Page 50 of Pro Bono

“That isn’t going to save my job. You couldn’t have gotten away with it unless I was either not looking or stupid. I guess it was both. The truth is, we trusted each other, but one of us was wrong.” She looked at herwatch. “We may not have much time, so we’ll stretch it. If you leave the building right now, I can use the injuries to your face to say you went to get them taken care of. You should go to your doctor or one of those urgent care places on the way home, so there’s a record.”

“Then what?”

“You’ll have to decide for yourself. Stealing from a client is both a state and a federal crime. You could either get the best lawyer you can find, or fly tonight to a country that won’t extradite you.” She leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek. “If you do get on a plane, don’t write. Now get going before they decide to stop you.”

“Thank you, Connie.” He got up and, instead of turning right to return to his office, turned left and took the elevator down to the parking level where his car was. He started it and drove out onto the street.

Upstairs, Constance Pollock ignored the fact that the telephone on her desk had a button lit up. She stood and put the two chairs back where they had been, then took her purse and went into the private bathroom next to her office. She looked closely at herself in the mirror. At some point very soon, she was going to have to meet with some of her superiors, and probably other people she knew only by name. She brushed her hair and repaired her makeup. She decided she should use this opportunity to pee. The bosses would agree that this matter had the same urgency as a house fire, and required that everyone put in continuous effort to tamp it down before it grew to take them all with it. Once this one got started it could last for hours.

She looked in the mirror again on the way out and set her face in a serene, confident expression. She found her assistant, Claire, standing by her desk. Claire said, “Mr. Herrod said to come back to his office, and this time bring the folder for Ronald Talbert.”

22

During 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?”

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