I open my eyes. Freddy is standing next to the bed.
“You have to help me,” she whispers.
“Okay,” I whisper back.
“I wake up this morning? And some psycho is, like, looming over me.”
“Sounds scary.”
“She looked like a hamster.”
“Oh!” I sit up. “That’s just Mattie.”
“She dumps these shopping bags on my bed,” Freddy continues, holding them up to show me. “Then she says she hopes I brought my own glue gun.”
Deep from under the covers, Will groans.
“I mean, I did,” Freddy says, “but who acts like that, right?”
The shopping bags contain candied almonds, fake flowers, champagne-colored gauze bags and a long note, which I skim. “She wants us to assemble the wedding favors.”
“Yay, crafting!” Freddy hops onto the bed. “Let’s order room service.”
“How did you get in here?” Will asks groggily.
“I went out with one of the desk clerks last night.” Freddy yanks the cord of my bedside lamp out of the socket and plugs in her glue gun. “Let’s just say her gratitude knows no bounds.”
Over breakfast, Freddy and I fill bags with almonds while Will reads the paper. “Listen to this,” he says. “A man was arrested on Southard Street for jumping through a window, tackling a homeowner, emptying a vacuum cleaner canister onto the floor and masturbating on a pile of clean laundry. Stark naked the entire time.”
“Florida.” I smile. “Home sweet home.”
Freddy points the glue gun at a pile of sea grass drying on the windowsill. “What’s with the dying foliage?”
“Will’s been collecting it. He won’t tell me why.”
She looks at him. “It’s a secret,” he says.
A cell phone rings. “Whose is that?” she asks.
“It’s my second phone,” Will replies, silencing it.
“Yeah? For your second family?”
He laughs. “It’s for work.”
“Will has a double life,” I tell Freddy. “By day, he’s a brilliant, mild-mannered archaeologist, but when the sun goes down, he reveals his true identity as—”
“Wait wait! Let me guess.” Freddy peers at him. “A cold-blooded CIA killer.”
“A high-flying drug dealer,” I say.
“A mutant superhero,” she suggests.
“Pope Francis!”
“Both!”
Will smiles as he powers off the phone. “You’re not even close.”
Freddy and I finish the favors, and she leaves for the pool. I sit down next to Will on the sofa.
“Hi,” I say.
He folds the paper. “Hi.”
I curl up to him. He reaches for me. We start kissing. I slide my hands underneath his t-shirt and up his back.
He breaks off and checks my phone. “Look at the time.”
Ugh, he’s right. I’m going to be late for my prep.
We get up. He heads into the shower while I dress. “I should be done by two,” I say through the bathroom door. “Meet me back here?”
“I’ll try, but I’ve got a busy day. Lunch with the groomsmen. Picking up the tuxedos. And tonight’s my bachelor party. I might not see you.” He pokes his head out. “Good luck with work.”
He kisses me and disappears. I loiter around for a minute, but all I hear is running water. I guess a repeat of yesterday morning isn’t going to happen.
I go downstairs and stop at the front desk, next to a sign that says RENTAL CARS AVAILABLE.
“I need something sporty,” I tell the man behind the counter.
“So do I,” he says.
“Do you have a Jaguar?”
He taps at his computer. “Got an XK. A convertible.” Tap tap tap. “It’ll run you four hundred ten dollars a day.”
“Perfect!” I hand him my license. “Go ahead and give it to me for the week.”
“Room number?”
“I’m going to put it on my corporate card.” I pause. “Actually, would you mind writing on the invoice that it’s a Ford Focus?”
He looks at me over the top of the screen. “That the Jag is a Ford Focus.”
“Yes,” I say.
“But you want the Jag.”
“Yes. But I want you to say it’s a Ford Focus.”
“That’s a pricey Ford Focus,” he remarks.
“Maybe it’s a turbo.”
“They don’t come turbo,” he says.
“Are you going to do this for me or not?”
He thinks about it for a second. “Not.”
“Whatever.” I hand him my corporate card. “Lyle will just have to deal.”
I drive north on U.S. 1 toward Marathon Key. I’m passing through Sugarloaf when Mattie calls. “The wedding favors are waiting for you at the front desk,” I tell her.
“Oh, wonderful! I felt terrible asking you to do it. I know how busy you are. In two days I’ve seen how your life is … it’s so …”
“Hectic?”
“Well, yes, but more—”
“Harrowing?”
“Oh, I don’t know if—”
“Complicated,” she says. “I hate burdening you with something minor like this, but I didn’t have a moment to spare.”
“No worries,” I say. “It was a laff riot. It was a long ride on the chuckle truck.”
“Sorry dear, what?”
“It was fine,” I say. “Freddy and I had fun.”
She yammers on about a few other things, then we hang up. I put the top down and turn up the radio. It’s another beautiful day. Too bad I have to spend it indoors.
Not too, too bad, though. I told Will’s mom the truth yesterday: I like my job. And I’m pretty good at it. I’m a decent analytical thinker, I’m quick on my feet and I have a good memory. I’m especially talented at prepping witnesses for deposition. I ought to be—I’ve done it dozens of times. At a big firm like mine, junior lawyers aren’t allowed to do the fun stuff, like appearing in court or actually taking depositions. Preparing witnesses is about as much responsibility as we get. And for good reason: nobody graduates from law school knowing anything about being a lawyer. A recent law grad is like a newborn panda, mewling and useless. She needs a few years of growth and experience before she can be released into the wild without getting eaten. I chose my firm because it’s one of the best at training lawyers. And I’m learning a lot.
I just wish it wasn’t in the service of EnerGreen. Some people are on the side of angels? I’m right here, next to the red dude with the big fork. Not always—not all the firm’s clients are evil—but EnerGreen is. I have to keep reminding myself that my purpose right now is essentially selfish. If I don’t become a decent lawyer, I’m of no use to anyone. After a few years, I can leave the dark side and use my amazing legal skills to do something useful.
Because being a lawyer is great. It’s mentally engaging and competitive and fun. Work is really the only time that I feel focused.
That’s not true. One other thing focuses me. But I don’t get paid for it.
That’s not true. I got paid for it once.
Misunderstanding!
Anyway, I’m good at prepping witnesses because I’m good at reading people. That’s a little gift I inherited from Gran. It’s what made her such a great lawyer—intuition that allowed her to size up clients, connect with witnesses and persuade judges and juries. Like her, I always know when someone is lying. I can divine a person’s true intentions and motivations.
So what motivates Peter A. Hoffman, certified public accountant?
Fear.
Fear and doughnuts.
He’s attacking a plate of them when I walk into the conference room at his resort. “Help yourself,” he says with his mouth full. “I ordered us some coffee, too.”
I sit down across from him. I pull out my binder and a legal pad and place them on the table. I take my laptop out of my bag.
“My family’s at the pool,” he tells me. “How long’s this gonna take?”
I uncap my pen. “Most of the morning.”
“The whole morning?” he whines. “Why?”
I set my pen down and regard him for a moment. He’s a squat man with a balding buzz cut and doughy cheeks. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt sprinkled with powdered sugar.
“Mr. Hoffman. Pete. Your employer, my firm’s client, EnerGreen Energy, is the defendant in a lawsuit. A multibillion-dollar lawsuit. You are aware of this, correct?”
“EnerGreen Energy isn’t my employer per se,” he says. “I work for a subsidiary.”
“Fine. But you know that there’s a case arising from the collapse of the Deepwater Discovery oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago. You know that the plaintiffs—residents of the coastline of Louisiana and Mississippi—are seeking twenty billion dollars in damages from EnerGreen for injury to the environment, loss of tourism, medical expenses, loss of their livelihoods. Right?”
“Of course,” he says.
“Good,” I say. “Right now, we’re in what’s called the discovery phase of the lawsuit, when the parties gather information from each other. The plaintiffs are looking for evidence to prove their claims, and we, EnerGreen, are looking for evidence we can use to defend ourselves. The plaintiffs asked EnerGreen for a lot of documents, some of which we gave them. Now they want to ask questions of the people they think may have knowledge of the matters in dispute.”
“Right,” Pete says. “Like an interview.”
“Pete,” I say sharply. “This is not just some interview. This is legally binding testimony. You’re going to be sworn in by an officer of the court. That means that if you do not tell the truth, you’re committing perjury. You could go to jail.”
At last he looks worried.
“The plaintiffs’ lawyer is going to ask you questions. He’s not Matt Lauer. He’s not Jon Stewart. He’s a trained interrogator who’s going to wring as much information out of you as he possibly can. He’s also going to try to make you look like a bad guy. Like a liar and a scumbag. He’s going to make you out to be a key player in the worst environmental disaster ever to hit the Gulf of Mexico.”
He’s gone pale. “I’m an accountant! I had nothing to do with the spill!”
“He doesn’t care, Pete! His job is to make you look bad. During the deposition, the plaintiffs’ lawyer can ask you whatever he wants. There’s no judge there to stop him. The attorney defending you can object, but that’s a legal formality—it doesn’t stop the questions. Unless the plaintiffs ask about something privileged—communications between you and your lawyer—you have to answer.”
Over the top? Sure. But it’s doing the trick. His forehead is gleaming.
“Now you, Pete, are in a particularly awkward position,” I continue. “The plaintiffs have gotten their hands on a few of your e-mails. Do you know which ones I’m talking about?”
He nods slowly, staring at me like a petrified gerbil.
“I’m here to help you, Pete. I’m going to guide you through everything, step by step. I’ll teach you how to listen to the questions, how to think about them, how to answer. If you pay attention and do exactly what I say, the deposition will go very well.”
I give him a wide smile. He smiles back. I stop smiling.
“But only if you work hard. If you give bad testimony? The case goes down in flames. EnerGreen loses, and it’s all your fault. Twenty billion dollars. That’s not loose change, even for the world’s third-largest energy company. Imagine putting that on your résumé, Pete. Do you want EnerGreen to lose?”
“No, ma’am,” he whispers. Even the backs of his pudgy little hands are sweating now.
I smile at him again. “Good. Let’s get started.”
I begin with the mechanics. The stenographer will sit here, to your right. Speak slowly and clearly, so that she has time to catch everything.
The camera will be here. When you speak, look into the camera, not at the attorney asking you questions. He will be to your left.
“Your attorney will be sitting next to the stenographer,” I say. “His name is Philip Gardiner. Philip will be defending EnerGreen during the deposition on Friday. He’ll object to questions and make sure you understand what’s going on. He’s there to help you.”
“Okay,” Pete says.
“If you don’t understand a question, say so. Ask for it to be rephrased or repeated. The last thing I want you doing is guessing at what the plaintiffs’ lawyer is trying to ask.”
He picks out another doughnut. “Okay.”
We run through some practice questions and answers, starting with the preliminaries: his education, his work history, the general duties of accountants, his job at EnerGreen. He’s stiff and awkward at first, but slowly gets more comfortable.
“I’m going to let you in on a secret, Pete. There is one simple rule to acing a deposition. Learn it, and this thing is in the bag. Are you ready?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Here’s the rule. Listen to the question, and answer only that question.”
“Those’re two rules,” he says.
“It’s one rule. With two subparts.”
“You should call it two rules,” he says. “Easier to remember that way.”
He reaches for another doughnut. I slap his hand away. He jumps in his chair and looks at me with startled eyes.
“I need you to focus here, Pete. What I’m saying is important. In order to answer the question correctly, you have to understand the question. You don’t want to answer a question that hasn’t been asked of you, do you?”
“Right!” I say. “Never say anything beyond the bounds of what the questioner posed to you.”
“Can I have a doughnut now?”
“No. We’re going to do an exercise. Remember the rule,” I say. “Listen to the question and answer only that question.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He pauses. “Was that the exercise?”
“No. This is it. Do you know what time it is, Pete?”
He checks his watch. “Ten forty-five.”
“Wrong,” I say.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s ten forty-three.”
“The answer is ‘yes’!” I shout. “The answer to the question, ‘Do you know what time it is?’ is ‘Yes’!”
“What if I’m not wearing a watch?” he whispers.
I put my head in my hands. “Let’s take a break.”
Pete scuttles out of the room. I text Will:
—get yr tuxedo?
—I just picked it up.
—try it on for me later?
—Bad luck!
—fine. just bowtie
Will doesn’t answer. When Pete comes back, I remove the e-mails from my binder and place them in front of him. “Do you recognize these documents, Pete?”
He glances at them quickly. “I know those e-mails. I wrote ‘em.”
“Do you remember sending them?”
“Yes’m, I do.”
“You are telling me, Mr. Hoffman, that you have a specific, clear recollection of sending these e-mails. You remember,” I bore deeply into his droopy little eyes, “sitting down at your desk one morning, turning to your crumb-strewn keyboard and typing each and every one of these words?”
“My keyboard’s not—”
“Under oath,” I continue relentlessly, “under penalty of perjury, you are testifying here today that you recognize both of these e-mails, word for word, that you remember the date, the hour, the minute, the second your index finger hit ‘send’?”
He looks frozen. “No?”
“Okay!” I say. “So you don’t specifically remember sending these e-mails?”
He grins. “Sure I do!”
For once I’m glad I won’t be defending this deposition. As second chair, all I’ll have to do is keep an eye on the running transcript and hand Philip the occasional document. Watching how he deals with this yahoo will be good experience, at least.
“Let’s talk about what you actually wrote here, Pete. What did you mean when you said that you were going to give certain figures a, quote, good old scrub-a-dub, end quote?”
“That’s an accounting term,” he tells me.
“‘Scrub-a-dub’ is an accounting term?”
“Scrubbing numbers, massaging numbers.” He waves a dismissive hand. “It’s standard CPA terminology.”
“Is ‘It’s kind of a scam’ standard accounting terminology, too?”
“Sure.”
“What does it mean?”
“You know,” he says, “that something’s a little off. A little fishy. Not quite right.”
I stare at him for a moment. “Pete? That’s what ‘It’s kind of a scam’ means in non-accounting terminology, too.”
“Oh yeah,” he chuckles. “Right.”
I grip my pen tightly. “You need to avoid using that sort of language during your deposition. The plaintiffs want sound bites, pithy little quotes that they can put in a brief, or cite in their opening arguments, or plaster across the Internet to make EnerGreen look bad. Don’t oblige them. If you find yourself about to give an answer that uses the word ‘scrub,’ or ‘massage,’ or ‘scam,’ or ‘creative accounting,’ or ‘fraud,’ or anything that those of us here in the real world consider negative, just—don’t say it, okay?”
He looks chastened. “I’ll try.”
I drill him on the e-mails for a long time. I finally get him to a place where he can testify that what he wrote was a combination of imprecise wording, wonky CPA talk and playful irony. That the other accountants he was e-mailing would have understood that he wasn’t actually suggesting that they commit fraud, lie to their auditors or hide anything from anybody. It’s not great, but it’s the best I can do.
We take another break, and I check my phone. I have a new e-mail.
Hi honey ok know you dont want to hear it but we are worried you havent thought this thru! gran never told you the whole story about her husband (my dad) but maybe it’ll help you understnad why we’re making a big deal out of this. Gran grew up poor as you know the family having hit hard times and she had terrible teeth because they didnt have any money for dental care plus in those days people werent aware about flossing like they are now.
This is my mother’s signature style. The woman changes the oil in her own truck, can fix almost any mechanical object and has an encyclopedic knowledge of tropical hardwoods. But she punctuates like a modern poet.
she went up to Miami for law school she met a wonderful man. A dentist. The initial attraction having been due to her dental problems but she loved him and she married him very fast only to find out he was a TERRIBLE GAMBLER. Several times they would have to leave where they were living in the middle of the night as they didn’t have the rent money. She got pregnant (me) and had to drop out of school. And then one night he didnt come home and she waited and waited sure that his debts had caught up with him but no.
He ran off with his HYGIENIST!
Now im not saying this is what Will is going to do (of course!!!) but that marriage distracted her from what she wanted to do and of course she got back on track but it was HARD. People maek big life decisions without thinking and it matters honey!
Love,
Mom
I start composing a snarky reply, but I hesitate. Mom means well. She always means well. And I love her to pieces. She used to play with me for hours when I was little—get right down on the floor with my wooden blocks and dolls and dinosaurs, building fantastical structures, inventing whole worlds. But as I got older, she had a harder time dealing with me. Reasoning and argument were not her things. I could talk circles around her, tie her up in knots. She couldn’t discipline me for shit. Fortunately Gran was there to stop me from going totally off the rails. Until she couldn’t.
Why am I thinking about this now? I shake out of it and type a quick reply:
Wow—crazy story! can’t believe hadnt heard this one before. talk soon—busy today with work. thanks mom! xxL
I toss my phone into my bag as Pete shuffles back into the room. It’s almost one. “Now, Pete,” I say, for what feels like the millionth time, “the plaintiffs allege that EnerGreen committed fraud in its financial statements by inflating the projected costs of the oil spill in order to hide losses racked up by the company’s energy trading subsidiary.”
“Yep,” Pete says confidently.
I stare at him hard. “What do you mean, ‘yep’?”
He suddenly looks super shifty. “I mean,” he says slowly, “that I understand that what you just contended, right there, is that which the plaintiffs also are themselves contending with.”
Jesus, this is painful. I remove a few more documents from my binder and spread them on the table. “Let’s talk about the financial statements, Pete. I’m going to pretend to be the plaintiffs’ lawyer, okay?”
“Yes’m.”
“Mr. Hoffman, do you recognize this document?”
“Yes’m.”
“Can you tell me what it is?”
“This is EnerGreen Energy, Inc.’s 2012 annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission,” he says.
“Would you please turn to page forty-five?”
“Yes’m.”
“Do you see at the top of the page, in Schedule 9, line 14, that the projected damages from the Deepwater Discovery oil spill are assessed at $55 billion?”
“Yes’m.”
I finally snap. “Enough with the goddamned yes’ms!”
He looks cowed. “Okay.”
“You’re killing me with the yes’ms, Pete.”
“Sorry.”
“I’d like to show you a different document,” I say, handing him another one. “This is the insurance claim that EnerGreen Energy filed with AIG, its primary accident insurer. Do you see that on page four, EnerGreen projects its total losses from the spill as only $25 billion?”
“Yes,” Pete says.
“Mr. Hoffman. How do you explain that while EnerGreen was telling the SEC and its shareholders that damages from the spill were going to be over $50 billion, it was telling its insurers that the losses were only going to be $25 billion?”
Pete shifts in his seat. “I would say that when you’re dealing with audited financials, which is an extensive process, a multifaceted process, there’s always lots of moving pieces, balls in the air if you will. You’ve got various cost centers utilizing different metrics and rubrics to achieve your ultimate outcomes. Any discrepancies therein would be in the normal course caught and corrected in the standard processes of verification and reconciliation.”
“That makes absolutely no sense,” I tell him.
“Are you you right now,” he asks, “or the plaintiffs?”
“I’m me,” I say. “What’s the truth?”
“We were using the spill to hide major losses from our trading division,” he says.
I stare at him.
“Our traders had entered these long-term forward swaps that fixed the price of natural gas at year-end 2011 levels,” Pete continues. “But the price plummeted when a new field was discovered out there in Uzbekistan. We were stuck in these godawful contracts, which they tried to hedge by entering into a different set of swaps pegged to the price of titanium—”
I wasn’t following him, but I didn’t have to. “Fraud,” I say. “You’re talking about fraud.”
Pete looks taken aback. “I don’t know that I’d call it fraud.”
“What would you call it?”
He thinks a moment. “You’re right,” he says. “It’s fraud.”
He keeps explaining, and all I can do is gape at him. He’s so nonchalant. He’s just told me that his employer is committing accounting fraud, securities fraud and probably a dozen other kinds of fraud I’ve never even heard of. EnerGreen, a company responsible for one of the most horrific environmental disasters in history, actually saw that disaster as a convenient opportunity to hide other mistakes, a handy way to lie, cheat and steal so that it could keep making money.
And what’s Pete doing? Sitting here serene as can be, eyeing the last doughnut.
“How big are the losses?” I ask him.
“North of fifteen billion.”
My mouth drops open. “Fifteen billion dollars? That’s enough to bring down the company.”
“You bet. If the truth got out? Credit would dry up. We wouldn’t have enough cash to cover daily operations. It’d be your classic run-on-the-bank scenario.”
He pauses, glancing at the doughnut, then at me. I nod. He takes it.
“That’s why we had to hide the losses,” he continues, his mouth full. “What I said in that e-mail is true. The spill was a goddamned godsend, coming when it did.”
A goddamned godsend. I take out my phone and text Philip:
—Big problems at the deposition prep. Can you please call me? Thanks.
Then I text Lyle:
—hoffman = nightmare. we have to postpone dep
I stand up. “We’re done here, Pete.”
“We are?”
“I think it’s safe to say that your deposition is not going to happen anytime soon. My boss is going to call your boss’s boss’s boss’s lawyer, and then somebody’s going to write a big check, and we’re all going to say good-bye.”
Lyle writes back:
—Call me. Also pltffs want his empl records.
—dep cant happen, lyle!
—Just do it.
Unbelievable. “So there’s one last thing,” I say to Pete. “In the highly unlikely event that this deposition goes forward sometime in the very distant future, the plaintiffs want us to produce your employment records. It’s a formality, but we have to do it or they’ll yell and scream and accuse us of violating the rules. You said something about working for a subsidiary?”
“Right,” he says. “EnerGreen Energy Solutions LLC. We just opened a branch office in Key West. I came down to help set up their accounting system and decided to bring the family. The office has a couple geologists doing deepwater testing around here.”
“Hey,” I say. “Awesome. Welcome to the Florida Keys, EnerGreen.”
“There’s a secretary there named Maria. She can get you what you need.”
“Why do you work for an LLC?”
“It’s a tax dodge,” he explains.
Why did I ask? Why?
Pete looks worried. “They gonna ask me about that?”
“They’re not going to ask you about anything. Ever.” I hold out my hand. “It was really nice meeting you, Pete. Enjoy the rest of your vacation.”