Chapter 22
22
D uring the early part of the day Warren spackled the bullet hole in the wall outside his door while he and Vesper waited for the workmen to come. The cleaning crew thoroughly removed the blood stains in the carpet of the hallway and stairs. The locksmith replaced the damaged lock with a new, heavier one with a steel plate that covered the space between the doorknob and the woodwork so it couldn’t be jimmied or drilled.
After lunch Warren said to Vesper, “Do you think it’s time to take a look at your house and see if those two guys that broke in here broke in there too?”
“I’ve got to find out sometime,” she said. “It may as well be now. I can take an Uber or Lyft. I’ll just pack my bag and go home.”
“When I suggested taking a look, I meant both of us. I’ll drive you,” he said. “We’ve found some good guys for the repair if we need them. Their numbers are in my phone.”
“Um,” she said. “I wonder if you would mind packing a bag too. I feel pretty safe and confident right now in daylight, but I know that tonight if I’m alone in the house, every sound is probably going to terrify me.”
He said, “Of course.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “But the world looks like a different place to me lately.”
Their packing took a short time, and then Warren went around his condominium checking window latches and door locks. They went out and he locked the door and pocketed his new key. They got into his rental car and drove toward Vesper’s house in the Valley. He was extremely careful, taking the Lankershim Boulevard exit from the 101 freeway and driving to the Metro station across from Universal Studios and then down into the part of the parking lot that was at the bottom of the graded incline where they couldn’t be seen from the street. They waited for five minutes, but nobody drove into the lot searching for them. He left the lot and went over the overpass above the 101 freeway, exited onto Laurel Canyon, and went the rest of the way to Encino on Ventura Boulevard.
They pulled into the Ellis house’s driveway, and then walked to the kitchen door. Vesper unlocked the door and turned off the alarm, and they went in.
Warren said, “Try to arm it again.”
She did and then the electronic voice said, “System armed,” and the screen above the keypad began to tick off the minute they had if they’d wanted to leave.
Warren said, “That’s reassuring. All the entry points are closed with no breaks in the circuit or it wouldn’t do that.” They still checked every door or window in the house for signs that they might have been tampered with, and didn’t see any. They went from one room to another looking for any evidence that anyone had been inside the house while she had been gone.
When they reached the second floor of the house, which held the bedrooms, she said, “Nothing seems to be out of place.”
Warren said, “Think back. I called you a couple days ago to say you needed to get out of here, and I was coming for you in fifteen minutes. Did you leave your house perfectly neat like this? Was there nothing out of place?”
She looked around her for a moment. “I remember checking the locks, and then going upstairs to look out the edge of the upper window’s curtains to look at those two cars parked at the ends of the block, to try and see what the men in them looked like. I couldn’t. I had wasted too much time trying to, I had to rush the packing and get downstairs. Then you called to say you were going to be fifteen minutes late, and I was feeling anxious, so I left my bag in the kitchen and came up here to look out again, but I ended up straightening the room to kill time.”
He shrugged. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll go down and bring our bags up here.”
“I’ll go down with you and check the mailbox. I’ve been having them hold my mail at the post office, but people are always sticking flyers and things in it, and I’m sure when they pile up, potential burglars must notice.”
They started back down the stairs together and reached the first landing when his phone rang. He saw the caller’s number. “It’s Martha,” he said. “Hi, Martha.”
“Hi, Charlie. I’ve got a senior vice president at Founding Fathers named Ford Morham on the line saying it’s urgent that he speak with you this afternoon. I can connect you, or make an excuse, or make an appointment. What’s your pleasure?”
“Thanks, Martha. Put him on, please.” He sat down on the carpeted stairs at the landing and Vesper went the rest of the way down.
He heard the clicks and the sound of moving air. “Mr. Morham? This is Charles Warren. I understand you’d like to speak with me.”
“Yes, Mr. Warren,” he said. “Thank you for taking my call. We’d like to arrange a meeting to discuss the issues raised by Mrs. Ellis’s accounts with Founding Fathers Vested. If it’s possible, we’d like to take care of this quickly. Is there a time today when we can get you together with our attorneys?”
“Do you have a time in mind?”
“How about four P.M. at our offices?”
“All right. I’ll be there. Goodbye.” He listened for clicks, then said, “Martha? Are you still listening in?”
“I’m here,” she said.
“Then you know I’m going to be at that meeting at four, but I’ll stop at the office ahead of time. If you’ve got anything I should be paying attention to, that would be a good time.”
“All right. See you then.”
He went the rest of the way down to join Vesper, who had made it to the mailbox and then back to the kitchen. He said, “That was the call we’ve been waiting for from Founding Fathers Vested. They want to meet with me at four.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think it means that the people in charge of fending off claims got worried and talked with the people who actually know specifics about how their business is run and realized that they’ve got troubles.”
“If something happens, great,” Vesper said. “Just remember, you’ve already won. In trying to cover up, they restored what they took, and thanks to you, all the money I had invested with them is in my bank accounts. And you already got a ridiculous settlement from Great Oceana.”
“It’s not over quite yet.”
“If this just ended here, I’d be perfectly happy.”
“I get that,” he said. “But I think we’ve got a chance to help another big company make it less likely for small investors to get robbed in the future.”
“I understand,” she said.
“I know this is going to sound like a waste of time, but I would like it if you would come with me and spend an hour or two in my office while I’m in the meeting.”
“You don’t think I’ll be safe here alone?”
“Apparently nobody’s broken in here. But those two guys who were watching this house and then broke into my place weren’t random robbers, or they wouldn’t have known to come to both places. They must have been working for somebody, and I don’t know who. With the meeting, today just became one of those charged days when a thief might think it was his last chance to stop us from ruining his life. Maybe you should pack fresh clothes while you’re at it.”
She headed for the staircase. “I’ll be right down.”
When she came back downstairs, she was wearing a black pantsuit with black flats and carrying her overnight bag.
Warren said, “You look really nice.”
“It’s the default outfit that everybody owns. You can wear it whether you want to tap dance, deal blackjack, or bail out of a plane.”
“Let’s stick with the easy ones for now.”
When they got to the office, he and Vesper sat in the conference room with Martha while she presented routine matters for his attention and gave him various papers to sign. After a few minutes Vesper got up and said to him, “Do you mind if I use your office to call Tiffany?”
“Feel free.”
Martha gathered up the papers on the conference table. “I guess that’s all the stuff you need to see and sign at the moment. I looked up Ford Morham, so you can know who you’re dealing with before you go at four. It’s on the computers.”
“Thanks, Martha.”
He went to the computer in the spare office, signed on, and found the folder of entries she had compiled. Morham looked the way his name sounded. He was tall with a thin nose and bright blue eyes. He had been to a prep school in Pennsylvania that Warren hadn’t heard of, then Duke, and then NYU for his MBA. The résumé was a steady rise over twenty-five years at three companies.
He closed the file and went into the outer office. It was getting to be time. He gathered copies of the past year’s monthly reports for Vesper Ellis’s account at Founding Fathers, copies of his lawsuit against the company, and copies of his letters to the company and their replies, and put them in a thick brown file envelope that tied with a string. He knocked and opened the door of his office and waved at Vesper, who was sitting behind his desk talking on the office phone. He said aloud, “I’m leaving now, Mrs. Ellis.”
The Founding Fathers Vested office was too far to walk to, and his latest rental car was sure to be familiar to anyone who was hired to watch him, so he went down the elevator only as far as the second floor and stood at a window in the alcove that held the elevators, summoned a Lyft car, and stayed there to watch the street from above. Five minutes later he saw a car that matched the picture on his phone. He kept his eyes on the cars behind it and near it for a few seconds, stepped into the elevator for the one-story ride, and then made it out the door and into the car in about ten seconds. The driver was a man in his twenties who had a cheerful, friendly manner. Warren responded the same way and told him the address he had already supplied on his text message, so there was less chance of a misunderstanding.
The car slid into motion and took him toward Founding Fathers. He memorized the cars in the street behind the Lyft car, and occasionally checked to see if any new cars appeared. In twenty minutes the driver pulled up and let him out in front of the building where Founding Fathers Vested occupied the top five floors. Warren got out and headed inside. When he reached the lobby, a woman in her early forties wearing a gray suit cut across the lobby to intercept him. She held out her hand and said, “Mr. Warren? I’m Constance Pollock. We’ve been expecting you.”
“Good afternoon,” Warren said. “Thank you for meeting me.”
She checked her watch. “You’re early. It looks as though we have some time to kill before the meeting. Come on, we can wait in comfort upstairs.” She pressed the elevator button and then hurried in and pressed the sixth-floor button. When the elevator opened again Warren saw that the floor had wide hallways lined with individual offices. She took him to a small conference room. She said, “Would you like coffee, tea, sparkling water, a soft drink?”
“Do you have just regular bottled water?”
“Sure,” she said, and left him alone in the room. He sat down. It seemed to take a very long time for her to return. He wondered if she had gotten a call or been derailed by someone she’d met in the hall. Finally, he got up and went to the door, opened it, and spotted her about a hundred feet away heading in his direction with a water bottle.
He held the door open and accepted the bottle. “Thank you.” He glanced at his watch. “Six minutes to four. Is the meeting on this floor, or should we get going?”
“It’s a bit farther. Come with me,” she said, and walked along the hall, turned a corner and then another.
He was impatient. He liked to be in a meeting room before the planned time. It gave him a chance to collect his thoughts and size up the other people as they entered the room. This Ms. Pollock had a relaxed manner that was becoming irksome.
She reached a door and swung it open. He could see the usual giant conference table, the large windows. This row overlooked the southern part of the city and ended in a blue stripe of ocean. He was relieved. She said, “Sit where you’re comfortable. The rest of the group should be nearly ready to head over here.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “It’s four o’clock now.”
She looked at him, apparently puzzled. “Yes.”
“Your Mr. Morham scheduled this for four o’clock.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Mr. Morham is a senior vice president. He’s used to having other people scheduling meetings for him. He probably forgot that there are a lot of people who have to gather for this one, including someone who flew in this morning from the home office in New York. You could say that setting your meeting for four P.M. today was aspirational. At the moment you’re set for four thirty.”
“The only one they didn’t tell was me?”
His phone rang and he reached for it. Constance Pollock said, “I wouldn’t tie up your phone line if I were you.”
“Why not?” He looked at the screen of his phone. It was Martha.
“If there’s a change and they’re ready early, they’ll try to text you.”
“Hello,” he said into his phone. “What’s up?”
Martha said, “I just got a call from Founding Fathers. They say you missed your meeting time, and they’re getting ready to call it off.”
“Call them back, tell them I’m in their building, and find out where the meeting is. I’ll hold.”
He kept his eyes on Constance Pollock while he waited. She was on her way out of the room.
He got up and kept his phone to his ear as he snatched up his file envelope and followed her out.
Martha said, “Room 901. It’s a conference room.”
“Thanks.” He put his phone away.
He saw Constance Pollock disappear into one of the elevators and when he arrived he saw she had pressed the down buttons on all of them. He went into the stairwell and ran up the steps to the seventh, then the eighth, to the ninth, flung open the door and trotted only eight steps before he was at the door marked 901. He tried to open it, but it was locked. He knocked on the door firmly, waited, and then pounded on it.
The door opened and a man about thirty was standing there. “Mr. Warren?” the man said. He fiddled with the doorknob. “Sorry. This seems to have gotten locked.”
“Right,” Warren said. “Apparently there was a mix-up. Ms. Pollock was under the impression that this meeting was at four thirty.” Constance Pollock was sitting near the far end of the table, and she pantomimed her surprise at what he was saying.
“We were about to give up on you,” said the man at the center of the table. Warren recognized him as Morham from the information Martha had sent him. Warren realized Morham was almost certain to have realized that Constance Pollock had been trying to sabotage this meeting. He decided to say nothing further about her.
Warren’s eyes left Constance Pollock. “Well, we seem to be here now.”
Morham said, “Please have a seat.”
“Thank you.” He sat.
When Morham went through the polite ritual of introducing each of the sixteen people who were seated around the long table, he skipped Constance Pollock. Then he said to Warren, “I’m sure you must have guessed the reason I asked you to come. The director of our fraud division, Ms. Susquino, was struck by your response to her letter, and took a second look at your client’s accounts. She decided to make the effort to investigate your assertions about them. She had our IT people look into when the computer files had been opened or closed, and what operations had occurred. It turns out that you were right. There was evidence that someone had made some changes to old information contained in Mrs. Ellis’s file and tried to erase the times and dates of those changes. In addition, the files for the two cash accounts for investment were dated years ago, but were actually quite new.”
Warren said, “I appreciate that Ms. Susquino was willing to do the extra work, and that you were willing to be open about what she found out.”
“I understand that in the scramble to cover up the crimes, the perpetrator or perpetrators restored Mrs. Ellis’s money, or came close to it, and that when she learned of this, she withdrew her investments and closed the accounts.”
“That’s correct,” Warren said. “On my advice.”
“Then I assume that means you and she are satisfied and we can put this unfortunate event behind us.”
Warren stared into his eyes and said, “I advised it because I could see no reason to believe that she or any other client of your company could be confident that their money won’t be siphoned out of their accounts tomorrow.”
“There are many reasons, but I’ll just mention three. The first reason is that we’ve already been accumulating evidence of who was responsible and how he went about it. We’re also looking into the question of who else knew and might be part of the conspiracy. And three, we’re looking very closely at anyone who should have noticed something wasn’t right and pursued it.”
“Personnel matters are up to your company, of course,” Warren said. “Our lawsuit is only about my client’s accounts.”
“What does your lawsuit suggest she is entitled to?” Morham asked.
“I want to receive proof within thirty days that the federal authorities have been informed, and I want a suitable payment for expenses and damages to my client within ten days.”
A man in the same side of the table as Warren leaned forward and said, “One million dollars.”
Warren realized that the upper-level executive who had flown in from New York was not imaginary. He was here to make the settlement. Warren said to him, “Two million, in a cashier’s check, within one week.”
“Two it is, and you drop your lawsuit and do not do any press releases or public statements.”
“It’s fair to give the company time to revise its procedures and correct the problems before they’re made public,” Warren said. “If you live up to the agreement, we will drop the lawsuit and won’t make public statements. We can’t refuse to answer questions asked by the authorities.”
“Founding Fathers will accept that,” the man said. “We should have a contract ready for signature within a day or two.”
Warren said, “I’d like the agreement typed up and signed before I leave the building. In fact, I have a version in my office computer right now. If you’d like, I can send it with my phone to any computer here that’s connected to a printer.”
The man down the table smiled. “I get that you anticipated the terms we would need. But did you actually anticipate the amount?”
“I knew what I would settle for.”
The man said to the others, “You can all go, except for Mr. Morham, Mr. Caine, and Ms. Ostroff. We’ll need you for the contract. Thank you all.” As the others all filed out, he walked up to join Warren near the head of the table. “I’m David Stokes, in case you didn’t remember from the long list of names.” He shook hands with Warren. He said, “We’ll wait while you send us the contract, and then Ms. Ostroff and Mr. Caine, who are attorneys, will read it, and then you, Mr. Morham, and I can sign it.”
Mr. Morham said, “Send it to FMorham@Founding Fathers.” Mr. Caine went out to a nearby office and returned with five copies. It was such a simple agreement that it fit on five sheets, including the signature lines. The two attorneys verified that it accurately reported the oral agreement. The two executives signed, Warren signed, and then the two company attorneys signed as witnesses. A few minutes later Warren was walking out of the conference room with a fully executed copy.