by Susan Wolfe
Might as well start with her black folder of board member and executive CVs that she’d brought home. She flipped through the stack, extracted Roy’s resume, and began.
Dull reading it was. His last company, Trilobyte Memories, had merged with Microsoft. The company before that was MegaMind Software of Massachusetts. Never heard of it. And so on, stretching with no gap in employment all the way back to a PhD in Economics from the University of Washington in 1987. B.A. from University of San Francisco, random public high school in Oregon. Lovely wife Linda, two swell children, other interests were sailing and history, blah blah blah. About as conventional as it got. All checked out and confirmed when he was hired, no doubt.
Still, she might as well spend an hour verifying dates of employment and degrees, just to get some momentum. She used her old Mac to go online, but couldn’t find a good site for employment stuff. That meant confirming the employment dates by phone during business hours, which was probably more trouble than it was worth. But she did locate a promising site called Degree Clearing House. She used her personal email address to sign in as an HR person from Hewlett Packard, checked a box saying she had Roy’s permission, and requested verification of all three degrees.
That was a start, but it only took half an hour. Katie-Ann was now bent over her homework a couple of feet away, so Georgia quietly drained the last of her tea and carried both cups to the sink. What next?
What else did they do before they hired someone? Criminal background check, but that report had to have come back cleaner than a gnawed bone, or they wouldn’t have hired him. Maybe there was something else in his personnel file, if she could think of an excuse to get her hands on it. She made a note.
Too bad they hadn’t restored Roy’s or Sally’s emails as part of the side-deal investigation.
Could Sally have something personal on him? Maybe he had a boyfriend. (Katie-Ann glanced up when Georgia snorted.) Second family somewhere? Either of those would give fine leverage, but how would Sally know? Life insurance beneficiaries. Georgia made another note.
Had they worked together before? She pulled Sally’s CV out of the folder and set it next to Roy’s. No prior employment together. So Sally should only have access to HR stuff, plus anything he’d told her. Unless Sally knew Roy’s family. She made another note.
She tapped her forefinger against her lips, considering. No matter what she found, Sally wasn’t going anywhere as long as Roy ran the company. And nothing she found would keep Sally from coming after her once she realized what Georgia had been up to. If she realized. Was there some way to camouflage it?
Sally would come looking for an explanation, that seemed sure. What if she told Roy about the “overheard” conversation? Seemed unlikely. What would it accomplish, except making Sally look dumb and treacherous? But she was bound to find a way to do something nasty. She winced, anticipating the wrath of Sally. And even if Sally did nothing, Georgia would still be watching over her shoulder for quite a while.
She’d sort of fucked this up, really. So focused on Sally that she allowed herself to make unexamined assumptions about Roy. What if she lost her job because of it? She glanced across the table at Katie-Ann, whose only concerns appeared to be geometry and a worrisome lock of blond hair that refused to stay wound around her finger. Was it possible she’d actually gone too far?
She shook her head with one decisive snap. Regret was like a pigsty, only good for wallowing. She had no intention of losing her job. She did intend to be smart about what happened next.
“Georgia,” Ken said a few days later, standing in the entrance to her cube, “come on down to my office for a few minutes, will you? I’d like to ask you about something.” She set the phone back in its cradle and followed him down the corridor. She’d return Eddie Fallon’s voicemail message later. Probably just wanted more backlog data, although she had looked up to see his pale gray eyes flick away from her in the meeting the day before.
Why hadn’t Ken sent Maggie to get her, the way he always did? Was this about Sally? She thought he looked slightly grim, his lips set in a thin, straight line. Or was she imagining it? Great. How long was she going to torment herself like this, imagining that every communication was about Sally?
Not long, apparently. “Sally stopped by here today,” he informed her as he closed his office door behind him and gestured for her to sit at his conference table. Now his face definitely looked grim, despite the cheerful, cherry-colored bow tie against his pale blue shirt.
“To what did you owe the pleasure?” she asked innocently, her mind racing in instant hyper-alert. She hoped she was ready for this.
“She wanted to warn me about you.”
“I’m sorry?” As she feigned surprise, she could already hear the rhythmic thud of her pulse in her ears. Beyond him she saw that gray clouds had thickened over the parking lot, and the tops of the eucalyptus trees were flashing their silver undersides as they churned in the wind.
“She says you’ve been tipping her to confidential matters within the department to try to curry favor with her.”
“Ah.” She nodded calmly. So no mention of the “overheard” conversation in the stairwell. This she could handle. “Well, she’s right in a way, although ‘curry favor’ shows how futile it all was.”
“Can you help me understand what’s going on here?” No, she thought, looking into those green eyes that rested frankly on hers, she could only deceive him. He was leaning slightly toward her, listening attentively, trusting her candor. She firmly suppressed the familiar impulse to tell him everything, along with a less familiar feeling that might be self-loathing. There’d be time for that later.
“Well,” she began, “we all knew it was Sally’s fault that Beatrice quit, and I was afraid we’d lose Suzanne, too. I offered to help with the options memo and everything, but honestly, I thought Suzanne’s days were numbered.”
She paused, hoping that Ken’s reaction would help her gauge her performance. He just raised his eyebrows slightly, inviting her to continue. Sort of like that very first job interview.
“Sally lost another admin around that time, and I offered to help her, hoping I could get in her good graces and run interference for the whole legal team. But the only thing Sally really wanted from me was dirt on the legal department.” She shrugged. “And I thought, what the heck, maybe I could tell her a few things she was going to find out anyway, to make her think I was on her side. I thought I could get her to let up on all of us.”
“So you decided to manipulate her.” He wasn’t going to make this easy. And why on earth should he?
“Well, yes, I guess I did, although I didn’t think of it that way at the time. But it obviously didn’t work, and now Sally wants you to think I’m disloyal. I’d say that pretty much sums it up.”
“Why would she want me to distrust you, Georgia?”
She shrugged. “Why did she go after Beatrice? Why did she convince Roy you wasted money on the side deal investigation? I think she just believes in divide and conquer. Unless . . . do you think she’s embarrassed that I saw her screw-up with the board?”
He frowned. “Seems like a pretty strong reaction to embarrassment. Assuming she even felt embarrassed.”
“Then maybe she’s mad I stopped telling her stuff.”
“Why did you stop?”
“The board meeting where she turned on Roy sort of freaked me out. I thought if she’d do that to him, she’d do it in a heartbeat to the rest of us. I started worrying she might try to use the secrets I gave her to drive a wedge between me and the legal team. More or less what she’s doing now, as a matter of fact.”
She paused again, and again to no avail. His face remained polite but impassive. This really sounded like crap, didn’t it? She wished she hadn’t eaten that greasy donut for breakfast. Her stomach was roiling like the tops of those eucalyptus trees.
“I know this could make you distrust me, Ken, but if you think about what I told her, they were all fake secrets.
Well, temporary secrets. The investigation about the credit card fraud. The Italy problem. The meeting about the SEC investigation that she was supposed . . .”
He held up his hand. “I’m not too worried about the specifics, Georgia. I agree they were relatively harmless. I do have to tell you I’m surprised and disappointed by your judgment regarding confidential information. At the moment, though, I’m much more concerned about her other accusation.” Ugh. So she had talked about the “overheard” conversation, after all. Well, she’d do her best.
“What other accusation?”
“About the offer to alter her Change of Control Agreement.”
Her surprise was suddenly genuine. “What??”
“Sally says you believed she was about to be promoted, and you wanted a job with her. So you offered to help her with a lot of things. At first it was just information, but then you told her about variations in the Change of Control Agreements, and offered to switch her from a double trigger to a single trigger.”
Ye gods and little fishes! Sally Kurtz was pulling a con.
“Sally’s lying to you,” she said evenly.
“She wasn’t lying about the first part.”
“No. She wasn’t. But this is a big lie.”
“Why would she make this up?”
“To finish me off,” Georgia said in rueful admiration, gazing away for a moment at the child’s stick-figure drawing on his wall. The gaps between those blocky teeth made it look like a few had been knocked out. She realized her mouth was slightly open, so she closed it and turned back to Ken. “Obviously, I have pissed off Sally Kurtz big-time.”
“Could she just be mistaken? Do you think you might have said something that she misinterpreted?”
“Not about Change of Control Agreements, because I wouldn’t know what to say. I know we give them to executives who might lose their jobs in a merger, but I never worked on one. I don’t even know what a single trigger is.”
“It’s when an executive gets automatic severance if somebody buys the company, even if she still has her job in the new company,” he explained. “Could easily mean a payout of well over a million dollars. You didn’t know that?”
“No, I didn’t know it. Ken, does this story make sense to you? Why would I think Sally was going to get promoted? Was she going to get promoted? Promoted to what? And why would I ever want a job with Sally Kurtz? I think she’s the devil, and her admins last about three days.
“And how could I change her from a double trigger to a single trigger? Wouldn’t the board have to do that? Could I just change some document? What about . . .”
Ken raised his hand to interrupt. “Hold on, Georgia. I’m relieved to hear you say you didn’t do this, and I believe you. The whole Change of Control thing sounds like a misunderstanding.” His mouth remained a thin line. “But I’m very disappointed that you were the leak I’ve been worried about. You have access to the most sensitive information in this company, and I’ve trusted you more than was strictly necessary.”
Those sorrowful eyes were unbearable, and he didn’t know the half of it. Her face felt so hot it must be neon. “I’m so sorry to have disappointed you. I was wrong and stupid, and I jeopardized your trust in me.” God, had her voice cracked? She sat up straighter and swallowed. “For what it’s worth, I will never leak anything out of the department again, no matter what noble purpose I think it might serve.” It was a promise she intended to keep. Good thing she wasn’t the sort of wimp who cried.
He seemed to relent. “Or just come talk to me about it. We could have thought this one through together.”
“Absolutely. Really stupid.” They were silent for a moment. “But what about this thing Sally’s doing? She’s accusing me of out-and-out dishonesty, and she’ll destroy me if she spreads it around.”
“I don’t think she’ll do that, Georgia. I must admit, though, nothing Sally does lately makes any sense to me at all. I wonder if she’s having personal problems.”
“Could you, like, remind her not to spread the rumor, so the company doesn’t get hurt?”
He seemed to be half listening, taking his own turn staring at the stick figure drawing on his wall. “I wish I could figure out what she’s thinking.” He turned back to her. “I think I should just tell her I discussed it with you, and I’m confident it was a misunderstanding.”
“Is there anything I should do? Should I go to Sally and try to sort it out?” Which of course she could never actually do.
“I recommend that you carefully avoid any private audience with Sally for a while. You never know how she’d characterize it.”
She almost sagged with relief. This horrible conversation was coming to an end. “Thanks, Ken. I’m very sorry to have disappointed you and caused you trouble. I will work hard never to do it again.”
Yi! Georgia thought as she headed back to her cube. Sally had evidently decided to vaporize Georgia out of (frankly justifiable) revenge. And she certainly wasn’t going to stop because Ken dropped by for a chat. Scams were a lot more fun when they came off without a hitch.
And Ken might never trust her again. She reached her cube, and rested her hand against the cool metal of the entrance to steady herself. She might have just lost her only real ally and friend in Lumina—in California—maybe in the whole nonincarcerated world.
Dear Daddy,
I am experiencing a challenge.
There’s a person named Sally in our company who prevents competent people from doing their jobs, and champions destructive ideas in order to advance her personal agenda. She causes good employees to leave our company by her spiteful manner, and then hires mediocre replacements who she believes will be political allies.
For some time now I have been arranging for her departure. She sucks up to our CEO like a leech on a skinny-dipper’s backside, and this has afforded her great protection. I therefore undertook to persuade her that her political fortunes were best served by turning on him, and honestly, Daddy, I succeeded big-time. She has insulted him to the board and to the executive team. She has taunted him to his face. By all rights she should now be only an unpleasant memory.
But she is proving difficult to eradicate. Although I accurately gauged both her ambition and her treachery, she has a power over our CEO whose nature I suspect but can’t yet verify. Whatever the reason, he is impervious to her insults and continues to treat her as his finest friend. It seems if Sally sets his clothes on fire, he will pay a dry cleaner to remove the smell of singe from her skirt.
Now I have learned that she realizes my intentions and has decided turnabout is fair play. And unfortunately, she is exhibiting a certain hitherto concealed intelligence.
Frankly, Daddy, I’m afraid. Have I allowed myself to be surrounded, just like General Lee at Appomattox? I can’t outrun her. Should I lie low and hope she gets distracted by bigger battles, or should I take the offensive while she thinks she has me cornered, and hope for the advantage of surprise? Because this next step is a serious one, I would value your opinion soonest.
Your loving daughter,
Georgia
Dear Georgia,
I must tell you, my dear, that your letter has caused me some alarm. Your pessimism strikes me as shockingly premature. Are you getting enough sleep?
Or even worse, has something made you hesitate to use your special talents?
Georgia looked out her passenger window at a young woman in brown suede boots exiting the Mail Boxes Etc. Lying to Ken. That look of disappointment on his face. Of course. Her father saw her more clearly on the basis of one inarticulate letter than she had seen her own self. Behold the one true King of Special Talents. She continued reading:
I do hope you’re not letting your personal feelings about this Sally person cloud your judgment. I know of no faster path to serious error, and this horsefly is surely not worth it.
Or perhaps you suspect that you caused your own setback. Which, frankly, Georgia, you probably did. But so what? Everybody makes mist
akes, and one setback rarely amounts to failure. This is no moment for the faint of heart, however. You have made a fool of this puffed up egotist in front of the board, and she will never rest while you remain in her vicinity. Seize the offensive promptly. I doubt that time is on your side.
Continue to think creatively, my dear. Such a dreadful character must have a plethora of weaknesses just waiting to be exploited! And don’t forget the secondary benefit: Although your primary objective is now to protect your position in the company, you will also experience exhilarating professional satisfaction when you finally hoist this adversary with her own petard.
I don’t mean to minimize your difficulties here. I know your situation is more perilous than I can fully appreciate from this distance, and it cannot be easy having responsibility for Katie-Ann. But I also know you will use your own excellent skill and judgment to find the right solution. I love you, Georgia, and am very proud of you.
Let me know what you decide to do and, when possible, confirm the success of your endeavor. Send news of Katie-Ann.
Daddy
P.S. You say your scam was cleverly conceived and well-executed, but its failure suggests otherwise. When leisure allows (and I do not mean now), examine each element of your con, and squarely face any error in order to learn from it. (Could you have predicted the CEO’s behavior more accurately? Are you confident Sally was the correct target?) Your healthy ego does not need the protection of self-delusion. Leave that to our marks, if you please!
P.P.S. When you are able to visit me, please take out flight accident insurance and name me as the beneficiary. For Katie-Ann’s sake, of course.
She laughed and shrugged at an oblivious UPS driver who was hoisting himself into the driver’s seat of his parked truck. Thank God for Daddy. Had anyone ever been so reliably himself? He always had her back, and his confidence in her was unshakable.
And then in the same breath he was betting against her on flight insurance. Was he trying to demonstrate his conviction that she’d survive the Sally crisis and make it down to see him? Or was he just betting against her on flight insurance? Hey, nobody was perfect.