TWENTY-FOUR

Ever since the cop’s visit to his office, Charlie Chandlis had been dying of curiosity. He knew that Abby had come into money. What he didn’t know was how much, or where it came from. He thought he knew his former wife, but the episode with his credit card had showed him that he didn’t know her as well as he thought. The Abby he was married to would never have had the sand to take his credit card, or to use it.

He didn’t show much anger. But underneath he was quietly seething. Abby had made a fool out of him and Charlie didn’t like it. Still there was another aspect to him that was titillated. The thought that Abby had turned over a new leaf, especially one with a slightly shady color, was something strangely intoxicating to Charlie. He didn’t know what he would do if he got his hands on her. That was the exciting part.

It had crossed his mind more than once over the past week that perhaps Abby had hidden assets during their marriage, something stashed away that was community property that she had failed to disclose during the divorce. The reason Charlie had a suspicious mind was that he had hidden assets himself, nearly eighteen thousand dollars in retainers, that he had never put on the books of his practice during the months just before they split up. Why she had paid back the six thousand on the credit card Charlie wasn’t sure. But if she had that kind of money, maybe there was more.

Abby’s law practice wasn’t much. For the most part, she was salaried. Still it was possible that she had come into a windfall, maybe a large settlement in a case. It wasn’t what lawyers were paid by the hour that made some of them rich. It was the contingent fees when they went to trial or settled a case on the courthouse steps. In a big case, the lawyer’s take could be six figures.

Charlie was confronted with the problem of how to find out. There had to be a bank account somewhere. Banks were secretive places. If your name was on the account, they might tell you what was in it. Otherwise you could forget it. If you held a check drawn against the account, they would only tell you whether there were sufficient funds on deposit to cover it. Charlie already knew they were sufficient in the case of Abby’s check for the credit-card charges. The card company had cashed it.

It took him a few days to devise a plan to find out more. In Charlie’s eyes lawyers were the high priests of society, special people with special powers. They made the laws, so why not use them for their own purposes? Over a two-day period in his spare time, Charlie concocted a civil complaint against Abby, a trumped-up lawsuit that he filed in the superior court in Seattle. Lawyers did this thousands of times a day all over the country, and no one paid particular attention, unless it was filed against a rock star or some basketball jock.

In the suit he charged Abby with civil fraud, the failure to disclose assets in connection with their divorce. In fact, he had no evidence at all. But evidence isn’t required to file a lawsuit, only to win one. Charlie had no intention of going to court. In fact, he made no effort to serve a copy of the lawsuit on Abby either by personal service or publication in a newspaper.

Instead, using the court’s file number issued by the clerk in the lawsuit, Charlie then issued a subpoena duces tecum. This was a court order requiring the recipient to produce records. In this case, banking records. Then Charlie started off on a fishing expedition.

The first place he visited was the bank where Abby had written the check to cover the credit-card bill. What he discovered was that she’d closed the account two days after her check had cleared. He wasn’t surprised. If she was hiding assets, she would be more cagey than to leave a bundle where Charlie could find it that easily. The fact that the account was closed, however, confirmed in his mind that there was something going on. Abby had something to hide.

He crafted a second subpoena. Calling on the sale of Abby’s house and pretending to be an interested buyer, Charlie had gleaned one other vital piece of information. Morgan Spencer, a lawyer with Abby’s old firm, was the contact on the sale of her house. If that was the case, it didn’t take much to conclude that Spencer might be handling other business matters for her. The question was, where did Spencer and his law firm do their banking?

Charlie combed a back issue of one of the small legal newspapers until he found what he wanted. It was a list of names, young lawyers recently admitted to the practice of law after passing the state bar examination. He ran his finger down the list until he found a likely candidate, then picked up the phone and dialed.

“Starl, Hobbs and Carlton.” It was a woman with a sexy voice on the other end.

“Hello. My name is Daniel Swenson.” Charlie pumped himself up to sound young and naive. “I’m a new admittee to the bar and I wanted to talk to one of the lawyers at your firm, if I could, about some business advice.”

“What kind of advice?”

“You know. Getting started. Opening an office. Setting up financial records, that sort of thing.”

“How did you get our name?”

As Charlie had suspected, the most difficult part would be getting past the receptionist.

“One of my professors at law school told me that your firm was among the best managed firms in town. A great reputation,” said Charlie. “So naturally I thought I would start there.”

“Just a moment,” said the woman.

He whistled quietly to himself as he listened to elevator music being piped over the phone.

“Hello. Who am I speaking to?” It was a man’s voice, deep and melodious, that came back to him on the line.

“Oh. This is Daniel Swenson. I don’t know how much your receptionist told you, but I’m a recent admittee, just getting set up in practice.”

“Yes. How can I help you?”

“I recently attended one of those meetings. You know, sort of bridging the gap between law school and practice. Several of the attorneys who spoke to us mentioned your firm as being particularly well run.” It was the kind of horseshit designed to turn the head of a silk-stocking lawyer.

“They sort of suggested,” said Charlie, “that more experienced lawyers wouldn’t mind giving a little advice. Just to get us off on the right foot.”

“Absolutely,” said the older lawyer.

“May I ask who I’m speaking to?” said Charlie.

“My name is Lewis Cutler. I’m the managing partner.”

“Oh jeez, I didn’t expect to get the boss,” said Charlie.

“That’s alright. What can I help you with?”

“I have to establish some business bank accounts, a client trust fund. You know the sort of thing. I thought maybe you could recommend a local bank that comes highly regarded within the profession?”

“Oh sure. No problem. We’ve used First National, the downtown branch, for years. Just ask for Jim Hanford. Tell him Lew Cutler sent you.”

“Do all the partners there use the same bank?”

“For business, yes,” said Cutler. “We use one bank for ease of record keeping. It gets to be a pain when you have accounts spread all over town.”

“Gee, thanks. That’s a big help. I’ll remember that,” said Charlie.

“Not a problem. Anything else I can do for you?”

“No. I think you’ve been more than helpful.”

“Listen, I know how it is when you’re first setting . . .”

Charlie hung up and left Cutler talking to himself on the phone. He turned to the typewriter and plugged in the name of First National on the form subpoena, then ripped it from the typewriter, signed it, and grabbed his briefcase.

Twenty minutes later he waltzed through the revolving door of First National. He pretended to make notes at the counter in the center of the bank until he found the name-plate on the desk he was looking for. He walked up to the bank officer sitting at his desk.

“Can I help you?” The man was middle-aged and balding.

“Mr. Hartford. My name is Charles Chandlis. I’m an attorney and I have a subpoena for financial records regarding one of your depositors.” He handed the man the subpoena, and the officer looked at it.

“Please have a seat.” He motioned Charlie to one of the chairs on the other side of his desk.

The form was official-looking, bearing the title of the superior court along with the file number of the case.

“It’s very specific.” Charlie sat down. “We seek only information regarding accounts for the named individual. Nothing else. The bank is not named as a party defendant.” He mentioned this in hopes that the banker might see the downside in failing to comply. With Charlie, subtle intimidation was an art form.

“Yes. I see. Our legal department is in another building.” The banker seemed confused as to what to do with the document, whether simply to comply or to have his own lawyers scour the form for a while.

“You can send it along to them if you like. But I was hoping to get some basic information today. Certainly you can have a reasonable period to produce the records. Ten days. Two weeks. I know you’re busy.” First the whip, and now the carrot, thought Charlie.

“I see.” The banker was straining his eyes hoping to find something that might jump off the page at him, some justification for delay. But he didn’t find it.

“Your bank comes very highly recommended,” said Charlie.

“Oh really?”

“Oh yes. A good friend. Lew Cutler at Starl, Hobbs and Carlton. Speaks very highly of you.”

“Oh sure. I know Lew.”

“Great guy,” said Charlie. “Yeah, we go way back. He can’t say enough good things about this bank. He keeps telling me I’m going to have to move my business accounts over here. Looks like I’m gonna have to take him up on it,” said Charlie.

There was a budding smile on the banker’s face as he looked at Charlie over the top of the subpoena. “Everything appears to be in order,” he said.

Actually it wasn’t. The banker might have asked for a return on service of process. This would have shown that their depositor, the defendant in the lawsuit, had not been served with a copy of the suit. Without notice of the litigation, Abby had no way to fight the subpoena, to try to quash it. A lawyer in the bank’s legal department would have seen this. If Charlie played it right, by the time they did, he would have what he wanted.

“What is it you want to know?” said the banker.

“Very simple,” said Charlie. “All I need for the moment is whether you have any accounts on deposit for the named individual? And if so, how much is on deposit as of this date? For now, that’s all I would need. As I say, you can copy the records at your leisure and send them along later.”

This sounded reasonable to the banker. They didn’t have to do anything but look in their computer. “I think we can do that.”

“Wonderful,” said Charlie. Subpoenas were such wonderful things.

Hanford started punching his computer keys.

“What’s the depositor’s name?” said Hanford.

“Abigail Chandlis.” He spelled the last name for him. “It might be under Abby.”

He punched some more keys.

“Yes. We have an account in that name. It’s a joint checking account with a Morgan Spencer.” He wrote the account number on a slip of paper and handed it to Charlie.

“May I ask how much is in the account?”

Hanford punched a few more keys and scrolled down on the screen.

He looked at the numbers and had to focus his eyes. He wrote it out on a slip of paper and passed it across to Charlie. It was bank policy when balances got this big, to protect the privacy and the security of their patrons.

Charlie whistled. Abby had a million-two on deposit. He nearly fell out of the chair.

“Can you trace the source?”

“There’s only two deposits. But the computer doesn’t show where they came from.”

“Is there any way to find out?”

“Just a moment.” Hanford picked up the phone and dialed. “Yes. I need an account history.” He gave the number of the account and waited a moment. “Only two items? Could you fax those for me? Great!” He gave the bank’s fax number and hung up.

He looked at Charlie. “It’ll be just a moment.”

A couple of minutes later he walked over to the fax machine and collected the pages coming through.

“The most recent check deposited in the account, a little over six hundred thousand, was drawn against the account of Pietros Films, Ltd.”

This meant nothing to Charlie.

The first one, a total of six hundred thousand, was written against a royalty account on a bank in New York. Owens & Associates.

What was strange was that both checks were written to a Jack Jermaine. They were signed over by him and then deposited into Abby’s account.