Chapter 8 - The Society of Wolves
The Chicago Club on East Van Buren Street was the inner sanctum of the city’s financial establishment.
Behind its heavy oak doors and stained-glass windows, men whose grandfathers had rebuilt the city after the Great Fire sat in high-backed leather armchairs, smoking cigars they weren't supposed to have under municipal ordinances, discussing the refinancing of toll roads and the private placement of municipal debt.
At 1:15 p.m., the main dining room was filled with the low, continuous rumble of fifty private conversations, punctuated by the clinking of silver cutlery against monogrammed china.
Brendan Fairchild sat at Table Four—the traditional table of the Fairchild family since 1924.
Across from him sat Samantha Lowery.
She was twenty-nine, an interior designer whose firm had received four hundred thousand dollars in "consulting retainers" from Fairchild Capital over the past eighteen months. She wore a tailored cream-colored knit dress from Celine, a diamond tennis bracelet that had appeared on her wrist three days after Chloe’s initial hospitalization, and an expression of sharp, anxious irritation.
"Brendan, this is absurd," Samantha whispered, leaning across the white linen tablecloth. "My corporate card was declined at the Merchandise Mart twenty minutes ago. The vendor told me the account was flagged for bankruptcy fraud. You said this was a temporary liquidity rebalancing."
Brendan was drinking his third dry martini.
His eyes were bloodshot, his collar stained with sweat, his hands trembling so violently that the gin sloshed against the rim of his glass every time he lifted it.
"It’s an administrative error, Sam," he rasped, his voice dropping into that frantic, rhythmic cadence of a gambler who had doubled down on twenty and was waiting for the dealer’s ace. "Nora went to her father’s old law firm. They filed some frivolous ex parte motion in the federal building. Julian is filing an emergency stay right now. By three o'clock, the judge will dissolve the receivership and we’ll have the accounts back."
"Julian isn't filing anything, Brendan," a voice said from behind his shoulder.
Brendan froze.
Julian Vance—his second cousin and the junior managing partner of Fairchild Capital’s legal division—stepped to the edge of the table.
He wasn't wearing his overcoat. He wore a rumpled suit, his tie crooked, carrying a cardboard banker's box filled with personal files and three legal folios.
"Julian," Brendan gasped, turning in his chair. "Did you get the stay? Did Thorne sign the order?"
Julian set the cardboard box down on the empty chair beside Samantha.
"Thorne didn't sign the stay, Brendan," Julian said, his voice flat, exhausted, completely devoid of familial loyalty. "Thorne issued an emergency bench warrant for your arrest."
Samantha gasped, her hand flying to her throat, her diamonds catching the chandelier light. "What?"
"The SEC took the servers at nine-thirty," Julian continued, looking down at his cousin with an expression of profound, bitter disgust. "They didn't just find the medical logs, Brendan. They found the offshore distributions to Samantha’s shell corporation. They found eighteen million dollars in disguised dividend payments routed through the Cayman debt fund during the middle of the Dutch loan default. They’re charging you with grand larceny, bankruptcy fraud, and second-degree reckless homicide."
"Reckless homicide?" Brendan choked, the martini glass slipping from his fingers to shatter against the linen tablecloth, the gin soaking into the bread basket. "They can't charge me with homicide for an internal benefits dispute!"
"They can when the beneficiary is three years old, Brendan," Julian said. "And when the coroner's report states that the denied medication would have had an eighty-five percent efficacy rate in stabilizing the pulmonary pressure."
The heavy double doors of the dining room swung open.
The room did not go quiet all at once; it silenced in ripples, starting from the front tables near the library, moving across the parquet floor until the only sound in the great hall was the hum of the silver dessert cart being wheeled between tables.
I walked into the Chicago Club.
I was still wearing my green military field jacket over my black turtleneck. My boots were dusty from the morning in Skokie. I didn't carry a purse. I didn't carry an umbrella.
Behind me walked two federal marshals in dark suits and the Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Marcus Hall.
Every head in the room turned.
These were men who had known my father for forty years; men who had attended his memorial service at Fourth Presbyterian Church; men who had sat on the bench beside him during the municipal scandals of the nineteen-eighties.
An elderly man with silver hair and a three-piece suit—Arthur Montgomery, the senior trustee of the Chicago Symphony—stood up from his table, his eyes wide as he looked at my face.
"Nora?" he whispered. "Robert’s girl?"
I didn't answer him. I kept my eyes locked on Table Four.
Brendan scrambled to his feet, his chair overturning behind him with a loud, hollow crash that made three waiters freeze in their tracks.
"Nora!" he shouted, his voice cracking into a desperate, theatrical plea as he took two steps toward me, his hands outstretched. "Nora, please! Tell these men! Tell them this was a private family matter! We can settle the estate! I’ll sign the house over to you! I’ll give you seventy percent of the partnership units! Just tell them to drop the warrant!"
I stopped four feet from him.
The marshals moved with silent, mechanical precision, flanking him on both sides, their hands resting casually over their service holsters.
"The partnership units don't exist anymore, Brendan," I said.
My voice was not loud, but in the dead silence of the Chicago Club, it carried to every corner of the vaulted ceiling.
"At noon today," I said, "the United States Bankruptcy Court confirmed the absolute foreclosure of the Nora Garrison Trust over all assets of Fairchild Maritime, Lake Forest Holdings, and Fairchild Capital. The firm has been dissolved. The office tower on Wacker Drive has been transferred to the municipal land bank to satisfy twelve million dollars in delinquent property taxes."
Samantha jumped to her feet, her chair scraping violently. "And my contracts? My design retainers?"
I looked at her.
Her face was pale, her lips painted a glossy crimson, her perfume filling the air between us like cheap incense in a tomb.
"Your design retainers were paid with funds stolen from my daughter’s medical reserve, Samantha," I said softly. "The federal receiver filed a fraudulent conveyance action against your firm forty minutes ago. Every dollar you received from Brendan over the last eighteen months has been frozen. The marshals are at your showroom on Michigan Avenue right now, changing the deadbolts."
Samantha looked at Brendan, her mouth open in a soundless scream of betrayal, before she turned and bolted toward the service exit, her high heels clicking frantically against the parquet floor.
Brendan didn't watch her go.
He stood before me, his chest heaving, his fingers twitching against the sides of his trousers, looking at the frayed green fabric of my field jacket.
"You had this all along," he whispered, the truth finally breaking through the dense, multi-layered armor of his vanity. "Your father... your father planned this from the day we announced the engagement."
"My father didn't plan your cruelty, Brendan," I said. "He just planned for your nature."
Marcus Hall stepped forward, producing a set of high-tensile steel handcuffs from his coat pocket.
"Brendan Fairchild," the prosecutor said, his voice ringing through the silent dining room. "You are under arrest for federal wire fraud, bankruptcy evasion, and reckless homicide under Title 18 of the United States Code. You have the right to remain silent."
The steel clicked shut over Brendan’s wrists.
He didn't fight. He didn't yell.
May you like
He stood with his head bowed, his shoulders hunched, his hands locked together behind his back, as two marshals escorted him past the tables of seventy men who had known his grandfather, none of whom raised a hand to touch his shoulder as he passed.
I watched him go through the heavy oak doors, out into the gray, wind-swept chill of Van Buren Street, where the prison van was waiting with its engine idling.
