Bitter Truth (39 page)

44

T
HE OLD LEDGERS were spread out on our conference room table, cracked open and releasing a finely aged mold into the air. The numbers inside were inked by hand and showed the day-to-day operations of the E. J. Poole Preserve Co. for the years up to and beyond its purchase by Claudius Reddman and the change of its name to Reddman Foods. These were the books Caroline had found behind the secret swinging panel in the library at Veritas and the accountant was now hard at work, I expected, letting the numbers in the ledgers tell him the story of how Claudius Reddman had managed to wrest control of the company from Elisha Poole. It was the very day of Edward Shaw’s funeral, a day of ostentatious mourning and the false tears of heirs. Oh, what a cheery scene that would be. With Edward dead, there was nothing for Dante to gain by killing Caroline anymore, so she had left her seclusion to attend the funeral, though I still had concerns for her safety. She asked me to join her, but I declined. I had stirred the Reddman family pot enough, I figured. Today was a time to leave them to the misery of their present while we uncovered the sins of their past.

While Yitzhak Rabbinowitz, of the accounting firm of Pearlman and Rabbinowitz, worked on the books with Morris, I occupied myself with the piles of paperwork generated by the District Attorney’s relentless prosecution of
Commonwealth v. Peter Cressi
. I doubted I would still be on the case after the abdication of Enrico Raffaello, and I thought of just bagging the whole thing, but my malpractice carrier liked me to actually do the work required on my cases, so I was responding to the government’s requests for discovery, the government’s motions
in limine,
the government’s suggested jury instructions. At the same time I was busily drafting my own motions to suppress whatever I could dream up even the flimsiest reasons for suppressing. The arguments were rather weak, I admit, but they all passed my baseline standard: the red-face test. Could I stand before a judge and make the argument without my face turning red from embarrassment? Barely, but barely was enough to satisfy the ethical requirements of the Bar Association and so for suppression I moved.

At about three in the afternoon I stretched at my desk and strolled over to the conference room to check on the accountant’s progress. I expected to see the two men elbow-deep in ancient volumes, following the figures in the ledgers with their fingers, tap tap tapping numbers into calculators spouting long ribbons of white awash with damning sums. What I saw instead was Yitzhak Rabbinowitz and Morris Kapustin sitting together at the end of the table, feet propped, as relaxed and carefree as a couple of cronies swapping tales over coffee at the deli.

“Victor, come over, please,” said Morris, waving me in. “Yitzhak, he was just telling me about our mutual friend Herman Hopfenschmidt.”

“So I tell him,” said Rabbinowitz, “I say, Herman, with your business such a success and with what you have in the bank, and I know how much it is because I’m your accountant, you still throw around money like a man with no arms.” Yitzhak Rabbinowitz was a tall, broadly built man, bald with a bushy gray mustache. He wore a sport coat and a short-sleeved shirt so that his hairy forearms stuck out from the sleeves, one wrist adorned by a gold Rolex, the other by a flashy gold and diamond band. He leaned back in his chair as he told the story, gesturing wildly, his words coming out slightly wet. “Be a
tsaddik,
I say. Give a little. Beside, someone in your tax bracket, you could use the deductions. Give a little, Herman, I say, give till it hurts. So what does he do? He clutches his chest and says, ‘It hurts, it hurts.’ ”

“That Hopfenschmidt, he’s always been a
chazzer,
” said Morris, nodding. “He still has the first dollar he ever stole.”

“I say, Herman, that’s not funny. Not funny. So how much can I put you down for? Ten thousand? Frankle, he gave ten thousand last year and you earn twice as much as Frankle. And Herman says, ‘It hurts, it still hurts.’ I say, five then at least. Even Hersch with his one dry cleaning store, he’s giving five thousand and you earn ten times as much as Hersch. Think of all the children you’ll be helping, Jewish children, who can’t afford even a chicken neck on
Shabbos
. What does Herman say? ‘It hurts, it hurts.’ I say, all right, one thousand, but that’s the minimum I’ll accept and he says, ‘But you don’t understand, Yitzhak, it hurts, it really hurts.’ Next thing I know he falls off his chair. Splat, right on the ground. He was right, it did hurt. He was having a coronary.”

“For real?” said Morris.

“Of course. Would I joke about such a thing? He’s at Einstein as we speak. As we speak.”

“Some
chazzers,
they’ll do anything to keep from giving.”

“Mr. Rabbinowitz,” I said, interrupting. The Reddman books were sitting at the other end of the table, forlorn and alone.

He looked up at me and smiled. “Call me Yitzhak, please, Victor, now that we are working together.”

Working? “Well then, Yitzhak, I was just wondering how we are doing on the books. Have you found anything yet? I’m sort of in a hurry on this.”

“It’s going very well, Victor. Very well, and almost we’re ready to show you some things. Not quite but almost.”

“You want maybe some coffee, Yitzhak?” asked Morris.

“Yes, that would be terrific,” said Rabbinowitz, smiling at me. “Cream and sugar, Victor, and don’t be stingy with the sugar.”

“Anything else?” I said flatly.

“A doughnut or a
pitsel
cake, would be nice. Anything for you, Morris?”

“Just a water, my stomach still is not what it should be.”

“You know your problem,” said Rabbinowitz to Morris. “Too much fiber. It gives gas.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“A coffee with cream and extra sugar,” I said. “A
pitsel
cake and water.”

“You’re very kind, Victor. Thank you,” said Rabbinowitz. He turned his attention back to Morris, as if I had been dismissed. “So as soon as we’re finished here I’m going over to give Herman a visit up at the hospital. Coming so close to his Maker, maybe it will have softened him up. I tell you, Morris, it was a miracle, really. I think now I can get from him the ten.”

“Sit down, Victor,” said Yitzhak Rabbinowitz when I came back from the Wawa with the coffee and an Entenmann’s cake and a bottle of mineral water. “We’ll show you now what we found.”

“You’re ready?”

“It was rather clever, but not so very well hidden. I’m surprised that Poole didn’t catch it himself. The key was learning when it was that this Reddman started keeping the books.”

“We think we have it now,” said Morris. “We were forced to match the handwriting in the earlier journals with some letters we found in the books and from later journals, after he bought control.”

“Kapustin here was a big help,” said Rabbinowitz, “which surprised me, really, because generally he is absolutely useless.”

“Don’t be such the
cham,
” said Morris. “You, you’re less than useless. The last stock he convinced me to buy, Victor, it didn’t split, it crumbled.”

“Tell me something, Morris,” said Rabbinowitz. “If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t you ecstatic?”

“Are you guys finished with your vaudeville,” I said, “because the day is short, the task is great, the workmen are lazy…”

Rabbinowitz looked at Morris, who looked back and shrugged.

“He doesn’t find us entertaining,” said Morris. “I’m surprised because I find us very entertaining.”

“Sit down, Victor,” said Rabbinowitz, putting on a pair of half-glasses. “Sit down and we’ll show you what we found.”

I sat at the conference table and Rabbinowitz placed two of the books in front of me. One was a heavy old ledger, the other was smaller, and when he opened the books an ancient scent erupted, something mildewed and rotted and rich with must. The pages in each book were yellowed and cracking in the corners, some of the numbers were obliterated by time, but the handwriting in those entries that remained legible was careful and precise.

“This is the disbursement journal and the general ledger for 1896,” said Rabbinowitz. “Before Reddman started doing for himself the books.” He pointed out to me the meaning of the various entries in the disbursement journal and then went to a long list of figures for January. “These are the amounts paid to specific suppliers each month. We used the amounts in this book as baseline figures. Maybe you’ll notice, Victor, that the monthly amounts paid to each supplier, they stay about the same, adjusted seasonally. More produce was bought in the late summer and fall when the harvests came in so more was paid out then, but everything went up roughly proportionally with each of the farmers.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“The monthly totals in the disbursement journal were posted at the end of the month to the general ledger. If you also notice, at the back of the general ledger, there is a final trial balance for the year. Assets of course equal liabilities and everything seems in order. All stock at the time, as listed in the general ledger’s stock register, was owned by E. J. Poole. Stockholder equity, in less sophisticated times a rough measure of the value of the company, was surprisingly high for such a business. All in all, I would have to say that the E. J. Poole Preserve Company was well and tightly run in 1896.”

Rabbinowitz took two more books from the pile, the disbursement journal and general ledger for 1897, and placed them in front of me. The same hand had made the entries in these books, though a little less precisely. Rabbinowitz again went through the monthly entries in the disbursement journal, comparing the amounts paid each supplier with that paid the year before. Everything seemed in order, the monthly totals were duly posted to the general ledger, and the trial balance at year’s end again showed a healthy company, all the shares of which were still owned by Elisha Poole.

He then placed the books for 1898 in front of me. As of March of that year the handwriting of the entries changed. “This is when, as best as Morris could tell, Reddman started keeping the books.”

“Any indication of why?” I asked.

“None,” said Morris, “but you might have noticed that Poole’s handwriting, it had started to deteriorate. We think maybe that might indicate a reason.”

“Any extra monies started being paid directly to Reddman?” I asked.

“No,” said Rabbinowitz. “That, of course, was the first thing we checked. Reddman, he received only modest raises all along until he finally bought the company outright. He started as an apprentice tinsmith and, even though he took on more responsibility, his pay remained rather miserly. But I want to show you something here.” He pointed to an entry in the disbursement journal for payments made to a farmer named Anderson. “Notice here that shortly after Reddman started doing the books, the disbursements to Anderson jumped up slightly in proportion to the amounts paid to the other farmers, just a few hundred dollars, but still an increase.”

“Maybe Anderson started expanding his output.”

“That of course is possible,” said Rabbinowitz, who immediately turned to the back of the general ledger. “But notice, in the trial balance sheet for that year, stockholder equity didn’t rise even though sales had actually improved.”

“Interesting,” I said.

Rabbinowitz brought out the disbursement journal for 1899 and dropped it on top of the other books, dust rising when it fell. I sneezed and then sneezed again. Morris handed me a tissue while Rabbinowitz showed me the disbursement entries, month by month, for 1899. Everything seemed stable until we got to June. Rabbinowitz tried to turn the page to find July but I grabbed hold of his wrist.

“What’s that?” I asked

“I told you he’d notice it,” said Morris. “He’s no
yutz
.”

“An unexplained jump in the amount paid to this Anderson,” said Rabbinowitz with a flourish, as if we had discovered a great scientific secret. “Fifteen hundred dollars more than you would expect to see for that month.”

“Any supplier decrease its payable in a similar amount?” I asked.

“Good question,” said Rabbinowitz. “And the answer, it is no.” He took me through the book page by page, showing that the increase was maintained for every month through the whole of the year. “Almost ten thousand dollars by year’s end. Now I want to show you two things in the general ledger.” He brought out another volume and paged to the trial balance at the end of the book. “First, shareholder equity dropped by about ten thousand dollars at year’s end, approximately twenty percent.”

“Almost the exact amount of the unexplained bonus paid to Anderson.”

“Exactly right,” said Rabbinowitz. “And look at this in the stock register. Eighteen ninety-nine was the first time Reddman started buying shares of stock from Poole. He bought five shares, or five percent of the company, for six thousand dollars.”

“Where did a tin cutter with a pittance of a salary get six thousand dollars?” I asked, even though by then I figured I knew the answer.

“What we guess, Victor,” said Morris, “is that this Reddman, he volunteered to take control of the books so that he could slip his friend Anderson a little bonus and get for himself a kickback. For some reason he figured he could get away with even more and then he hit on the idea of using the money to buy the company outright, so he raised the payoff and started buying stock. The beauty of it for him was that while he was stealing from the company, the company was losing profits and its value was decreasing, making the price he was to pay less and less. I bet he was able to convince Poole that he was doing him such a favor because of how terrible the company, it was doing.”

“So, in effect,” I said, “Reddman was stealing from Poole and using the money to buy Poole’s company. Very clever.”

“Clever, yes,” said Rabbinowitz. “For a thief.”

The other volumes showed the same thing, inexplicably large payments to Anderson, weakening shareholder equity, increasingly large purchases of stock by Reddman that would have been impossible on the salary he was listed as receiving in the books. By 1904, Reddman owned forty-five percent of the stock.