Chapter 32

Chuck

This morning was going to be a normal morning. That is, if there is such a thing as a normal morning in the zoo I call home. After I woke up, I slipped on my peg, drained my accumulated overnight bloat, and went outside to form and relax.

While I was moving to each new position this morning, instead of music, I was putting together a plan. I wanted to gather all of the IDs with safe deposit keys and visit each location to move the assets to a single location. I already had begun using the local bank, so that should be okay.

I had another idea as to how to handle the gold. If I were to change the gold into the currency of a South American country, then slowly transfer funds back to the U.S., it wouldn't be terribly suspicious. I could transfer the funds directly into one of Ben Phillips' accounts. For that matter, he may have accounts in banks in South America. He does have a home in Costa Rica. He is someone I needed to talk to right away.

My plan was to gather the assets, transfer account funds from each account into Ben's accounts and pay taxes as if it were income. That would eliminate all of the miscellaneous accounts and Ben could work on disposing of the houses.

At breakfast, I asked Wanda, "I have a bunch of running around to do. Do you think I could get a leave of absence or another vacation?"

Wanda asked, "Could you combine your personal business with visits to offices? If you could, you could travel all you wanted and no one would question you. You might get interrupted with an emergency somewhere, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem."

"Okay, sounds good, we'll handle it that way," I said. "I'll try to get together an itinerary and you can alert the offices."

The first thing I did was to run to the bank at eight thirty and get into the safe deposit box. I pulled out a bar of gold, a bundle of money, the IDs I had left in there, and the envelopes that I had gathered from the other boxes. From the office, I brought home all the correspondence that I had gathered so I could work on it.

Once home, I called Ben and asked him if he could come see me. He asked, "Can't you come to the office? I have a busy day today."

"Okay, I don't want to, but I'll be there in a half hour. I need you as an attorney as well as financial advisor today."

A half-hour later, I was sitting in Ben's conference room. While I waited for Ben, I looked over the room and discovered two cameras, so I'm sure the room had recording capabilities as well. When Ben came in and greeted me I said, "Can we go get a cup of coffee together?"

"I'll have a secretary get us some," as he reached for a phone.

I put my hand on his arm and said, "Please, let's go out for some."

Ben's sharp and he understood. We walked out through the office where he advised his staff he would be out for a while.

As soon as we were alone in a descending elevator, I asked, "Are the cameras and recording devices always on in your conference room?"

Ben looked shocked, but then thought about it and said, "You may be right. They may be on all the time."

"Ben," I said firmly, making sure to get his attention, "What I need to talk to you about is very confidential, and for this part of our conversation no one, and I mean no one, should be told any part of it."

Ben said, "If you're in trouble I can get you good representation."

"I'm not in trouble. As a matter of fact, I've discussed this with my immediate supervisor. That's why I'm going to do what I'm going to do."

"Then what's so confidential?"

"Let's sit so you can listen for a little bit."

We went to a coffee shop and found a place in the corner that was empty and away from windows. With our coffee on the table, I began. "Ben, I must have your absolute assurance that everything I tell you will remain between you and me."

Ben nodded and said, "You've been a good client for a while now, and I'm proud to manage your assets. Anything you want to have remain confidential will be so."

I sighed, then said, "To begin with, sometimes my job requires me to do some strange things. Sometimes bad people are eliminated, but their elimination goes unheard of because these people have spent years assuming multiple identities. Their true identity can't even be traced. They could be a foreign agent, or just someone that became one of the people out there that perform dirty deeds, but not dirt cheap."

"This just happened. The person that is no longer around had multiple identities, and everywhere he established an identity, he owned a house and had a bank account with a safe deposit box."

I opened my briefcase and showed him a rubber banded set of IDs for Key West. Also in the case was a banded bundle of hundreds. I lifted out the bar of gold and said, "Each of the safe deposit boxes has lots of this in them. At least, I suspect the ones I haven't visited yet do also."

Ben handled the bar of gold gently then placed it back in my briefcase. He took the ID set, looked through it, and said, "If you had a big beard like the picture, this could be you."

"Ben, I've already been to a bank, used the IDs, gained access to the accounts, and removed the cash and gold from a safe deposit box. The lady at the bank thinks I look much better without the beard. As you can see, the signature isn't scribbled, but is in legible script. I was able to copy the signature and sign it easily. It was accepted."

Ben was squirming, "What do you want me to do for you?"

"I want to have the house in Key West transferred into my name or to a holding company. You said you already set up a holding company for some of my investments. In some cases, I want you to sell the house to the family who lives in it now. After that, I want you to help me transfer money from the checking and savings accounts into my investment account. I will gladly pay taxes on these new assets. Can you do that?"

Ben nodded and asked, "What are you going to do with the cash and gold?"

"You can probably help there. I was thinking of possibly setting up accounts in a South American country and putting the gold there. I could do the cash too, but I think I might be able to make a lot of the cash from gambling proceeds. Again, your advice would be appreciated."

"You're as bad as those sports people. They get all kinds of offshore money that they don't want to report. They finally do report it and pay taxes on it, but they cry. At least you're willing to pay taxes. Actually, if you can get the cash and gold to Costa Rica, I'll set up multiple bank accounts and we can transfer money back to your accounts here. Since the deposits will be going into investment accounts, you'll have to pay taxes on it as income from a foreign source, and of course, taxes on any gains."

Ben asked, "Is this more than a million?"

I nodded, "Lots more."

Ben smiled, "You're like Steve. He can't pick up a penny without it turning into a gold coin. I can do this, so tell me about the Key West house."

"The place is just a three bedroom ranch style about two blocks from the water. It's nothing spectacular but it would be a great place for you to use for a weekend or a week. Let me know and I'll make sure the place is ready for you. I have a housekeeper/manager watching the place for me. It has a pool and a very nice open yard that's landscaped without grass. I advised the housekeeper of my name yesterday, telling her that I had previously used a fictitious name. I want to open a checking account down there so she can have money for property upkeep and to pay for landscaping, pool care, and any service man needed. I'll probably set her up with a checking account so she can pay the household utilities. That way, I won't have to worry about the place. We'll just go down and use it when we want."

"I'll get a power of attorney for you to sign for this property. I'll contact an attorney in Key West. You'll have to give him a power of attorney, and I won't see you sign it, or know you did that. I'll just handle the transaction by sending money to the attorney who will put it into the new account that we will transfer from your investment account. You can do the transfer online. I see on this card a couple of passwords. I'm sure this one is the banking password. This short one here is for the ATM. Have you tried it?"

I said, "I did and it worked."

Sitting back I asked, "If there are houses in other states, can you handle those? I would probably just sell them real cheap to whoever is in them now. To help with the purchase, I could carry the mortgage."

"Sure, Chuck, the same as the Key West place. You'll have to go to the city where the house is and sign a power of attorney to get rid of property."

"Good deal, Ben. Let's work on the Key West account while I try to find out what's really out there. Tell me when you will be in Costa Rica and I'll bring you some of these assets."

Ben said, "Bring as much as you can. The bankers down there love to deal with liquid assets. They'll make a bunch off your deposits until they are all transferred. You'll be popular. Perhaps you could buy the condo next to mine. It's pretty big, bigger than mine by a lot, but you could take Steve and his family down sometimes. You have quite a group at your place too, right? At least you've set up trusts for children yet to be born."

"I do have a lot of people at home, Ben. They are planning on a new place in the back part of Steve's property. It should be something spectacular. It should be complete by this summer."

Ben said, "Okay, now I see why you wanted me to come to your place. Tell you what. Next time you have something like this to discuss, just tell me that you're the client and you want me to come to you. I'll get your drift. I have to do that with Steve and Sue all the time."

We shook hands and we went up to his offices where I signed a few power of attorney forms. Ben said he would talk to me more about our plan soon.

Back home, I began going through the mail. Everything that was this guy's responsibility was on direct payment. There was a tax bill for the Las Vegas property that was easy to handle. I called the county and used the debit card to make the taxes current. Almost everything else was bank statements and a couple of real credit card statements that showed the balances as having been paid.

I made up an Excel spreadsheet for each ID, entering the money that was in each checking and savings account. If all the bank statements from everywhere were correct, the guy had about eight million, under different names, spread all over the country. I counted a total of twenty-one different names and locations. All of them appeared to have a house or condo, since the statements had been mailed to a local address before being forwarded to Key West.

After getting out a map of the U.S. and marking each city that I needed to get to, I made an itinerary to go to at least two cities a day over a two week period. I marked the cities where I thought I should stop in at the Marshal's office and allowed a full day at those locations. It would take a little over two full weeks.

Now, I needed transportation. I would have loved to use my Lear, but I needed to use an aircraft that wasn't marked up so much. The Embraer had been easy to fly, so I thought I might just use that. It was painted with a single stripe down its side. I made a note to make sure we had it registered and went on from there.

I called the charter service and DeDe answered, I asked, "How's the convalescing going. Getting tired of the wheelchair yet?"

DeDe said, "That's right, I'll bet you spent a lot of time in a wheelchair."

"Off and on for about a year; you get used to it and it can get you into some places faster."

I paused then said, "DeDe, I want to use one of the new jets for a couple of weeks. Have you applied for registration?"

She answered, "John's already got all of the paperwork in. We're using the same N numbers unless they change them on us. Do you want to use one of those? They don't carry many people."

I said, "I'll be going alone, and I don't need the communications setups, so I don't need one of the Lears. I flew the Embraer back from Orlando to get checked out in it and it wasn't bad at all. How about I use that for a week and see how it does?"

"No problem, Chuck. Jimmy said it was a pretty neat aircraft. As a matter of fact, he took it up for a checkout this morning for about an hour. He said we all need to get checked out in both that and the Eclipse."

"The Eclipse is really a short range aircraft," I said. "It doesn't have a very good range at all. I'll fly the Embraer, and I'll beg if I need something more."

DeDe said, "You shouldn't have to beg to fly your own aircraft. If you need either one of the Lears, let me know. Here's Jimmy, let him tell you about the plane you want to fly."

Jimmy picked up a phone and said, "That's a fast little plane. It does over point eight mach and gets to altitude pretty fast. It seems to be fairly efficient too. I nosed around in the cabin and found a pull down screen that can be used for movies or as a PC screen. There is a full communications network on board. The other seats have plug in network connections. Are you going to make that your favorite toy?"

"No, I know the Lears are booked and folks like to fly on them. I'll take the Embraer, or should we just call it the Phenom or P-100?"

Jimmy said, "Any of those names will do. Do you want me to get it painted real quick?"

"I think for what I'm going to be doing for the next couple of weeks, a plain Jane bird would be best. Did you see anything that needs to be worked on?"

"Not really, the navigation system is pretty standard and everything works. Pay attention to everything and if you get antsy about anything, have it looked at or have me look at it if you're here. Maintenance also has a learning curve on the aircraft. The little Eclipse is pretty standard. I've been to school on both planes and worked on a lot of them. So, Chuck, when are you going to start rotary wing training?"

"Soon, I guess. I might be able to work it in between some of the visits I need to make. Thanks, Jimmy, I'll begin my journeys tomorrow morning."