Chapter 5 - The Audit of LaSalle Street
By 9:00 AM on Monday morning, the news of the Vance family collapse had become front-page news across the Midwest.
“HIGH-SOCIETY WEDDING RAIDED BY FEDERAL AGENTS; FORMER ZONING COMMISSIONER RICHARD VANCE ARRESTED FOR $100K TRUST FRAUD & INTERSTATE CAR THEFT.” “THE STERLING WEDDING TERMINATED: JUDGE ARTHUR STERLING’S FAMILY CUTS ALL TIES WITH DISGRACED DEVELOPER.”
Inside the thirty-eighth-floor executive suite of Vance-Caldwell Capital on LaSalle Street, the morning sun broke over Chicago in a blinding, dazzling expanse of liquid silver and gold.
I sat behind my massive black walnut partners desk, dressed in an impeccably tailored navy wool skirt suit, my reading glasses pushed up into my dark hair, reviewing the final administrative accounting dockets with my senior litigator, David Vance—Agent Evelyn Vance’s brother.
The heavy mahogany door of my office clicked open.
Arthur Vance, my uncle—Richard’s estranged younger brother, who had spent thirty years running an honest civil engineering consultancy in Evanston—walked inside.
He carried a leather portfolio under his arm, his weathered, handsome face bearing that quiet, dignified integrity that my father had surrendered decades ago.
"Morning, Harper," Uncle Arthur said, pulling out a chair and sitting across from me.
"Morning, Uncle Arthur," I smiled, sliding a cup of steaming dark roast coffee across the blotter toward him. "Did you review the receivership filings for Dad’s commercial properties?"
Arthur sighed, taking a slow sip of his coffee, shaking his head with a mixture of sorrow and clinical resolve.
"Your father’s developer firm was a house of cards, Harper. He had twenty-two million dollars in unsecured short-term mezzanine debt. He was taking deposits from working-class families on residential developments in Waukegan that had never even cleared the preliminary environmental drainage permits."
Arthur opened his portfolio, laying three certified maps on the desk between us.
"The federal bankruptcy trustee is appointing our firm as the primary restructuring conservator, Harper.
Every single home buyer who gave your father an earnest money deposit will be made whole through the liquidation of his commercial assets.
Not a single family will lose their life savings because of his greed."
I closed my eyes, leaning back into my leather chair, letting out a long, shuddering breath of pure, unadulterated relief.
"And Mom?" I asked quietly.
Arthur’s face hardened into a grim, unsparing line.
"Eleanor was evicted from the Evanston house at seven o'clock this morning," Arthur said.
"The bank executed the foreclosure writ under the junior mortgage Richard took out to pay for Jocelyn’s European sabbatical two years ago.
She is currently living in a rented one-bedroom residential motel on North Avenue with Jocelyn.
Jocelyn took an entry-level inventory shift at an Amazon fulfillment center in Kenosha to pay for their groceries."
I looked out the panoramic glass walls at the blue expanse of Lake Michigan stretching toward the horizon.
An Amazon fulfillment center.
Ten hours on concrete floors. Steel-toed boots. High-visibility vests. No champagne. No string quartets. No designer bags.
May you like
For twelve years, my mother had told me that hardship built character whenever I worked three jobs to pay my state college tuition.
Now... my sister was finally going to build some character of her own.
