Page 48 of Pro Bono

She reached out and placed her hand on his arm. “It’s all meant to make things smooth and easy as possible for you. It’s done. There’s nothing up there anymore that belongs to you. Go home.”

Dennis was already out of the car opening the door for him, and in another two minutes Ollonsun was sitting behind the wheel of his own car staring out the windshield at the bright, hot street.

21

At threeP.M.Warren checked the Vesper Ellis account at Founding Fathers Vested on his computer, then looked up at her. “Take a look at this.”

She came over to the kitchen table and looked at the screen.

“This is your current balance at Founding Fathers,” Warren said. “It’s the same as the latest monthly report you brought me, except that two lines have been added for the two imaginary accounts, and they are, for the first time, included in the balance. The total is a quarter million dollars higher. They gave you back what must be the amount Ronald Talbert siphoned off.”

She hugged him. “Thank you. That’s all because of what you did.”

He said, “I think you should call them now and withdraw all your money. You don’t need to tell the person on the phone anything other than that you’re withdrawing it. Have it sent electronically to your checking account.”

“Okay.”

She went to the guest bedroom where she had left her phone charging, then came back. “Can you read the number from the monthly report for me?”

He did and she dialed the number and ordered the person who answered the call to complete the transactions necessary to liquidate the investments and send the proceeds to her bank. The process took around ten minutes, and when she was finished, Warren said, “Very good. Now I get to do my job.”

“What’s your job?”

“To put away all the suits we prepared against any company except Founding Fathers, and pursue getting that one to court. I’ll compose a short letter to Founding Fathers now to bring them up to date, and ask Martha to have it messengered to them.”

The letter didn’t take long.

Dear Ms. Susquino:

We have received your letter in response to the claim Warren & Associates submitted on behalf of Vesper Ellis. We feel that, as a courtesy, you should be given notice that she is proceeding with her lawsuit against Founding Fathers Vested Investment Corporation.

Since Mrs. Ellis has brought our firm all the monthly reports ever sent by Founding Fathers to her or her late husband, it has been possible to verify that the two additional accounts you mentioned did not exist as recently as one month ago when she came to our firm about the discrepancies in her account. In the monthly reports, we retain permanent proof of those discrepancies, which vanished at the same time as the two new accounts appeared. Your owncompany’s IT department can, I’m sure, confirm to you that the creation of the two new accounts and the erasure of the discrepancies can easily be detected, traced, and dated by law enforcement technicians.

Charles Warren, Attorney at Law

He sent the letter to Martha.

Ronald Talbert had been in his office for hours dealing with clients when his cell phone rang. He looked at the screen to see who it was and had the urge to open the window beside him and hurl the phone out, letting it fall eight stories to the street. It was, like most urges of that sort, something he knew he would never do for a hundred different reasons, the first of them that windows in the Founding Fathers Vested office building couldn’t be opened.

He touched the green circle and said, “What do you want?”

Pat Ollonsun said, “First, I want to apologize for pissing you off last night. I’m very sorry. I was in a desperate state and acted badly.”

Talbert said, “Pat, frankly, no apology from you will ever fix what you did last night, and I don’t want to waste another minute talking to you about it. I hope this is the last conversation I have with you about anything, but I know I’m not that lucky. What do you really want?”

“I came in after Chris was asleep last night, and I was at the office before she got up this morning. I’m on my way home, and I need to know what you told Fran about your face, so I can say the same thing.”

“Home? Why are you going home so early? The New York markets haven’t even closed yet.”

“I got fired this morning, Ron. My career at Great Oceana is over, and I’m damned sure never going to get work in finance again. Please, just tell me, so I can at least make an attempt to salvage my marriage and family.”

“Jesus,” Talbert said. “I—” he paused. He had been about to say he was sorry, but it was automatic and not sincere, so he choked it off. “I told her we had stopped for a coffee at an outdoor stand on Fairfax and four young guys started making fun of us. You said something that gave them an excuse to attack us, and because it was two-to-one they got in quite a few punches before we chased them off.”

“Okay, thanks, Ron.” He paused. “Why didn’t we call the police?”

“They were young and fast, so by the time we thought of it they were in their car and gone. Since it was a fight, there wasn’t any actual crime we weren’t also guilty of.”

“Is that true?”

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