The fraud is the mechanism. The racial targeting is the methodology. The real estate development is the payoff." She looked at both of them. This is not one man.
Gerald Pruitt is the operational center of this based on what I'm seeing, but a scheme this sustained, this financially sophisticated, with this level of audit protection, he had partners inside the company and almost certainly outside it. The board, Marcus said. Patricia looked at him. I don't know yet. Possibly some members.
Possibly none. It's entirely feasible that the board was kept in the dark through the same falsified reporting that fooled the city oversight committee. She turned back to Evelyn. Which board members have the closest relationship with Gerald Pruitt? Evelyn thought for a moment.
Raymond Holt, she said. He's been on the board for 9 years. He and Gerald have known each other since before I promoted Gerald. They golf together. Their families socialize.
Patricia wrote the name down. Anyone else? Sandra Weiss, Evelyn said. She chairs the finance subcommittee. She's the one who signs off on the annual audit reports.
Patricia looked up from her notepad. Sandra Weiss signed the audits. Yes, every year. Yes, Patricia set her pen down. She looked at Marcus.
He looked back at her. Something passed between them that Evelyn didn't fully understand but felt the particular communication of two people who have spent years watching institutions fail at exactly this kind of accountability and are now calculating whether this time will be different. Ms. Brooks, Patricia said, I have to ask you something directly and I need a direct answer. Ask it, Evelyn said.
Were you aware of any part of this? Patricia said. At any point, in any form. Were you ever told anything, shown anything, given any indication that caused you to look away or ask fewer questions than you should have? The question sat in the air like something with mass.
Evelyn was quiet for a moment. Marcus watched her. He'd wondered this himself, not in the accusatory way, but in the necessary way, the way you have to wonder it if you're going to trust anything that follows. "No," Evelyn said, "but I have to be honest about what that means. I didn't know because I didn't look hard enough, because Gerald ran operations and I trusted Gerald, and I spent the last 4 years focused on growth and acquisition and external partnerships, and I let the program run itself because it was performing on paper and I didn't ask enough questions about whether the paper reflected reality."
She looked at Patricia steadily. "I am not a victim in this. I am a person who had authority and didn't exercise it carefully enough, and those are not the same thing." Patricia looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded, not warmly, but with the particular respect of a woman who has sat across from a lot of powerful people over 22 years and learned to distinguish between the ones who are performing accountability and the ones who are sorrily standing inside it.