The Clayton Account

by Bill Vidal

  ‘Sure, Dick, I’d love to,’ replied Tom eagerly, then adding, as if to play down his keenness: ‘I need to get back to England by the weekend, and there are a couple of things I want to talk over with you.’

  The relationship between the Sweeneys and the Claytons went back most of the century. Eamon Sweeney and Patrick Clayton had arrived in America together in 1915, having worked their passage on the same steamer from Ireland. Within days of reaching New York they had both found jobs, Sweeney as a clerk with a downtown law firm, Clayton as a construction worker in Brooklyn. Despite their diverging paths thereafter, their friendship had remained intact. In later life, as they each achieved their very distinct versions of success, the bond was to grow closer.

  So while Patrick carved his way in the corrupt world of public-works contracts, Eamon went to night school and became a lawyer. Both men married, had children and bought houses in Westchester County. Their respective eldest sons, Michael and Richard, attended Harvard together. Then Dick joined his father’s law offices and eventually succeeded him as senior partner, but Michael had no penchant for business and Patrick had never encouraged him to join the family firm, indeed he had been rather pleased to see his son opt for an academic career.

  They stood outside the offices of Sweeney Tulley McAndrews on Fifth Avenue until Tessa had got in a taxi to Wall Street. Then the two men walked along 48th Street towards the Waldorf. The maître d’hôtel made a fuss over Mr Sweeney and escorted him and his guest to the usual table in Peacock Alley. A soft melody drifted in from the Cocktail Terrace where someone played Cole Porter’s old piano.

  ‘Dick,’ said Tom tentatively, stirring his scotch to melt some of the ice, ‘did you know my grandfather?’

  ‘Sure. He and my old man were bosom buddies. The best.’

  ‘Of course. But what I’m really asking is: how much do you know about his business dealings?’

  ‘Hey, Tom, that’s a strange thing to ask! What exactly do you want to know?’

  ‘My father never really talked about it. As though it embarrassed him a bit. I know Patrick was never short of a buck, even during the Depression. But what happened to his construction company?’

  ‘I guess it died with him. It was pretty much his own thing.’

  ‘But you were his lawyers, right?’

  ‘Well, kind of. It was strictly my dad’s account. As I said, good pals and all that. From the Old Country.’

  ‘So you’d have records?’

  ‘If we do, I never saw them. But I imagine there must be files down in the archives. I guess … if you really wanted to see them, there may be grounds for letting you. But it’s all Thirties and Forties stuff. I doubt you’d learn much of interest. What are you after?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose it’s just roots, Dick,’ Tom lied. Then, to justify his interest, he elaborated:

  ‘Since Dad had a pretty good start in life, and so did we, I’ve often wondered where it all came from.’

  Dick Sweeney nodded understandingly, his face that of an elder about to pass on his wisdom to the younger man.

  ‘Look, Tom,’ he said benevolently, ‘it was pretty tough for immigrants in those days.’

  Tom nodded encouragingly, and Sweeney continued:

  ‘The Far West may well have been in Oklahoma, but’ – he waved his left thumb in the direction of the Hudson River – ‘it started right there in New Jersey. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Sure,’ Tom smiled. ‘Probably hasn’t moved that much further either.’

  They laughed. Dick leaned in closer to Tom and continued in a low voice:

  ‘So you lived by your wits. And if you could make a few bucks out of it, a little bootlegging didn’t hurt anybody too much. Nothing like the Chicago lot, mind you. Over here it was all more contained.’

  ‘Thanks. I appreciate your candour. And no, it does not worry me one bit.’ He smiled, then asked, ‘Were they successful?’

  ‘Very,’ replied Sweeney returning the smile.

  ‘And they were never … caught?’

  ‘Didn’t work that way, Tom.’ Dick shook his head as if amused. ‘No one got caught. Not if they paid the right people, kept low, made no noise.’

  Tom paused as if in thought, then nodded, hoping his next question would sound casual enough.

  ‘Thanks again, Dick. Changing the subject, there is one thing I wouldn’t mind having a copy of …’

  ‘Name it,’ said Sweeney, suddenly the lawyer again, producing his pocket notebook and a pen.

  ‘My grandfather’s will. If you could fish it out, I’d very much like to take it back with me.’

  ‘Sure thing. When are you leaving?’

  ‘Thursday night.’

  ‘I’ll have it for you by tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  And then they ate. Turtle soup and the finest New York Cut for Clayton. Oysters and Lamb Cutlets Villeroi for Sweeney. Washed down with Napa Valley Zinfandel, then coffee and cigars. Neither man subscribed to eating fashions. And not another word was said on the matter of Patrick Clayton.

  Morales reclined in the silk-cushioned bench swing and rocked it gently back and forth, allowing the soles of his Gucci loafers to slide on the polished marble floor. He dressed casually, yet unmistakably expensively. The top buttons of his pale silk shirt were undone, to reveal a thick chain from which a diamond-studded crucifix swayed with the motion of the swing. His deep tan emphasized the green pallor of his eyes and the sun-bleached ends of his thinning auburn hair. Though he was in his forties, his age was belied by taut muscles which the clothes could not completely conceal.

  The view from the veranda was breathtaking, the flawless lawn stretching majestically to the south-west, an equatorial setting sun casting a gentle warmth over beds of white and pink carnations before it slowly sank behind the cordillera. But he knew that appearances were deceptive, that in the woods beyond his garden men would be patrolling the perimeter, armed with AK-47s and pouches full of hand grenades.

  And this was starting to bother him: that he, Carlos Alberto Morales, in the peace of his own home, could not relax without the protection of a private army. Out of sight, behind the neatly trimmed hedge, he could hear the splashing and laughter of his children enjoying the early evening in the swimming pool, the very sounds accentuating his yearning for living space.

  The goddamn gringos were, as always, at the root of the problem. Their people consumed his produce with relentless passion and their government blamed him. At first it had just meant Morales could no longer set foot in America, but he could live with that. But in recent years they had started bringing the fight over to Colombia, and that was really bad news. They threw money at the government in Bogotá: loans, aid, planes, guns and ‘advisors’, tough Drug Enforcement Agents, seconded to the Colombian Army, with a gun in one hand and a chequebook in the other. Even Medellín was becoming unsafe; people could be tempted to betray you. Fifty thousand bought almost anything in Colombia. So far Morales had fought greed with fear: treason meant death, for the traitor and his entire family, if need be. But even that no longer guaranteed protection, so he had thought long and hard for a better tactic – and now he had a new idea.

  Morales heard the car before he could see it. He knew it would have been stopped at the main gate and then observed from the woods as the walkie-talkies relayed its progress. Nevertheless, he was pleased to see two of his bodyguards come out of the house and walk up to meet the vehicle. It pulled up in front of the veranda and its sole occupant emerged.

  ‘Good afternoon, Don Carlos,’ said the new arrival. Tall and fair and, as always, immaculately dressed in a linen summer suit, he walked with the deadly assured stalk of a mountain wild-cat. ‘I came over as quickly as I could.’

  ‘Come up, Enrique. Have a cool drink.’ Morales pointed for the visitor to sit next to him.

  They sat side by side in silence, Morales still gently swinging them to and fro. The drinks arrived, fruit juices in crystal goblets on a silver tray.

/>   Morales dismissed the servant.

  ‘This land,’ he said, waving his right arm at the hills and forests beyond the estate, ‘has been very good to me, you know, Enrique?’

  ‘I expect it has, Don Carlos,’ the visitor replied non-committally. ‘More as a result of your own efforts than its own generosity, I would say.’

  Morales nodded appreciatively. ‘Perhaps. But it troubles me that it seems to do very little for the rest of the people around here.’

  Enrique Speer remained silent. He recognized the tone. Morales was leading up to something.

  ‘I was in Medellín the other day. You know what I saw? I saw dirty streets and hovels they call homes. It made me think. Why do people have to live like that, eh, Enrique? Why in this noble and prosperous land of ours?’ His brows rose inquisitively.

  ‘It seems to be the way of things in Colombia, Don Carlos.’

  ‘Sadly, I cannot do much for Colombia. But I could do something close to home. Did you know that half the children in this province do not even go to school?’

  Speer shook his head.

  ‘What is it like to be sick and poor? I walked into a charity hospital, just to have a look, and … ugh! I would not wish to send my dog there!’

  ‘There are of course plans to regenerate the area. US Aid is particularly channelled in this direction –’

  ‘Plans, plans,’ Morales interrupted. ‘The gringos are so stupid. By the time the politicians and their friends in Bogotá have taken their cut, there will be barely ten cents in the dollar left over.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘When you have a problem, Enrique, you hit the problem.’ He slammed his left fist into his open right palm. ‘That’s how I deal with things.’

  ‘How can I be of help, Don Carlos?’

  ‘I am going to share my good fortune with the people of Medellín. I am going to build a hospital. A modern hospital with good, well-paid Colombian doctors. And two schools. Large schools, well equipped, to educate the children of the poor.’ He spoke emphatically now. ‘And housing. Lots of housing. Low-cost, but decent.’

  ‘That is amazingly generous!’ Speer was truly impressed.

  ‘Of course. But how generous? I mean, how much will it cost me?’

  ‘Well, there is the cost of building, inevitably, but also the continuing expense of running things.’

  ‘Don’t worry about running costs. The business community will contribute,’ he smiled. ‘The Church can give us teachers. They always talk of social justice. So, let them send their priests and nuns as teachers. No, I mean: how much to build?’

  ‘I’ll work on it.’

  ‘How much roughly?’

  ‘Fifty million, give or take … should go a long way.’

  ‘What am I worth, Enrique?’

  ‘One twenty, one twenty-five.’

  ‘We do it, then!’

  ‘I am speechless. You will give away almost half your fortune to the people of Medellín?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Such a gesture will make you the most loved man in the region.’ Speer began to understand.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. In such circumstances, anyone with a bad word to say about you, here …’ – he waved at the forests and hills – ‘would be digging his own grave.’

  Morales snorted. The image appealed to him. ‘Just so, my friend. Now tell me: how do we do it?’

  ‘Well, you have a construction company in Spain –’

  ‘Constructora de Malaga. Small fry.’

  ‘Yes, but we could capitalize it. I’ll need to move some money around. Then it could go into joint venture with you –’

  ‘With the Morales Foundation.’

  It was Speer’s turn to look curious.

  ‘My new charity. I will speak to De la Cruz and set it up. Meanwhile, you organize the money.’

  ‘I’ll have to go to New York, of course.’

  ‘You do that. And give my best regards to the Laundry Man.’

  * * *

  On Thursday morning Tom Clayton awoke early and went for a run on the beach. The wind had abated completely and a wintry sun was rising over the Atlantic. As he ran, breathing in the salty tang of the ocean, he went over his plans once more. Over the past two days he had made telephone enquiries. One day should be enough to accomplish what he wanted.

  An hour later, having showered and dressed in appropriate travelling clothes, he locked the house and looked at it contemplatively for an instant, then walked down the path carrying his luggage to the car. The early-morning traffic between Long Island and Kennedy Airport was light. He returned the hire car, dropped his bags in the United terminal and took a taxi into Manhattan.

  He first called briefly at the offices of Sweeney Tulley McAndrews, where he collected certified copies of his father’s and his grandfather’s wills. He looked at them carefully: just as expected, Pat Clayton’s will made no mention of Swiss accounts. Satisfied, Tom put both wills in his briefcase alongside the other documents he had brought from the house. By mid-morning he had taken the papers to the New York Bar Association’s headquarters, where Richard E. Sweeney’s signature was certified with apostils. He then walked to Federal Plaza and had the Bar Association’s signatures legalized by the State Department.

  At one o’clock he met his sister for lunch at Gino’s on Lexington. Tom was already seated at their table when she came, elegant as always, in a new Chanel suit, attracting glances from men and women alike. More than ever, she struck Tom as the perfect likeness of their mother, exactly as he remembered her, for at thirty-seven, Tessa was almost the same age Eileen Clayton had been when she died.

  They talked about the funeral, their respective partners and their children. Inevitably, most the conversation was about their father, and Tom noticed that Tessa kept averting her eyes.

  ‘Something on your mind, I think.’ His tone made it not a question.

  Tessa looked up at him, then nodded. ‘Did Dad ever talk to you about the Irish thing?’

  ‘You mean the family in Ireland?’

  ‘That too, yes,’ she replied hesitatingly. Then, as Tom remained silent, she continued:

  ‘I mean about the Cause, the Struggle, whatever they call it.’

  ‘Not in years.’ Tom had vague memories of his parents’ conversations and the whispered references to Uncle Sean.

  ‘He hated them, you know?’

  ‘Dad? Hate?’ Tom could not hide his surprise.

  ‘With passion,’ she said sadly. ‘He blamed them – I think he meant Uncle Sean – for our losing touch with the old country.’

  ‘When did he tell you that?’ Even as he asked the question, Tom felt guilt flood through him: realizing how selfishly he had always pursued his own ambitions, and how little thought he had devoted to his widowed father.

  ‘When he came back from his trip to Ireland,’ Tessa’s eyes clouded for an instant, ‘he even cried.’

  Tom took a sip of his wine and looked around the busy room as his sister regained her composure. It seemed bizarre, in this fashionable mid-town restaurant, to get upset about crazy, ancient conflicts thousands of miles away.

  ‘Did he mention it again?’ he enquired.

  ‘Not exactly,’ she recalled. ‘But last summer in the Hamptons, apropos of nothing, he was telling me about family duty – duty to the ones that stayed behind.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘I think he was asking me to renew the severed links. With the family. Dad’s profound sense of history, I suppose,’ she speculated.

  ‘Any idea where we start?’ Tom forced himself to smile.

  ‘Well … five or ten thousand apiece, for the family, wouldn’t hurt us. They are not at all well off, and I do believe it would have pleased Dad.’

  ‘Okay,’ Tom agreed, reaching across the table to squeeze his sister’s hand. ‘For the family, and for Dad.’ He did not mention his problem and, anyhow, a few thousand more or less would hardly make a difference.

&nb
sp; They left the restaurant together and turned into a sun-drenched 47th Street, a torrent of New Yorkers dashing past purposefully. Yet none bumped into them. Perhaps it was the commanding aura they projected. Though Tom was six inches taller than his sister, at five feet eight Tessa was taller than most women. Tom’s unruly mop of curly brown hair somehow added to his poise and though Tessa’s hair was fair and frizzy like her mother’s, and Tom’s a reddish brown, their shared facial expressions and laughter left no doubt as to the blood relationship.

  Tessa opened her handbag and took out a cashier’s cheque for $10,000.

  ‘My half,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Ah! You expect me to deliver it as well?’ Tom jested.

  ‘You live closer to them.’ She looked at him with their mother’s aquamarine eyes. ‘You could hand it over in person.’

  ‘Across the Irish Sea.’ Tom parodied childhood ballads.

  ‘Across the Irish Sea,’ she echoed, threading her arm through his. Speeding up their step, they merged with the crowd.

  * * *

  In the afternoon Tom took his documents to the Swiss Consulate General, where an official certified the signatures of the US State Department and sealed his own signature with the Swiss crest.

  Clayton checked the documents once more and replaced them in his briefcase. At five-thirty he stopped for a drink at the Pierre, called his wife in London to confirm his flight details, then took a taxi back to Kennedy for the overnight trip home.

  As the plane flew towards the Arctic Circle and the Polar route to Europe, a five-course dinner was washed down with vintage champagne. Later Tom reclined his first-class seat to its full length, put on a pair of eye-shades and went to sleep. He was woken for breakfast five hours later as they descended towards Heathrow.

  After a slight delay, queuing for Immigration, he picked up his bags and walked out of the terminal to find Caroline waiting in the car. Tom put his bags in the back, then deposited himself on the passenger seat and reached over to kiss his wife. Her lips were soft and she smelt of recent bath salts. Her shoulder-length, rich chestnut hair felt fresh and slightly damp as it brushed Tom’s cheek.