and suspicion hovering over his father’s firm and legacy.
He walked through a maze of corridors lined with contemporary art to his father’s office and was surprised to see so many staffers and consultants working at their desks after hours. Luckily, Anne Cartwright, his father’s senior administrative assistant, was sitting at her desk outside his father’s office. She stood up to greet him.
“I’m glad you’re here, Anne,” Wilson said.
“It’s nice to see you, Mr. Fielder,” she said, looking surprised. Then, softly, she asked, “How’s your mother doing? I talked to her this morning about your father, she seemed so worried.”
“She’s doing fine, all things considered,” Wilson said, feeling uncomfortable. He didn’t like the idea of putting his mother through more pain, but they had to talk, either tonight or tomorrow morning. He couldn’t wait any longer. “Thanks for asking.”
“Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Fielder?”
“Please, call me Wilson,” he said, looking around to see if anyone else could hear him. The nearest desk was empty. “I’d like to look through some of my father’s files.”
“Mr. Emerson was here today. I gave him access to all the files, just as you requested.”
“Thank you, Anne. Hopefully, his history of the company will help us dispel some of the rumors.”
Anne nodded hesitantly. “Let me show you where things are and you can help yourself.”
She obviously wasn’t used to giving such free reign to anyone other than his father. Anne was a tall, professional-looking woman in her late fifties with an expression of sadness in her eyes. Wilson let her unlock the office door, even though he had his father’s key. “How many people have keys to this office?” he asked.
“Just myself, the security company, and, of course, your father had his key.”
Wilson nodded as he followed Anne into the office. He could almost feel his father’s presence in the room. The wall of glass overlooking the Charles River, the elaborate Italian renaissance ceiling, the exposed columns of stone, the collection of unusual books and curious artifacts from around the world, it all reflected his father’s eclectic tastes.
At the far end of the sizeable office was his father’s workstation, which covered an entire wall. A variety of electronic devices and gadgetry were spread across the builtin black walnut desk. Two fax machines, a paper shredder, three computer screens, two printers, a scanner, three flat-screen TVs, stereo equipment, and four telephones. There were also a number of family pictures from their travels around the world, which brought a new wave of emotions. Wilson looked away to stay focused. A few feet in front of the workstation was a gray stone conference table, oblong and irregular in shape, surrounded by seven black leather wing chairs.
Emotions returned as Wilson remembered a time, eight months earlier, when he’d come to talk about his career at Kresge amp; Company. Secretly, Wilson had wanted his father to say, Why don’t you come to work for me? Even though he probably never would have accepted, he still wanted the invitation. But his father had never asked. He remembered wondering whether his father was waiting for him to make the overture, asking outright: I’d like to join you at Fielder amp; Company. Now, he wished he had. Maybe both of them had been too proud or too fearful of rejection. Or was my father simply trying to protect me? Mental images of his father in the hospital brought him back to the present, as Anne opened the twelve file cabinets on each side of his father’s workstation.
“How long do you need me to stay?” Anne asked.
“You can go home when you like, Anne. I’ll be here for a few hours. I’ve got my father’s keys, so I can lock up,” Wilson said, taking the keys from his pocket. “Do I have everything I need?”
She examined the keys closely before showing him which ones were file keys, office keys, and building keys. Then, she held up an oddly shaped gold key. “This one opens the vault in the clothes closet,” she said, pointing to the bookshelves at the other end of the office, past the matching French sofas and large wrought iron and glass coffee table in the sitting area. “You also need to key in the password HWF1952. I haven’t given Mr. Emerson or anyone else access to the vault.”
They both walked toward the wall of bookshelves. Wilson opened the shelf-faced door leading to a private bath, shower-steam room, and large walk-in closet. His father’s wardrobe filled the racks and drawers of the closet. Over the years, he’d occasionally borrowed his father’s clothes, having worn the same-sized pants and jackets since he’d turned twenty.
“It’s on your right, behind the suit coats. Only your father had this key,” Anne said before handing the keys back to Wilson. Then she excused herself.
After inserting the key and entering the password, he opened the concealed vault. Inside he found a solitary folder containing a computer disk and a paper printout of all the corporations, general and limited partnerships, limited liability companies, investment trusts, stocks, bonds, and other money instruments in which his father held partial or controlling interests. He’d seen a similar list in Daniel’s office. Many of the entities had Nevada and Wyoming addresses, others had Nevis and Cayman Island addresses, and still others had Swiss addresses. His father had obviously gone to great lengths to protect his privacy and conceal his assets. Under Nevada and Wyoming state law, only one name and signature was required to register a business entity, making it easy to keep owners and officers anonymous. Wilson could appreciate the appeal of Nevada and Wyoming, the most secretive states in the union. And Nevis, a tiny island country in the Caribbean, had even more favorable and flexible offshore banking laws than the Cayman Islands or Switzerland.
According to the latest update of the files a month earlier, his father owned or controlled one hundred and ninety-eight different entities or instruments, each of which held ownership positions in a wide variety of publicly and privately held corporations. After reexamining the long list of additional investments, Wilson breathed a sigh of relief, having found no indication that his father owned shares in Zollinger’s Dutton Industries, Zebra Technology, or any of the companies identified in Daniel Redd’s fifty-two files.
However, there was more in the concealed vault-an old book,
After pondering the inscription, Wilson read the book’s introduction. It was a compelling summary of how a handful of men brought about the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s, simply because they wanted to slow middle-class wealth creation in America and shift economic power back to Europe. According to the book, the flaw in capitalism was that it allowed elite private corporations with captive customers and government protection-such as the Federal Reserve, international banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies-to preserve their power and wealth at the expense of the masses. Capitalism’s first movers had used their early success to structure the system to their advantage and entrench their control.
Wilson reflected on the many conversations with his father about corrupt authority and exploitation. They were conversations that had fueled his deep-seated distrust of authority. He quickly scanned the rest of the book, but he was preoccupied with reflections on what sort of men his great-grandfather and grandfather had been.
He turned his attention to the stack of loose papers. The press clipping on top of the stack was a
