Janet felt her face warm. She swallowed hard. “What’s going on between you and the former partners you mentioned?” Before Bruno could respond, she added, “Where’s the money coming from?”
Bruno shook his head and frowned. “I’m selling something of value to my former partners. The money, when transferred, will be legally mine to donate to St. Anne’s. Beyond that, the only thing I want you to understand is that those men in New York City were setting me up to take the fall for a securities scam they orchestrated and that I had nothing to do with.”
“Why did you run? Why didn’t you just go to the authorities?”
Bruno scoffed. “After they got word that the SEC was investigating the company, I’m sure the partners had records doctored, absolving them of any culpability and making it look as though I had devised and executed the whole thing.”
“But wouldn’t the truth have come out in an investigation?”
Bruno shrugged. “Yes, perhaps. Perhaps not. But by then it would have been too late. There’s no way they would have taken the chance that the SEC investigators would have believed me.” He sighed and, after a long moment, said, “My assistant was having an affair with one of the senior partners. One night, after too much wine and sex, he told her about the SEC investigation. He mentioned that I had been behind an illegal scheme to defraud investors. When she asked what would happen to me, he told her I would ‘probably never testify.’ My assistant and I had worked together for ten years. I guess she knew me better than just about anyone. She knew I would never do anything illegal, and that the partner’s comment about me not testifying really frightened her. The poor woman was embarrassed to tell me about the affair, but thank God she came to me. She probably saved my life.”
Janet asked, “After the money is transferred, will you be safe?”
Bruno looked at Janet with a soulful expression. “I’ll never be safe, Janet. As long as I’m alive, they’ll see me as a threat.”
Janet’s eyes widened and became moist. “What will you do?”
“Leave California.”
Janet knew her reaction showed on her face. She slowly shook her head. “I hate to see you go away.” Her words had barely been spoken before she realized just how much she would miss him. She had a sudden ache in her stomach and a tightening of her throat. Her eyes flooded with tears. The man had become more important to her than she’d appreciated. Her reaction seemed to embarrass Bruno, who looked down at the briefcase on his lap and played with the brass clasps.
The quiet between them lasted a good sixty seconds, then he said, “It can’t be helped. These are dangerous men. There’s already been an incident that involved the broker, Charles Forsythe. Someone set his car on fire.”
Janet shot him an incredulous look as she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
Another fifteen seconds of silence settled between them before Janet said, “Forgive me for asking, but do you have any family?”
“I was married once, but that was a long time ago.”
At 7:55 a.m., Briscoe interrupted them. “I need Mr. Pedace to sign this affidavit that he is who he says he is. His driver’s license expired a long time ago.”
Janet laughed. “If he is who he says he is, good. But if he’s not and is a crook, what’s to prevent him from lying?”
“Nothing really.”
“Then what’s the point?”
Briscoe shrugged as he placed the document on her desk in front of Pedace. “Just crossing T’s and dotting I’s,” he said.
Bruno smiled and picked up a pen from her desk. “It’s okay, Janet.”
“By the way,” Briscoe said, “I called Mr. Forsythe and asked him to notify me the minute that the funds are available.”
Bruno signed the affidavit and handed it back to the lawyer.
“Mr. Forsythe mentioned that the wire he’s expecting is for a total of forty-five million dollars. Did I misunderstand the amount? The documents I prepared reference a gift of forty-three million. Is that still accurate?”
Bruno appeared uncomfortable—his face flushed and he looked away. “The number you put in the documents is the correct one.”
Briscoe nodded, shrugged, and left the room.
Charles Forsythe’s eyes felt as though they were sunburned. He hadn’t slept a minute the night before. He railed at himself as he drove toward Redondo Beach. “How could I be so weak?” he asked himself. I have a great wife whose father helped stake me years ago. Everything I have is due in no small part to my meeting Katherine Wheeler shortly after I arrived in Los Angeles more than two decades ago. And now I’ve put everything in jeopardy because my girlfriend makes my blood boil.
The fact that Forsythe hadn’t yet given up Bruno Pedace to the New York private investigator said nothing about a lack of affection for his wife and children. It said everything about his lifelong relationship with Bruno. His loyalties wrestled with one another inside his head and his heart, but, as he exited the I-5 Freeway, he knew what he would do. At the same time, he also knew he would never be able to look at himself in a mirror without feeling miserable. From this point forward, he would be nothing but a characterless shit. A man who’d cheated on his wife and who’d turned on an old friend.
He arrived at St. Anne’s at 8:30 a.m. as he’d been asked to do by a lawyer named Briscoe. He was met at the front door by a Frank Mitchell who led him through to a conference room where he was introduced to Briscoe and Carol Harper. Forsythe shook hands with them and said, “You all look a bit haggard.”
Mitchell gave Forsythe a weary smile. “We’ve been up since 4:00 a.m. preparing documents to confirm Mr. Pedace’s gift to St. Anne’s.”
Forsythe nodded. Just as he was about to take a seat, Bruno entered the room, accompanied by a striking woman who Bruno introduced as Janet Jenkins. When Bruno approached him, Forsythe extended his right hand, but his old friend stepped forward and hugged him. Then Bruno turned to the others and announced, “Mr. Forsythe is like a brother.”
Janet watched the two men together and noticed how uncomfortable Forsythe seemed when Bruno hugged him. She thought, maybe he’s too macho to be comfortable hugging another man in the company of strangers. She brushed the thought aside and took a seat across the table from the broker.
“Thanks for meeting us here and on such short notice,” Mitchell said. “I know it’s a bit irregular, but Mr. Pedace made it clear that he wanted everything executed as quickly as possible.”
Briscoe waved a hand at the stack of documents, “You said that the money would be wired no later than 9:00. We might as well have all of these documents executed in anticipation of the wire coming in. One of the documents we’ll give you includes wire transfer instructions from your account to St. Anne’s account.”
Absent emotion and expression, Forsythe just nodded. He happened to catch the Jenkins woman’s raised-eyebrows-look she directed at her boss, Frank Mitchell, who returned her look with a slight hunching of his shoulders.
I’d better be careful, he thought.
It took thirty-five minutes for them to finish their business. Briscoe placed some of the documents in a folio and handed it to Forsythe. “Thanks again for handling this,” the lawyer said. He smiled and asked, “When will the funds be transferred to our account?”