The Aspen Account (17 page)

The tires chirped on the cold runway. He was back in Aspen, yet he could take no comfort in being home, for he knew that his life was changed forever. The one thing he had feared for more than a decade was finally happening, and it had taken him too long to realize it. He was devastated by the realization that he had failed to protect the only thing that really mattered.

Closing his sad eyes, he felt the jet roll to a stop in the dark winter paradise.

27

MICHAEL’S FATHER SOUNDED eager for news. “So busy season is in full swing?” It was Sunday evening when the call came, and Michael was just back from being in Aspen with Sarah.

“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “‘Busy’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“And your mother says you’ve been put on the X-Tronic engagement. That’s exciting stuff, son. One of the best companies in the country. Nice job.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Michael said into the phone, feeling a sudden pang of guilt. He hated not being able to tell his father the whole truth: about the peril his job was facing at the firm, his growing suspicions of fraud at X-Tronic, and his hidden agenda for Glazier.

“How are your classes?” Michael asked, hoping to steer the conversation to more comfortable ground. “Find your next protégé yet?”

Ernest Chapman laughed. “There are one or two possibilities, I think. But none even half as good as you were.” He paused. “Your mother and I went to visit your grandfather’s grave up in Haddem. It was his birthday, so we took a nice wreath for his tombstone.”

“I wish I could have gone,” Michael said as images of his grandfather flitted through his mind. The clearest, most potent memory was of himself, age seven, sitting on his grandpa’s right leg and steering the old brown Ford pickup. His grandpa was the only one who would let him “drive” at such a young age. Those were innocent times for Michael, still years before he was old enough to hear the story of his family’s history in Elk County, Pennsylvania in the 1950s, before they had to move away to Kansas. It was his first real lesson about both the good and bad sides of business. And although his father hadn’t said so, Michael suspected that his grandfather’s shame had much to do with his father’s becoming a professor of accounting and finance. It was as if, when his father stood before a classroom to teach business ethics, corporate responsibility, and proper accounting practices, he was making amends for what his own father had done many decades earlier.

They chatted another ten minutes about weather, fishing, and hometown politics. After hanging up, the stories about his family’s history in Bethel, Pennsylvania newly stirred up within him, Michael found himself more driven than ever to keep investigating the mysteries he had uncovered at X-Tronic.

*     *     *

Alaska’s heart sank when she walked into the Funky Buddha and saw her three paintings still hanging on the wall. Even after lowering the price on each, she still hadn’t gotten a nibble. It seemed, no matter what she did, she just couldn’t sell her work. Moments like this made her really question her dreams of being a professional artist.

Spotting the owner’s gangly frame behind the bar, she forced a smile. “Still no buyers, huh?” she said.

“Sorry,” he said in a tone of genuine sympathy. “We haven’t really been selling anybody’s work this month,” he said, cocking his head to the paintings over the other booths along the wall.

“At least tell me people noticed them,” she said.

“Oh, sure. They love your stuff—your booths are the most popular ones in the whole place. They just aren’t buying anybody’s, that’s all.”

For so many years now she had tried to keep optimistic about painting, but lately it was getting harder. All her life she had felt a little different from others, a little strange, almost like an outsider. She had loved painting for as long as she could remember. As she grew up and had to deal with her mother’s leaving and her father’s accident that left him blind, there had been times when the only moments in her life when she felt balance and control were while painting. It had become her personal escape from the world. Later, near the end of high school, with the building pressure to choose a career to study, she had feared she could never fit into the kinds of careers that even her closest friends were thinking about. There had just been something different about her, and for a long time she had worried she would never find a path of her own.

Finally she had decided to pursue the uncertain career of her passion. Studying art history and painting at the university had felt like living a dream, but it hadn’t prepared her for the difficulty of continuing that dream after she finished college. Now she had been following this path unsuccessfully for years, and she was beginning to feel stuck. She could no longer envision where her life was taking her, and that scared her. And as much as she loved painting, she worried that pursuing it might be ruining her life.

“You don’t mind if I leave them up, do you?” she said quietly. “I know you usually have a three-week limit.”

“We’ll keep ’em up as long as you like,” he said. “I kind of like them anyway—be sorry to see ’em go.”

“Thanks, Rory,” she said. “You’re a pal.” She felt that she should say something else, but the melodic ring tone of her cell phone broke into her thoughts. “Is the upstairs open?” she asked the owner.

“Sure,” he said, “but no one’s up there. Go right ahead.”

She answered the phone as she moved toward the stairs. “Hey, Dad,” she said, trying not to sound as off balance as she felt.

“Hey, angel,” the raspy voice said. “Save any souls lately?”

“No time,” she replied with a wry chuckle. “Still too busy trying to salvage yours.” She was feeling a little better. She loved talking to her dad, loved hearing that gruff laugh.

“I’m a lost cause, kiddo. You’d be wise to cut me loose.”

“Oh, shut up, Dad. What kind of way is that to talk to your daughter?”

“The bank called again.”

Alaska grimaced. Now she knew why he had called. It was never just to talk. It was always to tell her either good news or bad news. For the past six months, there seemed to be only the latter.

“What did they say? Can they give you another extension?”

“I talked them into it,” he said. “I think they feel bad ’cause I’m blind and live alone. Maybe it would be bad publicity to foreclose on someone like me. Still, I don’t think their charity will go much further. And I’m not even sure what good the extension will do—I’ve gotten next to nothing from record royalties in the last five years. I think
that
golden goose is finally cooked and eaten. I need to talk to someone about foreclosure and bankruptcy. I’ve never understood how those things work, but I’d better start learning fast. Maybe there’s some protection.”

“Damn it, Dad, why’d you send me to Berkeley to study art if we were starting to have money problems? Do you know how much that
cost
? And do you know how hard it is to make money painting? I would have made different decisions if I’d known back then how much trouble we were in. I could have done something to help us.”

“Aw, angel, you’ve always wanted to be a painter, ever since you were a little girl. I wasn’t gonna rob you of that.”

Her eyes were tearing up now as she looked down from the empty rooftop bar onto the cold, gray city street below. She felt so powerless to control events in their lives. 

“Well, at least I’ve known about this for a little while, Dad. I’m going to help us through this. I’ve got a job waiting tables at a nice restaurant downtown. And I’ve got other things going that could make a lot of money. I’m painting some of the best work I’ve ever done. Just hang on a little longer, okay? Things are going to get a lot better for us again, I promise.”

“I’m so sorry you have to worry about this, angel. It’s not fair you should have to carry this burden. I’m not the greatest father.”

“No? Well, you happen to be the greatest dad
I’ve
ever had, so there. I love you, and I’ve loved the life you gave me. It’s time I gave a little something back. I have to go now, Dad, but I want to talk more later on. Can I call you this evening?”

“Anytime, angel.”

When the call ended, she was in one of the main outdoor booths on the vacant balcony. Her father’s voice had kept her strong and motivated, but the moment his voice was gone, she felt overwhelmed by sadness. It wasn’t fair. Things weren’t supposed to be this tough. She wasn’t supposed to have to make the decisions she had made during the past month. She felt hollow inside, and sick that she could do nothing to protect her father.

It was the two of them against the world, as it had always been: her mother leaving them, the accident that left him blind, and now the money problems. Just one bad thing building on top of another over the years. But she wasn’t going to let the world beat them. Not anymore. If it meant protecting her daddy, she would do a deal with the devil himself.

28

AT SEVEN O’CLOCK Monday morning, Michael sent an e-mail to the Cooley and White audit team at X-Tronic, saying he wouldn’t arrive until midmorning. Then, grabbing one of the two briefcases of the contract copies, he drove downtown to the corner of Stout and Seventeenth. The towering gray buildings shaded the crowded streets and alleys in an urban setting that now seemed foreign after so many weeks working in the sunny suburban Tech Center. Navigating his way through the pedestrian throng on the final leg of its morning commute, he arrived at the elegant brass doors of the United First Bank. The oldest financial institution in the Rocky Mountain region, it had remained an archaic, stand-alone bank, keeping its long tradition of conservatism and discretion—the very qualities that made it most attractive to Michael in this moment.

He went to the front counter and asked to speak with an account representative. Within moments, a slender woman in a dark business suit crossed the marble floor to meet him. She led him to her office, where he selected a medium-size safety-deposit box. He then gave the woman his instructions: he was to call the bank and verify a rotating password on a weekly basis to confirm the continued storage of his briefcase. “I will call every Monday before noon,” he said. “If I should ever fail to make the call, please contact this person and give them this message, along with full access to my deposit box.” He slid a sealed manila envelope across the desk. Looking down at it, she was visibly startled to see the name of the addressee.

*     *     *

Sarah left the
Denver Post
building Monday night and crossed Colfax into Civic Center Park. During the day, the small park sat as a peaceful, open medium between the State Capitol building and City Hall, nearly two hundred yards of lovely stone pathways stretching between the two seats of government, wandering past fountains, sculptures, flowerbeds, and benches. But by night, most pedestrians had vanished, and the trees lining the lawns made it a dark and shadowy place. Traffic circled endlessly around the area on the edge of downtown, and police cruisers were often seen in the vicinity, which kept the area fairly safe, but the roaming homeless, hustlers, and other street people gave some visitors a heightened sense of danger. But not Sarah. Denver was her town, and nothing could harm her as she moved through its shadows.

Walking across the dark hollow of the small Greek amphitheater where Hamlet had died on a dozen summer evenings, she paused to look at the lingering Christmas lights of City Hall. She hesitated before walking up the steps where she and Kurt had sat with friends watching
King Lear
’s tragic end. They had planned to catch
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
this June—something that would bring her to tears when the ads started popping up around the city in May.

Choking back the tears, she headed toward the lights of the Central Library, winking through the park’s dark trees, and followed this beacon as homeless people shifted like zombies in the darkness around her.

Reaching the other side of the park, she crossed the street and walked a half block along the five-story castlelike structure before reaching the library’s main entrance. She took the escalators up three floors and walked over a bridge to the entrance of the Western History section. Moving through the small security station, she realized how clever Michael had been to arrange the meeting here. For this was where many of the archived historical documents of the Old West were stored, and that meant added security measures. Everyone who entered this part of the library walked through metal detectors and had to check in all possessions: cell phones, backpacks, computers, and even notepads and pens. Librarians gave out wooden pencils and small squares of white paper so that people could hand copy things from the various historic documents, journals, and manuscripts, but nothing could be photocopied and absolutely nothing could be checked out. She realized Michael had picked this place because they could arrive alone without drawing notice but also have security and privacy. It would be tough for anyone to smuggle a surveillance device past the security station to record their conversation.

She walked into an elliptical-shaped reading room with a large wooden structure in the center that looked like the base of an antique oil rig rising up through the wood and glass ceiling. Moving past the dozen or so people in the large room, she crossed to the edge, on the other side of some tall bookshelves, and passed three private meeting rooms until she found Michael waiting inside the fourth.

“Thanks for coming,” Michael said when she came in. He sidestepped her to close the door, then adjusted the blinds over the windows before going back to the table. “These are good rooms.” When he sat, he looked at her as if trying to discern something from her expression. “Are you ready for this?”

“Yeah, I’m ready,” she said. “Now, tell me what the hell’s going on inside X-Tronic.”