black Sharpie: Sandy DeHart. She has told me on more than one occasion that her food has a habit of disappearing, and she has long suspected Doty Olson in IT. Just for the record, I have never stolen a coworker’s food out of the refrigerator.

  When I return, Sandy is in my cube.

  “This came in over the weekend,” she says, handing me a piece of paper. It’s an email from the Integrity Helpline containing information about the call I put in.

  I pretend to read, and then I look up at Sandy. “Has Mark seen this?”

  “He emailed it to me this morning. He wants you to look into it.”

  “Okay,” I say, stifling a smile. “So, it’s San Francisco? Do you need me to go out there and check things out?”

  “I’m guessing we can just pull up the contracts and do a desktop review from here.” Sandy shrugs. “Get on the records management system and see what you can pull up.” She leans over my shoulder to get a better view of my screen.

  Of course. What was I thinking when I made the helpline call? In a few clicks, I have logged on and begin to search the database for any documents with the word Westwind in them. I beam internally as I come up empty.

  “Doesn’t look like Westwind’s in our system, Sandy.”

  “Well, shit,” she says. When Sandy says “shit,” it has two syllables: “she-it.” It’s so natural an expression to her that it doesn’t even remotely sound like profanity. It can be argued that it’s not regarded as such in Texas.

  I place a call to Contract Administration and put the clerk who picks up on speaker. “Hi, this is Tanzie Lewis in Internal Audit,” I begin. “I can’t bring up any of the Westwind contracts. Do you know how I can get copies?”

  The clerk sounds exasperated. “That’s because they haven’t been brought into the centralized system. They still do everything themselves out in San Francisco. They’re scheduled to come online next year some time.”

  “What if I wanted to get copies of their contracts?” I ask. “Could you get them for me?”

  “I’m afraid not. You’ll have to deal directly with them. And let me warn you, Tizzy—they’re not very accommodating. We tried to get copies of some service agreements for procurement, and my goodness, you would have thought we’d asked for a million dollars. We finally just gave up because they were so uncooperative.”

  Sandy and I exchange looks. It is something of a red flag when a remote location drags their feet on a contract review like this. Sandy crosses her arms and sighs.

  “Let me get with Mark and see what he wants us to do. Meanwhile, can you put together a risk assessment, testing program, and some sort of project timeline just in case he does want to send you out there?”

  “Sure thing,” I say, trying not to telegraph my delight at my own ingenuity. A project timeline: How long would I like to stay in San Francisco? Two weeks would be perfect; it would probably be long enough to work through this fictitious scheme and help out Spiro as well.

  With that time-frame goal in mind, I get busy putting together the fraud risk assessment Sandy asked for. Soon, I’m marveling at the coincidence before me. Even though I made the whole thing up, and impulsively at that, Westwind does actually present something of an elevated fraud risk to CoGenCo. This isn’t only because they’re a remote location, not connected to our systems, and ignore requests from corporate. There are more red flags that pop up when I access the HR system: a thin organization, with just a business unit president, a couple of VPs, and about twenty or so underlings—tiny compared to the thousand or so folks in Houston. Low head count ca
n result in an environment where employees wear multiple hats and oversight is compromised. It’s a perfect environment for the bid-rigging allegation that I called in, as well as for lots of other more commonplace schemes, including fake vendors or diverted cash receipts. All we need now are some employees with financial pressure, and the situation will be textbook. I probably did CoGenCo a favor by bringing this to their attention.

  I’m putting together a list of interviews when Mark and Sandy appear at my cube.

  “So, you read the Integrity Helpline complaint that we received Saturday night?” Mark begins. I stop typing and turn around to face my visitors.

  “Yes, Mark,” I say. “I’m putting together an audit plan and testing program, if you think I’ll need to go out there.”

  “How soon do you think you can go?”

  “Any time.” I smile at Mark, not telling him that I am packed and my dog already has arrangements to stay at Bill Matheson’s estate.

  “I’ll have Grace see if she can book you two on a flight this afternoon, if that’s not too quick.”

  “Two?” I ask, trying not to let my smile dim.

  “Sandy thought it might be a good idea if she went with you. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the location.” Mark and Sandy exchange smiles. “I’m not sure she would be so willing to help out if it was a power plant in Collinsville, Illinois.”

  “Two is fine,” I say evenly. “Should we plan for two weeks?”

  “One,” replies Mark sternly, holding up his index finger. “San Francisco is an expensive place, ladies. This thing could blow my budget big time if we’re not careful. Bad enough I’m getting hit with two airfares.”

  “It’s an awful lot to do in four days, even with two of us,” Sandy argues.

  “Look, just go out there, do some interviews, look at the contracts, and see if this thing has legs. If it does, it’ll be a big deal, and we can extend the trip. Hell, I’ll probably join you. But four days is about right if it turns out to be a lot of nothing, some pissed-off employee or girlfriend—”