The Last Refuge (42 page)

By 1960, Carl Junior has full control of the trust. He simply orders Hornsby to write Regina into the deal as a full beneficiary and installs her in a house on company property. The only hitch is now that Regina’s an equal beneficiary of the trust, she’s also an equal partner in the whole enterprise. Technically. But it really doesn’t matter because she doesn’t know it. Why should she? Carl’s not entirely stupid. And Hornsby sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her. He figures in a few years Carl will come to his senses, Hornsby can just scratch her off the list and WB can go on its merry way.

Roy was listening to me, but not happily. He kept trying to get comfortable in his chair, as if they’d just bought it for him and it wasn’t yet broken in.

“I really don’t know what all this has to do with me or Harbor Trust,” he said.

I ignored him.

“Trouble is, guys like Carl Bollard make a habit of fucking up. New chick shows up in the office, probably in the typing pool, sexy little Italian named Julia Anselma. Bippin’ around the office in those hot fifties fashions. Before you know it, Carl’s at it again.”

“Carl Bollard was Julia’s boss,” said Roy, as if disputing the notion.

“Right. Only this time, there’s another wrinkle. The chickie on the side produces a chicklet. Your wife, as it turns out.”

Roy’s face went slack as he saw the rest of his life board a train and leave the station.

“By the time Amanda was born, Carl had moved on to another girl. But Julia got the same deal as Regina. A lifetime of security in exchange for a zipped lip. Say what you will, I think Julia did a brave thing. She gave Amanda a safe, comfortable upbringing, with a minimum of turmoil. All she had to do was keep a secret.”

I hadn’t told Jackie about Julia or Amanda. But she still maintained her professional reserve. The girl had good game.

“Of course, Julia doesn’t know about the trust either. Though you can just hear Milton Hornsby excoriating Carl, ‘No more! This one is the last!’ He wasn’t a nice guy, Hornsby, but you can’t blame him for being a little frustrated. Here he is busting ass for the company, building it up and keeping it running through all kinds of tough times, only to find himself babysitting the spoiled, screwed-up son of the founder,
who winds up owning everything, while Hornsby is left to play loyal family retainer. Must have really eaten him up.

“Lucky for him, though, Carl’s go-go lifestyle also featured oceans of alcohol, so right after the company folds, so does Carl. That’s when Hornsby decides it’s payback time. Carl’s will left all his assets to the trust. Since Regina and Julia are listed as surviving beneficiaries, the trust is technically still in force, controlling all the assets, the girls just don’t know it.”

“You have to register wills on the death of the signer,” said Jackie, interrupting, “but not trusts. It’s up to the trustee to come forward with that kind of information.”

“Hornsby does everything but. He closes down the plant, pays debts and corporate taxes, fills out forms, satisfies employee claims, sells off viable equipment. Zip-zip, the estate is now pretty clean. Just the real-estate and investment portfolio, which covers the estate tax and still throws off enough revenue to keep the whole thing going. And that’s where it sits for about twenty years.

“Until you came along, huh Roy?” I said.

By now he had his head in his hands, finally unable to support the weight of his fear.

“You finally score the prettiest girl in the class. She’s a bit of a basket case, but what the hell. She’s willing to be looked after, and who knows, over time, maybe she’ll really dig you. You like her mother, like to chat it up over Thanksgiving dinner. You’re a local Southampton guy, obsessed with money, and a banker to boot, a guy who knows real estate. Wouldn’t be
surprising for you to ask, ‘So, Julia, your mortgage all paid off?’ ‘Oh, no, Roy, we don’t own the house, it belongs to my old company, WB Manufacturing. It’s an arrangement.’ ‘It is?’ thinks Roy, ‘How could that be?’ Easy enough to check your mother-in-law’s account at Harbor Trust and see the monthly direct deposits, then trace the ownership of her house through the tax rolls to Bay Side Holdings, which leads directly to pay dirt. Milton Hornsby. Carl Bollard’s loyal CFO, livin’ large in Sag Harbor.”

“You caught Hornsby violating his fiduciary duty. A very serious matter,” said Jackie, swept up in the moment, or maybe just offended by Hornsby’s professional lapse.

“Must have been quite a conversation,” I said. “You’re married to Amanda, after all. What’s hers is yours. The simple, easy thing would be to expose Hornsby and just take control of the assets. But you’re an ambitious boy who lusts after the Big Play. Why settle for a bunch of millions when you can have gobs of millions? Better yet, be the power behind a huge development scheme. Have the same people who’ve ignored you or treated you like white trash kissing your ass. And why wait for the ponderous legal system to sort it out when you can have it all now. I mean, if Milton Hornsby could keep it secret, why couldn’t Roy?”

“You make Hornsby an offer,” said Jackie. “Total ruin or help you develop the property. As far as anyone knows, Bay Side Holdings is a legitimate entity, with Milton Hornsby the controlling party. No need to messy up the deal with the actual facts.”

I’d been staring hard at Roy while I talked, but now I snuck a peek over at Jackie. I could feel her flair for outrage about to ignite.

“So now you got Hornsby playing property owner, but you need a developer,” I said. “Hornsby suggests another WB alum, Bob Sobol, whom Hornsby knows will keep his mouth shut and make useful connections, inside and outside the legal lines.

“The three of you put a plan together. You handle financing, of course, which gives you a reason to visit the home office on a regular basis. Which also makes it easy to stay in touch with architects and planners in the City, avoiding locals so the plan won’t leak prematurely.”

I heard Jackie give a tiny, barely audible snort.

“Everything’s cookin’ right along until you’re ready to subdivide the property to suit modern development. Bay Side might own everything, but property lines are regulated by the Town. You need variances. Which means you have to go before the zoning appeals board.”

“Not a problem,” said Jackie. “Sobol brings in Hunter Johnson, a hotshot from the City, and teams him up with me, who I must say commands the local scene, and we put together an excellent case. Big, and complicated, but nothing the Town hasn’t seen before. Except for the ratty old plant sitting in the middle of the concept. It’s an obstacle. But not insurmountable. It just means a wider than normal scope for a variance request. Everyone on Jacob’s Neck and Oak Point has to be notified. And invited to a public hearing.”

“Including Regina,” I shot in before she could get there. “It suddenly dawns on you—when notice goes out to Regina, who knows what’ll happen? Who knows what she’s going to say, and to whom? Everything’s legally half hers—what if she finds out? Julia Anselma didn’t know anything, but who knows about Regina? She’s a crazy old broad, with a big mouth. Can you afford to take the chance?

“You panic. Shut it all down. And wait. Hoping something will come to you. A way out. A way to get everything back in gear. The pause is great for Hornsby—takes the heat off. But not so great for Sobol. He’s still young enough to enjoy a big windfall. And he’s not happy that the only thing standing in his way is a few old ladies.”

Roy was still holding his head, with his eyes closed, but as we talked he started to shake it back and forth.

“Are you listening, Roy?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Good, I’m not done yet.”

He stayed still.

“I don’t know how it worked. If you talked about it, if you were actively involved, or if Sobol took care of everything himself and kept you and Hornsby in the clear. Sobol got to know both the old girls by hanging around the Senior Center. He could have worked it out all by himself. He used to be in quality control. I could see an engineer’s touch in how it was handled. I don’t think it was Buddy. He’s just muscle.”

Roy looked up.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

I thought about Sullivan telling me Regina might
have been a lousy old bitch, but she was his lousy old bitch. That’s how I thought about my father. He was a lousy father, but he was my lousy father. And he gave me my lousy life. People like Regina and my father, living side by side on the tip of Oak Point at the feet of the holy Peconic, never really figured out why they were here on earth, never really had a chance to know much more than hope, hard work and disappointment. And all they got in the end was the privilege of being beaten to death by people who thought they had a greater purpose, thought they could just sweep those shabby crippled lives away from their feet like so much useless trash.

“You killed her. And you killed Julia Anselma.”

I realized Roy was weeping. He’d been sweating so hard the tears had just blended in.

“Lock the door,” he was saying. “Please lock the door. I don’t want anyone coming in.”

He waited until Jackie got back in her chair. She tossed him a crumpled napkin dug out of her wool jacket. He ignored it.

“Those bastards,” he said. “They’d say things about wasting the old ladies. That nobody’d even blink an eye. I couldn’t tell if they were just provoking me, or if they meant it. But I swear, I never ever would have done such a thing.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re in it, you’re in it,” I told him.

I looked over at Jackie. She nodded.

“Oh, God.”

He dropped his head to the desk.

“Roy, listen to me. Look at me.”

He looked up again.

“Let’s take this one step at a time. You have the original trust document. I want it.”

He started to deny it, but I cut him off.

“That was your leverage with Hornsby. As long as you had the document, you had him by the balls.”

I leaned forward and said, between my teeth, “Give it to me.”

It was on the bottom of a stack of papers on one of the tables. All he had to do was roll his desk chair over a few feet and pull it out. The paper was yellowy brown along the edges. On the cover was the same label Hornsby had taped to the envelope. It was typewritten and you could feel the impressions on the back of the individual sheets. There was a table of contents. I flipped to the article describing beneficiaries, titled, “Distribution of Trust Property.” The first section said, “Upon the death of any beneficiary, as described in Article Six, the trust property shall be divided into as many shares as shall be necessary to create one equal share for each of the living beneficiaries, and one equal share for each deceased beneficiary who has living descendents.”

I flipped to Article Six. Regina and Julia each had their own sections. Other sections described how the entire principal and net income of the trust belonged to the beneficiaries. The trustee had full powers of administration, though the beneficiaries had the right to appoint or excuse the trustee. At least Hornsby had the good manners to finally excuse himself.

I handed it to Jackie.

“I was going to tell her,” said Roy.

“Who?” Jackie asked, looking down as she leafed through the document.

“Amanda,” I answered for him, “who you knew would be gone like a shot the second she learned how rich she really was. On her own, without you. To say nothing of the betrayal. So, you were going to tell her like Hornsby was going to confess on the front page of the
New York Times.”

“I was only trying to care for her.”

“By killing her mother?”

He winced. Then started to whine.

“I told you,” he started.

I stopped him.

“Roy, shut up. If you say one more word I’m liable to change my mind.”

By this point he was way too desperate and terrified to think clearly.

“What are you talking about?”

Jackie looked up again from the trust, curious herself.

There was so much about the world I didn’t understand. And never would. Like why my parents had married each other in the first place. It was never explained. It never even came up, but my sister and I would have cut off our own limbs rather than ask.

It was as if some external event had brought them together involuntarily, but irrevocably, and they were resigned to their fate. It was unclear whether they loved or despised each other. They simply existed as an official pairing, charged with the responsibility of feeding and housing two children, keeping the house clean and the lawn cut, and the apartment in the
Bronx free of dishes in the sink or dirty laundry on the floor. My father was in a near state of rage most of the time, much of which he directed toward my mother, but only because of her proximity. My sister and I were expert at making ourselves scarce, otherwise we’d have attracted a greater share of his wrath. Maybe as much as the guy who pumped his gas, or the checkout girls at the grocery store, or local, state and federal government officials, or the IRS, or any professional athlete who ever won or lost anything. Fury was his natural state of being, unlike my mother, for whom the situation involved a greater degree of happenstance. She bore it silently, at least as far as I knew. Yet I imagined her seeking rescue, in whatever form it offered itself. She never said it, but I always thought it. As I passed through adolescence, and my perceptions matured, I began to feel responsible for allowing her circumstances to persist. I developed an unrelenting compulsion to do something. I just didn’t know what it was supposed to be. So I did nothing, beyond wishing things would change. That something would happen to end the dreadful state of despair and indecision.

And then it did. Two anonymous thugs, agents of a secret power, came into the world and flicked my father into oblivion.

My mother was rescued. But she didn’t want to be. She was utterly grief stricken and furious, suddenly at odds with the entire world, as if taking up my father’s blind rage as her just inheritance.

I wasn’t much comfort. All I could think of was my own dismal calculation. That I’d wished it all into existence, thereby denying my parents their lives and
me any hope of reprieve from my remorse, for the rest of mine.