Ariel's Island

by Pat McKee

  “I’ll take care of it myself as soon as we finish up here.”

  I watched Fowler break down his shotgun, wipe it, place it in the gun case, and hand it to Oliver. I did the same, trying to act like I knew what I was doing.

  “Paul, Judge Richards has won his club championship every year he has entered. They now call it the Richards Cup. You couldn’t have a better coach.”

  “I’m well aware of His Honor’s reputation as a great shot. I’ll certainly take you up on that, Judge.”

  “And I’ll even let you use my gun.”

  Fowler changed the subject.

  “Judge, I’ve got to go to a meeting this afternoon, but I told Paul you might be convinced to take him on a tour of your cottage. You think that might be arranged?”

  “I’d be delighted. The crew has the afternoon off, and I have a meeting with the foreman to go over some finish items.” He looked at his watch. “The decorators will start moving furniture at noon. I’ll meet you there at two.” I got the impression that this visit had been pre-arranged, that Fowler wanted to keep me occupied while he was at his afternoon meeting. With anyone else I would have taken this as an affront, but with him I understood it as his personal attention to his guests’ needs.

  After lunch served by Oliver on the loggia, I walked across Third and onto the judge’s property through a chain-link gate with a sign that read “Construction Entrance.” There was a moving van parked on the street with a half-dozen men carrying in furniture, with two women in skirts, heels, and pearls, clipboards in hand, monitoring their every step, hovering over each piece of furniture. I was a few minutes early, but the judge was already there, nose-to-nose with a man wearing a hard hat. The judge was chewing and spitting out his words; the worker only nodded. I stood at a distance until the judge concluded his business and motioned me over. He was shaking his head as the workman walked off. Most judges are used to having their every word obeyed; Judge Richards expected his obeyed immediately. It seemed that working with people who didn’t know who he was—or worse, didn’t seem to care—was frustrating him.

  “As much money as I’m spending on this place, I expect everything done right. Hell, the foreman doesn’t give a damn what I say. I’m going to have to get the contractor out here.” He broke a smile for the first time. “Well, you didn’t come here to hear me complain. Let me show you around.” He led me toward the front of the building.

  “The builder used traditional materials, stone, iron, and wood, throughout.” Stone, iron, and wood. It sounded simple, even humble. But as we walked through the all-but-finished interior of Judge Richards’s cottage, it became evident there was nothing simple or humble about it. The stone covering the floors was Italian marble, the iron work gracing the curved staircase was hand forged, and the wood framing the coffered ceilings was hewn cypress, from hundred-year-old logs recovered from Georgia river bottoms and prized for the worm holes that turned the beams into abstract works of art.

  The judge was as giddy as a teenager showing off his first car, explaining the layout of each room, pointing out rare materials, hand-crafted details, custom appliances, antique furnishings now being positioned. We dodged movers as the decorators ordered them about.

  After an hour I left Judge Richards standing in the first-floor game room that overlooked the Atlantic. He was questioning a carpenter about the precision of some of the dental molding finishing the fourteen-foot ceiling above a fireplace deep enough for a child to play hop-scotch in. The conversation was becoming heated, so I ducked out.

  As I left, Judge Richards caught my eye, as if he wanted me to stay—even as he was still engaged with the workman—as though he felt the need to keep me there. His body language betrayed the conflict, an impulse to pull me back into his conversation, countering his desire for candor with the craftsman. The cottage won out.

  I smiled, waved, and walked back toward Fowler’s. My head was spinning with questions about Judge Richard’s new-found wealth. I resolved to do what I could to clear my mind, and instead of going back to Fowler Cottage, I walked under the canopy of trees toward the heart of the island. It was hot and steamy, and I didn’t want to walk far, even in the shade. I headed toward the Abbey, only a few minutes away at a stroll. By the time I reached the front door I was drenched in sweat and welcomed a chance to sit in the hotel’s bar, drink a beer, and cool off. Four liveried doormen stood at attention to open the doors, and they directed me to a room just off the main lobby. I had been here for a conference not long ago, but I hadn’t had much opportunity to spend time in the hotel’s bar. I perched on a softly upholstered stool in the dark and quiet and ordered a Samuel Adams draft.

  How on earth could Judge Richards afford a Holland & Holland shotgun, much less buy a new cottage on Frederica Island? Was it a mere coincidence that his cottage was going up right next to Fowler’s? And the judge must have inked the contract on the multi-million-dollar beach house not long after the dramatic change in his attitude toward my case. I could hear Fowler’s words, “Nothing great is achieved without great risk.”

  Perhaps worse than any of these troubling thoughts was the realization that if any of this were what it seemed, my career-making win in the Milano case was little more than a cheap manipulation of a system in which I was an inconsequential pawn. I was too proud to accept that conclusion readily. Or maybe it wasn’t pride I was feeling; maybe it was even baser than that. I had counted, over and over in my mind, what access to the Equity Account meant for me, how a couple million dollars annually would change my life and that of my family forever.

  Was this what partnership, what loyalty to the firm, meant? In a few hours, had I transformed from one who at least espoused a belief in the principles of law, of concepts of good and evil, to one who was willing to see things excused by money, pardoned by power? I had wanted all my life to be one of the wealthy and privileged; now that I was one, was I willing to pay the price to stay? I resolved, for now, to see as little as possible and to say even less. After all, there could be perfectly honorable explanations for all that had happened: my victory, the result of my extraordinary legal skill; Judge Richards’s new-found wealth, an unanticipated inheritance; and I after all indeed worthy of my exorbitant profit share—self-deception seemed an easier path than challenge.

  My eyes took a few minutes to adjust to the dimness inside the bar. Once they did, I looked around and saw only a few other mid-afternoon patrons, but one caught my eye. It was the imposing presence of Hector Cabrini.

  SyCorAx’s lawyer radiated a Mediterranean heritage with a practiced smile that at once is disarming, but upon frequent repetition betrays insincerity; even so, it was all I could do during the trial to keep the women on the jury focused on the evidence and not on him. His physical attractiveness masked an aggressive manner he used to intimidate opposing lawyers and even judges. Cabrini was talking to an older dark-haired gentleman whom I did not recognize. The two leaned toward one another, both speaking so as not to be overheard, each intent on the other’s words. The older man was wearing a tailored suit and silk tie even in the tropical heat. They were so concentrated on their conversation that neither of them noticed me.

  I could not believe that even someone as shameless as Cabrini would show up here so soon after the beating he took in the Milano trial. His face and form were so well known, it wasn’t as though he could show up anywhere and remain incognito. I expected him to have been on the first flight off to some five-star retreat as soon as the verdict came in, but not to this one.

  It was a fair bet that with the high-flying status that shares in Milano Corporation had once attained—and regained after the trial—that many of the financially sophisticated investors on this island held stock in Milano Corporation, and the prevailing attitude here would be decidedly sympathetic to the Milano family. Cabrini was as welcome on Frederica Island as the developer who had bought the cottage next to the Fowlers. It was a good
thing Melissa and her uncle weren’t here yet.

  I resisted the strong temptation to walk up to Cabrini and to gloat a bit in front of his companion. Whoever he was, if he was willing to be seen in public with Cabrini, he wasn’t innocent. Instead I slid around the other side of the bar, kept my head down, drank my beer, and left.

  I had resolved nothing. I spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to enjoy the view of the ocean from Fowler Cottage in a failed attempt to banish the doubts from my mind. So far, the Equity Account was holding them off.

  When Fowler returned, he announced we would be dining with the Milanos at the Abbey.

  “Anthony does not maintain a cottage on the island. He has a villa on the Amalfi Coast where he now lives most of the year. He’s arranged for us to dine this evening in the Summit Room.” The Summit Room of the Abbey was dominated by the table at which the leaders of nations had pulled the levers of the world economy at the G-8 conference, and it was only used for very special events. “If you didn’t bring your tuxedo, Oliver can fit you with one.” I was well aware of the Abbey’s dress code from my previous visits, and I came prepared, not wishing to embarrass myself or my host.

  But I smiled to myself for the irony of it all. It was just a dozen years ago when I had left Thornwood. Tonight I was having dinner with an heiress where presidents and prime ministers had plotted the course of the world.

  After graduating high school and walking out the gates of Thornwood Orphanage, I worked my way through Georgia State and landed a scholarship to Emory Law. I studied every waking hour for three years, was on the Editorial Board of the Law Review, and finished in the top five of a class of two-hundred-and-fifty Ivy League-educated rich kids.

  My resume got me inside the heavy oak doors of Strange & Fowler, but it was my Horatio Alger story the partners took to. They hired me, ostensibly touting my academic accomplishments, but I knew it was mainly for my background that tempered the otherwise overly-privileged image of the firm: an orphan could become an associate at a firm populated with the beneficiaries of multi-generational trust funds. I was more than happy to play the part and tried not to let their motivation concern me. My salary the first year was more than my bourbon-befuddled father had earned in his entire alcohol-shortened life.

  As Fowler and I walked into the Abbey, it was the prospect of an evening with Melissa that got my blood going, though I did look forward to meeting her famous uncle. My eyes were instantly drawn to Melissa as I entered the Abbey lobby. She wore a long low-cut black sheath dress that vividly demonstrated how Italian women inspire exotic sports cars. Melissa was more Ferrari than Lamborghini, more grace than flash.

  Melissa held out her hand.

  “Paul. It’s wonderful to see you again. May I introduce to you my uncle, Anthony Milano?” She indicated a dark-haired gentleman, who had not noticed my arrival and was involved in a quiet discussion off to the side with the maître d’.

  At the mention of his name, he turned. “Paul, I am Anthony Milano. I am very pleased finally to meet you.”

  Anthony Milano was the man in the bar that afternoon in discussion with Hector Cabrini.

  Six

  “Thank you.” That was the best I could do, disoriented by the realization that Anthony had been in cordial conversation with someone who had been his enemy through six years of scorched-earth litigation. Anthony seemed to find the silence to be evidence of my humility; I was fortunate he took that characteristic to be a virtue.

  “Come now, you must regale us with all the tales of your brilliance, which I have heard so much of! And do not be so modest. I know your victory on our behalf came at great personal sacrifice. Though we can never fully repay you, we can certainly express our appreciation. Can’t we, Melissa?”

  “Of course.”

  Melissa, oblivious to the turmoil that her uncle’s appearance had caused, flashed a disarming smile, and with it I put Anthony’s meeting out of my mind for the moment.

  The maître d’ escorted our party down the hall to a pair of paneled wooden doors that he opened with ceremony. We entered the Summit Room. In the center was a round table, local oak inlaid with the flags of countries that had attended the meeting. The table was adequate for eight, but it now was set with every imaginable plate, crystal, and silver for four. The walls were wainscoted with the same wood as the table, iron chandeliers hung from the coffered ceiling, and a deep Persian rug covered the floor, giving the room the appearance of a royal hall in a medieval castle. The maître d’ left, and four white-coated and -gloved waiters glided in, took cocktail orders, reappeared with our drinks on silver salvers, and vanished.

  Anthony, now leaning against a carved limestone mantle, took charge of the gathering. He gestured expansively and without concern for the ancient Chinese vase inches from him.

  “William, I want to thank you and your new partner—congratulations, Paul, William just told me the news—for the triumph of Milano over SyCorAx in the courtroom. We are most grateful for an extraordinary victory. I, therefore, propose a toast. To Strange & Fowler, to William Fowler, to his partner Paul McDaniel, and to Milano Corporation: May we all continue to prosper. Salute!”

  I raised my glass, glanced around, and caught Melissa’s eye. She smiled the kind of smile beautiful women have perfected to disarm the skeptical and charm the gullible. After a few sips of my martini, I felt myself slipping from the first group and falling into the latter.

  When dinner was served, we sat around the massive table at the points of the compass, not close enough for any pair to break off in a separate discussion from the others, so that all four of us bantered throughout the evening. Both Anthony and Melissa appeared engrossed in my detailing, at the prompting of my partner, of the chess match that was the Milano trial. William was effusive in his praise, not so much for my benefit, but for the benefit of the Milanos.

  “The case was challenging enough, but Paul’s most brilliant maneuver was to parry an unfavorable Supreme Court decision that came out just weeks before the trial and still launch the thrust that proved to be SyCorAx’s final undoing.”

  I was not often to be embarrassed by compliments, but, nevertheless, I had tried to tamp down William’s remarks, if only to maintain my credibility with the clients. Even so, I did not waste the opportunity for a little showmanship for Melissa’s benefit.

  “It was such an unexpected turn that Judge Richards called both sides into his chambers, postponed the trial, and pushed to settle. With the backing of Anthony and Placido, I insisted we press on. Judge Richards was against it. Cabrini was gleeful. But I had a plan:

  “In my opening statement, I dared SyCorAx’s lawyers to explain how the corporation came in possession of Milano’s secrets. They never did.”

  Anthony glanced at William, eyebrows raised in a look of true bewilderment.

  “So what was your plan if SyCorAx came up with a witness who knew, surely you—”

  “There wasn’t one.”

  “In Italy we say that is ‘avere I coglioni,’ which, given our mixed company, I will translate loosely as ‘very courageous.’”

  Melissa laughed, “Uncle, you know I speak Italian.”

  “Well then, you can translate it for yourself.” Anthony gave a wry smile. “I’m sure Mr. McDaniel gets the context.”

  More than once I had related the key points in the case to partners, friends, and the press, and after repeating, yet one more time, the more dramatic turns in the trial, my enthusiasm for re-telling the courtroom battle waned and my interest turned to the Milanos. After a few bottles of Brunello di Montalcino were passed around the table, each taking long pauses at Anthony’s glass, William encouraged Anthony to talk about their fathers’ business relationship. It didn’t take much to get the two of them telling war stories, how they assisted their fathers preparing for trials up and down the Atlantic seaboard, spending long nights on New York-to-Atlanta trains. Th
eir relationship was based on the successful efforts of Strange & Fowler in keeping Northern unions out of Southern mills. The firm’s work was the key to the Milano’s paying low wages and reaping high profits. The elder Milano and Fowler were largely responsible for keeping hundreds of thousands of Southern millworkers in abject poverty for generations.

  My family was one of those stuck in the mass of humanity that fed Milano’s mills. But in less than a generation, the McDaniels had moved from mill workers to legal champions of the mill owners. I wondered how much of a move it was. As Milano and Fowler spoke, never mentioning the hardship their successes caused countless others, I was struck by how the wealthy consider the poor. I was certain they had no idea both my parents were lives sacrificed at the altar of Milano mills, and I was even more certain they didn’t care.

  But the truth of the matter was that my father died in an accident of his own making. As was his custom on Monday mornings, he showed up drunk to his shift at the Laurens Milano Mill, not yet having time to sober up after a weekend of drinking. It wasn’t that anyone cared. His job tending the loom required little mental acuity, only the willingness—so as not to idle the line—to mend thread and replace bobbins while gears continued to spin and levers flew within inches of fingers, hands, and arms. That morning, his arm caught in a chain drive that lifted him from the floor and flayed all the flesh from his elbow to his wrist. He bled to death before they could get the machine stopped.

  My mother fared little better. The scant amount she got to compensate her for the loss of her husband was sufficient only to bury him and to fund her own month-long drunk. They fired her before she returned to work. She tried to sober up and get another job, and she did so for a time, but the longest she ever stayed employed after the accident was about six months. As soon as she got a few dollars in her pocket, she would start drinking again and lose her job, only to sober up once more when her money ran out.