Revenge of the Cube Dweller (20 page)

Right now, Bishop has an exceptional credit rating. If news of their complicity in the pipeline is revealed, that could change.

“The banks just aren’t lending right now,” Bennet says. “The last thing we need is a credit squeeze. First one guy wants us to post margin, then the others find out and want it too. Pretty soon it dominoes and we have no cash at all.”

“Bennet, are you telling me we are over our heads on the trading floor?” Baldwin sounds nervous. Since Baldwin is the Chief Operating Officer, his focus is on the mundane tasks of making
the plants run and the pipelines flow—the physical business. He might not have much visibility into the less tangible side of trading derivatives.

“No no,” says Bennet. “I’m saying that this Houston catastrophe could be more than just jury awards, fines, and court fees. It could affect our credit, which has enormous impact on the marketing and trading operations. If not handled correctly, it could kill us. We really need to make sure that bad press is minimized and judgments are contained.”

Again there is silence.

“What if we went to one of the Houston sewer contractors and, say, offered them some incentive to admit liability? What’s bankruptcy to them if they come out with a personal $50 million or so? If the city of Houston is involved as a co-litigant, we may be able to save a ton on this,” Baldwin suggests.

“Do you have any contacts down there?”

“Absolutely. I have contacts everywhere, Benny.”

“This may have legs, but let’s just keep that between us, if you know what I mean.”

Their conversation shifts to family stuff and late dinner plans. I look at my watch, and it is past two.

I am just about to call Lucy on my cell when my desk phone rings.

“This is Skip Perkinson, Tanzie. I’m in here with Frank. I’m wondering if you could come to my office on twenty-nine.”

I swallow deeply. “Of course. Do I need to bring anything?” I ask, trying to stay calm. Surely if I am about to be fired, it would not be by the head of HR. More likely a perky junior representative would have that unpleasant task. “Skip, I don’t think I have the right badge to get onto the twenty-ninth floor. It will take
me a minute to get a security escort.” I can use my janitor badge, of course, but I’m not about to let him know that.

“I’ll send Carol, my admin, to meet you in the lobby,” Skip says.

This ride up to twenty-nine is nothing like the one with Keith the security guard. Carol is the typical adorable blonde who resides in almost every HR department, with trendy clothes and accessories. She is chatty and I try to remain very calm. Have they discovered that I hacked Baldwin’s computer, or that I broke in last night, or that I dialed into the executive meeting? I take deep breaths and smile at Carol’s inane banter until she delivers me to Skip.

Frank sits at a mahogany conference table with his laptop open and does not get up like Skip does when I enter the room.

“Have a seat, Tanzie.” Skip gestures to a chair next to Frank, who is consumed with his computer screen and doesn’t even make eye contact as I sit down.

“What can I do for you?” I ask Skip as I look at Frank’s screen to get some idea as to why I have been summoned.

“Frank tells me that he has uncovered a rather sophisticated embezzlement ring in our Accounts Payable department, and he indicated that you might be able to put some documentation together for us.” Accounts payable fraud has all the sophistication of a corndog. It’s common stuff, but I suppose Frank has built it up to make himself look like a mastermind.

I take my first full exhale since I picked up the phone. I am so relieved about not being sacked that I forget to be pissed at Frank for once again taking credit for my discovery.

“Frank mentioned that it’s a mother-daughter duo, but he has been unable to give me their names so that we can do an
investigation on our end,” Skip continues. I suppress a chuckle. How embarrassing for poor Frank to have met with the head of HR to crow about his discovery, only to realize that he never asked me the names of the employees responsible, and that his computer skills are so poor that he can’t even repeat what I showed him in his office yesterday.

I bring Skip up to speed, outlining how the fraud works and giving Mazie’s and Amy’s full names.

“Good work,” Skip says. “Jim is out this week, but I think we need to put together some documentation to put in front of him when he returns on Monday,”

“Why can’t you just fire them?” I ask.

“If only it were that easy, Tanzie. We need to get paperwork in order. Legal will need to weigh in, and we will probably need to get in front of Bennet or Baldwin. And they’re pretty tied up at the moment. We open ourselves up to litigation if we don’t have every i dotted and t crossed on this.”

“I see. So they just continue doing what they do until we can get all the paperwork and approvals in order? That doesn’t seem right.”

I can feel Frank glaring at me. Imagine, questioning the great Skip Perkinson instead of just executing the task I was given!

“Sadly, yes, Tanzie,” Skip continues. “What I need from you and Frank is a write-up in layman’s terms about what has gone on, by whom, and for how long. We’ll also need some sort of estimate as to the amount stolen. Do you think you can have that to me by Monday morning?”

Skip looks at Frank and Frank looks at me. Actually, I can have it done in an hour, but I see no reason to rush on this since nothing is going to be done until Monday.

“Yes, of course.”

“That won’t be a problem, Skip,” Frank interrupts as he shuts his computer and stands up to shake Skip’s hand. He is taking over once again, but I can tell that Skip knows what is really going on.

Carol escorts Frank and me to the elevators and we ride down in silence. When we arrive back on six, Frank stands by my cube. I wait for an apology, but he never offers one.

“Tanzie, have that documentation to me by Friday morning so I have a chance to review it.”

“Sure thing, Frank.” I know he wants it so he can email it himself to Jim and Skip, hoping against hope that he can then recover from his lapse in front of Skip today. One thing is certain, though: If Frank stays, I will be kept on. It is clear he needs me. It is also a definite possibility that Skip, who surely is responsible for the reorg, has noticed that I am much sharper than Frank and will keep me on board. Suddenly, things are looking up.

I
call Lucy but she doesn’t pick up, so I spend the next hour or so replaying the tape, making notes on the times at which the most damaging conversations took place. It is that fraud triangle all over again. The extreme
pressure
of possibly losing their company and the personal humiliation for having let all those people die; the
opportunity
to make it all go away by greasing the palm of a Houston sewer contracting firm president; and the
rationalization
that it isn’t really the Bishops’ fault but in fact the nitwit in EH&S who dropped the ball.

This gives me an interesting view into how these guys think. There is no discussion of why EH&S was so thinly staffed in the first place that they could not properly deal with the many issues they had on their plate. I feel bad for poor Sullivan; he is the internal scapegoat here. I suspect that he will meet the same
fate as good old Hal, unless they keep him on board just to keep his mouth shut.

It is not uncommon for people caught up in a major problem to make the problem bigger with a cover-up. In this case, if Bishop’s general counsel was correct, the brothers might have to pay out huge damages, maybe even sell off a business unit or two and make some changes to their trading portfolio, but Bishop as a whole could live to fight another day. If they destroyed the paperwork, the Department of Justice could shut them down á la Arthur Andersen. If they bribed a construction firm or sewer contractor in Houston to take the rap, they could go to jail. The cover-up here seemed like a huge mistake; the very hubris that built the Bishop empire could likely serve to destroy it.

There is just something about people who cannot admit mistakes or defeat. Urging them to be reasonable is like trying to teach a pig to sing: They are just incapable.

I once attended a business ethics seminar where it was suggested that when struggling to decide what to do, always imagine your mother or some other loved one is reading about your decision in the newspaper. A company that lets a maintenance project fall through the cracks is just incompetent and possibly criminally negligent. But one that commits fraud by destroying evidence or bribing is in another category.
What would Mama Bishop think of these boys now?
I wonder.

I prepare a summary of events to help with my debrief after work with Lucy. It is true that Bishop did not maintain the section of pipe under the Galleria area. They also did not have adequate records. Those items would be violations of regulatory requirements. However, the actual cause of the explosion and whether Baldwin would in fact bribe someone to take the fall
for Bishop are still unknowns. The impact on Bishop’s credit and how that will affect the operations going forward is another unknown.

My inclination is to lay low and take my time investigating. As long as I continue to be an employee, I have greater access to information than someone on the outside. Lucy, with her activist viewpoint, will probably want to go screaming to the media about the Bishops. It is probably not a good idea for me to let her know about the bribe possibility just yet. Just as with Mazie and Amy, the longer an investigation goes on behind the scenes, the better the quality of the information gathered will be. I don’t like deceiving my sister, but I need to be careful to rein in her enthusiasm for bringing down the Bishops on an uncomfortably accelerated timeline. Lucy might very well be the smarter one, but what I lack in smarts I make up for in strategy and patience.

Walking down the hallway leading to my condo, I am surprised to hear Lucy’s muffled laughter. I haven’t turned the key all the way when Lucy opens the door from the inside.

“She’s home,” my sister calls over her shoulder to my elusive neighbors Kim and Dan, who are currently sitting in my living room.

Kim and Dan have the three-bedroom unit next to mine, and just after I moved in they occasionally invited me over for a glass of wine or dinner. Dan writes for the
Tulsa World
newspaper and considers himself an oracle of liberal intelligence. He told me one time that he hoped his editorials would, over time, infiltrate the Tea Party brains that controlled Tulsa politics. He is short
and has that fortyish receding hairline that signals the transition into middle age for some men. Kim is a trust fund kid from old Tulsa money that allows the couple to live in their swank condo in the most prestigious part of town. I’m only renting my unit, but I understood theirs had cost over $1 million, a gigantic sum considering the affordability of most Tulsa real estate.

Kim is something of an artist and spends her days at her loom weaving tapestry pieces or at her downtown glass-blowing studio. She looks younger than Dan, petite with a few gray strands starting to streak her dark curly hair. Her clothes are comfortable yet chic, and except for the gorgeous platinum, art deco diamond ring she wears on her right hand, no one would ever assume she has the kind of money that supports their comfortable lifestyle.

Ours was one of those friendships you make when you first move to a place. They feel sorry for you and try to include you socially, but after a while, there is really no need on their part to perpetuate the friendship, and the relationship remains friendly but never becomes a close one.

Kim and Dan are active members of the Democratic Party, which has zero clout in Tulsa, or in Oklahoma, for that matter. I think they were at first intrigued by my growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area but less endeared by my choice of workplace. Bishop stands for everything they are against, and I suppose I’m guilty by association. So slowly but steadily I stopped getting invited over for dinner, and they never seemed available to accept the invitations I extended.

“You never told me that Lucy O’Leary is your sister,” Kim says as she pours a glass of my zinfandel. “I’ve been ordering
yarn from her and following her environmental initiatives for years. She’s my hero.”

I go to pour myself a glass, but the bottle is empty. “I’ll get another,” I say as I walk to the wine rack, grabbing the Ridge and heading to the kitchen.

“I ran into Lucy as she was walking back from Utica Square this afternoon. I recognized her right away; she’s pretty unmistakable with that hair. I hope it’s okay that we just invited ourselves over.”

I should have known that my neighbors would be Lucy fans.

“Not at all,” I lie through my country club smile
.
I’m not at all ticked that you pretty much wrote me off after a couple of dinners and now pretend like we’re best friends when my semi-famous sister appears
.

I had hoped to spend the evening going through the Bishop files with Lucy, not making small talk with the neighbors. I bring the bottle over to the coffee table and place it next to the empty one.