"What are you talking about, Mom? I had no idea that you knew anything about that, and I had no idea that he was involved in any of that."
"Yeah, that was kind of the point. He was embarrassed. All of that education, all of that pedigree, the internships ..." She walks over to the dining room table and sits down, cradling her coffee cup in between her hands. I sit down next to her and wait for her to explain. "I don't know all the details, of course, but at night he made it seem like the fund made a lot of money investing in legitimate companies but there was this section of it, this part of it that had investments in the illegal drug trade and running guns and paying for revolutions."
I shake my head. "No, that can't be."
"It can. He showed it to me. Delio Capital, it's a secondary company, a subsidiary and he was listed as one of its directors."
"Directors? Are you sure?"
"He showed it to me on his computer, a computer that he carried around with him everywhere, his work laptop that the cops never found. Do you remember me asking about it?"
I nod.
"They never found it. They said that it must've melted in the car or maybe it was never there but I knew that he never went anywhere without it, and this was no different."
"So what are you saying?" I ask.
"What I'm saying is that, that night he was really distraught. It was about a month before his death, he showed up here drunk, woke me up. I made him coffee and breakfast, it was three o'clock in the morning. When I asked him what was wrong, at first he didn't want to say anything but as time passed, he just started rattling off this information. And then he showed me his computer and he showed me a company listed as a subsidiary of his hedge fund. He was on the official letterhead as one of the directors but he wasn't happy about it.
“He was pressured into it and the more he found out about it, the more upset he got. At first he thought that they would be involved in doing leveraged buyouts. You know, investing in so-called failing companies like Toys “R” Us was, taking them over, saddling them with billions of dollars’ worth of debt and then bankrupting them while they made all the profits from the top. That was a common and very illegal practice of a lot of hedge funds. Michael didn't want anything to do with it, but he knew that it was something that he probably would have to."
"But funding a revolution, funding extremism, what do you mean by that?" I ask, reaching over and taking her hand. When our fingers touch, she practically jumps out of her seat, startled.
"The company would pay for weapons, ammunition, grenades, bazookas, whatever the rebels needed, and they would sell them to whichever side was offering the highest price. There was no good side or bad side. There were no whatever's better for the people or not, it was war to the highest bidder. And so, if a military coup occurred and those organizing it could collect enough money and steal enough money from the government to make themselves president, or dictator, or whatever, they would buy these weapons from this company and there were others as well, ones that specialized in laundering money from the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, and a variety of others, not just illicit but awful, disgusting things. Michael got sucked into that. He said yes, probably before he knew the vast extent of it.
“And when he came here that night, he was looking for a way out. I told him that I had some money in savings and that he could start a new life somewhere. He knew how to sell stocks and do trades and he could probably build himself a nice nest egg from the ten-thousand dollars that I had and maybe even borrow money from you but he was clearly against that. He didn't want you to know a single thing about what he was doing. He was too embarrassed, I guess."
"Why didn't you tell me any of this?" I ask, shaking my head. "I could have helped. I mean, I could have come up with something."
"No, he swore me to secrecy."
"And what about after? After his death? What then? Why didn't you tell me then?"
8
Jacqueline
I sit across from Mom, refusing to let my gaze drop. I feel like if look at her long enough she will finally admit all of the deep, dark secrets that she's holding onto about Michael, and I will have some semblance of order or answers. But the problem is that she doesn't.
She repeats herself, tells me about that night, and all of her knowledge seems to come from that time.
"Why didn't you tell me about this after his death?" I ask. "Why didn't you tell the police? And that his death wouldn't have been an accident."
"I didn't want to tell the police because he swore me to secrecy, and he told me that he even tried working with the FBI, but they had people everywhere. I thought he was afraid of trusting the wrong person. He was trying to buy some time."
I shake my head. A part of me not wanting to believe her. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't want you to have any questions. There was nothing to do about any of this. I waited for the DNA results and the dentist records confirmation. And once I knew that it was him, I figured that was it. What more could we do?"
"We could get justice!" I snapped.
I think back to how she reacted when I received the letter. She was so adamant about it. She totally didn't believe that it was a scam. She tried to convince me that it wasn't real, and it seemed to be the complete opposite of how she was acting now.
"What more is there, Mom? What more aren't you telling me?"
"This is it. There's nothing else."
"I still don't understand why you didn't tell me."
"I was scared, okay? A man came up to me when I was in the grocery store. He threatened me."
Her hands start to shake as she brings the cup of coffee to her lips.
"He told me that if I were to go public about anything that Michael told me or tell a soul; police officer, a journalist, you, anybody, then you would be next. I did it to protect you. I figured I’d already lost one child to this terrible thing, and I wasn't going to lose another.
"What about now? Now a lot of people know. Now you're out there searching, questioning people, and that's the exact opposite of what I wanted you to do."
“What about the letter?" I ask, narrowing my eyes. "You were so certain it was a fake."
"I tried to slow down the rushing waters, okay? You were so certain that it was real. I wanted the cops to do something, but I wasn't sure what, and obviously I didn't give them all the information. I know that I'm not the example of consistency. But, I'm a mother who lost her son. And I'm terrified of losing you as well. But I know now that there's not much I can do to stop you, and so I'm going to arm you with as much information as I possibly can so you can make the best decision."
She goes to the living room, grabs her laptop, and shows me a page from Delio Capital that she had mentioned. "This is the company. This is the customer-facing website of the company that my brother supposedly was working for."
We click through to the "About Us" section, and I scroll down for the Board of Directors. His name is nowhere to be seen.
"No!" Mom shakes her head. "No, no, no! It was right here. Everything else is exactly the same. It was right under this guy. David Berchester."