Chapter 11
11
C harlie Warren was silent. He had remembered the bus from the first moment when fake agent Stamford had mentioned it. The bus had been a regular feature of his dreams for the past seventeen years—half his life.
He crafted a slight smile and said, “Why drag me here? What do you want?”
Stamford said, “That morning I was driving a busload of firefighters who had been fighting a wildfire in California to the state prison at Ely. When you were coming at me, I saw your face. My friend here was also on the bus, and he saw you too. For the first few years it was hard for us to find out who you were. We did learn your mother’s name.
“We were in prison, so we couldn’t do much on our own. But there was a guy there who had gotten really good at preparing appeals cases for other inmates. He had been a lawyer somewhere before he killed his wife and her boyfriend, and he kept busy by researching these cases and filing them. We asked him if he had a way to do research on people on the outside. It turned out he did, because he had to locate witnesses, solicit their testimony, and so on.”
Foltz said, “We had your mother’s name. He found her and pulled all the public records about her—the deed to the house she owned, her two marriage licenses, your father’s will, car registrations. And your name. We read the story about you in the LA Times online. You were twenty-six then, but you looked about the same, so we knew it was you. We had long sentences, and time can answer a lot of questions.”
Warren said, “How did you know my mother’s name, and why did you bother?”
Foltz said, “It started a few minutes after you went past us. Our bus was headed east, and we went right by the wrecked BMW. We stopped and backed up. The car’s engine was still hot, and the driver was stuck in the wreck with the air bag holding him there. We dragged him out, but he was dead. The other guys all got back in the bus, but I hung back. I turned the engine off and used the keys to see what was in the trunk. There was a fancy leather bag with clothes and a little cash money, but the big thing was a manila envelope. I opened it, and it was full of papers, the kind that companies used to report on investment accounts. The current accounts were all in a man’s name, but there were some withdrawal receipts that were from bank accounts in the names Linda Warren Stone and McKinley Stone, all cash. Stone wasn’t the name of the man that was on all the big investment stuff. That was all I had time to read, because the bus was filling up and we all knew we had to get to a phone and call the police before they came across us. I left everything except the envelope. That I shoved down the front of my pants and covered with my shirt. When I got the chance and could talk to my friend here, I told him what I had.”
Stamford said, “I stopped the bus at a restaurant and called the state police and told them who we were and that we’d found the wreck. We hid the envelope in a vent on the roof of the place.”
“On the roof?”
Foltz said, “Yeah. So it would be safe.”
“Years later I got out of prison, went back, and retrieved the papers. The envelope was greasy and sooty, but the papers inside were just fine. I waited for him to get out so we could do what we’d been planning for over fifteen years.”
“What was that?”
“Get the money,” Foltz said. “It was all in the name that wasn’t McKinley Stone. The envelope had his real identification—license, birth certificate, social security card, all the stuff people collect. The picture was McKinley Stone. We hired a guy to do a version of them that had a few old pictures of me on them.”
“Of course, it didn’t work,” Warren said. “It was subject to escheatment by the state.”
“That’s the word. Too much time had passed. All the banked money got confiscated by the states where the banks were, because they hadn’t heard from the owner for so long.”
“Legally it’s not confiscated,” said Warren, “just held. It also isn’t your money, and never was. And by the way, it would be pretty unlikely that a man who never touched any of his accounts in seventeen years isn’t dead, no matter whose picture is on his ID.”
“So we thought of you,” said Stamford. “What Stone took was your mother’s money.”
“That’s right,” Warren said.
“And we figured that since he had married her, he probably thought he could take the money without a legal problem, but then he ran out on her without getting a divorce. Since he died right after that, she’s his legal heir. Right, Your Honor?”
“That’s right,” Warren said. “Even if he hadn’t stolen it from her, whatever he had when he died goes to her in the absence of a will. That’s how it works in California law.”
“So now you know,” said Stamford.
“Right,” Warren said. “So now, I suppose you’re going to tell me why I should help you take my mother’s money.”
Stamford said, “The short answer is that this guy was really smart. We figured out from the papers in his car that he must have converted every withdrawal from her accounts into cash, converted that into bank accounts, and then used those to invest in new accounts with new companies. No single company handled both a withdrawal and a new investment. No match there. The amount withdrawn never matched the next purchase. They never happened within months of each other, so that didn’t match.
“The biggest thing is that the owner’s name didn’t match. McKinley Stone was an alias. At the end of the process, a man with a different name, social security number, license, and birth certificate, all of them real, opened a new account and invested some money. Nobody who looked for it found it. The reason is that nobody had the name. We have the name, and we have the papers.”
Warren starred at the two men. “So, what do you want?”
“We’ve been researching you, following your life for years. You’ve grown into a successful lawyer who is known for finding hidden stashes of money for clients. We also personally saw you as a teenager right after you killed the man who conned and robbed your mother. We know you’ve got a pair of balls on you. You’re somebody we want to be in business with.”
Foltz said, “We give you the information necessary to go get your mother’s money—the name, the identification, and all the papers. You and she get half the money. We get half. Simple.”
“What? No threats or anything? Fifty-fifty is unheard of for thieves. ‘Hands up. Give me half your money.’ That just doesn’t seem to happen much.”
“What?” Foltz said. “You want to haggle?”
“Actually, I have no interest. Offering half means you intend to kill my mother and me and take it all.”
“You must realize that we’re not even asking you to do anything illegal. But if you’re not on our side, we also can’t just take you back to your office and let you go.”
“The answer is still no,” he said.
“Get up. We want to show you something.”
They pulled the guns out of their shoulder holsters. Then each took one of Warren’s arms and pulled him to his feet. Foltz led the way to the short hallway and stopped at a door, then knocked loudly, unlocked the door, knocked again, and called, “Coming in.”
He pushed the door open. It was a bedroom with a single twin bed and plywood nailed over the windows. The light was turned on and there was a door to an attached bathroom. A woman came out of the bathroom carrying a hairbrush.
Warren said, “Mrs. Ellis. Are you hurt?”
She saw Warren and said, “Oh my God. You too?”
“Okay, you’ve seen her. Come on.” Foltz pushed Warren toward the door.
Warren said to her, “Don’t be afraid.” He looked at the others. “Give me a couple minutes to talk to her alone.” Stamford and Foltz went out, closed and relocked the door.
Warren whispered to her, “Go in the bathroom and lie in the tub with the door locked.”
He stepped to the door and waited while she went into the bathroom. When she was inside, he stood just to the side of the door to the hallway. He called, “All right.”
The door swung open and Foltz had one hand occupied with pulling the key out of the lock. Warren pivoted around the door, got his forearm under Foltz’s chin and squeezed his neck in a chokehold, then swung him around so Foltz was between him and Stamford.
Stamford danced from side to side with his pistol, but Warren kept Foltz between them. Stamford was angry. “How did you let him do that?” Foltz’s head was dragged back so he couldn’t speak or look down. Warren tightened his grip.
Warren said, “Toss the gun or I break his neck.”
Warren used the moment of distraction to snatch the gun out of Foltz’s shoulder holster and pointed it in Stamford’s direction. Stamford saw nothing he did was going to be in time to keep at least one of the two from being shot, so he dropped the gun.
Warren said, “Step away from it.”
Stamford did, then said, “Now what?”
“Sit on the couch.” As Stamford did, Warren pushed Foltz onto the couch with him. He aimed Foltz’s pistol at them as he squatted to pick up Stamford’s pistol.
Warren stood and held both pistols pointed downward. “I don’t plan on killing you, which I’ve been tempted to do for a few minutes.”
“What’s stopping you?” Foltz said.
“After I thought about your pitch, I got curious. My mother and I could have used that money that my father had saved—for my college and law school, and a lot of other things. We both had to start all over again. She spent the first few years working two jobs and another on weekends. I’ve been working ever since. A lot of times I’ve wondered who Mack Stone really was. I would like to find out for her. There’s also you. I know you’ve been planning to have that money for a long, long time. I also know you wouldn’t be bothering me or my innocent client if you didn’t need this. It’s what keeps you going. So here’s how this is going to work.”
“Wait a minute,” Foltz said. “Who put you in charge?”
“You did,” Warren said. “I listened to you. Now you listen to me. After that, you get to talk again. I want Vesper Ellis. You’re giving her to me, and you will give your word never to go near her again. In return, I’ll do my best to keep you out of jail for taking her. You will stop saying I killed Mack Stone. I did, but we aren’t going to get anywhere by incriminating each other. Agreed?’
Stamford said, “All right.” Foltz was silent until Warren lifted the muzzle of one pistol about an inch. Then he said, “Agreed.”
“When the time comes, you will give me all the papers and other information you have, including whatever you dug up on me and my family. If I persuade any state governments to give the money back or prevail in the court cases with the ones who resist, I will give you a fair cut.”
“Who’s to say what that is?” Stamford asked.
“The person most qualified to determine that is me,” Warren said. “Not only am I trained in the law, but I’ll be the one doing all the work, and the money is my mother’s.” He paused. “But I concede that the money would never have been found without your past dishonest efforts, and I’ll be mindful of that. I give my word that you will receive part of the money. We’ll call it a finder’s fee or consulting fee or something like that. We’ll report it to the IRS and you’ll pay taxes on it. In fact, I’ll have my firm do your taxes and file them. As of this afternoon you will not do anything that’s against the law. You’ll clean this house of all prints, remove the plywood, repair any other damage, and leave the property the way you found it. I advise you to do it fast, so the owner doesn’t show up with the police.”
“The owner is a bank,” Foltz said. “We could probably stay here for years before they ever send anybody to look at it. When prices hit the right level, they sell them in bunches to other companies.”
“Do it anyway,” Warren said. “I noticed you did a great job of cleaning Vesper Ellis’s house. The police didn’t find any prints or even DNA. This time don’t forget any phones.”
“All right,” Stamford said.
“One more thing,” Warren said. “Foltz was the woman the LA criminal court building is named after. Stamford is the nice town in Connecticut you drive through right after you leave New York. What are your real names?”
“Alvin Copes,” said the former Agent Stamford.
“Andrew Minkeagan,” said the former Agent Foltz.
“Don’t call me. Write down a phone number you never used to call me and I’ll call you from a new, clean phone and give you that number. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Then let’s go set Mrs. Ellis free.”