Mortal Bonds Read Online Free

up the seafood. I hoped it was going to be donated rather than tossed.
    Virgil made a little steeple with his fingers and leaned toward me. “As my brother is an adult, I never apologize for him, but I do ask for your understanding. He is far more intelligent than he sometimes appears.”
    “Asperger’s?” I said.
    Virgil looked mildly surprised. “You are familiar with the symptoms?”
    “I have a son. We’re still waiting to see just where he fits on the autism scale. I take it the boat is one of your brother’s enthusiasms?”
    “Enthusiasms?” He rolled the word around in his mouth like a taste of expensive wine. “I like that.”
    “My son likes cars.”
    Virgil smiled. “And does he race them by remote?” He chuckled.
    “Not yet,” I said. “He’s six.”
    Everett had been quietly watching us talk, but his impatience was starting to show. He cleared his throat. “Ahem.”
    Virgil looked at him with a touch of regret. Then his eyes blinked once and a mask of duty hid him. “Everett makes a point, Mr. Stafford. I should explain why you were asked to come up here today.”
    “No, no,” Everett said. “Please, Virgil. Take your time. I would never think of rushing you.”
    Virgil and I ignored him.
    “You are, I am quite sure, aware of the troubles visited upon my family. I worked for my father for ten years.”
    The whole world was aware. But when I had Googled the rest of the family, Virgil and Morgan were the only two ever mentioned. Morgan because of her work with the charities that her father supported, and Virgil as the prodigal son. After finishing first in his class at Williams, and before coming home and putting on the mantle, he spent two years in Colorado as a ski bum, supporting himself as a bartender at night. Sometime during that period, he had sired a son, whom he still supported, though he had a restraining order against the mother—she had tried to stab him twice, succeeding the second time in opening a six-inch scalp wound. Virgil got himself stitched up and came home to work in the family business. He appeared to have worked his way up more on merit than on nepotism. When his father got caught, he was running the equity research department in the investment bank.
    “Up until ten months ago, I fully expected to be running the whole brokerage business before I turned forty.”
    “Not the whole firm? I thought the holdings also included a few offshore banks in addition to the money management business.”
    Virgil winced at the mention of the money management business. It was there that his father had run the con, paying investors double-digit returns—with their own money. When it ran out, he simply found new “investors” to keep the game running.
    “Also, two restaurants in lower Manhattan,” Virgil continued. “A livery service, an airplane and helicopter charter outfit, and until a few years ago, a printing company, which we closed when the firm went paperless.”
    “Your father believed in integrated resources.”
    “My father was a secretive control freak. So, you see, when people ask me how could I
not
have known what he was doing, the answer is fairly simple. I knew about equity research. I was learning about the brokerage. But I knew as much about his international banking business as I knew about his investment funds. He owned a sushi bar. Was I supposed to know how to cut fish?”
    It was a stretch, but I saw his point. Wall Street is a business of specialization. Managers rarely get a chance to peek over the cubicle wall to see what the next guy is up to, and when they do, they may not understand what they’re looking at.
    “I reported directly to him,” Everett said. “I ran two of the bigger funds. And I had no idea what he was doing.” It was a well-polished performance. The Feds had bought it, which was all that mattered.
    “So, who did? Those two clerks who cut deals and pled out?”
    So far, the only two people who had been indicted, other than Von