Chapter 6 - The Liquidation
The headquarters of Sterling Port Solutions occupied the third floor of an old brick warehouse building near the docks in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
On Monday morning at nine o'clock, the wind off Newark Bay was blowing the smell of diesel exhaust and low tide through the rusted chain-link fences that bordered the rail spur.
Mark Kessler sat behind his six-foot mahogany desk, his tie undone, the collar of his custom shirt gray with twenty-four hours of sweat. The room looked like it had been hit by a small, localized hurricane. The wastebasket was overturned, three cardboard legal boxes were open on the leather sofa, and his personal assistant—a woman who had worked for him for seven years—was standing by the door with her coat on, her arms folded across her chest.
“I’m not signing the timecards, Mark,” she said, her voice shaking with an exhaustion that had turned into disgust. “The bank sent two men in gray suits to the accounting office forty minutes ago. They’re auditing the payroll accounts right now. The checks aren't going to clear on Friday.”
“Get out,” Mark croaked. He hadn't shaved. The stubble along his jaw was patchy and white, making him look sixty instead of forty-two. “Get the hell out of my office, Brenda.”
She didn't slam the door. She simply walked out, leaving it half an inch ajar, letting in the sound of twenty-two truck drivers shouting at the dispatcher in the hallway below.
The door clicked open thirty seconds later.
My father walked in.
Richard Bennett was wearing the same trousers he had worn to the wedding, though they were wrinkled now, the knees bagged and the hems dark with dried mud. He didn't have his dinner jacket; he was wearing an oversized blue windbreaker he had bought at a gas station across from the county jail after his bail had been posted at midnight.
“Mark,” Richard said, his voice cracked and breathless. “Mark, thank God you’re here. The lawyers in White Plains... they’re talking about an indictment. An actual criminal indictment. They’re saying the judge won't reduce the bail without a property bond, and the bank in Scarsdale is refusing to release the equity line on the house.”
Mark didn't look up from his desk. He was staring at a three-page fax that had just finished printing on the machine behind his chair.
“Get out, Richard,” Mark said.
My father stopped two feet from the desk, his hands hanging limp at his sides. “What? Mark, it’s me. It’s your father-in-law. We have to coordinate our statements. The police have a video from the garden—somebody had a phone out by the bar—and they’re saying you encouraged the assault. If we hire a joint defense team—”
Mark stood up so fast his leather executive chair crashed backward into the radiator.
“My father-in-law?” Mark roared, the veins in his neck bulging against his starched collar like blue cables. “You ignorant, pathetic, suburban piece of garbage! You destroyed me!”
Richard recoiled, his back hitting the doorframe. “Mark! What are you talking about? I was defending Chloe! I was defending your wedding!”
“You pushed Adrian Vance’s daughter into a pond!” Mark screamed, spraying spit across the mahogany desk. “You broke the arm of the gate, you screamed at his security detail, and you stood on that terrace like a drunken clown shouting about thirty-dollar checks while the man who owns our master notes was standing ten feet away!”
He grabbed the three-page fax from the tray and shoved it into my father’s face.
“Read it!” Mark howled. “Read the top line! The Port Authority has declared our lease in default under the criminal association clause! Vance’s holding company called the forty-million-dollar demand note at eight o'clock this morning! We don't have forty million cents, Richard! By noon today, the marshals are chaining the gate on the rail yard! I’m ruined! My house in Alpine is gone! The cars are leased through the corporate account—they’re repossessing the Bentley before five o'clock!”
Richard blinked, his eyes darting across the legal text, his hands beginning to shake with the same violent rhythm Lily’s had had on the bluestone.
“No,” my father whispered. “No, that’s... Nora wouldn't do that. Nora’s soft. She’s always been soft. If I talk to her—if her mother goes to the apartment and explains about the family—”
“She’s not soft, you idiot!” Mark yelled, dropping his hands onto the desk and leaning forward until his forehead nearly touched my father’s nose. “She’s married to a man who buys railroad lines for spare parts! She hasn't looked at you in five years because she knew exactly what you were! And now... now you’ve dragged me down into the gutter with you!”
The glass door of the outer office swung open with a heavy, administrative thud.
Three men in dark suits stepped into the room, accompanied by two uniformed officers from the Elizabeth Police Department.
The lead man carried a heavy leather briefcase with the seal of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey embossed in gold on the flap.
“Mark Kessler?” the man asked.
Mark didn't answer. He simply closed his eyes, his shoulders collapsing inward, his hands sliding off the mahogany desk until they hung uselessly at his sides.
“I am Thomas Wright, court-appointed trustee for the assets of Sterling Port Solutions,” the man said, pulling a sheaf of stamped documents from his case. “Pursuant to an emergency order issued by Judge Martinez at eight-thirty this morning, this facility is now under federal receivership. You have twenty minutes to remove your personal effects from this office. All commercial records, digital assets, and vehicle keys must remain on the premises.”
My father backed out into the corridor, his boots slipping on the worn industrial linoleum.
He looked through the open door of the dispatch office.
The two television monitors that usually displayed the traffic cams for the New Jersey Turnpike had been switched to the local news channel.
Across the bottom of the screen, the yellow ticker was crawling beneath a still photograph of my father’s mugshot from the Westchester County Sheriff’s Department:
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SCARSDALE REAL ESTATE EXECUTIVE ARRESTED IN WEDDING ASSAULT CASE... CHARGES INCLUDE CHILD ENDANGERMENT... VANCE MARITIME CONFIRMS TERMINATION OF COMMERCIAL CONTRACTS...
Richard Bennett turned and ran down the stairs toward the gray gravel of the parking lot, his breath rattling in his throat like a dying engine, the wind off the salt marsh tearing the paper windbreaker from his shoulders.
