Arthur P. Allaton
November 8, 1940 – September 21, 2012
Bryce Allaton stood next to the grave waiting to feel something. He’d taken the day off work, skipped his dentist appointment and driven all the way out here in the misting rain, and now here he stood, waiting for something to happen. Just what he was expecting, he didn’t know, but it should be moving, profound, life changing. With a little disappointment he looked down at the small dark aluminum frame with the plastic laminated sheet of paper that read Arthur Allaton, his father and thought to himself; yes, it’s the right place, how long does this usually take?
Bryce wanted to forgive his father for dying, and for having the accident that killed him and for doing the things that forced Bryce to change the way he thought about his father. Bryce just couldn’t figure out how to forgive him. It wasn’t as simple as just saying it or even thinking it. He’d tried doing both. He thought if he stood quietly by the grave, things would become clear, maybe he’d cry or hear music or maybe his father’s spirit would come to him and explain everything. You know, like in the movies.
His father, Arthur Allaton, had died last week on Monday, three days after having an “accident” at his house. On Monday Arthur normally would have been at work but normal was a good distance away now. Arthur Allaton was the co-owner of a small investment company that he’d started with a friend in the early 90’s just before investing had become fashionable again. Arthur Allaton had spent most of his life prior to that working in a commercial bank in nearby Port Ludlow in the investment department. At the age of 50 he’d decided it was time to take the next step, to build something for himself and maybe help others to earn their piece of the American Dream through prudent investment. That was what he’d announced to his wife Marilyn and their only child, Bryce, just before retiring and starting the company with his friend, Merritt Halley who worked at the same commercial bank in nearly the same position.
Bryce had always paid attention to whatever his father did. He patterned his life after his father. His father had taught him that the duty of the son was to learn from the life of the father and then do better. To do this, it was necessary to take many of the same initial steps and then using the resources and leverage that a strong background provided, go further and accomplish more. In turn, Bryce’s sons and daughter would be taught the same thing. It was a formula used over time by many elite families to create structures that spanned hundreds of years, like the noble lines of Europe or their American equivalents those family lines acted as examples of strength and power for the rest of the civilization. Those families seemed to be endowed by some supernatural force to raise them above the others. Arthur had taught Bryce where they came from and groomed him to take his place up there in the Allaton Pantheon.
So when Bruce was 24 years old with his newly printed MBA and hearing that his father was retiring from the commercial bank and going into investing with his friend Halley, Bryce saw this in the next step for his father. Bryce had known Merritt Halley as his father’s friend his entire life. Bryce paid attention. He watched his father’s fortune and reputation grow with this step and he did all he could to position himself in life as his father had.
His father and Mr. Halley were lifelong residents and well known to all as having solid reputations as good men of business. They both sat on the city council, the school board, the board of directors of the credit union. They were looked to as pillars of the community, active in their respective churches and the usual civic service organizations. Halley had even been the city manager of Pinecrest for four years.
Bryce acquired a family of his own with a beautiful wife and three wonderful children to carry on after him. He joined the service clubs, went to the business breakfasts and listened and spoke on the principles of citizenship and good business. He shadowed his father in almost every way. His waistline grew with his assets and power and self-interest and inversely to his hairline and his acceptance of new things.
Bryce’s mother Marilyn divorced Arthur after 45 years of marriage for reasons that Bryce never understood and never really cared about. He loved his mother, but they had never had the kind of close relationship that he’d seen in movies and television. He couldn’t explain it. She kept in touch, mostly on holidays.
Then, after 20 years in business with Arthur, Merritt Halley had disappeared. At first, there had been much community concern, what could have happened to him. Kidnapped? Foul play? Had he fallen, struck his head and wandered off under the influence of amnesia? No, his car had been found by the Washington State Patrol in long-term parking at the Portland International Airport, 125 miles from Pinecrest. There was still some doubt about what this meant until an investigation revealed he’d purchased a one-way ticket to Jakarta, Indonesia.
Bryce’s father at first defended Halley but anyone could see that Arthur Allaton was devastated by this turn. Because of its holdings, the Washington State Investment Board and the Attorney General’s office launched immediate investigations and got an injunction from the U.S. District Court to freeze the company’s assets to prevent Allaton or the company from moving any funds in or out until a complete audit had been performed. A federal marshal had placed a padlock and yellow tape with a red seal on the front door of the company.
That was on Thursday, four days after Halley had gone missing and the day before his father’s accident. That was the day Bryce had gone over to the big house where his father lived alone. Alone since his mother had left five years before. When no one answered the door he’d let himself in with a key his father had insisted that he have.
He found his father sitting silently at his desk in the large office he had at the back of the ground floor of his two-story house. After his wife had left, Arthur had remodeled the family room into an office that looked almost exactly like Don Corleone’s office in The Godfather, even down to the leather chairs and dark wooden venetians blinds behind the desk.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon and the blinds were almost shut so there were only bands of yellow sunlight visible behind his father when he entered the room. Backlit that way he could only see the silhouette of the top of the old man’s head above the back of the chair.
“Hello, son,” his father said to him quietly as he entered the room. “I thought I might see you this afternoon.”
“Hi, Dad. Gabe at the bank told me what happened. Any idea how this will end?” Bryce said and sat down in the large leather chair facing his father’s desk.
“Not well. It’s not going to end well, son.” Arthur Allaton sat quite still behind his large desk and looked at the bookshelf on the opposite wall.
“Do you know how much Merritt took?” Bryce asked. He’d been thinking about his father’s solvency. His father’s company might still be able to weather this storm if it could limit the damage to the integrity of the company. There would be insurance to cover the loss if it were a reasonable percentage of assets. The problem would be regaining the trust of the clients.
“Yeah, I know.” Arthur said quietly.
“Was it a lot?” Bryce was thinking like an MBA. He wanted to show his father he could help out here. This was, after all, a family problem to some degree. He was seen as his father’s son in this community.
“Everything. He took everything,” his father said, quietly and seemed content to leave it at that.
Bryce heard the tone of depression and defeat in his father’s voice. He’d never known his father to be this unhappy or hopeless sounding when it came to a matter of business, or anything in life. Arthur Allaton was known as a take-charge leader. He habitually maintained a positive attitude about everything. But now his voice was without energy, flat, emotionless.
Bryce was disappointed to think that his father was crestfallen by the betrayal of even so close a friend as Halley. Arthur Allaton was his own man and not sentimental about anything. At least that’s how Bryce thought about him.
“Everything? You mean Halley betrayed and disappointed you. He let you down. You’re naturally hurt. He took your trust and used it against you.” Bryce imagined his father was feeling very alone now. But he needed to understand, he stood for more than that, and Bryce was here to help him. He still had his reputation and honesty. People understood he couldn’t control someone like Merritt Halley and his dark schemes. Halley couldn’t take his self-esteem from him.
His father laughed a short mirthless laugh.
“No, I mean he took it all.”
“How could that be? He didn’t have control of everything. You mean he took everything in one fund or one account, right?” Bryce was getting angry that his father obviously couldn’t concentrate clear enough to report the facts. He was being weak and weakness made him seem disgusting. He wanted to reach over the big desk and shake his father. This was not the time to go jelly-legged. This was the time for clear thinking.
“No, I mean he took everything, including my retirement account. I mean even my savings and my money market. I mean everything.”
Bryce shook his head at this. It’s hyperbole. He’s not making sense. This is more serious than he originally thought. Maybe he’s having a nervous breakdown. How could they survive people knowing that his father had lost his mind, temporarily, granted, but you don’t allow people out of touch with reality to manage your retirement funds. Maybe, he could tell the doctor to call it nervous exhaustion or something like that. People would see it as a measure of how seriously his father took his fiduciary responsibility to his clients. Bryce need to call Dr. Lunsby, his father’s physician, and tell him that they needed to handle this whole thing with great discretion.
“Make sense, here. How could that be, Dad? How could he have gotten the account numbers and passwords and codes, let alone the authorization. Only you could have authorized movement of that money. There was no way he…”
His father sat there motionless, slumped a little with no expression at all on his face, at least that Bryce could make out in the dim light. Bryce paused with his mouth open, taking a few slow deep breaths, each breath a sigh, each sigh following the next logical sequence in his thinking. Finally, Bryce spoke again.
“He didn’t, did he? Merritt didn’t get your account numbers or your passwords or your authorization, did he?” Bryce asked and shook his head with each question.
There was a long pause before his father finally spoke.
“Life is short Bryce. You realize that after you’ve lived a while. It’s short and you don’t get another chance. All the little things that we settle for, all the little prizes we carry around, they don’t mean anything. This house, the car, the respect of your fellow businessman, the man-of-the-year award from the Rotary, the Kiwanis, The Lions Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the Presbyterian Church, all of them. Little plaques on the wall, for what? Bryce, for what?” Arthur waved his hands at the frames on the walls and the items on the bookshelves.
“I don’t understand. They’re what you wanted. They’re what I wanted. Right? They’re the proof of your life, right?” Bryce spoke slowly.
“I thought so. But I learned, Bryce. I learned but it was too late. Your mother saw it and left. She saw before I did. She saw our life meant nothing. She saw it was stage dressing. It was like a stage play, and we had the worst parts. She went to find a different smaller place, one where she mattered. I didn’t understand when she told me. But I caught on after a couple years alone, thinking about it. She was right,” his father said.
“I still don’t get it. What did you think you were going to do?” This was going too quickly for Bryce. How was he supposed to make sense of this?
“Anything I wanted, Boyo. Anything at all. Go anywhere, do anything. Well, almost. I couldn’t come back here,” he said with a little life in his voice.
“So you made this plan with Merritt? You were going to take everything and leave? Were you going to split it and go your separate ways? Is that it?” Bryce felt as though he’d been dropped into someone else’s life without any warning. He wasn’t equipped to think like this.
“No, no, no. Never that. With Merritt? Merritt Halley? Are you kidding? He was way too conservative and straight-laced for that.” Then he paused for a few moments. “Well, I guess he wasn’t, after all. Was he?” Arthur said this last part with a hint of amusement.
“So, let me understand this. You managed to move all the funds into a single account and then he took it before you could.” Bryce was struggling.
“He beat me to it. I still don’t know how. He never paid any attention to the business. He was the social schmoozer. He wined and dined the clients, I did all the hard work. It’s a miracle he found out about what I was doing. I was set to go on Tuesday. The money couldn’t stay in that limbo for more than a business day. He must have been watching everything I did. It must have been minutes after the last transfer. In 12 more hours, I’d have been gone. In the wind, never to be seen again.”
“Jesus.” Bryce said. “You.”
“Exactly. Me. For once, me,” his father said.
“So what now?” Bryce asked.
“Are you kidding? My fingerprints are all over this. He’s got the money but I have the bag. I’m fucked.” Bryce noticed that his father had never spoken to him in this way before, almost like an equal. It was also the first time he’d ever heard his father use that word. But it was the right word, the only word really, for this situation.
“Are you going to take off?” Bryce asked with some concern, but he couldn’t have said why.
“Oh yeah. I can’t see me in jail, can you? On the other hand, I’m 71, I could use the health care coverage of some posh country club for white collar crooks.” Arthur raised his right arm and spread his fingers in front of his face, as if framing an option.
“I don’t know. There’s plenty of time to consider that alternative. I’ve still got a little bit hidden away for a run.” He continued, finally weighing his choices aloud.
“I can’t believe this is happening. Never in my wildest imagination could I have seen this coming,” Bryce said as his racing thoughts re-entered the conversation at an earlier point.
“Yes, I know. It wasn’t how I pictured things either.” His father said.
“No. That’s not what I … Oh, never mind.” Bryce said. “Look, I got to get home. The kids will be getting home soon and I need to start dinner. If you decide to take off, let me know how you’re doing. Will you?”
“Sure thing, son. Maybe I can catch up with Merritt in Indonesia and convince him to split the dough with me. I could usually make him listen.” Arthur laughed at this.
Bryce looked at his father with a worried look on his face and shook his head. “Take care, Dad. I’ll …,” then he shook his head and turned around and left the office and the house.
In the local paper that evening there were several articles about the local investment company principal disappearing with some of the moneys they were handling for their clients. Bryce could see that they didn’t have any idea of the extent of the embezzlement yet. Interviews with several of the company’s clients contained the usual mixture of anger and disbelief. Bryce knew this was going to get much worse as the investigation got going in earnest.
He thought it would be a wise move for his father to disappear. In the meantime, his father ought to lay low and ignore the phone.
Bryce didn’t sleep that night and got nothing done at work the next day, Friday, for thinking about how his world had changed in the past few days. He was getting ready to drive by his father’s house to offer to get supplies for him when the police department called with the news that his father had shot himself and was being taken to the hospital with a head wound.
Reporters had gone to his house to speak with him when they’d heard the shot and called the police who had found him.
Bryce went to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit to see his father. He was in a coma with his head wrapped in gauze, hooked up to a ventilator. The doctor explained the situation to him. There were no surprises. By Sunday night he was visited by the Nursing Supervisor who suggested the possibility of donating a couple of his father’s organs to the local tissue bank. His father was a bit old for the heart and lungs, he could donate his liver and kidneys as he had no other major illnesses. Bryce agreed to the donation and his father was pronounced brain dead the following day and his organs were harvested and shipped for transplant.
Bryce thought that his father might appreciate that there was still a chance that part of him might yet catch up with Halley.
Over the following weeks, the police and investigating authorities questioned Bryce several times and even went through his accounts and finances to determine if any of the missing money had made its way into his hands. None had, of course, and the investigation confirmed that. Bryce didn’t mention anything of the conversation that he’d had with his father the afternoon prior to his “accident” and even though there was quite a bit of evidence pointing to fact that Arthur Allaton had moved money, at least from his own accounts into another account containing misappropriated funds, they were not able to rule out Merritt Halley coercing Allaton into transferring the money.
Indonesia had no formal extradition treaty with the United States and Halley’s trail went cold there. Insurance made good on most of the losses by clients of the company but that took another two years to conclude. The $500,000 life insurance policy that Arthur Allaton had in place in favor of Bryce as sole beneficiary was refused due to the circumstances of Arthur’s death, even though Bryce contested their conclusion that it was suicide and not an accident.
Bryce was unable to find the money his father had said he still had hidden away. He’d paid for his father’s funeral and ordered a headstone for his grave which was due to be delivered in the next two weeks. Until then there was a simple marker on the grave; a dark aluminum frame holding a paper, laminated in plastic with his fathers’ name on it. He stood next to the grave in the misting rain waiting for some sense of closure that he was pretty sure was a long way off.
It felt to Bryce that he’d been cut adrift in the world. He looked at his life and everything and everybody in it differently now. He was no long tied to his father’s path and that was a scary proposition at 46 years old. He missed his father but at least he knew where he was. When he had ordered the gravestone, the form asked what he wanted inscribed on the stone other than his father’s name and dates. He’d thought about that for a long while and decided to leave it blank. The father he buried was not the father he’d grown up with and it might take some time to reconcile the two.
The End
Bryce wanted to forgive his father for dying, and for having the accident that killed him and for doing the things that forced Bryce to change the way he thought about his father. Bryce just couldn’t figure out how to forgive him. It wasn’t as simple as just saying it or even thinking it. He’d tried doing both. He thought if he stood quietly by the grave, things would become clear, maybe he’d cry or hear music or maybe his father’s spirit would come to him and explain everything. You know, like in the movies.
His father, Arthur Allaton, had died last week on Monday, three days after having an “accident” at his house. On Monday Arthur normally would have been at work but normal was a good distance away now. Arthur Allaton was the co-owner of a small investment company that he’d started with a friend in the early 90’s just before investing had become fashionable again. Arthur Allaton had spent most of his life prior to that working in a commercial bank in nearby Port Ludlow in the investment department. At the age of 50 he’d decided it was time to take the next step, to build something for himself and maybe help others to earn their piece of the American Dream through prudent investment. That was what he’d announced to his wife Marilyn and their only child, Bryce, just before retiring and starting the company with his friend, Merritt Halley who worked at the same commercial bank in nearly the same position.
Bryce had always paid attention to whatever his father did. He patterned his life after his father. His father had taught him that the duty of the son was to learn from the life of the father and then do better. To do this, it was necessary to take many of the same initial steps and then using the resources and leverage that a strong background provided, go further and accomplish more. In turn, Bryce’s sons and daughter would be taught the same thing. It was a formula used over time by many elite families to create structures that spanned hundreds of years, like the noble lines of Europe or their American equivalents those family lines acted as examples of strength and power for the rest of the civilization. Those families seemed to be endowed by some supernatural force to raise them above the others. Arthur had taught Bryce where they came from and groomed him to take his place up there in the Allaton Pantheon.
So when Bruce was 24 years old with his newly printed MBA and hearing that his father was retiring from the commercial bank and going into investing with his friend Halley, Bryce saw this in the next step for his father. Bryce had known Merritt Halley as his father’s friend his entire life. Bryce paid attention. He watched his father’s fortune and reputation grow with this step and he did all he could to position himself in life as his father had.
His father and Mr. Halley were lifelong residents and well known to all as having solid reputations as good men of business. They both sat on the city council, the school board, the board of directors of the credit union. They were looked to as pillars of the community, active in their respective churches and the usual civic service organizations. Halley had even been the city manager of Pinecrest for four years.
Bryce acquired a family of his own with a beautiful wife and three wonderful children to carry on after him. He joined the service clubs, went to the business breakfasts and listened and spoke on the principles of citizenship and good business. He shadowed his father in almost every way. His waistline grew with his assets and power and self-interest and inversely to his hairline and his acceptance of new things.
Bryce’s mother Marilyn divorced Arthur after 45 years of marriage for reasons that Bryce never understood and never really cared about. He loved his mother, but they had never had the kind of close relationship that he’d seen in movies and television. He couldn’t explain it. She kept in touch, mostly on holidays.
Then, after 20 years in business with Arthur, Merritt Halley had disappeared. At first, there had been much community concern, what could have happened to him. Kidnapped? Foul play? Had he fallen, struck his head and wandered off under the influence of amnesia? No, his car had been found by the Washington State Patrol in long-term parking at the Portland International Airport, 125 miles from Pinecrest. There was still some doubt about what this meant until an investigation revealed he’d purchased a one-way ticket to Jakarta, Indonesia.
Bryce’s father at first defended Halley but anyone could see that Arthur Allaton was devastated by this turn. Because of its holdings, the Washington State Investment Board and the Attorney General’s office launched immediate investigations and got an injunction from the U.S. District Court to freeze the company’s assets to prevent Allaton or the company from moving any funds in or out until a complete audit had been performed. A federal marshal had placed a padlock and yellow tape with a red seal on the front door of the company.
That was on Thursday, four days after Halley had gone missing and the day before his father’s accident. That was the day Bryce had gone over to the big house where his father lived alone. Alone since his mother had left five years before. When no one answered the door he’d let himself in with a key his father had insisted that he have.
He found his father sitting silently at his desk in the large office he had at the back of the ground floor of his two-story house. After his wife had left, Arthur had remodeled the family room into an office that looked almost exactly like Don Corleone’s office in The Godfather, even down to the leather chairs and dark wooden venetians blinds behind the desk.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon and the blinds were almost shut so there were only bands of yellow sunlight visible behind his father when he entered the room. Backlit that way he could only see the silhouette of the top of the old man’s head above the back of the chair.
“Hello, son,” his father said to him quietly as he entered the room. “I thought I might see you this afternoon.”
“Hi, Dad. Gabe at the bank told me what happened. Any idea how this will end?” Bryce said and sat down in the large leather chair facing his father’s desk.
“Not well. It’s not going to end well, son.” Arthur Allaton sat quite still behind his large desk and looked at the bookshelf on the opposite wall.
“Do you know how much Merritt took?” Bryce asked. He’d been thinking about his father’s solvency. His father’s company might still be able to weather this storm if it could limit the damage to the integrity of the company. There would be insurance to cover the loss if it were a reasonable percentage of assets. The problem would be regaining the trust of the clients.
“Yeah, I know.” Arthur said quietly.
“Was it a lot?” Bryce was thinking like an MBA. He wanted to show his father he could help out here. This was, after all, a family problem to some degree. He was seen as his father’s son in this community.
“Everything. He took everything,” his father said, quietly and seemed content to leave it at that.
Bryce heard the tone of depression and defeat in his father’s voice. He’d never known his father to be this unhappy or hopeless sounding when it came to a matter of business, or anything in life. Arthur Allaton was known as a take-charge leader. He habitually maintained a positive attitude about everything. But now his voice was without energy, flat, emotionless.
Bryce was disappointed to think that his father was crestfallen by the betrayal of even so close a friend as Halley. Arthur Allaton was his own man and not sentimental about anything. At least that’s how Bryce thought about him.
“Everything? You mean Halley betrayed and disappointed you. He let you down. You’re naturally hurt. He took your trust and used it against you.” Bryce imagined his father was feeling very alone now. But he needed to understand, he stood for more than that, and Bryce was here to help him. He still had his reputation and honesty. People understood he couldn’t control someone like Merritt Halley and his dark schemes. Halley couldn’t take his self-esteem from him.
His father laughed a short mirthless laugh.
“No, I mean he took it all.”
“How could that be? He didn’t have control of everything. You mean he took everything in one fund or one account, right?” Bryce was getting angry that his father obviously couldn’t concentrate clear enough to report the facts. He was being weak and weakness made him seem disgusting. He wanted to reach over the big desk and shake his father. This was not the time to go jelly-legged. This was the time for clear thinking.
“No, I mean he took everything, including my retirement account. I mean even my savings and my money market. I mean everything.”
Bryce shook his head at this. It’s hyperbole. He’s not making sense. This is more serious than he originally thought. Maybe he’s having a nervous breakdown. How could they survive people knowing that his father had lost his mind, temporarily, granted, but you don’t allow people out of touch with reality to manage your retirement funds. Maybe, he could tell the doctor to call it nervous exhaustion or something like that. People would see it as a measure of how seriously his father took his fiduciary responsibility to his clients. Bryce need to call Dr. Lunsby, his father’s physician, and tell him that they needed to handle this whole thing with great discretion.
“Make sense, here. How could that be, Dad? How could he have gotten the account numbers and passwords and codes, let alone the authorization. Only you could have authorized movement of that money. There was no way he…”
His father sat there motionless, slumped a little with no expression at all on his face, at least that Bryce could make out in the dim light. Bryce paused with his mouth open, taking a few slow deep breaths, each breath a sigh, each sigh following the next logical sequence in his thinking. Finally, Bryce spoke again.
“He didn’t, did he? Merritt didn’t get your account numbers or your passwords or your authorization, did he?” Bryce asked and shook his head with each question.
There was a long pause before his father finally spoke.
“Life is short Bryce. You realize that after you’ve lived a while. It’s short and you don’t get another chance. All the little things that we settle for, all the little prizes we carry around, they don’t mean anything. This house, the car, the respect of your fellow businessman, the man-of-the-year award from the Rotary, the Kiwanis, The Lions Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the Presbyterian Church, all of them. Little plaques on the wall, for what? Bryce, for what?” Arthur waved his hands at the frames on the walls and the items on the bookshelves.
“I don’t understand. They’re what you wanted. They’re what I wanted. Right? They’re the proof of your life, right?” Bryce spoke slowly.
“I thought so. But I learned, Bryce. I learned but it was too late. Your mother saw it and left. She saw before I did. She saw our life meant nothing. She saw it was stage dressing. It was like a stage play, and we had the worst parts. She went to find a different smaller place, one where she mattered. I didn’t understand when she told me. But I caught on after a couple years alone, thinking about it. She was right,” his father said.
“I still don’t get it. What did you think you were going to do?” This was going too quickly for Bryce. How was he supposed to make sense of this?
“Anything I wanted, Boyo. Anything at all. Go anywhere, do anything. Well, almost. I couldn’t come back here,” he said with a little life in his voice.
“So you made this plan with Merritt? You were going to take everything and leave? Were you going to split it and go your separate ways? Is that it?” Bryce felt as though he’d been dropped into someone else’s life without any warning. He wasn’t equipped to think like this.
“No, no, no. Never that. With Merritt? Merritt Halley? Are you kidding? He was way too conservative and straight-laced for that.” Then he paused for a few moments. “Well, I guess he wasn’t, after all. Was he?” Arthur said this last part with a hint of amusement.
“So, let me understand this. You managed to move all the funds into a single account and then he took it before you could.” Bryce was struggling.
“He beat me to it. I still don’t know how. He never paid any attention to the business. He was the social schmoozer. He wined and dined the clients, I did all the hard work. It’s a miracle he found out about what I was doing. I was set to go on Tuesday. The money couldn’t stay in that limbo for more than a business day. He must have been watching everything I did. It must have been minutes after the last transfer. In 12 more hours, I’d have been gone. In the wind, never to be seen again.”
“Jesus.” Bryce said. “You.”
“Exactly. Me. For once, me,” his father said.
“So what now?” Bryce asked.
“Are you kidding? My fingerprints are all over this. He’s got the money but I have the bag. I’m fucked.” Bryce noticed that his father had never spoken to him in this way before, almost like an equal. It was also the first time he’d ever heard his father use that word. But it was the right word, the only word really, for this situation.
“Are you going to take off?” Bryce asked with some concern, but he couldn’t have said why.
“Oh yeah. I can’t see me in jail, can you? On the other hand, I’m 71, I could use the health care coverage of some posh country club for white collar crooks.” Arthur raised his right arm and spread his fingers in front of his face, as if framing an option.
“I don’t know. There’s plenty of time to consider that alternative. I’ve still got a little bit hidden away for a run.” He continued, finally weighing his choices aloud.
“I can’t believe this is happening. Never in my wildest imagination could I have seen this coming,” Bryce said as his racing thoughts re-entered the conversation at an earlier point.
“Yes, I know. It wasn’t how I pictured things either.” His father said.
“No. That’s not what I … Oh, never mind.” Bryce said. “Look, I got to get home. The kids will be getting home soon and I need to start dinner. If you decide to take off, let me know how you’re doing. Will you?”
“Sure thing, son. Maybe I can catch up with Merritt in Indonesia and convince him to split the dough with me. I could usually make him listen.” Arthur laughed at this.
Bryce looked at his father with a worried look on his face and shook his head. “Take care, Dad. I’ll …,” then he shook his head and turned around and left the office and the house.
In the local paper that evening there were several articles about the local investment company principal disappearing with some of the moneys they were handling for their clients. Bryce could see that they didn’t have any idea of the extent of the embezzlement yet. Interviews with several of the company’s clients contained the usual mixture of anger and disbelief. Bryce knew this was going to get much worse as the investigation got going in earnest.
He thought it would be a wise move for his father to disappear. In the meantime, his father ought to lay low and ignore the phone.
Bryce didn’t sleep that night and got nothing done at work the next day, Friday, for thinking about how his world had changed in the past few days. He was getting ready to drive by his father’s house to offer to get supplies for him when the police department called with the news that his father had shot himself and was being taken to the hospital with a head wound.
Reporters had gone to his house to speak with him when they’d heard the shot and called the police who had found him.
Bryce went to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit to see his father. He was in a coma with his head wrapped in gauze, hooked up to a ventilator. The doctor explained the situation to him. There were no surprises. By Sunday night he was visited by the Nursing Supervisor who suggested the possibility of donating a couple of his father’s organs to the local tissue bank. His father was a bit old for the heart and lungs, he could donate his liver and kidneys as he had no other major illnesses. Bryce agreed to the donation and his father was pronounced brain dead the following day and his organs were harvested and shipped for transplant.
Bryce thought that his father might appreciate that there was still a chance that part of him might yet catch up with Halley.
Over the following weeks, the police and investigating authorities questioned Bryce several times and even went through his accounts and finances to determine if any of the missing money had made its way into his hands. None had, of course, and the investigation confirmed that. Bryce didn’t mention anything of the conversation that he’d had with his father the afternoon prior to his “accident” and even though there was quite a bit of evidence pointing to fact that Arthur Allaton had moved money, at least from his own accounts into another account containing misappropriated funds, they were not able to rule out Merritt Halley coercing Allaton into transferring the money.
Indonesia had no formal extradition treaty with the United States and Halley’s trail went cold there. Insurance made good on most of the losses by clients of the company but that took another two years to conclude. The $500,000 life insurance policy that Arthur Allaton had in place in favor of Bryce as sole beneficiary was refused due to the circumstances of Arthur’s death, even though Bryce contested their conclusion that it was suicide and not an accident.
Bryce was unable to find the money his father had said he still had hidden away. He’d paid for his father’s funeral and ordered a headstone for his grave which was due to be delivered in the next two weeks. Until then there was a simple marker on the grave; a dark aluminum frame holding a paper, laminated in plastic with his fathers’ name on it. He stood next to the grave in the misting rain waiting for some sense of closure that he was pretty sure was a long way off.
It felt to Bryce that he’d been cut adrift in the world. He looked at his life and everything and everybody in it differently now. He was no long tied to his father’s path and that was a scary proposition at 46 years old. He missed his father but at least he knew where he was. When he had ordered the gravestone, the form asked what he wanted inscribed on the stone other than his father’s name and dates. He’d thought about that for a long while and decided to leave it blank. The father he buried was not the father he’d grown up with and it might take some time to reconcile the two.
The End
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