Another Whistle Blower

by Douglass, Carl;

  “Absolutely,” says David. “He has something like twenty books out and is very popular, but he uses a pseudonym, and no one seems to know who he really is. I think that is a great choice. So, McGee, I suggest you move Cecil by car to LA tomorrow. I will not tell anyone in my office about him; my administrative assistant will block out the entire afternoon day after tomorrow.”

  “It’s a twelve-hour car trip from Salt Lake to LA. We’d better make the appointment for later in the afternoon,” says Cecil.

  “Yeah, that is a bit of logistics that I didn’t take into consideration,” Russell says. “Okay with everybody?”

  There is unanimity, and the wheels are set into motion.

  Cecil makes his call to consortium headquarters and talks to Carl Midgely, the senior in house corporate attorney, “Carl, I hate to sound like an alarmist, but that guy Evans from the IRS office in Ogden insists on a meeting with him day after tomorrow at two. He says if I can’t make it for some excuse, he will issue a subpoena. He sounds serious and even threatening. I need that help you promised.”

  “You will have it, my friend. Don’t worry about a thing. Crandall Fisher, our consortium attorney assigned to you to deal with IRS problems, and John Wang from our accounting firm, Danforth, Highcroft, and Wang, will be there. We should try to get together an hour before the appointment time to go over what we are going to say and what records we are going to submit. Bring everything you’ve got, but leave it in your car; so, this Evans person doesn’t get the idea that he is going to get everything, at least not right off the bat. You okay with that, Cecil? We have your back. I promise that we’ll take care of you.”

  Cecil takes the promise as irony and thinks, “I’ll just bet.”

  He says, “More than okay, I’m grateful.”

  Tenelly Outhower, CPA, and her assistants, MaryJo Blackly and Tina Brown, have a successful first day. They meet with three family members of Mastcakil victims, now deceased. The families are more desperate for money than they are for expressing their outrage or for launching a suit they may well never win. The gist of the conversations is similar with each family:

  “We are so sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs. Guerro. We feel your pain. We don’t really know if our medicine was the case of Angelina’s death, but whether or not it had something negative to do with her condition, we want to help.”

  “Tenelly, our daughter left us with a mountain of debt. We really don’t know what to do. My cousin’s brother-in-law is an attorney. He says we should sue the company. We don’t like that sort of thing in our family. People we know who were involved in suits had a miserable time for two or three years. That seems like more than we could handle right now so soon after the funeral. But, we have people coming after us to pay the medical bills and the funeral bills. Everything.”

  “I think we can be of help, Maria. If you don’t mind me asking, how much are you in debt at this point?”

  “Almost a quarter of a million dollars. My husband—bless his soul—has a very bad back and can’t work. I make only eighteen thousand a year working as a waitress. We can hardly pay the rent.”

  “I understand perfectly. How about if we take over your debts and get you some peace of mind? I think my friends here and I could maybe bat our eyes at the top brass at the company and get them to fork over something extra to get you going again. We know it won’t bring back your lovely daughter, Kara, but maybe it would help.”

  “How much are you thinking, Tenelly?” Maria asks, now less the pathetic sorrowing mother and more the business mind for the family.

  “Maybe we could get the company to go as much as three hundred thousand, how does that sound?”

  “It would be nice, but we really do have a lot of bills that have piled up while we were taking care of our daughter … and there’s Roberto’s bad back … and my feet need some care from a podiatrist that we haven’t been able to afford through all of this….”

  She and Tenelly are getting on the same page in this dialogue. Tenelly knows that all that is left to do is to settle on a figure.

  “What do you think would be appropriate, dear?” she asks.

  “When you called, Roberto and I gave it some thought. He thinks we would probably need, maybe something like … oh, I’d say seven-fifty, or even more appropriate, eight hundred. A big company like ZyterBrothers Technologies could afford to help us out for that much. After all, it really does seem like Mastcakil was what caused Angelina’s blood corpsuckles—or however you say it—to be destroyed. That killed her.”

  The gloves are off now. Tenelly is glad the demand was not more. She knows it would be a very poor idea for her to attempt to get Maria to come down. A suit would be a slam dunk for the family, and the judgment would probably be more than ten times as much in the end.

  “Tell you what. Let’s agree on the eight hundred right now, and I can write you a check. Ever see a check for eight hundred thousand dollars, Maria?”

  Maria snorted, “I can’t remember a check for two hundred dollars. What kinda people do you think we are?”

  “People just like me, I’d guess. People who think eight hundred dollars is a lot of money.”

  “You got that right.”

  “So, consider it done. I need you to sign these papers. They say that you agree not to sue the company, and you agree never to tell anybody about the deal. If you do, the money has to be paid back to the company.”

  Maria signs with alacrity.

  Mary-Jo produces a check written out to Maria and Roberto for the huge sum, and Tenelly signs it as an officer of the company. They have a group hug. As soon as they are out on the street again, Tenelly tells Tina to order a nice bouquet of flowers for Maria.

  “Let’s go get a nice juicy steak. We have cause for celebration,” Tenelly says.

  She calls in a report to Mr. Dilworth at the end of the day with $1.8 million worth of good news—or, more accurately—$20 or $30 million saved, worth of good news.

  Chapter Nine

  The author’s house is sixty-five miles away from Cecil and Andrea’s home in Salt Lake City. It sits on a knoll overlooking Heber Valley with a view of the majestic Mount Timpanogos to the west, a line of western juniper-covered low hills to the east and north, and a wide valley to the south. The house and its lot grant a seven or eight mile view in every direction, which is a measure of security that is not lost on Cecil and Andrea. The house is ridiculously large for the older couple who live as the king and queen of their domain. It is a post and beam French hunting lodge named Le Son du Cor [the Sound of the (hunting) Horn], which reflects the owner’s enthusiasm for hunting and a passion for the parade of wild animals that live on the property or parade through it with regularity. On any given day—including the day Cecil and Andrea are welcomed into the bird room, a peaceful room with a view of nature at its best, and filled with paintings and statuary of all sorts of birds—the view is likely to include elk, deer, rabbits, coyotes, an occasional moose or bobcat, and a rare cougar. The house is painted in soft natural earth-tone colors and is full of very comfortable couches and chairs. The grounds are beautiful in all seasons. The springtime that brings Cecil and Andrea affords a view of Gambel Oak breaking out into yellow-green leaves that catch the sunlight and cast a soft golden glow all around the house.

  “Come in, come in,” says Sandra, Carl’s welcoming and gracious wife. “Take a load off and raid the fridge, have a nap, or take a hike up into the scrub oak. No one knows you’re here, and no one will see you out around the lot. It’s part of why we still love to live here despite the amount of work there is to do all the time.”

  She gives Andrea a hug and shakes Cecil’s hand vigorously. She is a worker and has strong agile hands.

  “Carl will be back in about an hour. He is out doing a book launching in Provo. He usually sells out in a couple of hours and gets bored telling people about his latest book if he can’t make decent sales. Actually, most of his sales come from the internet or his website; but he st
ill enjoys the direct person-to-person touch.”

  “Thanks for everything, Sandra. We have had a stressful last two days. I think we could do with a good nap. Would that be all right?”

  “Certainly, you don’t have to feel like you have to entertain us. Come on down for supper at six. I forgot to ask, do you eat meat?”

  “We do,” Andrea says and smiles. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, it’s a new age: gluten-free dating sites, girls’ arms covered with grey tattoos so completely that you can’t tell what the ink is trying to depict, PETA and vegans, lactose-intolerant kids, and piercings anywhere and everywhere. I would be embarrassed to have anybody know that I have a tattoo or piercing in some of those unmentionable places. The long and short of it, we are meat eaters here if you hadn’t already guessed from Carl’s trophies in the great room.”

  Cecil and Sandra give the down-to-earth and ingratiating woman warm smiles and trot off up the stairs to sleep in peace for the next five hours. The doorbell rings shortly after they get to sleep. A tall, powerful-looking, extremely black, man dressed in a perfectly tailored suit is standing outside flanked by two massively muscled and frightening men of similar skin color. They are all wearing Kevlar vests, and they all have submachine guns slung over their shoulders and a Sam Browne belt with K-Bar knives, ammunition pouches, and a large caliber handgun. They are Sandra’s kind of people, and she invites them in without hesitation. Of course, she has been forewarned by a call from a nice woman named Caitlin O’Brian who lives in New York City. Carl filled her in about what is going on, and assures her that these men are there to protect Cecil and Andrea, and Sandra and her husband as well.

  The handsome African-American man leads the way in and greets Sandra warmly. She gives him a hug which is a surprise to the man. He is more used to having people take to him more slowly and hesitantly.

  “Ma’am….”

  “Hey, I’m Sandra. Only old ladies in the South are ‘ma’ams.’ This is your home while you’re here, and we’re not much on formality.”

  “This is Quince Longely and this is Able Drahman. We’re all from New York.”

  Sandra shakes their hands and says with a smile, “Poor things.”

  The three hardened security guards laugh out loud. Protecting this lady will be a pleasure.

  “Are the Edgingtons here?” Ivory asks.

  “Yes, they’re having a nap. You are certainly welcome to snoop around, get something to eat—but there is one rule: you have to keep hungry enough to have a big supper.”

  The ultimatum is issued with a broad smile.

  Sandra goes back to her work preparing her usual sumptuous dinner for friends and family, and gives Carl a call on his iPhone.

  “They’re here,” she says laconically.

  “They seem okay?”

  “I feel as safe as I do when you’re around me packing your Glock. They are incredible specimens of manhood and very efficient. They are checking the place out for places to hide, escape routes, and where to watch out around the valley with their binoculars.”

  “Good thing, Sandra. See you in an hour.”

  Cecil gets up and has a shower and changes into comfortable clothes. Ivory sees him looking around the great room and shakes his hand.

  “We should talk.”

  “Right. Do you mind if Carl listens in?”

  “Ordinarily, I would. But if you vouch for him, then we’ll go along with it. Remember, we are talking about your life and that of your wife. Do you trust him to keep your secrets to that level?”

  “We go back a long ways, and yes I do.”

  Cecil signals for Carl to join them. Quince and Able slip quietly to stand like great silent pillars in strategic positions, their eyes constantly watching, looking, scrutinizing, and analyzing.

  Ivory says, “This has all happened pretty fast for you. I know you are tight with Russell Gaspero from the FBI, but I presume you are not really familiar with McGee and Associates.”

  “You are right. You guys come highly recommended, but it would be good to get a better feel for what you do and what you want Andrea and me to do.”

  “The firm started with McGee. Actually, he is J.P.A.M.J. McGee. His mother named him

  Joseph Patrick Aloysius Michael John McGee. Most PIs were former cops who either became unfit for further NYPD service or retired with a nice letter, a nice plaque, and a meager pension and chose being a PI over being a security guard. McGee was different. He always wanted to be a PI, and he started out at a young age to prepare himself. He got a degree in criminology at CUNY and a law degree from Columbia. His first job was as a CSI for NYPD. That lasted three years, and he quit because the pay was too low and the promotions too slow. He then worked as a criminalist for the FBI specializing in ballistics and then banking fraud for a total of five years. He quit that because he could no longer stomach the bureaucracy. Our firm—McGee & Associates—does its share of nasty divorce dirt digging and embezzlement work, but our real money comes from surveillance in corporate espionage cases, forensic accountancy, and in-depth investigations for the defense in high-profile criminal cases—usually murders.

  “The office of McGee & Associates Investigations is in midtown Manhattan. We don’t advertise on TV or on billboards. Our clients are largely rich, have serious issues with opponents; or, in criminal cases, they have vices to hide and important secrets to keep. Our policy is to provide the truth; and the clients who pay the bills are informed up front that we will not lie for them in or out of court; and we will give them all of what we discover and let them be the judge of how to use the information. We don’t take bribes; anyone who does such a thing will be kicking rocks down the road half a minute after any of the partners learn that he or she does. Sometimes our clients balk at such pristine morality, but it has paid off over the two decades we have been in business.

  “There are three partners: McGee, Caitlin O’Brian, and me. Caitlin was once a New York homicide detective. I have been with McGee for about three years. I’ll tell you a bit about me. I used to be in a gang—the Black Knights. I got out without being killed or sent to prison thanks to McGee’s help. My old gang friends are great assets and are loyal ‘muscles’ for lack of a better term. We handle the unpleasantries, and we are in charge of security services such as we are doing with you guys, Cecil and Andrea. I do all of the personal security for high profile clients.

  “I can fill you in on what to expect and how we handle things when we are making the long trip across the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles. We need to leave in the dark so no one knows that we were ever here. We’ll go in two cars. I will have you, Andrea, and Quince in one car; and Able will either follow us or ride point as he thinks is necessary. Don’t let the guns make you nervous. They are part of our working equipment, and it is your enemies who should be nervous. We’ll meet Caitlin in LA, and we’ll have a pretty heavy-hitting team by the time we arrive at the Century Plaza attorneys’ office.”

  Chapter Ten

  The second day of effort to persuade Mastcakil patients with adverse effects to see reason and accept a quiet lump sum rather than waiting for the uncertainties of a suit is a mixed success story for Tenelly Outhower, CPA, and her assistants, MaryJo Blackly and Tina Brown. The families of Lincoln Rasband, Hector Gomez, and Rachel Diztwich—all deceased—are amenable to the “compensation” and they settle for amounts ranging from $400,000 to $850,000. Tenelly and her assistants run up against a stone wall when they meet with Dustin Bradshaw—in Cooper City in Broward County—who is still suffering for a bad case of Stevens-Johnson syndrome. He has gone through the pains of hell, lost his job and his insurance, and has an accumulated debt of nearly $600,000 with the potential of more treatment to come. As he admits the three women from the OrganoNatural Pharmaceutical Marketing Consortium to his unkempt little flat, he is midway through a course of IV antibiotics which requires him to make a trip to the hospital for his twice-daily treatments. He is discouraged, and he is angry.


  No amount of persuasion, cajoling, or feminine wiles will sway him. When he is able to get up and around, he is going to Miami’s most notorious class action tort law firm. Dustin knows the mantra of the law firm: “BAD DRUG, GET DONOVAN LAWYERS FOR A GOOD RESULT.”

  “Sorry, Boss,” Tenelly reports to Mr. Dilworth, “We’ve have run into a guy who will not listen to reason. He has unshakable plans to get to the law firm of Donovan and Associates—you know them, I’m sure—and he wants to be in on the ground floor of a nationwide class action suit against Mastcakil and the consortium.”

  “Are you certain that you have exhausted every avenue, Tenelly?”

  “Sorry, but I am sure.”

  “Call David Nelson, head of support activities. He’ll take care of the problem. You just keep on finding and talking with the other people with a potential to sue.”

  “Yes, sir, will do.”

  The following day at one-thirty on a sultry afternoon in Ogden, Utah, the consortium tax expert team arrives in the office of the Internal Revenue Service at 324 25th Street. The team—consisting of David Nelson, head of ‘support activities’; Crandall Fisher, consortium attorney assigned to Cecil Edgington to deal with his problems with the IRS; and John Wang from the Independent consortium accounting firm, Danforth, Highcroft, and Wang—is given an empty conference room to prepare their documents for Mr. Evans when he finishes with the client he is currently interviewing.

  Fisher states the generally held opinion of the team, “This is hardly even a speed bump. We have more knowledge, experience, and know-how than a room of Henry Lloyd Evanses or any other agents operating out here in Podunk or whatever this burg is called. I predict we’ll be in and out of here in less than an hour, and Cecil will be off the hot seat in a matter of days. We’ll all be able to get back to business as usual.”

  “So, where’s this drugstore man, Edgington?” asks Nelson, who seldom speaks, but when he does, people who know him or of him pay close attention.