Chapter 3 - The Audit of Blood & Banknotes
My workshop is situated inside an old brick commercial laundry building in an industrial pocket of North Hollywood.
It smells of industrial solvent, curing platinum silicone, damp plaster, and dark roast espresso. To an outsider, it looks like the anatomical laboratory of a Victorian grave robber: rows of life-cast fiberglass busts line the steel shelving, severed polyurethane limbs hang from meat hooks near the spray booth, and bins of synthetic hair are sorted by shade and texture along the south wall.
To me, it was the only sanctuary on earth that made complete, mathematical sense.
If you mix component A with component B in a one-to-one ratio, the silicone cures. If you leave out the catalyst, it stays sticky, ruined, and toxic. Chemistry doesn't care about family loyalty. Physics doesn't guilt you into paying for its private school tuition.
I arrived at the studio at six-fifteen that evening.
My cheek had stopped bleeding, leaving a dark, plum-colored contusion about the size of a fifty-cent piece right over the bone, with a crescent-shaped scab where the glass had sliced the epidermis. I didn't clean it immediately. I sat at my steel fabrication desk, pulled up my banking portals across three twenty-seven-inch monitors, and dialed Arthur Sterling.
Arthur had been my business accountant and contract manager for nine years. He was seventy-one, had the bedside manner of an embalmer, and had spent four decades auditing production overages for major studios.
“Harriet,” Arthur answered on the second ring, his dry, raspy voice accompanied by the rustle of paper. “I saw the production disbursement from Universal clear this afternoon. Are we allocating the thirty percent to the tax reserve or the Vanguard index?”
“Arthur,” I said, leaning toward the microphone, “I need a forensic clawback. Tonight.”
A brief, heavy pause hung on the line.
“Which accounts?”
“All of them,” I replied. “Every single routing number that doesn't terminate in my personal corporate entity. The family plan. The secondary cards. The municipal autopays. Every dollar that leaves this office on the first and fifteenth of the month.”
Arthur let out a long, slow whistle through his teeth. “I’ve been waiting five years for this phone call, kid. Open your ledger. Let’s do some surgery.”
For the next three hours, the only sound in the dark workshop was the clicking of my mechanical keyboard and the steady, ruthless rhythm of Arthur’s voice over the speakerphone.
When you subsidize people gradually, you suffer from financial boiling-frog syndrome.
A hundred dollars here for a field trip.
Three hundred there for an emergency vet bill because Lauren’s labradoodle ate an entire box of vegan brownies.
Six hundred for a transmission repair on Lauren’s Subaru so she could drive to Nevada to film night-vision footage of military flares and call them Pleiadian scout ships.
When Arthur pulled the historical consolidation across the past seven years, the number that populated the bottom-right cell of the spreadsheet made the air leave my lungs like I’d taken a kick to the solar plexus.
$314,820.00.
Three hundred and fourteen thousand dollars.
That wasn't just disposable income. That was the down payment on the commercial building I was currently leasing. That was the emergency cushion for three independent film hiatuses. That was my early retirement, sitting inside Lauren’s designer shoe closet, Ruth’s manicured country club lawn, and Madison’s private horseback riding lessons.
“Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit,” Arthur said, his pen scratching against a pad. “The Verizon commercial account. You have seven lines on the tier-one unlimited corporate package.”
“Who holds the devices?”
“You have your primary line, your workshop tablet, and the studio security modem,” Arthur read. “Then you have Lauren Reynolds, Madison Reynolds, Ruth Reynolds, and a fourth secondary line labeled ‘Lauren Studio Production.’”
“Cut them,” I said.
“Immediately? Or at the end of the billing cycle?”
“Call them right now. Report the four external lines as terminated by the primary corporate guarantor. Suspend data, voice, and text roaming. If they want to keep their hardware, they can transfer the billing to their own social security numbers.”
“Done,” Arthur clicked his mouse. “Next: Chase Sapphire Preferred authorized users. You have two secondary cards issued under your master corporate line. One in the name of Lauren Reynolds, one in the name of Ruth Reynolds.”
“What are the current balances?”
“Lauren’s card carries three thousand four hundred dollars from this billing period alone,” Arthur said, scrolling through the line items. “Four hundred and twenty dollars at an organic day spa in Pasadena. Six hundred and eighty dollars at Sephora. And... interesting. A pending authorization from twelve minutes ago.”
I sat up straight in my chair. “Where?”
“Prime 112 Steakhouse, Beverly Hills,” Arthur read, a faint, wicked chuckle vibrating through the line. “Pre-authorization hold for one thousand two hundred dollars. Party of eight.”
I looked at the clock on my wall: 9:14 PM.
Lauren had gone anyway.
Even after the phone shattered on the floor, even after I walked out, even with my blood on her daughter's fingers, Lauren had gathered Madison, her friends, and probably Ruth, and marched into one of the most expensive steakhouses in Los Angeles County, fully confident that when the silver leather folder arrived at the table, Harriet’s corporate card would quietly swallow the debt.
“Kill the card, Arthur,” I whispered.
“The transaction hasn't finalized, Harriet. If I terminate the card right now, the terminal will decline the post-authorization batch.”
“I know,” I said. “Kill it.”
“Consider it vaporized,” Arthur replied. “What about the residential overhead?”
“Give me the breakdown.”
“You are currently paying the master property tax escrow for Ruth’s home in Glendale—nine thousand eight hundred dollars annually. You are also paying the monthly homeowners association fee of four hundred and ten dollars, the high-speed commercial fiber internet, and the municipal water and power accounts. The accounts are in Ruth’s name, but the automated debit draws directly from your auxiliary business checking.”
“Revoke the ACH authorizations,” I commanded. “Send formal written notice via certified courier to the Glendale Tax Assessor and the utility boards stating that as of midnight tonight, the third-party payor is permanently removed from the accounts.”
“And Lauren’s apartment?” Arthur asked, his voice turning deadly serious. “That’s the big one.”
I leaned back, closing my eyes, rubbing the bridge of my nose.
Lauren lived in a bright, airy two-bedroom townhouse in a gated complex in Burbank, five minutes from the Disney studios. She had told everyone at her sky-watching meetups that she bought it with the proceeds from her “independent media ventures.”
The truth was far uglier.
Three years ago, when Lauren was facing eviction from a moldy duplex in North Hollywood, Ruth had shown up at my studio in tears. She had sat on a stool beside a rotting zombie bust, wiped her eyes with a lace handkerchief, and told me that if Madison grew up in a bad neighborhood, her blood would be on my hands.
I had signed the master corporate lease under my production entity, Gorehound FX LLC, paying the three-thousand-two-hundred-dollar monthly rent directly from my operational overhead as a business deduction, while Lauren paid me “whatever she could spare” from her alien sticker sales.
Over thirty-six months, Lauren had spared exactly nine hundred dollars.
“The lease expires on November thirtieth,” Arthur reminded me. “The management company requires sixty days' notice for non-renewal. We are currently at forty-five days.”
“What’s the penalty for breaking the term early?”
“One month’s rent as a liquidation fee, plus forfeiture of the deposit,” Arthur said. “About six thousand dollars.”
“Draft the termination letter tonight, Arthur,” I said, opening my eyes. The studio was dark, save for the blue glare of the monitors reflecting off my bruised cheekbone. “Pay the liquidation fee from my personal checking. Notify the property manager that Gorehound FX is surrendering the keys on October thirty-first. Lauren has twenty-two days to find a new lease or pack her crystals into a U-Haul.”
“She’s going to come for your throat, Harriet,” Arthur warned quietly. “A parasite doesn't say thank you when you remove the host; it thrashes.”
“Let her thrash,” I said, clicking the mouse to log out of the Chase portal. “I’ve spent fifteen years designing monsters that chew through bone, Arthur. I’m not afraid of a woman whose only weapon is a ring light.”
I hung up the phone.
I sat in the dark for five minutes, listening to the hum of the ventilation fan.
Then, right at 9:28 PM, my personal phone began to ring.
The screen lit up: LAUREN.
I didn't answer.
Three seconds later, it went to voicemail.
Then it rang again: MOM.
Then a text notification chimed, followed by three more in rapid succession:
Lauren (9:29 PM):
HARRIET ANSWER YOUR PHONE RIGHT NOW
Lauren (9:30 PM):
THE CARD DECLINED. WE ARE SITTING AT THE TABLE. THE WAITER IS STANDING HERE WITH THE MANAGER. THIS IS ILLEGAL.
Lauren (9:31 PM):
May you like
HARRIET PICK UP THE PHONE! THEY ARE THREATENING TO CALL THE POLICE! RUTH IS HAVING A PANIC ATTACK!
I picked up my phone, switched it to Do Not Disturb, laid it face-down on the steel table, and walked into the supply room to mix a fresh batch of silicone.
