Chapter 9 - The Settlement
The grand jury took forty-five minutes to return a true bill.
Two counts of felony reckless endangerment of a child under five. One count of third-degree assault. One count of witness intimidation, added after the district attorney listened to the voicemail my father had left on my phone from the gas station parking lot on Sunday morning.
The trial was set for January.
On Friday afternoon, the private meeting was held in the executive conference room of Vance Maritime on the sixty-second floor of the Chrysler Building.
The room had forty feet of floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the East River, four miles of blue water dotted with tugboats and container barges moving out toward the Narrows.
My mother sat at the far end of the thirty-foot table of polished rosewood.
Beside her sat my father’s criminal attorney, a man named Henderson who had spent three days realizing that his client had forty-two thousand dollars in liquid assets and an eighteen-hundred-dollar mortgage on a house whose property tax was six months in arrears.
Adrian sat at the head of the table.
He hadn't taken off his suit jacket. He had a single black fountain pen resting between his first two fingers, tapping the leather blotter with a rhythmic, hypnotic click.
“This is the civil agreement,” Harold Vance said, sliding three copies of a sixteen-page document across the rosewood.
Henderson picked up the top copy, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, his thumb flipping through the red-lined paragraphs.
“A complete release of all personal claims against Nora Vance and Lily Vance,” Henderson murmured, reading aloud. “An irrevocable waiver of any right to communicate, directly or through third parties, with the minor child until her twenty-fifth birthday. An immediate quitclaim deed on the Bedford residential parcel to satisfy the civil damages for personal injury.”
My mother gasped, her hand flying to the pearls at her throat.
“The Bedford house? That’s... that’s our retirement! Richard’s father bought that land in nineteen-seventy! We were going to build the guest cottage for Chloe!”
Adrian didn't look up from the blotter.
“You can sign the deed today,” Adrian said, his voice entirely conversational. “Or the civil suit will be filed in the Southern District on Monday morning at nine o'clock. The damages we’re asking for are twelve million dollars. The jury will be drawn from Manhattan. They will see the video of the fountain on a seventy-inch monitor in the first forty minutes of the trial.”
Henderson leaned toward my mother, his voice a harsh, desperate whisper behind his palm. “Sign it, Diane. If this goes to a civil jury after a felony conviction, they’ll take the house, the pension, and the jewelry. You’ll be living on social security in a rental unit in White Plains.”
Diane Bennett looked down at the paper.
Her hands were shaking so hard she dropped the pen twice before she found a grip. Her signature—the looping, elegant script she had spent forty years perfecting for thank-you notes after the country club galas—was jagged, uneven, and broke through the bottom line of the vellum.
“And the criminal case?” she whispered, looking at Adrian with eyes that were sunken and wet. “The district attorney... can’t you speak to him? Richard has high blood pressure. He won't survive a state facility.”
Adrian picked up his fountain pen, capped it with a soft, mechanical click, and slid it into his breast pocket.
“The district attorney represents the people of the State of New York, Mrs. Bennett,” Adrian said, rising from his chair and straightening his cuffs. “Not my logistics trust. Your husband had an opportunity to consider his blood pressure before he put both hands on my daughter’s shoulders.”
He walked toward the double doors that led to the executive elevator lobby.
“Wait,” she called out.
Adrian stopped, his hand on the bronze door handle, but he didn't turn around.
“Where is she?” my mother asked, her voice cracking into that old, thin sound of defeat. “Is she... is she ever going to see us again?”
Adrian looked back over his shoulder.
His face was completely empty. It was the expression he wore when he looked at an old freight manifest that had been cleared from the books three quarters ago.
May you like
“Who?” Adrian asked.
He pulled the heavy door open, stepped into the private lobby, and let the oak swing shut with a quiet, vault-like thud that cut off the room forever.
