Page 51 of Pro Bono

“How about fourP.M.at our offices?”

“All right. I’ll be there. Goodbye.” He listened for clicks, then said, “Martha? Are you still listening in?”

“I’m here,” she said.

“Then you know I’m going to be at that meeting at four, but I’ll stop at the office ahead of time. If you’ve got anything I should be paying attention to, that would be a good time.”

“All right. See you then.”

He went the rest of the way down to join Vesper, who had made it to the mailbox and then back to the kitchen. He said, “That was the call we’ve been waiting for from Founding Fathers Vested. They want to meet with me at four.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think it means that the people in charge of fending off claims got worried and talked with the people who actually know specifics about how their business is run and realized that they’ve got troubles.”

“If something happens, great,” Vesper said. “Just remember, you’ve already won. In trying to cover up, they restored what they took, and thanks to you, all the money I had invested with them is in my bank accounts. And you already got a ridiculous settlement from Great Oceana.”

“It’s not over quite yet.”

“If this just ended here, I’d be perfectly happy.”

“I get that,” he said. “But I think we’ve got a chance to help another big company make it less likely for small investors to get robbed in the future.”

“I understand,” she said.

“I know this is going to sound like a waste of time, but I would like it if you would come with me and spend an hour or two in my office while I’m in the meeting.”

“You don’t think I’ll be safe here alone?”

“Apparently nobody’s broken in here. But those two guys who were watching this house and then broke into my place weren’t random robbers, or they wouldn’t have known to come to both places. They must have been working for somebody, and I don’t know who. With the meeting, today just became one of those charged days when a thief might think it was his last chance to stop us from ruining his life. Maybe you should pack fresh clothes while you’re at it.”

She headed for the staircase. “I’ll be right down.”

When she came back downstairs, she was wearing a black pantsuit with black flats and carrying her overnight bag.

Warren said, “You look really nice.”

“It’s the default outfit that everybody owns. You can wear it whether you want to tap dance, deal blackjack, or bail out of a plane.”

“Let’s stick with the easy ones for now.”

When they got to the office, he and Vesper sat in the conference room with Martha while she presented routine matters for his attention and gave him various papers to sign. After a few minutes Vesper got up and said to him, “Do you mind if I use your office to call Tiffany?”

“Feel free.”

Martha gathered up the papers on the conference table. “I guess that’s all the stuff you need to see and sign at the moment. I looked up FordMorham, so you can know who you’re dealing with before you go at four. It’s on the computers.”

“Thanks, Martha.”

He went to the computer in the spare office, signed on, and found the folder of entries she had compiled. Morham looked the way his name sounded. He was tall with a thin nose and bright blue eyes. He had been to a prep school in Pennsylvania that Warren hadn’t heard of, then Duke, and then NYU for his MBA. The résumé was a steady rise over twenty-five years at three companies.

He closed the file and went into the outer office. It was getting to be time. He gathered copies of the past year’s monthly reports for Vesper Ellis’s account at Founding Fathers, copies of his lawsuit against the company, and copies of his letters to the company and their replies, and put them in a thick brown file envelope that tied with a string. He knocked and opened the door of his office and waved at Vesper, who was sitting behind his desk talking on the office phone. He said aloud, “I’m leaving now, Mrs. Ellis.”

The Founding Fathers Vested office was too far to walk to, and his latest rental car was sure to be familiar to anyone who was hired to watch him, so he went down the elevator only as far as the second floor and stood at a window in the alcove that held the elevators, summoned a Lyft car, and stayed there to watch the street from above. Five minutes later he saw a car that matched the picture on his phone. He kept his eyes on the cars behind it and near it for a few seconds, stepped into the elevator for the one-story ride, and then made it out the door and into the car in about ten seconds. The driver was a man in his twenties who had a cheerful, friendly manner. Warren responded the same way and told him the address he had already supplied on his text message, so there was less chance of a misunderstanding.

The car slid into motion and took him toward Founding Fathers. He memorized the cars in the street behind the Lyft car, and occasionally checked to see if any new cars appeared. In twenty minutes the driver pulled up and let him out in front of the building where Founding Fathers Vested occupied the top five floors. Warren got out and headed inside. When he reached the lobby, a woman in her early forties wearing a gray suit cut across the lobby to intercept him. She held out her hand and said, “Mr. Warren? I’m Constance Pollock. We’ve been expecting you.”

“Good afternoon,” Warren said. “Thank you for meeting me.”

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