Unknown Man #89

4

“THERE’S NOTHING MYSTERIOUS about it,” Mr. Perez said with his soft accent. “My business is finding lost stockholders. People who own stock in a company but don’t know it.”

“Why don’t they know it?” Ryan asked him.

“We’ll get to that if you’re interested.” Mr. Perez uncrossed his legs and pulled himself out of the deep chair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask you what you drink.” He picked up a glass from the coffee table and moved away.

“Nothing, thanks,” Ryan said.

“Too early, huh? I have my di

“Where’s your home?” Ryan asked him.

“Baton Rouge, when I’m not somewhere else. I also have a home at Pass Christian, on the Gulf. But I haven’t seen much of it lately, been spending most of my time up this way.”

Ryan sat in a straight chair with arms, his damp raincoat across his lap. He was having a hard time typing Mr. Perez. Light-ski

Ryan wondered how much the hotel suite cost. There was a desk piled with folders and papers and a thick briefcase on the chair next to it. Beyond the desk, through an open doorway, he saw twin beds with gold spreads and gold headboards. He bet it was costing the guy a hundred a day, at least. He wondered if the guy was a lawyer. He looked like one: not the corporate lawyer, but the downtown city-hall lawyer.

“What do you call what you do?”

Mr. Perez was coming back with his whiskey over ice, taking his time.

“My title? Well, my card says I’m an investment consultant. How’s that sound?” Mr. Perez smiled easily.

“I suppose you’re a lawyer, too.”

“Why do you suppose that?” He lowered himself carefully, holding the lowball glass in front of him, and sank down in the chair.

“I guess I just assumed you were.”

“You hire lawyers,” Mr. Perez said. “You don’t have to be one. Thank God.”

“Can I ask you, how do you happen to know Jay Walt?”

“I don’t know him. Least I didn’t,” Mr. Perez said. “I used him once before, he was all right. You see, locating people, a very good way to find out about them is through their credit rating. So I generally use somebody in the business. I believe he was the first or second one in the Yellow Pages, Allied Credit something or other. Let me ask you, are you a friend of his?”

“No,” Ryan said.

“You don’t care too much for him either.”

Ryan didn’t say anything.

“I have kind of a negative feeling myself,” Mr. Perez said. “Man talks out loud in elevators. I was thinking, there’s not much reason to keep him around. That’s if you’ve got something to tell me.”

“A few things,” Ryan said. “But I don’t know what I’m into yet. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“You’re trying to locate a lost stockholder who, I hope, doesn’t know he’s lost,” Mr. Perez said. “See, the way I go about it, I pick out a company that was around during the depression, when the value of their stock was quite low or maybe worthless. I go to the company and I say, ‘If you give me the names of any stockholders you’ve lost track of, I’ll see if I can locate them for you, at my own expense. Get the dead wood out of your stockholder list and bring it up to date.’ See, what happens from time to time, the company will get back a dividend check they sent out. Or their a

“What I was wondering before,” Ryan said, “the stockholder, I mean if he’s alive, he knows he owns the stock, doesn’t he?”

“You’d be surprised,” Mr. Perez said. “He might’ve put it away thirty years ago and forgot about it. Or he thought the company went broke during the depression. Or, what happens, he inherits the stock but never looks at it to see what it is. Now it’s buried under some old papers in the bottom of a desk. So, I get the list from the company and go to work.”

“They just give it to you?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Mr. Perez stared, interested in Ryan’s answer.

“Well, I’d think it would be privileged information. I can’t see the company taking the chance, exposing their stockholders to, well, they don’t know what, do they?”

Mr. Perez smiled. “You were going to say exposing them to some kind of con. Believe me, Mr. Ryan, there’s nothing questionable or suspicious about what I do. You’re right, though. Some companies are hesitant. They feel they have to consider my proposition very carefully, discuss it, get approval from the board, all that. Well, in those cases, what I do, I get on friendly terms with one of the third- or fourth-level executives of the company and ask him to let me have the list-he knows I’m not going to do anything illegal-and avoid a lot of red tape and confusion.”

“What’s that cost you?”

“Not a thing. Oh, I may send him a case of scotch, something like that.” Mr. Perez paused, but Ryan didn’t say anything. “It’s done all the time.”

“So then you try to find the lost stockholder.”

“That’s right. I locate the individual and I tell him I have knowledge of a certain property in his name that’s of some value.”

“You don’t tell him it’s stock.”

“No, that might be telling too much. I ask him to sign an agreement first, giving me a percent of the value as a finder’s fee. He does that, then I tell him what it is.”

“Can I ask you, what percent do you get?”

“Well, it depends. Sometimes, if there’s a lot of work involved, as much as half.” Mr. Perez took a sip of his whiskey and lit a cigarette. He was comfortable in the deep chair, at ease talking about himself. “So now the guy scratches his head and tries to think of what it is he owns or if something could have been left to him or what. Or he might want to talk to a lawyer first. That’s fine. Sometimes they’ll dig around and find the stock or remember it from years and years ago and I’m out of luck. I say thank you, I’ll be on my way. But if he doesn’t know what it is, then he signs the agreement and gives me power of attorney to handle the transaction. We sell the stock back to the company or on the open market, I take my percent, and everybody’s satisfied.”

“What if he doesn’t want to sell it?”

“That’s all right, he can pay me the equivalent of my percent.”

Ryan was trying to picture it. He said, “I can’t imagine the stockholder being too happy, splitting something he owns with a guy walks in off the street.”

“You get different reactions,” Mr. Perez said. “Most people are very grateful. I’ve found something that’s been lost and they look on it as paying a reward for its return.”

“I suppose, if you look at it that way,” Ryan said. Like Mr. Perez was doing them a favor. Maybe he was. But there was something about it, something about warm, friendly Mr. Perez that bothered Ryan. He wondered about other sides of the man; what he was like when he was pissed off, or when a deal fell through, or when he didn’t like somebody. Mr. Perez had already, no trouble at all, crossed off Jay Walt.