Clamour of Crows

by Ray Merritt

  The conversation then turned personal. She suggested that we could now find some quiet time together. Between the lines, she made it clear that she did not want to share her billing as much as she did her bed.

  I declined both. I had lost my lust for Big Law, and was never into polyamory. I still have my first love.

  Charlotte’s will always be the Firm.

  52

  The holidays were upon us. For the first time in a long time, Nip and I would be celebrating Christmas. We were hosting a lunch the day before at Twenty Acres for our medley of munchkins. Viggie had already left to fetch Drew and her mother. They’d be loaded down with all the traditional goodies. Dixie and his new best friend were also coming, and would be laden with additional holiday cheer.

  The only one missing was Terry, who was off on her long-delayed and well-deserved vacation.

  And a cornucopia of presents had arrived from Paris. I didn’t wait ’til Christmas to open them. Pounds of Swiss chocolates, Lindt and Sprüngli, of course, seventy-eight porcelain ornaments of the birds of Christmas, and four pairs of silver slippers with their patented yellow brick soles. Dorothy also asked me to alert the team that she was going to make an honest woman of Eloise. The wedding would be in March—at the Plaza, of course—and we would all be invited.

  “Nip, we have to go into town. The shelter called. Someone dropped off a baby Lab and didn’t ask for a receipt. Must have been the Grinch. It’s not right to spend Christmas in a crate. Think of all the wrapping paper he could shred. Besides, you could use a little chaos in your life.”

  One thing was clear. We wouldn’t be talking about Ozone at lunch. That assignment was over, all the villains laid bare—and dead. The Russian, I suspect, was an acolyte in evil, cutting his teeth by menacing dogs and harassing innocents. Sandino was a serious step up—a killer of children and women. I had always thought it best not to know the perpetrator of the Orlando incident. No specific person to hate. I was wrong. You end up hating everyone and everything. Luc Grogaman was uncomplicatedly venal, devoid of conscience, contrition, or remorse.

  He was the architect of all this evil.

  Or so I once thought. I might well have been wrong. That crown may belong to my past mentor and champion—the “venerable” Evan Trombley. With what has been unearthed to date, I’m now betting on him. Grogaman may not have been clever enough. Trombley had it all—the smarts, the cover of respectability, the ear of the Wiz, the keys to Ben’s kingdom, and, like Tolkien’s greedy and wicked dragon, most of the gold.

  Grogaman would have been an easy recruit for Trombley. He had no moral alarm system, no ethical grounding to fend off Trombley’s evil offer. Trombley’s master plan? Straightforward—knock off Ben, and magnanimously accept the Ozone board’s invite to be the interim CEO and regent to Dorothy, who, he would have argued, needed a few more years of seasoning to succeed him. In the meantime, he would continue to hoard his cache of ill-gotten gains and plot his retirement to Zurich, beyond the reach of the US authorities.

  Evan’s villainy apparently had no limits. I could easily have been in the car with Alice, if I returned to drive my family back as any decent husband and father would have done. He must have factored that in. To him I was expendable. If all he ever intended was to give his best friend Ben serious indigestion, as he alleged, why would he have sat by in the copilot’s seat of Grogaman’s car hell-bent on sending me and my team to our destruction? Grogaman was simply Trombley’s field commander, his CEO—chief execution officer—an equal in wickedness but a subordinate in deviousness.

  Ben must have sensed that something was seriously amiss. Fra Jero likely wilted under his persuasive charm during Ben’s first visit to Barcelona and he then learned, for the first time, that one of those Swiss accounts was his. The rest—Grogaman’s and Trombley’s involvement—was most likely revealed by the not-so-good father on Ben’s second visit, the day before he died. It was probably only then that Ben learned of Trombley’s secret Swiss account. Armed with a handful of damning deposit slips, Ben must have sought Trombley out, thinking that they both were being set up for blackmail by Grogaman. Fearing that Ben would have soon realized that he was not an innocent victim, Trombley simply killed him with his own wizard’s brew.

  Toxicity reports from the New Paltz police showed traces of marijuana in all the crash passengers except Trombley. His showed more than a trace of nitroglycerin. Drew found Trombley’s medical papers and consulted with his doctors. He suffered from severe angina. His doctors said he was managing it well. He had stacks of nitro in his apartment in various forms—pills, vaporizers, and drops.

  Ben, it turns out, was taking powerful medicines for his cancer, along with a bundle of thrill pills to complement his regime of Mr. Blues, according to Kati. She confessed that he was having some problems in that regard.

  I think Trombley spiked Ben’s drink with nitro drops. When you add that to Ben’s other pills, you have a helluva lethal cocktail.

  Potent enough to make him worse than sick.

  If my hypothesis is right, Trombley used me, duped me, and betrayed me, and, in the process, was ultimately responsible for the death of my family and the attempted murder of my dog.

  He broke every one of the principles he so sanctimoniously preached. Trombley was my boss, my mentor, my tormentor. Yet, as demanding and supercilious as he could be, he was also my rabbi and my surrogate father—stern and demanding but deep down supportive.

  Wrong, so wrong. That was my template, not his.

  His betrayal simply to harvest more pieces of gold is the hardest blow to absorb. You finally come to realize who really matters, who never did, and who always will. Trombley may not have been evil in any epic sense. He seemed unquestionably normal to those of us around him, which is why his villainy is so hard to process.

  And what about Ben? According to his doctor, he knew he was on a long march to death. Perhaps that excuses his bitter resistance to Dorothy’s and Leo’s needs. That and his maniacal quest for a male heir. He must have known about or at least suspected Grogaman’s depravity and, in the very end, Trombley’s complicity. “Those problems are my private purgatory. I have among me people who have no shame . . . I can taste their disappointments at my impending actions. Yet I have done things, ignored things, and excused things that were wrong.” Was he not telling us as much in his Precatory Letter?

  He was, I think, in his heart a good man.

  In his soul, he was more complex. Compared to the criminality of the hedgehogs, oiligarchs, media moguls, web manipulators, and brokerage bandits, Ben was a distant poor cousin. Except for Terry and Amaroso, and perhaps Russett, he had no close friends. He was forced to create his own virtual sidekicks and he found them in fantasy literature. And once there, I suspect, he deluded himself. The sad fact is that Ben never got to live a life that resembled the stories he so revered.

  There still remain loose ends, questions unanswered, and amends not made. Investigations like this don’t get neatly wrapped up. That only happens in network shows and bad novels.

  What’s next for me? Winston Barr it’s not. It’s only a matter of time before some government grunt—the SEC, the FBI, the IRS, Justice—realizes something is not kosher and slowly pieces it together. Then all hell will break loose. “Recently deceased Lion of the Bar turns out to be a megathief.” Once that happens, the scramble to the exit will be immediate. The Firm’s heavy billers will scurry off to those competitors whose ports offer safer harbors. Over time, the Firm will sink, drowning in irrelevance and bankruptcy.

  I’m not up for that. Twenty Acres is all the fairy tale I need. I’m going to see if I can make a go of it there. And Viggie’s moving in—perfect timing with Terry off on her trip. He loves it. It reminds him of his nonno’s place in Pescia. He’s already converted the kids’ playhouse into a working cottage—with a tabletop stove, a small fridge, a pull-down bed, insulation, and a heater just in case. He’s even pirated my cable line so he can watch his beloved socce
r. He’s only there Thursday through Sunday. Monday through Wednesday he’s working for Drew and Dixie. I don’t charge him rent, but insisted that he take conversational English at the high school every Saturday. He’s loving it. He enjoys making new friends, especially the female kind, and, I suspect, he is trying to make our new pup his own Nip.

  My position on the ladder of life may go down a few rungs, but I’m kind of looking forward to that. Alice’s “accident” tailed me like a faithful dog. I took the Baum assignment to lose that tail as best I could.

  Am I happy? Hard to say. Happy endings are often transitory. Forgiveness is supposed to mitigate past pain and unblock the future. I’m not sure I’m there yet. So what do I believe in? For now the company of animals, the earth beneath my feet, and the sand between my toes.

  That’s all I really want now—and it’s definitely what I was yearning for. Sometimes the very best gifts are those you already possess.

  For just a moment I felt at peace. Surprising, given what had recently transpired. That’s when it came to me: there was one other thing I wanted for Christmas—to forget about Evan Trombley and Luc Grogaman, and even Ben Baum, at least for a while. Nip gave me a curious glance as I stood there motionless. A feeling of contentment that I hadn’t enjoyed for a long time returned.

  53

  Christmas Eve lunch was by all objective accounts a success. Everyone was relaxed and friendly, but there remained a sense of unease. I think we all felt the absence of children. The new yet unnamed pup kept everyone amused and a few hours later, the party ended. Nip and I then went for a walk, leaving our new friend asleep in his crate.

  The winter afternoon sun cast a different light on the world. With no moisture to diffuse its rays, it penetrated everything in its path. The shells herded together by the tides showed off their deep purple underbellies and the ice-encrusted sea grass appeared bronzed. The sand at water’s edge was still brittled by the morning’s frost, yet the green water seemed mellow as the moon started to rise.

  It was good to be alone again.

  Tolkien had it right. My journey has not ended. I’m still following Bilbo’s footsteps, trying to walk out of the dark orbit of my past. To do that I need Nip. She is a necessity, not an accessory. She is a proficient griever, always awaiting homecomings that will never be, sniffing for scents that are no longer there. Yet she is healing me.

  Whatever happens, in this place of ours, we will always be searching.

  Perhaps this sad riddle is best for me.

  As I walked along the beach that afternoon, I was trying to roll back the rain-gray curtain of my life. I was starting to see things more clearly.

  Our walk ended and we took off for town. We now had one last thing to do. As we drove over the bridge, the sun momentarily darkened as clouds passed and the wind let up. The ships in the harbor, having been washed all day by the sun, were happy, I suspect, to return to the serenity of soft sounds and the medley of smells that a calm sea brings.

  The village, hoary with age and heavy with history, was alight for Christmas. Soon the stars would be out and the three lights of Orion’s Belt—Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka—would shine the brightest. I’d long since renamed them Alice, Lilli, and JJ.

  “Nip, we’re going to see Alice and the kids.”

  That she understood, her tail vibrating with anticipation.

  “It’s time to say good-bye . . . and hello.”

  EPILOGUE

  “How could you! You’ve done some crazy things over the years, but this tops them all! Do you know how much I grieved for you, the pain I felt . . .” Terry’s words dissolved into tears.

  “Tereza, I had no choice. I had to protect you. You have always been my love—my much better half,” Ben whispered in her ear. “I’m sorry I deceived you, but to do otherwise would have put you at great risk. I can explain it all.”

  Terry took a deep breath and with a somewhat firmer voice uttered, “This better be good.”

  “There was no real alternative. Luc was even more rotten than I thought. For the longest time I tried to ignore my concerns, but I finally realized that he was as evil as I feared. That became clear to me on my visits to the Spanish priest. I had befriended him with large contributions to his Basque brotherhood. Independence was the only miracle he prayed for. With that money and plentiful portions of the finest port I could buy, I loosened his reserve. He thought that I was privy to the part he played in helping Luc—as he put it—bury money in the mountains of Switzerland. He presumed I knew the drill: numbered accounts for Luc, myself, and—to my utter shock and disgust—Evan! My two closest allies—men I was dependent on and beholden to—were rank crooks. Luc, I understood. He had no scruples or conscience. Apparently he was able to siphon off millions from ClearAire’s clients and suppliers and direct that money through the priest to Swiss accounts in our names. Trombley, I then realized, must be his accomplice. The monies allocated to me were a small price to pay to ensure my silence. They knew I would not destroy Ozone to save my name—even if I could. In fact I was afraid they had already destroyed it. Their larceny would not have remained a secret for long. Somebody or something would crack and the SEC, Interpol, or Justice would eventually figure it out. There seemed to be no way to keep this from being discovered even if I turned them in. Ozone couldn’t survive the investigation that would follow. I would have had to spend the rest of my short life in the company of lawyers, accountants, and spin doctors. And you would have been called as a prime witness! You would have no privileges. You would have had to testify against me. It was then that I realized I would have to fake my death, hoping that Grogaman and Trombley could weasel their way out of this without destroying the company.”

  “But how did you . . . the funeral . . . how did you pull that off?”

  “With the help of my London doctor and a large dose of good luck. Over the years I had befriended the hotel’s doctor. He turned out to be an interesting character. He had a small clinic in London to minister to the homeless, where he spent his time when he was not at the hotel. What he really dreamed of was to leave his job at the hotel and head off to Tanzania to open a free clinic, where his father had been a missionary. That, however, required substantial monies—well beyond his reach. So with Andreas’s help, I forwarded him three million dollars. Then together we plotted my ‘untimely demise.’ He came to my room, sedated me on a gurney, pronounced me dead, and personally escorted me to his clinic’s ambulance. It was parked in the hotel’s garage, where Andreas and the cadaver of one of his recently deceased clinic patients were waiting. I was quickly revived. Andreas had brought appropriate clothes and he and I exited the ambulance a few blocks from the hotel. We then took a cab to Saint Pancras, the Eurostar to Paris, the train to Marseille, and a flight to Saint Thomas, where I took refuge on this boat. Andreas had purchased and outfitted it, and personally picked the crew and captain—all loyal, devoted, and exceptionally well-paid Italians. The boat is registered to a Liechtenstein company whose ownership is impossible to trace. Andreas remained with me most of the time. It seems Luc had put a price on his head.

  “Back to my demise, the good doctor—armed with a letter from me requesting cremation, just in case he needed it—had little trouble moving my ‘corpse’ through the coroner’s office and into the funeral home that handled the cremation and ‘burial at sea,’ which I understand was usually accomplished by flushing the ashes into the Thames. What we weren’t counting on was the accident that killed Grogaman, Trombley, and their henchmen. That was a sweet bonus, I must admit, and I’m amazed but not surprised how well Dorothy handled all this and saved the company. I shouldn’t be . . . she is, after all, my daughter! And I hear that Leo is doing better and Viggie is too.”

  “Ben . . . can I still call you that?”

  “Yes, but I have a new identity—thanks to Andreas. I’m Benedict Lyman now. Best to keep the same first name, I’m told. And as to the hair—or lack thereof—I decided on a new look.”

 
“I wasn’t going to ask. I thought it might be the effects of chemo.”

  “No, nothing like that! In fact Andreas has found a clinic in Switzerland that is working on new protocols for what I have. I’m waiting my turn for treatment. It’s not a cure, but it can extend life significantly.”

  “That’s such wonderful news. I have so many questions, my mind is racing. How did you find me?”

  “Andreas called Viggie. He gave him your itinerary. Once Andreas told me Saint John’s, I knew where you were. We had some great times at that little hotel. It seems like a century ago.

  “So here is my proposal. Stay here with me. You can come and go as you please. The boat will winter down here and summer in Europe. And it comes well-stocked. It has all our favorite books. Are you game?

  “And there’s one more thing. Will you marry me?”

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND ATTRIBUTIONS

  This story is a fictional saga, and as such is indebted to some of the giants of that trade. L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) was the American grand master of children’s literature. Best known for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he wrote fifty-five other works of fantasy literature for children to enjoy. Ben Baum of Clamour of Crows is wholly imagined and my hope is that readers understand that this creation was not intended to cast any aspersion on L. Frank Baum’s or his family’s stellar reputation.

  Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) and J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) need no introduction. Carroll was a genius—as a mathematician, photographer and logician—but is probably best remembered as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels. Tolkien, along with Carroll, is England’s greatest fantasy writer. The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion are classics.