A SILENT SONG ESSAY QUESTION
People who make their money through questionable means live in constant fear of being exposed and therefore try very hard to keep their dealings secret. Write an essay to support this statement citing illustrations from Kevin Baldeosingh’s Cheque Mate.

Some people are constantly worried about what they do in darkness being brought to light. When the things they do in secret are revealed in public they may be embarrassed or be in trouble so they go to great lengths to hide their misdeeds as in the case of Sukiya and Randall in Kelvin Baldeosingh’s Cheque Mate.

Since Sukiya is hell bent on keeping her huge income secret, she deliberately avoids going to the bank branch where she has her savings account because the staff there would be too familiar with her business. She chooses a special queue for platinum credit card holders that only has three people. There are only two people behind her and they are not close enough to hear her conversation with the teller. She does all this trying to keep her huge earnings a secret because of the fear of being exposed.

Also, she decides that she would not deal with any bank managers directly. Ever since she was appointed corporate secretary, she got a tenfold salary raise. She became among the country’s one percent highest income earners. Every 28th day of the month, fifty thousand dollars went automatically into her savings account. Her savings account had over seven million dollars. Although she has been working for fifteen years, she became corporate secretary only six years ago. As an in-house lawyer for Randall’s company, her savings never crossed ten thousand dollars. Now she deposits five times that amount every month in that same account, which she opened when she was eighteen years old working as a store clerk. That is why she decides never to deal personally with bank managers as most new customers in her income bracket do. A bank manager could make an educated guess and find an anomaly in her earnings. Someone who earns fifty thousand a month accumulating seven million dollars in only six years is something that would raise eyebrows.

Sukiya is worried that the bank teller may get suspicious when she takes back her cheque of five million dollars, which is a substantial amount. The teller seemed like a sensible woman and everything about her, including the black wire frames of her spectacles and her stocky figure in her grey bank uniform seemed sensible. But she was not making any sense, when she asks if Sukiya wanted to deposit the thirty million dollars, in her savings account. Sukiya thinks that ordinary tellers know little about how rich people conduct their business. But today she feels a flutter in her stomach. She is nervous because she was about to deposit a cheque of five million US dollars which is equivalent to 30,242,000 Trinidad and Tobago dollars. When the teller gestures with the cheque Sukiya almost flinches. Aghast at her own carelessness she barely hears as the teller explains about US dollar accounts. Sukiya is worried because her boss would be furious if her error exposed him to a legal investigation or a public embarrassment. This is a mistake she could not have made 16 years ago when she was a 25 year old attorney fresh out of law school or seven years ago when she completed a degree in accounting. She had never made such a mistake before and she never makes mistakes. She is thus worried that the teller may get suspicious if she took back the cheque. She does everything to keep her income secret.

Sukiya has to keep some of her money in offshore accounts for the fear of being exposed to the authorities. She could not deposit the five million dollars into her local account. All her cheques go to the Cayman islands account which she uses to invest and pay mortgages on her London flat. When Randall inherited his company, electronic banking was not standard. He had also watched many movies where accounts of businessmen had been cleaned out by unrealistically cunning criminals who hacked into them. So he preferred payments in paper. He insisted on paying Sukiya for her extra duties involving foreign firms with US cheques. Every two months she had to fly from Trinidad to the Grand Caymans to deposit the cheques into her account there. She does this to keep her large earnings a secret. She is worried about being exposed if she banks the money in her local bank accounts.

In order to keep her secrets safe, the maids are not allowed inside Sukiya’s study even when she is present. It always remains locked. Although she is not as paranoid as Randall, Sukiya’s desktop computer does not have internet access. For that, she uses her laptop, netbook or iPhone. The computer also has more than one layer of password for foolproof protection. On the computer, she checks her accounts over the past year and compares them with the recent transactions with the cheques laid out in front of her. Everything matches except for the five million. She does all this hoping she has not made any mistake because the mistake may expose her or her boss and this would make her boss furious in case it leads to legal investigations or public embarrassment. Sukiya does everything to keep the dealings of her company and their incomes secret.

Sukiya plans her strategy to help protect herself from the prying eyes of investigators. She arrives for the meeting with Randall at 1:15 and waits in her Q7 since she does not want to be kept waiting because that would put her in a position of weakness. She also does not want to arrive late since Randall insists on punctuality. She waits until 1.25 o’clock and takes the elevator to the top floor and walks into Randall’s outer office at exactly 1.29 o’clock.

In order to keep his secrets safe, Randall maintains his old secretary for very long time. This is because she knows more about his dealings than anybody else at the company. Margaret was Randall’s secretary even before he inherited the company. She has no formal skills except typing and shorthand. That notwithstanding, she is Randall’s executive assistant. What’s more? She even has her own secretary to deal with routine duties. Her office is bigger than Sukiya’s. She is paid more than most managers in the company’s subsidiaries. This is because she knows more about Randall’s dealings than anyone else in the company including Sukiya herself. Randall goes to great lengths to prevent his secrets from leaking to the public eye or the prying eyes of the authorities or investigators.

Randall tries to avoid prosecution by forging his own signature using Sukiya’s pen. He gives Sukiya a cheque of five million U.S. dollars which he says, on the books is her fee for writing the methanol deal but off the books, it is her fee for keeping her mouth shut about the methanol deal. Randall influences Sukiya to write a valuation report for the shares in which the contract undervalues the shares by fifty percent. He knows that Sukiya signs documents without reading them properly. Because of the undervaluation, the Chinese offer him a huge kickback. Feeling victorious, Randall smiles. Sukiya is more nervous than she was at the bank and now she feels as though her stomach is a cold, tight ball. Her mouth has gone dry. Randall uses different signatures to sign off the cheques. He does this to make it appear like someone had access to blank cheques and forged his signature. He even uses Sukiya’s pen, a Tibaldi rollerball, to make it appear like Sukiya had forged his signature. He tries to betray Sukiya in order to protect himself. He knows that the universe is collapsing and its masters cannot hold. The company will be bankrupt in three months. He thinks that there’s going to be a worldwide financial crisis before the year is finished. He laughs when he realizes that Sukiya does not pay attention to the world. He wants to avoid prosecution since he knows that when push comes to shove and the storm breaks he will be in its eye. His strategy is to avoid prosecution by ensuring that none of the documents the authorities will come for implicate him. He is the boss but there will be nothing to hold him accountable and that makes a crucial difference. Randall goes to great lengths to conceal his financial transgressions.

In order to protect herself, Sukiya ensures that she records Randall’s voice which incriminates him. She knows that if the company goes down, it will affect many people who have taken a life insurance with them. That will affect the votes and therefore the government would hire American forensic auditors or even the British QC to prosecute the case. She sheds tears and tells Randall that she has always been loyal to him to which he quickly replies that she was certainly paid enough to be loyal. She asks if he can help her. Randall tells her to approach him and kneel. Sukiya peers at her iPhone and presses some buttons. Randall’s voice is heard distinctly. He shoots up from his chair. He has the expression of a vengeful god. He stands there as if held by invincible chains. His breathing is heavy. Sukiya tells him not to worry as they will face the coming storm together. Sukiya does this in a bid to protect herself and keep her secrets safe.

In conclusion, people go to great lengths to keep embarrassing or illicit details of their lives hidden from the public eye. However, this means they live their lives in fear and they have to keep watching over their shoulder to avoid the prying eye of the hawk-eyed investigators or embarrassment from the general public.