Chapter Five
next morning I woke to someone pounding on the door yelling, "Mrs. Powell, open up! This is the New York City police and we're here to serve you with an eviction notice!"
When I got up, I found Eva curled on the living room sofa with a cup of coffee sipping it as she ignored the yelling coming from the other side of the door. We'd spent the previous day calling around trying to get ahold of the corner's report, but no one seemed to have any idea where that report was. Eva called in some favors from her friends in high places, and was able to get one of them to try and track it down. I wanted to take it to a Navy doctor and have them interpret it for me.
The pounding continued. I looked at Eva and she shrugged, so I walked over to the front door and opened it.
"Where is Eva Powell?" the officer asked.
"I'm right here, officer," Eva said raising a perfectly manicured hand and waving it as if she were volunteering to answer a question in class. "No need to shout."
"Mrs. Powell, you've been warned that you had a limited number of days to pack up and move out," the officer said as he shifted nervously. "Today is move out day. Are you ready to leave or do we need to call in the sheriff's office and have officers do the moving for you?"
"No, I'm ready," she said. "I just wanted to spend my last morning in the one room in the place that made me happy."
"Mrs. Powell, I suggest you go put on some clothing and gather your things," the officer said as he walked over and handed Eva the paperwork he held in his hand. "It's time to get going."
"Ah well, it is indeed," Eva sighed. "I've always loved this place. It's a shame that I don't get to stay here."
"What on earth is going on?" I asked looking between Eva and the officer. "Why is she being evicted?"
"And you are?"
"Ryan Powell, I'm Alan Powell's son," I said taking the papers out of Eva's hands and unfolding them. As I read the sheet detailing the numerous attempts to remove the Powell's from the premises, I realized that this had been going on for over a year. "Eva, what is this all about?"
"I have no idea," she said as she sipped from the china cup. "Alan told me he'd taken care of everything after the first notice, so I didn't worry about it until the collectors came calling every few days trying to get information from me."
"But Dad had plenty of money, I don't get it," I said as I read the notice again. There was nothing in it that said anything about what had happened, only that my father had failed to pay the mortgage for almost fifteen months and that the bank was now foreclosing on the apartment and turning it over to the building owners to re-sell. This seemed wrong. It seemed to fast, and why hadn't my father launched an investigation into what had happened? "Eva, who was in charge of the mortgage on this place?"
"Do I look like an address book to you?" she asked impatiently. "I have no idea how your father ran that part of the finances."
"Do you have any idea of how he ran any part of the finances?" I muttered under my breath. "Of course not."
"All right, well, it looks like they do, in fact have the right to boot us out," I said as I looked at the officer and shrugged. "So, you'd better go get your stuff and get ready to check out of the Hotel Powell."
"God, this is such an inconvenience," she moaned as she set her up down and pulled herself up off the couch. "I've got too much to do today to be bothered with packing. I'll just change my clothes and go to my mother's."
"Ma'am, whatever you leave in the apartment will become the property of the bank," the officer warned.
"Oh let it. Who cares?" she said waving her hand at him again. "It's a good excuse to build an entirely new wardrobe now that I'm a widow."
I looked at the officer and rolled my eyes as I walked back to the guest bedroom where I tossed what few things I'd taken out into my duffle bag and headed for the door. I looked around the place one last time and thought about how much my mother would have hated this apartment, then I saluted the officer and said, "I wish you luck with that one," before I exited out the front door and headed down to the street.
I had an appointment with the Commander over at the Navy Recruiting Headquarters in two hours, thanks to Commander Marks calling ahead and scheduling it for me. I needed to get information about Opie's family so that I could go see them and let them know that they'd been in his last thoughts. Down on 77th, I thought about hopping on the subway and then decided against it. I needed a chance to clear my head before I met with the Commander.
Something was definitely fishy with the apartment and my father's finances. It was completely unlike him to let something as important as a mortgage slip by. When I was a kid I could remember him drilling it into my head that it was absolutely essential that I be a man of my word. If I agreed to do something, then I was obligated to do it — no matter what the cost. He'd told me over and over again that a man's word was really all he had in the world, and that once he was deemed unable to keep his word, a man might as well hang it up.
I shook my head remember how the lecture was delivered in the early hours before dawn as my father woke me up to warm up and go running with him. He believed in a healthy mind and a healthy body, and he became more strident about it after my mother died. It was as if his determination to keep me fit and healthy was the only thing that continued to connect us once my mother died. The problem was that for as much time as he spent working out with me, he never once talked about anything outside of physical fitness or school. So, I followed his lead and kept it all inside.
In the process, we became exceptionally good at keeping secrets and maintaining our masks of normalcy, but we never found a way to help each other cope with the pain of loss. When I'd announced, in the middle of my senior year of high school that I'd be joining the Navy as soon as I graduated, my father shook my hand and said, "Good choice, son. Now you can become the best of the best — a SEAL."
I remember being surprised that he hadn't tried to talk me into joining the Marines instead, but that was quickly replaced by the feeling of gratitude I'd learned from my mother. Although he didn't wear his heart on his sleeve, my father had shown his love the best way he knew how, by letting me be my own man.
At Lexington and 53rd, I hopped on the E train and road it all the way to 23rd where I backtracked down 8th Avenue to 24th Street. I entered the Navy Recruiting Headquarters and reported to the receptionist at the front who sent me up to the twelfth floor for my meeting with the Commander.
I felt self-conscious carrying everything I owned with me, but I knew that I had no other choice until I visited my father's office and found out what had happened to him. I asked the young brunette secretary with the tight sweater in Commander Donnelly's office if I could stash my bag behind her desk while I met with her boss. She smiled and told me it was no problem, and I knew that if I asked her out, she'd say yes. The problem was that I was technically homeless and there was no way I could think about women until I found a place to live while I straightened out my father's affairs.
Fifteen minutes later, she showed me into the office. I stood at attention in front of the Commander's desk until he said, "At ease, sailor," and gestured for me to sit down in one of the chairs across from his desk.
"So, Commander Marks says you want to meet with Ensign Morgan's parents. Is that correct, Lieutenant Powell?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," I nodded. "I'd like to go see them and convey my deepest sympathies and give them a message from their son."
"Do you think that's wise, Lieutenant?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," I nodded. "Is that a problem?"
"Not at all," he said as he rested his elbows on his desk and leaned forward. "I'm just wondering if it's a little too much for you to be expected to deal with your father's death as well as the death of your team member.
"Not at all, sir," I shook my head. "I am absolutely capable of handling both, sir."
"This isn't about whether or not you're capable, of course you're capable. You're a SEAL," he said without hesitation, then his voice turned softer and he added, "The question is whether or not you should be doing both."
"Sir, I feel confident that I can manage both tasks without any significant problems," I said as I met his gaze. "I'm concerned about Ensign Morgan's parents. And I want to give them his last words."
"That's all well and good, Lieutenant, but what kind of assistance do you need to help deal with your father's death?" he pushed.
"I'm fine, sir," I said as I looked him in the eye knowing that while I wasn't technically lying to him, I was evading his questions. "Really, I am. I spent the night with my stepmother and later today I'm going to meet with my father's business partner."
"Alright, Lieutenant, I'll let you off with that explanation," he warned. He'd been doing his job long enough that he knew bullshit when he smelled it, but he let it pass. I think it was because he knew that SEALs were team players, and when a team was needed, they did not hesitate to speak up and ask for one. I nodded as I rose from my chair and stood at attention again. Commander Donnelly continued, "But if you need anything, anything at all, you are to call me at my private number. And I want you to report in once a week. Do you understand, sailor?"
"Hoo-yah, sir," I said as I saluted him and then did a point turn and marched out of the office.
I quickly grabbed my bag and gave the pretty secretary my number before realizing that, even if I wanted to, I didn't no longer had a home in the city. I smiled and, knowing that I would be ghosting her, made a mental note apologize later.
#
slung my duffle bag over my shoulder and walked down 7th Avenue to the TriCorp building on 7th and 19th Street. It rose up out of the sidewalk a tower of green glass and steel that reflected the world neighborhood around it but gave nothing away as to its interior contents. It had been designed by an architect specializing in biomedical research and had been intended as the first in a series of buildings that would be erected around the city representing the marriage of biology and community.
The first time my father had brought me to see it, I'd gone home and told my mother that it was a giant that was going to eat the whole block. My father had reprimanded me saying that this was a lie, but my mother had calmed him down with her smile and an explanation that I was studying Grimm's Fairy Tales in school, so it was natural that I'd be associating the things in my world with the things I was studying in school. As always, she made it sound like I was a genius for making the connections.
In reality, I'd had nightmares about the building for weeks after our visit, and after that, my mother had found excuses for me not to have to visit when my father suggested I accompany him to the office. After a while, he stopped asking.
I hadn't been in my father's office in almost fifteen years, so I wasn't surprised when no one recognized me as Alan Powell's son. I let the receptionist know I had an appointment with Julian Baines, and she buzzed me in and told me to go to the sixteenth floor and check in with Ruth. She cast a suspicious eye on my duffle bag, so I said, "Just home from a SEAL mission, and need to check in," and her eyes widened and I saw the look turn to interest. Some people can be so predictable.
Unfortunately, Julian Baines was not one of those people. He and my father had been friends in high school and started TriCorp after my father had returned from Vietnam. Julian had secured an educational draft deferment and had spent the war years earning multiple degrees in business and management. My father had taken advantage of the G.I. Bill when he returned and had gone back to college. It had taken him seven years to earn his PhD in biochemistry, and by the time he was done, he and Julian had developed the basic business model for TriCorp.
They spent two years talking to investors before they finally hit pay dirt and landed a pool of investors who fronted the money for their first project. In the end, the artificial intelligence research my father had designed had failed, but it spawned a host of other projects that were viable and incredibly profitable. So, my father put the AI development on the back burner and focused on generating enough capital to allow him to return to his first passion.
Meanwhile, Julian spent his time running the business end of the company and living the high life of a man who was trying to attract wealthy donors. As long as Julian didn't require my father to make more than an appearance at any given function, my father was happy to let him have the spotlight. They ran the business this way for two decades, until the industry shifted toward the tech side of things. At that point, my father began hiring younger people who'd been trained in the new technology and began resurrecting his AI project.
Julian had objected because the project wasn't as much of a moneymaker as the biochemical research they'd been doing. He and my father had had lengthy discussions about the direction TriCorp was going to take in the twenty-first century, and they had finally agreed to split the labs into two parts. One that continued to do the bread and butter biotech research and development, and the other would be under my father's direction and work on the AI project.
Or at least that's what my father had told me. Once I left for basic training, he wrote weekly updates with the regularity and precision of a true military man. The letters were reports, really. They told of his daily activities and discussed various things going on in the lab without disclosing much about what he was actually doing. None of it was particularly personal, and I always felt more like an audience member than a participant in his life, but at least it was regular mail. I dutifully replied to every letter, but I got the feeling that he didn't read these letters or that by the time he wrote again, he'd forgotten what I'd said in them.
Sometime around my fifth year, while I was in training to become a SEAL, my father's letters dropped off. I'd get one a month, if that, and I figured it was because the research had taken precedent over his need to describe it. I shrugged it off and focused on my training, and by the time I'd left for my overseas appointment, his letters had stopped coming. I told myself it was better this way. I had no expectations that he would contact me, and that meant there were no expectations that I would have to write to him.
The last time I'd seen my father had been two years before when I'd come home on leave for Christmas and spent the holiday with him and Eva in the Park Avenue apartment. He seemed content, and when we went to a Knicks game in Madison Square Garden he seemed more relaxed that I'd ever seen him. He told me about the strides they were making with the AI project and offered to let me tour the lab if I wanted. I had agreed, but we'd never made plans for me to accompany him to the office. I headed back to my post after the holiday without having seen what my father was working on.
Since then, our communication had been sporadic at best. I was sent out on mission after mission and my father had locked himself in the lab as the project became more intense. Eva had no idea what was going on, nor did she care, really, and since I had no siblings to keep me informed as to what was going on, I had no idea what had happened to my father over the past two years. His letters had been sporadic at best, and I'd rarely answered them.
As I sat in the waiting area of Julian's office, it occurred to me that, aside from the basic stats, I had no idea who my father was. I didn't really know Julian either. Growing up he'd been akin to wallpaper or the frame of the house, present and important, but not always someone I noticed. He and my father did the vast majority of their business at the office per my mother's wishes. It had been her only real request, that our home be a place separate from work, and my father had always respected that wish. In doing so, he'd kept Julian at a distance from me and my mother as well.
"Mr. Powell? Mr. Baines will see you now," the secretary said as she gestured toward the double doors behind her desk. When I didn't respond, she stood up and said, "Mr. Powell?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes," I said shaking my head to clear the memory of my mother standing at the kitchen sink washing an apple as she hummed along with the radio. "Yes, thank you, ma'am."
I smiled at her as I got up, grabbed my duffle bag and walked toward the doors. I pulled one open and walked into Julian's office. Inside, Julian stood up and walked around from behind his desk offering me a hand.
"Ryan, it's so good to see you again," he said smiling with all the warmth of a reptile sizing up its prey. I felt a chill go up my spine
"It's good to see you, too, sir," I said as I dropped my bag at my feet and offered both my hand and a guarded smile.
"Sir? What is this, the academy or something?" he grinned. "Call me Julian!"
Yes, si..Julian," I said as he gestured toward a chair and told me to have a seat.
"Can I get you something to drink?" he asked. "Soda? Tea? Whiskey?"
"No, I'm good, thank you, sir...uh, Julian," I said raising my hand and waving him off. His face was unnaturally tan and his hair was messily styled with what looked like wax. A tall man with broad shoulders and rather wide frame, he wore an expensive suit that looked like it had been tailor made to fit him but he'd ruined the effect by wearing a pair of leather driving moccasins that made him look like he had forgotten to change into his big boy shoes.
"I'm so sorry about Alan," Julian began.
"Thank you," I said not knowing what else to say about a man I hadn't known to a man I didn't know.
"He was my closest friend since high school," he said looking away for a moment. I got the feeling that this was for effect because I saw his eyes light on a reflection of himself in the window and then raise his hand to smooth down his hair. "He was my business partner, but first and foremost he was my friend."
"I know, I'm sorry for your loss," I said. There was something not quite right about Julian's behavior, but since I didn't know the whole story between him and my father, I didn't want to jump to conclusions.
"I'm going to miss him terribly," he said in a quiet voice that, for a moment, actually sounded sincere. I simply nodded in response. "He was the backbone of our research and development team. There's no replacing his talent and his skill."
"Really? I thought he'd hired a group of really talented people so that they could take over for him when he retired," I said as I watched Julian more closely. He was fidgeting in his chair and I wondered what that was about.
"He did, indeed," he said. "But Alan was one-of-a-kind. We couldn’t replace him if we had a hundred outstanding graduates. It's just not possible."
"I see," I said uncertain as to where this was leading.
"But you didn't come here to discuss that, did you?" Julian smiled and again, I shivered. "You want to talk about the will and his estate."
"Yes, sir," I said forgetting to call him by his name. "I'm concerned because my stepmother has been evicted from their home and it seems that my father has been having trouble paying bills for some time now. Do you know anything about this?"
"What? With Alan's personal business?" he asked in a surprised voice. "Oh goodness, no. I have no idea what he did personally. He was very, very private about things outside of the office."
"Even though you two had been best friends for close to forty years?" I asked.
"Ryan, your father was a very private man," he repeated with a knowing grin. "Surly you know that about him."
"Yes, I most certainly do, sir," I said deciding to stick with the more formal way of addressing him. Calling him by his first name felt somehow wrong. "I know he was a private man, but you were his best friend."
"C'mon, son," he said shaking his head. "You're a man, you know that there are many things that a man doesn't tell even his best friend."
I nodded, thinking about Opie and how I hadn't spoken to anyone about his death. There were many other things that I'd never told anyone in my life, but somehow I felt like my father would have been less guarded with his best friend of forty years.
"Then what about his will?" I asked. "Do you have any idea what he arranged for or even who has his will?"
"I have no idea what your father did with his will, or if he even had one," Julian said as he looked down at the cell phone buzzing in his hand, flipped it over and set it face down on the desk. "I assume that his lawyer would have that document."
"Do you have any idea who his lawyer is?" I asked. I was rapidly dawning on me that I literally knew nothing about my father, and that this lack of knowledge was going to make it very difficult to put his affairs in order.
"I think he hired Gates, Markham and Weller to represent him," Julian replied before pulling a pen out of his suit pocket and writing something down on a post it. "Here's their number, give them a call and find out if your father put them in charge of things."
"Thank you, sir," I said tucking the slip of paper in the front pocket of my jeans. I sat staring at Julian until he shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
"Is there anything else I can do for you, son?" he asked. I hated the way he called me son. I sounded like he was trying to step in and substitute for my father.
"Well, I'd like to take a look at his office and see if there are any pictures I could have," I said. After my father and Eva had gotten married, she had put all of the pictures of my mother into storage. I knew that the office would be the only place that my father would have kept pictures of my mother, and if he had kept them, I wanted those.
"I'll call down and ask his assistant to gather up the pictures and have them brought to where you're staying," he said as he picked up the phone and dialed a number. "Miss...um...Miss Frost, please go into Dr. Powell's office and collect his personal mementos and box them up. I'll send a service to pick them up and deliver them to his son."
"I'd prefer to go up and get them myself," I said as I stood up, grabbed my bag, slung it over my shoulder and turned toward the door.
"Ryan, I'm sorry, but that's just not possible," Julian said. "You are not to go in your father's office. We need to make sure that everything that's in there now, stays in there, and that none of his papers are disturbed until someone on the project can go through them."
"I'm sorry, sir?" I replied. It seemed like such a strange thing to say to someone who only wanted the personal mementos. "I'm not interested in going through his work papers, I simply want the photos and his personal effects. I'm not sure I understand what the problem with that is."
"I'm saying that I do not want you in your father's office, and that's my final answer," he repeated in a terse voice. "Are we clear on that?"
"I'm not sure I understand why you're so against me picking up his things," I said as I made a mental note of his tone.
"I said I would have everything delivered to you," Julian said as he narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice. "You are not to go near that office, young man."
I'd dealt with enough people in my career to know when someone was trying to hide something, and Julian was doing an exceptionally bad job of hiding the fact that he was hiding something.
"Sure, I understand," I said as I flashed a non-threatening smile. "No worries, I just wanted the pictures of me and my mom and dad, but I guess there's no reason I can't wait to have them delivered. It keeps me from having to lug them uptown, doesn't it?"
"Indeed," he murmured as he studied me. My backing down had raised his suspicion. "You're staying at with your stepmother, aren't you? I'll have everything sent over there."
"Yes, I am," I nodded and then made my way to the door. I turned and looked back at him and added, "Thank you, sir."
Julian Baines nodded as he gestured for me to leave the room.