by Joy Copeland
“The room near the copy machine?”
“Yes, you know the one. Well, the cleaning crew had already been through for the evening. I figured one of them had come back. At least I was hoping that was what it was. As I got closer, I heard these low grunts. I peeked in, expecting to see the cleaning crew. And there they were.”
“The cleaning crew messing around?”
“No, Ray and Milton. Going at it.”
“Oh my God!” Zoie grimaced and covered her eyes with her hands as if to do so would protect her from the mental images of the file-room scene.
“You asked how I know,” Carmen said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“What did they say to you?”
“They didn’t see me or hear me, as far as I know. They were too involved. Humph.”
“So what did you do?”
“I got out of there pronto. Went home. Had a drink. Actually two drinks.”
“My goodness.” Zoie took a deep breath. “I’m having a hard time with this.”
“How do you think I felt?”
Zoie pictured an imaginary headline in the business section of the Washington Post: “Crayton Foundation Head Fired. Details on p. F-2.” Well, maybe not the headline but one of the stories for sure. She frowned. “I don’t know what to say. This is unbelievable.”
“Believe it,” Carmen said emphatically.
“So you kept this quiet?”
“Not exactly. I told my mother, my husband, my sister…and now you.”
“You didn’t tell Regina?”
“Oh, no. If I had told Regina, you’d already know the details. I guess the whole world would know. You may have noticed she can’t keep a secret.” Carmen sucked her teeth in disgust. “I specifically asked her to not give out my address and to use it only to send me personal mail.”
“In fairness to Regina,” Zoie confessed, “she didn’t give me your address. I found your address among her things.”
It was Carmen’s turn to frown. “Well, that’s not good either. As for Ray, other than the people that I’ve mentioned, I haven’t told anyone. Frankly I don’t know why I’m telling you now,” Carmen said, rubbing her hands together, appearing nervous.
In the long silence that followed, Zoie tried to comprehend all that she had heard. Carmen was right. Zoie had come on a fact-finding mission, expecting that she already knew the answers. She couldn’t stop shaking her head in disbelief. There had been no hint of Ray’s being gay, let alone of his having a relationship with Milton, other than that of the boss and the “golden boy.” Milton functioned as the de facto second in command. Everyone knew he was Ray’s confidant. That was reason enough for their frequent closed-door meetings, not that she had been counting. She’d adopted a policy of keeping meetings with Ray to a minimum. It wasn’t that she disliked Ray—dislike was too strong a word. Her feeling was better expressed in a childhood expression: she found him icky. She, like Carmen, now knew Ray’s secret—a secret that was icky and volatile.
“I never suspected,” Zoie said, nearly whispering, continuing to shake her head. “Milton and Ray?”
“I didn’t know either until I saw them with my own eyes. In retrospect there were signs,” Carmen said, sitting up. “But I never put them all together. I mean that Milton is obvious, but by itself that means nothing.”
Zoie found her composure to speak. “Then you left the Foundation because of this knowledge. This incident made you uncomfortable?”
“My God! Talk about awkward!” Carmen held both cheeks. “It’s hard to look people in the eye when you’ve seen them with their pants down.” She smiled. “In the days following, I don’t know what was worse—running into Milton or Ray or seeing them together in meetings.”
“I can imagine,” Zoie said, trying to not smile too hard since she couldn’t help but picture the uncomfortable incidents.
“I wouldn’t leave a job because of someone’s sexual preference.”
“Of course not, but what about the fact that having sex in the office violates standards of appropriate office behavior? I don’t care whether the sex is homosexual or heterosexual, let alone that Ray is an officer at Crayton.”
“Yeah, I know. Right. It was serious stuff. But that’s not what did it for me,” Carmen continued.
“Then why did you leave the Foundation?”
Carmen sighed and clasped her hands. “I left because Ray was an asshole. No pun intended.”
Zoie smiled with clinched teeth and a raised brow. “He was being stupid. You caught him. Others could do the same.” Another stupid executive, Zoie thought.
“It was more than that,” Carmen said with a frown distorting her attractive face. “That place was sleazy. Ray was sleazy. Milton was sleazy.” She hesitated, trying to think of what to say. “Have you witnessed how the grants are given out?”
“Huh?”
“You must have wondered! Didn’t grant season just pass?”
“If you mean how grants are given out procedurally, yeah, it’s a little loose.” Zoie didn’t want to be more specific. Having approached Carmen, Zoie was already on the ethical fringe.
“A little loose! You didn’t notice how Ray dishes out funding? He treats the Foundation’s funds like his personal treasure chest. King Ray likes to grant wishes to his personal favorites.”
“But the Board has the final say,” Zoie said.
“I’ve never attended one of the Foundation’s Board meetings. Remember, I was a peon. All I know is whatever Ray recommended to the Board is what the members okayed.”
Zoie smirked. “Humph.”
“Ray calls the shots,” Carmen continued. “Then he struts like a peacock when he gets his way.”
“I see.” Zoie’s voice was hushed.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. Isn’t that what really brought you here?”
“I just happened to be in Fort Lauderdale for the weekend. It wasn’t a special trip,” Zoie answered in defense of her actions.
“Uh-huh. And you just came to see me because you had nothing else to do? Ms. Taylor, don’t fool yourself. You suspect something. You know something.”
“I do have concerns. Part of my job is to keep the Foundation from being sued.”
“Good luck,” Carmen said in a snappy tone.
“You’re insinuating that there’s hanky panky beyond sex in the office. Help me, please. Give me a clue here. Obviously, you know a lot.”
There was a long silence while Carmen considered how much she should say. She got up and walked to the picture windows and stared out at the lake. Then she turned to face Zoie. “Okay, let’s say…you’ve noticed the same things that I did. Maybe that’s your concern.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Maybe you noticed some irregularities in the way some of Ray’s favorite grantees are handled or in how these grantees account for their spending.”
Zoie sat back in her chair. “Could be,” she answered.
“And maybe you’ve noticed how Ray always pressures for a particular grantee.”
“You mean Mahali Salaam?”
Carmen shrugged and, with a Cheshire smile, tilted her head to indicate agreement.
Zoie said, “That homeless shelter seems to be a worthwhile investment for the Foundation.”
Carmen smiled. “I’ve nothing against the homeless, but when other successful, innovative programs are being cut…” she said, returning to the couch.
“Which programs are you talking about? Which one did Ray cut?”
“I try to forget this stuff.”
“Let me help you. Was it Magnum Youth Literacy?”
“At least that one.”
“Did you ever tell Ray about your concerns?”
“Yes,” Carmen said emphatically, “both before and after the file-room incident—though God knows dealing with him after was difficult.” Carmen rolled her eyes.
“What did Ray say?”
“Humph. He told me I was making a ‘mountain out of a molehill.’
He called me a nitpicker and said that I was letting bureaucratic details get in the way of providing service to the community. What a bunch of bull.” Carmen rolled her eyes again. “I told him I thought it was my job to look thoroughly into our grantee operations and to make recommendations. Then he accused me of not being a team player.” As she spoke, Carmen’s sun-kissed cheeks grew red. “He told me if I couldn’t go along with the changed agenda, then I should move on.”
“Is that what you did?”
“That’s right. I moved on.”
“Whoa!” Zoie said.
“I’m surprised that an audit hasn’t uncovered this stuff. One day it’s going to hit the newspapers. It won’t make the papers here in Florida.”
“And I don’t want to be part of a news story,” Zoie whispered.
There was another long silence, which was broken by a sharp cry coming from upstairs. This time the cry was different: it signaled a hurt child, not an irritated one. Carmen jumped up from the couch and stormed from the room, her bare feet pounding the ceramic tiles, sounding like a four-hundred-pound sumo wrestler.
After a while the crying subsided, but the quiet was soon broken by the loud voices of two women squabbling in Spanish. The child’s screams joined the raucous. For Zoie the distraction of the noise from upstairs was momentary. The potential consequences of her new knowledge preoccupied her mind. Was what she had heard about Ray and the Foundation true? There was no reason to believe that Carmen was lying or to attribute her damaging allegations to the ramblings of a disgruntled employee. As an officer of the Foundation, Zoie was duty bound to act. It was the right thing to do, and if something came out later, she could be implicated and deemed negligent if she failed to take action to remedy the situation. But which situation? The in-office fornication or the alleged misappropriation of the Foundation’s funds? She was sitting on a ticking time bomb.
Anxious to leave, Zoie checked her watch. It was one o’clock, the time Tina expected to be back at the apartment. Zoie retrieved her cell from her bag and pressed the programmed number for Tina. The line rang several times until Tina’s automated voice chimed in and urged the caller to leave a message. “Figures,” Zoie said.
Carmen reentered the room. “Sorry about that. My son decided to jump off my bed. He thinks he’s Spiderman, but he hasn’t learned to land.”
“I’ve heard that boys are more active than girls.” Zoie thought of Nikki. The truth was she could envision Nikki doing the exact same thing. Zoie smiled and stood. “I better go.”
“Ms. Taylor, we’ve talked about a lot of things today. I’ve probably said way more than I should have. I need to know something: What do you intend to do with what I’ve told you?”
“I’m not sure,” Zoie answered, gazing at the floor.
Carmen winced, her slender body becoming tense. “Please don’t pull me into anything to do with Crayton. I won’t give any official statements.”
“I understand.” During her years at Fairday and Winston, Zoie had encountered many people whose accounts of unsavory or illicit acts were given only with the promise that their disclosures would remain off the record. Having witnessed such events, most people didn’t want to get sucked further into the mire. Cautious witnesses clammed up, a tendency that benefited her corporate clients and left prosecutors frustrated.
“I won’t give an official statement about anything,” Carmen repeated.
“It may end here.”
“No, I have a strong feeling that it’s not over for you,” Carmen said.
Not sure of what to say, Zoie just shrugged.
Carmen walked Zoie to the door. Zoie stepped down the single step to the walkway and turned to face her host. “Again, thank you for your time and for being so frank.”
“Perhaps I’ve put a light on some things for you,” Carmen said as she clung to the door. Then with a matter-of-fact tone, as if she were ordering meat at the butcher’s, she said, “I wish you luck in your quest, but I must ask that you don’t contact me again. And I will deny anything that I’ve told you today. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”
Before Zoie could utter a word, the door closed.
Chapter 22
Guilty Until Proven Innocent
On the drive from Boca back to Fort Lauderdale, Zoie’s head whirled from Carmen’s revelations. She felt stung by the meeting’s abrupt ending. Naively she’d begun to consider Carmen Silva an ally—someone she could count on, someone who could help interpret further findings. However, Carmen made it clear that she wouldn’t come forward to make any official statements and that she wanted no more contact.
Zoie parked Tina’s rental car in its designated spot and made her way into the elevator. The heavy afternoon heat followed her through the passageway until she keyed into the air-conditioned efficiency. Tina hadn’t returned from the yoga auditions and as usual was incommunicado.
Zoie cut a slice of carrot cake, grabbed a glass of iced herb tea, and plopped in a lounge chair on the covered balcony. The ocean breeze on the building’s balcony side made it cooler. Staring into the distance, Zoie was oblivious to the buildings blocking her ocean view. Her mind was elsewhere as she recounted Carmen’s every word: the unfortunate sex scene featuring Ray and Milton, Carmen’s concerns about the grants, and Ray’s invitation to her to leave. Of course, Carmen could have been exaggerating, even making the whole thing up. A wounded ex-employee could easily fabricate a whopper of a tale. Zoie had seen it before: employee retaliation with months of out-of-court negotiations, usually ending in eventual settlements with nondisclosure agreements. But the more Zoie considered Carmen Silva, the more she believed the woman. She seemed straightforward and not motivated by money; she was not someone seeking revenge. She wasn’t out to make more trouble for the Foundation. No suit was pending or about to be filed. This woman wanted no part of the Foundation. Carmen Silva had told the truth.
Zoie shoved a chunk of the carrot cake into her mouth and swallowed it, failing to chew first. Its uncomfortable dryness stuck in her throat until she downed it with a swig of tea. What was she going to do? So this was why Ray had pressured her to support funding for the Shelter. His boundless enthusiasm for Mahali Salaam had always seemed a little fishy, exceeding what one might simply think of as altruistic sponsorship. He was selling Mahali like a used-car salesman promoting a prized lemon.
And where was the Shelter’s money going, money that was supposed to be there for that truck, that alarm system, and God only knows what else? But all those things were on the Shelter’s end. Was Ray covering for them?
Then there was Jahi, serious and dedicated. She didn’t want to believe that he could be caught up in something crooked. It was only fair that she confront him and give him the opportunity to tell her that she was wrong. As for Ray she’d give him that same benefit of the doubt. His office indiscretions were a separate issue. Or were they? The possibilities of what else could be happening frightened her, things like embezzlement, extortion, and kickbacks.
Her thoughts of fraud possibilities bounced from bad to worse. Maybe she’d been reading too many crime novels. After all, this was happening in real life, not in a book, a movie, or a TV show. As sloppy as the Foundation’s practices were, she’d always felt that the lack of a process was because everyone was anxious to make things simpler and more convenient for the grantees, an attitude that the grantees were there to do good work for the community, not to dot i’s and to cross t’s. Why couldn’t it end there? With everyone squeaky clean, a little loose and a little unstructured, but certainly well intentioned.
The sky’s brightness bore heavy on her eyes. Her eyes, which had been staring at nothing yet seeing everything, closed.
Zoie didn’t know how long she’d been asleep on the balcony when Tina startled her. Her friend was glowing with excitement.
“Tina, don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“I’m sorry. You were having such a nice nap.”
“Where’s Walt?” Zo
ie asked, still trying to get a fix on the time, the day, and the planet.
“Don’t worry. You’ll meet him. He had an appointment. He said he would stop by and take us to lunch tomorrow, before your plane.”
Zoie came out of her stupor. “So how were the auditions?”
“Well, we didn’t get that far. But it’s definitely workable. Walt’s studio is small. We thought we could shoot it there or maybe at the community clubhouse at this senior citizens’ complex.”
“I thought you wanted to do the video on the beach? You know, water, sand, sky.”
“Right…that’s still under consideration. We’d have to build a solid platform. I don’t think these folks could do yoga moves in the sand,” Tina said as she pressed her hands together in a prayer position and balanced on one leg. Tina came out of the pose and pulled up a chair next to Zoie. “And what about you? Did you lounge all morning?”
“No, I made it to Boca.”
“You did?” Tina looked surprised.
“Hey, remind me to stay away from anything with alcohol.”
Tina grinned, but Zoie’s face was dead serious.
“No problem. I’ll remind you. So what’s up with this woman in Boca? You made it sound so mysterious. Like CIA stuff or something.”
“Girlfriend, you’ve been living in DC too long,” Zoie said.
“Nothing juicy like that, huh?”
“Oh, it’s juicy all right. I wish it wasn’t,” Zoie replied, her lips twisting.
“Zo, this must be serious. So tell me. You know I can keep my mouth shut. Who would I tell anyway?”
“Walt!”
“Tsk. No! Seriously, mum’s the word. Okay.”
There was a long silence as Zoie considered her friend’s trustworthiness. This was privileged corporate information with significant ramifications. In truth, however, she had to tell someone. She needed a sanity check and some advice.
“Well, do you want me to guess?” Tina asked.
Zoie wasn’t ready for twenty questions. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you’re sworn to secrecy.”
In a mock swearing in, Tina raised her right hand. “Okay, out with it. And after all this formality, this better be good.”