Meta Crime

     It all began two and a half years before and quite by accident. After spending five years at Stanford studying finance, economics and law, Marty Reingold wanted time to relax. The average looking nerd wanted to reflect on life and to have some fun. To pay expenses, he worked part time as a waiter at Café Claude in San Francisco. 

      Matt Hunt, was a college drop out. He attended UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara but spent most of his college years surfing and bumming around the West Coast working his way north. He had a real love and talent for dealing with vegetation of all kinds. In spite of his dislike of any kind of labor, he ended up with a fairly lucrative landscape business serving the most prestigious home gardens in San Francisco. His radiant personality and movie star looks attracted clients, especially of the female variety.

     One night Matt was out with the daughter of one of his clients at Café’ Claude. He and the waiter struck up a conversation and by the next day Marty Reingold became an employee of Matt Hunt’s landscape service.  The young men developed an unlikely but deep friendship.

      Marty impressed enough of the landscape clients with his education and knowledge and Matt with his good looks and personality, that soon the twosome was included in San Francisco’s elite nightlife making society’s invitation list as available, interesting bachelors.

      At a party on Nob Hill, not wanting to wait in a long line, Matt dodged into the owner’s private bathroom next to his study.  When his landscape customer entered the room and began talking on his phone about a business deal Matt peaked his head around the corner to eavesdrop. He saw the man remove a large bundle of papers from the wall safe hidden behind an oil painting. Lester McCracken talked as he rustled through them. When he dropped the stack of papers they spread around the room. Matt was about to offer to help retrieve the flying mass when a woman opened the door.  “Lester, you’re needed right now for the toast.”

      “Damn it. I can’t come right now. I have to pick up these bonds.” The man continued locating and re-stacking.

      “Oh, forget that. You have to come right now. The crowd is waiting on your announcement.”

      “I’ll call you back later. Eleanor issued an order.” Lester hung up the phone looked around the room at the mess and then left, locking the door behind him.

      Matt exited the bathroom and picked up one of the old bonds meaning to return it to the stack. U.S. Treasury Department was written across the top. Not being able to resist the urge, he slipped several into his jacket pocket and left the room re-locking the door behind him.

      He joined Marty, had a few more drinks and the two of them left with friends spending the evening at a local jazz bar. They ended the night very late as usual. Matt forgot about the bonds until the next morning when he was hanging up his jacket.

      As he sipped his coffee he looked at the documents. “Oh my God. These things are for two-hundred-fifty-thousand each.” Matt called Marty excitement in his voice. “Get over here quick. I need to show you something.”

      Once Marty arrived at Matt’s he confirmed the amount of each of the bonds. ‘These look authentic. But, the government doesn’t issue these things anymore. They’re bearer bonds.”

      “What exactly are bearer bonds?” Matt asked.

      “They’re fixed-income instruments, owned by whoever is holding it, rather than having a registered owner like regular bonds.”

      ”So, are you saying they’re like cash?” 

      “Superior to cash, really, because they’re unregistered, no records ever kept of the owners or the transactions. 

      “Wow, what a find!”

      “Matt, you have to get these back to McCracken or you’re going to be in big trouble. Just a little lesson for you my friend. Bearer bonds have historically been the financial instruments of choice for money laundering, tax evasion, and concealed business transactions in general. Because of this, new issuances of bearer bonds were severely curtailed in the United States in 1982. All the U.S. bearer bonds ever issued have matured yet the treasury has over a hundred and thirty-five billion still outstanding. The ones you have are a drop-in-the-bucket. Nowadays bearer bonds are used mostly by the drug cartels. They’re better than other ways of exchanging funds. Interesting that these were issued in 1944.”

      “Ole Lester didn’t even know I was in the room. But, I’ll stick them back under a piece of furniture in his study sometime when I’m doing landscape work at his place. Since you’re such a wizard, why don’t you do some research and find out why he had a big stack of them.”

***

      A few days later Marty reported what he found out with his on-line research. Lester’s family money came from McCraken Arms and Munitions. Marty’s theory was that the bonds were most likely payment for some kind of World War II weapons, maybe something the government didn’t want anyone to know about. 

      Two weeks passed and neither Matt nor Marty heard or read a thing about the missing bonds. Matt worked at Lester’s home planning to return them but when the man waved to him and smiled from his study balcony Matt returned the smile and kept the precious documents. 

     "Marty, help me figure out a way to cash this landfall. It's all so easy. It looks like McCracken doesn’t even know the bonds are missing. No one knows and we could be set for life. All we have to do is figure out how to convert them to cash." Matt tried hard to convince his friend.

      "Matt, you're not thinking straight." Marty handed a copy of the Wall Street Journal to Matt. "Today I found this small article about the McCracken family and how one Lester McCracken was missing some family papers. He's hired Paul Bryan Detective Agency to find them. They ask for anyone knowing anything about the missing papers to call the listed phone number."

***

      The next week when Matt did his regular landscaping in the McCracken gardens, a man approached him and introduced himself as non-other than Paul Bryan. He informally questioned Matt about his knowledge of Mr. McCracken’s home and specifically his study. Matt told him he knew little about the inside of the home because his work was outdoors. The detective mentioned that Matt’s name had been on a party list and that he knew Matt attended at least one event there.

      “Mr. Bryan, I had a grand time at a party but it was held in the living area. I didn’t know about a study. Why do you ask?”

      Bryan gave Matt a long look then gave him his card and walked away. “If you think of anything unusual you might have seen the night of that party, give me a call. Some bonds went missing the night of the party.”  

      Marty had a similar experience with the detective.

***

     "Marty, my friend." Matt continued his mission to keep the bonds. "If they wanted anyone to know 

they owned these bonds the law, FBI and all, would be involved. They can't prove anyone took 

anything from them."     

      Matt smiled and slapped his buddy on the back when Marty agreed to find a way to keep them. The opportunity for quick wealth was too appealing to resist. 

       “Okay Matt.” Marty said.  “We have to get the bonds out of the country, into a Swiss Bank and then we need to disappear for awhile. We can't spend the money, any of it, until things cool down. You know Bryan is going to have us followed if we leave the country, don’t you?” Marty warned Matt.  

      “Yes but I have a plan that should clear us once and for all. We’re going to outsmart ole Bryan in Italy and make a fool out of him. First of all, don’t make it a secret we plan to take a vacation. The second part is pretty funny.”  He continued to explain to his partner. “I know an actress who had access to all kinds of elaborate stage props. One of her gigs was a movie about a huge bank robbery. She kept the fake currency for fun after the film was complete. It was all very real looking U.S. Treasury bonds, not bills. I’ve made a deal with her to buy a stack of the stage currency.”

***

      On the morning of June 4, 2009, Matt Hunt and Marty Reingold boarded Lufthansa flight 889 for Rome, dressed in jeans and carrying backpacks. Upon landing, custom agents assisted by Detective Bryan searched the twosome. No one found the old bearer bonds concealed below the keyboards of their laptops but agents did find a stack of authentic looking bonds nestled in between the pages of a novel, Wall Street.  The authorities and Detective Bryan were thrown off guard when the young Americans explained they were planning to make a film about a heist and the stage-bonds were to be used for that purpose.  

      “Detective Bryan, your questioning and such gave us the idea for our film. We have you to thank for that. There’s not a law against making movies is there?”

***

      A year later, Marty Reingold and Matt Hunt smiled as they sipped glasses of fine Italian wine at a small sidewalk café overlooking the Duomo in Florence. Tomorrow their plane to Zurich would leave early. A representative from Credit Suisse, referred by a friend in San Francisco would pick them up at the airport and the final deposit of the funds would be complete.

      “Hey man, I never thought we’d really pull it off, but here we are, not a care in the world.” Marty leaned back in his chair and looked around the plaza.

      “Go figure. It was all so easy.” Matt laughed out loud.

      “Yeah. You were right, it was meant to be.”

  

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