Chapter 8 - THE JAILHOUSE RECKONING
Two weeks passed. The winter turned bitter, plunging Chicago into a sub-zero deep freeze that froze the Chicago River into jagged plates of green ice.
The legal machinery moved with brutal, mechanized speed.
Vance Sterling held to his word. With the threat of state and federal fraud investigations hanging over his former loan officer, Apex Bridge executed a full release of all liens against Carter Forensic Advisory and Copper Table. In exchange, Douglas Hale, signing from a holding cell at Stateville Correctional Center under the desperate advice of his court-appointed attorney, executed a full quitclaim deed surrendering the Siesta Key four-plex to Apex’s asset management arm.
The phantom million-dollar empire was gone, swallowed whole by the very predator Douglas had tried to ride to an easy retirement.
On a gray Thursday afternoon, my phone rang. It was the Cook County Department of Corrections.
"Mrs. Carter? Inmate Douglas Hale has submitted an emergency request for a family legal visitation. He has refused to sign his plea agreement until he speaks with you."
Joel looked up from his desk at home, where we were reviewing the architectural plans for Copper Table’s rebuild. "Don't go, Simone. It's a trap. He wants to guilt you into paying for a private defense attorney."
"I know what he wants, Joel," I said, pulling my coat from the rack. "And that's exactly why I have to go."
The high-security visitation room at Cook County was divided by a two-inch-thick slab of scratched plexiglass. Douglas sat on the opposite side, wearing a standard-issue bright orange jumpsuit that hung off his shrinking frame. In two weeks, he looked like he had aged a decade. His white hair was greasy and unkempt, his skin gray, his hands cuffed to a steel ring bolted to the counter.
I sat down on the metal stool and picked up the black plastic telephone receiver.
Douglas grabbed his receiver with shaking hands, pressing it tightly against his ear.
"Simone," he gasped, his voice raspy through the static line. "Simone, thank God you came. You have to talk to this public defender. He’s a child! He’s thirty years old, he doesn't know what he's doing! He’s telling me I have to take a plea for four years! Four years in a medium-security facility! Simone, I'm seventy-one years old! I have heart palpitations! I won't survive four years in Stateville!"
I looked at him through the scratched glass. I felt no anger. I felt no sorrow. I felt the profound, empty stillness that comes when an old illusion finally dies.
"Four years is a generous plea for Class 1 felony burglary, criminal damage, and identity theft, Douglas," I said calmly. "The state's attorney originally wanted eight."
"You did this!" Douglas hissed, his eyes suddenly flaring with that familiar, entitled rage, his face pressing close to the glass. "You orchestrated this with that bastard Vance Sterling! You helped the bank take Siesta Key! That property was worth two million dollars! If we had held it for six more months, we would have paid back the loan, paid for your kitchen repairs, and had enough left over to buy you a new house! We were doing it for the family, Simone!"
"Stop lying, Dad," I said, my voice cutting through his manic rant like a scalpel. "The only person you ever cared about was yourself. You didn't care about Briana—you turned her into a felon to secure a loan. You didn't care about Beverly—you had her commit notary fraud that will follow her to her grave. And you certainly didn't care about me."
"I was your father!" he shouted, banging his cuffed hands against the shelf, causing the guard in the corner to take a warning step forward. "I fed you! I gave you a roof over your head!"
"You charged me rent when I was seventeen years old working at the grocery store," I reminded him. "You took my college savings bond that Aunt Clara gave me when I was twelve and used it to buy a boat you sold two years later for scrap. You spent my entire life teaching me that my only value was what you could extract from me."
Douglas swallowed hard, his chest heaving under the orange jumpsuit. When he realized that the old guilt tactics no longer worked, the rage vanished, replaced once again by that pathetic, manipulative desperation.
"Simone... please," he whimpered, tears welling in the corners of his rheumy eyes. "Your mother... she took a plea yesterday. Two years probation because of her health and her cooperation. But me... they're sending me downstate. I don't have money for the commissary. I don't have a private lawyer to file an appeal. Just hire me a private attorney. Twenty thousand dollars. That's all it takes to get an appeal filed. You have the consulting firm! You have the money!"
"I spent forty thousand dollars this week on new refrigeration units and stainless prep counters, Dad," I said. "And fifty thousand on legal fees to clean up the mess you made."
"You're choosing kitchen equipment over your father's life?!" he cried out.
"I’m choosing my daughter's future over your past," I said.
I leaned closer to the glass.
"Yesterday, Beverly signed the formal divorce petition from her court-appointed lawyer," I told him.
Douglas froze, his jaw dropping open. "What? What are you talking about?"
"Mother is moving into a senior subsidized apartment in Joliet," I said. "She turned over all your personal ledgers to the IRS. They are opening an investigation into fifteen years of unreported income through Hale Logistics. Even if you get out of Stateville in three years, Dad, the federal tax liens will take every penny of your Social Security."
Douglas looked at me as if he were staring at an executioner who had just read off his death sentence. His hands trembled so hard the telephone receiver rattled against the plexiglass.
"Why?" he whispered, his voice completely broken. "Why do you hate us so much?"
"I don't hate you, Douglas," I said softly. "Hate requires emotional investment. To an auditor, a zero is just a zero. You are simply out of credit."
I hung up the receiver.
May you like
Douglas screamed something through the glass, slamming his cuffed fists down again, but the heavy acoustic barrier blocked every sound. The guard stepped forward, grabbed him by the shoulder of his orange jumpsuit, and hauled him backward through the heavy steel door into the gray belly of the prison.
I stood up, buttoned my coat, and walked out into the cold winter air. For the first time in thirty-eight years, I breathed freely.
