Hard News

by Mark T Sullivan

  They forced a back window. Tore the place apart. But didn’t steal anything she could find. Some money maybe. She wasn’t sure.”

  “She report it?”

  “What do you think?”

  McCarthy cursed to himself. No call, no documented proof he could use in a story.

  “Did she say what they might be looking for?”

  Fetterbaum hesitated. “No … not exactly.”

  “But she hinted, didn’t she? C’mon, this could help a lot.”

  Smoke billowed from her lips. She took another sip. “You have an ID or something, Mr. …?”

  “McCarthy. Gideon McCarthy.” He fished out his press pass.

  She put her drink down on a table inside the hallway to her condo, took the card between two fingers, and studied it. “You’ve aged.”

  “A family trait: gray at thirty-five, drooling at fifty.”

  She laughed her hoarse laugh. “Okay, McCarthy, I’ll tell you. It was a mess inside. I was picking up some of the things that were knocked over in the kitchen. She rummaged around in that huge entertainment center she had, looking at tapes, counting out loud.”

  “Taking inventory?”

  “I think so.”

  “Videotapes or cassette tapes?”

  “Both.”

  “They get what they came for?”

  Fetterbaum blew smoke into the air and raised her eyebrows. “She was angry and frightened that someone had been in her place. But that seemed to go out of her once she’d finished with the tapes.”

  McCarthy wrote that down, too. “You tell the cops this?”

  “What do you think?”

  The reporter smiled. “I think I like you, Regina Fetterbaum.”

  She raised her glass to him. “My late husband, Stan, loved to play the stock markets. I learned a lot about the value of insider information.”

  “And I suppose you’d be less than helpful to other reporters who come by?”

  “Early bird gets the worm, I always say.”

  Across town, Prentice LaFontaine took deep breaths from an atomizer to ward off the asthma attack lurking at the edges of his lungs. On stifling days like this the air conditioners in the county clerk’s office lifted the dust that coated the labyrinth of files, swirling it into the air to taunt him. He wheezed, then coughed at the chemical expansion in his lungs. He hated this room.

  But where else could he scarf up as much dirt in so little time? Divorce records? Run a name through the A computer and ask at Window Three. Probate? B computer and Sally in Window One. Civil proceedings? Peruse by plaintiff or defendant, then call the number over the public announcement system. Criminal cases? All there on the wall.

  Sometimes, when the air-conditioning wasn’t on and they’d dusted, News enjoyed closing his eyes and smelling the place. If scandal produced an odor, it was this odd mélange of scents: the onion breath of the clerks, the stale cologne of the attorneys, the mold on the old papers, the tang of the cleaning fluid they used to wash the floors, the sweat of fear, the sweat of greed. If it wasn’t for the dust, he might call this room home.

  He reviewed what he’d discovered already. Two cases in the civil files named Burkhardt as defendant. Routine stuff: disputes over the grading practices on environmentally sensitive hillsides that Burkhardt had developed a few years back.

  In three cases Burkhardt had initiated legal action. Again they were the kind of proceedings News expected a successful developer to be involved in: breach of contract with a cement company, a suit disputing an ironworker’s claim of on-the-job injury and another over a subcontractor’s use of inferior materials.

  LaFontaine had read the probate files, too. Nothing of great interest. Sloan was an only son. The old man’s will was uncontested: he got the company and the millions. He was about to call it quits, when for the hell of it he looked in the criminal records.

  Bingo! S. Burkhardt. A 1986 case. Sealed the following year? He scribbled down the only two numerical codes left on the microfilm. He got in line to talk with Carol Randolph. She was the criminal clerk he’d taken to lunch a half dozen times over the years so she’d share her expertise when he needed it.

  “Carol, as always you’re looking marvelous,” LaFontaine declared when his turn came. “What’s your secret? Oil of Olay?”

  Randolph guffawed. “Just clean living, News. What can I do for you?”

  “Why would this be sealed?” he asked. “Case was opened and closed in eighty-six. Sealed the next year.”

  “Only criminal offense?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Can’t tell from these numbers, that’s the idea of sealing, you know. But my best guess is a drunk driving case. Judge sees there hasn’t been a prior, he seals it. Happens all the time, though this is kind of quick.”

  “Nothing else here to go on? You know, a way to figure out exactly what he did?”

  Randolph looked at the code numbers LaFontaine had scribbled down. She shook her head. “That number is the judge, or whoever the judge was who had that number a few years ago. The second one is the client’s attorney number. And he won’t tell you squat.”

  “Unless he’s a rat.”

  “Officially we have no rat attorneys in this courthouse,” she laughed. “Better luck next time. Say, when’s the next time you take an old broad to lunch?”

  “You know I space those lunches out. Can’t be around you too often, Carol.”

  “Why’s that?” she demanded.

  “Hang with a woman like you too often, I might start questioning my sexuality.”

  Randolph slapped the counter and howled.

  The recorder’s office was at the other end of the county building. Here every property record and lien was photographed and placed on reels of microfilm. News used a computer index to find the documents he wanted, then plucked the reels he needed from giant revolving stacks. He slid the first reel into an empty machine and punched in a number. It whined, spun for a minute, then jerked to a stop.

  A notarized letter of intent to finance the Cote D’Azure project for $124 million from Carlton Bank. Signed Robert S. Carlton III and Thomas P. Whitney, senior vice president. Notarized by Janice Tate.

  LaFontaine looked over the details of the financing statement. He was no money wizard, but the terms didn’t seem out of the ordinary—heavy interest payments the first ten years, then a balloon payment of $40 million in year eleven of the thirty-year arrangement. Given the projected value of a waterfront project like Cote D’Azure, not unreasonable.

  It was dated March 12. LaFontaine looked at his notes. Ten days before Carlton died at The Ranch Tennis Club. He’d pulled the clips before coming down this morning. A security guard had found Carlton around ten o’clock the night of the twenty-second on the practice court. The bank president was a member of the club, and was often seen there late at night perfecting his serve. It was his way of relieving stress, one friend said. Several sources named in the story had speculated that the strain of the federal audit had been too much for Carlton. Too many serves late at night. Pop goes the weasel.

  News made a note to himself to check the autopsy report on Carlton, then rewound the microfilm and plugged in another reel. Supporting documents to the letter of intent, legal briefs and other boilerplate language that described the details of the project. Nothing new. The next four reels contained similar background documents.

  He popped in the sixth and last band of microfilm. It spun and stopped. Illuminated on the screen was a legal document finalizing the terms of the loan contingent on Burkhardt’s getting the city’s approval of the deal. Signed again by Carlton, Bradley Whitney, and Burkhardt as president of “Blue Coast Partners.”

  Must be the shell entity Burkhardt organized to do the deal, News thought. It was notarized by Janice Tate on March 25. He made a note to check the secretary of state’s office for information on “Blue Coast Partners,” then stopped to stare at the screen.

  March 25? His heart raced. Bobby Carlt
on was dead three days when this was signed!

  He told himself to slow down, to think. Somehow a man had signed a document three days after his death. He went back over his notes, looking for a new angle of attack.

  “Thomas P. Whitney,” LaFontaine said. “Thomas P. Whitney.”

  Amateur Pornography …

  CORPORATIONS, LAFONTAINE DECIDED, WERE like penises, not happy unless engorged, erect, showing off.

  What more proof did you need than the Carlton Bank Building? Thirty-two stories, tan granite, tinted glass, rising to a strange mushroomlike top. LaFontaine gazed up at the building and grinned. A phallic symbol in the grand tradition of the eighties, when California real estate developers and financial institutions carried on like gluttons at a Roman Bacchanalia. Downtown office space was overbuilt now. Carlton Bank had fifty percent vacancy. Another reason many people questioned the configuration of Burkhardt’s development, forty percent of which was office.

  News played with these facts as he rode a glass elevator up the west side of the building. The bay sparkled below him. The sails on hundreds of boats puffed and ran in the steady breeze. On a grassy knoll before the water palm fans rustled.

  Suddenly he grabbed the wall to steady himself. Pain rippled along the inside of his bruised ribs. He belched and gritted his teeth. He should have known better. Thai chicken did it to him every time. Peanut sauce with cayenne red pepper and cilantro for lunch. And two cups of black coffee. He belched again.

  The elevator stopped at the eighteenth floor. The doors opened into a pale gray reception area with light birch wainscoting. He staggered out, hand on stomach.

  “Mr. Whitney, please,” he said to the receptionist, an intense little Asian woman in her early forties. She wore a pink suit with a white carnation in the lapel.

  “Do you have appointment?”

  “No. I’m a reporter with The Post. A couple of questions I need answered.”

  “You have questions about federal inquiry, you speak to Ms. Gretchen Vietze, tenth floor,” she said in a practiced cadence. “She’s the officer of public relations.”

  “How very military!”

  The receptionist’s eyes narrowed. “Ms. Vietze. Tenth floor.”

  “Look, deary, I don’t give a damn about the federal inquiry. Tell Mr. Whitney I’d like to ask him about a couple of backdated signatures I found on a loan agreement.”

  “What is this backdated mean?”

  “He’ll understand.”

  The peanut sauce reared its ugly head. LaFontaine doubled over. “Please,” he gasped. “I’m not feeling well.”

  The reporter’s greening flesh threw the receptionist. “I call Mr. Whitney!”

  “Bless you.” LaFontaine burped. He pressed his fingers into his abdomen, trying to calm the storm that raged within. He pulled out a roll of antacid tablets and popped four.

  After three minutes of escalating gut weep, a door opened at the far end of the room and a severe-looking woman entered. She wore a black suit with an off-white shirt. Her haircut was tight above the ears, blond, masculine. She was thick with the odor of Chanel No. 5, which almost triggered another round of nausea.

  “Gretchen Vietze,” the woman said.

  “Ah, yes. The P.R. commando,” said LaFontaine, who struggled to his feet. She shook his limp hand firmly. “Sorry, a little too much to eat at lunch. It will pass.”

  “What’s this all about, Mr. LaFontaine?”

  News heard the creak of the receptionist’s chair. “Is there anyplace more private?”

  Vietze glanced at her watch. “We have to make this quick. I have an appointment in fifteen minutes.”

  He followed her through the door and into a hall decorated in deep red shades. She turned into the third office on the left.

  “The receptionist said your office was on the tenth floor,” LaFontaine said once she’d gotten into place behind her desk. The power position. He remained standing to offset the home turf advantage.

  Vietze smiled. “Yes, well. Song does her job. What is it you want?”

  He fumbled in his briefcase and came out with reproductions of the letter of intent and the final accord on the loan agreement. “Notice the signatures,” he said.

  “So?”

  “Look at the dates.”

  She studied them for a moment, then lifted her head shaking it. “I still don’t …”

  “My, my how soon the passing of the powerful is forgotten.”

  She glanced back down at the date, then flipped back through her desk calendar. Over the years LaFontaine had honed his ability to read upside down. It’s a knack most good reporters develop after time. When she got to the date of the final agreement, he scanned her list of appointments and said: “Looks like you attended old Bobby’s wake the day he was supposed to have signed that.”

  Vietze eased the calendar shut. She fussed with several papers, then smiled brightly. “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  “And I’d like to hear it from Mr. Whitney, the other signatory.”

  “He’s busy in meetings this afternoon.”

  “It would look awful strange if the only quote I had to go with this story was your ‘I’m sure this can be explained,’ as you fidget nervously.”

  Her nostrils flared. The scent of Chanel No. 5 swept like a wave through the office. Despite the gurgle in his stomach, LaFontaine had the urge to giggle. The bank’s information Sandinista was sweating profusely. These were the moments he lived for.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Might I trouble you for some seltzer water? I have a bit of indigestion.”

  Vietze took a long breath. “I’ll have Song bring it.”

  “The gulag guard turns water gal. How nice!”

  News spent fifteen minutes flipping through back copies of American Banker, deciding in the process that there were worse jobs for a journalist than being a general assignment hack for The Post. Could you imagine spending your life writing about credit cards and discount rates? Better to be trussed and force-fed rancid Thai chicken by the evil Song.

  “Mr. LaFontaine?”

  He set down his seltzer water, lurched to his feet, and came nose to chest with Thomas P. Whitney, who stood nearly six feet seven inches in his Johnston Murphy wing tips. Whitney’s hand swallowed the reporter’s. Whitney was in his early forties. He was in shape, probably a runner, maybe a swimmer.

  “I hear you think you’re onto a hot story,” Whitney said. He lounged on the desk’s corner with his arms crossed. A power position LaFontaine could not neutralize.

  “Dead man’s signature on a document dated three days post mortem. Pretty stinky.”

  “Notarized three days after his death,” Whitney said. “Our notary had the flu. She couldn’t do the job when we needed it.”

  “So it isn’t unusual for a bank president to sign a document like that when the other signatories aren’t present?”

  “This bank has assets of nearly three billion dollars, Mr. LaFontaine.”

  “The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation doesn’t seem to think so.”

  The banker flushed. “That’s beside the point. Mr. Carlton was a busy man. He signed dozens of documents a day. It wasn’t always possible to get everyone together at once to finalize agreements. The letter of intent was the important document.”

  “Still, if Mr. Carlton’s signature hadn’t appeared there, the loan wouldn’t have gone forward?” News was fishing now.

  Whitney hesitated. “Officially the bank agreed to the deal with the letter of intent.”

  “Officially,” LaFontaine said. “But it could have been undone.”

  This time the pause was longer. “Technically, I suppose.”

  “Who could have made that decision?”

  “The executive loan committee.”

  “Chaired by Mr. Carlton. And now chaired by?”

  “Me.”

  LaFontaine tapped his lips with his pen. “Downtown office space is glutt
ed. Your own building is less than half-full. Cote D’Azure is a huge development. Given the…er, difficulties your bank now faces, do you think this loan was prudent?”

  Whitney’s smile was thin. “Prudent is a loaded word, Mr. LaFontaine. I think a better way to phrase the question would be was it worth the risk? The city thinks Cote D’Azure is best suited to occupy the shipyard land. Carlton Bank has long been a supporter of the city’s redevelopment efforts. Mr. Carlton felt a personal commitment to that end.”

  “And you?”

  The bank president coughed. “I share Mr. Carlton’s vision.”

  “What does a dead man see?”

  “Mr. LaFontaine, you’re trying my patience.”

  “It happens. Listen, I get the sense the deal was so far gone when he died that you couldn’t have done anything about it even if you wanted to.”

  “I repeat, I share Mr. Carlton’s vision of the city.” He reached out to shake News’s hand. “I hope I’ve cleared up any confusion you might have had. Now I must go.”

  As Whitney turned, News asked: “What do you think of Sloan Burkhardt?”

  Whitney missed a step, but showed no expression. “I think Mr. Burkhardt carries on in the tradition of his father.”

  At the same time, McCarthy was parking his Toyota in the shade of trees near the outbuildings of the Kemper Stables. Out here, where the well-trimmed lawns of the city’s suburbs gave way to scrub brush, the temperature hovered near the hundred-degree mark. Morning glories withered on their vines about the faded wooden posts of the corrals. The two dozen horses vied for the tree shade. Three burros ate hay.

  McCarthy thought about Regina Fetterbaum and why she’d opened up to him. He’d been developing a theory of talk for years now. It came down to this: strangers will tell you the unspeakable if there is sufficient motivation.

  There were four kinds of motivation. First, extreme personal pain: grief-stricken sources who hold a grudge against the object of investigation. Perhaps the most fertile ground and the most suspect information; you have to read between the lines to get the real story. Even then it is often clouded.