HEINZ NOONAN
and
Captain Heinz Noonan, the "Bearded Holmes" of the Sandersonville Police Department, was lost between channels 2 and 4 on his living room couch. The picture, that which he could distinguish in the scrambled pattern, showed a boxing match while the sound was the haunting call of a muezzin on a minaret. When he hit the channel switch on the remote control, the brown box on top of the television skipped through a dozen stations and then stuck on 35. Suddenly the picture was clear. A shapely woman in a wet negligee holding herself upright on a rope was weaving seductively in front of an Egyptian pyramid while a man with scraggly hair was playing a steel guitar on the sand in the distance. But the sound was from a football game.
"I didn't know you liked country-western music," said his son Otto as he sat down next to his father. "But don't you think you'd better change the sound?"
"I was trying to do that," snapped Noonan as he began hitting buttons on the remote control vigorously. Then the VCR snapped on and the woman on the rope was replaced with a scene from a soap opera.
"I wouldn't do that, Dad! You know how upset Mom gets when she finds that someone has been messing with her soaps."
Otto took the remote from his father's hand and hit a single button. The soap disappeared and the woman in the wet negligee was back. But this time she was lounging against a camel and a three-piece western band was to her left -- excluding the man on the steel guitar. But now the sound matched the set.
"Let me see that," Noonan said as he took the remote from his son's hand and hit the numbers for channel 7 and got 70, a beautiful snow pattern on the screen with a HISSSSS to match. Then he hit "0" and "7." This time the picture came up clear but there was no sound.
Fritz, his other twin, came into the living room with a cellular phone, took a quick look at his father's anguished expression and spotted the remote control switch in his father's hand. "You probably hit the mute button, Dad."
Captain Heinz Noonan, Chief of Detectives of the Sandersonville Police Department and nemesis of evil doers from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Yukon, was once again stymied by a remote control. When he hit the mute button, the numbers on the brown box sped to 35 and now revealed a fat hillbilly dancing around a mailbox waving a video tape over his head.
Fritz took the remote control from his father and handed him the cellular phone. "Let's trade. It's some guy in Laguna Beach with an apartment problem."
"An apartment problem?" But the question might as well have been directed at the wall. Fritz hit 37 and MTV came in live, clear and without a speck of snow -- and six decibels too loud for the Chief of Detectives. So he left the living room heading for the kitchen.
"Hello."
"Captain Noonan?"
"I hope so otherwise I'm having a heck of a time in his house."
"This is Detective Hortense Corvino in Laguna Beach. Laguna is a beach front community near Los . . . ."
"I know where Laguna is, Detective. What can I do for you?"
"Well, first let me apologize for calling you on a Sunday. I don't like interrupting family weekends. I get so few myself."
Noonan looked past the open refrigerator being raided by both Otto and Fritz who were trying to beat the commercial back to the MTV station. Out the other kitchen door he could see his wife and three friends practicing Tai Chi. "Yeah. Weekends together with your family are a terrible thing to waste. But what can I do for you, Detective?"
"Well, I feel a fit odd about calling, I have to tell you. What I have isn't so much a legal problem as it is a matter of twisted circumstances. I wouldn't have called you but my Chief met you at a conference in Florida several years ago. He suggested that I call you. I would have done it on a work day but yesterday we got an unexpected prod from the Superior Court to resolve this matter by Tuesday noon or close the case file."
"OK. Whacha got?"
"This is going to be tangled."
"Aren't they all."
Noonan began slowly walking around the stove in the center of his kitchen and opening drawers with his free hand. Once he found a pencil he flipped a receipt over and scribbled as Corvino talked.
"The matter came to our attention last Tuesday. We got a call from a woman, Barbara Bugiarda, that a strange man was in her living room making himself at home. She was in the shower at the time and had slipped into the bedroom to make the call. When we arrived at her address, a condo overlooking the beach, we confronted a Joseph Spazzino in the living room. I use the verb 'confronted' because Spazzino claimed he was the owner of the condo. Bugiarda also claimed to be the owner of the condo. Both had keys that fit the door but neither of them had any paperwork that showed the condo as their residence so we ran them both in."
"By paperwork you mean a driver's license or something that had the address of the condo on it."
"Right. Neither of them even had valid California licenses. The woman had a Texas driver's license and the man a Colorado license. Though both claimed to own the condo, neither knew where his -- or her -- paperwork was in the condo. I left a man behind . . ."
"You were the officer in charge?"
"Eventually. I was called in after both claimed to own the condo and neither had any proof. When I got there the two were yelling at each other in Italian so I separated them and ordered them to headquarters."
"Since you were there . . ." Noonan let his voice trail off.
"Captain Noonan! You sound like my Chief! Of course I felt I had reasonable cause to search the premises! But I didn't find anything. In fact, I found less than nothing. The condo was expensively furnished in a generic style, that is, as in it didn't have a masculine or feminine touch. Everything was perfectly placed in that condo, right down to the towels, soap and toilet paper. With the exception of the bathroom and bedroom, it looked as though someone had just set the furniture in and walked away."
"What was different
about the bathroom and bedroom?"
"Both were used. The bed hadn't been slept in but it was rumpled
where Bugiarda had placed her clothes. The bathroom had been used because she
had taken a shower. We found her luggage unopened in the bedroom."
"How about Spazzino's luggage?"
"My compliments for remembering his name and pronouncing it correctly."
"My in-laws are Italian. That's why I think both your people are fakes. Bugiarda translates as liar and spazzino in Italian means street sweeper."
"I wondered about that too. I'm Italian myself. Actually, spazzino also means scavenger. Spazzino's luggage was beside the couch in the living room. When we finally got a warrant -- and yes, Captain, I am aware of the limits of search and seizure -- we didn't find anything in any of the drawers. And I mean nothing. No papers, underwear, personal effects, gewgaws or books. We dusted the place. No fingerprints either. Zip. That place looked like an expensive hotel room."
"Did you check with the neighbors?"
"Here the story gets convoluted. Yes, we did check with the neighbors and the condo association. The neighbors had never seen anyone use that condo, at least not for the past ten years. There was some major renovation a year ago, rugs and the like, but other than that there hasn't been a sound out of that unit as long as most of them had been there. The condo association confirmed that the unit had been purchased cash about ten years ago and that association fees and insurance premiums were been paid monthly from a blind account in New York. All correspondence had gone to a law firm in New York. When we checked with the law firm they stated that they were handling the condo association business for a client and that unless there had been a violation of the law, they could not reveal any further information on the matter."
"Whose name is one the condo ownership papers?"
"A code number which corresponds to a file at the law firm. They confirmed that."
"Did you check with the feds? We could be talking a safe house here or maybe an owner that's in the witness protection program."
"Feds say they have nothing on the unit. Not that I believe them but that's what they told us."
"What happened when you got the two down to headquarters?"
"Both made long distance calls and about two hours later, two sets of ownership papers were faxed in. One from Texas and the other from Colorado."
"And?"
"Both are the owners. Both have papers legally transferring the condo to them on the same day. One set came from a law firm in Texas which handles estates exclusively and the other, from Colorado, came from a contested inheritance that had just settled. The law firm in Texas stated that the estate came through a John Doe who established ownership to the condo as well as $2.7 million in assets through a blind trust. All they know is that they were legally informed that the Doe was dead and to dispense with the property as indicated in his will."
"And the Colorado connection."
"This one is strange."
"And the Texas one wasn't?"
"Good point. Remember that law firm that paid the condo association fees?"
"Yeah."
"Well, originally it had 12 partners. That was back in the 1930s. By the 1950s, only four of them were left. Since each of them had a separate expertise, they split the company geographically but not on paper. In other words, they were all part of the same firm on paper but the four partners opened four somewhat independent offices. One specialized in tax, another in criminal matters, a third in corporate affairs, and the fourth in estates and retirement. But they continued to shuffle legal business back and forth so that no matter what problem a client had coming in, they were able to keep the business in-house, so to speak."
"Let me guess," Noonan said as he kept scribbling. "Their clients are fairly well-heeled."
"Their poorest clients are well-heeled. We're talking about some of the richest most powerful people in America using these four, most of whom do not want anyone to know of their financial affairs or transgressions."
"OK. As to Spazzino?"
"We traced Spazzino's paperwork back to the original 12 person law firm. When the firm splintered in 1952, the cases relative to that client were transferred four directions. As I traced Spazzino's paperwork, I had to talk with not just one of those firm branches but all four. Each time, as soon as I brought up Spazzino's name, I was bumped to a partner -- and a senior partner at that. Whatever file that bequest had come from, it was being handled at the highest level by all four firms and had been handled by those firms since before 1952. But when it came right down to the nitty-gritty, all of the partners said the same thing. The inheritance had came from an un-named client who personally transferred title to Spazzino ten years ago, the official conveyance to be done upon his or her death which had occurred recently."
"But wasn't the condo ownership registered with that New York law firm? Doesn't that mean that Spazzino has a strong claim, maybe even the only legitimate claim."
"Yes and no. But that claim of primary ownership only applies if the condo was legally acquired in the first place. We can't prove that it wasn't but then again we've got to take Bugiarda's claim as legitimate until such time as this matter is legally resolved."
"This sounds like a civil matter between Bugiarda and Spazzino. Why are the Laguna Police even involved?"
"Basically two reasons. First, we have an open case of breaking and entering with the alleged perp -- or two of them -- in hand. Bugiarda has not dropped her charges and Spazzino has counter-charged. We can't try both and we can't release the condo to both. Second, we're pretty sure that there's some hanky-panky here but we don't know what it is. As long as both of them are refusing to drop charges we can keep them out of condo and we can keep digging. But if we don't have something by Tuesday at noon, the judge is going to dismiss all charges and they'll have to work out their own deal."
IF NO CRIME
HAS BEEN COMMITTED ----
WHY IS HE CALLING NOONAN?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Noonan continued. "So you need a hook or angle to figure this out?"
"It would be nice."
"OK, I think you're approaching this problem from the wrong direction. The burning question isn't who owned the condo, it's who these two are."
THAT'S A GOOD START, RIGHT?
WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ADVISED?
Noonan went on. "I'll bet their licenses and social security numbers are phony. That means you didn't find a make on them using anything they gave you. See if you can find their cars and run a make on them. They're probably rented but maybe they left a clue on the application blanks -- and you can get fingerprint samples off those forms. I'm presuming that you don't have any fingerprints from either of them, right?"
"We don't have a crime yet so we don't have any fingerprints."
"Find out how they got to Laguna. If they used an airplane, which I'll bet they did, run a check on how they paid for their tickets. Do some checking with your legal beagles on the two law firms involved. Even if these two try to cover their tracks well, it'll still lead back to a city. Then call the police in that city and ask if the descriptions ring a bell. When you get what you can, call me back. Monday would be nice but I don't think you're going to make it that far."
"Sorry?"
"I said I don't think you're going to make it that far. It's a little after noon on Saturday and I'm betting you'll be back to me within three hours."
"Why's that?"
"Trust me. I've been here before."
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING ON?
WRITE DOWN YOUR ANSWER
NOW . . . .
AND SEE HOW YOU STACK UP
AGAINST
HEINZ NOONAN
Noonan was wrong by two hours. An hour later Corvino was back on his phone.
"Sorry to be back so quickly but . . ."
"Yeah. I know. You started doing a little probing and all of a sudden both parties dropped their charges."
"Right. So unless we have something concrete we've got to drop the case tomorrow morning at 8 a.m."
"That might be best in this case. Let them wrestle this out in civil court. At least it'll keep the Laguna Police clear of the fallout."
"Do you know something I should know?"
"Probably not, but here's how I read it. What we have here is some kind of a crude contest. A rich, important person has hidden something of great value in that condo and then told two people, maybe children or relatives, that the object is in the condo. The one that finds it gets something valuable. Or maybe what was hidden is extremely valuable. Both generate false identifications and get the starting gun at the same time. This is probably the last stop on their journey as they followed clues hither and yon to get to a condo that hasn't been used in a decade."
"Kind of like a scavenger hunt."
"Something like that. Obviously the woman, whoever she is, got there first. She searched the place and came up with what you did: zip. Spazzino got there late and hasn't had a chance to search but he's got to know that if his competitor didn't find it, it's not hidden in an easily identifiable location. Clearly it's going to take time for them to find it and they can't do that if the police are looking over their shoulder."
"So they joined forces."
"They didn't have any other choice. No charges, no crime, no police."
"So that finishes that?"
"If the Laguna Police want to leave it that way, yeah. If you still think a crime is involved -- which I do, incidentally -- I'd suggest you get a warrant and tear up the carpet."
THE CARPET?
WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?
DID YOU GUESS THE CARPET?
WHY?
"Carpet? Where did that come from? A wild guess?"
Noonan smiled. "When you called me earlier you said that the condo had been silent except for some major renovation a year ago that involved the carpet. Assuming you looked everywhere else, that's the only logical place left."
"What do you think we'll find?"
"Not something of traditional value like a diamond necklace or a gold ingot. I'll bet you'll find paperwork of some kind. Maybe ledger books or something incriminating. And if you want to know to whom it belonged without going through those law firms, take the date of those two transfers of title and go to your local library. Get a copy of the New York Times on microfilm and start from that date and go backwards looking at the obituaries. You won't have any trouble spotting your benefactor. He's the one that's had problems so massive it took four different law firms with four different specialties to keep him out of jail. It may be a woman. In any case the individual would have been in his or her eighties to have been using that law firm since the 1950s."
"And our two birds?"
"Look for the paragraph that starts something like 'The deceased is survived by.' Two of those names listed are the real names of those two. Run a make on all the names in the 'survived by' section and see if you can get photos."
"That would take some doing."
"No really. Just mention this conversation to the FBI. I'll bet their New York office would be more than happy to provide any pictures you want -- and the manpower out of their Los Angeles office to tear up those rugs. Even on a Sunday afternoon."
HOW DID YOU DO?
COULD YOU HAVE SOLVED THIS ON YOUR OWN?
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