Ransom Read online

  “Do you have any idea what kind of debt we're looking at?” he asked, his voice cracking, and of course she didn't because he never told her. “We're talking hundreds of millions. We'd have to sell everything we own, and we'd still be in debt for another twenty years. I'm not even sure I could ever dig myself out of this. We're in too deep, babe. It's over. It's really, really over.” She couldn't see the tears rolling down his cheeks, but she could hear them in his voice. Although she didn't fully understand it, with his wild investment strategies, leveraging their assets, and constantly borrowing to buy more, he had lost it all. He had lost far more than that in fact. The debts he was facing were overwhelming.

  “No, it's not over,” she said firmly. “You can declare bankruptcy. I'll get a job. We'll sell everything. So what? I don't give a damn about all that. I don't care if we stand on a street corner selling pencils, as long as we're together.” It was a sweet thought and the right attitude, but he was too distraught to even listen to her.

  She called him again later that night; just to reassure him again, worried about him. She hadn't liked what he'd said about his life insurance, and she was more panicked about him than their financial situation. She knew that men did crazy things sometimes, over money lost or businesses that failed. His entire ego had been wrapped up in his fortune. And when she got him on the phone, she could hear that he'd been drinking. A lot presumably. He was slurring his words and kept telling her that his life was over. She was so upset that she was thinking of flying to Mexico the next day to be with him, while he continued his negotiations, but in the morning, before she could do anything about it, one of the men who was there with him called her. His voice was jagged and he sounded broken. All he knew was that Allan had gone out alone on the boat they'd chartered, after they all went to bed. The crew were off the boat, and he went late at night, handling the boat himself. All anyone knew was that he must have fallen overboard sometime before morning. The yacht was found by the local Coast Guard when the captain reported it missing, and Allan was nowhere to be found. An extensive search had turned up nothing.

  Worse yet, when she got to Mexico herself later that day, the police handed her the letter he had left her. They had kept a copy for their records. It said how hopeless the situation was, that he could never climb back up, it was all over for him, and he'd rather be dead than face the horror and shame of the world finding out what a fool he'd been and what a mess he'd made of it. The letter was disastrous and convinced even her that he had committed suicide, or wanted to. Or maybe he was just drunk and had fallen overboard. There was no way to know for sure. But the greater likelihood was that he had killed himself.

  The police turned the letter over to the insurance company, as they were obliged to. Based on his words, they had refused to pay the claim on his policy, and Fernanda's attorney said it was unlikely they ever would. The evidence was too damning.

  When they recovered Allan's body finally, all they knew was that he had died by drowning. There was no evidence of foul play, he hadn't shot himself, he had either jumped or fallen in, but it seemed a reasonable belief that at that moment at least, he had wanted to die, given everything he had said to her right before that and what he'd written in the letter he had left behind.

  Fernanda was in Mexico by the time they found his body, washed up on a beach nearby after a brief storm. It was a horrifying, heartbreaking experience, and she was grateful that the children weren't there to see it. Despite their protests, she had left them in California, and gone to Mexico on her own. A week later, after endless red tape, she returned, a widow, with Allan's remains in a casket in the cargo hold of the plane.

  The funeral was a blur of agony, and the newspapers said that he had died in a boating accident in Mexico, which was what everyone had agreed to say. None of the people he had been doing business with had any idea how disastrous his situation was, and the police kept the contents of his letter confidential from the press. No one had any idea that he had hit rock bottom, and sunk even lower than that, in his own mind at least. Nor did anyone except she and his attorney have a clear picture of what the sum total of his financial disasters looked like.

  He was worse than ruined, he was in debt to such a terrifying extent that it was going to take her years to clear up the mess he had made. And in the four months since he died, she had sold off all their property, except the city house, which was tied up in his estate. But as soon as they would let her, she had to sell it. Mercifully, he had put all their other properties in her name, as a gift to her, so she was able to sell them. She had death taxes hanging over her, which had to be paid soon, and the two Impressionists were going up for auction in New York in June. She was selling everything that wasn't nailed down, or planning to. Jack Waterman, their attorney, assured her that if she liquidated everything, including the house eventually, she might break even, without a penny to her name. The majority of Allan's debts were attached to corporate entities, and Jack was going to be declaring bankruptcy, but so far no one had any idea of the extent to which Allan's world had collapsed, and she was trying to keep it that way, out of respect for him. Even the children didn't know the full implications yet. And on a sunny May afternoon, she was still trying to absorb it herself four months after his death, as she sat in their kitchen, feeling numb and looking dazed.

  She was going to pick Ashley and Sam up at school in twenty minutes, as she did like clockwork every day. Will drove himself home from high school normally, in the BMW his father had given him six months before, on his sixteenth birthday. The truth was that Fernanda barely had enough money left to feed them, and she couldn't wait to sell the house, to pay more of their debts, or even give them a slight cushion. She knew she would have to start looking for a job shortly, maybe at a museum. Their whole life had turned inside out and upside down, and she had no idea what to tell the children. They knew that the insurance was refusing to pay, and she claimed that their father's estate being in probate had made things tight for the moment. But none of the three children had any idea that before his death, their father had lost his entire fortune, nor that the reason the insurance wouldn't pay was because they thought he had killed himself. Everyone was told it was an accident. And unaware of the letter or his circumstances, the people who'd been with him weren't convinced it wasn't. Only she, her attorneys, and the authorities knew what had happened. For the moment.

  She lay in bed every night, thinking of their last conversation and playing it in her head over and over and over again. It was all she could think of, and she knew she would forever reproach herself for not going to Mexico sooner. It was an endless litany of guilt and self-accusation with the added horror and constant terror of bills flooding in, endless debts he had incurred, and nothing with which to pay them. The last four months had been an indescribable horror for her.

  Fernanda felt totally isolated by all that had happened to her, and the only person who knew what she was going through was their attorney, Jack Waterman. He had been sympathetic and supportive and wonderful, and they had just agreed that morning that she was going to put the house on the market by August. They had lived there for four and a half years, and the children loved it now, but there was nothing she could do about it. She was going to have to ask for financial aid to keep them in their respective schools, and she couldn't even do that yet. She was still trying to keep the extent of their financial disaster a secret. She was doing it as much for Allan's sake, as to avoid total panic. As long as the people they owed money to still thought they had funds, they would give her a little more time to pay them. She was blaming the delay on probate and taxes. She was stalling for time, and none of them knew it.

  The papers had talked about the demise of some of the various companies he'd invested in. But miraculously, no one had strung the entire disastrous picture together, mostly because in many cases, the public had no idea that he was the principal investor. It was a tangle of horror and lies that haunted Fernanda day and night, while she wrestled with th
e grief of losing the only man she had ever loved, and trying to guide her children through the shoals and across the reefs of their own grief for their father. She was so stunned and terrified herself that most of the time it was hard to absorb what was happening to her.

  She had been to see her doctor the week before, because she had barely slept in months, and he had offered to put her on medication, but she didn't want to. Fernanda wanted to see if she could tough it out without taking anything. But she felt utterly broken and in despair as she tried to put one foot in front of the other day after day, and keep going, if only for her children. She had to solve the mess, and eventually find a way to support them. But at times, especially at night, she was overwhelmed by waves of panic.

  Fernanda glanced up at the clock in the enormous elegant white granite kitchen where she sat, and saw that she had five minutes to get to the kids' school, and knew she'd have to hurry. She put a rubber band around the fresh stack of bills, and threw them into the box where she was keeping all the others. She remembered hearing somewhere that people got angry at those they loved who died, and she hadn't even gotten there yet. All she had done was cry, and wish he hadn't been foolish enough to go so wild with his success until it destroyed him, and their lives with him. But she was not angry, only sad, and totally panicked.

  She was a small, lithe figure in jeans and a white T-shirt and sandals as she hurried out the door, holding her handbag and car keys. She had long straight blond hair she wore in a braid down her back that, at a rapid glance, made her look exactly like her daughter. Ashley was twelve, but maturing fast, and she was already the same height as her mother.

  Will was coming up the front steps as she hurried out and slammed the door absentmindedly behind her. He was a tall dark-haired boy, who looked almost exactly like his father. He had big blue eyes, and an athletic build. He looked more like a man than a boy these days, and he was doing the best he could to be supportive of his mother. She was either crying or upset all the time, and he worried about her more than he let on. She stopped for a minute on the steps and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. He was sixteen, but looked more like eighteen or twenty.

  “You okay, Mom?” It was a pointless question. She hadn't been okay in four months. She had a constant look of panic in her eyes, a look of shell-shocked distraction, and there was nothing he could do about it. She just looked at him and nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “I'm going to pick up Ash and Sam. I'll make you a sandwich when I get home,” she promised.

  “I can do that myself.” He smiled at her. “I have a game tonight.” He played both lacrosse and baseball, and she loved going to his games, and practices, and always had. But lately she looked so distracted when she went, he wasn't even sure she saw them.

  “Do you want me to pick them up?” he offered. He was the man of the house now. It had been a huge shock to him, as it was to all of them, and he was doing his best to live up to his new role. It was still hard to believe his father was gone, and never coming back. It had been an enormous adjustment for all of them. It seemed like his mother was a different person these days, and he worried about her driving sometimes. She was a menace on the road.

  “I'm fine,” she reassured him, as she always did, and convinced neither him, nor herself, but kept moving toward her station wagon, unlocked the door, waved, and got in. And a moment later, she drove away, and he stood watching her for a minute, as he saw her drive right through the stop sign on the corner. And then looking as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, he unlocked the front door with his key, walked into the silent house, and closed the door behind him. With one stupid fishing trip in Mexico, his father had changed their lives forever. He had always been going somewhere, doing something he thought was important. In the last few years, he had almost never been home, just out somewhere, making money. He hadn't been to one of Will's games in three years. And even if Fernanda wasn't angry at him for what he'd done to them when he died, there was no question that Will was. Every time he looked at his mother now, and saw the condition she was in, he hated his father for what he'd done to her, and all of them. He had abandoned them. Will hated him for it, and didn't even know the whole story.

  Chapter 4

  When Peter Morgan got off the bus in San Francisco, he stood looking around for a long moment. The bus deposited him south of Market, in an area he wasn't familiar with. All of his activities, when he lived there, had been in better neighborhoods. He had had a house in Pacific Heights, an apartment he used on Nob Hill to do drug deals, and he had had business dealings in Silicon Valley. He had never hung out in the low-rent neighborhoods, but in his state-issued prison hand-me-downs, he fit right in where he stood.

  He walked along Market Street for a while, trying to get used to having people swirling around him again, and he felt vulnerable and jostled. He knew he would have to get over it soon. But after almost four and a half years in Pelican Bay, he felt like an egg without a shell on the streets. He stopped in a restaurant on Market, and paid for a hamburger and a cup of coffee, and as he savored it, and the freedom that went with it, it tasted like the best meal he'd ever had. Afterward, he stood outside, just watching people. There were women and children, and men looking as though they were going somewhere with a sense of purpose. There were homeless people lying in doorways, and drunks staggering around. The weather was balmy and beautiful, and he just walked along the street, with no particular goal in mind. He knew that once he got to the halfway house, he'd be dealing with rules again. He just wanted to taste his freedom first before he got there. Two hours later, he got on a bus, after asking someone for directions, and headed for the Mission District, where the halfway house was.

  It was on Sixteenth Street. Once he got off the bus, he walked until he found it, and then stood outside, looking at his new home. It was a far cry from the places where he had lived before he went to prison. He couldn't help thinking of Janet, and their two little girls, wondering where they were now. He had missed his daughters terribly for all the years since he'd seen them. He had read somewhere that Janet had remarried. He had seen it in a magazine while he was in prison. His parental rights had been terminated years before. He imagined that the girls had probably been adopted by her new husband by now. The waters had closed over him long ago in her life, and his children's. He forced the memories from his mind, as he walked up the stairs of the dilapidated halfway house. It was open to recovering substance abusers and parolees.

  The hallway smelled of cats and urine and burning food, and the paint was peeling off the walls. It was a hell of a place for a Harvard MBA to wind up, but so was Pelican Bay, and he had survived there for over four years. He knew he would survive here too. He was above all a survivor.

  There was a tall thin black man with no teeth sitting at a desk, and Peter noticed that he had tracks on both his arms. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and didn't seem to care, and in spite of his dark skin, he had teardrops tattooed on his face, which was a sign that he had been in prison. He looked up at Peter and smiled. He looked welcoming and pleasant. He could see in Peter's eyes the shell-shocked dazed look of a new release.

  “Can I help you, man?” He knew the look and the clothes and the haircut, and despite Peter's visibly aristocratic origins, he knew he had been in prison too. There was something about the way he walked, the caution with which he observed the man at the desk, that said it all. They instantly recognized each other as having a common bond. Peter had far more in common with the man at the desk now than he did with anyone from his own world. This had become his world.

  Peter nodded and handed him his papers, saying that he was expected at the halfway house, and the man at the desk looked up at him, nodded, took a key out of the desk drawer, and stood up.

  “I'll show you your room,” he volunteered.

  “Thanks,” Peter said tersely. All his defenses were up again, as they had been for four years. He knew he was only slightly safer here tha
n he had been at Pelican Bay. It was roughly the same crowd. And many of them would be going back. He didn't want to go back to prison, or have his parole violated, over a brawl, or having to defend himself in a fight.

  They walked up two flights of stairs in the rancid-smelling halls. It was an old Victorian that had long since fallen into disrepair and had been taken over for this purpose. The house was inhabited only by men. Upstairs, the house smelled of cats, and seldom-changed litter boxes. The house monitor walked to the end of the hall, stopped at a door, and knocked. There was no answer. He opened it with the key and pushed open the door, as Peter walked past him into the room. It was barely bigger than a broom closet. There was badly stained old shag carpeting on the floor, a bunk bed, two chests, a battered desk, and a chair. The single window looked at the back of another house, badly in need of paint. It was beyond depressing. At least the cells in Pelican Bay had been modern, well lit, and clean. Or at least his was. This looked like a flophouse, as Peter nodded and looked at him.

  “The bathroom's down the hall. There's another guy in this room, I think he's at work,” the monitor explained.

  “Thanks.” Peter saw that there were no sheets on the top bunk, and realized he'd have to provide his own, or sleep on the mattress, as others did. Most of his room-mate's belongings were spread all over the floor. The place was a mess, and he stood staring out the window for a long moment, feeling things he hadn't felt in years. Despair, sadness, fear. He had no idea where to go now. He had to get a job. He needed money. He had to stay clean. It was so easy to think of dealing drugs again to get himself out of this mess. The prospect of working at McDonald's or washing dishes somewhere did not cheer him. He climbed onto the upper bunk when the monitor left, and lay there, staring at the ceiling. After a while, trying not to think of all he had to do, Peter fell asleep.