Going For Broke (4 page)

             
Her heart melted just a little bit at the sight of her daughter, freshly bathed, in her Belgian lace nightgown.  She had just lost her first tooth (did Lumi remember to put the tooth fairy money under her pillow?), which at least  for now seemed to explain the lisp.  She had curly auburn hair and freckles, just like Trip’s sister Eleanor.  This concerned Victoria greatly, as Eleanor epitomized the look that only a girl from Wisconsin with a great love of horses and a great deal of money could achieve.  

             
She bent down to give Posey a kiss.  The children knew that they could really only air kiss their mother.  She was always on her way somewhere and knew that they couldn’t mess the makeup.  Posey was a little surprised, then, when Victoria gave her a hug. 

             
“Hey, where’s Dad?” Parker asked as he met them, Nintendo DS in hand. 

             
Good question, Victoria thought.  “He’s working late.” This was nothing new to the Vernon children, so they took it in stride.  Let’s end this conversation before it goes any farther, she thought.  “What time is it?” she asked with a false sense of concern.  That should get them scurrying. 

             
Lumi shooed the children back to their rooms and called goodnight to Mrs. Vernon.  Parker stopped as he headed down the hall.  “Hey mom, can you ask Dad to come see me tonight before he goes to bed?  I have something to ask him.”  Yeah, me too, she thought.

Chapter 3

             
Mike knocked on the door of his new boss, Clark Donaldson, and waited for the response.  After years in the Organized Crime Unit, Mike was used to a boss that barked, yelled and swore like a drunken sailor.  Clark, on the other hand, was as genteel as the white collar criminals that he investigated.  He motioned Mike into his office while he was finishing up a phone call.  He mouthed the word “Washington” and gestured to Mike to sit down. 

             
Clark covered the phone with his hand and whispered an apology.  His politeness drove Mike crazy.  That was one of the things he loved about the OCU - rudeness was the order of the day, and everyone was okay with it.   ‘Fuck you you fucking fuck’ was a term of love and affection, and Mike loved being a part of it.  Fuck yes!

 
             
For a guy who barely uttered a swear word until he was twenty, most of the people who knew him in his youth would have been shocked to see him hanging with the dogs of the Organized Crime Unit, throwing shit to the guys (and girls), eating every kind of slop that came by, wearing clothes that had as many wrinkles as they had stains.  As a matter of fact, most of the people who knew Michael Merrill Towner were shocked that he was even working for the FBI, and not sitting in a corner office of Howard, Towner and Richardson.  Mike had been on track to become heir apparent of one of the oldest and most revered law firms in Philadelphia.  His grandfather had founded the firm, his father took over the helm, and it was fully expected that he, too, would continue the family legacy.

             
He did everything his parents expected of him.  Haverford through eighth grade, Choate for high school.  Harvard for both undergrad and law school.  Mick and Susan Towner regularly congratulated themselves on the fine job they had done with Mike.  There was barely a day that someone at the club, the firm or at church didn’t ask about Mike, and the Towners loved nothing more than to dowplay Mike’s accomplishments.  Oh, Mike?  He’s in school in Boston.  They’d never mention the “H” word.  They wouldn’t want to seem like they were boasting.

             
It was a great childhood.  Mike had nothing to complain about.  He had two older sisters who treated him like their own personal baby doll, and still did to this day.  In law school, he started dating Brooke Heston, an undergrad from Tufts.  His parents were thrown by the Tufts thing.  They never mentioned the “L” word, but Mike got a kick out of the fact that she came from such a liberal school and that it bothered them so much.    They got to know Brooke, and really began to like her.  She may not have money, although she came from a fine old Boston family with no money.  For the Towners, the next best thing to money was lineage.  They warmed up to Brooke very nicely.

             
Everything was going according to plan until just before Mike graduated from Law School.  He was set to return to Philadelphia and start at Howard, Towner.  Brooke was going to transfer to the Art Institute of Philadelphia. She had been studying Art History at Tufts, so it seemed a natural transition.  She and Mike had found a great apartment near Rittenhouse Square and had even talked of getting a dog.

             
Until.  Until one night Mike woke up in a cold sweat and deep panic.  He couldn’t explain it, his future looming ahead of him terrified him.  He tried to wake up Brooke to explain it to her, but she just murmured and rolled over.   Over the next few weeks, he couldn’t shake the panic.  It was just wrong.  He wasn’t sure what he was meant to do, but following in his father’s footsteps definitely wasn’t it. He begged Brooke to come with him to New York, to help him find his path. 

             
Brooke wouldn’t have any of it.  She wanted to be the bohemian artist in the family, on the other hand,  someone had to keep the money flowing in.  That was their deal.  If she wanted to live on the Lower East Side in some piece of shit industrial apartment waiting tables, she wouldn’t have needed Mike Towner.  So Mike packed his bags for New York and Brooke went back to looking for Mr. Right in Harvard Yard.

             
After working as a bartender, taxi driver and bike messenger in Manhattan, Mike was not one bit closer to figuring out what he was going to do with his life.  Okay, he didn’t want to be Mick Towner 2.0, yet he really wasn’t enjoying his current career path.  Menial labor had its virtues, though he felt virtuous enough by now.  He toyed with being a public defender, though from what he saw in his part of New York, he figured that most of these poor bastards he’d be representing were guilty. 

             
One afternoon Mike was drinking in a dark bar on the Lower East Side (long before it even hinted at being fashionable) and got into a discussion with a very drunk guy at the end of the bar.  Before long Mike was able to ascertain that his new friend was an agent for the FBI, working on an assignment.  Obviously not a very good agent, since it didn’t take much for Mike to learn almost everything about the guy in less time than it took him to drink two Scotches.  Mike liked the idea of working a job that let you drink in the middle of the afternoon.  More than that, it appealed to his inherent sense of right and wrong.  He liked the idea of taking on the ‘bad guys’.

             
Getting hired wasn’t easy.  Apparently the FBI had a greater need for accountants than agents.  With his law degree, they offered him a place in their legal office down in Washington, although Mike wanted to be on the street.  He eventually got himself hired in the Organized Crime Unit and quickly worked his way up the ranks, eventually gaining the position of Chief Investigator.  It wasn’t what he had set out to do, it was what he was meant to do.  There was a freewheeling element to OCU that appealed to the rogue in Mike.  Act first, get permission later.  These guys were the cowboys of the criminal justice system.

             
Of course, that fly-by-the-seat of your pants approach didn’t work too well in the Federico case and it cost him.  They took him off his desk and sent him over to White Collar Crime, which was considered the arena of pencil pushers and accountants.  It was meant to be a bitch slap, and it was.

             
Which is how Mike found himself waiting for Clark Donaldson to finish his phone call.  After hanging up, Clark apologized again and turned his attention to Mike.  A pleasant guy, Clark wasn’t really happy to be put in the role of jailor for Michael Towner.  He was a good agent, and had a great reputation in the downtown office.  He had heard about Mike’s troubles, as well as his reputation for going off script.  He knew Mike wasn’t happy where he was, and wasn’t going to be very happy about where he was going.

             
“Mike, thanks for coming in,” there was that damn politeness again.  He handed Mike a manilla folder.  “Robert Vernon, 48, runs RPV Investments.  Run-of-the-mill Wall Street Guy.  Except it looks like Mr. Vernon has skipped town and has taken quite a bit of his clients’ money with him.  Chances are good that he’s left the country.  Not very imaginative, your basic embezzle and run.  The difference is that this guy took a lot of money from a lot of very influential people.  People with connections to Washington.  Between the amount of cash involved and the people who want it back, we have to make sure we find him.”

             
Mike nodded.  He had heard of Vernon.  Anyone who read a newspaper in New York had heard of Robert Vernon.  Okay, bad guy took someone else’s money.  That story was getting old in New York.  

             
“ That’s where you come in.  Find him.”

             
Okay, this wasn’t too bad, Mike thought.  They needed him to jump on a plane to the Caymans or Switzerland to track old Trippy down?  He knew the drill with these weasels. 
             
“Great, Clark, whatever you need.”

             
“I really appreciate your help Mike.  So here’s the plan.”  Clark handed him a second manilla folder.  “I need you to keep an eye on Victoria Vernon.”

             
Mike was visibly deflated.  The Park Avenue Princess?  He had heard of her too. 

             
“Clark - you’ve got to be kidding.  Let me track
him
down.  I know this kind of guy.  I know his moves, I know how he thinks.”

             
“We’ve already got people working on Mr. Vernon.  We need you on
Mrs
. Vernon,” Clark said as he closed his folder and stood up.  Clearly the meeting was over.

             
             
             
             
             
             
###

             
Trip Vernon never came home.  Not that night, and not the next.  Every day that passed should have brought Victoria closer to the edge, instead she went into offensive mode.  For the next two weeks, she kept every appointment, went to every gala, and attended every meeting on her calendar.  When appropriate, she would attend functions alone, telling people that Trip was out of town on business.  Which technically was true.  On the couple of occasions that she needed a ‘date’, she dragged Andrea Howard up from Tribeca.

             
She and Andrea had first met when they were repping wine, both out of college.  Andrea had gone to the University of Michigan, majored in chemical engineering and got straight A’s on every report card since she was five.  Andrea had always wanted to be the next Patti Lupone, so upon meeting her commitment to her parents and gotten a degree that she could fall back on, Andrea moved to New York to hit it big on Broadway.

             
There was only one small hitch in her plan: Andrea couldn’t sing a note.  At 6’1” with long curly strawberry blonde hair,  a freckled nose and hands the size of a man, she looked more like an imposing Irish innkeeper than a international singing sensation.  Fortunately for her, Andrea had a razor-sharp sense of humor, and was the first to appreciate the irony of her situation. 

             
Andrea more than made up for her lack of talent with a treasure trove of determination.  After years of selling wine, waiting tables, and hawking cosmetics (not a good career fit) Andrea hit theatrical gold when she was cast in an independent film by a fellow waiter at the Mongolian BBQ where she was waiting tables.  The film, “Call The Devil His Name” won Best of Show at Sundance and went on to capture gold at Cannes and garnered the then-unknown female lead a best-actress nomination.

             
Although she didn’t win, the roles came pouring in.  Andrea Howard became a household word overnight.  She became a steady regular in all the celebrity magazines, with constant speculation as to whom she was dating.  Most of Hollywood men were out - they were all much too short - so she was often paired in the press with pro athletes and ‘producers’.   There was great speculation that she was seeing a married movie star.  Victoria never asked, and Andrea never offered.