The Director by Paul Letersky

Author:Paul Letersky [Letersky, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I made my first mistake at the Cincinnati Field Office at 7:48 a.m. I remember the time so precisely because the time was the mistake.

Normal working hours were 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., but agents were expected to work roughly two hours of “voluntary overtime” (VOT) per day. Most agents actually worked far more overtime than that, on stakeouts or late-night meetings with informants or whatever, but this being the government, the overtime had to be strictly documented. To make that easier, by informal agreement the first agent to arrive at the field office was supposed to write “6:03 a.m.” on the sign-in register, no matter what the actual time of day was. Then when each agent came in, he would sign in with two or three minutes added to that time—“6:05 a.m.,” “6:08 a.m.,” “6:11 a.m.,” and so on—again no matter what their actual arrival time was. That way all the agents could “document” an hour or two hours of VOT. This was how it worked in every field office, and everybody knew it.

I said that everybody in the Bureau knew how it worked, but I should have said everybody except for brand-new agents like me. Nobody ever mentioned this in New Agents Training since technically it involved the falsification of a government document. No, not technically; it was falsification of a government document, albeit for a sound practical reason.

Anyway, when I came in that first day, I checked my watch and wrote “7:48 a.m.” on the sign-in sheet. And then every agent who came in after me looked at the sheet and said, “Goddamnit!” or “What the hell?” or something along those lines. Obviously they couldn’t write down “6:10 a.m.” for their arrival time when the guy whose name appeared above their names indicated he had arrived at 7:48 a.m. Even though the goons from the Inspection Division knew how the sign-in system worked and generally looked the other way—they had been street agents once, too—they wouldn’t be able to ignore that kind of discrepancy in the records. So unbeknownst to me I’d screwed my fellow agents out of their VOT for the day.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that explained the frosty looks as my supervisor introduced me to the members of my assigned squad in the Criminal Investigative section, and the way other agents were giving me the fish eye all day. Finally one of the older agents, one who had enough years in the Bureau to retire if necessary, took me aside.

“Hey, kid, let me explain how this works.…”

He was taking a chance. What if I refused to go along and complained that he was suborning me to falsify a government document? That could cause a stink that could blow all the way back to SOG. But they didn’t have to worry on that score. I quickly grasped the practical wisdom of the arrangement, apologized for screwing it up, and assured the veteran agent that it wouldn’t happen again—which it didn’t.

I’d passed the first test.

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