Excerpt (pages 7-18)

 

1/the letter

 

The day the letter arrived from Zurich had not gone well for me at work. Rarely did I lose a listing, and Janice Darling—hard to forget a name like that—had up to that point seemed receptive to my suggestions. The Darlings were ready to sell their mostly presentable 1920s center-hall colonial on two-and-a-half acres with mature plantings and a sweet little brook gurgling through the rear yard. Nice presence, good bones, golden oak floors, plenty of light and space, but after sixty or so years the house needed some sparking up. I persuaded the owners to remodel the master bath, replace the standard butcher-block kitchen counters with granite, and repair the half-dozen rotted windowsills if they hoped to attract a top-dollar bid. I should have quit while I was ahead.

Taking the Darlings for sensible folk, I also ventured to remark—as offhandedly as I could manage—that the exterior color of their house might present a bit of a problem. The clapboards were painted blue, the trim white. The blue was very blue—cornflower blue, one of my favorite colors, as it happens. But houses sheathed in vivid hues unsettle the eye while those in a creamy off-white, a soothing taupe, or, say, a pearly gray are more subtly inviting, especially in very proper Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where we lived.

“What’s wrong with our color?” Janice asked indignantly, almost as if I had passed a racist slur. I said it wasn’t a question of right or wrongjust that some potential buyers might find the brightness a little off-putting. Blatant was the word I actually had in mind, but caution prevailed.

“Well, then let them repaint it if they don’t approve of our taste. You’ve made us shell out for enough fix-up stuff already.” Said a tad peevishly, as if I were trying to penalize her because their house would never be featured in Architectural Digest. Two days later near the end of that afternoon, Janice called in to say they had decided to go with a different listing agent—“It’s nothing personal,” she assured me, meaning they preferred someone less judgmental.

 

 

 

In semi-shock over my abrupt dismissal, I retreated to our back porch to sip a therapeutic glass of chardonnay, contemplate our meadow riotous with spring wildflowers, and remind myself for the umpteenth time that housesellers are often their own worst enemies. Amid my bittersweet reverie, Jerry arrived home and joined me with a kiss and the day’s mail. I tried not to sound irritable while recounting the saga of my lost listing and the nice sales commission it would have yielded. Jerry heard me out patiently, offered a sympathetic “Not your fault,” and poured himself some wine. He’d suffered his own loss that day, he told me. “It’s bye-bye for Claire Ackerman—she’s landed a tenured associate’s job at Southern Illinois. I told her it’s a big school, not much character, not fertile soil for teaching art history—lotsa farm kids who think Giotto is a board game—she’ll hate it there.” And he started sifting through the mail.

“You say that whenever any faculty member dares to abandon dear little old Channing,” I pointed out. “Just because you adore the place doesn’t mean everyone else has to.”

It was Jerry’s blind spot, so much so that over the years he had turned down a dozen job offers of a full professorship at major universities, Rutgers most recently and Indiana U. the year before that. He just preferred the charms of a snug (some might have called it smug), low-key college with a leafy campus and time-worn granite halls of wisdom. Besides, Channing appealed to the antiquarian hauteur lurking inside Jerry. Founded well over two centuries earlier, it had a seductive pedigree and intimacy that large, impersonal universities with less rigorous admission standards lacked. And serving as entrenched chairman of the school’s Department of Art and Architecture allowed Jerry to teach whatever courses he wished, tweak his on-campus schedule for his convenience, pursue his scholarly writing, and leave room to savor our life together. Only rarely did he have to deal with a thorny problem at the college, like a student caught cheating—Jerry was faculty adviser to the select committee in charge of the hallowed Channing Honor Code—or the loss of a gifted younger colleague like Claire Ackerman.

 

 

 

“Oh, I think she was happy enough here—only she’s too impatient to see her name up in lights,” he said. “And now she’s picked the wrong marquee.”

“Not your fault,” I consoled him with a smile, echoing his earlier words to me.

Jerry gave a grunt of agreement, then paused on reaching the final letter in the mail stack he was holding and examined its postmark. “You seem to have an admirer in Switzerland,” he said, studying the hand-addressed envelope. “Nice penmanship, too, but no return address—very mysterious.” He handed it over, eyebrows comically arching. “Could be from your continental loveryou may want to read it in private.”

“Damn—I told him never to write me here,” I said, dropping the letter onto my lap and taking another swallow of wine. “Probably some kind of international Ponzi scheme.”

“Very cool,” Jerry teased. “Come on—’fess up. Is it Hans, Franz, or Rudolf?”

I wasn’t really in a playful mood, but Jerry was just trying to lighten me up. “Okay, you caught me,” I said and tore open the small envelope. It was a single page, quarter-folded, carrying a neatly handwritten message that read in its entirety: “My dear Mrs Hazeltine: I believe it would be greatly to your interest and advantage to speak with me. Please advise by return mail when might be a convenient time for me to phone you and at what number.” It was signed, “Yours very truly, Emil Hauser, Private Banking.” The letterhead read, in tastefully small type, “Helvetica National Bank, Paradeplatz 7, C.H. 8044, Zűrich, Switzerland.”

I handed the letter to Jerry. “The plot thickens.”

His eyes widened as he read it. “What could it be about?”

“A mistake, probably. Or some kind of scam—is that even a real bank?”

“Sounds like one. But I’m not really up on Swiss banking, to be honest.”

I studied the text. “Why didn’t Mr. Hauser just phone me? We’re listed.”

Jerry shrugged. “They do things more formally over there. He probably didn’t want to come on like gangbusters—calling you out of the blue the way a con artist might.”

“I’ll bet this was intended for you—you’re the one with all the international connections. Maybe some patron of the arts read one of your books or articles and—and wants to commission you to certify one of those masterpieces the Nazis looted and stored in Swiss bank vaults until enough time had passed and—you’ll see.”

 

 

 

“Nice try,” Jerry said, “but there are probably a thousand equally qualified art experts within spitting distance of the Alps. Besides, the letter was sent to you, sweetie, not me.” He sipped his wine and ruminated. “Must be something to do with Leon.”

That made more sense than my little fantasy. Leon Beckwith, my formidable father, had departed this earth six months earlier but had spent a fair amount of time in Europe as a businessman and later as a retiree with my stepmother in tow. “Conceivably,” I said, “but what in the world could that have to do with me? Daddy didn’t exactly dote on me—or weren’t you awake during the will-reading?”

“Hmmm.” Jerry impregnated the consonants with profound meaning. He had long nursed a case of raging ambivalence toward Leon, whose energetic manner and spirit of enterprise Jerry admired. But he also thought my father was crass, self-centered, dictatorial, and a poor excuse for a parent. Our two kids and I were about all Jerry and Leon ever had in common, though Jerry never quit trying to engage Leon in polite conversation that soon turned edgy because of their hopelessly clashing values. As my father’s younger child, I was still more conflicted—Leon and I never had the classic, huggy daddy-and-daughter thing going for us. My older brother Donnie had been his favorite, the golden-haired heir-apparent to the flourishing Beckwith commercial empire. But then Leon dumped Molly, our mother (who’s another gripping story I’ll save for a future epic) and went off to form a second family under the spell of the fetching and willful Alicia, my Stepmom-from-Hell, who came with her daughter Paula from her own failed first marriage. After that, I was only rarely in Leon’s company or thoughts, so far as I knew. Donnie was a different matter—appallingly so.

“‘Hmmm’ yourself,” I said. “‘Speak only good of the dead’—or whatever the saying is.”

“Hey, no slight intended to Pops—Leon was a man of many parts,” Jerry offered, feigning neutrality. “Maybe after he retired, he became a silent partner in a multinational zircon cartel that’s being liquidated now—and his kids get to split the loot. I’d write this Swiss dude back—what’s there to lose hearing him out?”

 

 

 

I refocused on the letter. “It seems kind of creepy—too clandestine. Why doesn’t Mr. Hauser just state his business instead of this cryptic come-on?”

“Because he doesn’t want to put it in writing—I believe Swiss bankers are famous for being hush-hush, in case you haven’t heard.” Jerry scanned the front page of the Inquirer, sitting on the table beside the chaise longue. “This wine’s fruity—have we got any olives?”

I stewed for three days before deciding that Jerry was right about the letter. There was nothing to lose by hearing what my Swiss correspondent had on his mind. If it was a crock or anything suspect, I would just tell him to get lost. At worst, he’d find out our phone number, which was not exactly a state secret—even the CIA could have found it if they called Information. I sent off a note telling Herr Hauser he could reach me at our home number any morning at nine o’clock Bucks County Time, which intensive research revealed would be 3:00 p.m. over in Zurich. He phoned a week later, punctual as a Rolex cuckoo clock.

“Because he doesn’t want to put it in writing—I believe Swiss bankers are famous for being hush-hush, in case you haven’t heard.” Jerry scanned the front page of the Inquirer, sitting on the table beside the chaise longue. “This wine’s fruity—have we got any olives?”

“Have I reached Mrs. Hazeltine?” he asked. “Emil Hauser calling—from abroad. We’ve exchanged letters.” Crisp delivery, a touch Teutonic.

“Yes, indeed. Thank you for calling. What can I do for you, sir?”

There was a pause, as if he thought a little foreplay might be in order, but then got right to it. “Well, I’m pleased to advise, madam, that you’ve come into some wealth—as perhaps you may have guessed…”

“Because he doesn’t want to put it in writing—I believe Swiss bankers are famous for being hush-hush, in case you haven’t heard.” Jerry scanned the front page of the Inquirer, sitting on the table beside the chaise longue. “This wine’s fruity—have we got any olives?”

Nice opening gambit. “Not at all,” I countered. “I’m quite a poor guesser, I’m afraid.”

“I see,” said my caller, perhaps suspecting he had reached the wrong Lynn Hazeltine. “The fact is, madam, that the late Mr. Beckwith—he was your father, correct?”

“Leon Beckwith, yes—if we’re talking about the same man. He passed away a few months ago. He lived in New York.”

 

 

“Yes, of course. And may I please offer my sincere condolences? I knew your father for a number of years, though you are probably unaware of our acquaintance. He had an account with our bank for more than thirty years.”

So, Jerry’s surmise was likely not far off the mark. “Is that right?

“And the fact is, madam, he never terminated it, although he hadn’t visited us for several years. He entrusted me to manage his holdings with our bank since it’s not merely a checking account, although checks can be drawn on it. It’s also an investment account, which I had the task of overseeing for him over the years—and its value has indeed enhanced steadily.”

“Really?” If this was a con game, it was luring me in. “Well, this is news to me.”

“I wasn’t sure, but that was my impression. Your father arranged it so that the account would survive him and left instructions with us for its assets to pass into your control after his own and your stepmother’s death.”

Herr Hauser was making it sound like quite a big deal, referring to “assets” instead of simply “money” or “funds.” Never one to beat around the bush, I asked, “When you speak of ‘assets,’ just what is it you’re referring to?”

“All the financial securities in your father’s investment portfolio with us, madam.”

Oh. Wow, even. Now it wasn’t just a boring old cash account, it was a bunch of stocks and bonds. “And—if I’m not being too direct, may I ask what the market value of these securities amounts to these days?”

“Certainly you are entitled to know that.” He did not go on.

“Okay—and so?”

“Ah, yes. Well, I’d rather not go into great detail on the telephone, Mrs. Hazeltine. That was my purpose in contacting you—to try to arrange a meeting here so we can go over the entire matter and answer any and all of your questions.”

Such continental politesse. Not my style. “In general terms, thenwhat are we talking about here, Mr. Hauser? I need some indication of the magnitude if I’m to…”

“Yes, of course, madam. Well, if I told you the dollar value of your father’s account with us is in eight figures, would that suffice for the moment?”

Hel-lo. As in: holy feces! Was this my fairy godfather on the other end of the horn? “You must be kidding,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

 

 

“Not a banker’s habit,” Herr Hauser said with a droll little laugh. “I gather this is a total surprise for you, madam.”

My brain somersaulted. “You might say.” My sobriety reflex kicked in almost at once, a genetic residue of my mother’s the-glass-is-half-empty syndrome. “I suppose there’s a catch. There must be a string of some sort attached—”

“A catch? I’m not sure I understand what you’re referring to.”

“Some condition—some kind of test I have to pass to win the prizelike swimming the Hellespont or reciting King Lear from memory.” I heard myself sounding giddily manic.

“Not at all, madam—it’s quite straightforward. Your father’s instructions were clear.”

Yes, there was nothing namby-pamby about Leon, so maybe this was all on the up and up. But then why was it necessary for me to travel to his bank, I asked, adding, “though I’m sure it’s a lovely place.” Why didn’t he just send me whatever papers needed signing, I’d return them promptly, and he could wire the funds from Leon’s liquidated assets directly to my bank?

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, I’m afraid. We like to do these things in person—at least initially—to be sure whom we’re dealing with, and that our foreign clients fully understand what’s involved.”

Did they have Leon’s DNA on file? Did they need fingerprints or a cheek swab from me? “Complicated how?” I asked. “Involved how?”

Patiently, as if addressing a slow child, he explained that my father had a confidential numbered account at his bank and that the identity of their clients, like Leon’s, was known only within its walls. Swiss banking laws prevented divulging any information about these accounts to a third party without the clients’ permission.

A low-wattage bulb in my brain began to flicker. “Third parties, you mean, such as the U.S.Treasury Department?” I asked.

“It would qualify as one example.”

“My father had an account with your bank as a tax shelter, is that what you’re saying?”

My question, clearly a bit too blunt, seemed to unnerve Herr Hauser. “I didn’t say that madam.” His bank, he said, had no way of knowing whether

 

 

my father reported or paid taxes on what his Swiss investment account earned. It merely provided him with an annual statement summarizing all the activities and transactions his bank adviser made for him in the account—purchases, sales, income, withdrawals, and so forth. And when Leon visited Zurich once or twice each year, Herr Hauser would review it all with him and discuss his investment goals and the strategy recommended to achieve them.

Mr. Hauser was good at obfuscating. I asked him if Leon’s account might be something other than a tax shelter. Like a repository for sales from an international gun-running business.

“So far as our Private Banking department is concerned, madam, our clients’ accounts are primarily vehicles for safeguarding their assets and enhancing their value. The source of their assets and added deposits is not our concern.”

I was starting to feel more uncomfortable than thrilled. “But their value and the income they earn are hidden from tax collectors, thanks to your country’s bank secrecy laws, correct?”

“If our clients so choose.” He conceded that the bank was a provider of clandestine services but insisted it was not the bank’s province to police its clients if they acted to withhold disclosure of their assets to any third party. But it didn’t seem quite the moment for me to question my caller’s employer for its ethics in catering to worldwide tax cheaters. After all, the guy had phoned to tell me manna from heaven (or wherever my father’s spirit had been assigned) was about to light up my life. “Well, Mr. Hauser, as I said before, I certainly didn’t know anything about all of this,” I said instead.

“I believe that was Leon’s intention—that the account be his surprise posthumous gift to you—and you alone, by the way, and none of his other heirs,” said the banker. “And it was of course not my place to ask him why he chose not to tell you in advance that this considerable sum would be forthcoming to you upon his death.” He paused for a discreet moment, then softly added, “And our frank hope, madam, is that if you approve of the manner in which we’ve been handling the account over these many years, you will allow us to continue doing so and relieve you of the complexities of managing a portfolio of this size.”

 

 

Uh-oh. I knew a sales pitch when I heard one. “We may be putting the cart before the horse here, Mr. Hauser. You’re giving me a great deal to digest—”

“Of course—please forgive me, Mrs. Hazeltine. There’s certainly no need for you to rush ahead.” Then, in his version of the soft sell, he went on: “Whenever you decide you’re ready to assume ownership of Mr. Beckwith’s account, I’m sure we can deal with the formalities expeditiously, and then you’ll be able to make any withdrawals you care to whenever you wish.”

It felt as if he were offering candy to a baby, a sort of sampling of the goodies that lay in store once I signed aboard his ship with its Jolly Roger whipping in a foul wind. If the income generated by his account at the Helvetica National Bank, like the rest of what Leon accumulated each year, was indeed taxable by the Internal Revenue Service, and he had in fact failed to comply with the law in that regard, my father had gypped the U.S. government out of a good deal of money. And now I was being invited by my caller, in effect, to perpetuate this gross misconduct.

I put the matter to him in not quite those words. “This gift you’re bringing me, Mr. Hauser, may not be entirely welcome. I wouldn’t care to engage in criminal activity, I trust you can understand.”

Gauging my alarm, the banker was noncommittal. “Your concern is understandable, madam—I’m sure my news is startling—but in a positive way, I should think.” Assuring me his bank was never privy to my father’s practices with regard to filing his tax returns, Herr Hauser stressed that his obligation was simply to advise me of Leon’s directive to transfer title to his Zurich account after he and my stepmother had died. If how Daddy handled his financial affairs would have a bearing on my willingness to take title to his account at the bank, I would be wise to consult a qualified American attorney or accountant for clarification, he suggested. “But I’ve long been assured by our bank’s legal office,” he added, “that there is no stipulation whatsoever in your nation’s statutes prohibiting American citizens from owning and maintaining investments at foreign banks. It is the individual citizen’s responsibility, of course, to comply with the provisions of the U.S. tax code just as with all of your other laws—”

 

 

His artful buck-passing hardly allayed my worry. “Perhaps you see, though, Mr. Hauser, why I asked you if there wasn’t some catch to this blessing you’re graciously bestowing on me.”

“To be sure, madam. But it hardly need prove a misfortune for you.”

“If, you mean, I’m willing to keep a multimillion-dollar secret from my government?”

Silence was his only response.

“One further question if you’ll humor me.”

“Of course, madam.”

“You say that my father directed that I be given sole title to this account. But he had other children, too, you know—I have a brother and stepsister. All of us are heirs—I don’t quite understand why my siblings aren’t also included in this unsuspected bounty of his.”

“A reasonable question,” the banker said, “but it never came up in the years I worked with your father—and it was surely not my place to inquire. I rather assumed it was simply his preference—that you were his particular favorite among his heirs—and that given the confiden-tial nature of the account, he didn’t wish to divide it and perhaps invite questions or disputes.”

Now there was a big fat joke—my father’s “particular favorite”! I couldn’t contain a small laugh “I think not,” I said matter-of-factly. “Rather the opposite, if anythimg. My father and I had a—a—you might call it a complex relationship.”

“Mr. Hazeltine never confided in me on such personal matters—our relationship was strictly professional. But perhaps he wished to reassure you of his affection in this manner?”

A plausible enough explanation from someone unfamiliar with Leon’s cluelessness about his and my clashing values. “Perhaps,” I said, “but it would be quite a reversal on his part.”

“All I can tell you, Mrs. Hazeltine, is that your father’s written instructions name only you as the first successor beneficiary of his account with us—and then your husband in the event you don’t wish or are unable to succeed as the titleholder.” And if neither of us were “available”—I assumed Mr. Hauser meant in case we died—then our two children would be assigned ownership of the account under a trust the bank would administer until they came of age.

 

 

How very calculating of Leon, not to mention underhanded: to present me with a seemingly magnanimous consolation prize. Had he dumped his perverse treasure chest, stockpiled over years by evading U.S. taxes—if in fact that was his practice, onto my lap while sparing his other two children this dubious bestowal? Yes, sure, he knew the comforts and luxuries it might afford me and my family would be welcome, but with potentially grave repercussions for us as beneficiaries if we excused his dark misdeeds and they ever came to light. What had I done to merit designation as the exclusive recipient of Daddy’s ticking twenty-four-karat time bomb? Was it, as the banker mused, truly meant to make up for a lifetime of emotional neglect toward me—or was it some final, ironic form of punishment for my failure to bow to him as our saintly paterfamilias? Either way, could Leon really have supposed I would be grateful for his slipping me this gross bonanza under the table?

Before I hung up, another red light flashed through my mind. “By the way,” I asked the banker, “if my father’s account at your fine institution is so confidential, how did you learn of my stepmother’s death, allowing me to take title to it? Someone here in the States must have contacted you—and been aware of the account’s existence.”

“Ah, yes, that’s easily explained.” It had all been prearranged by Leon. “He evidently left instructions with a gentleman who phoned me two weeks ago and identified himself as the executor of your father’s and stepmother’s estates. He didn’t tell me his name or seem to know mine other than asking for ‘Mr. H’ or my assistant. He said only that he had been directed to call my office number three months after Mrs. Beckwith’s death—or his own if he outlived her—and apprise me of the sad event. And so he did—but said nothing further. I think it’s probable this man had not been informed about the account and was simply fulfilling your father’s directive.”

Could well be—Leon played his cards close to his chest. I thanked Herr Hauser and arranged for him to phone back in a week, allowing me the chance to process his cascading news and discuss it with my spouse. But I already knew that neither of the two executors of my father’s estate was likely to enlighten me as to why I was the anointed heir to his radioactive Swiss gift. One of them was Leon’s New York lawyer, a cagey old solo practitioner who’d been his close adviser

 

 

forever—a man I hadn’t exchanged more than a few dozen words with in my whole life. He would hardly violate his confidential relationship with my late father to discuss Leon’s Swiss account with meassuming he knew of its existence. But if so, why would he have countenanced its omission from being mentioned in Leon’s will? That would have made him a co-conspirator against the U.S. government. The other executor was my stepsister Paula’s husband, Eddie Vaughan, a sleek, successful high roller in the oil-drilling business and openly disdainful of what he called “the whining underprivileged.” How Paula, a decent person, could bear him neither Jerry nor I ever understood, but as a co-beneficiary of Leon’s estate, she would likely turn cross upon learning I had been favored with such an inexplicably munificent gift—and maybe even vengefully rat me out to the feds.

Even more puzzling than my windfall was why Leon might have entered into such a subterranean arrangement in the first place. He could surely afford to have played it square with the IRS. He was just as surely not a crook at heart, yet tax evaders were indisputably criminals. So far as I knew, no one had ever accused Daddy of illegal or unethical behavior over all the years he had accumulated his wealth. He traveled abroad extensively both for business and pleasure, so it was hardly surprising that he would keep a foreign bank account for paying his overseas expenses. But Leon, I had just been told, hadn’t kept merely a modest checking account at the Swiss bankit was a serious portfolio of securities, according to Herr Hauser. Was Leon perhaps just diversifying his investment risks by domiciling a portion of his holdings in Zurich? But why in Switzerland, with its notorious bank secrecy laws, and not, say, in London or Hong Kong and quash any suspicion that he had become a chronic tax-evader? Did the danger of exposure provide him with some weird charge of excitement? And maybe he had dug himself too deep a hole by the time he realized he was playing a reckless game, only the longer he kept the account, the harder it had become for him to come clean. If all the compounded earnings of his Swiss account had actually gone unreported to the federales, their posthumous disclosure might fatally bollix up the distribution of his entire estate. So voila! Hand the fetid pile to sweet little Lynn—maybe she would figure out how to sanitize it. Lucky me. And lucky Jerry, whom I now had to entangle in this tantalizing mess.