by Kenneth Eade
After dinner, the cat found a cozy spot by the fireplace, but she was the only one who was able to relax. Brent cuddled next to Angela, caressed her hair, and they began to kiss; but something just didn’t feel right.
“You’re not into this, are you?” he asked her.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why.”
“I do. It’s probably that ‘work mode’ again.”
“You’re probably right,” Angela sighed.
“I’m sure it’s only temporary.”
“Me too. I’m just worried and it occupies all my thoughts. I keep thinking about you being almost hit by that car at the airport, and the strange death of this Gerald Finegan.”
“Jack and I will straighten all that out.”
“I’m sure you will.”
The fire popped and sizzled, and its light and shadows flickered all over the room, having a hypnotic effect on Brent and Angela. Finally, all resistance eliminated, they retired to the master bedroom. Angela secured the door from the inside and, after showering, tucked her gun in a sheath between the headboard and the mattress.
“Do we really need a gun with us in bed?” Brent asked.
“Sometimes a gun is the best friend you can have,” she replied.
When the lights went out, Angela seemed to sleep with one eye open.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Gee-offrey had made a motion to hold Brent in contempt of court for the failure to pay the attorney’s fees that were awarded to his firm when they won the SLAAP motion against Brent. Since looking at the file always made him sick, Brent had put off his opposition to the motion until the day it was due to be filed. The art of procrastination seemed to apply only to his personal matters.
Brent cursed Gee-offrey under his breath as he researched the case law. He could clearly not be held in contempt of court for failure to pay a judgment, but Gee-offrey couldn’t wait for the first payment from the Bekker Estate – he had to extract his pound of flesh, and Brent suspected that Judge Kronendork would be happy to oblige him in some way.
After wasting half a day’s precious time on the opposition, Brent finally put it to bed just in time for his afternoon appointment – another divorce case; something to look forward to.
The potential client was a wiry little accountant from Goleta with a goofy face, like Mr. Bean. Just looking at that face throughout the entire interview made Brent feel like the entire exercise was phony. He resisted laughing out loud and held it back for what would surely be an explosion of laughter after the man left.
As Mr. Bean sat there in Brent’s office in his cheap tweed sport jacket, Brent imagined him holding his ‘teddy,’ and the pent-up laughter pushed to get out, forming tears behind his eyes.
“Do you have any children, Mr. Bee, uh-Mr. Reynolds?”
Mr. Bean regarded Brent with wild, wide-open eyes and lifted eyebrows. “Why would I have any children?”
A question answered by a question. Fair enough.
“How long were you married?”
“Ten years.”
“That’s a long time. So then, you want a divorce; but we need to examine your respective finances to determine your exposure to spousal support.”
Mr. Bean frowned and his lips pouted, just like the real Mr. Bean. “Oh, no, no! I don’t want a divorce. I want an annulment.”
“Mr. Reynolds, a divorce is yours for the asking. All we have to do is allege that you have irreconcilable differences with your wife. But for an annulment, we would have to show some kind of grounds.”
“Isn't the fact that the marriage was never consummated grounds enough?”
“You mean, you never had sex with your wife in ten years?”
“That’s right.”
“How’s that, Mr…?”
Mr. Bean interrupted, “Do I have to spell it out for you?” and he smiled.
Brent suddenly realized that Mr. Bean must be gay, and said: “No, I think I get it.”
“Good. Now, I have a few more lawyers to interview, so I will let you know.”
“Great.” Brent actually felt relieved.
Then, as the man was leaving, he turned back around and said, “I’ll bet you think I look like Mr. Bean, don’t you? Tell the truth, Mr. Marks.”
Brent strained his eyes in surprise. “Actually, yes: I do.”
Then the man suddenly turned serious and the look in his eyes cut through to Brent’s spine in an icy cold path. He had seen these kinds of eyes many times during the days when his mentor, Charles Stinson, had him on the list of private counsel serving as public defenders for parole violators.
“Things are not always the way they seem,” he said, and turned and walked out.
The urge to laugh had died in that one moment. Brent examined the intake sheet the man had filled out before the consultation. He ran out into the reception area.
“Mimi, where’s that bodyguard of Jack’s?”
“I think he went out for a bite.”
“Great.”
Brent called the home telephone number that was listed on the intake sheet.
“Thank you for calling McDonalds, this is Jim: how may I help you?”
“Jim, does a Mr. Brian Reynolds work there?”
“No, sir, I’m sorry; we have no Brian Reynolds here.”
“Are you sure? He’s an accountant. About five-foot-eight, brown hair. Looks like Mr. Bean.”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. I would have remembered someone like that. I know everyone on the duty roster. I’m the manager here.”
Brent hung up and called Jack. “I’m coming over to sweep the place,” he said.
***
“It’s clean,” Jack said as he packed up his kit. “No bugs, no nothing. This guy didn’t leave anything behind.”
“Including his real identity, I suspect.”
“This was probably your vetting.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Anyway, I’m going to check him out. See if he’s real or…”
“A ghost.”
“Exactly. But is he the Ghost?”
“That’s what we have to find out.”
“Me, Brent. Not we. Don’t go chasing any more white rabbits without me.”
“I won’t.”
“And where is that worthless bodyguard I put on you?”
“I think he went to lunch.”
“Wonderful. Well, if he can’t stay on the job, we’ll have to get you another one. If they can walk up to you right in your office, they can kill you just as easily. Keep the office door locked from now on, and let me check out all the potential clients before they come in.”
***
Brent didn’t receive any emails from Erasure.onion: no welcome message, and no “we have declined your application.” But his strongest suspicions were that his application had, in fact, been rejected. He just hoped now that they would consider him to be harmless. If Gerald Finegan had been a target, Brent’s threat to Erasure.onion would be perceived as anything but harmless. This wasn’t a simple court case. In the world of contract killings, there is no arbitration.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Brent delved back into Gee-offrey’s closed will contest file and looked up the names and addresses of the plaintiffs who had suddenly and mysteriously dismissed their case against the Bekker Estate. The trail which held the answer to the mystery probably began there. He began looking into them, in stealth mode, on his computer.
David Marsen, aka Flusher, was a retired postal worker living in the suburbs of Los Angeles. He now spent his free time surfing the Internet and trying to make a million gambling on the penny stock market with his four-figure retirement money.
Myron Talbot (who names their kid Myron?), aka Truth Seeker, was an ex-Marine, retired, who worked as an automobile finance manager in San Jose. He’d be the guy who was always saying that the dealer was selling the car at cost, while at the same time garnering huge profits for his bosses. When he wasn’t printing out car sales and finance cont
racts on his big computer at work, he was at home in front of his smaller one, watching the stock market in the morning, planning to parlay those bonuses into a nice boat off the coast of the Azores, and watching porn in the evening.
Jeremy Williams, also known as Stock Sleuth, was a mall manager at Mall of America who spent his every free minute dreaming of being someone else. He mapped his American dream in the course of gambles in the sleazy small-cap world of big dreams and disappointments.
If Brent could only be a fly on their computer screens, he may be able to figure out what was going on, and what it had to do with him.
***
Brent got up early the next morning for the long drive to downtown Los Angeles for a motion in his federal court case. John Westhofen had financed his dream home in Calabasas, California, when he was at the height of his earning power as a frame supervisor at the AT&T Central Office on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. Not only did he lose that dream house during the 2008 crisis, but he was now being hounded by a collection agency for the J.P. Cheney Bank to collect the home equity loan on his second mortgage.
The complaint alleged that J.P. Cheney’s predecessor, a large bank that had been one of the most prevalent writers of loans on real estate before the crash, had issued both a first mortgage and a home equity loan to cover the purchase price of his client’s house. After ignoring a decent offer for a short sale, Cheney had foreclosed on the property; and now the bank was seeking to collect on the home equity loan.
Judge Karen Milfern was less threatening than Kronendork, which Brent was thankful for. Today was J.P. Cheney’s motion to dismiss Westhofen’s complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. It was also the day for hearing Brent’s motion for a preliminary injunction against Cheney reporting the home equity loan as a derogatory mark on Westhofen’s credit profiles. The turning point of the case would be today: it would either be dismissed or put the bank in an untenable position, which would force a settlement.
Judge Milfern took the bench and sternly laid out the ground rules. She had not made a tentative decision and each side had ten minutes to “hit the high points,” as she put it, warning them not to repeat anything they had already argued in the written briefs.
The judge gave Brent the first opportunity to speak. He had made up his mind to argue the case for all he was worth, even though there was no way that she would rule against the bank. After all, the bank was the cornerstone of the insider’s clubs and all the wealthy politicians and businessmen had been the driving force behind her appointment. Being a true underdog, Brent stood proudly at the podium and gave it his all: a captain going down with the ship.
“Your Honor, as we have pointed out in our opposition to the motion to dismiss, Section 580(b) of the California Code of Civil Procedure prohibits the collection of a deficiency judgment on a purchase money mortgage. This second mortgage may call itself a ‘home equity loan,’ but it was used to make up the remainder of the purchase price on the home that my client could not qualify for on the first mortgage, and that makes it a purchase money loan as much as the first mortgage is. As they say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.”
Brent’s attempt at humor fizzled out in a dud. The judge didn’t even flinch. She seemed perturbed that he had repeated even a minor point that he had already made in his brief. Brent continued his suicidal argument.
“This is also an indication of a massive fraud on the part of J.P. Cheney because in the attempt to collect this deficiency judgment that they cannot, as a matter of law, legally collect, they have not sued my client. No, that suit would be thrown out of court in a heartbeat! They are using a collection agency to harass him and bludgeon him into submission with a faulty mark on his credit profile.”
Still no change in the judge’s demeanor. She looked impatiently at Brent, as if she was thinking about the next case or sorting out her shopping list.
“Secondly, Cheney claims that, pursuant to its terms with the FDIC contract when it took over Country Bank, it assumed only Country Bank’s assets and not its liabilities, giving it the untenable position of being able to collect on my client’s home equity loan deficiency balance without having to face the collection defenses which my client has the right to present. This is unconscionable, Your Honor: as under the Allen v. United Financial Mortgage Corp. case, Cheney can’t completely skate away clean. It must assume all of the liabilities that Country Bank had as the owner and servicer of the loan. As the loan is uncollectible under California law, that is a servitude that is binding against J.P. Cheney.
“Finally, Your Honor, Cheney argues that only the FTC has the right to bring injunctive relief under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and that an individual such as my client is prohibited from doing so. However, as we know from the case of Andrews v. Trans Union Corp., there is no indication in the Fair Credit Reporting Act that injunctive relief is not available to individuals suing under the Act unless that power has been prohibited or restricted, and then it is available.
“It is in the public interest that Cheney should not be permitted to report outstanding deficiency balances that it is barred from collecting by state statutes that were enacted to provide consumers with relief. These laws were made to balance the equities between the consumer and the banks; to protect the consumer and give him power against entities such as the defendant, one of the largest banks on the world.”
“Thank you, Mr. Marks, your time is up. Mr. Albertson?”
Thomas Albertson swaggered up to the podium in his custom tailored suit, confident that he had spent enough of the big bank’s money to tear apart Brent’s argument sufficiently as to make it holier than a piece of Swiss cheese. His brief was a masterpiece that had cost the bank tens of thousands of dollars. He took a stance at the lectern as if the entire world was anticipating what he had to say, even though he was speaking to only one person.
“Your Honor, with all due respect to Mr. Marks… (Now, I’m going to tell you that you should have no respect for him.)...His arguments have no basis in fact or in law and should be disregarded. In the purest form of contract law, J.P Cheney is immune from any of plaintiff’s claims pursuant to the terms of its contract with the FDIC. According to the case of Rosenfeld v. JP Morgan Chase Bank, liabilities to consumers are retained by the FDIC Receiver and do not pass to Cheney.
“As far as Mr. Marks’ attempt to use the Fair Credit Reporting Act to enjoin my client from reporting the debt, the use of a private action under the FCRA is limited, Your Honor. I cite the case of Matthiesen v. Banc One Corp. For all these reasons, the complaint should be dismissed. And, as I covered in my brief, the legislative intent behind the statute makes it very clear that injunctive relief is only available to the FTC. It is not available to the consumer. If the Court is not inclined to dismiss the complaint at this time, it should not order injunctive relief, as it has no power to do so.”
The judge thanked Albertson for his argument, then removed her glasses and looked at him sternly. Albertson confidently looked her right back in the eyes, knowing that there was no way that a federal judge would decimate thousands of so-called ‘bad loans’ that Cheney was in the process of collecting billions of dollars on. The bank was just “too big to fail” anywhere, even in court. It was an unwritten rule. The payback of the bailout to the federal government had been successfully built on the bones of consumers who had lost their homes during the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and Cheney’s wealth had more than quadrupled. No federal court had dared to allow any case of mortgage fraud against the big banks to proceed beyond the pleading stages. None of them were going to any jury, period.
“I’ve thought long and hard about the issues presented in this case,” said the judge. Here it comes, thought Brent, who braced himself for defeat.
“I think that the only reasonable likelihood for taking a home equity loan at the time of purchase is to purchase the property, not anything else.
In other words, Mr. Marks, the Court agrees with you. This is a duck.”
Brent looked up from the counsel table in surprise. Albertson scrambled for his pen. He had a dumbfounded, panicked look on his face, like a lost dog.
“I also think that it is unconscionable for a loan servicer to collect such a loan with impunity and with no liability for the consequences of any of its collection actions. Therefore, the defendant’s motion to dismiss is denied. The Court also finds that the plaintiff has established a likelihood of success on the merits of his case, and that the balance of the equities and public interest tips in favor of the plaintiff. J.P. Cheney is providing derogatory information to reporting agencies based on a debt that it is likely legally barred from collecting and will be enjoined from doing so pending the outcome of the case. You will have my opinion by the end of the week.”
