by Dave Daren
“Can you dig up some more information on them?” I prodded. “Like who their leader is, that kind of thing?”
“And any possible connections to the Burkes?” she added with a smile. “I think I might have a few people I could check with.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I replied with a grin of my own as I stepped into my own inner sanctum.
“You’d probably be dead by now,” she retorted as she returned to her desk.
I’d only just planted my butt in my chair and turned on the computer when the phone rang. I heard Sofia answer, and then a moment later, she buzzed me on the phone.
“What’s up?” I asked as I watched the computer run through its boot cycle.
“Special Agent Smart is on the line,” she replied.
“That was fast,” I mumbled as I picked up the phone.
“Good morning, Mr. Creed,” the blonde agent said before I had a chance to even say ‘hello’.
“Good morning, Special Agent Smart,” I replied. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I saw in the reports that you were involved in an incident last night,” she explained. “I thought I would call and check in on you.”
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “But why are you keeping tabs on my name?”
“We get updates on all gang-related activities,” she replied. “Yours came in with this morning’s batch.”
“Uh-huh,” I said dubiously as I thought about how much gang-related activity probably occurred in the city on any given night.
“Do you mind if I ask what they wanted?” she continued.
“Nothing I could tell them about,” I replied.
“Ah,” she sighed. “Let me guess, attorney-client privilege.”
“Why, Agent Smart, you know me too well,” I laughed.
“I’ll guess Gloria Burke, but no doubt you’ll decline to answer that,” she replied with a small laugh of her own.
“I would,” I agreed.
“You should know that White Collar saw your name as well,” she remarked.
“Should I expect a call from them?” I asked.
“Who knows,” she replied. “They have their own way of doing things.”
“What do you know about the gang?” I pressed. “The Chuchos Lobos?”
“They’re under investigation,” she said.
“Well, I sort of guessed that,” I noted. “Is White Collar looking at them? Or just you guys?”
“They might be on White Collar’s radar,” she admitted.
“Because of Burke,” I guessed.
“You know I can’t say,” she replied.
“We always seem to have these conversations,” I noted. “You know, where neither one of us can really say anything.”
“Keep in touch, Mr. Creed,” she laughed. “Maybe we can help each other out again.”
She hung up before I could offer even a good-bye. On the upside, the computer had finally finished booting up, and I found an email from Carla Bowles with a list of names and phone numbers. It was an impressive list, and I recognized many of the names from news reports on big charity events and the like. The kind of events that featured big name stars and raised several million dollars for the cause of the day.
I started dialing, but as Carla had warned me, most of the ex-clients refused to discuss their business with Matthew Burke. A few were genuinely angry that a stranger had their phone number, and I told them that I had pulled the number from Matthew’s old files. One lady told me in no uncertain terms that I was to lose the phone number or be forever blacklisted from pretty much everywhere on the West Coast.
I was convinced that the world of Burke’s investors had shut its doors against me when I finally called James Delray. Jim, as he preferred to be called, was initially reluctant to discuss the Burkes, but after a side conversation that I couldn’t make out, he came back on the line and told me that he and Milly would be happy to have me over for drinks anytime in the afternoon. We agreed on 2:30, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I hung up. Finally, someone who was willing to help fill in some of the blanks about Matthew Burke.
I tried not to rush Mr. Bauman, my parents’ old friend, through lunch, but my mind kept coming up with new questions for the Delrays. Mr. Bauman sensed that my mind was drifting, and he politely refused desert, even though I knew it was his favorite part of the meal.
“They have apple pie,” I pointed out.
“Next time,” he assured me. “I can see you’re busy, and that’s good. I can tell Wanda that you’re doing okay.”
“I am doing okay,” I replied with a smile. “My firm is starting to build up a regular clientele.”
“That’s good,” he noted. “Those are the clients you want, the ones who keep coming back. Well, the ones who keep coming back and pay you for the work you do.”
“So how are you and Mrs. Bauman doing?” I asked. The last I’d heard, there had been plans to sell their small house and by a boat to sail up and down the coast.
“Wanda decided she didn’t want to spend all her time on a boat,” Mr. Bauman sighed. “Nothing to do if you get bored while you’re out in the middle of the ocean, she says.”
“So you still have your house,” I clarified.
“For now,” Mr. Bauman agreed. “But we’re looking into RV’s. Oy, the things they can do with RV’s these days. It’s like taking your whole house with you. You don’t have to worry about pirates either.”
“Maybe you could get a small boat to tow behind the RV,” I suggested. “You know, for lakes and such.”
“That might work,” Mr. Bauman said thoughtfully.
We went our separate ways after that, Mr. Bauman back home to discuss RV’s and small boats with his wife, and me back toward Bel Air to meet with Jim and Milly for afternoon drinks.
The Delray home was a modest one-story ranch that had probably been built in the 1950’s. It had been lovingly maintained, and no doubt updated throughout the years. The Delrays had probably bought it for a couple hundred thousand but it would sell for a few million in today’s market. Not a bad little nest egg to have.
The Delrays were about the same age as their house, and just as neat and trim. Jim greeted me at the door, a drink that looked suspiciously like a seabreeze already in his hand. He led me to the family room at the back of the house where Milly waited by a drink cart, ready to take my order. The room was dominated by the large flatscreen TV that took up most of one wall. Two matching recliners with a small table between them faced the TV, and behind the recliners sat a coffee table, a small sofa and a mismatched set of armchairs.
When Jim and Milly had their seabreezes and I my plain water, we gathered around the coffee table. Jim and Milly sat next to each other on the sofa while I sank into the armchair with the dark brown fabric. There was some sort of speckled pattern of green dots, which on closer inspection, were supposed to be small leaves. It wasn’t the ugliest piece of furniture I had ever seen, but it came pretty close.
“So, you want to talk about the Burkes,” Milly began. There was definitely a trace of excitement in her voice, and I imagined that she would fit in just fine with the crowd at high tea.
“Now, Milly,” Jim chastised. “Let the man ask his questions.”
“Why don’t we start with how you met the Burkes,” I suggested.
“Oh, let’s see,” Milly mused, and I could tell that she would be the one to answer most of the questions. “I think it was the Tolands who actually introduced us. Of course, we’d been hearing their name quite a bit before that.”
“How so?” I prompted.
“Well, quite a few of our friends had invested with Matthew,” Milly explained. “All they could talk about was what great returns they were earning. Now, of course, you get suspicious when you hear that kind of talk, but everyone was quite happy. And, let’s see, I think it was Sheila who told us that when she and Mort wanted to buy that condo in Taos, Matthew had the money for them in a heartbeat. Well, t
hat sealed the deal for us.”
“I have to say,” Jim finally spoke, “I never really liked Matthew. I mean, not as someone you’d want to spend time with as a friend. But, I really just needed his investment expertise, so I gave him a few thousand to see what he could do with it.”
“And did you make money?” I asked.
“At first, we did quite well,” Jim replied. “Matthew managed to turn our small amount into six figures pretty quickly. Naturally, we decided to give him some more, to see what he could do with that.”
“Naturally,” I agreed.
“That’s when things started to get wonky,” Milly added.
“Wonky?” I echoed.
“Nothing real obvious,” Jim quickly interceded. “I mean, we would have pulled all of our money out if we thought he was cheating. But we just had this feeling that the numbers weren’t right.”
“Jim talked to him on several occasions,” Milly added. “Matthew was always quick to assure him that everything was okay.”
“I’m a numbers man myself,” Jim explained. “Spent thirty years going over corporate accounts, so I have a feel for fudging. It seemed odd that we never lost money. Just kept making more.”
“Like a Ponzi scheme,” Milly agreed with a vigorous nod.
“Something like that,” Jim said. “When losses did finally appear, they didn’t really match with the investments. It was hard to make sense of what was going on with the money, and how much we really had in the account. I finally told Matthew I wanted to close it out.”
“That took forever,” Milly declared. “You’d think Matthew had gone to Timbuktu to find our money. We had to threaten to sue him just to get things moving along.”
“We’re still not convinced that we really received the full amount we were due,” Jim sighed, “but, at that point, we were just happy to be done. We took what he offered and left it at that.”
“Did you ever hire a forensic accountant to review the records?” I asked.
“Never got that far,” Jim replied. “Once we said we were hiring a lawyer, Matthew paid up.”
“You mentioned that you didn’t like Matthew,” I mused. “Can you explain that?”
“Oh, the two of them,” Milly uttered. “What a pair. Matthew was a smooth talker, no doubt about that. He was a real charmer, when he wanted to be. But I’ve seen him chew out one of the boys at the marina for adding too much vermouth to his martini. And Gloria. You’d think she was born to the royal family, the way she would carry on sometimes. You know you’re a snob when you insist on only wearing scarves from Hermès.”
“Not even Chanel?” I joked.
“Not even,” Milly agreed.
“I don’t know what their life was like growing up,” Jim inserted, “and frankly, it doesn’t matter. If you can do the job and do it well, you deserve to be paid well. End of story. But sometimes, you felt like Matthew and Gloria were trying to prove that they belonged.”
“Now we’ve made them sound like terrible people,” Milly mused. “And that’s not really accurate either. They could be really wonderful people sometimes. Matthew told the funniest stories, and Gloria loves animals and children. The happiest I ever saw her was when Perrin was about eight. The two of them were playing in the splash pad while they waited for Matthew to return from one of his fishing expeditions. You can’t fake that kind of happiness.”
“But you still wouldn’t just spend a day with them,” I added with a smile.
“No,” Jim noted. “Matthew would sometimes invite me to go out on the boat with him, but I always declined. I just couldn’t imagine spending a whole day with him in the middle of the Pacific. I took shorter trips with him, and always with a large group of fellow investors. That way, I could find someone to talk to.”
“Do you have your own boat?” I asked.
“We have a lovely little Chris Craft,” Milly replied. “But our son is the one who uses it most of the time.”
“I understand Matthew took his boat out a lot,” I remarked. “Would you say he was a good boater?”
“He was,” Jim admitted. “Which is why nothing about that weekend makes sense.”
“That’s true,” Milly agreed. “Even if Matthew was running some sort of Ponzi scheme, I can’t imagine that he would just give up and try to kill himself.”
“You think it was a suicide?” I asked in surprise.
“I don’t,” Milly reassured me. “But the rumor mill had it pegged that way. Why else would he have gone out in those conditions? He wouldn’t. He was too smart to do that.”
“Well,” Jim hedged. “I always figured he was trying to make it to the condo.”
“The condo?” I prodded.
“Jim and Gloria owned a condo in Mexico somewhere,” Milly explained. “Jim thinks that maybe the feds were closing in so Matthew realized he had to skip town.”
“He and Gloria used to go there a lot,” Jim mused. “Hop on the boat, head down the coast. Gloria and Perrin would spend most of their time in the condo while Matthew would go fishing just offshore. Matthew used to take clients down there as well.”
“Do you know where this condo is?” I asked.
“Somewhere in Baja, I think,” Jim said as he glanced at Milly.
“That sounds right,” Milly agreed with a nod. “But Gloria had to sell it a few years ago. At least, that’s what I heard.”
“Do you see much of Gloria these days?” I prodded.
“We run into each other sometimes at parties,” Milly replied. “And around town. You know, grocery store, yoga class, that sort of thing.”
“She calls every once in a while,” Jim added. “It’s always to ask if we have any interest in selling the house.”
“We’ve seen her with that new boyfriend a couple of times,” Milly added gleefully. “What’s his name?”
“Geoffrey,” Jim sighed. “Not Jeff. Geoffrey.”
“At least Matthew had polish,” Milly explained. “And some real brain power. But this new fellow, he barely talks and he always seems surly.”
“I haven’t seen them at the usual cocktail parties recently,” Jim added. “People may have stopped inviting them because the man is such a downer.”
“Spends all his time talking about how much he’s owed,” Milly agreed. “You know, had a hard life growing up so the world owes me kind of thing.”
“I don’t know what Gloria sees in him,” Jim said. “Though there is something about him that sort of reminds me of Matthew. I guess Matthew was the same way. That is to say, that he felt he was owed something.”
“Gloria does have a type,” Milly declared. “Someone who wants as much money as she does.”
A landline in the house started ringing somewhere, and Jim excused himself to answer it.
“He always answers the phone when we’re home,” Milly explained. “Says it’s so no one will think I’m here alone.”
“That’s smart,” I replied.
“I used to think it was just foolish machismo,” Milly sighed. “But as I get older, I’m rather glad he does it. Those damn telemarketers never listen to me when I tell them not to call back.”
We both laughed and then we talked about the Chris Craft until Jim returned. He was scowling when he reappeared and he went straight to the drink cart for a refill.
“Oh, dear,” Milly observed. “He only gets that look after a phone call from our middle child.”
“Cynthia needs money again,” Jim noted as he gulped down a sizable slug of his fresh seabreeze.
“Well, I think I have enough information for now,” I said as I stood up. “May I call you again if I think of any more questions?”
“Of course, dear,” Milly replied as she stood up as well and led me toward the front door. “I know we didn’t have the kindest things to say about the Burkes, but I do think Gloria deserves to move on with her life. If there’s anything else we can do to help her, just let us know.”
We shook hands on the doorstep, and then Mil
ly softly closed the door behind me. I contemplated what the Delrays had told me as I walked back to my car, and tried to slot it into the picture that I had of Matthew and Gloria. I had to admit, what had seemed like a simple, straightforward case had taken a turn into the outlandish.
On impulse, I called the phone number Gloria had given me. After three rings, it went to voicemail, and Gloria’s voice advised me to leave a message. I complied and explained that I wanted to meet to talk about Matthew’s business some more. I made it to the stop sign at the end of the block when Gloria called back.
“Sorry,” Gloria said when I picked up. “I didn’t recognize the number.”
“That’s okay,” I replied. “I was hoping to talk to you more about Matthew’s business dealings since that’s the focus of the FBI.”
“Didn’t you meet with Albert?” she asked.
“I did,” I agreed. “But I was hoping to get the more personal view. You know, how he got along with his clients, that sort of thing. Also, I was hoping to look through any files of his that you may still have.”
I could hear the sound of another phone ringing in the background and background chatter that sounded like one of the twenty-four hour news channels.
“You can come by tonight,” Gloria finally said. “I can show you Matthew’s old office. The maid dusts in there, but I haven’t been in it since that rude man from the FBI went through everything. If you can be here in an hour, you can meet Perrin and Geoffrey as well.”
“I’m on my way,” I replied.
Gloria hung up just as the car behind me honked. I rolled forward, easing up to the next stop sign while I tried to remember Gloria’s address. I finally gave up and pulled over. The car behind me revved his engine as he shot by with another long honk from the horn. I ignored the raised middle finger and texted Sofia for the address.
Sofia was quick to respond, sending both the address and a map. Armed with the proper information, I made my way toward Studio City, home of Ventura Boulevard, basketball stars, and lots of money. It’s one of the ‘in places’ to live right now, and the prices reflected that.
