Chapter 20
20
M ost mornings, Patrick Ollonson came into the office at six fifteen, because that was nine fifteen Eastern time, and it made him seem to be a client advisor who wanted to be in his office and already reading the summaries and projections for the stock market session that would open fifteen minutes later. That had always been a pose, but it had seemed to work for many years to compensate for average performance. The bosses liked to see the troops at their posts early, prepared to detect the moment when all the indicators lined up to make a particular course of action a clear winner. It was true that sometimes the prize could be won by getting into a sure thing early, and sometimes it paid to be the first one out. But for Ollonsun, to be there early was an empty gesture. He had never sent a mass alert to his clients to buy or sell anything.
But this morning he had been in his office at 4:00 A.M. He had not wanted to see anyone coming in, not wanted to be in an elevator or a hallway with anyone. He didn’t want anyone to see his face with its swelling, bruises, and cuts, or especially, to have to answer any questions about it.
Pat Ollonsun had married Christina Welbrower five years before Ron Talbert turned up and married Francesca, her younger sister. He’d had all that time to learn what marrying into the Welbrower family meant. The grandfather was Ted Welbrower, for Christ’s sake. He’d been a B-17 bomber pilot in World War II, shot down over Germany and captured, and later decorated for organizing the escape of two dozen Allied prisoners. After the war he’d borrowed money to buy up cheap tracts of farmland ten miles out from various western cities. Then he had put up some land as collateral for more loans to start car dealerships so people could live ten miles out and commute to the city for work.
Land meant houses meant roads meant cars meant gas stations meant food sales meant warehouses. His son Daniel, the girls’ father, was the educated version of the Welbrower girls’ grandfather, and the education had been like adding a jet engine. He was one of the first to cater to the new suburbs with shopping malls. Every bit of family history was just as intimidating. The maternal grandmother came from an ancient aristocratic Scottish family with actual castles and miles of green rolling land and rocky coastline. The girls’ mother seemed to have no ancestors who weren’t professors, scientists, or something. The Welbrowers didn’t think of themselves as snobs. They thought of themselves as superior. It was an opinion that everybody else seemed to share.
Being the first son-in-law had been a mixed experience for Pat Ollonsun. The good part was that Christina was beautiful enough to be an actress if that hadn’t been too low-class for Welbrowers, and she had learned in college courses that frequent monogamous sex was one of the most wholesome and health-promoting activities humans could do. The bad part was his own status. From the first introduction, Christina’s family and friends found Patrick Ollonsun to be an unsuitable match, so far beneath Christina that it had caused some of them to start introducing her to other young men to head off the marriage.
The truth about his marriage was more complex than he had understood at first. Christina had told him early on during a moment of tipsy honesty that his unending persistence in getting her to notice him, then date him, had made her think he could counterbalance the ferocious energy of the Welbrowers. The women, particularly as they were growing up, were prized and protected, but it was like being a treasure, not a person with agency. Christina had developed a resistance to being controlled by her family. She knew she was desirable, knew that most men in her social circle would want her. But an outsider like Ollonsun, who was about to take his first job in a California finance company three thousand miles from the nearest Welbrower, had been irresistible.
Five years later, when Christina’s sister Francesca had brought Ronald Talbert around, Pat had understood. He had realized that what Francesca was doing was reacting to the rift Christina had created with the family and choosing Christina’s side. For her it was rejecting the control of the old almost-medieval Welbrower patriarchy, being close to her beloved elder sister, and embracing the newness and freedom of California. She had even chosen a man who, from her flawed point of view, was like the one her sister had.
Pat had befriended Ron and taught him things that would help him survive in the world of the Welbrower sisters. To the extent that he could, he helped encourage and aid his wife’s efforts to bring Ron and Fran into her own social circle to make up for being dropped from the one Christina knew would exclude them. He had been the wise older brother-in-law, and when the time came, the doting uncle. And he had helped Ron learn the ways to produce enough income to fund a marriage to a Welbrower sister.
And now here he was, hiding in his office with his phone connected in an endless call to his own cell phone so any incoming call would find the line busy. It wasn’t really endless. He’d been in the office for over six hours. It was now a little after ten A.M. , and he’d had to renew the call every two hours because that was when the phone company automatically cut it off. He looked as though he’d either been in a drunk driving accident and gone into the windshield or been runner-up in a bar fight. His brother-in-law, his protégé and supposed friend, had done this to him.
He had been sitting here for all these hours, trying to think his way out of this mess. He had made his best effort to hide his hand in Vesper Ellis’s losses, but he had been skimming other clients’ accounts for so long that the sums had gotten to be more than he could cover. He had longed to ask for help from his wife’s family, but it was a solution he had tried before, and they had refused. Her father had actually referred to some warning he had given Chris when their engagement had been announced that when this day came, she shouldn’t bother to ask.
When their grandfather had died, Christina and Francesca had inherited identical trust funds. Pat had gone to considerable effort to find a way into Chris’s, but her grandfather’s attorneys had anticipated that some future husband might do that and set the trusts up so that there were three trustees who had to approve any withdrawal. Ollonsun had been sure that Christina could get around that, but he also feared that asking her would start the avalanche of questions that would sweep him out of the marriage.
This morning he’d gotten out of the house early enough that she hadn’t seen his face yet. She was used to not seeing him in the mornings, but by tonight he would need to find out from Ron what he was telling his wife, so their stories matched. He didn’t look forward to that, and he would give Ron time to cool down first. Meanwhile he had bigger and more immediate problems. He had learned that his “get out of jail free card,” the former mentor who had risen to be head of the European Division, had been quietly replaced during the past year; after he’d tried some inquiries of mutual acquaintances, he learned he had a fatal case of cancer.
Ollonsun had run through many possible ways of saving himself—framing someone else in the Great Oceana company—a brilliant young intern who had great computer skills; telling Vesper Ellis he’d borrowed some of her money to pay for his daughter Zelda’s emergency surgery and would pay her back in installments; saying he had not known that her late husband George Ellis was dead, so he’d approved withdrawals requested in that name that had now been traced to North Korea or Russia or China. His ideas had become increasingly wild and unpromising. They had, as the morning went on, become scarcer, and their space in his mind was slowly being usurped by hopes that something he had already tried was going to work.
The hope his mind kept returning to was that the two men he had been paying to watch Vesper Ellis and her lawyer would save him. He had given them a lot of cash last night and they had agreed to hurt both client and lawyer badly—fifteen thousand, if Ron had counted right. It was entirely possible that they would do such a good job that Vesper Ellis and Charles Warren would back off, in physical pain and afraid for their lives. But Pat could still hear one of them ask if he and Ron were willing to accept the fact that the victims might die. He admitted to himself that this was actually a better outcome. Then there would be no victim anymore, and no lawyer to pursue the complaint. He started to pray for it, and then felt that somehow prayer didn’t seem likely to help.
He was hearing the sounds of business going on outside his office door—footsteps as people walked up and down the open concourse where dozens of people worked in cubicles or in rows of computer screens arranged three to a desk in a fold-around arrangement. There was a woman’s voice that had a melodious quality that carried and reminded him of Chris’s voice as it came closer. Then he heard the “pock pock pock” of her high heels coming closer. They stopped, and he had a feeling of dread. She rapped on his door.
Ollonsun froze and listened, not daring to move in case his desk chair creaked to reveal that he was in. He and the woman listened for each other. He knew that if she gave up and left, he would hear her shoes. Instead, he heard her knock again, this time louder. After about ten seconds he heard her voice. “Mr. Ollonsun?” He waited for the shoes.
Instead, he heard a key in the door lock. His door swung open, and he saw her, the typical young Great Oceana executive—dark blue suit, silk blouse, straight dark hair cut at shoulder length. “Oh,” she said. “Mr. Ollonsun, are you all right? We knocked, but since you didn’t answer, we figured we’d better check on you.”
“I’m all right,” he said, then remembered he didn’t look all right. “This was just a little bicycle accident. I slipped in a gravel patch last evening.” He stood up. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
She stepped forward, smiling, and held out her hand to shake his. “Stacey Ramsdahl, admin.” Her handshake was firm and energetic, and it reminded him that his right hand was in pain from a punch Ron had half ducked so Pat’s fist had bounced off his hard forehead.
Stacey Ramsdahl was not here to waste time. “They need you right away in admin. Do you need a minute to freshen up or anything before we go?”
“Well, I was right in the middle of some things. Would it be possible to put this off until—”
“They need you there right away, I’m afraid.” She turned and seemed to notice his sport coat hanging behind the door, “Oh, your coat’s right here.” The door of every office that people like him inhabited had a coat hook screwed into the back of it, but she greeted it as a great find. She lifted it off its hanger and held it up so he couldn’t avoid slipping into it without physically resisting. “They said this won’t take long.”
She stepped to the door and pushed it open, and he saw the others. There was a man in navy blue coveralls with a tool pouch and a ring of keys on his tool belt. There was also a tall man about Stacey Ramsdahl’s age who was built like a football player. “This is Dennis. He’s going to give us a ride over to the admin offices.”
Dennis was just as friendly. He smiled as he said, “Good to meet you, Mr. Ollonsun.” Pat knew better than to let this one crush his hand, so he just raised it in a little wave, said, “Likewise, Dennis,” and engaged his hands in adjusting the cuffs of his shirt and then the lapels as they began to walk. He was being dragged out of his office to some dreaded inquiry, as surely as though they handcuffed him or prodded him along with guns. He couldn’t resist or escape or argue or, really, do anything except what this tall, attractive, cheerful young couple asked, or he would appear to be crazy or criminal on the building’s surveillance cameras.
The three walked down the open concourse to the bank of elevators. Ollonsun felt as though people must be watching them, but nobody he knew appeared. He stood in front of the doors and stared at them so no strangers noticed his bruised and scratched face.
When they reached the ground floor, Stacey Ramsdahl led the way, and Dennis fell slightly behind. It was as though he was there to be sure Pat didn’t change his mind and turn back. She pushed the door open and held it until all three were out on the sidewalk. A black car was parked in the five-minute loading zone, and she got in the back seat and patted the seat beside her, so Pat had to slide into it. Dennis slammed the door closed, got into the front, and drove.
Stacey Ramsdahl filled in the silence with small talk as the buildings floated by. “I’ll never get used to Los Angeles. This part always seems like it’s this plain, light-colored facade, so nobody knows that these dull, benign-looking buildings aren’t just a bunch of dentists’ and therapists’ offices, but places where billions of dollars are changing hands twenty-four hours a day and deals for hundreds of movies and television shows and things are going on.”
“I take it you weren’t born here,” Pat said.
“No. Rising Sun, Maryland. When I was growing up, I couldn’t wait to get someplace where all the action was. I picked LA. Now when I tell people that, they say, ‘Rising Sun. What a pretty name.’ And I know it is, but it’s funny that when I lived there, I didn’t ever think of it that way. Where are you from?”
He said, “Evanston, Illinois. I went to college in Boston, and I met my wife there. The woman who was going to be my wife, I mean. The year I met her I waited to register for classes until she had registered and then signed up for every class she was in. Now they’d probably call me a stalker. Fortunately, she didn’t take it that way.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet. And then you married and came here together.”
“Yep.”
He could see that the short ride was coming to an end. The building for Admin and the other parts of Great Oceana that didn’t deal with the public was ahead. A few seconds later Dennis swung across the lane and up the driveway into the garage entrance. Then he got out and came around the car to Ollonsun’s side to let him out so he would be aimed in the direction of the lobby entrance. The only other way out was over Stacey Ramsdahl, who was already unbuckled and waiting for him to move.
The parking attendant got into the driver’s seat and waited while Ollonsun and Stacey got out, then drove the car away. The three reassembled in their formation, with Stacey leading the way to the elevator, pressing the button, going in, then Ollonsun, and last, Dennis, moving in behind them and blocking the space until the doors closed and the elevator rose.
She had pressed the button marked 4. Ollonsun didn’t know where they were going, but he was fairly sure that the floors with the bosses, the people to be feared, were at or near the top, which was the twentieth. He felt a moment of hope that maybe this really was a meeting about something routine. The doors parted and the three stepped out. In front of them was an arch, and above it, the words Human Resources. He felt even better. He had been here a few times over the years, always for some dull practical matter—hiring, getting a child added to his health insurance, signing things when the company improved the pension system. He just hadn’t remembered which floor it had been on.
Stacey stepped out and led the way, and they proceeded inward. She stopped at the reception desk and said, “Gabrielle Nagata?” and the woman behind it pointed to the left and said, “Four eighteen.” They made their way to the right number, and a small Asian American woman with short black hair was waiting for them at the open door.
“Hi,” she said to Ollonsun, and reached out to shake his hand. He took a chance and shook it. “I’m Gaby Nagata, Mr. Ollonsun. Come on in.” Ollonsun’s two guides stepped aside so he could enter, and Stacey touched his upper arm and said, “We’ll wait out here.”
The room was large, with Gaby Nagata’s desk and two others, but nobody was in them. Ms. Nagata dragged a chair up to the large desk, and said, “Have a seat,” then went behind it and took a large folder from the left corner, slid it in front of him, and opened it. The printed forms inside were facing him. Still smiling, she leaned across the large desk and pointed to the first horizontal line at the midpoint of the first form marked with a red X. “Sign here,” she pointed to the next, “here,” the bottom, “and here.”
“What am I signing?” he asked.
“This one is to claim your bonus package,” she said. “You’re welcome to take your time reading it. I can leave you alone here while you do it, but there are a lot of pages that need to be signed, so it may take a while, and I understand they’re waiting for you upstairs.”
“Let me just take a minute or two to scan through it.” He looked at the top page and realized that the pages were separation papers. The bonus she’d mentioned was a severance package. He leafed through the papers quickly. He would get an extension of two years of his health insurance, including for his dependents. His pension accumulation would be removed from the Great Oceana account and made over to him in a lump payment, with a warning that it needed to be reinvested promptly in another retirement plan or be treated by the IRS as income. This added to his shock. They didn’t even want him as a client.
He glanced at Gaby Nagata. She was staring into his eyes, and her smile had disappeared. He looked down again to check the last few pages. His last day of employment was filled in, and it was today. There was a page that tallied up the amount of his final paycheck, which would be mailed to him on payday. Then there was a long list of things he was responsible for returning: his company ID card, keys, parking pass, any company-owned electronic equipment, and other miscellaneous company property.
The final page, which was to be dated and witnessed, was a long paragraph stating that he understood that he was no longer an employee of Great Oceana Vested Corporation, and agreed never to present himself to any person as such in the future, or to state or imply that he was in possession of any company financial or investment information, all of which was to be considered proprietary, or that he was engaged in any official or unofficial relationship or connection with any employee of the company.
He looked at her again. “Two years’ health insurance? That’s nothing. It will go by in a flash.”
She said, “It will go by in two years.”
“You know what I mean. All of this is incredibly harsh.”
Gaby Nagata studied him. “I don’t really know anything about your individual situation. Those are the standard forms that everybody needs to sign on retirement. If you think you can negotiate better terms based on your particular circumstances, fine. I wish you luck.”
“How often does that happen?”
“I’ve never seen it happen. If it does, they probably have Legal write a one-of-a-kind agreement, but I think they would send it here afterward so we could archive it.”
“So I may as well sign this, I suppose?”
“If you get a different agreement, presumably they’ll send it here to supersede this one. In the meantime, if you sign, you’ll be sure to at least get this bonus, the pension money, and so on.”
He took the pen she had used as a pointer and went from page to page signing his name or initialing various provisions. When he was finished, Ms. Nagata quickly used her fingertips to slide each page to the side until she had seen them all, then closed the folder over them. Then she stood and the smile returned. She said, “That’s all I’ll need. Good luck in your next position.”
“Thank you.” He walked to the door and went out to the waiting area, and saw Dennis and Stacey stand up from their chairs to join him.
They resumed their formation and the two men followed Stacey to another room, this one a small office inhabited by a man at a desk. He had a plastic tray on his desk, and he pushed it to the front so Ollonsun could reach it. He had a printed list. “Mr. Patrick Ollonsun. We’ll need your company ID.” When Ollonsun put it on the tray he checked it off his list and said, “Office keys.” When Ollonsun had disconnected them from his keychain and put them on the tray, he went down the list. When he had gone through the list, he handed the paper to Ollonsun and said, “Please note the paragraph at the top. “The items you didn’t have today must be returned by mail or messenger, or their cost will be deducted from your final paycheck.”
Ollonsun took the list, folded it and pocketed it, then followed Stacey out the door to the elevator. This time she pressed 20. When the elevator stopped and opened again, Stacey led them to a waiting area. Ollonsun had never been up here before. He had always imagined it as an opulent, old-fashioned place that was mostly silent, with polished woodwork and antique furniture preserved from the original offices. It was not that way at all. There were dozens of men and women moving from one office or conference room to another, sometimes outsiders carrying briefcases, called in from other places for some meeting or proposal or report, but most of them twentieth-floor dwellers. He could see that the proximity to the centers of power gave them a kind of electric energy so they moved faster and kept their eyes ahead.
After a short time one of the women on the concourse veered to their waiting area. “Hello,” she said, speaking only to Stacey Ramsdahl. “Is this Mr. Ollonsun?” Stacey said, “Yes.” She said, “Okay. Follow me.”
They followed her to one of the offices off the concourse, and all three of them followed her inside. The others sat and there was a free chair, so Ollonsun sat too. The woman said, “Mr. Ollonsun, I’m Hannah Soames, one of the senior attorneys in the Legal Division. Mr. Foshin, the head of Legal, assigned me to take this meeting with you. I assume you’ve been to Human Resources already, signed your exit papers, and so on.”
“Yes,” he said. “But I would like to discuss the terms on those papers.”
Hannah Soames stared at him as though he were a strange substance that she’d just noticed on the bottom of her shoe. She said to Stacey Ramsdahl and Dennis, “Give us a few minutes, please.” The two got up, glided out, and closed the door. When they were gone, she said, “What would you like to discuss?”
“In the first place, nobody came to let me know I was being let go, or talked to me about the size of my severance package, or how long I’d have health insurance for my family. All of these things are important. I don’t want to have to turn this over to my attorneys. I would have assumed we had room to bargain a bit.”
“Mr. Ollonsun,” she said, “I get the impression that you sincerely don’t understand what’s happening. The company has investigated and verified the accusation that you’ve been stealing from one of our clients.”
“Verified? That can’t be,” he said. “This isn’t about the Ellis account, is it? I saw that she’d made an inquiry, I looked into it, and found that nothing was missing. I reported that to the head of client services.”
“It’s time for you to drop the pretense. Legal didn’t just verify the Ellis complaint. Forensic accountants have looked into all your current clients’ accounts, found several other looted accounts without even going into the archive of closed accounts, minors’ trust accounts, etcetera, and realized that we had to come to an agreement with her attorney. We’ve paid her back and settled her lawsuit for three million dollars.”
“But—”
“The company will have to reimburse and settle with an unknown number of other current clients, and the heirs of deceased clients, and do a great deal of reorganizing and restructuring to catch people like you in the future before they steal twice. The reason we’re discussing any payment of any kind to you is that it’s been decided it will be better for Great Oceana to let you retire, sever any connection the company has with you, and set the situation in order with as little publicity as possible.”
“Okay, but there’s still the question of the numbers. If I’m cooperating and helping with the cover-up, that should be worth something.”
“Those are the numbers that would be appropriate for an employee at your level who is voluntarily retiring at your age.” She added, “Let me make this as clear as I can. The other choice wasn’t to negotiate what it would take to make you go away. It was to turn you over to federal law enforcement agencies along with the evidence of your crimes.”
“You’re threatening me?”
“On a personal note, I don’t like you, but because you are a human being, I will give you the very best advice I can. Take the money and run. In fact, do it now, before the bosses have second thoughts.”
Ollonsun stood up, turned around, and walked out the door.
Stacey Ramsdahl and her companion Dennis stood up from their seats in the waiting area and went with him. They ushered him to the elevator, to the parking level, to the car, and drove him to the building where he had worked for almost eighteen years. Dennis pulled up to the curb.
Stacey Ramsdahl said, “We’ll walk you to your car.”
Ollonsun said, “That won’t be necessary. I’ve got to go back upstairs and pack up the personal belongings I have in my office.”
She said, “Don’t go back up. They’ve already cleared out the room for you. That man who let us into your office is a locksmith and he’s changed the lock. Your personal things will be delivered to your home. You’ll probably have them by tomorrow afternoon.”
“I think I should check before I leave.”
She reached out and placed her hand on his arm. “It’s all meant to make things smooth and easy as possible for you. It’s done. There’s nothing up there anymore that belongs to you. Go home.”
Dennis was already out of the car opening the door for him, and in another two minutes Ollonsun was sitting behind the wheel of his own car staring out the windshield at the bright, hot street.