Giving Up - A short story about white collar crime

 

    “We have to do it,” said Malcolm.     

    “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Dave.  “You must be nuts!  We can’t.”

    The “it” Malcolm referred to was murder, and Dave just didn’t want to hear it.

    The two men were employed by an old New York accounting firm called Burton & Shivers and, through seniority, worked together on a large corporate account involving pension funds.  Over a couple of years they’d discovered ways, (mostly at the suggestion of Malcolm Bainbridge), to line their own pockets.  At first this was done by creating fictitious people for consulting fees, (John Taylor became a frequently used name), and then cook the books so that they got the money themselves.  Dave had been unsure about the idea at first.  Malcolm had started it, in fact, and he brought Dave into it by presenting him with a check for five thousand dollars.  Dave was frightened and, in the beginning, tried to refuse the offer.  But Malcolm had assured him that the funds could not be traced.  It was all covered up in a series of accounts below the radar screen, (including some in the Bahamas where the bank from which that very check was written was located), so that everything, in a way, was on the up and up.  So gradually Dave became involved, and went along with everything.  The false consulting fees, the interest funds of the hidden accounts, (this was their most profitable venture), and phony expense accounts, all became part of Dave’s portfolio.  And so the two men eventually were able to more than double their salaries.

    But now there was a bug in the ointment, for a new man was to join them on the account.  And he wasn’t just any man but Frederick Burton, the great-great grandson of the firm’s founder.  He had been assigned, having just gotten his masters in business administration at Princeton, of all places, to supervise them, while working his way up the corporate ladder.  Malcolm and Dave had been working with the young man for two days.

    “We’ve got to have him killed,” said Malcolm.  “or we’ll be finished.  And I know how to do it.”

    “No, no, no,” said Dave.  “We can’t!”

    “Do you know what’s going to happen if we don’t?  He’ll find us out, the little schmuck, you know he’s no dummy.  And then we’ll be fired, loose our accounting licenses, and probably go to jail.  Does that idea appeal to you?”

    Dave said nothing.

    “So there it is!”

    The two were sitting at a small round marble table in a room off the second floor lounge of the Americore Club, a private club in Mid-town Manhattan for dues paying businessmen that the two belonged to.  Sitting along side of a seldom-used billiards table lit by three green shaded hanging lamps, they were having a drink.  It was 6:30, Friday evening.  Green velvet curtains separated them from the bar, and a large oil painting of horsemen in bright red coats galloping along on a fox chase provided decoration.

    “You’re not going to propose doing it yourself, are you?” asked Dave, looking at Malcolm incredulously.

    “No, of course not.  Are you kidding?   I know how to hire people to do it.  But we’ve got to act fast.  As you know, time is short.”

    Dave couldn’t deny that.  That very afternoon the young, cheerful, freckled face of Frederick Burton had looked him right in the eye and asked who this John Taylor fellow was!  Two days on the job and he’d already spotted the fake consultant.  But murder, no, no, it just couldn’t be done.  Malcolm, on the other hand, was right.  This little fellow was going to find them out.  And then what?  Chaos and disgrace would surely follow.  He’d be fired, loose his accounting license, and be off to jail.  He could forget about enrolling his six-year-old daughter in the prestigious Mayfair and Evans Primary School on the Upper East Side.  On the other hand he could forget about the visits to that three hundred-dollar a night hooker he went to in times of need, (he was scheduled for an appointment that very evening).  And so, once again, he felt himself being drawn into one of Malcolm Bainbridge’s schemes.

    “How are you going to have it done?”

    “You know I’ve got connections,” said Malcolm.  “They know people that can do it, for a small fee.”

    “How small?”

    “Three hundred thousand.”

    Three hundred thousand!  Forget about that beach house he wanted to buy on Fire Island.  And how would he explain that to his wife?

    “How would they do it?”

    “Let’s just say he’d be mugged in Central Park while walking his dog, which he does at six thirty every morning.  It wouldn’t take long.”

    “Do we have the money ready?”

    “Oh yes, it’s ready,” replied Malcolm.  “I’ve already got it packed in suit cases.”

    The two men paused.

    “Well then I guess we never had this conversation, hmm?” 

*  *  *  *  *  *

Dave Cooper was there at work on Monday morning but, in a way, he wasn’t.  He was at his desk all right, looking over some new forms, just like usual.  But his mind was very far from the scene.  Those newspaper headlines he’d read in the cab on the way down the island of Manhattan kept flashing though his brain like neon signs, over and over again and again: Bizarre Shooting in Central Park- Accountant Survives; Walk in the Park Almost Turns Deadly; Casual Shooting Goes Awry.  Ayieee!  The shooting had happened, and Frederick Burton had survived!  He wasn’t even in the hospital anymore, the bullet had merely grazed his head.  Oh, this was not good.  Not good at all.  Surely Dave himself would become a suspect, along with his partner. And where was his partner?  He wasn’t even there yet!  Oh dear, Malcolm surely hadn’t, well, flown the coop, had he?  Time was ticking by in an agonizing fashion, and Malcolm wasn’t there, 9:30, no sign of him, and in their years together Dave didn’t know of a single day when he hadn’t been there way before him, (7:30, probably, cooking the books for profits that Dave didn’t even know about).  It had already been hellish putting on that fa?ade of ignorance to his fellow employees about the shooting- “How strange, yes, crazy, wasn’t it?  Hope he’s okay!  It seems as though robbery was the motive but they didn’t rob him, just ran away.  Could it be something else?  Naw, probably just some crazy kid out on a rampage…” How long could he keep that up?  And he hadn’t seen the boss.  Mr. Franklin was, as usual, way back in his office, way-way back, behind that phalanx of protection, the mahogany woodwork, the huge desk where his executive secretary, Mrs. Castor, sat, and Dave felt less of a widget in the power structure than her.  Mr. Franklin didn’t even use the same elevator as everyone else, he came in through a rear entrance, and didn’t even physically come out into the office, -(except for that rare instance of a speech to rally them in the conference room, where they hung on his every word with lots of mmm-hmmms, you’re absolutely right, absolutely, back to the books with pencils sharper than ever…)- that lowly chore was left to his subordinates who came with the directives, from on high, as it were.  And oh the meetings with him, at the infrequent intervals when one might be called in on the carpet to face the great schlemiel, ayiee. Those were no fun at all.  Certainly, he was polite, smiling, looking at his faithful employees with that all encompassing smile, that great good fellow how are you everything is fine, isn’t it?… It was the isn’t it that said it all, when the lackey or two behind him perked their ears up like rats waiting for some wholesome leftovers to make a meal of- for you knew, oh you always knew, that if everything wasn’t fine that there would be consequences.

Now, what time, 9:35, he still wasn’t there, should he be called at home, no, oh heavens no, that would indicate some sort of panic.  Panic?  Who said that word?  Strike that remark from the record.  Malcolm was surely coming in, wasn’t he?  Well what if he wasn’t, maybe he was home sick, no maybe, that’s right, maybe he’s visiting the injured man, that would be the thing to do.  That must be where he is.  Maybe that’s what Dave himself should be doing, put on a stiff upper lip and go see your future coworker, not future coworker, he’s here, it’s coworker … Go see him and express sympathies!  That’s it, call up Mr. Browning.

    “Mr. Browning?”

    “Yes?”

    “Dave Cooper.”

    “Yes Dave, what can I do for you?”

    There it all was, subservience: Mr. Browning to address the head lackey, lowly Dave came the response to the subordinate.

    “I was thinking that maybe I should go visit Mr. Burton to check on his recovery.”

    There was a pause.

    “Well Dave,” another pause… “you know that’s very nice of you to think that way, but from what we hear in here,” in here you know, the private sanctum from on high, another meaningful pause, “from what we hear in here he’s quite all right, just a scratch on the old head, really, no problem other than scaring him a little bit.  I don’t think he’ll need a visit.”

    “Really?”

    “That’s nice of you like I say but,” with a very heavy accent on the but, the most important word and here it came Dave knew, the other shoe was about to drop, there was unavoidable catastrophe coming on compounded by the error of the silly call he was making and here it came, “don’t you have work you should be doing today?”

    Ayiiee!!  There it was, he might as well as smacked him upside the head, put him in the corner on the dunce stool, how dare you ask to leave on such a flimsy pretext, and then:

    “As a matter of fact you might miss him at home because it wouldn’t surprise me if he just came walking in here today, work is important you know.”

    Dig it in and twist you bugger.

    “Okay, Mr. Browning.”

    And Mr. Browning hung up without further comment.

    Trouble was, Malcolm wasn’t there, and without him, even if it hadn’t been for this little catastrophe, Dave didn’t know what on earth to do.  This had never happened before, in fact, for Malcolm called the shots.  Dave was really a step and fetch it, an unwitting accomplice, an innocent sort of guy who’d stumbled into a den of thieves. And without the head thief he was sort of out of the loop completely.  Nevertheless, Dave turned on his computer and started to click onto the screens of the different accounts.

    There they all were, familiar, organized little squares and boxes, a neat little tribe of money receptacles, funds growing every day of the week- (with a little set of a slush funds for the two crooks, coming out of a side door…)- so let’s check on one of these and see, well, there’s the Metco Investment, good good, three quarters of a million, quarterly earnings in, that’s fine, on the rise, click again, same for the Divided Commodity Research Group, capital stable with quarterly payments in and reinvested, very good, smooth as silk, maybe things weren’t so bad at all, maybe if they’d just clean up the mess, destroy some records, hide some stuff, maybe they’d be all right, this trouble would just go away, why not?  Well, let’s see then, let’s click a few boxes and check out some of the, ahem, side money, the casual stuff, the fringe benefits, the excess profits; how he and Malcolm had nicknamed the slush money funds over drinks with very serious names, ‘The Bridge Fund’,  ‘Canasta Money’, ‘Aunt Minnie’s Cookie Fund’, ‘The Little League Trust Fund’…so there Dave looked, The Canasta Money, really a bank account in Honduras that was not exactly above board, they had about two hundred thousand in that one, or so he thought, let’s see…balance $2.98, what?  That just couldn’t be!  Wait, well maybe that was part of the money that was used for the killers, must be, let’s try again, The Bridge Fund, that was about the same, two hundred grand and change, okay, let’s try The Border Patrol Account, $2.98, yikes, wait a minute, Malcolm couldn’t have done this!  He wouldn’t!  Would he?  No way, that was more than was needed, well, maybe the price went up, let’s check further, Aunt Millies, balance, $375,000, whew, that’s ok, maybe he took more out for the payoff just in case, just to be sure let’s check The Little League Fund, cute little bats and balls logo, account balance, $2.98.  No, no, no, impossible, was Malcolm deserting him, transferring the funds to some South American account and leaving town?  It couldn’t be, let’s check, back to Aunt Millie’s, balance $2.98, yikes!  Withdrawals, let’s see, $373,000.02, 9:45 AM, April 16th, oh baby, this was too much. Malcolm was doing it at home, on his own computer, at this very moment!  What was Dave to do?  Call him up!  Right away!  But he couldn’t call from here, there’d be phone records, if it ever came to trial, well he wasn’t at work he had just called to see, no, that won’t work, he hadn’t even told Browning about the absence, better use a pay phone down in the lobby.  But then his own phone rang.

    “Dave Cooper.”

    “Dave, this is Mr. Browning.”

    “Yes, Mr. Browning,” sound industrious, I’m working here, just like you said, running a tight ship.

    “Dave, Mr. Franklin wants to see you,” pregnant pause, oh dear oh dear oh dear, Dave’s heart fell down his throat, way down, down amongst the kidneys and all that other junk down there, come on now, stiff upper lip, that’s the only way, come on, buck up.  “It seems that Freddie Burton-“ Freddie Burton, my God he’s using a nickname, like this kid is part of the inner sanctum!  “Freddie told him there were some things in your account that seemed odd to him and he thought maybe there should be a meeting about it so why don’t you and Malcolm come into the office in about 15 minutes?”

    “Well Mr. Browning,” this was already shaky ground, when you were called to the office it was a big deal and saying anything but yes sir was completely out of order but ”Malcolm hasn’t come in yet…” and he’s busy rifling the accounts from which we earn unreported income!  Though that couldn’t be said, oh my, what to do, what a weight this was, wasn’t it time to come clean, just fess up, throw in the towel, rat on him before he got to La Guardia, there might be a few months in a white collar jail, maybe, but not if he went states, told the truth, he was just an unwitting accomplice, no, he couldn’t, what would Malcolm do, have him shot, but this time the guy wouldn’t miss!

    “He’s not in?  Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

    “Well I just thought he might be a bit late, though it’s never happened before, you know he’s always here before I am…”

    “You wanted to ask me to leave the office and your partner’s not even here yet?”  

    Yikes, cover up man, come on.

    “Well I was going to wait until he showed up, of course, he should be here any minute.”

    An icy silence.

    “Well you come in here at 10:15, with or without Malcolm.  Do I make myself clear?”

    “Yes, Mr. Browning.”

    And Browning hung up.

    Only one option now, call him up, find out what was going on, maybe- (please!)- Malcolm was cleaning up the mess and then they’d advert disaster. He dialed, waited, ring… ring… ring… oh no, it’s the answering machine, his fifteen-year-old daughter’s voice.

    “Hello there, we’re sorry, but the Bainbridge family is just not here right now, so,” so-oooooo, “just leave a message after the beep and we’ll get back to you just as soon as we can.”

    It was two minutes before ten.               

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

“Oh?  Really?  She scored a goal?  That must have been great!  I bet she was thrilled to death!”

    Mr. Franklin was on the phone, and there sat Dave, humbly, in his office, the lowly subordinate, having been ushered into the hot seat only to wait and listen to the great leader go through a casual conversation with one of his wife’s friends, a soccer mom, somewhere out there on Long Island, and on and on it went.  Of course Mr. Franklin gave an occasional nod, not quite cupping the phone in his hand to say, sorry guy, it’ll just be a minute but you know, I’ve just got to do this, all polite, the implication being of course that someday lowly subordinate you might rise to this level, (but, of course, unfortunately, probably not.)  There behind the desk the great leader sat, with his dark blue suit, aqua blue shirt with a white collar, maroon tie with gold stripes on it, just casual as can be but Mr. Browning, no he wasn’t causal at all, standing there in the corner like some kind of orderly, in a black pinstriped suit, with an impatient look on his face. It was as though Browning knew something was up.  Indeed, this was the kind of day that he lived for, and it was why Franklin had him around, a kind of attack dog, ready to pounce in and make mincemeat of those unmentionable turdballs who got in the way of the mighty firm of Burton & Shivers.  Though Mr. Franklin just ran the whole caboodle with a real nice guy ain’t life the greatest kind of attitude, woe betide the man who gets on the wrong side of the faithful assistant here.

    “Okay then Evelyn, we’ll talk, I don’t know where Marge is.  I think she maybe went down to the club. Maybe Saturday night we’ll have dinner.  What’s that? …  Okay. …  All right. … I’ll ask Marge about it and we’ll see. … Great.  Thanks for calling!  Give my best to Herb. …  Okay, bye bye.

    “Dave!  How are you?  Listen, did you see that article today in The Journal”- The Wall Street Journal, of course, which all employees of Burton & Shivers were expected to read on their way to work-“about the proposed merger between Demmerville Optic Cable and Rundale Office Supply?  What an interesting combination isn’t it?”

    Just like usual, today of all days, cheerfully coming up with that little detail from somewhere way in the back of The Journal to make sure you were still a loyal employee keeping close track of the great business world in this great country in a cheerful unapologetic manner isn’t this the greatest but, that particular morning, Dave had been perusing The Daily News and other trashy tabloids to get the drift on the great murder plot which Mr. Franklin hadn’t even mentioned… yet.

    “Yes Mr. Franklin, I noticed that, it seems fascinating.”

    “Dave, what’s up, you okay?  You don’t look so good.”

    Come on, throw it up, it’s time, Malcolm is probably getting into a cab to go to the airport.

    “It’s something I ate last night I think, Mr. Franklin, I just feel a little odd today.”

    “All right.  Anyway, Mr. Browning has a few things he wants to talk about…”

    And Mr. Franklin pushed his chair back, arching his eyebrows in a kind of it’s out of my hands but here it comes gesture; here comes the attack dog, put on your seat belt.

    “I take it Malcolm is not here yet?” Mr. Browning asked.

    “No.”

    “Do you have any idea where he is?”

    “No, Mr. Browning, this is unusual, this has never happened before.”

    “I see.  Well, Freddie Burton,” there it was again, Freddie, like that was just the normal informal casual reference to this already on the first team kind of guy, implying, of course, that the lowly Dave would never get past second or third string- “has some questions about the kind of accounting that you and Malcolm have been doing and, if you don’t mind, we’d like to go out to your desk and look over some of the things he thinks are a little suspicious, little side accounts, consulting fees that he can’t make heads or tails of.  There are things there that Freddie just never heard anything about at Princeton and I was, frankly, a little alarmed at it all, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

    Dave felt up against the wall.  Come on, buck up, he and Malcolm had been over this a thousand times, tax write offs, that’s what they were, and charitable donations, to help the company’s image, if Malcolm were here he’d be explaining this off like an old pro, gradually shifting the conversation back to the great leader, away from the attack dog, so that it eventually ended up back on nicer subjects like pool cleaners and al fresco lunches overlooking the ocean way out there in the Hamptons but, well, Malcolm wasn’t here and Dave felt naked.  He was a side player, a coconspirator, a straight man, if you will.  All this stuff had been Malcolm’s idea; he had just gone along, why not?  It sure had been profitable.  How many times they’d talked about this kind of interrogation over drinks and it all seemed like such a joke.  Malcolm had the ready explanations for everything without even a thought. Paperwork, tax write offs, charity donations, no problem, baby and, by the way, there was another interesting article in The Journal.  Malcolm had such finesse, even with Mr. Franklin. They were on the up and up, that close camaraderie of two men who are able to act casual, of course we’re working our butts off to help the firm but it’s all a no brainer because aren’t we just the greatest as though, so it might seem anyway, that Mr. Franklin didn’t even mind if they stole a little money because it was from the client and done in such a proper and causal manner and….  But gad zukes Malcolm wasn’t here, gone, gone away, and devil takes the hindmost!  Dave could joke about that kind of stuff over a couple of drinks way off in the bar but here he was on his own and his fellow thief had left him in the lurch and he felt a few steps from the guillotine and couldn’t help but just lie down for the final strike…

    “Well?”

    It was time to throw in the towel.

    “There are some things…”

    He paused, trying, but just couldn’t seem to get it out.

    “Go on,” said Browning.

    “We’ve been doing some things-“

    “You mean stealing?”

    Stealing?  No, no, come on, tax write offs, it might look like stealing but it wasn’t, donations, come on man, cover up, we’re not over the edge yet.  Buck up man!

    “It’s hard to explain without Malcolm, frankly, we’ve been somewhat unorthodox in our methods-“

    “Oh yes indeed, Freddie thinks it looks quite unorthodox.  And, I must say, theft is a rather unusual procedure.”

    “But we’ve been making some contributions,” and he hesitated, couldn’t get it out that way either, without the head criminal it all seemed so impossible.

“Could you be a little more specific?”

“Well Malcolm knows it better than me.”

“Is that a fact?  Well maybe you shouldn’t be working here at all, Mister Cooper, perhaps Malcolm could be handling this account himself.”

It just wasn’t any use, and time to let it go.

“Oh all right, damn it, we have been stealing.  Freddie, as you call him, is right.  We’ve got side accounts going in the Bahamas with interest rates, fake consulting fees, phony expense accounts, the whole nine yards.”

There it was, like water exploding from a dam, the truth was coming out.

“When did this start?”

“Almost from when we started working on it. Malcolm suggested it to me, and he invented most of it-“

“You don’t mean to suggest that you’re not equally guilty?”

    “What?”

    “You heard me.”

“Come on Mr. Browning, let’s cool it on the Marine Corps stuff will you?  Yes, Malcolm and I have been feathering our nests, skimming the profits, and finding ways to cook the books.  And why shouldn’t we?  Look at you two, hanging around in here all day.  What kind of work do you do, anyway?  You’re a nice guy, Mr. Franklin, but it seems to me that you’re just kind of a cheerleader.  A front man.  You give a little speech or two here and there, and then run back into the office to hide.  Who out there knows whether you’re here or not?  But Mr. Browning, your attack dog, seems like he can’t wait to grind some lowly employee under his heel, kick them when they’re down.”

    “Now see here Cooper,” said Mr. Browning. There it was the final indignity, calling him by his last name.  “Am I hearing you correctly?  You two have been stealing money from the firm and you’re going to berate us?  Come, come now, something’s wrong with your reasoning there, it seems to me that-”

    Mr. Franklin’s intercom rang, and he motioned for silence.

    “Yes, Stella?”

    “Dick Gleason on line two.”

    “Thanks, Stella.”

    “Hi there Dick.  Listen, you’re not going to try to change the bet, I hope, you agreed last night to give me five strokes on the front and five on the back, you can’t back out now.”

How their fearless leader took this all in stride, not missing a beat, talking about his upcoming match on the golf course –(that very afternoon!)- as though the fortunes and career of Dave Cooper didn’t matter in the least.

“Oh, really?… The tee time is moved back to one thirty?  Well that’s just as well, Dick, I’ve got something going on here that’s going to hold me up a little bit.  I’ll be over at the club around one. … Okay, very good, see you then.”

    There it was, almost to illustrate Dave’s point.  Franklin was leaving at lunch to play golf.  So casual, even though he and Browning had their neck veins popping out at each other, almost coming to blows, the great leader seemed, well, amused by it all.  Hanging up the phone, he motioned over to Browning to calm down a bit, just simmer down, I think it’s under control here, let’s get to the root of the problem.

    “I hope that you two didn’t have anything to do with Freddie’s getting shot in Central Park?”  Mr. Franklin asked.

    “I’m afraid so.”

    “Oh Boy,” said Mr. Franklin.

    “And I guess you’re going to say that was all his idea again,” said Browning.

    Dave did not respond.

    “What makes you think he’s about to leave the country?” Mr. Franklin asked.

                “I’ve been looking at some of the side accounts we’ve created and it seems that he’s rifling the money out of them from another computer.  I saw one withdrawal listed as happening this morning.  I called him at home, and got the answering machine.”

    “Paul,” said Mr. Franklin to his henchman.  “you’d better go call the police.”

    “And maybe the FBI too, if he’s on his way to the airport,” said Franklin, on his way out the door.

    “Paul?”

    “Yes, Mr. Franklin?”

    “For the time being, let’s just mention Malcolm as the criminal, and that we think he might be on his way to the airport.”

          “Really,” he replied, with a look of disappointment, moving his eyes toward Dave in a contemptuous fashion.

    “Yes, Paul.  I’ll explain it to you later.”

    “Okay,” he said, and shrugging his shoulders as he left.

    The two sat in silence for a minute.

    “Well Dave, you’d better call a lawyer.  I’ll try to make it easy for you.  Hopefully you can go states evidence and might not have to spend time in jail.”

    “Thanks, Mr. Franklin.”

    “I mean you did come in here to rat on him, didn’t you?”

    “I guess so.”

    Well there it was, and Dave felt an immense relief, he was finally going to get it out, all the stuff that, down beneath his own pretense that everything was okay, had been grinding up against him for all those years, all that dishonesty, the lying the cheating the stealing the out and out thievery of it all.  Well, things weren’t that bad.  Yes, it was time to call the lawyer, maybe it’d just be a few months in some white collar jail and then off to a new life under the witness protection program, somewhere in the Mid-west.

    It was a relief, but oh the shame of it all.

 Copyright by Terrence Crimmins 2016

All Rights Reserved