Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(42)
He felt a hand start to shove him forward. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get in.” He bent down and slid into the seat. Nervously, he glanced at the figure a few feet away from him.
“Oscar, give us a few minutes so we can talk alone,” a voice commanded.
“Text when you need me,” Oscar replied before closing the door firmly.
At first Carter wasn’t sure who his fellow passenger was. But the voice confirmed it. Staring at him but not saying a word was Frederick Carlyle, Jr.
A few moments later Junior broke the silence. “Do you prefer to be addressed as Michael Carter or ‘Carter & Associates’?”
“Mr. Carlyle, if you give me a few minutes to explain—”
“Carter, I’m going to give you as much time as you need to explain why you and Dick Sherman stole twelve million dollars from my family’s company. If I’m not satisfied with your explanation, Oscar and I will personally escort you to police headquarters, where I will press charges against you. Allow me to caution you, Mr. Carter,” he said as he opened a manila folder on his lap. It was Carter’s personnel file. “I already know a great deal about you.”
Carter paused to consider his options. He could refuse to answer questions and just open the door and leave. That assumed the child locks were not in position. He pictured himself repeatedly yanking the door handle while Carlyle smugly stared at him. If he were able to get out of the car, would Oscar be there to greet him? He had an image of that huge hand around his throat lifting him off the ground. Was Carlyle bluffing about pressing charges? He had no idea.
“All right, Mr. Carlyle, I’m going to tell you the truth.”
“That would be very refreshing.”
Carter explained how Lauren Pomerantz had knocked on his door to share her story of being abused by Brad Matthews and how he had gone to Sherman with a plan to contain the situation. Only once did Junior interrupt.
“Who else knows about what happened to Pomerantz?”
This is a chess match, Carter thought to himself. The winner will be the one who can plan several moves ahead. When he told Junior about Pomerantz coming to his office, he had omitted the detail that she had gone to Junior first, but he didn’t do anything about it. Junior is probing to see if I know that, he thought. It won’t hurt to keep an ace up my sleeve for later. “As far as I know, Matthews obviously, Sherman, myself, and now you.”
“Go on. Tell me everything else.”
Carter spent the next fifteen minutes recounting the settlements reached, his progress on negotiations with other victims, and the Greenwich Country Club meeting with Matthews and Sherman.
“So you believe there are more women that we don’t know about?” Junior asked.
“I do. When I confronted Matthews and got him to name names, he conspicuously left out Meg Williamson. How many others he refused to admit to, at this time I don’t know.”
“My opinion of you has undergone a transformation, Mr. Carter. At first I thought you were a common thief, albeit a clever one. It’s not easy to make twelve million dollars fall through the cracks unnoticed, but you and Sherman succeeded in doing that.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Carlyle, if we were completely successful in doing that, you wouldn’t be here talking to me.”
“True,” Junior said with a grin. “Never mind how I found out. Here’s what I want you to do. Continue with your project. Keep me abreast of everything you’re doing. Who you’re negotiating with, settlements reached, potential new victims, I want to know everything.” He slipped him a piece of paper with a phone number and email address scrawled on it.
“Two more things, Carter. REL relies on a network of well-placed sources to help us get a jump on our competitors when pursuing stories. These individuals receive monetary honorariums for their efforts. I assume I can count on you to facilitate those transactions.”
“Of course,” Carter responded.
“And finally, I’ve had my eye on Dick Sherman for several years. I won’t bore you with the details, but he and Matthews have been using their positions at REL to illegally enrich themselves. I’m sure you wondered why Sherman so quickly approved your plan to save Matthews.”
“That did come as a bit of a surprise to me,” Carter said, knowing full well that it didn’t. He had assumed Sherman was being a loyal company man doing anything he could to preserve REL’s cash cow, Brad Matthews.
“A word of caution: you can’t trust Sherman as far as you can throw him. Not a word to Sherman or anyone else about our meeting today or our ongoing relationship. Have I made myself clear?”
“Crystal,” Carter said, repeating his favorite line from the military movie A Few Good Men.
“You’re free to go,” Junior said as he picked up his phone and began typing a text to Oscar.
45
Dick Sherman eased his Mercedes into his familiar parking space at the Greenwich train station. The slow burn that had been building inside him for weeks now felt like an inferno. I should have followed my initial instinct, he thought. At that first meeting I should have wrung Carter’s neck and thrown him in Long Island Sound.
Sherman was not accustomed to feeling awkward around people, particularly employees. If he didn’t like somebody, they’d have that person fired or make him (or her) so miserable that they’d quit on their own. Now when he saw Matthews in the hallways, there was no deference. After a quick, barely audible “hello,” the anchorman just kept going. Myers, he noticed, also went out of his way to avoid him. With the exception of staff meetings, he and the CEO had barely exchanged a word in the last month.