Bad Business
Page 14
"Coop," I said. "You got no chance."
He strained against my hand for another minute. I could see him debating whether to swing at me or not. He opted, wisely I felt, for not. Hawk came back into the living room with a video camera.
"Bedroom closet," Hawk said. "Lotta other stuff in there too."
"Video equipment?"
"Un-huh."
"And?"
"A selection of, ah, adult novelty items."
"Coop," I said, "you dog."
"Want to see?" Hawk said to Cecile.
"Oh, ick," Cecile said.
"That mean I'm all you need?" Hawk said.
"It means, oh ick," Cecile said.
Hawk grinned. Coop had assessed his position vis-a-vis fighting his way out of there, and found it not to be viable. He stopped pressing against my hand and leaned back again against the couch.
"Okay," he said. "I have an eye for the ladies." He looked at Hawk standing beside Cecile. "I mean, don't we all?" he said.
Some of us don't use a pimp," Hawk said.
Coop opened his mouth and thought about what to say, and apparently thought nothing would be best. He looked at me. A couple of simpatico white guys. I'd understand. He and I could clear this whole thing up.
"You want to he a senator," I said. "Maybe president. A sex scandal? A divorce, almost certainly messy? With the likely negative effect all that would have on Kinergy stock?"
"Okay," he said. "You've got me by the short ones. What kind of deal can we make."
"I thought you'd never ask," I said.
"How much," Coop said, "will this cost me?"
He felt better. He was back on familiar turf. He was making a deal.
"Hard to say at this point. I want my accountant to have full access to all Kinergy's financial records."
"You mean an audit? Why?"
"I do," I said. "I understand Kinergy has a cash problem."
"Cash?"
"That's what they tell me."
"Absolutely not," he said.
"I want you to pay for the audit," I said.
"I can't do that. That's absurd."
"And," I said, "I want to know everything you can tell me about Darrin O'Mara."
"O'Mara?"
"Yep. The company pimp."
"O'Mara? I don't know anything about O'Mara," Coop said.
"That's the deal," I said. "Audit and O'Mara. Or we tell everyone everything."
"I'm not going to agree to that."
"I've already spoken with Mrs. Cooper."
"Wilma?"
"Yep."
"About what?"
"If I were you I wouldn't want her to find out any of this," I said.
"Oh God."
"My thoughts exactly," I said.
"I can't. I'll pay you. I am wealthy. I'll pay you a young fortune."
"O'Mara and the audit," I said. "Or Wilma and the press and probably the SEC and maybe the vice squad."
"Jesus," he said. "Oh Jesus, I can't. I can't."
I leaned forward a little with my hands clasped and my forearms resting on my thighs.
"Coop, darlin'," I said. "You gotta."
I t was like pulling a camel through the eye of a needle. While we talked Hawk collected all the videotapes in a gym bag he found in the bedroom closet. Then he and Cecile sat and listened for a while. Then after about a half hour he stood.
"Me and Cecile got to go review all these tapes for evidence." he said.
"Me and Cecile?" Cecile said.
"Might have to watch them two, three times. Make sure not to miss a clue."
"Two or three times?" Cecile said.
"Maybe learn something," Hawk said.
"You might," Cecile said. "In fact you probably better."
"You like them feisty colored girls, too?" Hawk said to Cooper.
Cooper looked at the floor and didn't say anything. I gave Hawk the car keys and they left. As they went out of the apartment, Hawk said something to Cecile and I heard Cecile giggle.
48
I t was late when I left Cooper. I caught one of the last cars to leave Kenmore Square on the Green Line, got out of the nearempty train at Park Street, crossed to the Red Line, and got on another near-empty train to Porter Square. It was almost midnight when I walked up Linnaean Street toward Susan's house. I liked the aloneness of the empty street, and the way I could hear my own footsteps.
Y ears of big business and years of political aspiration was a lethal combination. My discussion with Cooper felt like it had lasted longer than my police career. But, finally, I was pretty sure I'd gotten all Cooper had. It was a long time for not so much. But I had a date for the audit. And I had some idea of how O'Mara was fitting in.
The streetlights were on, but nearly all the interior lights were out in the rondos and apartment buildings on either side of the street. Now and then there would be one room with a light on. Someone who couldn't sleep. Worried about money. Health. Love. Children. Someone excited. Frightened. Depressed. Bored. Someone doing homework. Someone having sex. Someone having a pastrami sandwich on light rye. Someone sitting by themselves drinking scotch whisky and watching Letterman.
The lights were on in Susan's living room. I walked up the stairs and rang the bell. In a moment the door clicked and I went in. I had just closed the front door behind me when Pearl came boiling down the stairs all long legs and flappy ears, and attempted to lap me to death. I could see Susan's legs on the top step, with the light behind her.
"You let anyone in who rings?" I said.
"I saw you coming up the street," she said.
"Sitting in the window all night hoping for me?" I said.
"You did call and say you were coming."
"Well, yes," I said. "If you want to think of it that way."
I got Pearl sufficiently under control to climb the stairs and kiss Susan. She got me a beer and herself a glass of wine and settled onto the couch beside me in her living room, wearing pink sweatpants and an oversized white tee shirt with The Bang Group printed on it in orange block lettering.
"Tell me about the love nest," she said. I did.
Two beers later she said, "So you were able to blackmail him."
"I was."
"You are sometimes a heartless bastard," she said.
"I am, but never with you."
"That's true."
"It's all that matters," I said.
"To you," she said.
"To me," I said. "Who the hell else are we calling heartless." She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the mouth.
"Tell me about Mr. Cooper," she said. "The lecherous bastard."
"Hard to find a place to start," I said.
"I have every confidence in you," Susan said.
"Okay," I said. "Cooper knew Gavin since they were both at Yale. After school Gavin joined the CIA and Cooper followed his destiny to the Harvard B School. They stayed friends. When he became CEO at Kinergy he felt the need of a loyal friend in a key position and hired Gavin to be chief of security."
"To be a CEO?" Susan said. "Of an energy company? In Waltham?"
"I asked him about that," I said. "He told me that he felt the whole team at Kinergy wasn't pulling together. He was getting threats from the no-dependence-on-imported-energy folks. He needed a tough guy, he said, that he could depend on, inside the company and in public. I had a sense he may have wanted some muscle behind him inside the company too, but he never quite said that."
"Was Gavin really a tough guy?" Susan said. "I mean a lot of those CIA people are simply information analysts. They never leave their desks."
"Quirk checked into him after he died. Nobody, of course, will exactly say anything, quite. Quirk says that he was probably a covert operations guy. Which would make him a legitimate toughie."
Susan smiled, and poured a little wine for herself. I still had beer left.
"Tougher than you?" she said.
"Unlikely."
"What did he think about the cash problem?" Sus
an said.
"He said he wasn't a micromanager. He said that was Trent Rowley's domain. After Trent bit the dust, Bernie Eisen was looking after the financial end in the interim."
"Did Cooper actually say bit the dust?"
"I'm paraphrasing," I said. "He also remarked that Adele, whom he liked personally, of course, was something of a man eater, and might not necessarily be reliable."
" Man eater was his term?"
"It was," I said. "Are you keeping a journal?"
"You can sometimes gain insight," Susan said, "listening to the way people speak."
"Have you done that with me over the years?"
"Of course."
"And your conclusions?"
"Sort of a big John Keats," Susan said.
"That would be me," I said. "Silence and slow time."
"And Cooper agreed to let your accountant in."
"And staff," I said. "Marty will need help."
"Did he know anything about the special whatsises, or the funny accounting?"
"He said he didn't."
"Do you believe him?"
"I think he was focused on being senator, and positioning himself for the presidency, and that Kinergy, having made him rich, was now merely a base. I think he had little interest as long as its profits kept growing and its stock kept soaring, which made him look good."
"So Adele is right," Susan said. "He let Rowley and Eisen run the company."
"I'd say so."
"How about the O'Mara stuff?"
"Cooper met O'Mara through Trent Rowley, he says. He, Cooper, is of course totally devoted to his lovely wife, Big Wilma . . ."
"He didn't call her Big Wilma," Susan said.
"I'm paraphrasing. He's totally devoted to Big Wilma. Their marriage has been, of course, blissful, but . . ."
"Any children?"
"One son. A career Marine."
"Really? Isn't that sort of odd. I mean from a family like that."
"Probably," I said. "But despite how swell Wilma is, and how happily married they are, Coop felt perhaps there was a way to enlarge his life experience and blah and blah and blah."
"So he decided to take a seminar with Darrin O'Mara."
"He did. The Eisens and the Rowleys brought him to one."
"Not him and Wilma."
I smiled.
"You should meet Big Wilma," I said.
"Out of place?" Susan said.
"Like a mongoose at a cobra festival."
"But isn't that O'Mara's rap? Freeing husbands and wives from the bondage of monogamy?"
I shrugged.
"In Coop's case it was hubbies only. Under pressure, he did allow that not only had he an eye for the ladies, but he had eyes for African American ladies in particular, which Big Wilma is not, by the way. And, because he's so decent a guy, and trying to preserve his wonderful marriage, and in order never to embarrass Wilma, or in any way imply a lack in her, he arranged for O'Mara to begin supplying him with the black women of his dreams."
"What a guy," Susan said. "Whose apartment is it?"
"Coop says it belonged to Gavin, who let him use it."
"You believe him?"
"No. I'm sure Gavin rented it for him. But I don't care if he I ies about stuff like that. If you let a guy like Cooper weasel on the small stuff, he thinks he's winning some of the battles, and it's easier to get the big stuff out of him."
"Did others at Kinergy use O'Mara?"
"We know Rowley did, and Eisen. Coop thinks that probably some other executives were involved, but he doesn't know who."
"You think that's a lie?"
"Probably."
"But you don't care."
"I'm not the sex police," I said. "I just want to know who killed Trent Rowley."
"God; I almost forgot that was what you were hired for."
"I try to keep track," I said.
"Did Cooper have anything to say about the longhaired man?"
"Not really. Said he was a friend of O'Mara's and because O'Mara asked, Cooper had his secretary call and get the guy into the dining club."
"Does he know the man's name?"
"Doesn't remember. Says his secretary might know."
"And when the man just sat there at the bar, you don't think Cooper wondered?"
"If you want to be president, and there's a guy who knows about you what O'Mara knew about Cooper ..."
"You don't ask," Susan said. I nodded.
"So why would this friend of O'Mara's be following you?"
"Worried about what I might find out about Kinergy?"
"Why would he care?"
"Well, he is the corporate pimp," I said.
"I suppose," Susan said. "Do you really think that's all it was?"
"No," I said. "I don't."
"Do you know what else it would be?"
"Not yet," I said.
49
Marty Siegel came to my office carrying a pigskin attaché case and looking like he was on his way to an inauguration.
"Are you sure you're an accountant?" I said.
"I am the best accountant in the world," Marty said.
"I know that," I said. "But you're supposed to be geeky and wear glasses and a pocket protector."
"Would contacts cover me?" Marty said.
"Accountants don't wear contact lenses."
"And if they're any good they're not hanging around with you, either," Marty said. "Be glad I'm atypical."
Marty put his pigskin attaché case carefully on the seat of one of my client chairs and sat just as carefully in the other one. He was tall and lean with long black hair that waved back over his ears. He wore a black silk suit, a white shirt with a Windsor collar, and a white silk tie. His face was clean-shaven and pefectly tanned. He even had a little cleft in his chin.
"I've arranged for you to do a full audit at Kinergy," I said.
"Access to the site?"
"Yep."
"Nothing off limits?"
"Nope."
"No time limitation?"
"Nope."
"You have something on the CEO?"
"Yep."
"Good," Marty said. "What I've seen so far, they could use a good audit."
"You already know things?" I said.
"Of course," Marty said. "Would I be the world's greatest CPA and not know anything yet?"
"Whaddya know?"
Marty looked at my coffeemaker. The pot was nearly full.
"You got coffee made?"
"Yes."
"Gimme some," Marty said.
I handed him a cup and he got up and poured himself coffee and sat down and crossed his legs, making sure to adjust his pants at the knee so the crease wouldn't bag.
"Any publicly held company," Marty said, "is required by law to make quarterly and annual financial filings. The quarterlies are called lOQs and the annuals are lOKs."
"Isn't that something?" I said.
"You wanna learn something or not?" Marty said.
He drank some coffee.
"Hey, this stuff isn't bad," he said. I nodded modestly.
"The filings are public. You can go to the SEC website and look them up. What you'd be especially interested in, if you were a really amazing CPA instead of some kind of semi-legal thug, would be three documents. The balance sheet, the income statement, and the statement of cash flow."
"I resent being called a semi-legal thug," I said.
"Okay," Marty said. "Illegal thug."
"Thank you."
"Any good accountant can learn a lot from those documents," Marty said. "And the great ones, like me, know to pay close attention to the footnotes."
"So whaddya know?"
"You know what mark to market accounting is?"
"No."
Marty looked pleased.
"Do you know what cost, or as it is sometimes known, accrual accounting is?" he said.
"Also no."
Marty leaned back and drank some coffee and got himself more comfortable i
n my chair.
"And," I said, "if you begin to tell me in any detail I will jam you into your attaché case."
"You wouldn't understand detail anyway," Marty said. "Say you kept a ledger, which in your case is unlikely, but say you did, and say you're making knuckle knives. You sell one to Hawk for a buck, and you debit your asset column one dollar, and credit your liabilities column one dollar. The two columns are always supposed to be equal."
"I don't have a ledger," I said.
"I know," Marty said. "And if you did, the columns would never be equal. But this is hypothetical."
"And Hawk's already got a knuckle knife."
"Shut up and listen," Marty said. "So you keep your ledger and somebody says how much money you got and you say a buck, and they say show me, and you take the buck out of your pocket and wave it under their nose."
I nodded. We'd get there eventually. Pushing him wouldn't do any good. Marty was one of those guys who knew so much about a thing that he had to tell you far more about it than you ever wanted to know.
"But," he said and paused.
"But?" I said.
I knew he was pausing for dramatic effect, I might as well help him enjoy it.
"Suppose you and Hawk have a deal. He'll buy a knife every year for five years. So you debit a buck from the asset side, and you credit five bucks on the liabilities. Because that's what the deal's worth over time."
I nodded.
"Get it?" Marty said. "See the problem?"
"What if Hawk dies or backs out of the deal?"
"Yes," Marty said.
He was thrilled.
"Or somebody comes by the first year and says show me the cash?" he said.
"l take out my one dollar," I said.
"And suppose the guy that's asking has just fixed your sink and seeing that you had five dollars in revenue, does it for credit, and now he wants his five smackers."
"I don't think I've heard anyone say smackers since I dumped all my Perry Como albums."
"Never mind that," Marty said. "What I described in grossly oversimplified terms is another kind of accounting called mark to market."
"Thank God for the gross oversimplification," I said.
"And here's a little embroidery," Marty said. "Say you think the cost of knuckle knives will go up over time, so you, or probably I, at your behest, because you pay me a monstrous retainer every year, and I am in your pocket, make a projection of how much the price will rise, and decide that they'll be worth two bucks, five years hence."