Larson Richards pulled his big black late-model Mercedes sedan into the driveway of the home where he had grown up. As he opened the car door, a blast of hot, sticky air met him. He pulled off his soft beige, elegantly cut suit jacket and hung it on the hook in the back seat.
Rolling back the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, he loosened his Hermes tie and wished he had realized that he would be coming to do this today when he dressed this morning. But after the meeting with his investors in his office this afternoon, it was clear that, if he wanted to go through the house one more time before the closing on Friday, today was going to be his last opportunity.
Richards took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the film of perspiration that covered his brow. Things were not going well with this deal. He had organized a syndicate of investors contributing millions of dollars to back him as he attempted to buy and consolidate the individual, small, mom-and-pop owned pizzerias that operated in just about every town in the northern half of New Jersey. Richards had seen an opportunity. If he could buy up all the little pizza parlors and consolidate them under one umbrella, he could turn around and sell the whole package to a national company, trading as “Jersey Pizza,” making a huge profit for his investors and himself in the process.
Approximately three billion pizzas were sold in the United States each year, but the tomato and cheese pies sold in New Jersey were in a class of their own. Residents who moved away from the Garden State claimed that pizza made in other parts of the country was not nearly as good. Since The Sopranos, with its northern New Jersey locale, had become such a cultural phenomenon, Larson was even more convinced his “Jersey Pizza” idea would work. But he had to find a buyer with deep pockets and he needed money to keep his business afloat until he could get to that finish line.
The investors, confident because of their fantastically good luck in the booming stock market, piled on board happily at first. The double-digit profits on Wall Street had made them very wealthy in a relatively short period of time. What Larson Richards outlined for them promised to double or even triple their investments. Who could say no to a business opportunity like that?
But as Wall Street corrected and the pizza deal suffered one setback after another, the investors had become less cocky and more worried. Richards was struggling from week to week to make his payroll. The expensive cars he had leased so that his offices could impress the prospective business sellers sat unused in his company parking lot, as he had had to let some of his people go. But the Mercedes and BMW dealerships didn’t give a rat’s ass about Richards’s economic hard times. The costly leases still had to be paid each month. So did the mortgage on his office building.
He had so much invested now, there was no turning back. He had long ago divested himself of his stock portfolio, taken a second mortgage on his house, and emptied his sizable IRA account, plowing all the money back into the pizza deal. He was convinced that if he could just keep things afloat a few more months, ultimately it would be all right. And he had just spent most of his afternoon trying to convince his skeptical and angry investors the same thing.
Thank God this house is closing on Friday, he thought as he let himself in through the front door. There will be another two million dollars in the bank next week.
He walked slowly from room to deserted room, wondering why he didn’t feel sadder or more nostalgic. He had spent his boyhood and teenage years in this house and his parents had tried hard to provide a life for him that was full of happy memories.
But he was angry with them nonetheless. They hadn’t been there for him when he really needed them.
He climbed the large, center hall staircase, feeling tired, his feet shuffling heavily on the polished wooden steps. In the upstairs hallway, he walked right past his old bedroom without stopping, heading directly to his parents’ room.
It was empty now, the furniture all carted away by the bargain-hunting antiques dealer who had purchased the contents of the gracious home for a fraction of its true worth. But what else could he have done? He didn’t have the time to do the calling around and researching necessary to find out how he could get the best prices for his mother’s carefully acquired antique furniture collection. His time was better spent trying to hold his business deal together, and the quicker the house was empty and sold, the sooner he would have the big cash infusion he so desperately needed.
The walls of the master bedroom were marked with smudged outlines where the triple dresser and massive four-poster bed once stood. Images of jumping up and down on that big bed as a kid flashed through Richards’s mind, but he pushed the memories aside. He didn’t want to remember the good times. Those were history. The recent past had not been so kind.
He opened the heavy paneled door and stepped into his mother’s walk-in closet. It, too, was empty now. All her dresses and suits were gone, but the smell of her perfume still lingered. He exhaled deeply to clear his mind as he reached for the dial on the wall at the back of the closet.
He knew the combination by heart and methodically he turned the safe’s dial back and forth, listening for the sound of the tumblers clicking softly into place. The square panel opened quietly, revealing, just as he expected, nothing inside.
Larson had known the safe would be empty because he had checked it right after his parents’ death, removing everything in it at the time. His mother’s jewelry, the promissory notes his parents had asked him to sign. This last trip today was a final attempt to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything.