In his riches, man lacks wisdom: He is like the beasts that are destroyed.
âPsalm 49
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Several times Stan Morgan drove his rental car up the long driveway that wended through trees until a vast lawn opened up. You could hit a three wood from there and not hit any of the buildings. Morgan moved at twenty miles an hour, drinking the place in. He had been away from the Midwest so long before coming in search of Richards that he was struck by how different the trees and bushes and flowers were. He couldn't have named any of them, but then there were few trees in California he could name. At first the absence of mountains got to him. Flying to Chicago, there had been mountains for hours and then suddenly just a pattern of rectangles on the unbroken plain. Coming into O'Hare with the lake in view was a lot like LAX but Chicago was not L.A. Morgan had passed his childhood here, but he now felt that he was in a foreign land.
The first night he stayed at the O'Hare Hilton, studying a map of the greater Chicago area. Then he rented a car and for days just drove around, staying at one motel after another, getting the lay of the land. He was certain Richards was here somewhere,
probably in the Fox River he had mentioned from time to time. Fox River was the first place he located on the map, but a week went by before he went there. He got off the interstate and suddenly he was in a small town, preserved by the frame of highways that enclosed it. This seemed more like the Midwest of his imagination. When he came upon St. Hilary's parish and saw the school playground filled with elderly people, he parked and got out. The attractive young woman palmed him off on the parish housekeeper who happened along, but he had an interesting chat with her over tea in the rectory kitchen. She was full of parish gossip and for a moment he thought he had found his prey. But when Mrs. Murkin got out the Catholic Directory in the pastor's study, a comfortable scholarly room, he knew she would draw a blank. So he told her Richards had stopped being a priest. Her manner changed and it was clear she had no sympathy with priests who returned to the lay estate.
Richards had explained it all to Morgan, with something of a chip on his shoulder. He blamed it all on Vatican II.
“They dug in their heels, Stan. They were no more interested in change in the Church than they were in the collection basket.”
When he first met him, before he knew he had been a priest, Richards had seemed just another smoothie. Morgan had tried to sell him an insurance policy, but their roles were soon reversed.
“Don't tell me, but I'll be there's not much money in what you're doing,” Richards had said.
“I do all right.”
“Look, this is a state where a great percentage of the people are either in therapy or retired. They're living on Social Security and whatever plan their company had.”
“Are you retired?”
“Only in a sense.” The sense was explained later, when he
told Morgan that he had been a priest, but on that first occasion, Richardsâ“Nathaniel Richards, but don't call me that. Or Nate. My surname will do.”âbecame lyrical about the possibilities of helping all those retired people make their money go further. A day or so later, he met Marilyn, a good-looking ash-blonde who provided guidance for the perplexed. So that meant the Richardsâthough she didn't use his name; even the apartment was in her nameâalready covered half the target he had described for Morgan.
“So why don't you get into financial management yourself?”
“I already am. But I am my sole client.” A pause while he let Morgan grasp the significance of this. “I manage my own portfolio and I am making notes for a book. One Marilyn and I intend to write together.”
“Well, that takes care of you.”
“Have you thought about my proposition?”
“What proposition?”
It was too good to believe. Richards would set Morgan up, send him through a crash course on investments, and let him run the office. “Of course, you'll have to bring on more people as you prosper.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I nearly bought an insurance policy from you. You've got the perfect manner for it. You obviously like people.”
Within a year, Morgan had opened an office in Coronado, paying an astronomical rent, but Richards insisted that appearance is reality when you are offering to help others do better with what they have. Licensed, franchised, computerized, a reassuring woman of middle age, Mildred, as receptionist, Stanley Morgan waited for the clients to come. And they did. A tasteful ad announcing the opening of the office and soon people who had prepared
for a carefree retirement and spent most of their time keeping an eye on the market drifted in.
“Think of it as one of the corporal works of mercy,” Richards said. It was the first clue he had that Richards was, or had been, Catholic.
“I don't remember financial advising on the list.”
“Hey, this is the postconciliar world.”
Morgan hadn't really believed that his silent partner would remain silent, but he did. There was never any suggestion that their fifty-fifty deal be made formal. A handshake had done it. The arrangement seemed more than justified when it became clear that he was not expected to pay back any of the money Richards had invested in setting him up in business. Richards was content to be treasurer and keep the books.
Stanley Morgan had been twenty-eight at the time, nine years ago. A dropout from the University of San Diego, he had been in sales until he went into insurance, always with the sense that what he did was temporary. He might have been preparing himself for the fateful day when he met Nathaniel Richards. He became close to both of them, but Marilyn was a little relentless in talking about sex. She assumed that he had a string of girlfriends.
“No doubt it has its attractions,” she allowed. “And unlike serial killing, it isn't against the law. But sexual maturity and fidelity go hand in hand. You want someone for the long run.”
“I'm in no hurry.” The truth was that he had been all but celibate since breaking up with the girl that had led to his leaving the university as well. He might have been leaving to spite her.
“With casual partners, you can never develop a fully meaningful sex life. You have to know one another, body and soul, in order to realize your full potential as a sexual being.”
Surprisingly, Marilyn was the religious one of the two, though
her religion seemed to revolve around sex. Richards just sat there smiling when his wife lectured Morgan. The implication was that he and his wife had what all the world wanted. Maybe they did. Until Marilyn was diagnosed with cancer. What does sex have to do with death?
“Shouldn't she see a priest?” Morgan suggested.
“I'll take care of that.” Another remark whose significance he had missed at the time.
They had weekly conferences about Morgan's clients. Richards wanted to make available what he had learned looking after his own money. He was big on savings-and-loans. “Money making money from money making money,” he explained. And he found an outfit in Arizona that he touted highly. Morgan directed many of his clients in that direction.
Marilyn's death changed Richards. He became moody and thoughtful.
“She died well.”
“The grace of a happy death?”
“Do you practice your faith, Stanley?”
“Did I say I had one?”
“Oh, come on. It's written all over you. And you went to the University of San Diego. The Notre Dame of the West.”
“Not the way I used to.”
“It's the story of our times.”
Six months later the Arizona savings-and-loan went belly-up and Morgan had an office full of angry clients. He told them he had lost money himself, investment is a risk, they knew that.
“But that money is what we lived on, for God's sake.”
If too many of them had all their eggs in one basket, it was due to his advice, but where else could they find an outfit like the one in Arizona? Paper profits had soared and there had been
many expressions of heartfelt gratitude until the bubble burst. Happy investors had brought in their friends. Stan Morgan had acquired the reputation of being a magician of the market. And he had sunk everything he could lay his hands on personally into the Arizona outfit.
“It was bound to happen,” Richards said philosophically.
“Wasn't your money there, too?”
“Some. Diversification is everything, as I shouldn't have to tell you.”
Smug, that was how he seemed. He dipped his head and just looked at Morgan when he asked if Richards could do anything to help him out of this mess.
“The next thing you'll be telling me is that this is all my fault for not leaving you to selling insurance.”
At the moment he would have given anything to be just an insurance salesman again. His clients were important people and they went to the media. Morgan was filmed leaving his office as if trying to escape. Finally he agreed to an interview as the only way to stop the adverse publicity. It had the opposite effect, as he should have known. He read the story in disbelief, trying to remember if he had said anything like the words attributed to him. Overnight he became the symbol of the shrewd financial con man preying on the gullible rich. Under cover of darkness, he drove to Richards's apartment, wanting camaraderie at all costs, to hell with the smugness. Richards was not there. His car was not in his parking space. Stan waited in his parked car for his silent partner to return. After two days of fruitless efforts, he realized that Richards was gone.
Why? Did he fear being connected with the debacle now that a police investigation had begun? That couldn't have been it. Morgan went over the accounting records on the computer Richards
had used in the office. Suddenly he realized how silent his partner had been. There was no recorded involvement of Nathaniel Richards in the firm. His fifty-percent share? There were quarterly payments to a bank in Zurich. In the trial underway in Yuma, Stanley Morgan's name came up as in collusion with the savings-and-loan to defraud their investors. Faxes from his office were produced, faxes he had never sent. But California wanted him for its own. He was indicted and put on trial.
How could he explain the incriminating faxes? He knew nothing of them. And what of the mysterious Swiss account? Again he knew nothing. His only advantage was that his former clients began to be portrayed as wealthy old geezers who had been greedy for more. His lawyer persuaded him to plead guilty to questionable business practices and the charge of fraud was withdrawn. In the posh facility in which he served out his year with other white-collar criminals, he came to a full realization of what a dupe he had been. From the first meeting, it seemed in retrospect, Richards had been sizing him up for a patsy. What an ass he was to think that someone hitherto a stranger would offer to set him up as financial advisor, would pay for his training, establish him in an impressive office simply out of benevolence. Why hadn't he seen that there had to be a reason behind all that. Everything about Richards was fakeâexcept for the death of Marilyn. And Stan Morgan resolved that he would track Richards down if it was the last thing he did. And then? His thoughts didn't go much beyond telling the bastard what he thought of him.
There is hot anger and there is cold anger. There are impulsive acts and there are cool and calculating ones. Stan Morgan developed a cold anger and from the time he set out to act on it his every move was considered and dispassionate. Had Richards really been a priest? He knew his moments of doubt, but what
else did he have to go on? Someone who had been ordained, who had served for a time in the active ministry, should have left some kind of trail. The only clue Stan Morgan had was Fox River, Illinois. There was no more trace of Richards in the apartment where he had lived than anywhere else. Marilyn had rented it before they married. A marriage record? There are no central marriage records. The archdiocese of Los Angeles could find no record of a marriage between Nathanel Richards and Marilyn Daly.
And so he had come to Fox River. Taking Edna Hospers to dinner, taking her family to a Cubs game, had not been part of the plan. The old people that frequented the Senior Center reminded Morgan of his clients. Maybe he had imagined they could trade stories on how difficult it is to deal with people that age. He had liked her boy Eric, but the kid was too curious. Prudence dictated that he keep his distance from her. So on the basis of something Marie Murkin had said, he drove through the grounds of the Athanasian headquarters called Marygrove. Could such a peaceful setting hatch the kind of traitor Richards was? The third visit there, he saw him.
Morgan stopped the car immediately, pulling slowly over to the side of the road, and watched the bearded figure wearing some kind of habit. It all might have been a disguise, but Morgan remembered the odd hitching movement Richards made when he walked. He was not alone. He was bending the ear of an older man similarly dressed. Morgan watched them out of sight with a grim smile. He had found Father Richards at last.