The Love Of Money - S02 E153

Story 3 months ago

The Love Of Money - S02 E153

Read Story: SEASON 2 EPISODE 153

The next day was even longer.

***

Monday, September 16th, 11:45 am

I slapped the thick manila folder on the table. Thick enough to qualify as a small-town phone book, it landed with a thud that startled everyone else in the room.

Accounts receivable. Accounts Payable. Depreciation. Discretionary budgets. Equity. Quarterly returns. If I had to look at another goddamn accounting statistic, I was going to slit my wrists and give myself a blood deficit. It was all I could do to keep my eyes from crossing.

“You okay?” Vikram asked, peering at me from over his laptop.

I’d asked Chandler and Erin to gather as much information as possible on Sunday so we could take a look at the books first thing Monday morning and see if we could get some answers. Two very prominent people had threatened to go public with the information they had on the Gerrard estate, and I’d been foolish to go this long without fully understanding what was in my portfolio.

Not that I could simply pull up a spreadsheet and see it all. I’d been warned that Colin Gerrard Sr. had a complex, highly compartmentalized company structure, but now that I was getting a good look at it all, I was starting to see just how intricate the web really was.

There were so many accounts! Money would flow into one, transfer to another, then that money would split and go into two more. Follow one trail only to find out that it was a shell corporation in Ireland. Who was the executive there? Some guy I had never heard of with a phone number that didn’t work.

Rinse and repeat.

It was the largest metaphorical cluster of tangled Christmas lights I’d ever seen.

We’d set up in one of VistaVision’s largest conference rooms. The massive table was littered with file folders and the boxes they came in. Laptops rested along the edges so we could verify some of the old data while examining the new data for the companies that had since gone fully digital. They were all manned by lawyers provided by YPV and forensic accountants recommended by Erin and Psalter.

“Nope,” I responded to Vikram’s question, leaning back in my chair. We’d been doing this for over three and a half hours without a break, and as someone who hadn’t looked at financials for well over two months, I was getting rusty. “This is frustrating as hell.”

“Colin had to have people managing all this,” Erin said without looking up from her laptop. “But all I could find were in-house money-crunchers who didn’t know anything outside their lanes. Even the ones here…”

 Chandler swatted away a folder and sat down on one of the corners of the conference room, a cup of hot tea in his hand like the walking stereotype of a Brit he was. “While I don’t doubt Erin’s capabilities, Marcus, I daresay I’ve done almost everything humanly possible to account for every penny associated with VistaVision. I’ve gone much further than what is typical for the sake of thoroughness.”

“Same on our end,” Vikram said. “There’s a lot of money that we can’t account for that we’ve put into what’s become known as the ‘Roger VanCamp bucket.’” He made air quotes with his fingers as he said it. “Every time we have an unanswered question, it all goes there. Apparently, he’s been at this for a while. We’re finding big question marks that go back years.”

“How do they get away with shady shit equaling billions of dollars?” I asked.

“Companies like VistaVision and Gerrard Holdings are siloed,” Chandler said. “Departments use software that other departments don’t use… have budgets that are approved through department heads that don’t necessarily know what other departments’ budgets are. No one person can be aware of what all departments are doing at all times in a company this big. A few inscrutable people in key positions would be allowed to get away with so much, as long as they exercised a bit of caution.”

“People like my grandpa and Roger VanCamp,” I concluded.

“Yeah,” Vikram said. “It’s the same with YVP. I have no idea what goes on over in injury law. I just mind my own business.”

“Precisely,” Chandler said. “Only, in this case, it was less your grandfather and more his children.

I eyed Chandler for a long moment until he started to look a little uncomfortable.

“Hey, guys,” I finally said to everyone. How about you take an early lunch and give us the room? Chandler, you stay. You too, Vikram.”

The rest of the law and accounting nerds looked around at each other like they were suddenly worried that their jobs were on the line, but then they slowly gathered their things to leave—except for those I asked to remain.

Erin stayed as well. My assistant continued typing away on her laptop as if she hadn’t heard anything I’d said, already aware that she was meant to stay.

Chloe did the same, still leaning back in her chair with her phone in front of her. Her golden-brown eyes peered from under her eyebrows, dispassionately watching all the people getting up to file out of the conference room.

Eventually, it was empty of everyone except the five of us.

“Okay,” I said, spinning in my chair to look at Chandler. “I’ve heard enough to get the gist of what happened, but I’m gonna need you to lay out as much of the family history as you can.”

It was long past due for me to get a full recounting of the Gerrard family drama that had led to death, prison, and estrangement. Unfortunately, anyone in the family who could give me that recounting wanted nothing to do with me, so Chandler was the best I had.

“I see,” Chandler said, “And where precisely would you like me to start?”

“The Kelly Madison shit,” I said. “Apparently, everything came to a head when she was fired, including the death of Michael Haley.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about the specific reason Kelly was let go,” Chandler said carefully, “but I suspect that Colin discovered she was going behind his back.”

“Like, stealing money?”

“I assumed it was something as simple as that,” Chandler mused, “but roughly a year and a half ago, your grandfather said something I thought quite curious. We were in the middle of a legal dispute with another company while apparently having a non-compete agreement with one of their competitors. I recall him muttering to himself that he wished he’d kept it in his pants. I think he was referring to Kelly Maddox.”

“So, they were having an affair?”

“Anyone working closely with Colin knew it was happening,” Chandler scoffed. “Kelly Maddox was his worst-kept secret. Your grandfather was a master at keeping things close to his chest, but she didn’t share his talent.”

“And that was enough to tip you off that Kelly was dipping her hand in the cookie jar?”

Chandler huffed. “Not stealing so much as making deals and decisions behind his back that he wouldn’t have approved of. You see, after that comment, I went back to look at some old irregularities and found enough to justify my suspicions. Not that it mattered… by that point, Kelly was long gone.”

“And she was able to get away with it because of silos?”

“And she had the help of his son.”

“My dad?”

Chandler shook his head. “I don’t know what role your father played in subverting Colin’s authority, if any. I’m referring to Logan.”

“The one in prison for murdering Michael?”

“Yes. Colin put a lot of faith in your uncle.” Chandler shook his head, looking a little sad. “They were so much alike, those two. They looked alike… had the same mannerisms… the same temperament…”

“What did he do in the company?”

“Well, he was training to take over the empire one day. Colin insisted on making him the Chief Operating Officer for Dynistat—another of Colin’s companies specializing in research and development in computer hardware. I suspect that’s where the rot began in the Gerrard conglomerate.”

“But you don’t know for sure,” I said.

“Anytime I broached the subject of possible corruption, Colin would tell me to butt out,” Chandler said, looking mildly offended. “He would say things like, ‘Mind your own store, and let me worry about the rest.’ He was a terribly proud man.”

Chloe snorted, reminding me that she worked for him near the end of his life. She’d also mentioned that he could be stubborn and mean.

“Anyway,” Chandler continued. “That was years ago. I simply let it lie and continued to focus on where I was needed—here.”

“So, when she was fired…”

“Yes! Many of us felt it was a long time coming! Only when she was removed from her office, Colin replaced her with his son-in-law. Up until then, Michael oversaw VistaVision’s theme park division, which had resulted in the most profitable three-year streak that still stands to this day. Colin was so impressed that he decided to move Michael into a position with more responsibility, helping him manage the entire estate—Gerrard Holdings.”

I couldn’t help but wonder how Logan felt about Michael getting to work so close to his father. That kind of position had to come with all sorts of perks.

“Things went well for about three months, and then everything fell apart. Michael was found in bed with an intern from VistaVision. Both had been murdered—a nasty bit of business.”

Helen had been the one first to mention the murder, but it was in passing. Getting more of the details made it seem more real, though. I’d heard that my grandpa was a hard man, and I’d witnessed Tyler’s asshole behavior firsthand. To think some of my family was capable of murder, though…

“Logan was arrested the same day, and it came to light that he had been responsible for selling hardware for new guidance missiles to The People’s Dawn.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “What’s that?”

“A terrorist organization masquerading as a liberation group for some country in Africa. The chips were confiscated by the government and reverse engineered. Within a year, we received word that the technology had made its way into the Near East and Russia. Three months after that, they were used against American strategic assets.”

Chandler’s jaw tightened, clearly affected by the memory. “The technology produced in our labs had been used against our own countrymen. I even knew one of them. Attending his funeral was… difficult.”

Feeling a little sick at inheriting this kind of legacy, I sat back in my chair. How the hell had Colin managed to recover from something like that? Had he suffered any sort of major fallout?

Did the government have my name?

Well, of course, they had my name, but did they have it for more reasons than I’d originally thought? “Jesus…”

“Indeed,” Chandler said somberly. “Things might have been much worse had Michael not approached Colin with his findings.”

“So, Logan sold the tech, Michael found out, and Logan killed him?”

“Well,” Chandler said, “that’s the official story. Colin wanted to go after Kelly, but the only evidence we could find on Michael’s death was linked to his son, so Logan went to prison, and Kelly remained free.”

“How was she able to just walk in here and vote in that board meeting, considering everything?”

“Because she has powerful friends,” Chandler said. “Tanaka respected Colin, but they cooled to each other. Kelly Maddox also commanded his respect but was also more willing to compromise than Colin. It made her preferable to work with for people like Hiro Tanaka, Rajesh Desai, Daniel Hahn, Torman Håkansson…”

“Daniel Hahn?” That was the first time I heard that name.

“Yes. He owned roughly… two percent of VistaVision, I believe. He also owned small percentages in a few other companies under your grandfather’s estate.”

“What happened to his shares?”

“Bought out by Brantwood Holdings.” Chandler looked unhappy. “There used to be many more investors with significant shares of VistaVision. Brantwood bought out many of them.”

“The company that Amber Bell represented, right?”

“The very same.”

“Isn’t that a little suspicious?”

Chandler shrugged. “Not particularly.