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A wealthy mother awakens from a coma after a murderous auto accident to the musings of a freakishly cool nurse with whom she slowly bonds. Job one: find her family. Job two: recover her inheritance from the clutches of two criminals who just happen to be attorneys. Job three: her son and one adopted grandson are attracted primarily to guys.
Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.
Oscar Wilde
The quiet room at the estate in Flourtown might have inspired a rich medieval tapestry.
Carol Schuyler-Ross looked through tall glass which formed the wall opposite. Floor-to-ceiling, triple-paned, and bullet-proof, the glass revealed an enclosed, untidy English flower garden, larger than the room itself.
A distant brick wall lay straight ahead in her line of sight. The wall, built in eight-foot sections, were interrupted with evenly spaced white stone columns a little taller than the wall. The columns, topped with square, granite lintels, established visual divisions highlighting forward and recessed sections of the brick wall.
Connected by curved polished brass railings twining around the columns, the ends of each wall section were interspersed with seasonal flowering vines. Sweet autumn clematis and a few honeysuckle vines grew there in summer.
Today all leaves were off the vines, now bare; the lintels were snow-covered. Five inches of cold white stuff.
Carol sat on a comfortable dark blue brocade wingback chair in a warm, well-lighted space near an antique rosewood side table to her right. A glass of cold water on a coaster sat at her side.
Small picture frames, short crystal vases of yellow roses, and her European art book collection filled three tall eight-foot cabinets handmade of alder. A wheelchair sat by the wingback chair to her left.
On the white marble floor was a fine Louis XV Savonnerie carpet circa 1750, rare indeed. To Carol's left, one wall shimmered, painted an eggshell white with a tinge of pale yellow.
On that wall, a polished slab of alder wood featured a rectangular, pure-white marble slab upon which a Caravaggio oil painting hung, glowing with color under bright illumination.
The building shown in the painting had been, in ancient times, a restaurant.
Carol pondered at least once a day why the Spanish painter had traveled to Venice in 1600. He had to have done. The only other options for him would have been to work from someone else's painting (not likely, she thought). Cameras had not been invented then; he didn't copy a photo.
She knew it was currently a yarn shop of some extraordinary quality and selection around the corner from St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. The Basilica had been a private chapel for the doges until 1807 then became a cathedral. She remembered spending a week or two with her father there while he met with real estate brokers and art dealers.
She had walked in Venice, studied the originals of art objects familiar from classes at Bryn Mawr College, entertained herself shopping and lost her virginity.
Although she had been away from home many times with her father, her twenty-first birthday happen to arrive while they were in Venice. Her ever busy father arranged for a male guide to escort her that day. The guide took her to his home for lunch where the guide and his brother had introduced her to the pleasures of sin.
The guide and his brother both took Carol gently as befitting a rich virgin perhaps; the men then turned to each other and fucked each other's brains out.
Carol, both excited and entertained, thought her birthday had been educational. Her bodyguard, standing in front of the small door to the villa, heard the various happy noises inside. The man detailed to Carol had been informed by Frank that she had to become a woman someday somehow and it might as well be when she decided. His orders were to go in all guns blazing only if the happy noises weren't happy, such as screaming for help.
Frank and Carol never discussed that day.
They had flown on to Lisbon that trip.
Near the Douro she owned a luxury condominium building. The ground floor was filled with shops: Cartier, Tiffany and Co., Giorgio Armani, and Brioni.
The first floor just above sheltered two fine restaurants, the second through fifth floors were used as a landscaped auto park for the owners, and above that were lovely three and four-bedroom condominiums, two or three on each floor. The ninth floor featured a pool and gymnasium for residents and guests only. The entire tenth floor was Carol's penthouse, graced with its own private elevator and floor-to-ceiling windows all around.
Outside was a lawn and balcony surrounding the condo, a small vegetable garden, a pottery shed and a great view of the river below. The building was an investment, Carol's private residence in Lisbon prior to marriage and kids. She still owned it through the Schuyler trust.
While there she had knit like a house afire at times and loved to collect yarns and needles, especially Portuguese knitting needles.
The sun, the light and the warmth of Lisbon recreated themselves in her memory when she knitted now in Flourtown, Pennsylvania.
Soft yarn, the clack of knitting needles (using the standard two needle set), a few examples in the room of her very large collection of art objects carefully purchased over ten years from auction houses in London, Paris, and New York...the snippets of time, remembered, now filled her head with pleasure.
Carol alternately slept and gazed out into the private garden, now empty, clouded, and covered with powder snow without tracks of any kind.
She watched as hidden garden lights came on. The wall and vines now stood out against a backdrop of dark gray snow-clouds in the Pennsylvania early evening. The children would be home soon, she thought, noting the bare limbs and branches of maples beyond the wall, trying to remember again the day of the year when she could reliably expect leaves again.
A faint draft in the room brought the scent of her Chanel Grand Extrait perfume. A tinny version of Chopin Nocturne Opus 9: No. 2 in E-Flat Major played on iPad speakers and the tempo reminded her of silent film.
The Rachmaninoff vinyl disc was the better medium she decided, the better recording. Whoever had digitized the Nocturnes had sped them up a trifle, possibly to eat up fewer kilobytes of disc space or eliminate a few seconds of download time. They had been ill advised, she thought. Better speakers and the vinyl disc digitized without changes would improve the sound in the room.
She smiled, rubbed her tongue over a tiny bump on the inside of her cheek and a Bluetooth connection opened from her Bose Hearphones. "Call the trust," she said.
The phone rang at the Schuyler trust office in Philadelphia and was answered on the second ring. "Carol! How is your day?
She wondered why she had waited so long. "I'm fine, June, and you?"
"I'm having a great day now that you called. It's been quiet here. How may I help today?" June replied.
"Would you please order quadraphonic stereo speakers (small ones to install in my room's upper corners? They have to have Bluetooth capability to get streamed music and audio from multiple sources."
"I'll research it for you now and text you. If you approve, we can have them installed. "Shall I bill it to the trust as usual?"
"Yes, thank you, June," Carol replied. "Catch you later."
She rested her iPad Pro, with all 128 megabytes of memory, with both Wi-Fi and cellular capabilities, on her lap.
Her iPad was, however, more remarkable for the information kept off it than the music, photos, audiobooks, games, and other apps that were downloaded to it.
She had decided not to refer to personal finance or art or her gem collection on the iPad.
She needed to have secrets. She had not, despite appearances to the contrary, just fallen off a turnip truck.
She called the bank about her own personal money not in the trust, called the trust about her trust money when she needed to, and the Philadelphia and Manhattan repositories when she had questions or orders about her own art and gem collections. A footman came to transfer her to the wheelchair and lunch.
Time passed quickly after lunch usually. The footman and her attendant had come for her an hour before Michael and Barbara got home from school to refresh. The footman again transferred her from wingback chair to the wheelchair and assisted her to her suite then later to the front door to meet the children. Michael and Barbara stepped from their limousine with their security detail close behind bringing up the rear guard. The children burst into the house for hugs and minute descriptions of their day.
Carol reviewed their chores with them, looked at her children's homework and reminded Michael of his seventeenth-century art session with his tutor from William and Mary College. This tutor had flown in from Williamsburg for the week.
All the tenured professors taught at the estate had been granted temporary leave from their college or university, where they wrote, taught, and/or did research in their field.
At any one time, one or two tutors were in residence at the estate. Most accepted the private work, a coveted sinecure, which provided some private time to catch up on their own areas of interest. All of them enjoyed the amenities.
Each had their own suite in the house, were attended by the servants, enjoyed twenty-four-hour room service and laundry services in addition to a spectacular salary that doubled their own annual salary, paid weekly by the Schuyler trust. The play time wasn't discussed or scheduled.
More than one footman served the part of the house where the male tutors where quartered. Although not a formal part of their service, a few spent extra time with the tutors, especially the classics tutors, some of whom appreciated bringing history to life. The 'naked Apollo' scene proved popular in that crowd.
The classics tutors (ancient Greek and Roman language, literature, philosophy, history, archaeology) and the arts tutors (music visual art, art history) made up fully half of the visiting professors. The rest were Mathematics, business, language, and physical education tutors. Carol asked all of them to exclude tests, quizzes and grades.
The tutoring sessions were given right after dinner each weekday save one and for two hours on Sunday. The children were given their choice of the timing of their Sunday tutoring and which weekday they wanted "off." She saw no point in mixing stress with education and was pleased at this stage of the children's lives to find what subjects they gravitated to and were good at learning.
She was eager to find out how they learned. By rote, by hearing, by doing, or by example or reading, she was interested in the mechanics of learning as they applied to her children. The idea wasn't new with her. Her father Frank had drilled the point with her tutors that they had to know the mechanics of how Carol learned. They both knew that some students need to read, repeat, write, and/or watch someone do a problem to actually understand and remember their lessons.
Carol spent her weekdays in her sitting room in Flourtown just as surely as she had been in solitary confinement. The room seemed like a gilded cage.
She was aware that this prison came with rewards and punishment, the latter partly self-inflicted. As long as she was a partial invalid, the Judge seemed to pay little attention to her hobbies. The long hours cooped up in the sitting room was the price she had decided to pay for now. Progress out of the wheelchair meant work she wasn't sure she wanted to do or was able to perform.
The buzzer her husband allowed her to call her attendant at the desk lay pinned to the fabric of the chair. She was allowed to eat or drink as she pleased. The trust corporation had rules and policies about taking good care of beneficiaries.
Judge Ross had read and nearly memorized the trust provisions and rules about her care, and the rewards and penalties that affected him. Frank had reached forward through trust provisions to make certain that his daughter was protected in the future. He wanted no person or circumstance to fleece her or any future children. At least Frank thought he had covered all those bases. He had not foreseen, however, all of the circumstances to come.
A small desk served as the nurse's station in the hallway. It sat across the hall from tall double doors of the sitting room. A large bathroom suitably equipped with a walk-in shower and other handicapped-access features was located next to the nurse's station.
A desk-mounted telephone at the nurse's station had two lines. One was a house telephone. The other, when picked up, promptly rang straight into the office of Judge Ross if he was in chambers.
Estate security tracked the location of Carol and each child constantly, much to their annoyance at times. Carol had passed through the annoyance stage and was really, really done with it.
She didn't mind the guards and dogs on the nearly three-mile perimeter of the property patrolling high above the surrounding roads on a continuous concrete path atop the high berm surrounding the property, the berm covered with green grass and wild flowers.
Frank had taught her that there were people in this world who had been raised with the concept of `what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too."
Just inside and below the berm was a near-impenetrable barrier of greenery and just inside that a high razor-wire-topped electric fence. The driveway was gated; a guard shack was always manned. She couldn't see them from the house.
The large mansion sat on a square consisting of three hundred acres of apple orchards plus twenty acres of a variety of strawberries, some June bearing. The properties surrounding their estate for miles were planted in alfalfa for honey and hay.
A slew of security cameras monitored inside and out every day around-the-clock. There were no close neighbors. She owned the agricultural property as far as she could see and far beyond the immediate estate. Their closest neighbors were four miles away.
The house had all of the standard accoutrements of the fabulously wealthy. The back lawn was graced with landscaped tennis courts, an Olympic-size pool, and a helicopter pad with a large Sikorsky helicopter. On each side of the mansion acres of formal gardens, wetlands, and a lake or two with winding walking paths were placed.
In front there was a very long winding driveway with formal rows of tall trees on either side, streams, and water features.
Just behind the house were a guesthouse, servant's quarters, a ten-car garage with chauffeur's quarters overhead, laser motion detectors, under-walk pressure detectors, infrared detectors, heat detectors, and computers linking all of them to a security center on the property.
The estate might have attracted attention had it been in view of any passing motorist. Its hedges, fences, berms and plants hid its features from passersby, the first defense against trouble.
My name is Michael Ross. The berms didn't keep trouble out.
This story about the breakup of our family was, for a while, painful to remember. My twins Eric and Loren, later acquired and grown, told me that the telling of this story would be a great written history, so no one would forget Carol. Their progeny would better understand their own story.
There you go. I guess that's a raison d'être for the story, anyway.
I found my mom after losing her in an auto accident which looking back wasn't an accident at all. I missed my teen years with her. I lost my dad but for some reason never thought about him after his death. We didn't relate on any close level before he died—there was no sensation or feeling of loss there.
It seemed then, it still seems like a long time, those years after the accident before things changed. Losing and finding my mom and sister and finding them along with my lover is what this story is about.
I do know that reading other people's life stories is a little bit like watching someone else's travel photos or movies on a cold winter day in an overly hot living room at somebody's house (when you are a kid) with the photographer narrating each and every miserable slide or scene.
That genre of horror show uses a narrator, usually an amateur camera buff, who uses one or more of the following phrases in combination with a place name or day of the week...for each picture proudly presented to the captive audience:
"I don't remember exactly where we were when we arrived here, but..." or perhaps...
"Honey, do you remember the, uh, hotel in the background in this picture?"
Or "Here is the slide where Andy broke his leg...or was that the next slide?"
Or "I don't remember this slide at all. Maybe this was from last year's trip, honey."
Everlastingly on it goes.
The difference in my case is that although I started as a kid, I grew up quick after the accident. I decided to. I wasn't old enough to understand the necessity of the choice at the time. I just took the proverbial bull by the horns (how Freud and Jung would have carved that roast, I don't know) and moved on one day at a time.
This story isn't a home movie although I was the photographer of my own life. I remember every scene clearly; I cannot escape the telling because it is now a part of my history, my teen years, this damage. I could temporarily change my circumstances then, but not my feelings. I was looking for a rock I had lost, a base; It wasn't just an afternoon's quest but a constant ache for a long time.
I am one of those people who is friendly to everyone, not easily provoked, easy-going, cheerful mostly. I have to say this process strained my definitions of who I was and my perceptions of how I did things.
My mom's father, Frank Schuyler, passed away some years previously and his will left my mother everything: the stocks, the real estate holdings, the companies, the house with its land, and the jet. He placed all of that wealth in what came to be called the Schuyler trust. I might have met him once but don't remember it.
In any event, Mom was the sole beneficiary, the sole owner of the trust. The stocks amounted to nearly six per cent of Boeing, along with huge stakes in Apple, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Pfizer, and smaller chunks of some twenty other equities. I didn't know her net worth precisely then.
She had told me once that there was a probability that after her death or other impairment I would be the next beneficiary.
I hadn't wanted to think about that and didn't.
The billions in equities would have been simple enough to add up based on the stock market prices of the day multiplied by the number of shares owned, an easy spreadsheet task. I didn't particularly want to know. Those numbers weren't on my radar then.
The value and quantity of real estate holdings changed on a daily basis due to changes in supply and demand, among other factors. Since her trust corporation was privately held, it was able to screen a good deal of her holdings in layered corporations, not a few of which were sheltered from scrutiny by registration hidden elsewhere.
Perhaps this was to shield money from U.S. Federal and State taxes. I never said Frank or my mom was perfect.
Mother's real estate holdings were divided into residential and commercial divisions.
A variety of residential and commercial properties in New York, Florida, California, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, Alaska, and Georgia accounted for much of the U.S. real estate holdings. The trust had a national real estate division that managed them.
A variety of very large international commercial properties catered to quiet wealthy corporate customers in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Paris, London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Madrid, Nice, Monaco, and Frankfurt. Some were giant industrial parks. Others were hotels. Some were condominiums for investment.
One was a luxury hotel chain with properties in India, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Shanghai and Singapore. The trust had a division devoted to the commercial properties: their care and feeding; rent management, property maintenance, and leasing. All were profitable and produced income. Lots of it. The trust was awash in cash, more than mom could spend if she kept spending twenty-four hours every day.
Mom had no siblings except for an estranged half-sister from a previous marriage of her fathers. The sister was independently wealthy by marriage. Their mother had absconded many years previously, not apparently having read Oscar Wilde's famous dictum about generous mothers or being able to withstand the lure of Las Vegas to a wealthy divorcee.
My grandfather Frank announced his choice of the next beneficiary of the trust to my mom on her fourteenth birthday. Frank wanted Carol to take charge of his wealth after his time was up and to succeed with the wealth he had created.
To that goal, he spent a good deal of time with mom explaining the nature of money as analogous to a crop which grew, had natural enemies, needed watering and fertilizer from proper attention to the condition of the "plant", and benefited from pruning and harvesting.
He told her that money was to be used for good, but not given away to what he called the "undeserving." Carol didn't miss much. She understood what Frank was about. Mom had her own ideas how wealth might benefit society.
Her father had been new money, off grid and off politics. His focus in life was on family and neighbors and he spent a good deal of time thinking and planning and doing...for the future.
He had adopted an idea that thirty stocks could constitute equities diversification if chosen properly. Frank's portfolio included more than equities, however. Gems, gold, and other precious metals attracted his attention. In those days fortunes were made and lost on commodity markets. He wasn't interested in loss so he avoided that market. He also avoided options and most bonds. Only the safest of bonds, and not many of those, brought some balance to his wealth.
Frank was not a huge fan of government bonds at any level, federal, state. or local. He didn't like the idea of politicians spending money that might interfere with the repayment of those bonds, which his intuition told him weren't worth the paper they were printed on until repaid.
"If I could be guaranteed that politicians would put money aside for bond repayment and leave it the hell alone," Frank would tell his daughter, "bonds might be attractive since the yields are specified. Pity that the politicians love to spend money they shouldn't spend."
He did not give money to any other than his family. No organizations. He owned no politicians. Buildings named after him: none. Charities: none. He was a generous tipper because he believed anybody that worked hard for him deserved a tangible `thank you' to take home for his or her family.
His ideas about wages for employees were generous, considering that employees might be more likely to be loyal (he liked loyalty) which actually cost him less over the long run for training new people. He didn't like turnover. He gave health and dental benefits to each employee long before anyone else did. His idea was that healthy employees were able to work harder.
He did not believe, however, in rewarding what he regarded as idle behaviors such as maternity leave.
His one bow to self and pleasure, aside from the helicopter, was his private jet. He felt he deserved a new Gulfstream jet every two years with which to visit his business properties.
Frank advised his daughter to acquire the best pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and facilities using world-class protocols for maintenance and updates.
"Don't stint on the details," he told her. "Details matter at forty thousand feet in the air over an ocean."
Every electronic option for the pilot deck, every possible galley option (freezer, refrigerator, microwave and convection oven) with more than adequate linen, china, and crystal storage was installed. Extra-large fuel capacity had been installed.
The jet had a generous pantry size. The masculine interior included the softest leathers, flat-bed seats before their time. The bed, covered with high thread count Porthault linens in a warm brown hue and a splendid down comforter, invited long naps.
Frank had decided that since he spent many hours in his Gulfstream, he would have the best crew money could hire. All of his pilots had military, some had additional commercial experience, and most had accumulated Gulfstream hours. His maintenance crews were paid well and were trained to work in large, comfortable permanent hangars at Teterboro Executive airport near New York City.
The proximity to the city and its multiple large airports, he found, facilitated hiring the best maintenance personnel from a large pool. Their work-bays were equipped with the best tools and the workers logged their work as required, completing FAA reports, and their tasks on time.
He did not want to farm his jet maintenance out to a commercial airline company. He wanted original, genuine OEM parts, not some knockoff used parts from "who knows where."
The latest iteration of her father's jet was named "Rainier" in honor of the mountain in Washington state. He had toured the park as a teenager one summer and camped for a few days at Ohanapecosh, a little piece of heaven on the eastern slope of Mt. Rainier with tall Douglas fir trees like a cathedral, never logged, virgin and adjacent fields of wildflowers that pretty much matched his limited ideas about what heaven must look like if God had taste.
Rainier's city-pair range was long enough to get from New York to Anchorage. If he was on the way to Beijing or Singapore or another distant destination, the refueling process was more than a rest stop from travel itself. He usually did the only personal shopping he ever did by getting off the jet and buying chocolate and ice cream and other great junk food (explaining to one and all that it was for his daughter, of course).
He hated to admit that he had a sweet tooth himself. Carol liked chocolate and he liked buying it for her. That was it. That explained the chocolate junketing perfectly well for Frank.
For Carol, chocolate became a geographical peg, a cue to locate herself in the world after a long trip to wherever... London, Paris, Mexico City, et cetera. Chocolate with chili, sweet chocolate, dark chocolate, chocolate with sea salt, chocolate with citrus zest, drinkable thick warm chocolate, bonbons, truffles, and mocha--all thrilled her global map neurons to pieces.
Since enough pilots took call, the jet was available at short notice for global trips, standing always provisioned and fueled unless scheduled for downtime due to maintenance, repairs, or installation of new equipment.
The jet featured two multi-channel satellite telephones and fledgling data services, later the newly minted network, `the Internet'.
Carol was used to being wakened at odd hours for flights to places far away, often waking in high, sunlit skies at 41,000 feet elevation not knowing where she was at first, then checking the flight map monitor close by.
She had access to digital lectures, movies, and seminars during the trips. She participated in some and had access to her tutors instantly. Rarely, the tutors would accompany Carol and Frank for an extended trip.
She spent a lot of time alone. She, conversely, was not lonely. There was always someone with whom to interact. She didn't miss siblings because she had grown up without any in the house. She didn't find refuge in things. They were merely what she was accustomed to having.
The concept of paying bills was limited to double-checking some major transactions regarding investments. She had never paid a utility bill or a phone bill. Someone else did that in her universe.
Carol wasn't spoiled in the classical sense, where she was given quarter in every battle she undertook.
Her father did not play sports or openly carouse. It was possible that his work was a substitute for having fun.
Few save his male secretary knew him well enough to know. Frank prided himself in his ability to work with discipline. He did not drink or smoke. He did not "do" drugs, legal or otherwise. His exercise program consisted of walking in a different park or around his properties with four security guys for thirty minutes every weekday. He did not hobnob or talk to other rich guys. He didn't hobnob with anyone but his secretary.
He felt that consulting was a waste of his time. Buy and sell orders not originated by the brokers working for Frank went off by handwritten notes via his manly secretary, a handsome red-haired gentleman, and a very close friend.
William, the secretary brooked no criticism of his boss. His mind, heart and body belonged to Frank. In or out of the house, the jet, the bathroom, the bedroom, William made sure Frank couldn't do without him.
William compared copies of stock orders with order confirmations each week and prepared a one paragraph report based on findings for Frank.
Frank Schuyler did his own research. Opportunities for growth and return on his capital were suggested to him by himself. Period. He paid some attorney fees, mostly associated with the real estate portion of his business.
He hired the best accountant team from the best small accounting company in the Midwest. His tax return was always clean. The return measured six inches thick. The only incentives for his employees were small ones like complete medical insurance, full dental insurance, a 401-K plan matching dollar for dollar, ten weeks of vacation time, and six weeks of sick time with automatic firing of anyone who used it all in six weeks.
The large incentive was money. Salaries all measured at ninety-five per cent of the national average for similar work. His employees seldom left for greener pastures.
Frank's attention was to business and on occasion, William. Except when thoughts of his daughter sprang to mind. Like once an hour. She had big green eyes and resembled her mother now passed after her short time in Las Vegas and had a kind heart, very unlike her mother.
Like Mt. Rainier with its wonderful summer wildflowers, Carol evoked a deep paternal response in him and reminded him of the loveliest flower in the Northwest forest, the trillium. It was the Security staff's radio code and nickname for her.
Carol met Thomas Ross Esq. on a Monday afternoon at the Montgomery county fair, waiting in line to enter the sheep barn where a ram, judged Grand Champion for the year, had eaten all of his oats, unraveled his ropes by ram magic and was in process of charging out the door through anyone in his way. Tom Ross managed to grab the stump of the ram's rope and hung on to a couple of prizes.
Frank Schuyler's champion ram was saved that day and although it would be a gross error to suggest that Carol was the real Grand Champion or the real prize that day, Thomas knew opportunities almost as well as Frank Schuyler and didn't really care about much save the main chance in life.
Thomas wasn't dumb. He was, on the other hand, ethically challenged. His law degree, obtained at Princeton after a four-year college stint at Notre Dame, prepared him to safely plan for the future. Safe for his own future, that is.
Frank had spent money to investigate Thomas Ross and upon reading a report that analyzed Thomas six ways to Sunday had a feeling about him but decided that his daughter and Thomas could make what he thought he wanted most: grandchildren.
A few years later after Frank's death from a heart attack, Thomas proposed to Carol. He had been elected as Judge of the local circuit court, figuring that the campaign investment funds would soon be repaid from Carol's funds, the existence of which but not the exact whereabouts was known to him.
She married Judge Ross and over the years a boy and a girl, Michael and Barbara, came along, each healthy. She nursed, loved being a mother, loved her children, kept an eagle eye out for threats to them, tried to decrease risk for them, and tried to let them make mistakes as soon as there was benefit to them from that strategy.
Her husband had decided from the get-go that management of her fortune to be should not be left to anything but capable hands. His own hands, truth be known. The trust that conveyed money and power to Carol over time could, he thought, be handled in a way both legal and unlikely to get him into trouble.
Carol Schuyler's first auto accident at age twenty-six bruised her lumbar spine, causing decreased sensation in her legs, an inability to walk with confidence, and worst, in her case, wheelchair time for the foreseeable future. A patch of black ice had surprised her driver who promptly lost control of the car on a poorly designed curve. Her door opened, and the car rolled over her. Airlifted by helicopter to Philadelphia and treated by the best trauma surgeons available, she progressed to a point then lost the will to continue the physical therapy.
The Judge had lost it, privately, over the damage to his trophy wife. What if people pitied him because he was stuck with her now? Did she know how much extra work this was going to pose for him?
For all practical purposes the Judge had gently locked her up in the house with bonds of what he called "love" the day she came home from the hospital. She was let out to walk the kids with security along and went to a large church where no one knew anyone else. Security accompanied her to the country club whose annual dues ensured that only those who deserved his notice hung around his wife.
In the name of security, Carol was kept right where he could martial and manage the guiding forces of her life, that is, the money with which his marriage to this person, now a virtual cripple, had cost him. He was pretty sure she owed him.
He had a future with all of her money, he was certain, since no one else cared for her, or her fortune, as much as he, of course. He would overlook and forgive himself the slight problem of his excessive caretaker control, which, in the last analysis was a favor to Carol and the kids. He mentally pounded his gavel on that one.
Her money would be hers de jure, but de facto? He had that covered like an abandoned well. Or so he thought.
Carol Schuyler Ross had a bright, incisive intelligence along with that kind heart for her children. She became aware early on in her marriage that her husband cared more for her money than for her. Prolonged absences, a cold bed, and control issues marked their relationship.
He told her after the accident that her disability mattered, and he was going do additional work in the family to take the daily responsibilities of her money and property on, so she wouldn't have to deal with all that.
This declaration surprised her initially since she hadn't thought she was suffering at all saving her relationship to him.
She had decided to go along to please him and let him feel like he was contributing. He insisted, and it was still early in their marriage.
A small percentage of her mind, however, growing with time, was apprehensive about the lack of control over what she had always thought of as her father's bequest to her, not her husband.
After her father died, she had taken swift action to assume control. She worked to grasp the details of the trust Corporation's divisions and regions, her assets and liabilities, learning more about internal rates of return, depreciation, tax structuring, tax consequence planning, about audits, controllers, the fine points of managing managers, and evaluating the performance of her business advisors.
These last were a group of handpicked economists, attorneys, accountants, communications experts, and computer geeks who, with programmers and their sophisticated computing equipment, were the backbone of the trust.
Within a year after her accident, she had lost control of the trust in every way that mattered. She didn't hate her husband. She felt violated in more ways than one however. The thought of divorce, effects on her children along with the loss of a ton of money to her husband, and attorneys he would drag into the mess didn't appeal to her.
She waited, put up with him and arranged some things about which he didn't know.
He knew she liked gems. He didn't know she spent enormous sums on them and certainly didn't know where they were stored and protected. It turned out he knew nothing about her art collection either. He did not know which bank or what accounts housed her personal money. The trust accounting department was not chatty and did not feel any pressure from Carol to talk about her trust money to anyone either.
He also didn't know that she was careful to nearly an extreme. She had regularly seen her gynecologist among other specialists. He knew that. He didn't know that she had enlisted her OB-GYN to help her hedge her health, her life and her money. She explained to Dr. Watt that control of her property was in danger. She asked for a medical device she wanted, not on the market. She knew that he would follow through. He did.
Over time, a large donation from the trust was given to the biomedical engineering department of Dr. Watt's medical school. A single small device was built, tested and after another donation from the trust to her congressman about which the Judge knew, a private bill in Congress was introduced about which the Judge knew nothing, to require the FDA to approve experimental use of this device for "national security" purposes unless the FDA could prove that use would harm the patient.
A dermatologist friend of Dr. Watt agreed to excise a freckle and a skin tag on Carol's neck in the outpatient surgery clinic owned by Dr. Watt and an oral-maxillary surgeon recruited to implant the tiny device, about the size of a vitamin pill under the inside surface of her cheek. She had only to swipe her tongue over the healed bump inside her mouth to toggle on and off a switch.
The switch converted the pressure of the tongue to a tiny electrical burst on a frequency not generally used by communication devices. The energy travelled for thirty feet through space and through most walls. The receiving device was much like a voice-activated cell phone with special, abbreviated switch and control features. The receiving device emitted no sound or vibration and recognized Carol's voice only.
When the receiver was placed in a certain discrete spot on her wheelchair, the system was complete. The receiver automatically used Wi-Fi carrier frequencies in the house, switching like hummingbirds from one to another. Had anyone listened, they would have heard a bit of static and/or background noise? Her maid was paid very well to discretely remove the receiver and charge it daily.
She could communicate from her sitting room, function in her gem and art world, speak with her bankers and museum curators and just as importantly, talk to her own smaller gem and art storage facility in Philadelphia (smaller than the Schuyler trust repository in Manhattan which was a separately administered facility though she technically owned both), a magnificent repository with world-class security, backup communication systems, utilities, air conditioning, and staff hired from colleges in small Midwest states. Those staff were paid so much that no other position tempted them.
The loose gems lived in a large vault accessed by a discrete hallway. They were categorized by gem type and digital provenance; all were imaged, laser watermarked when appropriate, and any identifying data both noted and digitally stored.
They were further sorted by color. Each category and color were placed in a sealed bag. The bag was set on a digital scale which measured bag mass in grams to many decimal places in a clear Plexiglas cage locked with locks which opened after recognizing both a 5 finger and palm print along with a retinal scan on devices monitored continuously by computer.
The security computers were not connected to the Internet. They were dedicated to keeping constant track of the bag weights on each of the hundreds of scales. If those weights deviated, an instant crosscheck of the finger and retinal scanner logs occurred.
If a security supervisor failed to note and cancel the alarm, warnings were sent to Carol or her children in her absence by text, email, and cell phone. Most of the alarms were noted and quashed within seconds.
Many of the gems were either large or rare enough to be worth millions of dollars. They didn't rust, didn't need polishing on a regular basis, were not viewed by the general public and were not sold unless absolutely necessary. All were museum quality, but never destined for a museum.
The full-time Philadelphia art staff included those responsible for security, a small repair and maintenance shop, a moderate sized restoration department and a department responsible for provenance records and documentation. An accounting office kept track of the cash flow of acquisitions and sales and paid the bills independent of the trust.
Carol wanted all of this to be transparent to her husband. She succeeded. She left a notarized memorandum of understanding with his secretary that if she was ever sidelined, absent or worse under Pennsylvania law, that Michael, as firstborn, then Barbara was to be allowed access and ownership.
She was aware that her husband's secretary was a great and loyal personal friend.
There was no name on the door of either repository. There was a Philadelphia street name and number only. It was a titanium alloy door which opened only after matching and scanning a five finger, palm print and a retinal scan no matter who the inside security people thought was looking at them on camera. The small camera outside constantly scanned passersby, employees and owners, including Carol, Michael and Barbara.
The Judge and passersby weren't on the list.
Judge Ross did not know about the Philadelphia storage facility. He suspected she had huge amounts of after-tax income to spend. He had allowed it, he decided. He had arranged to recover it. All of it eventually.
He thought.
His secretary, a good friend of Carol, had, however, a backup file of Carol's financial access information. She did not share any of that with the Judge. She withheld bank names, account numbers, and related debit and credit card numbers from the Judge in a drawer inconveniently and irrevocably unavailable to him.
Judge Ross was decently adept at procrastination and delay in some matters. He felt he could trust his secretary to provide the details to him when the time came.
Mary Tate, the ideal circuit court secretary for a judge, served two masters cheerfully.
She knew this Judge well and wasn't impressed by his behavior or with the tilt of the scales of justice in this case. She felt it was her duty to level the playing field in Carol's favor.
Mary's dad, a devotee of not-so-fine wine in gallon jugs during most of her teen years, had made her life miserable. Mary's mother had been rescued more than once by stock market and financial education, courtesy of Mr. Frank Schuyler himself, who counted her mother as a best female friend from high school.
She saw the Judge as her father incarnate, a philandering drunk who, other than being a poor specimen of the father genre, was also a guy who deserved a brake on his activities.
Mary was a consummate `braker' as well as a smart lady. She worked in a courthouse and knew injustice when she saw it.
When Michael was thirteen, he brought home his first real friend, Darren for a sleepover after getting requisite permissions from Mary, his aunt. Carol knew Michael had zero interest in girls, hadn't worried about it and when she saw the personal level of interest between them figured a few things out quickly. The Judge was clueless.
Darren and Michael had talked about growing up during breaks at school and Darren had mentioned body changes, hair under his arms, his odd dreams, and other stuff which Michael had also noted along with a lower voice which still cracked sometimes to his annoyance. Michael and Darren weren't sure whether they should be talking about this but were thinking they should get together and talk some more.
At the sleepover, they managed to get better acquainted. The friendship didn't last since Darren's parents moved to Arizona six months later. Michael wasn't to see him again for many years.
Two lead attorneys on Carol's trust team knew Judge Ross more than any of the other local lawyers.
They argued cases in his courtroom for some years prior to their big break, after which their percentage of successful cases rose rapidly. Cooper and Stutlin, Esquires, had graduated from Yale and Princeton, respectively, came with stellar recommendations and had been vetted and hired by a Philadelphia legal firm with offices in Manhattan, Miami, and London.
As it turned out, they were amazing politicians, corrupt to astonishing heights and billed clients cheerfully for an hour after working for five minutes and sometimes after no work at all. They also had nothing but a stellar eye to opportunities for self-improvement.
It turned out, naturally, that competition had driven them to rise from new attorney on the block status to looking around for growth opportunities like having their own practice someday.
They had entered the Judge's chambers abruptly one day to find him engaged in an activity unbecoming to the judiciary known in Latin as "in flagrante delicto" involving a twenty-two-year old, muscular, and not-at-all embarrassed person.
Within a few days, Cooper and Stutlin were pleased to inform him verbally that they were, after all, reasonable people. They presented themselves as men of the world who knew that men "needed" to have their needs met on occasion and agreeably noted that the Judge could rely on their good will and discretion.
Judge Ross, smart as a whip, felt uneasy. As he assessed their behavior and words, he decided that they were, perhaps, potentially harmful, however he had to figure that he was still in control. Didn't they argue cases in his courtroom? Didn't they want and need a reasonably friendly judge on their side at least half the time?
Not that he would break the law or even bend it for them. He decided that he would, however, avoid going out of his way to rule against them. There. That sounded fair to him.
Feeling that a subtle approach might be more profitable with less work and risk, the attorneys soon presented a document to the Judge for his signature. Among other items, it specified that Carol's estate would be exclusively represented and managed by Esquires Cooper and Stutlin and representatives as first replacements for the Judge under the trust documents should he or she or the children become incapacitated in the future. They had no access to the Schuyler trust documents that addressed this very situation, but the Judge assumed they had parsed all that out.
In addition, if Carol were to become or remain `disabled', the document specified that the two of them would be first in line to present the enclosed Guardian ad Litem application to county authorities, also to be pre-signed by the Judge, undated, to take control of her money and her person to make such arrangements that the Judge might have made in those circumstances under the current terms of Carol's will, if the Judge became incapacitated. They had no access to her will, but assumed there was one and that it would, naturally, leave her worldly goods to her family.
The document was soon signed, notarized and exactly three copies distributed. One went to Judge Ross (only making its way as far as his secretary's hands), another to the attorneys themselves and another copy made, and unknown to the philandering judge, it made a journey to Manhattan to a certain Russian family there, more specifically to their team of attorneys.
The two attorneys, not wanting to complicate matters or `queer their pitch' had not informed the Judge that they represented other clients in New York City, including a Russian family who fed on many illegal lines of activity for a living. One of those was extortion and another was the sale of illegal drugs.
Much of the street cocaine and heroin trade below Central Park on Manhattan Island funneled through this large family, whose side business was on the order of "hey there, we want to do you and/or your business a favor and protect you from bad things." The family usually failed to mention that the bad things' were they, the family, and the consequences of not either forking over, paying up, going along, or worst of all changing suppliers of family' products or services in their territory.
That same family had diversified some in recent years into legal and more responsible businesses, but the driving cash behind the money-laundering firms came from their core businesses: extortion and drugs. They did not dabble in some crimes. Low unit-income offenses, low-life frequent-arrest crimes, bank robberies, prostitution, high-bail pursuits or murder. Those they avoided.
This was a family business and they excused themselves thinking that they were the best in the business. It's what they decided to think. It enabled them to live a part of their lives without too much guilt.
This trip wasn't exactly planned.
In fact, the upcoming trip that Father told us about that Friday morning over Belgian waffles, curried eggs, Canadian bacon, hand-squeezed orange juice and blackberries from the sideboard in the breakfast room had not been anywhere near his faux-patrician mind the week before as his valet hung up his suit, laid out his clothing for the next day, and quietly closed the tall double rosewood doors of Mother and Father's bedroom suite.
The plans had jumped unbidden to his cerebral cortex or some other part of him as he read a certain magazine stashed in his private bathroom while time passed there. A picture of the Jersey shore with ocean bathers had stimulated his imagination and he had vacillated a bit, but somehow was certain that the trip would be good for his family and also vastly entertaining for him.
The Judge loved little periods of guilty excitement and sometimes wondered why but had no interest in sharing with a therapist. A guy who needed help like that, he reasoned, was a weak sister who simply didn't have what it took to be a man and solve the problems presented to him.
He didn't get through law school by farming out the tough challenges to someone else. No sir. He liked what he liked and when and if he decided to somehow fix it, he would fix it himself.
By himself. By gum.
Reality was, he lacked the insight necessary to analyze why he might not want to make the trip, knew precisely what trouble he was pursuing and usually sought unnecessary pain and trouble whenever he could, especially when directed at his own pleasure. He rarely reflected on the wisdom of avoiding actions that didn't get him closer to his goals; his goals involved money and pleasure. Period.
My sister Barbara and I listened carefully. We kids did not present objections to dad's plans. We had learned over time to gather data before objecting to Father's plans. Father preferred that he argue only those motions from his children that involved facts.
For instance, if one of us had mentioned that we were expected to play a middle-school orchestra solo, thus preventing the proposed trip (and if that fact was supportable by evidence) he would at least listen.
On the other hand, if his child merely stated that they had an aversion to the planned activities springing from father's lips, the expected outcome was waste of everyone's breath.
I thought mother never objected to anything and was pretty sure she had married father for his looks, intellect, charm and company. I was also convinced he got the better deal from the get go. It wasn't until many years had passed before I realized that she married him for breeding stock, pretty much. As a kid, however, I just had mixed feelings about my father, but realizing biological kinship, I usually shut my mouth about it.
Mom discovered the sequential delights of marriage, did her duty, pushed out progeny and since at some point more children were deemed "inconvenient" by the Judge, she decided that sex was equally inconvenient.
Which decision was convenient for mother, seeing as how the Judge interested himself during the labors of love far more than he interested anyone else. Including her.
I was an adult when I deduced this. Neither parent ever breathed a word about it.
I remember the morning our young brash chauffeur Albert Thomas, he of magnificent construction and tight breeches, was summoned by the butler and given traveling orders. The valet and housekeeper packed for the family, and one of the maids dutifully trucked the bags out to Albert, who insisted on doing all of the loading of the limousine.
Father dismissed the Security Staff for the weekend trip.
"No need to go with us," he ordered, "I'll take good care of our `Trillium' and you guys can be with your families this weekend."
Albert was accustomed to last minute trips for the judge. He didn't care about his own schedule much and thought having a job was a good thing all in all as long as the pay check was adequate.
It was.
At age twenty-seven, he often had enough disposable income to buy rounds of drinks for friends at the Cherry Street tavern downtown in Philadelphia. Having worked for the Judge five years, he had never had so much as a fender-bender.
His usual rule was this: drinking and driving didn't mix except for when they on occasion did.
Recently, one Charley Burden had become acquainted with Albert over Heineken, approached him friendly enough, and during conversation at the Cherry Street tavern had discovered that Albert had never done marijuana or cocaine. Charley, incredulous, had suggested that life wasn't complete until one had tried the full range of options for fun.
Albert, after a couple of drinks had agreed to try some weed. The first reefer did nothing for him even though he inhaled deeply and tried to imagine all the things he had heard happened: munchies, increased libido, etc.
The second one he tried managed to summon up some relaxation.
By his third, he was not only ravenous, but the 40-year-old male bartender was looking pretty good to him. He then developed a real fondness for marijuana and the occasional foray into something stronger, a fact that didn't escape my sister and me.
We knew that these things existed, taught ourselves to recognize the dilated pupils of withdrawal from oxycodone and the pupillary constriction of a large dose, the increased irritability and trips to the bathroom with withdrawal and the marks on the forearm...and were only academically and superficially surprised to recognize our first case as our very own chauffeur, Albert.
Albert was not a computer genius and preferred a good old-fashioned map. He couldn't find his map for New Jersey. He wasn't sure that it was up to date anyway and needed to fill up the limousine's gas tank, so he glided up to the pumps at the gas station.
He asked the attendant to fill the tank with high octane and strolled inside to purchase a new map. He was paying for his map when Charley Burden walked in.
"Dude!" Charley exclaimed. "How's it going?" Albert explained the weekend trip about to happen.
"We'll go do Route 95 toward East Windsor tomorrow morning. If I know the family, though, we won't get to Levittown before supper. The Judge loves to stop at every historical site to teach his kids about history."
One hour later, Charley's boss, a Philadelphia consigliere, took all of this in. He recognized an opportunity to access a huge fortune for which his family connection would be grateful in some way and called a couple of people in New Jersey and New York, confreres in those states, to ask permission to operate in their territories briefly.
The consigliere received the accustomed collegial blessing to do so, made a mental note to return the favor which would come eventually...and left for his club in Philadelphia reviewing the details and preparing for supper and drinks at the club to be followed by a little pleasure with the men and women of the Golden Slipper establishment whose job it was to provide diversion, en masse usually.
He had never heard of Blossom, Marcus or John Jones, didn't know the intended victims, didn't care, and made a point not to know other details other than the cell number of two attorneys suggested by his colleague in New York as being ideal for that part of the plan. Those two attorneys, he suspected, worked for his own boss or perhaps colleagues in New York.
It didn't matter.
Cooper and Stutlin, pacing in their firm's conference room high over the Philadelphia skyline, received the call. Cooper called a mob event coordinator in Manhattan. "Execute the Ross plan," he said. The entire six-page plan had been formulated, detailed and practiced months before.
One of the planners was ex- military, brought trained logistics genius to the plan.
An ambulance, arranged. A crash, arranged. Willing doctors, check. An on-site coordinator, chosen. Friendly cops, money spent. A hospital floor furnished per spec, check. Nursing agency chosen, check. Document folders ready to present to the trust, pre-signed by the Judge, just needing to be notarized, check.
Six miles past East Windsor in heavy fog, Albert turned the car around making the excuse that he heard a noise in the carburetor. He had taken a thousand-dollar gift from Charley to participate in a traffic exercise study in U-turns apparently and was told to wear padded protectors; a foam- covered back brace under his suit and foam braces covering his hip and knees.
Barbara and I had noticed, of course. We didn't miss much. No one in the car but Albert heard any engine noise. No one except Albert in the limousine knew that he had been instructed to make the U turn exactly six miles past East Windsor.
A large truck broadsided us at a high rate of speed in the midsection of the car.
Chaos followed. Albert disappeared. I assumed that Barbara died. An ambulance took her away. The attendants told me she was dead. My father died in front of me within a few minutes before an ambulance or any police arrived. My mother disappeared in an ambulance. She looked pretty bad and wasn't talking, moving or making any noise.
It hurt really bad to take in a breath, I had a giant headache, cuts from broken glass and an emotional hurt the size of New York. A couple of policemen wanted to talk to me on scene. Stunned, I managed some response and was taken away by another ambulance to a hospital somewhere in New Jersey.
I, Michael Ross, the young crown prince of the family survived, all alone.
Or so I thought.