by Noah Rea
Sal had worked on the code a little the night before. He suggested the number one was Leon and the number two was Rebecca. When we read it with those substitutions, Deb and I both agreed that he was probably right. He had not picked up on the Vietnamese, but he had most of the Greek characters figured out. Some drawings none of us had cracked, so Sal asked me to work on those since they probably represented something in Rebecca’s life, and I would have the best chance to figure those out. I agreed.
We had some friends who had a contemporary house with shed roofing. I found that Rebecca had used a square with one side higher than the other like it had a shed roof. I tried substituting house for her square and it seemed to work. I told Deb and Sal, and they agreed. There were several crosses that we felt were an important key. So I worked on that next.
I wasn’t making much headway until I asked the agent if he knew the name of the nursing home that Leon was in before he died. It was Christian Brothers Nursing Home. When I put nursing home where the crosses were, it made sense and I told my two partners. Within a couple of hours, we were beginning to get enough done so we could tell most of what Rebecca had written.
It wasn’t long though until we were exhausted. This was serious cranial work. We took a break for a short lunch and then got back on it. About two in the afternoon, Sal wanted to take what we had done back to his office and show it to another guy. He would work on it some that evening because his wife and kids would be away at grandmother’s house and wouldn’t be home until late. That sounded good to us.
Just before he left, Deb put something similar to the Vietnamese thoi together with our “stop.” We went for a walk while he drove away. This was harder work than I was used to doing. Accounting had been tedious at times, but I hadn’t done any of it for a long time now. I also had the same kind of feeling as when I’m working real hard on some kind of puzzle. What we had made out so far is that Rebecca was having a lot of trouble with someone who was fighting with her over Leon.
We went to see Franz. He was walking around visiting with other patients. He was in real good spirits Margaret said. She hadn’t found an easy way to tell him about his house. We hadn’t either.
“I guess we will go visit with him and maybe we won’t have to discuss it today.” Deb said.
“I hope.” Margaret said.
We went to find Franz and he was in a sitting area with some other people talking. When he saw us he threw up his hands showing his excitement. He introduced us as his new friends.
“Let’s go to the room.” Franz said and he shuffled down the hall with some energy while we followed.
“Did you see the house?” He asked.
“Yes, we found it,” I said. “It looks like a nice house. Did you plant the flowers out front and the trees and do all the landscaping?”
“Yes, I worked on it almost every day. It was one of the most fun things I did. I have a real green thumb you know. I have been real blessed that I can make things grow.”
“Did you grow a garden?”
“Oh, yes. If you had been able to see the back of the house you would have seen a nice sized garden. I especially like tomatoes and peppers so I have a lot of those. I have some corn too. Then I have a little of several other things but my big crops are those.”
“Were you married?”
“Yes, Corrina and I were married 52 years when she passed away. We didn’t have any children and we haven’t talked to our family in Michigan in most of that time. They don’t want to have anything to do with us because I was in Hitler’s youth army.”
“Did you volunteer or were you drafted?”
“That is a good question and it sounds so simple now to be one or the other. The truth is both. My mother was taken to a concentration camp because they measured the length of her nose and that told them she was Jewish. That is ridiculous but that is what they said and off she went. So I was alone starving when most other kids were starving even that had a family. I was promised food if I would join and then they grabbed me up and hauled me off. So was I forced into service or did I volunteer. The truth is they grabbed me up and I didn’t protest. They would give me food.”
He paused and looked at us for a few seconds.
“Something has happened so I won’t get my house back, will I?”
We didn’t say anything for what seemed several seconds.
“It doesn’t look like it but we don’t know for sure. We are hoping to get it back for you but someone bought it and they are living in it.” Deb said.
I was glad it was her that answered. A woman’s voice is usually softer and gentler and hers is for sure so her telling him was kinder than I could have been.
He just sat there for several minutes without emotion or speaking.
“Well I’ll just have to make do somewhere else then.” Franz said with some sadness and some determination. “I have done it before and I will do it again.”
We just sat there amazed and with nothing we could really say. He is eighty years old and just found out he lost his home. Now he is talking about going to live somewhere else. That was amazing to us.
We visited for a little while longer and then told him we would be back in a couple of days. He thanked us for coming and said he needed to take a nap.
We told Margaret what had happened and she said they would check on him every little bit and be sure he was okay. We were sure he was depressed because he almost immediately wanted to take a nap. That is a good defensive mechanism.
When we got home, Jim called. He said we would not believe what had been happening today. He said the letter went out to the banks late yesterday afternoon. In the letter they had instructed the banks what to do if they should be approached to close an account. If the person did not have the proper paperwork, then they were to tell them that the bank had an accounting error relating to the account, and that it should be cleared up that day or the next. They weren’t to tell anyone about the letter. Then the letter stated that the directions did not exclude anyone including a branch of government.
If they would leave a phone number, the bank would call them when it was straightened out, and they could come back in and close the account. If they protested, the banker could say that it should be resolved really soon. If the people wanted to take the money out that was not contested, they would simply say their charter with the FDIC or OCC, whichever applied, would not let them.
The letter did not mention the IRS. The FBI had gotten several calls from banks saying that IRS agents had been in to close accounts. The bank people had done what they were instructed to do by the FBI. It may have been the only time most of them had ever told an IRS agent “No!” Some of the IRS badge carriers were not very happy and didn’t take “No” very well. At a couple of places, security had to show them out. Most would not leave a phone number, and all said they would be back.
Jim said they had twenty-three banks where they had agents waiting inside for the IRS person or impersonators to come back. They hoped to have a few people in custody soon.
Sal called to tell us that he and someone with him had finished breaking the code and thanked us. I asked for a copy of the broken code. He said he would send an e-mail attachment with an encrypted code, and he told me the code to unlock it.
Deb and I knew we wanted a more secure house than most, and the best way to do that it seemed was to have a courtyard totally enclosed. We had discussed it as a possible option before but now we were certain we wanted to make that a priority if we could.
When we searched for and drove to look at houses like that we found all kinds. That surprised us. We knew of the low-lying single-story Spanish design with red-clay tiled roofs. But we discovered old-world styles of half-timbered two-story houses that were raised above ground level so parking, utility rooms, and storage underneath. We found some that didn’t have a formal name. They were small residential campus layouts like some college campuses where you have buildings of different sizes connected with covered walkways. So
metimes the walkways had a wall on the outside creating a secure inner courtyard. Access to the courtyard in some cases was only through one of the buildings. In other cases they entered through a gated driveway.
Reading Rebecca’s notes was fascinating. She had met Leon at a deposition at his house. He had been involved in some kind of lawsuit, and one January the lawyer agreed to meet Leon at his house so he wouldn’t have to get out. The lawyer hired Rebecca to record the deposition. She got there several minutes before the lawyer, and Leon liked her. He asked for her phone number. Later he called her and told her he had no family who cared about him, and he wanted her to be the executor of his estate. She was surprised he would trust her and tried to talk him out of it. But apparently, few people talked Leon out of what he really wanted.
Things seemed to have gone pretty well for a couple of years with Leon being low maintenance. Then one day all that changed. Leon was taken out of his house and moved to the Christian Brothers Nursing Home. He had been sedated in his home and taken out on a stretcher to an ambulance. The neighbors were told he had a mild stroke, and he should be fine. The people who took him were careful to not raise any alarm even though Leon was unconscious.
Once in the nursing home, he was kept pretty much sedated even though he was awake much of the daytime and put to sleep at night with meds. They kept him feeling good. They were giving him Nardil and Wellbutrin among other things. They apparently gave him enough other things to mask their real intentions. His doctor brought in medication he said one pharmaceutical company or another wanted him to try. They made sure Leon had enough that he didn’t talk too much. Often when he did speak, his speech was slurred and his thoughts disconnected and impossible to follow.
Leon tried to get nurses and others to listen to him. He wanted to go home. He was there against his will. Those that put him there had no right to take him out of his house.
It took Rebecca a few days of frantic searching to find Leon once he was taken from his home. When she did find the nursing home he was in, they wouldn’t let her see him. She finally convinced them she was his granddaughter with the lawyers help. Leon was cogent enough that he recognized her and verified her relationship. She got really upset when Leon told her what he knew. She pitched a fit, wanting to know who put him there, and who took him out of his house. Apparently, the doctor who was to care for Leon got a call from the nursing home and sounded the alarm to others.
Before Rebecca was killed she apparently had not been to Leon’s house for a while. She had been visiting and working with Leon at the nursing home. She was being stonewalled everywhere she went. The doctor caring for Leon also tried to scare her off several times. He told her she was upsetting Leon, and she might be the cause of a heart attack or his death.
Later the doctor told her that Leon was upset at her and wanted her to stay away. Then he told her the nursing home staff was getting tired of her false alarms and wanted her blocked from seeing Leon. Finally, the nursing home asked her to quit coming. She didn’t, but she was harassed all along the way. When they knew she was coming, they would give Leon enough meds that he would be out. They would also try to stall her at the front desk long enough to dope him up when she came unannounced.
While she was working with Leon at the nursing home, they cleaned out his house, checking accounts, stocks, bonds, car, and everything else he had. Then they did a quick short sale on his house. He died conveniently the day after the closing.
Rebecca heard from a niece of Leon’s just before he died. All she seemed to care about was how much money he had. She had implied that if anyone, like Rebecca, stole his money, the rest of the family would sue her.
The people who took Leon’s stuff seemed to think Rebecca would go away once Leon passed away, and that would be the end of it. She started raising a stink about getting an autopsy. She got Leon’s lawyer involved again and with her own money, and they began to look for ways to subpoena someone over Leon’s stuff. They were hitting dead ends and being stonewalled everywhere they looked.
Rebecca had gone to Leon’s probate. A lawyer there representing the government declared there was no money or equity in the estate that was not owed to the government. So Rebecca was the executor of an estate with nothing in it.
They gave Rebecca a small urn with Leon’s ashes. There had been no memorial. No family with him when he passed away. He had been un-connected. Rebecca cried. Now, I remembered about when it happened because Rebecca was sad and upset. Looking back, I believe she had been thinking about telling me but had kept her promise instead, even after his death.
Then the writing had stopped.
That very fact after so much writing and work and detail proved an untimely ending. The sudden stop screamed of something not right. It shouted something had not finished the way it should have... Leon had not gotten justice. No one knew what was going on, and there were few answers about anything relating to Leon’s last few months.
But the stopped writing had a story of its own, and I knew what it was. Rebecca’s work was unfinished because they’d stopped her. I was sick. I had been so helpless, so angry, and so powerless to help her. She had no way to help Leon or get justice for him. If he had just let her bring Ben into the situation it might have been better. Together they might have been able to do more. This faceless enemy had been so cruel. They’d taken a healthy man from his home, they had drugged him, and had taken everything he had including his dignity, freedom, and life.
I went to the bathroom and threw up. It seemed as if the room was spinning, and I was so dizzy. Things were not right, and I couldn’t fix them or make the world settle down.
It took me a while to get my thoughts together to move on. Deb just hung out with me, loving me but not crowding or rushing. I was exhausted and sick. Deb suggested we get a little something to eat. I ate a little and that helped.
This was all overwhelming, but we agreed on a couple of things. We knew something was about to happen in Rebecca’s case. When we talked about her or Leon, both of them seemed so surreal. It was way too big for us and we felt helpless.
I suggested we go home. When we got there I took an unusually long nap. This was making me sick.
***
When I woke up I went looking for Deb. Since there was nothing we could do on Leon and Rebecca’s case, we eventually moved forward with the house project, even though we were moving very slowly. Deb understood, and we worked at my pace.
We called Margaret to see how Franz was doing.
“He is doing great. He is walking up and down the halls visiting with other patients. He was a little sad when he realized he wouldn’t be going home but he has pulled himself together and is making the best of it. He has a strong spirit and isn’t in bad health. He really is pretty strong for his age. He played checkers nearly all day yesterday and maybe the champion though he won’t say so. We think he beat everyone here. He says he didn’t but we think that means he didn’t beat people that don’t play so he actually did beat everyone that played him.”
“That is great.” Deb said. “We are really busy right now and want to come see him again but we might not make it today. Will he and you be okay if we don’t make it until tomorrow?”
“Oh yes, we are fine. He is the ideal patient. He doesn’t have the money to stay here and he doesn’t need us but he is doing great.”
“Please make a point of telling him we called and we will be back up to see him.”
“I sure will.” Margaret said.
We didn’t say anything for several minutes.
“Deb, I don’t think I can help him right now because I’m so drained. Can you call Otis and ask him what he thinks we can do for Franz?”
“Sure, honey, I love you. You know I will do anything I can to help you and I agree that we need to help Franz as much as we can.”
“I knew my best friend Rebecca had been a wonderful person.’ I said. “I wished so much she had asked Leon to release her from her promise as far as I was conc
erned. I wish she had told me what was going on so that I could be in the fight for Leon with her. I am so sad that she was doing it alone. I loved her so much and am so sad that we weren’t in it together.”
Neither of us said anything for several minutes.
“Please don’t ever get into a situation where you promise not to share something with me. I don’t want you to have to do anything on your own. We should be together in whatever we get into.” I said.
Deb quietly answered. “I won’t. She should have included you somehow. I will learn from her mistake and I promise you that I won’t do the same thing.”
I just nodded yes because I was glad for that promise.
Then she called Otis to tell him about Franz. She was on the phone with him for probably thirty minutes. When she hung up I asked if they had any answers on how to take care of him.
“No, not really. We went over some ideas. There are church organizations that usually can help but they don’t normally move fast. We could take him to the downtown YMCA but at his age someone would take advantage of him one way or another and at least rob him blind.”
“Could we make room for him in the house we build and take care of him there?” I asked. “I mean I think I would like to but I’m not sure and don’t want to if you are against it.”
“No, I would like to but we don’t have the house yet and what do we do until we have the house? It could be a year before it is ready to move into.”
“We can’t keep paying for him to stay there. I mean we could but that is very expensive and not a good use of money for something he doesn’t need. Maybe we could find an assisted living place where he would rent an apartment and have a nurse check in on him every day and where he would have an alarm where he could signal for help if he got into trouble with something. Then we could check on him once a week or so. That might not cost too much.”
“I know you don’t feel like it right now so let me call around and see what I can find out.” Deb said. “If we can find a place he can afford or almost afford and we pay the difference then it could be workable until we build our house. We could include an in-law suite of some kind and put him in there.”