by Susan Wolfe
“But I have an even bigger concern,” he continued. “I think we need to make sure we distinguish Lumina Management from Big Brother. Does anybody share that feeling?”
“Absolutely,” Andrea responded. “This could backfire big time with our engineers. I mean, there’s listening when employees ask us to listen, and then there’s just always listening. I’d hate to have a bunch of programmers staging a sit-in instead of finishing the 6.1.”
Georgia suppressed a laugh and tried to catch Ken’s eye. He was looking at his iPhone, his face flushed.
Georgia: u r missing Grt Human Crcus.
No response. When she glanced up at him he had set his iPhone down and was staring blankly at Burt.
“So that’s what you missed,” Georgia concluded later in the privacy of Ken’s office. “What was the distraction? Your family okay?”
“They’re fine, Georgia, thanks.” He paused. “This isn’t very professional, but I’ll show you what I was looking at.” He scrolled down his iPhone for a moment, and then handed it to her across his conference table. “From Roy. It’s about my bonus for the last six months.”
Ken,
Your final score for your first half bonus payout is 40%. The key pluses were your settlement of the SAP lawsuit, and your drive to complete the side deal issue on time. The minuses, of course, are that you allowed our company to be pushed into the side deal audit and that you spent to great excess to complete it.
Best regards,
Roy
Georgia read it twice. “He took away part of your bonus because of the side deal audit?”
“I know this seems petty, and it’s probably terrible leadership to show it to you, but I’m a little bit frustrated.”
She returned the iPhone. “He doesn’t have a clue.”
“He really doesn’t, does he? He seems to think we had a choice. He seems to think we had time and leisure to find a cheaper way.”
“Well, or maybe he’s just cheap. Does he realize Jean-Claude told you ‘no budget limitations’?”
“Probably not. But here’s the other thing that bothers me: If you were going to do this to somebody, would you do it in an email? It didn’t warrant five minutes in person?” He studied his iPhone screen. “Look at the ending: ‘Best regards.’ Evidently he thought it was a cordial message.”
“Okay. So I’d say the scorecard is ‘comprehension: zero’ and ‘people skills: minus five.’ Are you going to talk to him about it? That’s what you’d tell me to do.”
“I don’t know, Georgia. You’re exactly right that I should talk to him in order to preserve the relationship. But if you have to point this out to somebody, doesn’t that mean he’s incapable of understanding it? He’ll probably just miss the point and tell me I’m greedy. Or repeat his ludicrous belief that we had a choice.”
“Or offer you Andrea’s job.”
He snorted, staring vacantly at the table top. “Exactly. Not sure I could take it right now.” Then he looked up. “You know, Georgia, it’s not very satisfying to work for a person who can’t understand anything you’re doing. Eventually, you ask yourself what’s the point?”
“Yeah. Pearls before swine,” she acknowledged. She was torn between anxiety that Ken was so discouraged, and gratification that he felt free to share it with her.
“Sounds kind of arrogant, doesn’t it?” he said sheepishly.
She shook her head ruefully. “No. And this was a big pearl. Poor old swine really tripped over it.”
Ken laughed. “Georgia, you’re a piece of work.”
“Anyway, our team knows what you did. Jean-Claude knows.”
“What we all did,” he corrected. “Yeah. That’s right, they do. And we go the extra distance because it’s the right thing to do, not because somebody praises us for it.” He sat for a moment. “Well, in any case, this isn’t a good use of anybody’s time. I’ll talk it over with Laura. How’s the options research coming? Need some help?”
“Nope. I’m on it. Can I ask you something else? How likely do you think it is that Glen really didn’t know about the side deal in Home Depot?”
He didn’t owe her an answer, of course. He looked into her eyes, considering. “Not very likely,” he acknowledged finally, “but I hope it’s true. When you don’t know for sure, it’s always best to give people the benefit of the doubt. I’m a pretty big believer in second chances.”
“And what about all those bad disti deals?”
“Between you and me, Georgia, Charlie Reebuck doesn’t strike me as the kind of independent thinker who would risk this on his own. I think Terkes probably knew about those, too, and if Horace had looked at a few more emails he’d have found that out.” Still Terkes instead of Glen. “Why? What do you think?”
“Agree with everything,” she responded, “except maybe the benefit of the doubt. Have to think about that part. So, why did this great independent law firm never question Terkes’ self-serving denial? Why did they do such a window dressing job of investigating?”
“Because that was their job, Georgia. Window dressing, and I’m sure they perfectly understood that. We were on the brink of a corporate meltdown, and Horace’s job as independent investigator was to make sure the investigation ended before we got there. Terkes—Glen—needed to be free of further suspicion so that the company could be free of further suspicion and file on time. Our team had a very different job. We were obligated to conduct a real investigation, and we took it wherever the evidence led us.”
“Should we finish the job now?”
He looked slightly horrified. “You mean look at the rest of Glen’s email? That would be very dangerous for the company. Suppose we find another whole line of side deals, and go through this again? Horace rightly or wrongly relieved us of the responsibility to look at anything else, and we just need to leave it there.”
“What about the retaliation against the employee in Boston?”
“You mean Ben Larkin, the flippee? What about it?”
“Is Glen responsible for that?”
“Absolutely. He allowed Buck to retaliate against Ben Larkin, and then talked Roy out of firing Buck. Glen has a lot of influence with Roy, and he seems to pop up in a number of less-than-admirable moments for the company.”
She decided to press her point. “But if he did know about the side deals and either encouraged it or else let it go on for years, isn’t he still a huge risk to the company?”
Ken brushed his palm over the top of his hair. “Yes,” he admitted, “but chances are he’ll lie low for a while. This was a pretty big mess.”
“Lie low until we forget. But not change his ethics about it.”
“Well, now that’s an interesting question.” He smiled slightly as he searched her eyes. “Do you believe people ever change their ethics? I personally believe they can, but it’s hard, so they have to be quite motivated. I’ve never seen anybody care enough to change their ethics because of work. It’s always been something in their personal life. So I guess we step up our vigilance, and beyond that, Glen is just our cross to bear.”
“We’re getting a traffic jam in our cross-bearing lane.”
“Beg pardon?”
“We keep concluding that people who don’t do their jobs are just our cross to bear.”
Ken snorted, but his smile was suddenly vacant, signaling the end of the conversation. “I guess we’ve had several of those, haven’t we? Wish I knew a better answer.”
It was alarming to see Ken this discouraged, she thought as she headed back to her cube. The stupid bonus insult was a big part of it. Nothing she could do about that. But whatever idiotic scheme Terkes was going to come up with next was already a storm, slowly building to hurricane strength somewhere out over the ocean. Probably. Maybe not. Would be great to be certain about Glen’s involvement in those side deals, one way or the other. Too bad the company couldn’t look at his restored emails.
Of course, Georgia wasn’t the company, was she? She personally had no
obligation to tell the public anything. She was nothing but a snoopy, low-level employee with a certain amount of spare time on her hands.
CHAPTER 20
Georgia and Quan were with Ken at his conference table when Maggie stuck her head in. “You have a letter from the SEC in the lobby. I’m going down for it.”
“SEC.” Ken lifted his head away from the palm that had been supporting it. “Thanks, Maggie, and would you ask Zack to join us?” He turned to Quan and Georgia. “Pardon my French, but qu’est-ce que hell?”
“Maybe there’s just a formality with regard to the 10-Q,” Quan suggested.
“I hope you’re right. Must be something about the 10-Q.”
A few minutes later Zack appeared with copies of a formal-looking document, ironically entitled Informal Request For Cooperation. Georgia scanned it quickly. Accusation of keeping dual sets of books. Forty-three categories of requested documents, mostly financial stuff. What did this have to do with the 10-Q?
“Oh no,” Quan said quietly as he paged through the request. “They’re investigating us.”
“At least it’s still informal,” Zack noted. “We probably don’t have to disclose it yet.”
Georgia’s eyes fell on a name near the end of the document. “You see who the complaining witness is?”
“Does it tell us?” Ken asked, looking up. “They don’t usually reveal that.”
“This guy might have wanted full credit.” She reached across the table and pointed it out to him.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! ‘Benjamin Larkin, sales executive.’ That’s your flippee, isn’t it Zack? Page 13, halfway down.”
“I take it you mean Buck Gibbon’s flippee.” Zack flicked to the correct page and scanned. “That would be he,” he confirmed with bitter satisfaction. “I guess Ben wasn’t quite the punching bag you were all hoping for.” ‘You?’ He was blaming Ken along with the others.
“Well,” Quan said, “at least we don’t have to worry about them putting him on a Performance Improvement Plan now. That would be suicide. A textbook case of retaliation.”
“Does death by stupidity count as suicide?” Georgia asked innocently.
Ken stared at her for an instant, then said, “Zack, would you step out and call Buck Gibbons now? Tell him he can’t put Ben Larkin on a PIP. Let’s explain why Ben is their new lifetime employee. Assuming Glen hasn’t fired him already.”
“Would he do that without telling anybody?” Zack hurried out without waiting for an answer.
“Is there a chance we really do keep double books?” Quan asked, raking his black hair back from his face.
“Boy, I don’t think so, but we obviously have to find out.” Apparently this had nothing to do with the 10-Q.
“Can I just ask?” Georgia looked up from her copy of the document. “If we think we don’t keep double books, why are we so afraid of an inquiry?”
“The last place any company ever wants to be is on the SEC’s radar,” Ken explained. “An SEC investigation is so toxic to a company’s reputation that just disclosing it could tank the stock, regardless of the outcome.”
“And once they start poking around,” Quan added, “they might turn up something we did do.”
“No reason to think that’s going to happen here,” Ken reassured them. “But the point is to get in, cooperate fully, and get out.”
Zack reentered the room. “Well, they haven’t fired him yet. Or if they have, they haven’t bothered to tell HR. He’s still on the payroll, and I’ve left messages for Burt and Glen to call us right away.”
“Boy, Zack. I know how strongly you felt about Ben Larkin. You probably think I could have done more to protect Ben, and maybe you’re right. This must make you quite upset.”
“I don’t think ‘upset’ quite covers it, Ken. Those jokers have brought the whole SEC down on our heads. Which serves them right, but I can’t even get any satisfaction from that . . . !” He slammed his fist down so hard the binders jumped. “. . . because you and I are the ones who have to deal with it.” So loyalty trumped blame. It did for her, too.
“Maybe now they’ll fire Buck after all,” Quan suggested.
Ken shook his head. “Don’t think so, Quan. Probably just confirm their bad opinion of Ben. Friends, it seems the Big Circus is back in all three rings.”
So it was, thought Georgia, and Glen Terkes was proving quite the ringmaster.
At 9:30 that night, Georgia and Katie-Ann were sitting across from each other at the folding table in their living room. Katie-Ann was in her flannel pajamas and T-shirt, one heel up on the chair seat, absent-mindedly twirling a strand of shoulder-length blond hair as she bent over her homework. Georgia was in jeans and a wrinkled plaid shirt, searching through the restored Glen Terkes’ email that was recent enough to be uploaded by thumb drive onto her ancient, cracked, cherry red gumdrop desktop.
“Nailed!” Katie-Ann pronounced, slamming her geometry book so decisively that it jiggled Georgia’s monitor.
“Great. That makes one of us,” Georgia muttered without looking up. She was on her fourth batch of Terkes’ email, and it was going more slowly than she’d expected. Here at home she wasn’t set up to sort by search term, so she was cruising thousands of subject lines, opening anything that looked promising. It was inefficient, but at least this time she didn’t have to find every bad email. She only needed one.
Which she still hadn’t found. Well, she’d sort of found it. From the first three batches, she knew that Terkes had been copied five times (at least) on email from sales reps that actually offered side deals. So unless he never read his email, he surely knew plenty. But he’d wiggled out of that once already. This time she wanted to catch him red-handed, either offering a side deal or telling one of his reps to offer one. So tonight she had switched from incoming to outgoing email.
Katie-Ann was at the kitchen sink, looking with distaste at the crusted lasagna pan, when Georgia said, “Whoa!”
“You found it?”
“Not exactly, no. I found something different.”
“What?”
“Mr. Sales-Gorgeous has a thing for porn.”
Katie-Ann shrugged, and resumed scrubbing the lasagna pan. “Like a lotta people. But how do you know?”
“I just opened an email called ‘Project Carmen,’ and it wasn’t the kind of project I was looking for.”
“In his email? Who’s he sending it to?”
“Some guy called Brotkin. Maybe that’s B. Rotkin? Outside the company.”
“Sort on that email address, and see if he’s done it more than once.”
Georgia punched some buttons, and said “About ten times in this two-month batch. They all have project names. Hold on.” She was silent a moment, and then she said, “Holy Shit.”
“So much for not swearing in this house. You found more?”
“Just opened one called Project Alice.” She hesitated. “It’s a kid.”
“Gross. Something that would suit Reverend Awknell?”
“Honestly, I think this is beneath Awknell. She looks like she’s about ten.”
“You serious? Maybe she just looks young.” Katie-Ann headed over to the table.
“No! Don’t come over here. Hold on.” She punched a button and waited. “This one’s a grown-up.” She punched again. “I’d say . . . young teenager.” She continued opening email. “But here’s another little kid. Grown-up. Another little kid. At least, I think these are different children. Where did he get these?” She folded her screen down onto her keyboard and held her hand over her mouth.
“Isn’t he really stupid to be sending kiddie porn on company email?”
Georgia barely shook her head. “This guy isn’t stupid.”
“Any chance he didn’t know what was actually in there?”
“How could that be? He’s the one sending them.”
“Then he must just believe he can do whatever he wants and nothing bad can happen to him.”
Georgia was silent.
“Don’t look at them any more, Georgia. They’re freaking you out. Ken will know what to do.”
Georgia continued staring at the lid of her computer for a moment, and then looked up. “I can’t tell Ken. I’m not supposed to be looking at these emails at all, and I could sink the company right back into a crisis. I wasn’t expecting this.” She opened the monitor again and closed the photo image, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth. Her stomach was sort of bucking against the lasagna all of a sudden. “With those gold cuff links. What a dirtbag.”
“Gives me a good idea for my debate topic.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to do ‘Sex: Boon or Bane to Humanity?’ ”
“Katie-Ann, I don’t think . . .”
Katie-Ann threw her head back and laughed. “Can not believe you think I’m serious.”
Georgia snorted in spite of herself as she punched more keys. “Don’t jerk my chain right now, okay? I’m a little preoccupied.”
“No worries, I’ll be totally age-appropriate. How about ‘World Peace: Achievable in Our Lifetime?’” She laughed again and began tilting the soapy lasagna pan back and forth under the hot water from the faucet. “You’ll figure out how to handle it, Georgia. You always do.” Katie-Ann could still joke because she hadn’t seen the pictures. Anyway, this wasn’t her issue, and Georgia was determined to keep it that way. She’d sleep with the gumdrop laptop right next to her pillow, just in case.
She continued her search, carefully avoiding B. Rotkin, while Katie-Ann wiped down the counters and disappeared into the bedroom. Just before midnight she found the email she’d been looking for. On March 17 at 3:32 a.m., Terkes wrote to the head of the Denver office:
. . . Your linearity for the quarter is alarming. Begin offering our special distributors the standard buyback provision.