Fraudulent Transfers Page 22
“Your offer is still outrageous.”
“Well, your clients should have seen this coming when they decided to poison Mrs. Marchant’s dog.”
“I’ll communicate your offer, as I’m required to do, and call you back. But don’t hold your breath.” Stringer then terminated the call by slamming down the phone.
He did call me back the following morning and offered $10,000, plus a walk away mutual dismissal of claims. I countered with $90,000. After several more phone calls, and further posturing on Stringer’s part (and mine), we reached a settlement at $50,000. Since this was $30,000 more than what Olivia Marchant had told me she would accept in settlement, I considered this a job well done. I told Stringer I would prepare the settlement documents, which I wanted to do anyway since he wasn’t very good at that sort of thing. By noon on Wednesday, the documents had been signed and the settlement payment was in the McConnell Jones and Knight trust account, with the understanding that the money couldn’t be disbursed until Judge Cloverton had signed the order dismissing the plaintiff’s claim and the defendants’ counterclaims, with prejudice (meaning the claims could never be brought again). Judge Cloverton in fact signed the order late in the day on Wednesday and Olivia Marchant picked up a check drawn on our trust account Thursday morning. After more tears and multiple thank you’s, she gave me a hug and a check of her own to cover our firm’s charges--$5,800--plus another $2,000 for Marvin Lang. Marvin at first refused to take this payment, since he had agreed to provide his expert witness services in this case for $1,000. I told him Mrs. Marchant wanted him to have the money and her feelings would be hurt if he didn’t accept it. He finally agreed to keep the money and then he promptly made a $1,000 donation to the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region in memory of Tanya, Mrs. Marchant’s dog.
Early afternoon on Thursday, Ed called from Dallas, where he had settled in and was beginning work on his MasterCard data breach assignment. He reported that Seymour Wheeler had been arrested the day after our meeting with him at Bayfield Bank by the Cayman Islands Financial Intelligence Unit, the Cayman Islands’ equivalent of our Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. At the time of his arrest, Wheeler was trying to board a Cayman Airways flight to Havana, with a connection on to Nigeria. That same day, Tomas Padilla had been arrested at the Peace Arch U.S./Canada border crossing north of Bellingham, Washington. At the time of his arrest, he was trying to enter Canada in a rented car using a counterfeit Canadian passport having another fictitious name, Roberto Gonzales. Padilla was being held in a Vancouver jail without bond while U.S. and Canadian officials argued over which country would get to try him first. Peter Bordeaux and Roland Kwan, or whatever their real names were, had disappeared as soon as word got out that Bounce’s money laundering attempt through Bayfield Bank had crashed and burned and Padilla had been arrested. Law enforcement agencies up and down the West Coast were looking for them. Vancouver police had reported an assassination-type killing last Tuesday of a man believed to have been one of the principals behind Bounce. This was apparently a Vancouver organized crime family’s idea of an appropriate sanction for breach of contract. FCEN, Ed said, was convinced that Bounce was out of business for good and the other money laundering operations known to be active in the San Francisco Bay Area, if not also out of business, would at least be taking a long vacation.
At 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Stephanie’s daughter, Angie, showed up on schedule to tutor me in the use of McConnell Jones & Knight’s new cloud-based computer system. I had agreed to pay her $15/hour, which was considerably cheaper than what our regular software guy, Byron, would have charged. Angie was very patient with me and took me through all the procedures I needed to know in order to log on to our cloud account, perform basic document drafting functions, surf the Internet, and send and receive emails. My tutorial lasted an hour, and Angie and I agreed that was enough for one day. As she was leaving, she said: “Mr. McConnell, I think you’re, like, really getting the hang of this. Let me know when you’re, like, ready for your next lesson.”
Mid-afternoon on Friday, I left work early to take Fletcher to see his vet, an animal loving woman named Heidi Freeman. I described to Heidi how Fletcher sometimes stumbled when he walked and could no longer jump into the back of my SUV. After poking and prodding and squeezing in and around Fletcher’s hip joints, all of which provoked some modest whimpering, she told me what I was afraid she would.
“Jack, he’s in the beginning stages of hip dysplasia. In other words, his hip joints are wearing out. As you probably know, this is not uncommon in Labradors. We have some good anti-inflammatory meds now that can help control the pain but eventually the pain will become greater than the drugs can handle and then you’ll have a difficult decision on your hands whether the time has come to put him down. That could be in two weeks or two years. We can never tell that in advance. But as you probably also know, Labradors and other large breeds are not long lived. Fletcher, at age eleven, going on twelve, has already passed the median life expectancy for a Labrador. So, he may be getting close to the end.”
“Thanks Heidi,” I said. “I figured that’s what you would be telling me but I’ve been in denial. Your advice?”
“Try the medication. I’ll give you a starter supply, and let’s just take it day to day. Fletcher will let you know when the time has come to end the pain. He’ll wag his tail, look you in the eye, and tell you in his own way ‘thanks for a good life but it’s time to go.’ I’ll be here to help when that time comes. That’s an occasion for a house call.”
Fletcher gave Jennifer a goodbye lick on her cheek and we headed home. This discussion of canine mortality had no apparent effect on Fletcher’s appetite and I gave him an early dinner, with an extra helping of Greek yogurt added to his regular senior dog chow.
My Friday, and my week, finally ended on a better note. When I returned home from the vet’s office, I found a UPS package on my front porch, coming from some Internet company I had never heard of. After I had fed Fletcher his dinner and poured myself a glass of wine, I opened the package. It contained a dozen eight ounce bottles of Sea Scent Body Lotion and a message from Veronica. “Jack, I didn’t want you to forget about me. I’ll be home in a week. I love you.”
The End
About the author
Jim Flynn grew up in Omaha, Nebraska; attended Dartmouth College on a National Merit Scholarship, majoring in French; and went on to earn a law degree from Stanford Law School. In between the start and finish of law school, Jim served as an officer in the United States Navy, assigned to a branch of the Navy that specializes in electronic espionage and where he learned Mandarin Chinese. Jim practiced law in Colorado Springs for thirty-eight years, representing banks and other clients in the financial services industry. Jim lives in Colorado Springs, with wife Anne Marie and dogs Winston, a Golden retriever, and Abby, a not-sure-what. Fraudulent Transfers is a sequel to two earlier Jack McConnell and Veronica Stailey adventures—Overdraft, about a cyber attack on the U.S. banking system, and Where There’s No Will, about a multi-million dollar will contest in rural Gunnison County, Colorado, that resulted from a missing will.