“It is. Didn’t Dale phone?”
“His secretary? Yeah, but to be honest, I thought you’d be better informed.”
“I know our mayor and district attorney are missing,” I said. “I know every local issue on the upcoming ballot, I get the newspaper, and my subscription to the Wall Street Journal is good for another six months.”
Bless him, he smiled.
“And I know you’ve got an accounting problem,” I said, showing off a little. I sat down in a leather chair, facing him.
“That I do, Mister, ah…?” He started rummaging on his desk for something.
“Angel. Mort Angel.”
He sat back. “Right, good, Mr. Angel.”
“Mort.”
“Right. Mort. I shouldn’t keep you here too long. Wouldn’t look right. Besides, there’s not an awful lot I can tell you. You’ll be posing as a new employee. In accounting.”
“Bottom-line problem, huh?”
He nodded. “Five, six months ago my gross dropped .6 percent. Like a rock. Doesn’t sound like much, I know, but—”
“But .6 percent of”—I did a quickie calculation, based on what I’d seen so far, and experience, which was considerable and might prove useful even if I didn’t want to admit it—“say, five million five, is…thirty-three thousand a year.”
“Close. Five million eight.”
“So, thirty-four eight. Are you sure it’s not a normal fluctuation?”
“I’ve been rock steady the past two years, percentage-wise, adjusted for the season. Then it dropped, stayed dropped. No reason for it that I could see.”
“So you think someone’s cooking the books?”
“It took me a while to come to that, but…yeah, that would be my guess.” He looked unhappy.
“But, you’ve got no proof?”
“No, just the sudden drop in gross.”
Which, as a small-business owner, would eventually find its way into Skulstad’s take-home pay. “Have you hired any new accountants lately?” I asked.
“Nope, although I lost one eight months back. Retired. Mike Anderson, head of the department. Good man. I didn’t replace him.”
Which might have opened a door of sorts.
“Now I’ve got three bean counters,” Skulstad went on. “All of ’em have been with me more than three years.”
“Thirty-five thousand is a fair amount of beans.”
He nodded, then ran fingers through graying hair. “You got that right. My margin on gross here is only three and a half, four percent. Point six percent is a lot.”
“So…which one of them is doing it?”
He gaped at me. “That’s what I want you to find out.”
“It wasn’t a legal question, Mr. Skulstad. It’s just between you and me. If you had to guess, which one would it be?”
“Well, Phil Galloway, if I had to pick one. But I wouldn’t want that to get out of this office.”
“It won’t. Which one of them is driving a new car?”
He gaped again, then smiled slowly. “Iris. Iris Kacsmaryk. Now, why didn’t I think of that?” He gave me a look that told me I was one damn fine detective. I didn’t tell him about K in my bed.
“Might not mean anything at all,” I said. “It’s just another place to look.”
He checked his watch, then stood. “I take it you know all about ledgers, computer spreadsheets, that kind of thing?”
“Christ, do I. I’ve seen goddamn quadruple books.”
“Well, I don’t. I’m into the buying end of it. And quality. Means I do a lot of traveling and evaluating. I have to trust my staff. The money end…Mike used to handle that. I can’t do it all. But I’m not a fool, Mr. Angel. Someone’s got their hand in my pocket here. Or maybe I’m getting old.”
“So I’m the new accountant?”
“If you want to work it that way. I didn’t know how you’d want to do it. I’ve been telling ’em I was thinking about hiring another person, just in case. Betty is the department head now. She’s been with me going on twenty years.”
I shrugged. “We can do it that way, sure. No problem. But if I ask for time off, I’ll want it, no questions asked, even from this Betty. I might need to do some outside surveillance, and I can’t do it sitting at a desk. I want to be all set to go when your people get off work.”
“I understand,” Skulstad said. “I’ll let Betty know you might need personal time off for a while, until you get settled in.” He put a hand on the doorknob, then paused. “I don’t want to fire anyone, Mr. Angel. I only want it to stop.”
“It’s like one big happy family here, huh?”
He smiled. “You understand, then?”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. Some families need a dose of tough love now and then.
Skulstad opened the door and ushered me into the anteroom, into Rachel’s presence again. For her benefit, he shook my hand and said, “Rachel will take care of you, Mr. Angel. It’s good to have you on the team.” He went back into his office and closed the door.
I smiled at Rachel. “Take care of me.”
She handed me a sheaf of papers. “Fill these out, please.”
Another sonofabitching set of W-4s, 401(k), insurance. I couldn’t believe it. “You’ve gotta be kidding,” I said.
She stared at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Christ, not again.” I glared at the paperwork.
“Again?” she echoed.
Okay, so that wasn’t terribly swift of me. It’s just that I saw my future flash before my eyes, and it was an entire vaudeville act of filling out W-4s and 401(k) shit, no offense to Greg.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You can fill them out in there.” She aimed a wine-colored nail at an empty room.
I went, emerged twenty minutes later a tiny bit angrier than when I went in. Rachel smiled as I handed back the paperwork that’s killing this country, so I returned the smile and said, “How would you like to have dinner?”
“I almost always have dinner, thanks.”
Sharp. “I mean, with me.”
“No, thank you.”
“Wine? Reno’s finest pasta?”
“And where might that be?”
“Olive Garden?”
“Not even close.”
“Pasta Maniacs?”
“They closed ten years ago. I see you’re right on top of things, pasta-wise. And, my ‘no’ was generic, Mr. Angel.”
“Mort.
