A Class Action

by Gene Grossman

  “We’ve already found Kupchic. He was the stiff in Stuart’s Camry trunk that your boys picked up over at Victor’s place. We also found his prints on some brake tools in Joe Morgan’s service bay, so we have that piece of the puzzle together already.

  “We also lifted Rosenbaum’s prints off of the trunk that Kupchic was found in, so we can be pretty sure of that chain of events.

  “We sent Jack Bibberman to Chicago on a fishing trip, and he was successful in getting a picture of all three of these losers together. Rosenbaum, Kupchic and Eaton. It’s an old photo, but Victor’s Photoshop expert can age Rosenbaum for you. A picture of what he probably looks like now, along with his prints, should give the locals a good chance at finding him.

  “Eaton’s money isn’t in yet from either his wife’s insurance policy or the Will, so it’s a good probability that Rosenbaum’s still in town waiting for his pay-off. The real good thing we’ve got going for us is now is surprise, because Eaton has no idea how close we are, or that I’ve got his whole plan figured out.”

  I sure hope that the rest of her office is listening in to this oratory, because it must have rivaled the best fictional detective’s end-of-the-book summation. Here comes the real acid test.

  “Now it’s up to you, Miss District Attorney. Do you have the stones to admit that Joe Morgan is innocent, and to take this to the Grand Jury for a murder indictment of both Eaton and Rosenbaum?”

  “You’ve done a good job of putting this together, Pete, but I still don’t have enough to go against Eaton. Rosenbaum, no problem, but Eaton’s the tough one.”

  “Myra, what are you talking about? Didn’t you hear me lay out the whole case for you? Without Eaton, Rosenbaum would have no motive to kill his old friend Kupchic. If it weren’t for Eaton, Rosenbaum probably wouldn’t even know where Kupchic was. C’mon, you know you can do it.”

  “Okay Peter, I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll go to the Grand Jury and get an indictment against Rosenbaum. Then we’ll pick him up and sweat him a little with a capital charge hanging over his head. We’d be justified in sticking a needle in his arm because of the special circumstances here because it’s a murder for hire.

  “Once he’s convinced we’ve got him cold with fingerprint evidence, maybe we can lead him to believe that Eaton gave him up and then offer to take the death penalty off of the table if he rolls on Eaton.

  “It works on television. I see them do it every week on ‘Law and Order,’ so I don’t see why we can’t get away with it.” Not bad. I think I’ve finally gotten through to her.

  “Very funny. After Eaton’s conviction, I can just see the headlines now, describing this case as being ‘ripped from television.’ Whatever. If you think it’s best to do it that way, I’ll go along with it. The main thing is that my guy gets out from under the hook.”

  “Wait a minute, Peter. There’s a small catch. Your guy has to stay in custody until we pick up Rosenbaum.”

  “What? You’re holding my guy as ransom until you can find a replacement?”

  “No, dummy, think about it. If we release him now and the word gets out, then Eaton and Rosenbaum will both know that something’s going on and they may get spooked and leave town. Even if Eaton stays for the money, Rosenbaum will be gone. Seeing your guy released might even push Eaton to kill Rosenbaum. He’s a loose end that Eaton can’t afford to have out there.

  “If he’s bad enough of a guy to hire Rosenbaum to kill Kupchic, then he’s certainly bad enough to hire someone to kill Rosenbaum. No, I’m sorry, but Joe Morgan can’t be released yet.”

  “Okay Miss prosecutor, I’ll tell you what. At least put him in a safe house somewhere. I’ll get my client Berland to foot the bill if you’ll provide the security and let Joe stay in some hotel somewhere.”

  Myra thinks about it for a minute.

  “All right, he can stay in a hotel, but if you let word leak out that he’s been released before we get a chance to grab up Rosenbaum, then the whole deal’s off. Joe Morgan doesn’t pass ‘go’ or collect two hundred dollars. He goes directly to jail.”

  The deal is made. I call Mister Berland to tell him that he’s putting up Morgan in a hotel. He surprises me with an even better idea. He wants to host Morgan at his home in Hidden Hills. It’s a gated community with armed guards patrolling. I call Myra and she agrees to it. She even says that she’d like to save the expense of providing county security, so if Morgan agrees to wear an electronic anklet, he can vacation in Hidden Hills for a while. Why not? It was a good enough neighborhood for Robert Blake to stay in during his trial.

  I agree to everything Myra wants and head down to the jail to give Joe Morgan the good news. I’d really like to let Indovine know that the dealership will soon be cleared of any wrongdoing, but decide to follow Myra’s advice and keep the lid on everything for now.

  After visiting with Joe I go back to the boat where I can sit down in comfort and put the rest of the plan together. I call Mister Berland again to finalize the arrangements. Joe will be transported to his home in an unmarked District Attorney Bureau of Investigation vehicle. Once in the house, the anklet will be attached. He’s also curious about how the matter of the Will contest is going to be handled, and after explaining about Eaton’s whole plan, I instruct him to continue as if none of this new info has come to light. He’s to go ahead with an appraisal of all the parts of his late wife’s estate, her share of the house and the business and other assets. After the appraisal is done, we’ll tell Socrates Gutsue to inform Eaton’s lawyer that you’re ready to settle everything up in open court, at which time you’ll present a cashier’s check to the court in the sum of over two million.

  I also tell him not to even think about liquidating anything, because no cashier’s check will ever be prepared. Once Eaton’s lawyer is informed that the appraisal processes are under way, all we’ll have to do is call him every couple of days with new amounts in the increase to his client’s share. That way he won’t object to the time it’s taking to finish things up. As long as his waiting time is being constantly rewarded with increases, we can buy the extra time it takes to round up Rosenbaum and connect Eaton to the deaths.

  Eaton is no dummy. He knows that his luck can’t last forever, and he probably can’t keep Rosenbaum in hiding indefinitely, so he’ll be pushing his attorney to move things along quicker. I hope that his pushing is tempered by his greed when he keeps getting informed of the increases in the amount he’ll be winding up with out of probate.

  This is going to be a good year for me. One real nice thing is that I’ve got three clients paying for my doing the same thing. If I can pull off everything planned, I can collect a reward from Berland for saving the estate from paying Eaton, from Uniman Insurance for saving them from paying Eaton, and from Indovine’s firm for clearing Joe Morgan. The thing that really makes this so sweet is that it’s all mine. My deal is that unless the firm is financing a case or referred it to me, I don’t have to give up any portion of the money to the kid, and if I know anything about her at all, she’s probably staying up nights trying to figure out some way to horn in on these fees. She really helps me out a lot on all the work, but when it’s not on the law firm’s matters, she bills me at a rate of thirty-five bucks an hour for administrative work, and that’s okay too, because I just pass the expense on to my client. I don’t feel sorry for her though, because she’s already a multi-millionaire from the settlements for her mother’s death in a car accident, and her stepfather’s death in a plane crash. Loophole Louie, the court-appointed CPA who oversees her trust account, just sent me a statement last month. The brat is now earning a couple of hundred thousand a year in interest, but it’s not all profit. I get paid one dollar a year as trustee, but I still feel in my bones she wishes I would waive the fee and do it for nothing. A typical female.

  The way I have things planned, there’s no way she can get a piece of the several hundred grand I’ll bring in if everything comes together. Maybe I’ll give her a bonus l
ike some side curtains for her e-cart, or a big new bed for the dog. What the hell, what’s money for if you can’t spend a little of it on your friends?

  And speaking of money, I turn in my weekly report on hours spent and expenses advanced so she can do the billing to Indovine’s office and Mister Berland’s company.

  The phone rings. It’s Jack B. and he’s back from Chicago.

  “Hello Romeo, how’s the interstate lover doing today?”

  “I’m fine Mister Sharp, but I’m afraid that Phyllis and I may be through. It’s just too tough to maintain an interstate relationship, and neither one of us can afford to fly out to visit the other on a frequent basis.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that Jack. Any time you want to talk about it, I’m sure Suzi would like to counsel you.”

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll talk to her when I’m ready. In the meantime, when I returned I found some results that came in from my inquiry to the automobile transport company. You know, the one that runs the car carrier trucks that deliver to Stuart. Per your instructions, I asked them about that one particular truck that delivered the Camry’s to Stuart’s place in Van Nuys. The delivery to Stuart that trip had only five Camrys on it. Their routing plan shows the truck made only two stops after picking up the five vehicles from Billy Z.’s place. The first one was in Langley, Virginia for a pickup, and the other was a delivery to the dealership where Eaton works.”

  I thank Jack and tell him to get an invoice over to us so we can cut him a check. The information he got is really interesting. When I spoke to some employees at the dealership they told me that whatever was off-loaded into that secure garage was done inside, and out of sight of anyone there. If my guess is correct, that wrapped-up item was probably the fancy Hummer slated to be bubble-topped and used in the parade. And if the truck dropped off the Hummer at the dealership, the first stop it made at Langley, was probably CIA Headquarters, where the Hummer was bullet-proofed, painted, wrapped up, and loaded onto the car-carrier truck.

  The driver must have gotten curious and peeked under the tarp to see what he was carrying. That must be how he knew it was the Hummer, and he probably mentioned it to Stuart, who then told Vinnie, who then told Olive, who then told me. That answers another question.

  Knowing that the car-carrying truck was at the dealership also might solve another part of the puzzle, because I now think I know how Kupchic’s body got into the trunk of Stuart’s car.

  Just for effect, I bounce my theory off of the same associate who gets to hear all my ideas… the dog. I explain to him that Eaton was letting Kupchic hide in that secure garage while he worked evenings on those Suburbans that were locked up for the night in Joe’s service bay. He and Eaton had their falling out over the money, and Eaton hired Rosenbaum to kill Kupchic. The body must also have been hidden in that secure garage, so that when Eaton found out that the Hummer was being delivered, he summoned Rosenbaum to the dealership. When the car-carrier truck was backed into the garage to off-load the Hummer, Eaton distracted the truck driver while Rosenbaum dumped Kupchic’s body into the trunk of one of the Camry’s on the truck. The truck then delivered the Camry to Stuart’s place, complete with a body in one of the trunks, and Rosenbaum’s prints on the car.

  I love it when a plan gets figured out so neatly. There’s no disagreement from my associate, so the theory must be correct. To avoid waking the dog, I make an effort to quietly call Myra because I want to give her the new information about my recently confirmed theory. I get through to her and lay it all out. She now has all the pieces of the puzzle together, so all we have to do is get Rosenbaum and the case can be closed out. Boy, I’m good.

  Stuart calls. He’s bored. His Small Claims Court business is going fine and because he hired some people to make appearances, he doesn’t have to work on it anymore. His used car business is going well, with several Toyota and Honda dealers buying almost everything he can bring in from Billy Z. Vinnie and Olive are now running his armored truck service and the sale of that weight control junk, so that’s another responsibility off of his shoulders, and he’s looking for something else to do.

  I don’t have any suggestions for him other than to make better use of Jack’s talents as an investigator. There’s a lot of insurance fraud going on out there, and defense law firms like Indovine’s are always looking for good investigators to trap phony claimants. He says he’ll think about it.

  Most of the time the wheels of justice turn pretty slow, but with Myra’s hand on the crank they spin a lot faster. I get word from the District Attorney’s office that Myra went to the Grand Jury and got a murder indictment against Alan Rosenbaum. She also had Joe Morgan released and delivered to Mister Berland’s custody in Hidden Hills. Pictures of Alan Rosenbaum the way he probably looks now have been distributed to the local police agencies, and a statewide search is being conducted to find him. Wisely, Myra has held back on releasing the picture to the press, so that Eaton can be kept off guard until Rosenbaum is picked up.

  My work is done for the day, so I call Berland to invite myself out to his mansion for an afternoon catered lunch. The last time I was there I noticed that he has a full time cook in the house, so I figure there’ll always be something good to eat.

  Joe Morgan is confused about something. He tells us that each of the first two Suburbans was towed back to his service bay for inspection and repairs. While going through them, he made a note of the mileage and also removed some extra wires that had been connected to each vehicle’s odometer device.

  He also noted that each of the first two vehicles had been driven the exact same number of miles before it exploded. This is a very strange coincidence, so I have Berland tell me exactly what his wife and daughter had planned for the day of their accident.

  He explains that he had their driver drop his wife off at a friend’s house, where she met with her weekly book group to discuss something they all recently read. His daughter was supposed to pick up her Suburban at the dealership where it had just been serviced, then pick up her mother. There was an inquiry from Las Vegas about demolition of an old hotel scheduled to be replaced, so they were both planning on taking a ride up there to get details so that a bid for the demolition could be put in. I ask him for the address where his wife’s book club met and then drive over to the dealership.

  With the exact mileage now known for the pre-explosion trips of the first two vehicles, I want to follow Nancy Eaton’s driving path on the day of the accident and see how far she would have gotten if allowed to go that amount of miles.

  The dealership’s assistant manager lent me Nancy’s Suburban that morning so that I could drive around to the same places that the first two owners went. What I want to do now is complete Nancy’s trip by driving those extra miles, to make up for the ones that were deducted by my earlier use of the vehicle. I want to see how far she would have gotten if I hadn’t used her car that morning.

  The first two Suburbans didn’t explode on the same day they were serviced because it took several days for each of them to accumulate the number of miles required for the explosive charges to go off.

  On the day that I borrowed Nancy’s Suburban, I only drove the routes that I was aware of, not knowing if any other driver of those vehicles put extra mileage on it. Today, I’m going from the dealership straight to where Mrs. Berland’s book club met, and then right back to the freeway and towards Las Vegas. I’ll drive the exact same number of miles as the other two Suburbans and that way I might be able to see where Eaton planned on having the explosion take place.

  After about an hour of negotiating the traffic I get past the place where the accident took place and continue to the 405 Freeway, northbound. Berland told me that they were planning on taking the ‘back way’ to Vegas, so I drive that route until my odometer reads the same number of miles that all three Suburbans registered. I look around and don’t see anything other than a deep rock quarry off to the left side of the road. We had an especially long rainy season this year, and the
bottom of the quarry is filled in to create a small lake that’s probably twenty feet deep.

  When I first figured out what Eaton’s plan might be I felt guilty that my use of her vehicle that day used up valuable miles on her odometer. If I hadn’t done that, maybe she would have had that explosion in some place where the car’s swerving might not have been fatal.

  Now, seeing where Eaton obviously planned for the explosion to take place, I can see that all I did was make the accident happen sooner. The same results would have been there, but if it happened out here, there’s a good chance that we might not discover it for months, if ever.

  Thinking back, now I understand why Eaton was so mad at his assistant manager for letting me borrow that vehicle. If not for the fact that it ultimately went off of Mulholland Drive, his plan might have failed completely, with just a minor traffic collision. That would have been a tremendous inconvenience to him, because he probably already had Rosenbaum kill Kupchic, so there would be no one left to rig her vehicle a second time.

  Back at the boat, I think I hear a small crowd gathering out on the dock. It must be haircut day. Once every month or so, the kid gives Bernie a touch-up trim. She can’t reach the top of his head, so after she gets him to sit down, she stands on a milk crate and uses her Flowbee with a vacuum attachment to give his fur an always-needed trimming. It’s really an amazing device. First, you adjust the length that you want the hair to remain. Then you plug in the Flowbee, turn on its vacuum attachment, and gently pass it over whatever hairy surface you want to trim. She also has some battery-operated flea-killing comb that she passes over him a couple of times. It’s something she ordered from the Sharper Image catalog.