Charlie texted as I was waiting for the subway.
You going to show up today? I might give your chair away and then you’ll have to stand at your non-standing desk.
I typed a one-handed response.
On my way in. Don’t touch my chair.
He responded with a picture of my desk chair with a massive box on top of it. I couldn’t remember ordering anything.
Special delivery from ... New York Dept of Taxation and Finance?
I dropped my phone on the platform as my brain put it together. It had to be documents from the FOIA request. Was it possible my idea to help Sterling was actually going to work?
Oh shit! Guard that for me. There in twenty.
Chapter Twenty-One
“So what you’re saying is, I’m the reason you’re making partner. In fifteen years,” Charlie said triumphantly as he chewed the rim of his glasses.
“If I pull this off, yes.”
“Well DeFiore, I’m humbled that my daily slog was the source of your creative genius.”
I proudly held up the piece of paper I’d found after three hours of digging, my fingers covered in ink. “The smoking gun.”
Charlie clapped. “This job keeps getting sexier.”
I stared in disbelief at the yellow notepad covered in my left-handed scribble. “This piece of paper just gave me what I needed to dothismath equation.”
Charlie peered over the desk divider. “The work of a mad genius.”
I sank into my chair. “I killed thousands of brain cells trying to figure out the movie budgets without having to file a complaint. And each brain cell was worth it.”
“So you figured it out?”
“Lawyer 101. You can’t subpoena information or documents without filing a lawsuit. But we can’t file a lawsuit, because his case sucks. And the only way to scare them into settling is to prove weknowthe movie budgets were more than $5 million, because that’s the max he agreed to for each movie.”
“I see.”
“Enter Exhibit A. The New York State tax filing that the producers filed, claiming a thirty percent tax refund on the total budget of the film. And see this number here?”
He squinted. “Too small.”
“$3.6 million.That’s the refund they requested in the tax filing.” I held up the notepad. “And this is the sixth-grade math that tells me $3.6 million is thirty percent of$12 million. That’s sixty percent of his total investment in just one movie. Which was not the deal.”
He stood up. “Boom!”
“I would have never gotten the idea for the FOIA request if you hadn’t called me the other night to complain.”
“Glad my misery could be helpful.”
My cell phone vibrated somewhere under a stack of papers.
“Hey, Em,” I picked up, trying not to lose my train of thought.
“Hey. Can you meet me for lunch? Please say yes.”
I cradled the phone with my shoulder. “Is everything okay? You never leave the office to eat lunch,” I said suspiciously.
