Ariel's Island

by Pat McKee

  “Well, things are coming together. I have an idea.”

  Melissa looked both puzzled and suspicious at once. “Surely you and your law firm didn’t have anything to do with Anthony stealing Milano Corporation from my father?”

  “We may have been his instrument. I think I know what happened.”

  “I’d sure like to hear it.”

  “One of the first things I worked on when I started at Strange & Fowler was a Shareholders’ Agreement for your uncle and father. Since these instruments are long, tedious, and boring, the task of writing the document often goes to a very junior associate, someone who ghost writes for a senior partner. The partner charges the client exorbitant rates for what is represented as his work. It was William Fowler who looked after your uncle and father while I labored on the document for weeks in a windowless cubical in the Strange & Fowler library.

  “The primary concern in a corporation like Milano is that the control of a significant number of shares and, thus, control of the corporation, remains in family hands. I remember I provided in the agreement that if either your father or your uncle passed away or were in danger of losing his shares, then the other was given the right to purchase the shares for cash at market value—not an unusual provision in such an agreement.

  “When the lawsuit depressed the value of Milano shares, the banks called for more security. They probably wanted Placido to sell some of his books, but when he refused they threatened to take the shares. That threat triggered the Shareholders’ Agreement, and Anthony snapped up your father’s shares in Milano Corporation for pennies on the dollar. The banks didn’t care to have the shares, or the books; they just wanted money. And when the stock went back up after I won the suit, your uncle multiplied his fortune by thousands of times.”

  Melissa’s jaw was no longer clenched in anger, now her eyes were wide, her mouth open in a caricature of disbelief.

  “I just don’t understand how . . .”

  “Your father could have sold his books and avoided it all.”

  “He’d never do that. He’s spent a lifetime collecting treasures that are irreplaceable. He once told me he could always make more money, but he could never make another First Folio.”

  Few things unite the fratricidal brotherhood of lawyers, but it is fair to say that most are bibliophiles at heart. Law school, with three years in a law library, will do that to you. For me, I had found the law library to be the quiet refuge I needed. In the company of books that held the recorded wisdom of centuries, I could believe that my hard work and study would be rewarded. I understood Placido’s addiction.

  “Wise men have embraced poverty, and rich men have courted bankruptcy over their desire to possess great books. Universal symbols of creativity, knowledge, power. Once they build their libraries they’d just as soon stare down the gates of hell before they’d relinquish even a single manuscript. The only way significant libraries ever come on the market is when the collector’s unenlightened heirs part with them for mere cash after their benefactor’s death. It’s a good thing you can’t take it with you, otherwise heaven would be stacked floor to ceiling with old books. Although, come to think of it, that may well be what heaven is like.”

  Melissa smiled and her hand brushed mine. The touch seemed timed and calculated, but it nevertheless sent a jolt through me, like a school boy holding hands with his girlfriend for the first time. I was still grasping at the illusion that Melissa could be interested in me for more than legal advice, and I realized that that hope left me vulnerable to Melissa’s blatant manipulation. But I didn’t care. I held ever tighter to the illusion. With effort I brought my thoughts back to Anthony Milano. And with even greater effort I moved my hand away from hers, for no other reason than just to keep my focus.

  “What I fear is that your uncle is guilty of far more than taking advantage of your father when he was down. He may have orchestrated the entire scheme. And I may have been his stooge.”

  “I’m not following you . . .”

  “You recognize the name ‘Hector Cabrini?’”

  “I know he is the lawyer for SyCorAx.”

  “That’s all you need to know. As the lawyer for SyCorAx, he came painfully close to stripping Milano of the patents it had developed.”

  “But you won the case.”

  “So get ready for this: Hector Cabrini was having a drink with Anthony in the Abbey bar this afternoon. And they didn’t look like they were getting ready to duel to the death.”

  “That’s unbelievable. My uncle acted incensed with the lawsuit, and he was convinced that no decent attorney would bring such a case. The way my uncle talked, he wouldn’t have been caught dead with anyone associated with SyCorAx, and under no circumstance with any of its lawyers.”

  “Well, caught he was. And he was very much alive. I saw him myself. He’s right about the SyCorAx lawyers; no decent lawyer would have filed that lawsuit, and Hector Cabrini is no decent lawyer.”

  Melissa shook her head.

  “That just can’t be.”

  “And here’s another bit of interesting news . . .”

  It passed through my mind that I should let Melissa know about the Equity Account, my disproportionate share of firm profits, appearing now to be more of a payoff for my silence than a reward for my services.

  So, was I going to tell Melissa she had reason to suspect me, too? That my total loyalty was purchased by Strange & Fowler for the price of a few million dollars a year, the equivalent of what Melissa Milano probably spent annually on her private jet? I looked into her eyes.

  I decided not to.

  “The judge who presided over the Milano trial has recently come into a very large amount of money. And I mean a very large amount of money, enough to buy a multimillion-dollar beach house and to drop a hundred thousand dollars on a shotgun. All this from a man who, before he came on the bench, could barely have scraped up enough money to pay cash for a used double-wide.”

  “So, what are you saying? That my uncle helped SyCorAx sue Milano? I can’t imagine such a thing. What if SyCorAx won? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense. And it explains a lot of things. Anthony must’ve been aware of your father’s weakness and, seeing an opportunity to take advantage of it, contrived a lawsuit to drive the price of the shares down. When the value of the stock inevitably plummeted, it triggered the Shareholders’ Agreement. By the time your uncle exercised the option to purchase the shares, they were trading at close to penny status.

  “SyCorAx came from nowhere with a hard drive full of patent secrets and with an extremely aggressive law firm behind it. It takes a lot of money to fund a patent-infringement case, particularly when it’s brought by Hector Cabrini, and those secrets had to come from somewhere. I’m betting your uncle was the source of both.

  “But the trick was, once Anthony got the lawsuit going, he had to assure that Milano couldn’t lose. He did this by withholding key evidence from SyCorAx’s lawyers. But your uncle was blind-sided by the Supreme Court decision just like I was, and it threatened to undo everything. He took care of that problem at the last minute by putting a lot of grease on the wheels of justice, or in this instance, cash in the pockets of Judge Richards.

  “Somehow Anthony had to make sure a recklessly brash young lawyer was in charge of the case, someone who would try to win the suit outright, instead of a steady old hand who would play it safe and wisely try to mitigate the damages.”

  I couldn’t repress a shudder at the thought of Billingsley’s death. I had finally come to accept his suicide. The autopsy report found a near-toxic level of oxycodone in his blood. Billingsley was so drugged he hardly would have been able to drag himself to the top of the office tower and throw himself off. His widow, when she was finally able to talk about it, said he had been troubled for weeks about something at the office—no doubt the Milano case. Had Anthony jus
t taken advantage of Billingsley’s unfortunate death, or was there a more sinister explanation? I couldn’t bring myself to believe that Fowler could have been complicit in a partner’s murder, and I pushed the possibility out of my mind.

  “But once the value of the shares went back up, the costs Anthony incurred in paying off attorneys, bribing judges, arranging for unlikely promotions—possibly even a murder—were miniscule compared to the gains he realized. Not to mention the value your uncle has secured for himself by achieving complete control of Milano Corporation and the marketing of the patents it developed.”

  “It is almost as bad as if SyCorAx had won.”

  “SyCorAx did exactly what Anthony wanted.” It was only then that the full realization of what I had been saying took effect. I shook my head and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m not the hot-shot lawyer I want you to think I am. At least I was good enough not to blow a victory that was handed to me.” The homily on risk taking Fowler served me last night came rushing back once more. “And I suspect Fowler has known about this all along. He’s probably been right in the middle of it.”

  “This is too much to take in.”

  “Yeah. I agree. Both William and Anthony would have known that it was foolish to bring the two of us together, that your father is smart enough to have figured out what had happened and would have told you. It wouldn’t take too much imagination to think you might try to enlist my help and together we would know enough to bring them both down. We’re not thinking this through.”

  “You’re missing one more very important piece of information.”

  “I don’t know if I’m up for any more surprises. What?”

  “Anthony thinks my father is dead.”

  “Why?”

  “He arranged for his murder.”

  “But I thought Placido and Anthony were extremely close; what about the two childhood buddies playing pranks in the basement? Is all that just corporate spin?”

  In the years I had done legal work for Milano Corporation, I had been indoctrinated into the corporate mythology of the inseperable brothers. It was a narrative crafted to humanize the image of a financial leviathan, and one I drew from at trial to soften the hard edges of Milano Corporation. I had had no doubt the story was embellished, like so much else developed by public relations firms for their corporate clients, but after tonight’s revelations, I was fast coming to the conclusion that whatever small truth may lay in the family lore, it hid much larger deceptions. But the extent of the deceit still escaped me.

  “They were close, at least until my father got the foolish notion that he was going to save the world and license some of the firm’s patents, the ones that figure prominently in HIV research, for next to nothing. The problem was the patents were not Placido’s to bestow; they were created at the cost of millions by the corporation, and Anthony was not about to let my father give away what could prove to be a corporate gold mine.”

  I couldn’t tell from Melissa’s tone whether she identified more with Placido’s altruism or Anthony’s greed.

  “So, what do you think? Did Anthony devise the lawsuit to save Milano Corporation from Placido’s philanthropic intentions or to grab all the potential profits from the patents for himself?”

  “What does it matter? Anthony bribed my father’s chef to poison him. My father suspected the plan and foiled it, then disappeared before they could confirm whether he had succumbed to the poison. Without a body to show for his efforts, Anthony has strong suspicions that Placido is still alive. So right now my father is in hiding to keep his brother from killing him, and I am serving as a hostage to keep Placido from publicly revealing Anthony’s intentions and as bait to reel Placido in to his demise. I have shared my family’s dirty secrets with you in the hope that you might help me figure a way out of it all. Is that too much to ask?”

  With that Melissa’s composure melted. She buried her face in the folds of her sweatshirt, and her shoulders shuddered. Melissa’s sudden despair left me at a loss as to what to do or say. I slid closer. It was a few moments before her sobs slowed, stopped, and she raised her head. Even in the darkness I could see the tears that streaked her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry. You have done everything Milano Corporation has asked of you. I have no business requesting you to risk getting personally involved in our family affairs. I just don’t know what to do.” Melissa let out a deep breath and leaned on my shoulder.

  I was as baffled as she, maybe more so, since I had Fowler’s apparent complicity with Anthony and my conflicting loyalties to the firm and my profession to deal with. I had little experience comforting distressed heiresses, nor did it occur to me that Melissa’s tears on the beach might be of the same sincerity as those shed at dinner, then an act for the sake of Anthony, now, to soften any reluctance I had left.

  With all my social insecurity, I had great confidence in my intellectual ability. But without more sure-footed social instincts, my over-active imagination frequently got me into trouble. This time I felt I may be jumping into something I could not get out of. But jump I did.

  “Well, I know one way to stop Anthony from killing your father, from doing away with you, and from keeping all of Milano Corporation for himself.”

  Melissa looked up, doubt and hope mingled in her expression.

  “You and I find your father and go public with Anthony’s scheme.”

  I knew as soon as I said it, it was a foolish gamble. I had worked all my life to get where I was with the firm, and all I had to do to count my share of the Equity Account for the rest of my life was walk away from the Milano family problems and let Anthony and Placido work out their disputes themselves. Melissa would be fine even without her father’s share of the corporation; after all, she was an investment banker in her own right. At worst she could sell just one of her father’s magnificent volumes and live well the rest of her life.

  But I couldn’t walk away and leave Melissa to suffer whatever fate Anthony had planned. And I wasn’t willing to give up a chance to be with Melissa. My old feelings for her were stirred, but there was more to it, a challenge really. With Melissa I had a chance to prove I was, in fact, worthy. So I threw everything I had worked for to the wind, all to be with a beautiful woman. I wasn’t the first man to do so.

  With that Melissa kissed me, a long, soft kiss, tinged with the salt of her tears. Then the evening took a different turn.

  Eight

  I was up watching the sunrise from the dunes the next morning, and I got in to Fowler Cottage well after first light. My eyes must have betrayed my lack of sleep when I appeared for breakfast.

  “How did you sleep, Paul?” Fowler inquired, peering over the edge of his newspaper, a forced heaviness behind the questioning in his voice.

  “Couldn’t sleep. Took a long walk on the beach.”

  Fowler laid his newspaper on the table. The lines in his face looked deeper, more pronounced, eyes red-rimmed and weary, as though he, too, had been up much of the night.

  “I’ve just received some shocking news. Early this morning Judge Richards was found dead in his room at the Abbey. A shotgun wound. He was cleaning his gun when it went off. The blast woke almost everyone in the hotel. It was either suicide or an accidental discharge. The authorities are investigating.” Fowler was watching me, measuring my response.

  “What? He couldn’t have . . .”

  I was already struggling for control of my emotions after a night of disclosure in which I was forced to confront the thought that the greatest success of my career was but a small part of a cynical manipulation of the world’s financial markets by Fowler on behalf of a client so ruthless he would attempt to murder his own brother. I was now well beyond tact.

  “. . . No. Not suicide. I can’t imagine it. Not him. Not another.” My face was distorted by incredulity, and my
words continued to tumble out. “Just yesterday afternoon, he couldn’t have been happier showing me his cottage. He was looking forward to moving in. Accidental discharge? No. He handled a shotgun like he was born with one.”

  “Paul, I understand your shock. But more often than not it’s the people most familiar with guns who have accidents.” Fowler was still maintaining the façade, still trying to keep control, but the tension in his voice betrayed the effort.

  “Not the judge. He wouldn’t try to clean a loaded shotgun. And why would he, just before we were to go out shooting this morning? He would have cleaned and oiled it yesterday, after using it—which, as I remember, is exactly what he told the attendant he was going to do. This makes no sense. None.”

  “Look, Paul, I’m as distressed as you. I suggest we let the Glynn County authorities perform their investigation and we accept their conclusions. I’m confident they’ll come to a prompt and proper resolution.” Fowler’s tone was tense. He was used to having his judgments obeyed, and he made no attempt to hide his displeasure at my questioning. Fowler’s eyes bore into me. My loyalty was in doubt.

  I now had no reason to believe anything this man told me. I was convinced it was well within his ability to make sure the authorities rule the matter an unfortunate accident or tragic suicide and not something more sinister.

  But I realized in order to keep safe, if not to maintain the pleasure of my ostensible patron, it was essential that I not continue to betray my skepticism. After all, where was I heading with this? No suicide. No accident. Was I willing to say I thought the judge was murdered? And what about Billingsley? I had to tone down my initial outrage and attempt to appear more circumspect. I let out a deep sigh to signal I had backed down from my overly emotional response and shook my head in a feigned display of resignation.