The Heir Read online

  “Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock.”

  “I’ll be there, Fred.”

  I got in the car, but not fast enough. Nathan Kern floated elegantly up to the window.

  “Jason! I don’t know what to say.” Not that that had ever stopped him from saying it. “It just doesn’t seem possible.” If Fred was the king’s chamberlain, Nathan was the archbishop.

  “Apparently it was,” I said. I was the court jester.

  “We will need to talk. I know the foundation will be as important for you as for your father.” Selfless nobility, thy name is Nathan Kern.

  “I don’t plan to have much part in it.”

  He was surprised at that, and he shouldn’t have been. He knew me better. “But it was always Melvin’s foremost concern.” His elegant fingers were trembling. I thought the diamonds would fall out of his cuff links.

  “He left his estate to it. I feel sorry for you, Mr. Kern. You have some big responsibilities now.” I was getting tired of the day or I might have been a little nicer. I could feel Katie preparing the lecture. “Give me a week, and I’ll be glad to come see you.” By then I might even build up some curiosity about him and his world. There had to be something beneath the sanctimony.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he said.

  I took that as a good-bye and closed my window.

  We finally got out onto the road. “You could have acted like an adult,” Katie said.

  “That’s not my way.”

  We’d come up behind a truck, and there was no place to pass.

  The coast road went on a few more miles like this, two winding lanes. “Everyone there was looking to you to take your father’s place.”

  “I’d rather die.”

  “Jason.”

  I punched the accelerator and passed blind on a curve. The road ahead was clear so I kept the speed up. Katie held on to her shoulder belt.

  “You don’t have to kill me, too.”

  I slowed down. “All right, I won’t. But the only reason I’m not taking this car off a cliff is because I don’t want to die the same way Melvin did.”

  “Thank you.” She would have bitten through the guardrail, her jaw was clenched so tight. I needed to make a gesture.

  There was a gas station after a few minutes, and I stopped beside some landscaping and pulled up two flowers.

  “Here.”

  She relented. “I accept your apology.” We got back out on the road and she held them, treating them with far more respect than they deserved. “Why did I marry you, anyway?”

  “For my money,” I said.

  “Then I made a big mistake.” She said it with a smile, though, for which I was very grateful. “I don’t know if your money is worth putting up with you. If you worked with those people—Nathan Kern and all the rest of them—you could be rich.”

  “I am rich.”

  “Not as rich as you could be.” The edges of the smile hardened a little. “He’d put you on the board of the foundation, and you could get control of everything your father had.” She looked out the window. “It should have been yours anyway.”

  “Look, all I did was get born into this family,” I said. “It wasn’t my choice. As long as they send my check each month, nobody gets hurt. If they want anything else I’ll inflict damage.” I waited until she looked back at me. The two daisies in her hand were a little damaged. “You like your flowers?”

  “Yes.”

  The road was bending through hills, away from the ocean. I stopped again, just off the edge, where the guardrail actually was bitten through. Out of the car, I stood and looked down the hillside at the scraped dirt and torn bushes and the broken tree at the bottom. They’d cleaned away the wreckage, every piece of it.

  Katie got out with me.

  “Why am I here?” I said. “What is the point?”

  She pulled a knot of wildflowers from the ground, much nicer than the daisies, and handed it to me.

  “Here.”

  “You don’t need to apologize for anything,” I said.

  “I just want to give you some flowers.”

  I stood for a moment. Then I tossed them down the steep hill and the wind caught them and they landed just where his car had. I’d seen it there, with yellow police tape and spotlights, and the trucks pulling it up the embankment.

  “He’s gone, Jason,” she said. “It might really be different now.”

  2

  Fred was stacked behind a desk as big as he was in his thirtieth-floor corner office. I didn’t know if he had any other clients. I avoided the big armchair in front of the desk and settled with Katie into a sofa at the side.

  “Good morning,” he said as he took out a pile of thick folders, a formal greeting for the official occasion. “These are copies for you and Eric to take. We will not be reading the whole thing today.”

  “I guess I just want to get it over with,” I said. “Is there anything we don’t already know? Tell me the bottom line.”

  Pause. “We will just wait for Eric.” It was making me uncomfortable, the way he was staring at me. The whole office made me uncomfortable, the way it was a little dim, a little worn, just a little disorganized. But it was still just Uncle Fred.

  And then Eric blew in, his helmet under his arm. He dropped it and his leather jacket on the floor next to the armchair. “Sorry. Construction.” He was dressed like a peasant, in khakis and a lime polo.

  “My suit better still be in three pieces,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  He wasn’t looking good. His eyes were red and his face was pale, and the green shirt made it look worse.

  “Are you okay?”

  He blinked. “I guess so. I was out late.” He had no extra fat on his body, but now he even seemed gaunt. The shirt was loose.

  “It shows.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Come over this afternoon,” I said. “We’ll feed you.”

  “I’ll call Rosita,” Katie said. “She’ll have lunch.”

  “Thanks.” He yawned and then straightened up in the armchair. “All right, Uncle Fred. I’m ready.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  Fred went. “The first step is just a little legal exercise to make everything official.” Fred looked at me. “You are Jason Rove Boyer, the son of Melvin Howard Boyer and his first wife, Ann Rove Boyer, deceased?”

  “That’s what they always said. I wouldn’t remember.”

  I hadn’t meant it to be funny, but he laughed, just like a family lawyer was supposed to, relieving the tension. He should have been in movies. “You are twenty-eight years old, you have been married once, to your present wife, Katherine Sevildray Boyer, and you have no children. That’s all correct?”

  “Unless there’s something I don’t know. We only got married once, didn’t we?” I said to Katie. That was supposed to be funny.

  “Just once.”

  I would do it again, though, and she would, too. The first time she really did do it for my money. But we’d come to know each other, even in just three years. I’m not much of a companion, and she has other friends for talking and spending time. It was deeper than that, something between two complex people. I hadn’t known how much I needed someone like her.

  Fred chuckled again, breaking my thoughts. Sometimes I wondered what he was thinking. “I need to know if someone is going to come out of the woodwork.” Just a tiny edge on his voice. “No children?” “Not a one,” I said.

  “And you are Eric Melvin Boyer, also the son of Melvin Howard Boyer and Ann Rove Boyer, deceased?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re both deceased now.” This was bothering him more than the funeral. Or else he just wasn’t feeling well.

  “Yes, of course.” Fred shifted into deep sympathy mode. “It will be fine, Eric. Now. You are twenty-five years old, you have never been married, and you have no children. That’s correct?”

  “No children, no wife.”

  “If there was a w
ife, or child, that I did not know about, it would be . . . well, a difficulty.” Fred paused and gave us both a few seconds to have any sudden memories. “And to the best of your knowledge, you are Melvin’s only children?”

  “I’m probably not the one to ask,” I said.

  “But to the best of your knowledge?”

  “We’re the progeny.”

  “Well, then, we’ll get to the main part. Jason, Eric, your father was very wealthy, as you know. Your father had discussed with you what he planned to do with his assets?”

  “He was leaving them to his foundation,” Eric said. “Jason and I would get enough to live on.”

  “Yes, that had been his original plan.”

  Original? What was the man saying? Katie stirred beside me.

  “Eric, you will be getting a sizable income. I suggest you get advice on investing it. You are a young man, and you will have the opportunity to build up substantial wealth if you don’t waste it.”

  Every kid needs an Uncle Fred. And maybe Fred knew how much Eric needed advice about money.

  “What is ‘sizable’?” I asked.

  “Fifty thousand dollars per month, from a trust created for the purpose.” He’d been living on twenty. No, he’d been getting twenty, but he’d been spending about twenty-five. BMWs were so expensive these days. Fifty would come in very handy for him, and his Jaguar dealer wouldn’t complain, either. If he remembered what he’d borrowed from me, he might even start paying me back. I wouldn’t remind him.

  “And it will increase when you get married.” Fred turned to me. “Yesterday, you asked about Angela. She will also have an income.” Okay, good for Angela. I was sure it would be more than fifty thousand a month. “Then there are numerous other bequests to relatives, friends, and employees, which amount to less than two million dollars. As his executor, I will take care of those.” He tapped the stack of papers. “You each have a list, although it is not complete. There were some bequests your father chose to not be made public.”

  All of that had been his original plan. What was no longer part of the plan? It was my name that had not yet been uttered. I was already thinking it through. Four years at Yale, I must have gotten a degree. Business, yeah, that was it. I could get a job with that. Or maybe I could drive trucks.

  “Jason, you were to have received a similar monthly income. That has been changed.”

  I decided on the trucks. Maybe Katie could ride with me.

  She was frozen beside me, and I felt two red hot lasers drilling into my shoulder. Maybe I’d be riding alone.

  Maybe I could freeload off Eric. I could wash his cars. We’d make sure Rosita fixed him a real nice lunch today.

  I didn’t have enough time to build up real confusion. Fred’s mouth was still moving.

  “Your father had originally planned to leave the bulk of his estate to the Boyer Foundation, and Mr. Kern and the board of directors would have been trustees. However, except for the other distributions I’ve mentioned, you are now the sole heir of the estate.”

  “No.”

  There was pounding in my brain and a wave of heat shooting up through my chest and head, like a ring crushing me. It was a primal reaction, before I even really understood the words. Sole heir? It was rage, absolute fury. And it showed.

  “Jason?” The lasers beside me had suddenly malfunctioned. The way she said my name, she sounded as if she were about to lose power completely.

  I was so angry I didn’t care. How could he mess it up so completely? When he’d been leaving it to someone else instead of me, I was annoyed by the rejection. But this was total idiocy. He hadn’t even told me! I would have killed him if he hadn’t already been dead.

  Fred decided to keep going. “The estate is primarily stock in the companies your father owned and controlled, but also includes his properties, art and valuables, and,” he was faltering, seeing my anger, “some other investments.”

  “Why?”

  Fred took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Jason. I know this wasn’t what you expected.”

  “I won’t take it.”

  I’d hit Fred’s button. “Just a moment.” He said it angrily and with exasperation. I hadn’t seen him like this. “You have no idea what you are saying.”

  “But I don’t want it. I refuse.”

  “Then I’ll take it,” Eric said, his eyes wide. “Give it to me. What’s the problem?”

  “At least listen to him.” Katie had rebooted.

  “Just tell me why he changed it,” I said.

  Fred was calm again. He shook his head. “I don’t know why. When he instructed me to revise his will, I asked him why, but he chose not to confide in me.”

  “He could at least have told me,” I said.

  “I think he would have. But there was no opportunity.”

  “When did he come up with this brilliant strategy?”

  “We first discussed it several months ago. He signed the will at my house Saturday evening last week and died on his way home.”

  On his way home. That was past stupidity, deep into farce. I couldn’t even think, only feel, and all I felt was anger. Why couldn’t he have said something to me? When did we even last talk? Two months ago? Three? What did it mean? Why am I here?

  It was all too much. Minutes passed and I just sat, and the others knew better than to break my silence.

  At least Fred and Katie knew better. “Deal with it, man. If someone gives you fifty million dollars, you just say yes. This is not hard to figure out.”

  It was too plain to put into words, but I tried. “I just want something to live on and to get rid of the rest.”

  “You can live on whatever you want.”

  “I don’t want to be Melvin.”

  That shut him up. He didn’t even know what it meant.

  Katie knew nothing she could say would persuade me, so as desperately as she wanted to try, she wasn’t talking. The harder you push a mule, the more obstinate it gets. She left it to the expert.

  “It will take time to adjust.” Fred shuffled the papers. “But you will. And it will take a short time for probate and transfer of titles.”

  He risked a small smile. “You can’t get rid of anything until it’s actually yours.”

  “What do you mean, about not wanting to be him?” Eric said. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Everything he was. His deals, his influence, his manipulations. Sitting in his mansion, being the big man. Being the king.” Was that it? “Being so sure of who he was.” I turned to Fred. “No. I won’t do this. If I have to sign something to refuse it, then make it quick.”

  “You do not understand.” Soft, round Fred had again lost patience and was finally, suddenly, very hard. “And the stakes are too high for childish behavior.” He paused while he got my attention. Now I was seeing the Fred who counseled ruthless men.

  “Listen to me, Jason. Your father had great power in this state, and his wealth was only part of it. He had thousands of employees and held immense sway over government. He could make or break anyone he wanted. He had no rivals because he had defeated them. You know who he was.”

  I had his attention. “I know who he was, Fred. Everyone knew exactly who he was.”

  “That is the point. Now his death has left a vacuum, and that is very dangerous.” He was speaking deliberately, as if I were a child. “I had thought to wait before I had this discussion with you, but I see I need to do it now. You have no choice, Jason. You must take your father’s position.”

  “I don’t want it. You know me. I’d hate it.” I looked away from him. “It wouldn’t work, anyway. Let someone else be king.”

  “That is not an option. I said that a vacuum is dangerous.” He was measuring me; I could see it in his eyes. “Your rivals have already taken the first steps to fill it.”

  “My rivals? I said I don’t want it. If they do, let them have it.”

  “You don’t know what you are saying. There will be war.”

  “Yo
u mean that literally?” I shook my head. “War? People getting killed?”

  “Perhaps, yes, but I’m referring to a larger conflict. Political influence and union violence will be part of it. Organized crime would take sides. There are many ways battles would be fought.”

  “And this was how Melvin got to the top, I suppose?”

  Fred shook his head. “I will not discuss that with you. But the Boyer companies could even be forced out of business, and your own wealth eliminated. If you do not choose to fight the war, you will lose it.”

  “But all I have to say is ‘Yes,’ and I’m king, and everything’s fine.”

  “Not that easily. You will have to fight, and it will take some time to consolidate your position. But I will be helping you, and you will have other allies, and you will have your father’s wealth and his name.”

  “What would have happened if he hadn’t changed his will? Nathan Kern wasn’t going to be fighting wars.”

  “Perhaps that was why your father changed his will.”

  Every time I started to get the boat upright, he shoved another wave in and swamped it.

  “Does Kern know about this?”

  “I’m not sure. I will meet with him this afternoon. You might wish to speak with him yourself soon. He is leaving the country next week on business.”

  Leaving the country sounded like a good idea. “Does anyone else know?” I asked.

  “Not yet, but they soon will. You will start getting calls. It would be better if you signaled your intentions and initiated the calls yourself.”

  I was getting better at recovering. The more Fred talked, the easier it was getting to turn him down. I hadn’t thought through the consequences, though. “So who would I call?”

  “Governor Bright and Senator Forrester. They represent the two main political factions. The governor’s chief of staff, Clinton Grainger, will approach you very soon, I expect. That will be critical. As I said, he has already made some moves. Forrester is more cautious but more dangerous.

  “Next, your father controlled his corporations through three boards of directors, and those gentlemen and ladies will be awaiting your instructions. The businesses themselves are all capably run. There is no day-to-day management involved, just strategic decisions.