Page 59 of Bullet
It was just after eight, and I was aware of the fact that I was slowly passing the time at which I’d typically be leaving my house and heading in, but I was early every single day. One later day wouldn’t hurt anything.
Or so I thought.
As the nine o’clock hour came and went, I started to get one call from the club right after the other. First Nick, then Seth, then Avery, then Bucky. I’d only been the VP for about a month, why was everyone all of a sudden ringing my phone off the hook? I reluctantly stood up and trudged back to my bedroom, prepared to get dressed and head to the bar as soon as possible so everyone would calm down, when I suddenly got a string of texts from Avery.
“Harry, if you get this, you need to call me ASAP.”
“Something is wrong with the books.”
“Nick thinks you stole some money. Well, a lot of money.”
“I need you to call me right away.”
I stood staring at my phone in shock. Did Seth forget to notate the check or something? I was just there yesterday, how did I all of a sudden come to be accused of stealing? Smacking the call button on Avery’s text feed and putting it on speaker, I ran around my room, finding anything to wear so I could leave and go to the club, and then Avery picked up.
“Hello?” He sounded frantic.
“Avery, what the fuck is going on?” I barked. “What do you mean Nick thinks I stole money?”
“The books are off. Really off. They aren’t saying much to anyone about it, but Nick’s on a fucking rampage around here, saying he made a mistake. You gotta get here and get this cleared up fast.”
“Okay, I’m on my way.”
The line went dead without me even saying goodbye and I finished getting dressed and made my way to the club as fast as I could get there. It was a particularly hot day in Hoppa, and between that and the anxiety I was suddenly feeling, I was drenched in sweat as I walked in.
Which even I had to admit, didn’t look good.
All of the members were sitting around the bar and all their gazes shot in my direction as I walked in. In all of their expressions, in a way that made me feel sick to my stomach, I could see that hint of consideration that I’d actually done what Nick was accusing me of. All except for Avery who jumped up and ran over.
“Hey.”
“Where’s Nick?” I asked.
“In the back with Dynamite. I’d be careful heading back there, man. Nicky’s blowin’ a stack.”
“I can’t believe he would just blindly think I was stealing without talking to me first,” I replied.
“That’s what we all said, that he needs to talk to you first. Just head on back, but keep your wits about you, and holler if you need some help.”
Some help? Did they all know something I didn’t know? Was I about to be bum-rushed by a man who wasn’t even going to give me a chance to defend myself, or was there some kind of damning evidence that already had them all convinced? It made no sense to linger in the front anymore, so I walked around the bar, through the swinging door, and back into the warehouse.
The tension in the room as soon as I entered was oppressive. Seth was sitting at the table with the books unfolded in front of him, and Nick was sitting in his regular spot, glaring back at me.
“Hey, Harry,” he greeted. “Come. Sit.”
“Nicky,” I said as I started over. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you know I would never steal from you.” I side-eyed Seth. Was he setting me up or something? Was his nice-guy act just a facade? “What’s going on?”
“Show him,” Nick said.
Seth turned the books to face me. He pointed to the column that had all the numbers in it from yesterday. “See anything wrong here?”
I scanned the numbers from all the different vendors, and the fifty-k check that we’d written out, and the bottom line showed a fifty-thousand dollar hit from the check we’d written, but that was it. “No?”
“Look again,” Seth said.
At that, I started to slowly add up all the numbers in the column. When I got to the bottom, before the fifty-k check, I was already fifty in the hole, but then the check made it a hundred k. “These numbers don’t add up,” I said. “There’s an extra fifty… missing.” I looked up at Nick and felt conflicted. I didn’t want to blame Seth for anything that wasn’t his fault either, but I still had to ask the honest question. “Why is an imbalance in the books that he’s handling lead you to believe thatI’mstealing?”
Seth flipped a bunch of pages of the book, taking it back to about a month and a half ago when I was still handling the books personally. He had a bunch of columns highlighted and I looked through them and saw that there was a similar issue. They all looked as if someone had reconciled the books, and then gone back after the fact to make it look like we had certain amounts under what we had. The bottom lines all had numbers that showed less than we had, almost as if someone was skimming off the top and fudging the numbers to match.
