Frenemy of the People

by Nora Olsen

  I watched as Clarissa stood in the center of the ring, holding the line attached to Sassy, and gave her commands. Keeping one ear cocked toward Clarissa and one ear listening to everything else, Sassy walked, trotted, and stopped when Clarissa told her to. Sassy was obviously very smart, and she seemed to think Clarissa was the boss. No way a butterfly would do any of those things.

  Clarissa folded up the line and beckoned me over. “Okay, now you’re going to ride her. I’ll describe it and then I’ll ride her myself for a few minutes, just so you can see what it’s like, and you’ll know it’s perfectly safe. You don’t mind if I ride her, do you?”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. My heart hurt to hear the doubt in her voice. Clarissa obviously loved this horse. “Go ahead.”

  Clarissa put the saddle on Sassy, adjusted it a little, and fairly sprang onto Sassy’s back. They took off around the ring, looking fluid and perfect as if they were one organism. Sitting straight up in her saddle, Clarissa looked haughty and proud. I remembered how I originally thought Clarissa was a snob and wondered how I could have been so wrong.

  “You see how gentle she is?” Clarissa called out, returning and dismounting.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You ready to give it a try?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Always wear a brain bucket,” Clarissa warned me, taking the riding helmet off her own head and plopping it onto mine. “You’re the same height as me, so I don’t think I need to adjust the saddle. You have to approach a horse from the left. I’m going to bring her to the mounting block to make it easy for you to get on. Just climb up those stairs—you have nothing to worry about.”

  Clarissa coaxed me up the mounting block and cajoled me into putting one foot in the stirrup and then sliding onto Sassy’s back as gently as I could. It seemed awfully high off the ground, but Sassy’s back seemed broad and safe. I held the reins, and Sassy’s mane too, in a death grip.

  “Heels down. Toes up and in. Don’t slump!” Clarissa barked. I decided she had a bit of the dominatrix in her. “Okay, I’m going to lead you around. You just try to stop staring down at your hands and look where we’re going.”

  I gazed fixedly between Sassy’s ears. It was disconcerting to feel the massive animal moving beneath me, but after a while I started to get used to it. “Can she tell I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing?” I called out.

  “Of course,” said Clarissa. “And you’re being good about it, aren’t you, Sassy? She’s pretty hot and spirited if you’re a good rider, but she’ll just plod along for you.”

  Clarissa persuaded me to let go of Sassy’s mane and hold the reins in a more relaxed way. She asked me to give Sassy commands—like saying Whoa! and pulling once on the reins to get her to stop, or kicking her with my heels to get her to go. It was actually kind of fun. The riding lesson didn’t last too long, which helped keep it fun.

  When I got off, I slid off into a heap on the ground. My legs felt like jelly, but I quickly scrambled to my feet.

  “You’re a natural,” Clarissa told me.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Eh, actually you’re just okay. But keep it up and you’ll be a great rider!”

  We took Sassy back to her stall and brushed her more, and Clarissa showed me a special blanket I should put on Sassy if she got sweaty. I hoped I would never have to be alone with Sassy and put all this into practice myself. What if she needed the special blanket and I didn’t give it to her? Would she die? I wanted to love Sassy because Clarissa did, but I was still mostly fearful of the horse.

  I noticed Clarissa had gotten quiet, and then I saw her wipe a tear off her face.

  “Hey, are you crying?” I asked.

  “One tear isn’t crying,” she said. “I thought I’d never get to ride Sassy again, so I don’t know what I’m so upset about.”

  “Listen, she’s still your horse,” I said.

  “That’s very sweet, but she’s actually not,” Clarissa said.

  “No, I’m not kidding. There’s more to ownership than a piece of paper. Property is theft, and so forth. Sassy loves you. We’re going to share her. Even if, you know, someday you run off with someone else, we can still have joint custody.”

  “You goof,” Clarissa said, swatting me with the end of the rope, but she was smiling. I kissed her.

  “If you’re a total lunatic, but you’ve gotten into the innermost fibers of my whole being, does that mean I’m in love with you?” Clarissa asked.

  My heart beat faster. I tried to play it cool, so I just shrugged and said, “You tell me.”

  So she told me.

  When the girl you love says she’s in love with you, that’s the best feeling ever.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Clarissa

  I was a little disappointed by the lawyer’s office. I had hoped it would be grand and inspire confidence, but instead it was a little hole-in-the-wall. Stacks of folders were everywhere and the furnishings were dingy. But the lawyer herself, who was named Ms. Guerrero, was fairly impressive. She wore a beautifully tailored dark suit and said she specialized in foreclosure defense. Ms. Guerrero was a tall, dark-skinned woman with jangly earrings and a fiery look in her eyes. Her forehead was creased in concentration as she listened to Dad’s history of the house.

  “We bought it in 2007,” he said. “My wife and I went house hunting on a whim, just as a way to spend the weekend, kind of thinking about the dream house we might be able to get someday. We thought we’d be renting for a while longer. But the agent said we would be eligible for a mortgage. We put down $48,000, which was less than ten percent of the price of the house. The loan officer said his job was to make our dreams come true.”

  “And did you have to provide any verification of your income?” Ms. Guerrero asked. “Like paycheck stubs or tax returns, that kind of thing.”

  “I didn’t have to show them anything,” Dad said. “They just wanted a number. So I gave a somewhat optimistic picture of my yearly income. I have a specialty business repairing classic cars, so my income changes from year to year.”

  “We call that a ninja loan,” Ms. Guerrero said. “They’re basically begging you to lie to them. In a traditional loan, they check to see if you can really afford to make the payments. And if it looks like you can’t, they deny you, to keep you from buying something you can’t afford. So the loan officer never explained it was an ARM?”

  “A what?” Dad asked.

  “An adjustable rate mortgage, Dad,” I said. I wished he had done more homework for this meeting with the lawyer.

  “No, he never did. But I read the agreement recently and it was in the fine print. The loan officer said it was a one-percent mortgage. Which was $1,559 per month. But that was just the starter rate, it turned out. After three months it was always at least five percent, sometimes more. The other thing is the bill listed the minimum payment first, and I always paid that amount. I didn’t know there was a penalty for only paying the minimum.”

  “Every time he paid the minimum, it added over a thousand dollars to his loan in deferred interest,” I said. “So the amount he owed kept growing and growing.”

  The lawyer nodded. “That’s very common with these predatory loans. You were set up for failure. The second mortgage you took out was even worse. How did it come about that you took out that mortgage?”

  “Someone called our home number and spoke to my wife. The person said it would be really easy to refinance and he could get the loan approved really fast. He said we’d be better off with the adjustable-rate one still, and it would more likely adjust down rather than up. It never adjusted down, though. We ended up using the money to pay off our credit card bill, paid some medical bills for my other daughter, loaned some money to my brother who was desperate, and we bought a horse for Clarissa here.”

  I winced at that. If they had asked me, Would you like us to buy you a horse with money we don’t actually have? I would have said no. But how was I supposed to
know?

  “I guess it was too good to be true. Maybe we borrowed more than we really needed,” my dad said.

  “That’s what they wanted you to do,” Ms. Guerrero said. “Now let’s talk about what your options are. Mr. Kirchendorfer, you do have a very good case for your foreclosure being fraudulent. Everything your daughter flagged as questionable on your paperwork is indeed extremely questionable. Miss Kirchendorfer, I have trained forensic auditors who don’t do as good a job as you did.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “My girlfriend helped me. She did most of the work.”

  “Well, unless she is a forensic auditor, I’m very impressed by her too.”

  “Eeww. She’s not,” I assured her. “She goes to my high school.”

  “The lack of a promissory note is extremely problematic,” Ms. Guerrero began. She became very animated as if talking about problematic mortgages was what she lived for. Her voice crackled with electricity, and her body language expressed barely contained excitement.

  “What is that again?” Dad interrupted.

  “That is the paper that documents the loan,” Ms. Guerrero said, drumming her manicured fingers excitedly in a brisk tattoo on her crowded desk. “It proves the bank owns the loan. Your mortgage changed hands so many times—so many different banks taking it over—that somewhere along the way this very important legal document was probably lost. I can therefore argue in court that without the original note, the deed of trust is a nullity and there is no proof you, the borrower, ever incurred the debt.”

  “He did incur the debt, though,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

  “This is a legal game,” Ms. Guerrero said. “If they’re so bad at their job that they lose the note, which is just the biggest blunder you can imagine, then they don’t deserve to foreclose on you. Do you know there are people who are going to pay off their mortgages in full and then discover they don’t have a clean title to their own homes because of the negligence of banks and processors? So my strategy is about shifting the burden of mortgage debt back to the greedy banks who created it.”

  I couldn’t understand all the details of what Ms. Guerrero was saying, but I got the basics, and I liked the way she was thinking. She was planning to use every stupid thing the bank had done against them. I was actually getting a little hot and bothered hearing this beautiful woman talking so intelligently. Who knew that was sexy?

  “This approach could take you out of foreclosure and give you time to get back on your feet,” Ms. Guerrero continued. “It has worked a number of times around the country. There was even a case in Massachusetts where a man named Antonio Ibanez, who had defaulted, was given his house back. And he no longer had to pay anyone because his promissory note had been lost and it was so unclear to what lender he legally owed money. But I have to tell you that some of the judges in New York are not receptive to this approach. Now let’s consider the robo-signing.”

  “I know what that is, at least,” Dad said. “Those forged signatures and false affidavits.”

  “It’s really awful,” Ms. Guerrero said. “There are cases of people who’ve been foreclosed on, even though they paid their mortgages in full, because of robo-signed documents. With this issue, I can definitely go to court and get you reimbursed for late fees and other charges you had to pay as a result of the foreclosure proceedings. It’s a good tool for negotiating with the bank. I can call them and say I know you did something illegal. They may cut you a better deal or give you more time. But I can’t guarantee that you can stay in your house.”

  I actually thought it was a good thing that she wasn’t promising anything. It meant she was honest. If she were crooked she would just say, Oh, I guarantee I can get you off the hook! Please sign here.

  “I also found one other thing that even Clarissa did not spot,” Ms. Guerrero said, eyes widening with delight. “You were overcharged by $960 on a recordation tax, which is just a tax for the privilege of officially recording a real estate mortgage. They overcharged you, which is just out-and-out fraud. The deed they filled out is not the same one you signed.”

  “Awesome, so you can get our money back?” I asked. My father gave me a look that meant sit there and be quiet. I didn’t see the point of going to a lawyer if we weren’t allowed to ask any questions.

  “I could, except the company has now gone out of business,” Ms. Guerrero said. “So I’m afraid we can prove you were cheated, but I can’t get you any satisfaction for it.”

  “Just give it to me straight,” my dad said, like Ms. Guerrero was a doctor who was going to say how long he had to live. “What do you think I should do?”

  “You have right on your side, but I don’t know if it’s worth it for you to hire me,” Ms. Guerrero said. “If I were to negotiate with the bank on your behalf, that’s going to cost you about $2,500. That’s because even for a lawyer it can take hours of going through phone trees and talking to offshore call centers before I can speak to someone who has the power to negotiate. The last thing you need is another bill, am I right? And I can’t promise we would win this. There are no guarantees. But I’m not trying to talk you out of hiring me.”

  “You sound like you are,” I said. I wanted her to talk my dad into this because I wanted to take the bank to court.

  “I just want your father to go in with his eyes open,” Ms. Guerrero said. “Here’s an important question for you, Mr. Kirchendorfer. Can you actually stay in this house, even if I get your foreclosure stalled or thrown out? Is there something that’s going to happen to make it easier for you to make your monthly payments? Or will you still be stuck with a house you can’t afford to pay off, that isn’t worth as much as it was when you bought it? Are you underwater on the value of your house?”

  My dad sighed but didn’t answer the questions.

  “In the crappy mortgage you have, the option period, in which you’re allowed to pay the minimum payment every month, ends after five years,” Ms. Guerrero said. “Then you’re going to have to make the full payments. That’s coming up soon. If you’re having trouble with the minimum payment, the full one is really going to break you. Of course, I would try to renegotiate the terms for you, but as I said, I can’t promise anything. Sometimes the banks are uncooperative even when it’s to their own disadvantage.”

  My dad looked down at his hands again.

  “If you do have to leave this house and be foreclosed, I am confident I could get the bank to wipe out your debt and leave you with a good credit rating. I could make a foreclosure easier and better. But I can’t do that for nothing.”

  “I don’t think there’s any way I can pay the mortgage,” Dad said. “Short of a miracle.” He balled his hands into fists and then rubbed them on his pants legs. “I guess I was hoping you could wave a magic wand and just make all our problems go away. But I can’t pay the mortgage. I guess I deserve to be kicked out of my house. I let my family down. I’m supposed to take care of Clarissa, and my wife, and my other girl who has special needs, and I blew it.” He made a strangled sound in his throat. A sob.

  I didn’t know where to look. I had never seen my father this vulnerable. It was horrifyingly embarrassing. All my anger toward him melted away. He had always tried to do the right thing.

  “Look, I’m a lawyer, not a therapist,” Ms. Guerrero said. “But I can tell you this. Don’t judge yourself too harshly, Mr. Kirchendorfer. Put the blame where it belongs. What the banks were doing was criminal—they facilitated this ninja loan you got, and did not adequately explain the interest rates, and overall acted with no regard for ethics or their professional responsibilities. Your only crime was poor judgment of the situation. Your failing was being naïve. Would you blame a little old lady who gave her social security number to a con man? When I was in law school, I once bought a VCR on the street, and when I got home it turned out to be a box of bricks. I was foolish, but the guy who sold it to me was the crook.”

  “I guess I thought I was smarter than that,” Dad said. “I never put m
yself in the little-old-lady category before.” He cleared his throat and seemed to get himself under control. I wished so hard I could fix this for him. And I wanted him to see that it wasn’t his fault, that this was happening to thousands of people.

  “I don’t even understand why this whole mortgage crisis happened,” I said. “I mean, I get what happened to my dad and my house. But this was a countrywide thing, right?”

  “Yes,” Ms. Guerrero said. My dad gave me another look but I ignored him. I really wanted to know, and this was my only chance to find out.

  “Couldn’t the banks see the economy would collapse if they kept giving out mortgages they knew people could never repay?” I asked.

  Ms. Guerrero beamed at me like I was the smartest student in the class. “Great question, Clarissa. Mortgage brokers get paid a commission, so of course they tried to encourage people to borrow the maximum amount. But the mortgage broker didn’t give a—” Ms. Guerrero glanced sideways at me and coughed. “The mortgage brokers didn’t care that the loans would fail because they sold their loans to companies on Wall Street. And the Wall Street companies didn’t care because they could package the bad mortgages up into securities and sell them to investors, who had no idea what was going on.”

  “But isn’t there someone important who is overseeing all this stuff?” I asked. This was all so ridiculous. If I were in charge, I wouldn’t let any of this stuff happen.

  “There are ratings agencies that are supposed to tell you if securities are good or not,” Ms. Guerrero said. “But the ratings agencies gave these lousy securities Triple A ratings, the best grade you can get. No one knows why they did that or what they were thinking.”

  “Clarissa, we can’t waste any more of this nice lady’s time,” my dad said. That was my dad all over. Ms. Guerrero was clearly a shark—a sleek, attractive, principled shark, but still a killer—and he was calling her a nice lady. Who under the age of eighty wants to be called a nice lady anyway?