The Corporate Ladder: Mergers

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The only noise between the two men was the soft smacking of beef as Tom Larsen chewed on his hamburger. It had been that way for the past the fifteen minutes since Larsen sat down; the only words that pierced the silence were Tom ordering a burger, fries, and a coke.

Given that Larsen was the one who had found Vincent, the one who said that the two should talk, Wong had assumed that Tom would actually, you know, talk. But he hadn’t. He sat there, directly across the booth from Vincent, just staring at him until the food arrived.

For his part, Vincent spent the first few minutes just staring straight ahead in panic, watching the movements of Tom’s neck muscles, waiting for him to say the words that would seal his doom. I know what you did. The SEC has searched Woodcomb’s hard drive and found traces of your falsified records. Because you got sloppy and did something illegal, you’re going to jail for the rest of your life. All manner of things that would culminate in one inevitability: he was fucked.

But Larsen didn’t speak, he just stared until the food arrived and then quietly started eating.

As Wong watched him, those thoughts of terror were replaced with confusion. Does he know anything? Is this even related to Woodcomb? Is this a ploy to get me to spill the beans to save Charlie? Does the SEC know he’s here? Does anyone know he’s here? And since he couldn’t answer any of those questions himself, he remained silent.

Halfway through his burger, Larsen finally spoke. “Why did you become a lawyer, son?”

Taken aback, but trying to seem composed, Vincent just shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You have a dual degree in computer science and electrical engineering from MIT…”

Wong smirked. “Don’t forget about my minor in interpretive dance theory.”

Ignoring the sarcasm, Tom continued his thought. “Which you completed in only three years…”

“I know, should have finished in two. What can I say, I got a bit lazy.”

“With perfect grades…”

“Still pissed that the department chair rejected my request to add an ‘ultra A-plus’ grade.”

That one got Tom to chuckle, and he took a sip of his drink before plowing on. “Yet you didn’t go to a top law school like Harvard…”

“I really didn’t like their campus.”

“Or Yale…”

“New Haven in the winter? Pass.”

“Or Stanford.”

“California is full of hippies and mactors.”

Now Tom scowled in annoyance. “My point is, you could have gone to one of those schools with your grades, even if you slept through the LSATs, instead of going to the University of North Carolina. You could have gone straight from college to the Department of Defense, or Boeing, or Microsoft, or Google, or wherever, and by now you’d be running a department there making twice what you’re making here. So, I’ll ask again: why did you go to law school?”

Vincent took a bite from his own burger and a sip of his drink, buying time trying to think up some snarky response to the anvil of questions Larsen had just dropped on him. After racking his brain and coming up with nothing cheeky or clever to say, he finally decided to just tell the truth. “Because I love winning.”

Tom grinned and pointed a finger right at Vincent before taking a fry. “That’s right. That’s exactly goddamn right. You could have gone to any of those jobs and you’d have been bored off your ass attending meetings or filing requisition requests, and you would have hated it.

“I watch you at the office, and kid you have that drive others don’t. Your friends Woodcomb and Benson? They’re herbivores. They come in every day, fat and happy to be lawyers. They do their jobs, they leave, they get drunk, they cash their paychecks, they buy nice toys, and they fuck pretty girls.

Larsen smiled, his lips twisting even further up his face in an almost sinister expression. “But you? You’re a fuckin’ carnivore. You come into that office every day and you hunt. You revel in every advantage that you can exploit, I see your eyes just light up with glee. When you get the opportunity you don’t want to just beat your opponent, you want to annihilate them. You want to lord over your victory, ravish them for spoils, and put their heads on pikes to demonstrate to others ‘I am one you do not want to fuck with.’”

Vincent shook his head. “No. I don’t want to annihilate them. I want to gut them, leave them bleeding in the streets, so if they survive they’ll know it was due to my mercy. That their life isn’t theirs, it’s mine. I gave it to them, and I can take it from them.”

Tom clapped softly, no sarcasm or mockery. “You were that kid who never talked in class and no one could believe when you were number one at the end of the year weren’t you?”

With a smirk, Vince nodded. “So what does all this mean to you, Mr. Larsen?”

“It means,” Tom said as he leaned back in the booth, “that you’re the guy I want. And you can call me Tom.”

* * *

It was raining outside when they left the diner, so Larsen offered Wong a ride back home. It wasn’t that he thought someone in that dinky little diner might overhear what he was about to say, but he wanted to make certain that this plan, which was almost a year in the making, had no leaks. Unless the company was bugging his car, it was the best place to do so.

“Back when I first met Paul, he was like you and I. A carnivore. He was vicious, he was smart, he was ruthless. I learned more from him in my first week there than I had in five years at the D.A.’s office. But now, he’s an omnivore, which is even sadder than being a herbivore because it means that he has the capability to be that carnivore but chooses not to. Instead of hunting, he rests on his laurels and his reputation. He’s gotten lazy, arrogant, and greedy. Which is why I no longer think he’s suited for the CLO position.”

As he pulled the car to a stop at an intersection, he looked over at Vincent. “Tell me, when you were finding those documents to leak to the SEC, did you find anything else?”

Wong shook his head.

“Well, if you had gone deeper into our system, you would have found information that would scare Paul Volek and most of the seniors in our department shitless if it got out.”

“Which is?”

“An offshore slush fund filled with client monies, including some from outsourced and/or subcontracted entities, which have been used to pay outstanding corporate and personal debts.”

Wong slumped back in his seat silently, as Larsen studied his face for a reaction. The kid clearly wasn’t expecting to have the senior VP of legal to tell him that the Chief Legal Officer was misappropriating client funds. Every lawyer learns their first day in Ethics class that client funds should never be commingled or re-allocated, especially not without the client’s permission or knowledge.

Although Meca was not a law firm per se, the corporate legal department often handled contracting for many of its subsidiaries, meaning it often needed to hold the funds of those companies in escrow or some other form of a trust. Of course, doing so was grounds for disbarment, but given that these commingled funds were being used for personal benefit, criminal prosecution wouldn’t be out of the question.

“Who else knows?” Vincent finally asked.

“Only the two people in this car.”

“How did you find out?”

Larsen shrugged. “Sheer dumb luck. A client wanted funds transferred in anticipation of a deal that went through sooner than expected. Paul was on vacation, so I checked instead. When I couldn’t find sufficient funds in the recorded account, I did some digging.”

“Why not report it immediately?”

Larsen frowned. “Because when I checked again later, the money was all there again. I can’t be sure where the accounts are, who has access, or even how much money is in those funds. All I’ve been able to determine is that they exist and Paul is involved. I don’t know how many of the other seniors know if any members of the board know. If I try to confront him without all the facts, he’ll bury me. Even though he’s an omnivore, you can’t expect him not to go feral when you back him into a corner.”

“Are you sure Paul is involved?”

“100%. He is the only one with access to all of the individual client trusts we have,” Tom smirked before continuing, “and he just purchased a $10 million property in the Caribbean six months ago. Maybe he’s been a master saver or great at investments, but…well if two plus two looks like four, don’t second guess that it might be five.”

Vincent directed him around the corner to a bougie apartment complex before Tom brought the car to a stop. Before he got out, Wong turned to his boss. “What do you need me to do?”

“Exactly what you did to Woodcomb. Find those accounts, find records, find something that we can use against Volek. He may have gotten spooked by the SEC and covered his tracks, which is why you’ll need to be extra crafty.”

“But what’s the end game? Like say I have the smoking gun, what are you going to do with it?”

“Force Volek to step down, recommend me for CLO, then clean house of whoever else in legal was involved. Try to see if we can keep any indictments or investigations from coming down on the company. And if we can, when I’m installed as CLO you’ll be given a nice raise.”

Vince didn’t respond immediately, he just stared at Larsen blankly for a few seconds before saying “a nice raise and a promotion.”

Larsen couldn’t help but grin. God, this kid’s got moxie.

“Agreed.” He reached out to shake the young man’s hand, but Vince hesitated.

“One other condition. When you take over, Benson is gone. Don’t care how, but I don’t want to be working with that jackass a minute longer than I have to.”

“Vindictive doesn’t look good on you Vincent,” Larsen said, barely above a whisper.

Wong shrugged. “Is that a no?”

Larsen shook his head. “If that’s what it takes, Benson is gone.”

And with that, the offer was tendered, accepted, and sealed with a shake. .

38

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Josh T.

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