A change of gravity

by George V. Higgins

Barrow. Spring did the legal work, drawing up the declaration of trust, originally making his son, Edmund, practicing law in Boston, the nominal administrator, unpaid, omitting the names of the beneficiaries who were the actual trustees. The document made each interest in the trust indivisible in itself, inseparable from the remainder of the corpus, and non-transferable by conveyance or special mention in a will, except by express statement, oral or in writing, addressed to the other trustees, of testamentary intent to make a gift, or by testamentary deed of trust, to take effect in the event of disabling incompetence or death of the beneficiary.

  At the initial meeting of the trustees, held on the second Sunday in November at the headquarters of the Barrows Construction Co. at the sand pits in Hampton Falls, Spring had described the trust agreement to the others as a cordon sanitaire. "Discretion is important to us. If one of us dies, as all of us someday surely will, we do not want estate appraisers rummaging around in this operation, asking awkward questions. That's why we're making it a lock-box: very hard to get into; you had to be there. Almost impossible to get out of by yourself unless you're literally willing to die in the attempt."

  The instrument provided that in such event, or upon application by a beneficiary or his attorney-in-fact for liquidation of his interest, the value of the interest would be determined by appraisal, and the surviving beneficiaries at their sole option and discretion choose either to admit the decedent's designee to his vacant place, or if for reasons of uncertainty or reservations about his suitability they chose not to, thereupon either by additional capital infusion or by sale of trust assets redeem the interest of the late beneficiary by payment to his successor in interest an amount equal to the value of his prorata share.

  The original arrangement soon proved to be geographically unwieldy. For that and other reasons, including perceived risk, in 1961, five years before the statute of limitations would bar state prosecution of any criminal offense possibly committed in connection with construction of the courthouse, Spring had thought it best to suggest to Edmund that he draw up the document substituting Philip Fox of Hampton Pond as the managing trustee of record.

  Fox owned and operated the Fox Agency, Real Estate amp; Insurance. Fox's firm had handled the bonds underwriting the courthouse construction, so he had followed the project attentively and was keenly aware of its many ramifications. His agreement to serve as trustee specified that at the end of his first year he would be credited with a management fee of a ten percent ownership of the Fourmen's Trust fund, subject to divestment should he fail for any reason to serve for a total of at least five years. For the next four years thereafter he would annually receive a further interest amounting to two-and-one-half percent of the value of the fund that year, also subject to divestment if he failed to complete the specified term of five years. Thereafter he would participate in gains and losses on equal terms with the original four holders. While his duties as managing trustee would continue, he would cease to receive any additional compensation. Everyone involved in his admission to membership understood the interest he received to be hush money, although Lane was the only one who called it by that name at meetings, causing the others to wince.

  Lane though blunt was right. Fox's addition to the trust served prudence as well as managerial efficiency. From his bonding work he knew that the original monies constituting the corpus of the trust consisted entirely of kickbacks from rigged-bid contracts and subcontracts for materials involved in the project, completed in 1957.

  The total came to about $135,000, slightly over eleven percent of the total cost of the building and grounds.

  Spring conservatively oversaw its enlargement in the bond market. Nine years later he had more than doubled it, to approximately $315,000. On his advice the trustees then voted to begin gradual diversification of their holdings, transferring some of the profits from the bond accounts into common stocks and investing the rest in real estate, both by purchasing undeveloped land and by buying up mortgages insured by the government. In 1970, Barrows had commenced construction of the trust's first cautious venture in long-term ownership of residential real estate, the sixteen-unit apartment building at 1692 Eisenhower Boulevard, at a rock-bottom cost of $7,100 per unit $113,600. The trustees also accepted Spring's recommendation that the trust become more aggressive in the stock market, using about seventy percent of their remaining capital to purchase common stocks issued by companies among the 500 indexed by Standard amp; Poor.

  At the close of the 1968 spring meeting, Philip Fox had reported having been badly frightened by a premonition, and to be on the safe side wished to vouch for his grandson's bona fides and ability to keep his mouth shut; in the event of his death, he said, it would be his wish that the surviving original trustees/beneficiaries allow Walter to succeed him as both trustee and beneficiary. The other trustees dutifully scoffed at his superstitious ness but agreed. In November they carried out his wishes, voting to admit Walter, not so incidentally carrying out their preference not to disturb the corpus of the trust as would have been necessary if they had chosen to buy him out.

  In 1972, the members convened for the regular spring meeting on the second Sunday in May at Larry Lane's apartment at 1692 Eisenhower Boulevard, he having become too infirm to travel to the Fox Agency offices in Hampton Pond, for more than ten years the customary venue for the semi-annual gatherings. With great difficulty Larry had made a statement. He had written it out on six sheets of paper. Interrupted by coughing, wheezing, choking and gagging, he had needed nearly eleven minutes to deliver it. To his old henchmen it seemed like eleven hours.

  "It's no more obvious to you guys now than it's been to me for a long time that this'll be the last meeting I'll attend, and I thank you for coming here so I could do it. When November rolls around, I'll be gone, and damned glad of it, too. I hope I wont have to, but if I do, the pain gets so bad I can't stand it, I'll see to the end of it myself. I've been on the brink of that many times as it is, and I can see myself making that choice. And if I'm too far gone to do what needs doing, I've got a friend I can count on to help me. My family would too, in a jiffy, you bet, if I ever asked them, but I'd never let the bastards have the satisfaction.

  "I recommend, if the Man gives you a choice, take the heart attack, or the stroke. Either one's got to be better'n this. The drawback of going that way is it's too sudden to make any plans; tell your friends how you want things done. Way I'm going, I do have some time. "S the only good thing about it. I can tell you I'd like my place to go to Amby Merrion. I realize he's a good deal younger than everyone but you, Walter, but you'll all get along fine with him, I promise you.

  "I recall being in the same position with all of you except Walter in April, Sixty-eight, when Phil Fox told us he'd had some kind of waking-dream or something, terrible premonition. He said he'd never put much stock in them before, but he'd never had one this powerful, and it'd really rattled him. He said he hoped, naturally, it'd turn out to be dead wrong, and that come November wed be making fun of him, laughing how foolish he'd been. But if it turned out this one was right, and he did pass away before then that was how he said it; he said "passed away," and then he gave a little shudder, like he'd had a sudden chill; I can see him, plain as day his wish would be that we let Walter take his place. And then he spoke very highly of you, Walter, and so when it turned out that Phil's awful hunch'd been right, we naturally honored his wishes. And we've found out that his judgment was correct.

  "Now since I'm having all this trouble talking to you, I'm going to cut it a little short here. I'd like it if you'd all consider that I've now said about Amby all the same good things that Phil had to say about Walter. He's a good guy. You can trust him. He keeps his word. He's gone out of his way to be a friend to me, faithful as could be, making sure I'm as comfortable as possible, doing everything he can. And he did it almost a year before he had any idea that there might be something pretty good in it for him. He's a decent man. He's got good character: by that I mean he's loyal, and
if you tell him something's confidential, he keeps it that way. And that's about all that I've got to say. Except to say, Fiddle, that this's probably the last time I'll piss you off at a meeting, by calling our little arrangement 'the Foreskin fucking Trust' as I've tried to do at least once, each time we've met, to see how mad you always get. Oh, and ask you all to join me for a few drinks — farewell drinks I guess they'd be. And thank you for how you've always treated me, for being my good friends."

  When Merrion succeeded to Larry's place in the fall of 1972, the value of the trust had more than doubled again. Walter Fox, having inherited not only his grandfather's interest but also his managerial responsibilities, conservatively estimated that each of the five shares was worth about $143,000. The corpus then consisted of the apartment building, each month grossing $6,160 in rental income Larry had insisted that his share of trust income be debited $308.00 each month he lived in number 11, eighty percent of the rent anyone else would have had to pay.

  By then Big Roy Carnes was dead. His son, Roy Junior, Milliard's predecessor in the House, had retired from the State Senate as chairman of the Committee on Post Audit and Oversight to become chief executive officer for financial operations of The Buehler Corporation, a New England textile company then completing its changeover from manufacturing to importing fabrics, mostly from the Far East, and beginning its relocation to Anderson, South Carolina. Two of the original trustee/beneficiaries, Chassy Spring and Fiddle Barrow, still survived, but Spring was in ill health in a rest home in Gloucester, near his son's home in Marblehead. Spring did not attend Merrion's inaugural, and would die within the year.

  There had been three purposes for that meeting, held in Fox's main office in the white six-room bungalow with green shutters and a white picket fence that the Fox Agency occupied in the center of Hampton Pond (in Canterbury, Hampton Falls and Cumberland, the Fox Agency operated storefront satellite offices providing coverage extending into Holyoke, Springfield, Chicopee and Amherst and Northampton). Carnes, citing the demands his new position made on his time and energies, and the imminence of his permanent departure from New England, had invoked the buy-out clause. Stating in his letter to Walter Fox his confidence that Fox and the others would give him 'honest weight," he had waived his right to demand appointment of a disinterested appraiser, noting in passing that he had 'often wondered why the hell Chassy ever thought it would ever be a good idea to give an outsider access to the books; what if he got curious and decided he wanted to know where the dough'd originally come from?"

  Fiddle Barrow offered two proposals, prompted in part by his own increasing frailty but precipitated by Spring's incapacitation. The first had been to convert the securities into shares of a moderately aggressive mutual fund, Spring no longer being able to supervise the trust's investments and no one else among the trustee-beneficiaries appearing to have either the time to assume his oversight of market investments or the acumen to do it with confidence. The second had been to cede the management of the property at 1692 Eisenhower Boulevard to Valley Better Residences, Inc." so that thereafter the only task remaining to the trustees would be negotiation and deposit of the checks representing their profits.

  Merrion, Fox and Barrow voted unanimously to convert the stock into shares of the Dreyfus Fund. Conformably to Edmund Spring's written statement of his father's wishes 'he said to have him vote the same way as everyone else does, whatever they want to do' Barrow cast Spring's vote as his proxy. They further voted to direct the Dreyfus Fund to transfer shares in the account to be established in the name of the trust in the amount of $143,000 to Roy Carnes, Jr." and to put the apartment building under Valley Better management.

  Neither Merrion nor Fox then or later had perceived any need to divulge their common interest to outsiders. But each time Merrion after that went into any kind of community meeting or social occasion not knowing in advance exactly what he was in for, and found that Walter Fox was also involved, he was glad. Because they had that one financial thing in common, and treated it as clandestine, to Merrion it seemed they had a bond of secret knowledge. Fox seemed to share that belief. Each of them knew that the other possessed a reserve capability Tuck you' money hidden from the world, and hoarded the knowledge along with his own treasure.

  As Merrion's business to the casual observer would have seemed to consist principally if not entirely of his job at the courthouse, so Walter's had appeared to be the Fox Agency, the insurance and real estate brokerage he'd inherited at the age of twenty-nine from his grandfather, Philip, in 1968.

  On July 18th, 1968, the day of Philip Fox's funeral in the Episcopal Church of St. John in Hampton Pond, government offices and small businesses there and in Hampton Falls, Canterbury, Cumberland and neighboring sections of Holyoke, Chicopee, Northampton and Springfield displayed hand-lettered signs in their windows and on their doors:

  "Closed 11-1, in Memory of Phil Fox." Or just: "Philip Fox. 1882–1968." A columnist for the Springfield Union wrote: "Phil Fox died having spent a lifetime demonstrating, not declaiming, to all who knew him his unshakable belief that faith without good works is useless."

  Even Fred Dillinger eulogized him. In his Transcript column he described Fox as 'the man who singled himself out if he was not first recruited, as he usually was to lead the area when it was time to solicit donations. It didn't seem to matter to him what the cause was.

  To renew hope for a family burned-out of its home or a shop owner out of his business; to rally support for a fund-raising drive to send the Canterbury All Stars to Williamsport, Pa." for the Little League World Series; the Hampton Pond High School band to Washington for the Cherry Blossom Festival, or to New York for the St. Paddy's Day Parade. And when someone said to him, "Phil, you're not a Catholic, and you're not Irish, either," he said, "You're mistaken, my friend. On Saint Patrick's Day I'm Irish everybody is." He acted on his own each year to see to it that every hard-luck family had a turkey on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and a ham for Easter, too. Phil Fox may not have been a saint in Heaven's eyes, but to those of us on earth, he looked a lot like one. Phil Fox will be missed."

  That column ran the day before the funeral. Reporting 'the enormous turnout to bid good-bye to Phil," the Transcript story said: "He did not confine his good works to his home town of Hampton Pond. He considered himself a local resident of every community where the Fox Agency did business. Whenever Canterbury or 'the Falls' or Cumberland had a question whether there'd be cash enough to help the poor or the unfortunate, or achieve a common civic goal, Canterbury and the other towns always knew they really had no question Canterbury had Phil Fox.

  His grandson, Walter, will have giant shoes to fill, and as we express our sympathy, all of us will wish him well."

  Walter was the successor because his father, Andy, had been among Marines killed at the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean Conflict.

  Phil's other son, Walter's Uncle Cameron, was an episcopal priest, vicar of a well-to-do parish in Litchfield, Connecticut; he had never had any interest in the family business, 'anything involving actual work," Phil sometimes mildly said.

  The consensus of the business community at the time of Phil's death was that Walter was a mere untested kid, too callow to take on the enterprise. His alternative was to sell the agency; there were aggressive bidders. He was aware of the consensus and it made him timid, but the operation of the agency was the only work he knew. At twenty-nine he felt too old to start a new career. Since he was the sole heir, it was his call to make. Nagged and hindered by his fear that the elders were right and he would make a disastrous mistake, he decided nonetheless to proceed.

  The agency had rewarded his cautious management, perking along nicely and continuing to return decent profits, growing at a steady rate of two to three percent a year, just about keeping pace with inflation or staying a bit ahead of it. At first that gave him quiet satisfaction.

  Then after a few more years he became somewhat more assertive. He began to think his instincts might in fact
be fairly good, well worth relying on.

  His first wife, Jacqueline, was the first to discover he had changed.

  Having become 'terminally bored' in Canterbury, she had decided to unload her life with him there for a more stimulating career in TV production at station WTIC in Hartford. She was perfectly astonished when he hired Sam Evans to counter her libel for divorce with a vigorous one of his own. First he alleged desertion, claiming that her twelve-hour daily absence commuting to a ten-hour workday at Independence Plaza constructively amounted to desertion of his bed and board. Then he flabbergasted her by seeking custody of their child, and undisputed ownership and occupation of the marital domicile in Hampton Pond alleging she had proved herself an unfit mother by constructively leaving him to raise their daughter by himself.

  Then he really stunned her: he won, on both prayers for relief (Jacqueline had made the right career choice for herself, though; in the three years she spent in Hartford, she displayed an affinity for her new work that made her professional catnip to the people building CNN in Atlanta; lured to Peach tree Plaza, she vanished into Georgia, never to be seen again north of Washington, D.C.).

  Apparently emboldened by results, Walter as Merrion saw it began to act 'like a guy who's discovered that he doesn't really have to give a shit." He developed the confidence to admit freely he'd not only started out but remained 'wishy-washy, scared to death of making some dumb-ass greenhorn mistake that'll wreck the business' and that 'about the biggest change' he'd 'ever dared to make was adding on the logo," the red brush-stroke profile of a fox that now adorned the agency's For Sale signs and stationery While he freely confessed his opinion that its modest improvement in prosperity under his direction probably had more to do with regional population increases and his grandfather's reputation than with anything he had done, he began to think and soon after that to say that still he must deserve at least some credit for having been smart enough to leave a good thing alone.