Practice to Deceive (2 page)

Cynthia was delighted.

The writer was lazy. He had interviewed maybe a dozen people for the article, fellow lawyers mostly, a few clients, and the defendant she was in the process of pounding into submission—no one who had known Cynthia longer than two years; no one who could tell him about the unflattering life she lived before she became obsessive, humorless, frustrated and self-righteous.

“She has some mouth on her, this girl,” Mom claimed, paging through the article. “Claimed she didn’t want to be
merely
a housewife. What’s wrong with being a housewife? I’m a housewife and you kids are lucky I am. The world is falling apart because women aren’t housewives anymore, because they aren’t staying home.”

Mom tossed the magazine on the kitchen table and folded her arms. “Something else Lee told me; I wanted to ask you if it was true or not.”

“What?”

“Is this Cynthia the same lawyer who defended the drunk driver who killed Laura and Jenny?”

“Yes.”

“How could you?” She was angry now.

“What?”

“How can you spend time with someone like that?”

“Someone like what? Ma, she’s not the person described in the magazine article. She’s very caring, she’s very sincere—”

“I don’t care.”

“She carries iodine in her purse in case someone has an accident.”

“I don’t care! She tried to save the man who killed my granddaughter.”

I took a deep breath. Nothing I could say would make much difference, but I thought I’d give it a try and then let it go.

“I started seeing her a few months ago while I was working a case. My first reaction was the same as yours. I wanted to punch her out. But after speaking with her for a while I realized I wasn’t angry anymore, not at her or the rest of the world. Besides, Mom, she’s a lawyer. It’s her job to defend people who aren’t very nice. Sometimes I work for the same people.”

“It’s wrong,” Mom told me.

“It isn’t wrong.”

“I don’t care what you say.”

“Wait until you meet her—”

“Meet her! I have no intention of meeting her.”

“Ma …”

She turned her back on me, returning to her chicken. But I knew she wasn’t finished. I waited. Finally she looked back, grease dripping from the wing she held with metal tongs.

“Lie down with dogs and you’ll wake up with fleas,” she told me.

M
Y FATHER HAD
arranged all of Mrs. Gustafson’s monthly financial statements in chronological order. I started with April, seven years ago. Mrs. Gustafson had opened a discretionary account with Levering Field, giving him full authority to make investments on her behalf. He seemed to have done well for her: long-time dividend payers, short-term bonds, mortgage-related securities, moderate-risk mutual funds—including one in which I had invested. She was averaging about nine percent annual return with negligible risk. That’s a lot of money for a little old lady living alone in Central Florida; her biggest bills were property taxes and a Medicare supplemental insurance payment, about thirty-five hundred a year.

“What am I looking for?”

My father was lying on his sofa, reading
The Wall Street Journal
. He turned a page and said, “Seek and ye shall find” without looking up.

“Hey, this isn’t my algebra homework. You can help me without worrying that I won’t learn how to do it myself.”

Dad smiled. “The last six months.”

The last six months were telling. In month one, Field began liquidating Mrs. Gustafson’s positions in all her investments, storing the cash in a money market savings account. By month two, the process was complete. In month three, Field bought twenty-five units of Willow Tree, LP at ten thousand dollars each.

“What in hell is he doing?” I wondered aloud.

“Keep reading,” my father said.

There was no return on the investment in months four or five. In month six, Field reported a net loss of the entire investment and notified Mrs. Gustafson that he was closing her account.

“What happened?”

“The statement is not very informative, is it?” my father volunteered from the sofa.

“Best guess.”

Dad neatly folded his paper and slid into a sitting position. “I never guess. It’s a sign of weakness.”

I didn’t reply.

“Apparently, Field put all of Mrs. Gustafson’s money into Willow Tree through a private placement,” my father said.

“Private placement?”

“An investment scheme that’s not registered with the SEC.”

“How does that work?”

“Willow Tree was a limited partnership. Limited partnerships are usually used for real estate development. Developers need financing to buy the land, so they offer a number of limited partnerships, as many as thirty-five. Basically, you give them your money, they run the company, and pay you back out of the profits.”

Based on the tone of his voice, I suggested, “You don’t approve.”

“Know what they say about that kind of investment?” he asked rhetorically. “At first the general partners have the knowledge, and the limited partners have all the money. When it’s over, the limited partners have the knowledge, and the general partners have all the money.”

Dad leaned forward and smiled. I smiled back. My father is probably the single smartest man I know, but he generally conceals his intelligence beneath a decidedly blue-collar facade, declaring with pride his Rice Street roots, admitting freely that he’d been a rowdy gang kid going nowhere fast until he was saved by a squeaky-clean Catholic girl from the right side of the tracks. Actually that’s Mom’s version of the story. Anyway, what he does not admit is that in the subsequent years, he earned a drawerful of degrees and certificates from the Universities of Minnesota and St. Thomas. As a result, business competitors tend to underestimate him. So do the unions with which he negotiates as a freelance consultant working on behalf of management—they think they’re dealing with one of their own until it’s too late.

I hadn’t even learned about my father’s educational background until I was a sophomore at St. Thomas and met one of his former professors. “Jim Taylor? Best student I ever had,” the professor had told me. When I mentioned the incident to Dad, he just shrugged the way he does and said, “It’s nothing to get excited about.” That’s when Mom, who had been sworn to secrecy, took me to their bedroom and showed me Dad’s trophies, plaques, and paper.

“Why didn’t you tell me about all this?” I asked him.

“I didn’t do it to impress you,” he’d said.

We never discussed the matter again.

“You researched all this, didn’t you?” I said now.

My father did not say if he had or hadn’t. Instead he told me, “Willow Tree was created to build low-income housing in and around the Twin Cities. It was grievously underfinanced and incompetently managed. It was unable to convince a single city or county board to rezone property for their use; it couldn’t get proper building permits, construction costs skyrocketed—they went out of business without putting up so much as an outhouse.

“That’s point one,” Dad continued. “Point two …” He closed his eyes and recited from memory, “‘In recommending to a customer the purchase, sale, or exchange of any security, a member shall have reasonable grounds for believing that the recommendation is suitable for such customer …’ NASD Rules of Fair Practice, twenty-one fifty-two, section two.” He opened his eyes again. “Field put everything Mrs. Gustafson had into Willow Tree.”

“He should have known better,” I volunteered.

“It’s a violation of fiduciary responsibility!” my father exclaimed vehemently. The last time I’d seen him so angry, I was sixteen years old and trying to explain to him and the Fort Snelling State Park rangers exactly what I was doing in the park at one
A.M.
with a young lady in the back seat of my mom’s car.

“Investment counselors work under a concept called ‘the shingle theory,’” Dad added more calmly. “The theory is that when someone hangs out a sign saying he is an investment counselor, he is promising that he will look after the interests of the client and follow high professional standards. Obviously, Levering Field did not do that in Mrs. Gustafson’s case—you don’t put elderly people living on the relatively fixed income of a retirement plan into risky ventures. That makes Field guilty of misrepresentation at best and fraud at worst.”

“I know the rules apply to stockbrokers,” I said. “But if Field is just a personal investment counselor—”

“I don’t give a shit if he’s a goddamn janitor!” my father exploded. “If he’s investing other people’s money, he has a responsibility to do the right thing!” Dad stood up, punched the air a few times, circled the sofa twice, reclaimed his seat, and said, “So, there.”

“Maybe he didn’t realize Willow Tree was risky,” I suggested.

Dad shook his head. “Due diligence,” he said calmly. “Field was obligated to research the product he was investing in, and he didn’t. If he had, he would have known better. Christ, if I can figure it out …”

“I wonder why he did it.”

“What do you think? He did it for the money. He earns five percent commission off any trade he makes. Hell, he could have charged more; we don’t know.”

“No, I mean why did he do it to Mrs. Gustafson? And why now?” I leaned back in the chair and regarded the hundreds of books carefully arranged on shelves along the wall.The books belonged to my mother. My father never reads them, only
The Wall Street Journal
and
National Geographic
.

“What happened six months ago?” I wondered aloud.

“Mrs. Gustafson had a stroke,” my father answered as if he expected the question. “At her age, the doctors thought she wasn’t going to make it. But she’s a tough old bird. They were amazed at how quickly and completely she recovered. She lost some vision, some mobility, but mostly she’s all right.”

“Does she have any family?”

“No one.”

“No nephews, no nieces?”

“No one.”

“Does she have a will?”

Dad shook his head.

“Think Field knew that?”

“Part of his job is to know the customer.”

“That sonuvabitch,” I said under my breath.

“You understand now, don’t you?”

“That sonuvabitch,” I repeated. “Field thought she was going to die and leave all that money to the State of Florida. So he cashed her in, trying to make as much off of her as possible while she was still breathing. But she survived, and now she’s screwed.”

“That’s what I think, too.”

I studied my father’s face for a moment. He did not look away.

“What am I doing here?” I asked. “You already have it figured out. Call a lawyer. Call the attorney general; see if a crime’s been committed.”

Dad shrugged. “I thought you might want to run over to Hammond Stadium with me, catch the Minnesota Twins in a couple of Grapefruit League games.”

“Spring training? Who are you kidding? You don’t even like baseball. The only reason you took my brother and me to games when we were kids was because you thought it was your parental duty.”

“That’s true.”

“So?”

“So?”

“So, why am I here?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“No.”

“Try.”

“No, you tell me.”

“All right,” he said. Dad left the sofa and moved to the desk. He stood in front of it. It made me uncomfortable looking up at my father, so I stood, too.

“I would never ask anyone to do anything I was not willing to do myself if I had the skills.”

“OK.”

“From what I know of you, you’re very good at what you do. Tough, resourceful, persistent, sometimes ruthless.”

“OK.”

“If you weren’t my son, you’d still be just the kind of man I would hire for this job.”

“What job?”

“I want you to get Mrs. Gustafson’s money back.”

“How?”

“By hook or by crook.”

“By crook?”

“By whatever it takes.”

I sat down.

“H
I
,” I
SAID.

“Hi, yourself.”

I was always pleased to hear Cynthia Grey’s voice. It was very soothing, almost like a melody played on a musical instrument, a clarinet, Artie Shaw doing “Summertime.” You listen to the voice, not the words.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” It was eleven-fifteen
P.M.
in the Twin Cities.

“No, I was watching Leno. How are you?”

“Fine. Listen, I’m coming home tomorrow.”

“I thought you were staying with your parents the entire week.”

“Something came up that I have to deal with. Can I see you?”

“You had better,” she told me.

“No, I mean professionally.”

She hesitated. “Sure. What’s up?”

“It’s one of those things you have to explain in person.”

“You’re not in trouble again, are you?”

“Not yet.”

“Uh-huh.”

I changed the subject. “How have you been?”

She hesitated again. “OK.”

“OK?”

“Yes,” she said, but the word was weak and followed by an audible gasp.

“Cynthia?”

“It’s nothing,” she said. Her weeping was now unmistakable.

“Cynthia? Cynthia, are you all right?” I was alarmed. Cynthia Grey never cried. Never. Not even when someone had shot at her.

“Yes, it’s just … I can’t … I’ve been crying since noon and I can’t stop.”

“What’s wrong? Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing’s wrong … It’s just … It’s just—”

“What? What happened?”

“They offered a settlement,” she informed me between sobs.

“The clothing people?”

“I took it to my … clients. Told them they could do better … in court … but they voted unanimously to accept it.”

“How much?”

“Sealed,” she said. She was weeping freely now. “Sealed. No admission … of wrongdoing. No statements … to the media.”

“Cynthia,” I said softly, wishing I was there, wanting to wrap my arms around her, wanting to comfort her.

“I don’t believe it. After everything that’s happened … to me, after … everything that I’ve been through … it comes to this. I just don’t … believe it.”

“Most out-of-court settlements are sealed, aren’t they?” I asked, trying to be understanding from fourteen hundred miles away. “No admission of guilt? Isn’t that why companies settle out of court, so they don’t have to admit their guilt?”