The Corporate Ladder: Considerations

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Vincent sat in the same booth he always did, eating his double bacon. Although he tasted the succulent juices that flowed from the beef patty, he couldn’t truly enjoy himself. He kept looking up, expecting Tom Larsen to walk through the doors and sit down across from him.

When the SEC had pulled Larsen out of the conference room, his hands cuffed behind his back, Vincent was sure that they would be walking right back in to bring him along too. After all, Wong was his partner. No, his accomplice.

Accomplice. It was a legal term of art that Vincent now used to refer to himself. He had broken into a secure computer system without authorization. Now Larsen was being charged with wire fraud. If anyone ever found out that he had acted under Larsen’s direction, he would be charged as an accomplice.

He buried his head in his hands at this thought, as his breaths became shallower and quicker. The questions fired through his brain as rapidly as he tried to rationalize them away.

Did someone know? How could they? No one other than he and Larsen knew that they were even looking at Volek.

Then how the hell did someone make it look like Tom was the one behind the slush fund transactions? He had no idea. Even if someone knew that he was poking around in Volek’s system, how would they know that it was at Larsen’s direction?

So then how did Volek do it? That was the big question. Vincent had been monitoring the transactions that very morning, and at that point, everything looked as expected. Volek had attempted to deposit the missing five million dollars into the client’s bank account, which was being frozen by the SEC due to Vincent’s anonymous tip. Somehow, in the course of a few hours, Volek had managed to alter those transaction documents. Or, worse, the original transaction was a forgery to make it look to Vincent like Volek had put in the request, laying a trap he’d walked right into.

But that still doesn’t explain how Volek could know ahead of time. It wasn’t like he had some sort of spy who knew about their plan so he could set up his counter-attack. Except–

He slammed his head back against the wall repeatedly, cursing himself for his stupidity. Of course. Annabelle.

If she hadn’t blindly installed the Exodia program, if she watched it run and saw what its true purpose was, if she understood what information Vincent was looking for, then she could have alerted Volek. That was still a lot of “ifs” and it didn’t explain how she could know that Larsen was involved. Perhaps Volek put the pieces together himself once Annabelle told on him, but as Vincent thought it through it was impossible to deny that she was the only person that could have derailed this plan. Or at least, the most likely.

He expected to feel rage boiling up inside of him, realizing that she had betrayed him. Instead, he felt panic. He had no idea what to do next.

Did he follow through with his threat and expose her late-night drug use to Volek? Doing so would cost him his leverage over her, and she could still be useful. But failure to follow through on his threat might undermine him even more in her eyes. Perhaps there was a way to use the leverage without undermining himself.

Use it to get the truth out of her.

In an instant, Vincent was walking out the door, dumping the remains of his burger and fries into the trash. Set up a digital drop box, which would automatically unlock the following day, with the evidence of her drug use–the texts and Venmo’s he’d pulled off her iPhone. Approach her, and show her that he wasn’t playing around unless she told him exactly what happened.

Then, he would have to consider what to do if she confirmed that she had betrayed him.

* * *

The rest of the afternoon dragged forever. Vince didn’t have his personal computer on him, meaning he couldn’t set up the digital dropbox until he was safe at his own house. To keep busy, he mentally re-ordered all the dirt he had on Annabelle in his mind, making sure that he would show her a damning picture. Every few minutes, she would slip past his desk and give him a look. He wasn’t sure if she was scared, sorrowful, or just plain acting to gain his sympathy. Either way, he had no interest in anything but the truth.

Around the office, no one was working. Instead, people were constantly breaking off into groups or ducking into conference rooms, no doubt to discuss Larsen’s arrest. Vincent didn’t mind because he couldn’t concentrate with his heart pounding at the thought that any second Larsen might give him up to the SEC or Volek would summon him to his office to reveal that the jig was up. Every time that glass door opened, Vince would duck his head and plead to the gods that he would become temporarily invisible. God, what he wouldn’t give for one of those cloaking devices that the Predator had. Or an invisibility cloak like Harry Potter’s.

“Can you believe it?”

It was Rob Benson, the last person Vince wanted to deal with right now. Forcing a smile onto his face, he turned around in his chair. Benson was clearly still ailing from a night of heavy drinking or whatever the night before, even at almost 3 p.m. Probably, he was just glad that no one was expecting him to work.

“Yeah I know, crazy right?”

Benson scoffed as if Vincent’s lame reply was the understatement of the century.

“At least Charlie is going to have someone to keep him company in prison it seems. I hope you’ve been keeping your nose clean with the SEC sniffing around.”

“Oh, I imagine it’s far cleaner than your nose,” Vince said with a smirk.

Benson looked a bit puzzled then his eyes widened as he figured out Vince’s little wordplay. He dropped his voice before continuing, “well I know that there’s definitely a lot more shady stuff going on that the SEC probably hasn’t found yet. It’s just a matter of when. I don’t know about you, but this is all part of a game being played by those guys higher up the corporate ladder than us. They’re the kings and queens, we’re the pawns, you and I. I’m just saying, I’m not here to rat you out and I hope you would do the same for me.”

Vince nodded as Benson moved on. He was sure that Benson didn’t have anything on him to rat him out with, but the point was well-taken. Knowledge, money, savvy, all ultimately meant nothing if you didn’t have the power to use it, and right now he and Benson had none of that. Luckily, Vincent knew that power can be fluid, changing at the drop of a hat. One vacuum had opened up with Larsen being taken out of the picture. Now Benson was, rightfully, fearful of who might occupy that blank space. To an extent, so was Vincent, but he was far more optimistic than Rob Benson.

In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity. His father would recite to him quotes from great strategic minds like Sun Tzu, Genghis Khan, Zhuge Liang, Hannibal, Maharaj, Machiavelli, Napoleon, Nelson, Frederick the Great, Clausewitz, Jomini, Jackson, Sherman, and many others. “Sharpen your mind, trust yourself, and always give your enemy his due,” the elder Wong would chastise him. Chaos was upon him now but also was an opportunity. The question now was, could he survive the chaos to seize it.

* * *

Yoga, happy hour, home. Even after their run in at the club, Vincent had kept the routine of following Annabelle and her evenings had remained consistent save for the occasional detour to Volek’s house. He’d figured it out quickly, how he’d missed their little rendezvous when he was first following her because Volek would always call her late into the night or morning, where Vincent had often given up an hour or so after she returned home.

This time he stuck around, waiting a block away from her building until he saw her car pull out of the underground garage just past midnight. Her 2019 Porsche Boxster should have been a red flag that she had something seedy cooking, but given that her family was loaded Vincent hadn’t looked too much into who had given her that $70,000 car.

Vincent kept a distance of about a block and a half. He wasn’t sure if this was an appropriate tail length, he’d just heard that in a movie, but he kept his eyes on her phone’s GPS, still displaying on his tablet’s monitor in the seat next to him. When she turned onto Market Street, though, he frowned. Usually, she would take Broad Street all the way to Volek’s swanky pad in the affluent Riverfront neighborhood. Market Street would take her towards West Philadelphia, the complete opposite direction.

Where the hell is she going?

The answer, it turned out, was a seedy little motel in Belmont.

As Annabelle parked her car, she looked around nervously before exiting. Vincent didn’t blame her, this neighborhood was not the greatest and he couldn’t imagine why Volek would meet her here. Usually, she would just go straight to his house and slip in for a few hours before returning home. Maybe Volek’s wife was home this time and he didn’t want to risk being caught, but even still Vincent knew that Paul Volek was a much more cautious and fastidious man than to invite his mistress to a place like this. But then again, there was his Beamer, parked right next to her Porsche outside the motel.

Vincent couldn’t see clearly as Annabelle knocked on the door and entered, but he was sure that he caught a glimpse of Paul’s burly figure in his rearview mirror who opened it for her. For nearly an hour he sat, training his phone at the door of the window, making sure to get good photographic evidence of both of their license plates and cars, as well as the room itself. Thirty minutes later, when Paul left, Vincent was thankfully able to get a good shot of his face in the light of the neon “vacancy” sign. He doubted it would do any good to threaten Volek with evidence of this affair if he did know that Vincent had been at Larsen’s side, but having any ammunition was better than none.

After Volek’s Beamer pulled out, Vincent sat in the driver’s seat of his own Carolla, gripping the seat and preparing what he would say when Annabelle emerged from the room. He bounced up and down on the cloth seat in anticipation, just wanting to get it over with and put some more pieces of this puzzle together.

A minute passed. Then two. Then five. Then fifteen.

The tension built in his stomach, from nervousness to readiness to fear to anger and then finally to frustration that forced him out of the car. All the energy bounding through his body made him feel like he could kick the door in and confront Annabelle with her deception. He was ready to scream, grab her, and shove her against the wall as he demanded to know if she betrayed him to Volek with threats to release all this damning information to him and the other senior associates.

He passed the window to the room, looking in expecting to see her still in the room preparing to leave. As he did, he realized that all that nervous energy might not be enough.

Throwing his body behind the kick, he slammed into the door twice, finally puncturing a hole in the shabby, wooden frame. It was a small hole, but it was just enough for him to reach in and turn the lock so he could open the door and bound into the room.

Nervousness to readiness to fear to anger to frustration. Now, back to fear. Actually past fear to panic.

Vincent could feel the blood pumping through his veins as he rushed across the room to the bed where Annabelle lay on her back next to a small pool of vomit and an empty shoebox, half dressed with her robe open, and her lips a shade of dark blue. He put his finger to her neck, praying to God he’d feel a pulse. .

42

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Josh T.

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