Termination Man: a novel (40 page)

Kurt Myers looked me directly in the eye, anticipating a response. I knew that his words were completely disingenuous. Based on his son's history, he doubtlessly realized that the present allegations against his son would be based on at least a kernel of truth. But he wasn't going to rise to that moral challenge. He was going into deflection mode, arrogating the economic contributions made by this company for his son’s defense.

And I had a decision to make.
Was I going to openly declare my allegiance with Donna and her daughter?
Or was I going to continue to play the double agent, all the while hop
ing
that Shawn Myers would destroy himself before his father destroyed me?

I hadn't yet decided.

“I understand what you're saying,” I said. “But this matter is really outside my bailiwick.” This felt like a repeat of our earlier conversation. Kurt Myers gave me his disappointed look, one that he had no doubt perfected over years of cajoling, counseling, and scolding recalcitrant subordinates.

“I had really thought that I could count on you, Craig. Frankly, I’m disappointed.”

“You
can
count on me, Kurt. You can count on me to perform the duties outlined in my contract with TP Automotive. What you're talking about here is a legal matter. I really think that Bernie Chapman, or someone like him, would be the person to talk to in regard to this issue.”

Kurt pretended to be partially mollified. “Okay, okay. You've got a point. I understand that you’re doing a good job; and what I’m asking is something new and unexpected for you. And anyway, it isn't my intention to ask you for legal advice.”

“Then what exactly would you have me do?”

Even as I uttered this question, I knew that it had been a mistake. By displaying even the slightest degree of openness, I was giving Kurt Myers the green light to make me his accomplice. I had always thought that I was so damn smart. But Kurt Myers had several decades on me, and he was as wily as they came. The son of a bitch was going to do his best to compel me to become a part of whatever he had planned.

“You're an investigator, Craig. And in my opinion, one of the best in the business. This Donna Chalmers woman.” Kurt wrinkled up his face in disgust and made a dismissive gesture in the air with one hand. “A woman like that has to have dirt in her past. I'm talking about the obvious things, of course: a criminal record, a history of drug use, not to mention all sorts of relations with disreputable men. Wouldn't it be possible for you to dig some of that up––just so we would have it in the event that this really gets ugly?”

“You're asking me to prepare a smear campaign against Donna Chalmers?”

Kurt laughed and reached across the table, patting me on the arm, almost as a father would pat his son. “Craig, Craig. That’s an odd question coming from the mouth of the Termination Man. Yes, Craig, I know about your little nickname. And we are not talking about smearing anyone here. The last thing I want to do is harm this Chalmers woman. But we need to know the truth about her. I can't let her tear down everything we’re trying to build, can I?”

“Give me some time,” I said. The classic stalling technique. “Besides, I don't think there’s much dirt to find on Donna Chalmers.”

“How would you know that, Craig, if you haven’t even begun an investigation?” He patted my arm again. Then a smile that I found more than a little startling.

The bastard knows more than he’s revealing,
I thought.

“I’ll give you some more time,” Kurt said. “And I know that you’ll give me your best effort. And your loyalty, Craig. As long as I can trust you, this will turn out fine. Nothing is more important in business than trust.”

At the beginning of my assignment at UP&S, the lion’s share of my attention had been occupied by Alan and Lucy. Then the erratic and disturbing antics of Shawn Myers, and the sexual assault that he had likely committed. This was a crime that Kurt was expecting me to help cover up, and Donna Chalmers was expecting me to help prosecute.

Amid all these concerns, I still had another matter to deal with: the theft problem that was taking place on the loading docks. It was time to go after King and O’Rourke.

I returned to UP&S one Sunday evening, when the plant was empty except for the security guard. I signed in as Craig Parker and the guard ribbed me about working on a night when both the Bengals and the Browns were playing. I agreed that this was an outrage—but what could you do when you were overburdened and underpaid, working for the Man?

“
I hear you,
” the guard said. “
There is no relief in this world for the working
stiff
.
”

“You got that right, brother,” I said. The odds of a security guard betraying my work here tonight to King and O’Rourke was next to nil; but I was taking no chances.

Once at my desk, I grabbed a clipboard and pen, the sort of paraphernalia that would give the appearance of actual work. I believed that the facility would remain empty throughout my mission tonight. Once again, though, I was leaving nothing to chance. I had already compromised my undercover operation at UP&S in so many other ways.

The loading dock area was dark except for a single weak floodlight that burned overhead. I didn't need much light, though. Using a master password that Beth Fisk had provided to me, I booted up the AS/400 and began to look for the telltale signs of employee pilfering. 

What I found was neither surprising nor especially well hidden. Nick King and Michael O’Rourke were not exactly master criminals. As I suspected, they were filching company property, and they weren’t going to extreme lengths to cover their tracks.

I began by checking the receiving logs in the AS/400. The AS/400 is a database platform developed by IBM. It is used in thousands of factories and other businesses throughout the world. An organization can use the AS/400 to do anything from paying invoices to managing inventory. Nevertheless, the AS/400 dates back to 1988; and many companies have since migrated to other platforms.

At UP&S, the company’s ancient AS/400 was used for only one purpose: recording shipments received on the loading dock. The accounting, purchasing, human resources, and production control departments were all using more modern web-based software packages, which were tied together through some sort of a Rube Goldberg interface that contained numerous bugs—or so Lucy and Alan had told me.

This meant that the system used on the loading dock was more or less isolated. Nick and Michael issued reports to management; but neither management nor anyone else had any method of verifying that the data contained in these reports was sound and free of doctoring.

And Nick and Mike were doctoring the data, of course. Once I had access to the system, it took me about ten minutes inside the loading dock’s AS/400 to uncover the modus operandi of their scheme. King and O’Rourke were stealing the sorts of items that were most valuable and most easily converted into cash on the open market: power tools, copper welding heads, etc.

With the Wonder Twins’ most recent inventory report in hand, I checked the AS/400’s detailed receiving log for some suspect items. Then I pulled the actual bills of lading from the filing cabinet in the little makeshift office area beside the loading dock.

I found that certain bills of lading from various vendors didn’t match the receiving logs in the AS/400. Nick and Michael were recording some shipments as short. They were then free to remove the actual items from the plant, as these good were never recorded as received in the first place. Physically, this wouldn't be too difficult: It is fairly easy to tuck a power tool or a chunk of copper into a gym bag or a lunch cooler. And UP&S employees were never searched at the door. Even TP Automotive wouldn't have been brazen enough to attempt that.

From there, the stolen items were lost in the maze of bookkeeping, ordering, and inventory. The majority of the pilfered goods would simply be overlooked. Once in a while the purchasing department would be instructed to contact a vendor and complain about a short shipment. In 99% of all cases, a vendor would dutifully make up the recorded “shortfall” in their next shipment.

Based on the pattern I found, Nick and Mike were exercising caution so as to spread the shortfall amounts across various vendors. This would reasonably assure that no vendor would dispute the short-shipment complaints.

But some vendors had eventually complained. Then an annual audit detected a pattern of discrepancies between the quantities of items ordered, and the quantities recorded as received. These short shipments from vendors exceeded the averages recorded in other TP Automotive plants. This had been flagged by a corporate auditor; and now King and O’Rourke were on the hook for stealing from their employer.

I made copious notes, took photos of the AS/400 screens, and made copies of some of the bills of lading that were incorrectly recorded.

The next morning I met with the TP Automotive troika and laid out what I had.

“Good job, Craig,” Kurt beamed. He had been handling me with an unusual degree of politeness since our frank conversation about Shawn’s sexual assault allegations. The questions still needled me:
Was he simply trying to stay on my good side—or did he already know that I was secretly working for the other side? Was he trying to smoke me out?

Bernie picked up one of the photos of an AS/400 screen that I had printed out. It showed the log for a bill of lading that had been incorrectly entered. Then he picked up the actual bill of lading. He examined the two of them for a moment, and then framed the crucial question.

“This gives us proof that King and O’Rourke have failed to correctly enter all of the bills of lading. But it doesn’t necessarily prove theft, does it?”

“No,” I acknowledged. Bernie had me there. We could prove that the computer records of certain receipts were incorrect, but not much else. We couldn’t prove that the two men were deliberately falsifying the receipts as a cover for a theft operation.

“They could dispute this, then, couldn’t they?” Beth asked. “I mean, let’s be hypothetical for a moment, put ourselves in their shoes. Probably the first thing that they are going to do is claim that it was an AS/400 glitch, or that someone else had access to the data.”

“Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?” Kurt asked.

“Craig didn’t have much trouble gaining access to the system,” Bernie countered. I might have reminded him that I didn’t hack into the AS/400; Beth had provided me with the password. However, that line of rebuttal was ultimately a dead end. I knew that the AS/400 was not exactly secure according to the latest standards.

“You’re right,” I told Bernie. “With this much, the most you could reasonably prove is that you’ve got two dock workers who are inadequately performing one aspect of their jobs. You could fire them for negligence or incompetence with this evidence; but they might be able to make some sort of a wrongful termination claim. They could say that TP Automotive made them the fall guys for a bad system that you inherited from the previous owners of the company. I don’t think that such a claim would stick, based on what I have seen, but they could always try it.”

“We can’t take the risk of an outside investigation right now,” Beth said. “Not with Alan and Lucy and—” She caught herself before she inadvertently mentioned Shawn Myers. “Everything else that has been going on.”

Kurt gave me the gaze of a wise and understanding father.

“Any ideas about how we could make this airtight, Craig?”

I had a backup plan—a way that we could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nick King and Michael O’Rourke were guilty of stealing company property. I had been keeping this in my back pocket, so to speak, in the hopes that it wouldn’t be necessary.

“Well,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I do. It would require me to take some marginally legal actions, though.”

I waited for a moment to see if any of them would protest, and declare that TP Automotive would never associate itself with any actions that were “marginally legal.” But none of them said a word. I had expected as much. Companies that contract my services typically have a flexible concept of ethics to begin with. They also know that my status as a consultant isolates them from most legal repercussions in the event that something goes wrong. If I were to be arrested or otherwise implicated in something illegal, I would be the one to take the fall. The clients could hide behind a wall of plausible deniability. They could assert that they never knew that I was stepping over the often-fine line of legality.

But there was really no fine line regarding what I was about to propose. Not this time.

“I’ve seen situations like this before,” I said. “Guys like King and O’Rourke, they typically remove these items from the company premises and hoard them. Then they dispose of them a little at a time. What I’m getting at is that they have these items hidden away somewhere. Most likely in one of their personal residences.

“Oh my,” Beth said, suddenly putting the pieces together. “What are you suggesting?”

“We’re better off leaving it vague,” I said. “Let’s just say that if I obtain photographic evidence of UP&S property at the private residence of either O’Rourke or King, then both of them will know that there is no falling back on any sort of excuse about faulty systems or mysterious modifications of the data.”