Chapter 39
SHELL GAME
Stan told me about his adventure at DFW over a cup of coffee. I told him I was going to call Derek Donner and have him come write a big insurance policy on his life. Stan thought that was a good idea. I told him I was joking but he said he was serious. He thought key man insurance made a lot of sense. After hearing his exploits, I told him about my meeting with Speaker Potts. While we were talking, Jodie interrupted to tell us she'd checked the license number I had copied down the night before. The car belonged to Mint, Ltd. A check with the Secretary of State revealed that Horace Manning was a limited partner of Mint, Ltd.
After talking about this latest information, we decided we had to look into United Recycling and have Paul Thayer try to figure out who Manning and Potts were visiting at the Dallas Naval Air Station. Since time was running out, we had Jodie contact a legal research firm in Austin to have someone go over to the Secretary of State’s office to check out what they could on United Recycling.
Several hours later we had our report. The registered agent was a Simon Trueblood of Austin, Texas and the sole officer of the company was none other than Don Baker. I called Jimmy and asked him if he knew Trueblood. He advised me that he did and that Trueblood was Speaker Pott's attorney. I asked him if he'd ever heard of United Recycling and he said he had heard the name mentioned, but that was it.
The physical address of United Recycling according to the Secretary of State's file was on Mockingbird Lane south of R.L. Thornton Freeway. I decided to drive over there and check out the facility. The address was in a warehouse district and when I got there, I found a chain link fence surrounding the building. Unfortunately, it was padlocked but there was a realtor's sign on the fence, so I copied the number and called it when I got back to the office.
A young lady answered and I inquired about the availability of the property. In our conversation I asked about the previous tenant. She confirmed that United Recycling had leased the place for a year, but to her knowledge hadn't conducted much business there.
"Yes, it was very strange. They paid their deposit and a year's rent but never moved anything in the place. There was a caretaker who came and occupied one small office. He did a little shipping and receiving, but there were rarely any cars in the parking lot."
"Did you ever ask them about the lack of activity?" I asked.
"No, the rent was paid so it wasn't any of my business."
"Who handled the lease negotiations?"
"A realtor, Bass Realty. Roger Bass was their agent. He contacted me and said he had a client who wanted to lease the warehouse. I was happy about it because there was a glut of warehouse space and it had been vacant for some time."
"Did you ever meet the tenants?"
"No, the agent got the lease signed and collected the rent. I never really had any dealings with them."
After hanging up with the realtor, I called Bass Realty and talked to Roger Bass. He confirmed that he had been hired to find warehouse space for a recycling operation. He said his contact was Simon Trueblood. I asked him about the fact that no recycling ever took place on the premises. He said Trueblood informed him that the company's financing fell through and asked him to try to sublease it, but with the market so bad he wasn't able to do it.
It wasn't until the following day that we heard back from Paul Thayer. He had done background checks on Congressman Manning and Speaker Potts. It seems they both had served in the Naval Air Force from 1964 to 1970 and were assigned to the same aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War. Thayer checked the roster of officers assigned to the Dallas Naval Air Station and found a Captain Stuart Chamberlain who had also served on the same aircraft carrier during that time period. What this all meant was beyond me, but it was very interesting that Manning, Potts, and Chamberlain all felt compelled to have a meeting after my visit.
I didn't know exactly what to do with the information I had uncovered about United Recycling. After considering the question for a while, I decided to go take another look at the loan file to see if anything in there might be illuminating. This wasn't an easy task since the federal regulators were now a permanent fixture at Metroplex Savings and Loan. In previous savings and loans seizures that I'd read about all the defaulted loan files had been confiscated by federal regulators or the FBI. Jerry Hartsfield, however, indicated that this hadn't happened yet at Metroplex. He said I could come in any time and view the file. I told him I was on my way.
Hartsfield invited me into his office and we sat around a small conference table. He pushed the file over to me and said, "There you go."
I opened the file and started looking at the contents. There was a promissory note for 2.3 million dollars, a security agreement, UCC-1, loan agreement and corporate resolutions authorizing the transaction. What was absent was any documentation about the business—no financial statements, business plan, or even handwritten notes as to what the loan proceeds were going to be used for. I asked Hartsfield what he knew about the loan.
"Not much. It was Don's baby. He was in pretty thick with Manning and Potts and being that they were pretty powerful politicians, nobody questioned what they were doing."
"What about the loan officer who was indicted. What was her name?"
"Amy Gardner."
"Yes. It sounds like she was doing the same thing Don was doing—loaning money to dummy corporations and then pocketing the proceeds."
"Yes, it appears so."
"I guess I'll have to go visit her in jail and see if she knows anything about United Recycling."
Hartsfield nodded and replied, "It couldn't hurt."
The following day I went to the Dallas County Jail and visited Amy Gardner. She denied any involvement with United Recycling but did admit she got the embezzlement idea from Don Baker. She had seen him pull it off several times and figured she could do the same thing. She figured if he caught her, she could simply threaten to blow the whistle on him if he tried to bring her down.
Although everything I had learned over the previous few days was very interesting, I still didn't have any direct evidence that Manning, Potts, or Chamberlain had anything to do with Don and Amanda's murder. With Jimmy's trial less than two weeks away, I feared this line of investigation wasn't likely to bear fruit quickly enough and I might have to go back to my original plan of trying to pin the murder on Phil Smart.