I Take You (13 page)

So what motivates Peter A. Hoffman, certified public accountant?

Fear.

Fear and doughnuts.

He’s attacking a plate of them when I walk into the conference room at his resort. “Help yourself,” he says with his mouth full. “I ordered us some coffee, too.”

I sit down across from him. I pull out my binder and a legal pad and place them on the table. I take my laptop out of my bag.

“My family’s at the pool,” he tells me. “How long’s this gonna take?”

I uncap my pen. “Most of the morning.”

“The whole morning?” he whines. “Why?”

I set my pen down and regard him for a moment. He’s a squat man with a balding buzz cut and doughy cheeks. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt sprinkled with powdered sugar.

“Mr. Hoffman. Pete. Your employer, my firm’s client, EnerGreen Energy, is the defendant in a lawsuit. A multibillion-dollar lawsuit. You are aware of this, correct?”

“EnerGreen Energy isn’t my employer per se,” he says. “I work for a subsidiary.”

“Fine. But you know that there’s a case arising from the collapse of the Deepwater Discovery oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago. You know that the plaintiffs—residents of the coastline of Louisiana and Mississippi—are seeking twenty billion dollars in damages from EnerGreen for injury to the environment, loss of tourism, medical expenses, loss of their livelihoods. Right?”

“Of course,” he says.

“Good,” I say. “Right now, we’re in what’s called the discovery phase of the lawsuit, when the parties gather information from each other. The plaintiffs are looking for evidence to prove their claims, and we, EnerGreen, are looking for evidence we can use to defend ourselves.
The plaintiffs asked EnerGreen for a lot of documents, some of which we gave them. Now they want to ask questions of the people they think may have knowledge of the matters in dispute.”

“Right,” Pete says. “Like an interview.”

“Pete,” I say sharply. “This is not just some interview. This is legally binding testimony. You’re going to be sworn in by an officer of the court. That means that if you do not tell the truth, you’re committing perjury. You could go to jail.”

At last he looks worried.

“The plaintiffs’ lawyer is going to ask you questions. He’s not Matt Lauer. He’s not Jon Stewart. He’s a trained interrogator who’s going to wring as much information out of you as he possibly can. He’s also going to try to make you look like a bad guy. Like a liar and a scumbag. He’s going to make you out to be a key player in the worst environmental disaster ever to hit the Gulf of Mexico.”

He’s gone pale. “I’m an accountant! I had nothing to do with the spill!”

“He doesn’t care, Pete! His job is to make you look bad. During the deposition, the plaintiffs’ lawyer can ask you whatever he wants. There’s no judge there to stop him. The attorney defending you can object, but that’s a legal formality—it doesn’t stop the questions. Unless the plaintiffs ask about something privileged—communications between you and your lawyer—you have to answer.”

Over the top? Sure. But it’s doing the trick. His forehead is gleaming.

“Now you, Pete, are in a particularly awkward position,” I continue. “The plaintiffs have gotten their hands on a few of your e-mails. Do you know which ones I’m talking about?”

He nods slowly, staring at me like a petrified gerbil.

“I’m here to help you, Pete. I’m going to guide you through everything, step by step. I’ll teach you how to listen to the questions, how to think about them, how to answer. If you pay attention and do exactly what I say, the deposition will go very well.”

I give him a wide smile. He smiles back. I stop smiling.

“But only if you work hard. If you give bad testimony? The case goes down in flames. EnerGreen loses, and it’s all your fault. Twenty billion dollars. That’s not loose change, even for the world’s third-largest energy
company. Imagine putting that on your résumé, Pete. Do you want EnerGreen to lose?”

“No, ma’am,” he whispers. Even the backs of his pudgy little hands are sweating now.

I smile at him again. “Good. Let’s get started.”

I begin with the mechanics. The stenographer will sit here, to your right. Speak slowly and clearly, so that she has time to catch everything.

The camera will be here. When you speak, look into the camera, not at the attorney asking you questions. He will be to your left.

“Your attorney will be sitting next to the stenographer,” I say. “His name is Philip Gardiner. Philip will be defending EnerGreen during the deposition on Friday. He’ll object to questions and make sure you understand what’s going on. He’s there to help you.”

“Okay,” Pete says.

“If you don’t understand a question, say so. Ask for it to be rephrased or repeated. The last thing I want you doing is guessing at what the plaintiffs’ lawyer is trying to ask.”

He picks out another doughnut. “Okay.”

We run through some practice questions and answers, starting with the preliminaries: his education, his work history, the general duties of accountants, his job at EnerGreen. He’s stiff and awkward at first, but slowly gets more comfortable.

“I’m going to let you in on a secret, Pete. There is one simple rule to acing a deposition. Learn it, and this thing is in the bag. Are you ready?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Here’s the rule. Listen to the question, and answer
only
that question.”

“Those’re two rules,” he says.

“It’s one rule. With two subparts.”

“You should call it two rules,” he says. “Easier to remember that way.”

He reaches for another doughnut. I slap his hand away. He jumps in his chair and looks at me with startled eyes.

“I need you to focus here, Pete. What I’m saying is important. In order to answer the question correctly, you have to understand the question. You don’t want to answer a question that hasn’t been asked of you, do you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Right!” I say. “
Never
say anything beyond the bounds of what the questioner posed to you.”

“Can I have a doughnut now?”

“No. We’re going to do an exercise. Remember the rule,” I say. “Listen to the question and answer only that question.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He pauses. “Was that the exercise?”

“No. This is it. Do you know what time it is, Pete?”

He checks his watch. “Ten forty-five.”

“Wrong,” I say.

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s ten forty-three.”

“The answer is ‘yes’!” I shout. “The answer to the question, ‘Do you know what time it is?’ is ‘Yes’!”

“What if I’m not wearing a watch?” he whispers.

I put my head in my hands. “Let’s take a break.”

Pete scuttles out of the room. I text Will:

—get yr tuxedo?

—I just picked it up.

—try it on for me later?

—Bad luck!

—fine. just bowtie

Will doesn’t answer. When Pete comes back, I remove the e-mails from my binder and place them in front of him. “Do you recognize these documents, Pete?”

He glances at them quickly. “I know those e-mails. I wrote ‘em.”

“Do you remember sending them?”

“Yes’m, I do.”

“You are telling me, Mr. Hoffman, that you have a specific, clear recollection of sending these e-mails. You remember,” I bore deeply into his droopy little eyes, “sitting down at your desk one morning, turning to your crumb-strewn keyboard and typing each and every one of these words?”

“My keyboard’s not—”

“Under
oath
,” I continue relentlessly, “under penalty of
perjury
, you are testifying here today that you recognize both of these e-mails, word for word, that you remember the date, the hour, the minute, the
second
your index finger hit ‘send’?”

He looks frozen. “No?”

“Okay!” I say. “So you don’t specifically remember sending these e-mails?”

He grins. “Sure I do!”

For once I’m glad I won’t be defending this deposition. As second chair, all I’ll have to do is keep an eye on the running transcript and hand Philip the occasional document. Watching how he deals with this yahoo will be good experience, at least.

“Let’s talk about what you actually wrote here, Pete. What did you mean when you said that you were going to give certain figures a, quote, good old scrub-a-dub, end quote?”

“That’s an accounting term,” he tells me.

“‘Scrub-a-dub’ is an accounting term?”

“Scrubbing numbers, massaging numbers.” He waves a dismissive hand. “It’s standard CPA terminology.”

“Is ‘It’s kind of a scam’ standard accounting terminology, too?”

“Sure.”

“What does it mean?”

“You know,” he says, “that something’s a little off. A little fishy. Not quite right.”

I stare at him for a moment. “Pete? That’s what ‘It’s kind of a scam’ means in non-accounting terminology, too.”

“Oh yeah,” he chuckles. “Right.”

I grip my pen tightly. “You need to avoid using that sort of language during your deposition. The plaintiffs want sound bites, pithy little quotes that they can put in a brief, or cite in their opening arguments, or plaster across the Internet to make EnerGreen look bad. Don’t oblige them. If you find yourself about to give an answer that uses the word ‘scrub,’ or ‘massage,’ or ‘scam,’ or ‘creative accounting,’ or ‘fraud,’ or anything that those of us here in the
real world
consider negative, just—don’t say it, okay?”

He looks chastened. “I’ll try.”

I drill him on the e-mails for a long time. I finally get him to a place where he can testify that what he wrote was a combination of imprecise wording, wonky CPA talk and playful irony. That the other accountants he was e-mailing would have understood that he wasn’t actually suggesting that they commit fraud, lie to their auditors or hide anything from anybody. It’s not great, but it’s the best I can do.

We take another break, and I check my phone. I have a new e-mail.

This is my mother’s signature style. The woman changes the oil in her own truck, can fix almost any mechanical object and has an encyclopedic knowledge of tropical hardwoods. But she punctuates like a modern poet.

I start composing a snarky reply, but I hesitate. Mom means well. She always means well. And I love her to pieces. She used to play with me for hours when I was little—get right down on the floor with my wooden blocks and dolls and dinosaurs, building fantastical structures, inventing whole worlds. But as I got older, she had a harder time dealing with me. Reasoning and argument were not her things. I could talk circles around her, tie her up in knots. She couldn’t discipline me for shit. Fortunately Gran was there to stop me from going totally off the rails. Until she couldn’t.

Why am I thinking about this now? I shake out of it and type a quick reply:

I toss my phone into my bag as Pete shuffles back into the room. It’s almost one. “Now, Pete,” I say, for what feels like the millionth time, “the plaintiffs allege that EnerGreen committed fraud in its financial statements by inflating the projected costs of the oil spill in order to hide losses racked up by the company’s energy trading subsidiary.”

“Yep,” Pete says confidently.

I stare at him hard. “What do you mean, ‘yep’?”

He suddenly looks super shifty. “I mean,” he says slowly, “that I understand that what you just contended, right there, is that which the plaintiffs also are themselves contending with.”

Jesus, this is painful. I remove a few more documents from my binder and spread them on the table. “Let’s talk about the financial statements, Pete. I’m going to pretend to be the plaintiffs’ lawyer, okay?”

“Yes’m.”

“Mr. Hoffman, do you recognize this document?”

“Yes’m.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“This is EnerGreen Energy, Inc.’s 2012 annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission,” he says.

“Would you please turn to page forty-five?”

“Yes’m.”

“Do you see at the top of the page, in Schedule 9, line 14, that the projected damages from the Deepwater Discovery oil spill are assessed at $55 billion?”

“Yes’m.”

I finally snap. “Enough with the goddamned yes’ms!”

He looks cowed. “Okay.”

“You’re killing me with the yes’ms, Pete.”

“Sorry.”

“I’d like to show you a different document,” I say, handing him another one. “This is the insurance claim that EnerGreen Energy filed with AIG, its primary accident insurer. Do you see that on page four, EnerGreen projects its total losses from the spill as only $25 billion?”

“Yes,” Pete says.

“Mr. Hoffman. How do you explain that while EnerGreen was telling the SEC and its shareholders that damages from the spill were going to be over $50 billion, it was telling its insurers that the losses were only going to be $25 billion?”