The Aspen Account (2 page)

“John,” Michael said, “I’m sorry this got so out of control, but I’ve apologized to the CFO and everyone else involved. We had a long talk, so hopefully things will calm down at Pipco.” 

“Well, that’s something, at least, but it may be too little, too late. I was also appalled that you didn’t properly document the sales transaction of the discontinued operations. You should know better than to blow past an issue that important. You were careless.”

“I’m sorry about the problems on the engagement,” Michael said, “and I take full responsibility for what happened, but I think we can still—” 

Falcon’s upraised hand cut him off, and Falcon shook his head as if to say there was no point in continuing the discussion. “It doesn’t matter anymore. All of you have been pulled off the engagement. It was the client’s request, and to be honest, I agree with them. We can’t afford to lose them. You will transfer all your files to me, and I’ll forward them to the
new
team that will be out there next week.”

Falcon strode toward the door and opened it while motioning for everyone to leave the room. “I still need to decide what we’re going to do with the four of you, but for the time being I think you all need to give some serious thought to everything that went wrong on this engagement.”

The mortified staff auditors rose from the conference table and left the room with eyes lowered, unable to look at the senior partner as they walked past. Michael put himself last in the procession so he could offer one final apology, but before he could open his mouth, Falcon shut the door so that they were the only two in the room.

“This is your third project in a row where something has gone seriously wrong,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” Michael replied. But he offered no explanation, no rehearsed defense, nothing to counter the grave indictment. He knew he had been pressing his luck for the past few months, and for the first time, he considered the terrifying possibility that he had finally pushed it too far.

Seeing that Michael had nothing to say in his own defense, Falcon shook his head. “The others will all get negative evaluations in their employee files for their part in the project, but for you this is a little more serious.” He looked at his watch. “I’d like to take a moment to cool down, but then I want to see you in my office in fifteen minutes.”

When Michael finally walked out of the room, he looked at his watch and made a quick note of the time.
Fifteen minutes
. That might give him just enough time to leave the building and make an urgent call in case this proved to be the end of his career at Cooley and White. Walking down the hallway as fast as he could without drawing attention, he grabbed his coat from his cubicle and moved past glass-walled offices and more cubicles to the marble-floored elevator bay. Hitting the button, he stepped back and looked again at his watch.
Fourteen minutes
. He would need to hurry.

2

MICHAEL WALKED OUT the revolving glass doors to the Wynkoop Courtyard, where fat clumps of snow drifted like goose down on the faint breeze. On sunny days, the courtyard had a lunch crowd of three hundred, but today’s storm had left it under a foot of snow, and empty. To make sure he couldn’t be overheard by anyone coming or going from the building, he walked into the center of the plaza. He stepped out into the open, lowered his head, and punched in a number on his cell phone as wet snow fell down the back of his jacket collar.

“Glazier,” a crisp voice answered.

“It’s Chapman.”

“Michael? What the . . . ! You can’t just call me like this. We’re scheduled to talk next week.”

“I wish it could wait, but there’s something you need to know right away.”

“Make it brief.”

“Something happened today,” he began. “There were some mistakes made on a project.”

“Any trouble for you?”

Michael swiped the snow off a concrete bench with his arm and sat in the center of the desolate courtyard. “I didn’t think there would be. I’ve been in this situation before, so I assumed I would still have a little breathing room with the firm.”

“You
assumed
?”

“Damn it, Glazier. It’s right before busy season. The firm can’t afford to let anyone go this time of year. A slap on the wrist—that’s all I expected. It’s the only way this’ll work, and you know it.”

“Not if you get fired. You can’t let that happen, no matter what. It would ruin everything.”

Michael squeezed the phone tight. His fingers were getting cold. He looked at his watch: six minutes.

“I’ve been pulled from my current project. My entire team’s being reassigned. And now I have to meet privately with Falcon.”

“Shit! What did you
do
?” After a brief pause, the voice known as Glazier said, “Look, too much is riding on the line. I don’t care what you have to do—just make sure you still have your job at the end of the day. I don’t have to tell you what’ll happen if you get fired—too many people are depending on you.”

“I’ve gotta go, Glazier. I just wanted to update you. I’ll touch base later.”

Michael snapped the phone shut and turned to look up at the dark monolith that housed Cooley and White. Even in the muted light of snowfall, the building’s black windowed surface had a slick sheen that earned it the nickname of the “Darth Vader building.” It was an image of power, but also of gloom and despair. Walking back across the snowy courtyard, toward the revolving doors and the inviting warmth inside, he felt as if he were heading back into the lion’s den. Glazier’s words lingered in his mind:
. . . just make sure you still have your job at the end of the day.
His contact was right, of course. Everything they had done together for the past three years could be destroyed in the next twenty minutes of his life.

*     *     *

“Michael. Please, come in.” Falcon’s demeanor had softened in the short time since their last meeting, and Michael was terrified that the man was taking the polite, respectful attitude often extended to someone before they got the sack.

He glanced around Falcon’s office, taking in his surroundings, as if he might somehow save his career by understanding the man who now held it in his hands. On the shelf sat a family photo, a black-and-white that reminded him of one of those old Austrian films set in the Alps. There were professional certificates from various states and universities, and a watercolor of aspen groves in a hanging valley.

“Well, Michael,” Falcon began, “I want to get right to the point. I know you’ve already had some meetings about your problems on your past few engagements. Because of these new problems, there has now been a great deal of discussion between the partners regarding your future at the firm.”

He paused to let this last comment sink in before continuing. “It has been suggested that we let you go from the firm. Michael, I don’t know if you realize this, but after we conclude our work this year for Pipco, there’s a very good chance they will begin shopping around for another accounting firm. We could be losing a client that generated substantial revenue for our firm last year. That is not a mistake many people in your position would survive.”

Michael didn’t say anything. He sat in silence, maintained eye contact with the partner, and nodded his head, looking appropriately concerned, aware that the wrong word or gesture could spell the end for him at the firm.
You can’t get fired.

“When you joined our firm two years ago, you had scored in the top one percent in the country on the CPA exam. You were one of our most promising young professionals. But over the past six months you seem to have lost interest in your career. Your performance evaluations have gone from ‘exceeded expectations’ to ‘met expectations’ to ‘needs improvement.’ Michael, I don’t understand this. Is this really the profession that you want to be in? You need to tell me what’s going on.”

For what seemed an eternity, Michael looked down at the desk. What would his father think of him if he could hear this? Ernest Chapman, one of the most respected accounting professors in the Midwest, had written textbooks, won national awards, and was practically a deity at Kansas State. It horrified Michael to think of how his father would feel if he knew his son was on the verge of getting fired from this prestigious firm.

He could see the bright image of snow, rising in reflection on the polished desktop as it drifted downward outside the window. Falcon had a point, though—Michael
was
growing tired of his life in the firm. All he really wanted right now was to go have a margarita with Kurt and Todd. Why should he put himself through this torture?
No, just a little longer,
he told himself.
Just last a little longer and you’ll be free.

He could feel Falcon’s eyes on him. “I’ve been having some personal problems lately,” he lied.

“Michael, we all have problems, but in this kind of environment we need to handle those problems, or we won’t succeed.”

“I know, I know,” he said apologetically.

“Look, we want you to be able to succeed here, but this situation has become so severe that we need to formally place you on our ‘action plan’ program. You need to come up with a detailed plan specifying exactly what areas you need to improve on and how you plan to achieve each of your goals. I need to see some immediate improvements. Traditionally, the time frame for the action plan is thirty days, but because we’re in our second week of busy season, I’ve decided to extend it to sixty days. That should give you the entire busy season to show us if you’re ready to continue your career at Cooley and White.”

A swarm of thoughts surged through his mind, the most prominent being that he still had his job. After everything he had done in the past few months, he had somehow been able to diminish his reputation within the firm without being fired. This last incident had nearly been the end to everything he had worked so hard to achieve, but somehow, after the dust had settled, he was still standing. Glazier was right: he had been way too careless. There would be no more room for mistakes.

“Thank you for this second chance,” he said. “I will get my personal life together and will focus one hundred percent of my energy on improving my performance.”

The partner smiled. “I know you will. Let’s get the plan on paper in the next few days so we can see how we’re going to tackle this. Unfortunately, I’ve had to take you off the Pipco engagement. But we’ll get you scheduled on another client by next week, and then we could . . .” Falcon broke off his sentence as his phone rang. He looked at the number and then back at Michael. “Well, let’s circle back on this tomorrow morning.” He turned and picked up the phone.

Michael flipped open his portfolio and made a quick note. Then, closing the folder, he stood up to leave the office. 

“Oh, my God,” Falcon said into the phone. “No, no, Patti. Thank you, but I should be the one to send an announcement to everyone . . . No, I’m okay . . . I’ll take care of it.”

Michael turned back to look at the senior partner after the call ended. Falcon was looking with a bemused face at the receiver.

“Is everything all right?”

Falcon shook his head. “That was my admin. She just received a phone call from Kurt Matthews’s parents. There was some kind of skiing accident. This morning his body was found, frozen in the woods at Vail.”

All his life, Michael had never been good at handling death. He tried to take a deep breath, but the air felt shallow and insufficient in his lungs. He felt as if he were suffocating. The horrible realization was settling into his mind. Not Kurt . . . It wasn’t possible. His eyes focused again on the impressionistic painting of aspen trees—shimmering yellow leaves and a dusting of new snow. His head felt light; the painting seemed to give off a sense of violent chaos. He had to leave Falcon’s office, had to quit the firm. He had to get out. But no matter how badly he wanted to start a new life, he knew that he couldn’t leave Cooley and White . . . not yet—not until the game was over. 

3

THE SILVER ELEVATOR doors opened on the eighth floor of the Commerce Building, headquarters of the
Denver Post.
The young woman with flaming red hair stepped into a hive of activity as various staff reporters and seasoned journalists pounded away on their laptops, scrambling to file their stories before deadline. A small cluster of employees hovered around a mounted television, making snide remarks as a politician spoke into a dozen microphones. But the redheaded woman kept her head low and largely ignored the activity around her.

“Oh, my God, Sarah, you poor thing! What are you doing here?” a veteran copyeditor said, getting up from her desk and rushing toward her.

“Mrs. Adams,” the young woman said, “is Jack around?”

The copyeditor reached forward and gently grabbed the woman’s shoulders as if she had just returned unharmed from some perilous journey. “Oh, Sarah, I’m so sorry. Come here, child.” She pulled the woman close and hugged her. “You shouldn’t have come in. You know you don’t have to be here—everyone would understand.”

“Is Jack around?” Sarah Matthews asked again in a quiet voice.

The copyeditor gently released her. “Honey, he’s in his office.”

Sarah nodded. “I’m okay. Really.  I just need to ask Jack a question.” And taking a deep breath, she nodded briefly before sidling around the woman and heading to the senior editor’s office.

Her knuckles made a hollow dinging sound on the glass door. Jack Bayman looked up from his phone and waved her in. He sat hunched over his desk, tie loosened, sleeves up. Barking some final words into the receiver, he hung up.

“Sarah, you shouldn’t be here,” he said, standing up and sending his chair rolling backward. “I want you to take the week off.”

“Jack, I have a story I want you to put me on.”

“A
story
? Jesus, what are you trying to do to yourself! You’re in no condition to investigate anything right now.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Go home, Sarah. Please, take some time off. That’s not a suggestion; it’s an order.”