Chapter 5 - The Phantom Branch of Geneva
The grandfather clock in the corner of the gallery began to strike eleven. Its chimes were deep, bronze, and slow, vibrating through the floorboards like an underground engine. With every stroke, the Mercer empire—or what was left of its paper foundations—seemed to settle an inch deeper into the cold mud of Westchester County.
Julian Montgomery was the first to crawl toward the door.
He didn't stand up. He moved on his hands and knees for three yards along the wall, his trousers catching on the splinters of the broken wineglass, before he found the strength in his trembling thighs to push himself upright against the archway. He didn't look back at Victoria. He didn't look at his father-in-law. His eyes were fixed on the small leather briefcase Briggs had left near the umbrella stand—the one containing the Delaware releases.
"Julian," Victoria hissed, her voice cracked and ugly. "Julian, you're leaving me here? You're walking out?"
Julian stopped. He didn't turn around. His back was hunched, his expensive jacket stained with dust and dark spots of Margaux.
"I have six hours before the Grand Cayman court opens, Victoria," he said, his voice whistling through his dry lips. "If I’m not at the branch in Hamilton when the transfer requests hit the wire, they won't just take the house. They’ll take my passport. Do you know what happens to people who forge offshore indemnity guarantees in the Third District? They don't send you to Allenwood. They send you to the Metropolitan Correctional Center with the people who offload containers in Newark."
"You forged it for *us*!" Victoria screamed, taking two stumbling steps toward him, her hands clenched into fists. "You did it so we could keep the horses! You did it so we wouldn't have to tell the Van Der Bilt crowd that we were renting the summer cottage!"
Julian turned his head just far enough for her to see his profile—the slack jaw, the sweating temple, the dead, colorless eye.
"I did it for you, Victoria," he whispered. "And you knew it every time you handed me an invoice for eight thousand dollars from Bergdorf’s and asked me why the check hadn't cleared. Don't play the innocent virgin for your aunt. She knows what you are. The whole county knows what you are."
He didn't wait for her reply. He reached the heavy oak front door, pulled it open against the wind, and disappeared into the wet darkness outside. A second later, the sharp, angry roar of an eight-cylinder German engine tore through the sound of the rain, followed by the wet skid of tires across gravel as the Audi launched itself down the long driveway toward the gate.
"Coward," Victoria spat, though her knees were shaking so hard she had to lean her forehead against the wood paneling to keep from falling.
"He's not a coward, Victoria," Elena said from behind her. "He's an embezzler who knows his flight window has closed. The State Police are already at the toll plaza on the Saw Mill River Parkway. Mr. Vance gave them the license plate twenty minutes ago."
Victoria’s head jerked back. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated with an animal terror that had finally stripped away the last veneer of her finishing-school manners. "You... you called the troopers on him?"
"I called the Attorney General’s special investigations unit," Elena replied. "Julian hasn't paid his state withholding taxes since twenty-twenty. He thought Delaware was a wall. He didn't know that Delaware has a reciprocal agreement with the New York Department of Taxation when fraud is alleged in the initial filing."
Arthur Mercer had not moved from his chair. His hands were still flat on his knees, his chin still pressed against his chest. He looked like an old, broad-shouldered statue that had been abandoned in a overgrown garden.
"Eleanor," Arthur said. The name was barely audible above the drumming of the rain.
His wife was sitting on the floor by the sideboard, her legs tucked under her like a broken doll. She had stopped crying. Her eyes were fixed on Marianne’s cane, watching the silver ferrule reflect the yellow light of the sconces.
"Eleanor," Arthur repeated, his voice thicker this time. "Where is the blue box?"
Eleanor didn't answer. Her jaw was working, her teeth clicking together with a dry, rhythmic sound like dice in a leather cup.
"What blue box, Dad?" Elena asked, stepping closer to him. Her shadow fell across his gray hair.
Arthur’s head turned slowly, the vertebrae in his neck making a small, dry popping sound. "The one in the safe behind the Stubbs painting. The one with the Geneva receipts."
Marianne Mercer let out a single, sharp laugh that sounded like an axe hitting dry birch.
"The Geneva receipts, Arthur?" Marianne said, her voice dripping with forty years of preserved contempt. "Did you really think the Union de Banques Suisses kept records on paper in nineteen-eighty-four? Did you really think that old man in the Rue du Rhône was your friend?"
She took two steps toward her brother, her cane coming down with each stride like a metronome counting down his remaining minutes.
"The Geneva account was closed forty-eight hours after Father was buried," Marianne said. "I transferred the entire balance—fourteen million Swiss francs—to the trust in Vaduz. The papers you had in that blue box were copies of receipts from an account that hadn't held a single centime since the day Jimmy Carter left the White House."
Arthur’s mouth fell open. A small, clear line of saliva appeared at the corner of his lower lip. "You... you let me sign the renewals. Every five years, the broker in Zurich sent the management vouchers."
"The broker in Zurich was my second cousin on my mother’s side, Arthur," Marianne whispered, leaning down until her cold, pale face was six inches from his ear. "He charged me two thousand francs a year to send you those blue envelopes with the Swiss stamps. You were so happy every time they arrived. You’d take them into your study, lock the door, and spend the afternoon pretending you were an international financier with secret reserves in the Alps."
She straightened her back, her alpaca coat rustling softly.
"You were living on an allowance, Arthur. Like a schoolboy in a boarding school whose parents don't want him home for the holidays. And the moment you touched Elena’s money—the moment you thought you could steal from the only child in this house who had her grandfather’s blood—the allowance stopped."
Arthur’s breath began to come in long, rattling heaves. His chest rose and fell against the buttons of his blazer, his right hand clawing at the linen cloth on the table, dragging the silver, the plates, and the remains of the quail toward the floor.
"Arthur!" Eleanor screamed, scrambling across the floorboards on her knees, her hands catching his trousers. "Arthur, don't! Don't look at them! Look at me!"
"Get him up, Briggs," Marianne commanded.
Briggs stepped forward. His movements were swift, professional, and entirely without malice. He caught Arthur under the armpits, lifting the two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man out of the mahogany chair as easily as if he were an empty sack of oats. Arthur’s legs were limp, his feet dragging across the parquet, his polished Church’s oxfords leaving two long, dull scuffs through the spilled wine.
"No!" Victoria shrieked, lunging toward Briggs, her hands out like claws. "Leave him alone! He has a condition! You’re killing him!"
Briggs didn't even turn his head. He simply shifted his left elbow, creating a solid, immovable wedge of bone and muscle that caught Victoria across the collarbone, sending her spinning backward until she crashed against the sideboard. A row of silver cups tumbled down around her, clattering against the marble floor like falling bells.
"The car is waiting, Mr. Mercer," Briggs said into Arthur’s ear, his voice completely calm, completely indifferent to the screams of the two women.
"Elena..." Arthur groaned, his head lolling back as Briggs dragged him toward the archway. His eyes were wide, unfocused, staring at his youngest daughter through a film of tears and broken blood vessels. "Elena... you’re my girl. You’re my little girl. I took you to see the horses... remember? The grey filly at Saratoga... I let you name her..."
Elena Mercer did not move. She stood beside the table, her hands resting lightly on the blue folder that held the destruction of his life.
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"Her name was High Treason, Dad," Elena said, her voice dropping into the cold, empty silence of the room. "And you sold her to a slaughterhouse in Quebec three weeks after I went to college."
***
