Chapter 3

Monday morning we were both up early. It was 5:00 AM and I was fixing breakfast while Erica showered and finished her packing. When she came into the kitchen, she smiled at me and she actually blushed a little.

"Did you sleep well?" I asked.

Erica kissed me and said, "I slept wonderfully."

"Coffee?"

"Yes, please... Oh, before I forget, here is the itinerary for my trip."

Erica handed me the one page document and I set it on the kitchen counter. I looked at Erica again and smiled. I was feeling better than I had at anytime since my problems first began a few months earlier. I am not sure why but I was sure that the love making the night before had something to do with it.

At 6:30 AM, Erica's taxi arrived and I carried her suitcase out for her. Before she got into the cab, Erica hugged and kissed me. "I love you. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Everything is going to be okay now."

"I know," I said. "I feel much better already. As a matter of fact as soon as you leave I am going to update my resume and start the job hunt. By the time you get home Friday I will have a new job."

I saw a tear on Erica's cheek as she leaned in to kiss me again and then she got into the taxi and left. I watched as the taxi turned the corner at the end of our street and disappeared from sight. I stood there for another moment and then turned to go back into the house.

As I entered the house, I had no idea of the turmoil that would face me over the next few days.

Feeling more positive about the future than I had in a couple of months, I poured myself a cup of coffee, picked up Erica's itinerary off the kitchen table and headed for my home office.

My plan was to dust off my resume and start sending it around and maybe even post it on Monster.com. I turned on my computer and as it booted up I looked over Erica's itinerary. Her flight to LA was at 9:05 AM that morning and she would arrive in LA at 1:30 PM Pacific time, 4:30 PM Eastern. She was staying at the Westin Bonaventure on South Figueroa Street in LA. Her return flight would leave LA on Friday at 2:17 PM Pacific time and arrived in Atlanta at 10:50 PM.

I was still looking at the itinerary when my computer finished its calisthenics and was ready for me to begin my work. I went to the 'My Documents' folder to get the most recent version of my resume. Several of the documents in this folder were work related and one of them was my last draft to the Clinton Products' proposal. Seeing that caused a pain in my chest. I felt myself sliding back into my depression but I forced myself to fight it. If I let that take over I would never accomplish what I needed to get done. I sat and stared at the Clinton Products file and suddenly I needed to know how I had messed that up. I thought about how hard I had worked on putting the proposal together. I had worked closely with George Harris and the rest of his team and there was never a hint from them that they might be in financial trouble. It occurred to me that things just didn't make sense. Clinton Products had just bought two other companies. How could they have done that if they were in financial trouble? I had to get to the bottom of this.

I looked at the clock and it was 7:50 AM. I picked up the phone and dialed.

"George Harris speaking."

"I was hoping you would be in early," I said.

"David? I am glad you called. I have wanted to talk to you."

That surprised me. "About what?" I asked.

"I got a call last week from a Mr. Nelson. He told me there was a small problem with the contract and that he was going to come out and see me next week to straighten it out," George said.

"Did he say what the problem was?"

"No. I asked him and he said he would rather talk about it face to face. I asked him why you didn't call me about the problem and he said that you were no longer working on the Clinton Products account. Can you tell me what in the hell is going on?"

"What can you tell me about a Wall Street Journal article that said Clinton Products was being investigated by the SEC for cooking your books and that you may have to file Chapter eleven?"

"That's old news. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Old news? It was only five weeks ago. That's what is holding up this deal.

"What are you talking about? That story was in the Journal over three years ago and it was a bogus investigation triggered by a former employee. He was angry about getting fired so he called the SEC and made some wild accusations about our bookkeeping. The SEC sent an investigator down here and he interviewed a few people and then the investigation was closed. There was a second article the following week that explained what happened. How could you have mistaken a three year old article for being only five weeks old?" George said.

"When I saw the copy of the article the date on it was 4/17/2002."

"All you had to do was call me and I could have cleared this up for you," he said. "I can't believe you would let a misunderstanding about a news story derail our contract."

"I would have called if I had been given the chance," I said. "I was fired before I could even try to find out what happened."

"Fired? They fired you because of this? What kind of Tinker Toy outfit do you work for?" George said. "Do you want me to call your boss and straighten him out?"

"No. I think I'll do that myself. There is more involved here than just this one contract. Will you do me a favor though?"

"Sure, what do you need?"

"Don't talk to anybody about this until I talk to you again. I'll call you tomorrow and we will get things straightened out."

"No problem. Just remember what I told you before. The only reason I was going to sign a contract with BDS was because of you. If you don't work there, they don't get my business."

"Thanks for the support, George. I'll call you tomorrow afternoon and I'll straighten this mess out."

After the call, I was feeling better about myself because I hadn't fucked up after all but I was also extremely angry. I finally had an answer to who was behind my problems. It was Bill Nelson who had been fucking me over. I still didn't know why. Why would he have dug up that old WSJ article and changed the date to make it look like it was recent? Was his plan to get me fired and if so, why?

This got me to thinking about the other problems I had been having. Could he have tampered with my other contracts? On a hunch I called the mailroom at BDS. "Mail Room, Jenson speaking."

"Morning, Tom. David Beckman here."

"Morning, David. I thought you left BDS."

"I did but I might be correcting that later today," I said. "Got a question for you."

"Okay, shoot."

"Over the last few months, has Bill Nelson ever come down to the mail room to pull any of my contracts before they got mailed out."

"Didn't have to," Tom said.

"What do you mean he didn't have to?"

"He didn't have to come down her to get your contracts. He sent us a memo a couple of months ago that said we were to bring him any outgoing mail that had your name in the return address," Tom said.

"Did he say why he wanted to see all of my outgoing mail?"

"No."

"Did he ever ask to have anyone else's mail brought up to him?"

"No. Is there a problem?"

"Yes. Didn't you think it was improper for him to ask to see my outgoing mail?"

"A little but what was I supposed to do?"

"You should have told me," I said. "Do you still have the memo Bill sent you? "Yes."

"Here's what I want you to do. I want you to put the memo into an envelope and hold it until I come pick it up," I said.

"I don't know if I should do that. After all you don't even work here anymore."

"Here's the deal... you give me that memo and I won't report you for tampering with my mail. That is illegal, you know."

"Shit, man, I was just doing what I was told," Tom said.

"Doing something because you were told to do it is no excuse when you know that it's wrong. So... are you going to give me that memo?"

"Yeah. I'll have it for you when you come in."

"Thanks, Tom."

As I put down the phone, I could feel the anger building. All this time I had mistakenly believed that once I dropped my contracts in the outgoing mail that they were safe but it turns out they weren't. Bill Nelson was getting my contracts out of the mailroom and editing them to make me look bad. His tampering with my contracts had cost me my job and had put a terrible strain on my marriage. He would have to pay for that.

I now knew what was done, how it was done and who did it but I still had no idea why Bill Nelson was trying to destroy me.

It was just after nine o'clock in the morning when I placed a call to Barry Schwartz.

"IBM, Barry Schwartz speaking. How can I help you?"

"Good morning, Barry. This is David Beckman. I'm not sure you remember me. We met out in San Jose in a Cisco class several months ago."

"Of course I remember you, David. It's funny that you're calling today. Alan and I were talking about you yesterday. We were talking about the night the three of us went into San Francisco and had dinner down on Fisherman's Wharf."

I had to laugh at the memory. "I would rather forget that night. You got me to play liars' poker and I ended up paying for all of our dinners."

"Well, I did pay for the drinks and they cost almost as much as the dinners. Alan is the one who got off easy that night," Barry said.

"As I remember, we stuck Alan for the check the next night," I said.

"Right... right. We did. So what can I do for you? You want to come to NYC?"

"Some day but right now I am just looking for some information. Did you know Bill Nelson? He used to work out of your office," I said.

"Yeah, I know Bill. He left here about ten months ago."

"Do you know why he left?" I asked.

"Off the record?"

"Absolutely."

"He was fired," Barry said.

"Fired? Why was he fired? Can you tell me?" I asked.

"I really don't know what happened. The guy was a real asshole and no one was sorry to see him go but I never heard exactly what happened. You might want to talk to Alan about that. Alan and Bill started together and were pretty good friends for a while. I think they even went to college together."

I spent another fifteen minutes talking to Barry and I promised him that Erica and I would come to New York for a visit and let him show us around.

When I called Alan I got his voice mail and his message said that he was on another call and would call back as soon as he was available. I left him a message asking him to call me. And then sat staring at my computer. I remember thinking while I waited for Alan to call me back that Erica's plane should have departed Atlanta about a half hour earlier. If everything went well I would have my job back before Erica got to her hotel in LA. She was going to be surprised to not only hear that I got my job back but that I was right all along. Someone had been messing with my contracts. The big shock would come when I told her that Bill Nelson was the one who had done it.

While I waited for Alan, I decided to find the WSJ article on Clinton Products. It took me nearly a half hour to find the article and I knew what I was looking for. It would have to have taken Bill a lot longer to find the article. I had to keep trying different combinations of search criteria until I finally got a hit. I found the article that Bill used and the date on the article was 4/17/1999. So all Bill did was to change the year to 2002. I copied the URL and began searching for the second article that George Harris said had been in the WSJ about five days later. I found the second article rather quickly by searching the WSJ by dates starting from 4/20/ 1999. The article was in the WSJ on 4/24/1999.

I had just recorded the URL for the second article when my phone rang.

"Holy shit, there really is a David Beckman. I was beginning to think that guy I met in San Jose was just a figment of my imagination. I figured if you were real I would have heard from you before now," Alan Binder said when I answered the phone.

"That works both ways Alan," I said.

"Yeah, you're right... It's good to hear from you anyway. I just saw Barry and he said that you would be calling and then there was your message on my voice mail. Barry said you had some questions about Bill Nelson?"

"I know he was a friend of yours so if you don't want to say anything that's okay," I said.

"He was a friend but he isn't anymore," Alan said. "He fucked me over a couple of times, but that just made me a member of a big club. Bill fucked over a lot of people." "Barry told me he got fired. Do you know why?"

"It's a complicated story but the bottom line is that Bill tried to get his manager fired but was caught when he forged a phony expense account."

"So his plan backfired on him?"

"Yep. Everyone knew that Bob Morgan, Bill's manager, would not have done the things that Bill tried to make it look like he had done. Once it was known that someone was trying to get Bob fired, it didn't talk long for them to catch Bill. They fired Bill on the spot and tried to keep the whole thing quiet. So why are you interested in my old friend?"

"Your old friend has been my boss for the last six months and he fucked me over and got me fired. So I am just getting some background information for when I go after him. So he fucked you over too? I thought you two were friends for a long time."

"We became friends while we were in sales training. Then we worked together for about three years which was longer than the friendship lasted," Alan said.

"I thought you were friends in college."

"I barely knew him at school. I think that we had two classes together at Binghamton. I didn't really get to know him until we started at IBM," Alan said.

"You both went to Binghamton?" I asked as I felt a knot developing in my stomach.

"Yeah. We both graduated December 92 and started with IBM in January 93."

"Did you know Erica Patterson?"

"I don't remember that name. Did she go to Binghamton?"

"Yes. Class of 1993," I said.

"I'll have to check my yearbook and see if I recognize her. How do you know her?"

"I married her," I said.

"Married a Binghamton alum... smart move."

"Alan, thanks for the information man."

"No problem, David. Come up and see us some time."

"I'll do that," I said.

After the call, I sat trying to gage the significance of Bill Nelson having been a student at Binghamton at the same time Erica was there. If Erica and Bill knew each other, neither of them ever mentioned it. When Erica and I ran into Bill and Diane at the mall, they didn't seem to know each other. I couldn't imagine any reason why Erica wouldn't tell me if she knew Bill at school.

I couldn't make anything out of the Binghamton connection other than it being a coincidence so I moved on. I had enough proof that Bill Nelson had intentionally misled Mike about the SEC investigation at Clinton products and that he also had the opportunity to make changes to my other contracts before they were sent out to my customers. What I still didn't know was why but I decided to act on the information I had and worry about why Bill did it later.

It was 12:15 PM when I arrived at the BDS mail room and picked up the envelope that Tom Jenson was holding for me. From there I walked up to Mike's office.

"Hi, Marci," I said.

"Hi, David. How are you? I feel so bad about what happened to you."

"I'm fine, Marci, thanks."

I could see Mike sitting in his office reading a magazine. Sometimes I wondered if he ever did any real work.

"Marci, do me a favor please and go tell Mike that I am here to see him," I said. "Tell him that I have important information for him about the Clinton Products' deal. Tell him if he refuses to talk to me it will be a very expensive mistake."

"Are you sure you want to do that?"

"Yes. Just try and make him understand that this is important."

Marci went into Mike's office and returned about five minutes later.

"Mike isn't very happy about your being here. He said that it sounded as though you were trying to threaten him. He said that you should leave or he will call security. He said that if you don't leave he will have you arrested. I'm sorry, David, but you know how he is."

"Thanks for trying, Marci."

That didn't go the way I had hoped. Actually I should have known better. Mike isn't the kind of guy that likes to be told that he is wrong or to admit it when it is proven. It shouldn't have surprised me that he refused to see me. Unfortunately there wasn't much I could do about that except to do everything in my power to make sure that BDS did not get the Clinton Products' contract.

On the drive home, I forced myself to stop thinking about getting revenge against BDS and concentrate on the bigger problem. What was I going to do about a job? I had promised Erica that morning that I would work on finding a job and hopefully have one before she got home on Friday. While I was thinking about my possibilities a question formed in my head. "What do I have to offer that would help me land a good job?"

The question changed the way I was thinking and then the solution came to me. I pulled over to the curb and got my cell phone out and called Jeff Henning.

"H and S Computers, Jeff Henning speaking."

"Jeff, it's David."

"Hey, David, what's up?"

"I am going to drive over to Augusta tomorrow to meet with you and your partner if you are available."

"What? You're not looking for a job, are you?"

"I have a business proposition for you and I think you'll be very interested."

"Can you give me a hint?" Jeff asked.

"Sorry, you'll have to wait till tomorrow. I'm still formulating the deal. See you in the morning."

I stopped at the store to pick up some groceries and got home around three o'clock. Erica's plane wasn't due to land for another hour and a half and it would be probably another hour and a half before she got checked into her hotel. I decided to spend the time working on the proposal I was going to give Jeff and his partner the next morning.

I managed to work on the proposal for about an hour before I started thinking about what Bill Nelson had done to me again. I was so angry I felt that I had to do something immediately to get some satisfaction. I wanted to play with him a little so I decided to call him and tell him that I suspected that the WSJ article about the SEC investigation of Clinton products was a mistake. I was going to tell him that I knew that they had been investigated three years earlier and that the article he had may have been referring to that investigation. Then I would ask him to set up a meeting with Mike so that we could all discuss the matter. I just wanted to see how he would react to that.

When I called Bill's office number, his voice mail message said that he was on vacation. I started looking for Bill's cell phone number on my cell phone. I found Bill's name and a number that I knew wasn't his office number and I made the call. I hoped I could at least ruin his vacation.

"Hello?" a female voice answered.

"Hello, Diane? This is David Beckman."

"Hi, David. Oh, David... Bill told me what happened at work. I am so sorry. I can't believe Mike wouldn't give you another chance."

"Don't worry about it, Diane. I am better off away from that company. I am sorry to disturb you but I thought I was calling Bill's cell phone," I said.

"You got our house phone. Bill is out of town but I can give you his cell phone number if you don't have it," Diane said.

"If you have it handy, I would like his cell number. Where is Bill?"

He had to go to a conference in Los Angeles."

I find it difficult to describe how I felt at that moment. There was a sudden tightness in my chest that made it difficult to breathe. It took an extreme effort for me to continue talking to Diane when all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and try to block out all thoughts of what I had just heard. I had to force air into my lungs so that I could speak.

"He's in Los Angeles?" I managed to ask.

"Yes."

"When did this come up?"

"He found out about the conference last Wednesday afternoon."

I was almost too afraid to ask the next question." Where is the conference?"

"It's at the Westin Bonaventure," she said. "Oh, here's Bill's cell phone number."

Diane gave me the number and I didn't bother to write it down.

"Actually I don't think I want to talk to him now, Diane," I said.

I suddenly had a horrible picture in my mind of Erica and Bill boarding the plane that morning and laughing about what a fool I was.

"When did Bill leave?" I asked.

"He had an early flight this morning. He called me about an hour ago from the hotel to tell me he had arrived," she said.

For some reason, that made me feel a little better just knowing that they weren't traveling together. My mind was already working on what I was going to do. I had no plan yet but I knew that I wanted to talk to Erica before Bill found out that Diane told me he was in LA.

"Do me a favor, Diane. If you talk to Bill again today, don't tell him I called."

"Why? I am sure he would want to talk to you," Diane said.

"Maybe but I am not ready to talk to Bill yet. I thought I was but now I am not so sure. I'm just not too sure of things right now. Please don't tell him I called. I'll call him later in the week when I am ready to talk."

"If that's what you want, I won't say a word."

"Thanks, Diane."

When I set the phone down, I felt all of the energy drain from my body. Just ten minutes earlier I was feeling good for the first time in months and I thought that I could finally see the light at the end of my tunnel. If I had only known that it was the light from an oncoming train, I would have been better prepared for what I learned from Diane. Could Erica really be having an affair with Bill Nelson?

Erica and Bill both attending college at SUNY Binghamton could have been a coincidence but both of them going to LA the same day and staying at the same hotel was not a coincidence. I had the last pieces of the puzzle that I had been trying to put together and I didn't like the picture that was being formed.

I sat for maybe ten minutes with random thoughts spinning through my mind. I was powerless to hold onto any one thought for more than a few seconds before another thought replaced it. Finally, with a great deal of effort, I was able to force myself to stand up and walk to the kitchen. I got my Maker's Mark out of the pantry and poured myself a double and then sat at the kitchen table and tried to get my head around what was happening to me.