The Devil's Casino (14 page)

Do I think that my father was so dispirited by what had happened that he was deliberately reckless? Not at all. He still had so much to live for. Martha wanted me to tell you: He was one of three people who died on the lake that night.

—Lara Pettit

O
n the evening after Chris Pettit ‘s last day of work, Lara Pettit and her boyfriend, Bill Gilchrist, went to Brooklyn Heights to take him out to dinner. He’d been living there with Martha Dillman since 1994. Lara wanted to “take his mind off” of everything, as if that were possible. But when they got there, Martha asked that they all spend the evening with her children: John, 10, Sophie, 7, and Tom, 3.

The children were curious to know what the “special occasion” was. Chris Pettit looked drawn and embarrassed as he told them he wasn’t going to be working anymore.

After dinner, Martha took the kids upstairs to bed and Lara and her father sat downstairs, not saying much of anything, and not needing to.

Over the next few weeks, Lara saw her father in tears several times.
“
I don’t think he could figure it out himself—much less tell his daughter—how he had failed,” she says. “I think it really hurt him because he had done so much for everyone there. . . . He felt like everyone had turned on him. He would just sit and cry.”

Soon after, Pettit went on a job interview, and, according to Lara, was asked for his resume. “He’d been the
president
of Lehman Brothers,” she says, “and he was being asked for a resume! ” He walked out of the interview.

The last time Lara saw her father was on January 19, 1997. They were driving to a relative’s christening in Connecticut and he insisted they stop at a bank, because he was determined to sell all the Lehman stock he held, which was now worth $6.8 million. Lara tried to stop him.

“I said, ‘Are you kidding me? Why?’ And he said, ‘I can’t—out of pride—I can’t hold on to this.’” There and then, he sold all his Lehman shares.

Father and daughter spoke over the phone a few weeks later. Lara’s sister, Kari, was going to come up and stay in Maine with Martha and Chris for the weekend before his birthday; Kari had not come to stay before. Kari, like the rest of the Pettit family except for Lara, had so far refused to visit with Martha. She was bringing a new boyfriend. Chris was lighthearted and excited.

(He had found his family’s freeze-out of Dillman hard to bear since he had helped each of them in so many ways. He had gotten his brother, Andrew (“Andy”), a job as a director at Lehman. His aunt, Elizabeth (“Liz”), also worked at the firm. She traded commercial paper. According to Lara, he was also bankrolling three of his seven siblings’ families, who repeatedly asked him for money. He appeared to give it gladly, so he was hurt by their sudden distance.)

Lara says that when she hung up the phone, she was smiling. It was good to hear her father happy again.

Dillman and Pettit spent a good deal of that winter in her cabin in Maine, where Martha had grown up. It was a modest home, and they were going over their plans to build a bigger house nearby so that they could host all their children.

They were thrilled that Kari, then a graduate veterinary student at Tufts, and her new boyfriend, Rich, who was a computer software engineer, had accepted Martha’s invitation to stay on the weekend of February 15, several days before Chris’s 52nd birthday. “It was a big deal, a turning point for Dad,” says Lara.

For dinner Saturday they ate lobsters and drank wine. Kari recalls that her father was in excellent spirits, that they had a wonderful conversation.

It was Kari who suggested that they go snowmobiling after dinner—f un but dangerous in the dark. Kari knew, however, that Lara and
her
boyfriend had done it only a few weekends before and found it exhilarating.

She didn’t know that Lara had also been scared out of her wits.

“There are stumps in the ice you just can’t see. With four of us on the snowmobile at least we stopped him going too fast, but it was dangerous,” recalls Lara.

Kari asked Rich and her father to not get on the snowmobiles until she made a quick drive to the local store for cigarettes.

When she returned she saw that they’d left without her. Martha was inside. And suddenly there was Rich in the driveway, covered in blood, calling for help. He and Chris had been snowmobiling and hit a stump. Chris had fallen, his helmet had been dislodged.

Kari told Lara what happened next. “When my sister’s boyfriend went over to him, he was still alive, but he had a blunt head injury. Rich couldn’t carry him . . . so he just left him and went running around to nearby houses. . . . He was covered in blood, banging on people’s doors, trying to get someone to call for help. He couldn’t get anyone to open their doors. He finally made his way back to Martha’s cabin. He said, ‘Come with me! Come with me! He ‘s still alive!’ But by the time the police came, it was too late.”

Martha was questioned by the police since the accident occurred on her property and on her snowmobile. Rich was taken to the police station to give his statement and then released.

Kari was inconsolable. She blamed herself for his death.

Martha was asked if she wanted an autopsy. She rang Jim Sullivan, a lawyer who was an old friend of Chris’s, and then Bill Pettit, Chris’s older brother, and broke the news to them. She suggested to both men that if there was an autopsy, Pettit’s blood alcohol levels would make for ugly headlines. They all agreed there was no need.

That Sunday evening Bob Genirs returned home and found 18 messages on his voice mail. He hit “Play,” and heard Martha telling him Chris had died. She’d planned a funeral in Brooklyn on Monday. Four calls later there was a message from Mary Anne Pettit, saying a funeral had been planned for Tuesday in St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, in Huntington.

Mary Anne Pettit was livid when she heard of Dillman’s plans. “It was like she kept his body hostage,” she said. “Was there no end to her scheming?” (Dillman did not want to comment on anything to do with Chris Pettit.)

Two “wives,” two funerals, but Lehman executives did not need to ask which funeral to go to. They all showed up for the Mass in Huntington on Tuesday, although there were several awkward moments.

The first was during the funeral procession—or rather, the two funeral processions. There were the Pettits, led by Mary Anne, and then there was Martha Dillman, with John and Sophie. Sitting at the front of the congregation at St. Patrick’s were Dick Fuld and Joe Gregory.

Steve Carlson recalled seeing Tucker at the funeral. The two men had not spoken since that tearful scene in Pettit’s office. It would be years before Tucker could forgive himself for not reconciling with his friend. “He had his arm around Mary Anne,” Carlson said. “And we all knew that Tommy was part of the kerfuffle that took out Chris. We knew that he didn’t feel good about this. He had this tortured look on his face.”

The Pettit children were appalled when Martha ‘s eldest child, John Dillman, took his position as one of the pallbearers. Chris Pettit Jr. turned to Mary Anne and said, “There’s no way he’s touching my father’s casket.” But no one stopped him. He was, after all, a child.

Tommy Tucker gave the eulogy as his friend was laid to rest beside his brother Rusty in Farmingdale, Long Island. As the coffin was lowered into the ground he said:

When I look out at all of you, and think of all the lives that Chris impacted, the word that I focus on is
love
.

I had a conversation recently that touched upon the subject of love. I learned that fear is the main obstacle in developing a loving persona. If you get through the fear, you can achieve wonderful things. Chris was the guy who removed the fear from all of us. . . .

We were all better when he was around, because he took away the fear and gave us confidence. . . . Chris has made it easier for all of us to realize our full potential. He set the tone. He moved the obstacles. He made it fun. And he did it for all of you because he loved all of you.

Many of the Lehman people then went back to the city in their separate limos, back to their separate intrigues. Some left Pettit in the ground that day; some never forgot him. Tucker hasn’t. He finished his eulogy that day with these words:

I am sure his spirit will be with me for the rest of my life.

Which was, in some morbid fashion, true. Tucker was so haunted by Chris Pettit that six years after the funeral he visited a medium, James Fargiano, who is so heavily booked that he takes reservations a year in advance. Tucker says Fargiano was worth the wait. The medium, he says, summoned up Chris’s spirit—after he had brought in the spirits of Tucker’s parents to convince the skeptical Tucker this was no hoax—and the two old friends, or rather a spirit and a man, finally made their peace.

Tucker stayed close with Mary Anne. They were both shocked to discover that a codicil in Pettit’s will left half his estate to Martha. The codicil was dated May 1994. “It was the date that horrified me,” says Mary Anne. She does not understand why he would have done such a thing unless he felt guilty for making Dillman give up her job.

Steve Lessing always kept an eye out for Chris ‘s children—he got Chris Jr. a job as a scout with the New York Giants. And he bought Finnegan’s and gave the Pettit children a share of the investment in the place. It’s currently one of the most popular pubs in Huntington.

There was no end to the enmity between the two “widows”: The Pettit family was shocked to learn that not only would Martha Dillman be getting half of Chris’s money but she had also taken out a $4 million insurance policy on Chris’s life.

Why—and how—could she have done that? Mary Anne Pettit certainly didn’t understand. She wanted to hold a wrongful death hearing, but refrained when she heard that Kari would have to testify.

Kari still blames herself for what happened. She rarely speaks about that night, and there was no way she could have made it through a trial.

Dillman also contested Mary Anne’s claim to Chris’s deferred compensation. Mary Anne appealed to Dick Fuld for help, and he assured her that Dillman would “get the money over my dead body.” Legally, as Chris’s widow, there was no doubt that Mary Anne had the right to the money, and Fuld kept his word. Mary Anne received Chris’s deferred compensation—until, that is, Lehman filed for bankruptcy, and all deferred compensation checks stopped.

Dillman moved on quickly. In November 1998, the year after Pettit’s death, she married Douglas Malcolm Schair; he had bought the large house in Maine she and Chris had built. They soon divorced, and in 2004 she married William Zeitz, vice president of the Maine College of Art. She is now separated from him.

Joe Gregory kept in touch with Mary Anne Pettit; they were, after all, neighbors and Lara was still working in the Lehman office. The Tuckers remained her best friends.

Perry Moncreiffe, who came over from Britain for the funeral, says that when he saw Joe Gregory that day he was struck by how his demeanor had completely changed. Moncreiffe says he was no longer the Ponderosa’s “Little Joe.” He was now a man ascendant, a man of power.

Not long after Pettit’s death, Tom Tucker started a camp for financially deprived children who otherwise would never have a chance to escape the city.

He originally wanted to call it Camp Lehman Brothers and had gone in to meet with Gregory and Fuld to see if that was okay, since half the camp board was comprised of Lehman Brothers people. To his immense disappointment and frustration, Fuld and Gregory told him no.

“I think it would be great publicity for the firm to do this,” Tucker argued. “That fell on deaf ears,” he says. He does not know why.

The donations from Gregory added up to around $60,000, which was more than some former colleagues gave but a lot less than others. Fuld gave $10,000.

Over time, Tucker raised $3 million for the camp from many Lehman employees, including Steve Lessing and the former head of the Boston office, Bob Cagnina.

Tucker decided to name the camp the Fiver Children’s Foundation. The subtext was clear: He was naming the camp after the runt bunny from
Watership Down
whose ambitions were pure and brave—what Chris Pettit once stood for, what they had all once stood for in a dim and increasingly distant past.

Richard Adams, the author of
Watership Down
, came with his wife for the camp’s opening, and today, 500 children a year attend the camp in Poolville, New York. It is considered a huge success. In August 2006, it was featured in a segment narrated by Matt Lauer on the
Today
show.

Tucker, being the generous man that he is, never complained again about the lack of support from Gregory or Fuld—though he was very taken aback three years ago when he received a call from Nancy Hament, a former Lehman executive who had just had lunch with Gregory and had some surprising news. She said Gregory had told her he had never really liked Tucker. He felt they had different styles. While Tucker had never been as close to Gregory as he had been to Lessing or Pettit, he had believed they had a genuine friendship. He had even taken Gregory to lunch six months after he ‘d left Lehman because he’d felt like Joe was “slipping away.”

When he heard what Hament said, Tucker felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Joe? His carpooling buddy?

He called Lessing, who was more sanguine. Lessing told Tucker, “Joe’s a phony, Tom. Haven’t you worked that out yet? A complete phony.”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.