Page 59 of Pro Bono

“If she doesn’t buy it, we shoot her through the door. If she just looks out a window at us, we shoot her through that. In fact, that’s a better idea. We don’t both have to be on the porch. One of us could be all ready by the nearest window, and shoot her as soon as she reaches the ground floor.”

“It should work,” Talbert said. “She knows she’s involved in an investigation, so the police might need to get in touch and maybe protect her, right?”

“Right,” Ollonsun said. “Just remember what’s at stake. This is probably going to happen fast, so don’t freeze up on me after it starts. Whatever thinking you have to do, get it out of the way now, before we ring the doorbell.”

Talbert nodded his head, then stared at the ground for about ten seconds. Then he said, “Okay. Let’s go get the car.”

They set off walking around the block toward the car. As they walked, Talbert said, “What are you going to use for your police ID? Do you have anything with your picture on it?”

“Let’s see. My driver’s license, my Costco membership. She’d recognize those. My work ID would have been perfect, but they made me hand it in.”

“I still have mine,” Talbert said. “I sneaked out before they started looking for me.”

“That’ll do.”

“It has my picture on it. I thought you would be the one on the porch. You know what to do and say. You’re taller and older too. More like a ranking cop.”

“Oh, I know,” Ollonsun said. “My ID for getting into the front gate of our housing complex looks really official, and it has my picture on it.”

They reached Talbert’s car. He opened the hatch at the back, and took a roll of electrical tape out of his emergency toolbox, stretched it across the rear license plate, and cut off pieces. It took a few strips to change the numbers on the plate—3 to 8, 1 to 7, 5 to 6. Then he gave the little lightbulb above the plate a half-turn to remove it, and then gave the front plate the same treatment. When he got into the driver’s seat of the car, Ollonsun was already sitting in the passenger seat looking at the plastic ID from his wallet with his small flashlight. He turned off the flashlight. “Ready to do this?”

“Yes,” Talbert said. “Absolutely.”

They pulled to the front of the house and parked the car but kept the motor running so she would be able to see the lighted dashboard. They stationed themselves at the front of the house so Ollonsun could ring the doorbell and Talbert would be at the front window looking in.

Ollonson rang the doorbell, then knocked on the door. He was cautious about keeping the volume of the knocking down, but he was confident that the doorbell would not be set at a decibel level that would wake the neighbors, so after a few minutes he kept pressing it over and over. He looked at Talbert standing near the side window with his revolver. He congratulated himself on the tactics, but why wasn’t she running to the door?

He kept ringing for a long time, but heard nothing from inside. He said to Talbert, “Go around the house. Look for lights, shadows, anything. If you see her, shoot through the window.” Talbert walked along the outer wall and peered inside each window. It took him another eight minutes to make the circuit.

When he reached the front steps again, he said, “I don’t think she’s here. Leaving her car here doesn’t mean she’s here. She wouldn’t drive it if she was on a date. She might even have gone out of town.”

Ollonsun took out a handkerchief and wiped his fingerprints off the doorbell button. They got into Talbert’s car and Talbert pulled away. Talbert said, “Well, that’s his place and her place. Maybe they’re together.”

“I’d bet on it,” Ollonsun said. “You know, I got the impression from the research my guys did that he’s sort of a specialist in finding and recovering money. He does a lot of divorce cases where the husband or wife is hiding assets, or there’s some kind of a guardian who’s skimming a trust fund. I’ll bet he’s really good at knowing when it’s time to get out of sight. You know where I’ll bet he is?”

“We looked at the houses. Where else?”

“His office. I’m not saying every one of his victims goes looking for him, but I’m sure some do, just like us.”

“His office?”

“We know that he walked out of my company and your company within the past two days carrying written agreements of some kind. Mycompany told me they agreed to pay his client three million. If you had a piece of paper worth three million—or maybe two worth six million, where would you put it?”

“A safe deposit box, I guess.”

“Nope. These lawyers can’t be running into the bank every day to unload papers from their briefcase. They have their own safes. They’ve got to. I know the address of his building. You want me to drive?”

“Just put it in your phone and it’ll give us directions. And hand me that box of ammunition in the glove compartment.”

Vesper Ellis and Charlie Warren sat in the conference room in his law office. They had stopped at Art’s on Ventura Boulevard to get chicken matzo ball soup, pastrami on rye, and Dr. Brown’s cream soda. They had brought it into the conference room and served it on large sheets of wax paper on the conference table.

Warren had brought the original fully signed and witnessed agreements from Great Oceana Monetary and Founding Fathers Vested to put them in the safe. When he and Vesper arrived, they found that the payments from both companies had been wired to the office bank account after Martha had gone home.

Vesper said, “I’m really glad you thought of stopping at Art’s. I didn’t realize it at first, but I was starving. I hadn’t been there in a long time.”

“LA is full of amazing things to eat, drink, look at, and listen to,” he said. He froze and his gaze went upward. “Do you hear that?”

“Sounds like an elevator.”

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