“So Isabella said.”
“Let’s go sit.”
He led me down a long corridor, through a sitting room and out to a screened-in porch. A porch like mine only ten times bigger and furnished to look like the British Raj. Lots of teak lounge chairs with built-in cup holders and magazine racks, woven footstools and grass mat carpets.
There was always some place new at Burton’s house to sit. I wondered how he kept track.
It was only about ten-thirty in the morning, too early even for Burton and me. So he called Isabella on his cell phone and asked for someone to bring us alcohol-free mimosas.
“Provide the illusion.”
While waiting we quickly covered the baseball situation, which meant a general agreement over the appalling inferiority of every team that’s ever competed with the Yankees, including those guys who also played somewhere on Long Island. Apparently they were both in the World Series.
“Their stadium is in Queens, I think,” said Burton. “I really don’t know.”
“The boys lost last night. So it’s two one.”
“Piffle.”
We also reviewed prospects for the NBA season, in which Burton took a far greater interest. He had a box at the Garden, away from the celebrities to avoid TV exposure. I used to join him every once in a while.
“We should do that again,” he said. “I’ve refurbished the box.”
I looked around the screened-in porch.
“Teak?”
“Something more appropriate to the setting.”
Isabella showed up leading another woman holding a tray with the drinks, a basket of croissants and some fresh fruit. She hung around to convey her general disapproval of me until Burton managed to shoo her away.
“So, Sam. I have some information. Not a lot.”
“Me, too. A fair amount.”
“I received a message from an attorney named Hunter Johnson. Inquiring about you.”
“Checking my story.”
“I let it be known we were closely associated and left it at that. An assistant handled the communication.”
“I dropped your name so hard it busted the floor.”
“Hope it helped.”
“It did. I appreciate it.”
“Tell me what you’ve learned and I’ll see if I can fill in the holes.”
So I went through everything I’d learned since he’d sailed over to the cottage. About Carl Bollard Junior and his girlfriend Regina. Julia Anselma’s Bay Side house and tricked-out iron. Jimmy Maddox and his midnight raid. Jackie Swaitkowski’s confessional. Harbor Trust and the Battistons. Even my encounter with the trained bear, which I’d left out of our last conversation.
“I’m not happy about that,” said Burton.
“No permanent damage. Nothing that shows, anyway.”
I told him about my meeting with Ross Semple and conversation with Joe Sullivan. And finally about the trip to New York to see Hunter Johnson in his opulent offices.
“Place is really plush, Burt. You should check it out.”
“I’m sure. Real-estate practice,” he said, by way of explanation.
“So what do you think of all this?”
“You’ve been busy,” he said. “I haven’t much to add, except something on the trust.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know the beneficiary?” I asked.
“Carl Bollard, of course.”
“Of course. Who’s got to be pretty old at this point.”
“Would be, but he’s dead.”
“Dead.”
“Died some time ago. 1977 to be exact. Alcoholism. Had a room at the Institute of Living in Hartford. Was there for one last try at sobriety.”
“So that’s it for the trust. What happened to the assets? Who owns them now?”
“That’s a very interesting question, Sam. We have no idea, and as far as my associates can tell, neither does anyone else. As it is, everything we have comes from a retired loan officer who reviewed the trust as part of a WB capitalization program. This was back in the early fifties. Luckily, he still had his notes. You’re going to find that most people involved in this are either long dead or past the point of clear recollection.”
“What about Bollard’s will? His heirs?”
“No heirs we know of. The trust was established by his father, Carl Senior, the year his mother died, leaving Carl Junior the sole heir. Within the trust were all the assets of Bay Side Holdings, which included WB Manufacturing, the real estate it sat on, plus contiguous properties around Oak Point and Jacob’s Neck, corporate equity—basically the cash in the business—and a substantial investment account with a portfolio of bonds and securities. Carl Junior, who was an only child by the way, was the beneficiary, along with his father, until his father’s death, which happened in 1950. Carl Junior also worked at WB in a succession of jobs typical of a young scion being groomed for succession. The trust at first glance looked like a typical tax vehicle used for estate management and the fluid transfer of corporate authority from one generation to the next. But it was clear to me, having some experience with these things, that it was also meant to keep young Carl in control while the father lived, and out of trouble once he died.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the trust was revocable during the old man’s life, then unmodifiable for five years after that. Carl Junior got the benefit of the income, but he couldn’t touch the business itself until 1955, when he was forty-six years old.”
“Arnold Lombard said he was a wasteabout.”
“That would follow. His father made the calculation that after five years on his own his son should be ready to accept responsibility. If not, then to hell with it. This is a very common practice in family situations.”
“So you’re saying that since, what, 1977, all that stuff’s just been sitting there, nobody owning it but a piece of paper? That’s nuts.”
“Yes, nuts and illegal, and entirely out of the question.”
“Okay. Keep explaining.”
“The trust was formed in 1948 in conjunction with the wills written for both Carls. Also very common. These I have. Carl Senior’s we already know. Carl Junior’s says when he dies, the assets of the trust flow to his heirs and assigns, as designated in the trust. It doesn’t say anything about what would happen if he had no heirs or assigns beyond his father, who would get everything back if he died young. In which case Carl Senior could nullify the trust and move on with his life, all of which is purely academic at this point since that didn’t happen.”
“But Carl Junior had no heirs.”
“I said heirs, not assigns.”
“I presume an assign is just that. Somebody you say is an heir.”
“Exactly. That’s what we don’t know, because we don’t have the trust document itself. Wills have to be registered on the death of the signer. Not trusts. Once Carl Junior was free of the restrictions, he could modify the trust any way he wanted. It became his trust, just like it was his father’s before him.”
“We got to have a chat with Mr. Hornsby.”
“We do indeed.”
I stood up and walked over to the screen to look at the outside. The lawn stretched away for a few hundred yards, terminating at a tall privet hedge. The ocean was one estate away. Burton’s great-grandfather determined it was better to have twenty acres of developed real estate and landscaping between you and a big storm surge than a flimsy dune, and he was proved right in ’38 when the next-door neighbor washed out to sea with his whole family and fourteen friends who’d driven out from the city to watch the spectacle.
“You got a theory here, Burt?” I asked him as I finished off my second emasculated mimosa. Burton was still in his chair, pensive and removed. I sat back down next to him.
