Cutting Out the Rotten Flesh
“You won’t let go? Do you even know who I am? I fed this company for ten years, you ungrateful bastards!”
The scream, sharp enough to split the eardrums, echoed down the third-floor corridor.
···Bang!
The heavy oak door flew open roughly.
Vernon Gruber, who had always carried himself with his hair slicked back in pomade and his chin lifted in smug arrogance, was being dragged out with both arms pinned by two burly private security men.
The lapels of his top-of-the-line Italian suit were half torn away and hanging off one shoulder, and on the floor lay the Cuban cigar he had treasured so much, now trampled into a filthy pulp.
“Let go! I said let go! I’m walking out on my own!”
Vernon tried to dig in his heels with his large frame, but he had no hope of overpowering the former football players who were hauling him along by brute force.
One by one, the employees who had been holding their breath behind the partitions began to peek out.
I stood at the center of that chaos, arms folded in front of Vernon’s office door, and looked down at him.
Every employee’s gaze snapped toward me at once.
The ink on the termination notice posted on the bulletin board the night before had barely dried before the execution had begun.
Vernon twisted his head and glared at me, frothing with rage.
“Hey, kid boss! How dare you treat me like this? This is illegal! I’ll sue you for wrongful termination! My lawyers won’t let this slide! I’ll bury you in Texas soil!”
“A lawsuit,” I said.
I walked toward him.
With a small gesture from me, the security men released Vernon for a moment.
Vernon panted hard and straightened his wrinkled clothes.
He still couldn’t meet my eyes.
“By all means. America is a free country. I can’t stop you from exercising the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.”
I lightly waved a thin envelope of documents in front of his face.
“But I’m afraid that complaint of yours should also include your ‘real’ extracurricular activities, the ones you didn’t put on the notice.”
“What?”
“For example... the payments for pipeline materials supplied in 1989 by a shell company your brother-in-law ran.”
Vernon’s face froze in an instant.
“You bought them at exactly 300 percent above market price. And where did the difference go? It was funneled into an account at a paper company in the Cayman Islands.”
“H-how the hell did you...”
“If you decide to dig, there’s not much you can’t turn up. I happen to have a little pull with the IRS, too. Ever heard of Special Team 1?”
“T-the IRS? S-special investigation team?”
The blood drained from Vernon’s face.
Before the takeover, I had Vito and Soren comb through this company’s finances from top to bottom.
The gap between the numbers in the books and the materials actually sitting on site, the nonexistent employee roster, the suspicious subcontracting contracts.
I had no hard proof, only a strong suspicion, but that didn’t matter.
I passed all of it, intact, to Alfie Solomons at the IRS.
The chairman himself blowing the whistle.
It sounded strange at first, but in this line of work it wasn’t all that rare.
New leaders had often teamed up with public authority to break internal cartels.
In 1985, Stanley Pace, the newly appointed CEO of General Dynamics, voluntarily reported defense contract corruption right after taking office and joined forces with the federal government to drive out the previous management.
That same year, the new leadership of Wall Street giant E.F. Hutton turned over some 2,000 counts of check fraud to the Department of Justice on their own and saved the company.
In 1977, when Lockheed’s overseas bribery scandal broke, the new management fully cooperated with the SEC and launched a sweeping internal cleanup.
My case was much the same.
It was a warning example to everyone who couldn’t accept a young Asian man at the top and had tucked all their corruption away behind closed doors.
So of course a hunter like Alfie Solomons wasn’t about to pass up a score like this.
He threw the maximum manpower he could spare at King Baboon Pipeline, and in the process I learned every last speck of fraud in the company—down to the tiniest irregularities I never could have found from inside.
Doesn’t matter. The back taxes can be paid. He’s the one who’ll take the fall.
Somewhere far beyond the depths of the ocean, they said, there lived shrimp that cleaned the bodies of fish for them.
The fish would go to where those shrimp lived and lie there quietly, and the shrimp would pick through their bodies, eating parasites and dead skin.
The fish got cleaned; the shrimp got a meal.
In other words, I was using the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a kind of cleaning shrimp.
I said calmly, “You registered fifty phantom employees and embezzled their payroll, you inflated material prices through your brother-in-law’s company and siphoned off the difference, and you used that money to buy a villa in Florida and park a yacht in the Caribbean. I know all of it. Now the IRS does too.”
“How... how did you...?”
“What changes even if you know I know?”
I smiled and adjusted Vernon’s tie.
“It’s fine if you want to sue me, but I’m worried you may not have the luxury. The IRS is trying to tear you to pieces.”
“H-huh!?”
“If you’ve got lawyer money to burn, go ahead and file that wrongful termination suit. You’ll lose anyway, of course. But first you’ll have to survive the IRS attack, and that already looks like more than you can handle. And yes, they’re going to seize assets too. Every dollar you pocketed illegally will have to be returned to this company.”
As he listened, the color in Vernon’s face drained away little by little until he was nearly white.
At last, he dropped to his knees in front of me.
“Chairman! Please, spare me! I’ll put everything back the way it was, so please, just don’t report me...”
“If you’d started with that, I might have considered it. You’re too late.”
Even if he had begged from the start, I still had no intention of letting him off. But I had to say it this way to truly turn the guts of men like that inside out.
Still sprawled on the floor, Vernon was dragged away by the security men.
I turned to face the office staff, who had frozen in place.
“······”
“······”
“······”
Dozens of eyes were fixed on me.
“Good afternoon. I’m Lee Sanha, president of Lee Energy Holdings. I apologize for the disturbance.”
I continued as if nothing had happened.
“The man who just left, along with his people, was a cancer eating away at your salaries and the company’s future. And as you can see, the surgery is now over.”
There was a stir among the employees.
I needed to give them a clear vision.
Then the office door opened and more than a dozen people came in.
They were veterans—led by operations team leader Liddle Hiddleston—who had all been unjustly fired, demoted, or passed over for promotion by Vernon.
Complex emotions lingered in their eyes.
Suspicion, uncertainty, and a faint, fragile hope.
Looking back at them, I said, “The company will be normalized from here on out. Your coworkers who were unfairly dismissed are coming back, and all of you will be paid what you’ve earned, no more and no less.”
For a moment, silence hung in the air.
And then.
Clap-
Someone started applauding.
Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap!
Soon the entire office was filled with thunderous applause, and cheers burst up from every corner.
The reinstated engineers were hugging their old colleagues.
***
The business world in Midland was a small one.
The news of the bloody purge at King Baboon Pipeline spread in an instant.
At first, concern came first.
...King Baboon Pipeline Services, which had grown alongside the 1950s Texas oil boom, was now facing the greatest upheaval in its forty-year history. On his first day in office, the new owner, Lee Energy Holdings president Lee Sanha, fired the entire management team, including CEO Vernon Gruber, and had private security escort them out of the office. Industry insiders voiced concern, calling it a rash decision by an inexperienced young owner...
But a few days later, when Lee Energy’s follow-up measures were announced, public opinion turned on a dime.
I hadn’t simply cut out the executives. I had also brought back, in full, the veteran engineers and geologists Vernon had driven out in the past.
...An unprecedented event had occurred in the Texas oil industry. Lee Energy Holdings president Lee Sanha had personally reported the financial corruption in King Baboon Pipeline Services, the company he had acquired, directly to the IRS and requested a special investigation. Industry insiders were stunned, saying, “It’s the first time we’ve ever seen a manager report the fraud in a company he just bought,” and it would go down as a model case of transparent management—the first of its kind in the industry...
...After two weeks of intensive investigation, IRS Criminal Investigation Special Team 1 indicted former CEO Vernon Gruber on twelve counts. The major charges were as follows: first, registering fifty nonexistent phantom employees and embezzling their payroll. Second, inflating the price of material deliveries by 300 percent through a shell company run by his brother-in-law, “Sun Tiger LLC,” and pocketing the difference. Third, transferring those funds into a paper company account in the Cayman Islands to evade taxes, and so on... Former CEO Gruber admitted to all charges during questioning, and he now faces a minimum of eight years in federal prison...
...During the IRS investigation, Lee Sanha immediately paid all of King Baboon’s overdue taxes uncovered in the process. His side stated, “Though these taxes were caused by the corruption of the previous management, we will take responsibility as the company’s new owner,” and added that “true growth is only possible on a clean ledger.” Industry observers concluded that King Baboon Pipeline Services had, for the first time in its forty-year history, achieved “full normalization.”
...Lee Energy Holdings reinstated every key employee who had been unjustly fired or demoted during Vernon Gruber’s tenure, including veteran engineers, geologists, and operations specialists, restoring them to their original positions or higher. Some of those reinstated reportedly said, “I’m finally back where I belong after three years,” with tears in their eyes. Industry insiders praised the move, calling the talents Vernon had driven out “legends of the Texas pipeline industry,” and said that “the lost technical expertise has finally returned.”
The rotten flesh had been cut away, and at last, fresh new growth had begun to rise in its place.
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