The Spire Read online

  Darrow stared at his half-empty martini glass. Then Farr reached across the table, grasping Darrow’s forearm in a gesture of solidarity and consolation. Darrow was touched—Lionel Farr was not given to overt gestures of affection. Which had made his response to Lee’s death all the more telling: though it was seldom expressed, since their first meeting, a great portion of Farr’s empathy and respect, so sparely given, had resided with Mark Darrow.

  Between that dinner and Farr’s unexplained reappearance in Boston, Darrow had forced himself to live each day as if it mattered. But even after two years, his life seemed to matter less. Making money—if it had ever been—was no longer Darrow’s purpose.

  His intercom buzzed, announcing Lionel Farr, and then Rebecca, his assistant, opened the door to wave Farr inside.

  Standing, Darrow embraced him. Then he leaned back, giving his mentor a look of mock appraisal. “You look pretty good, Lionel. I could still pick you out of a lineup.”

  Farr grimaced, a pantomime of doubt. In truth, Darrow saw a change; though still fit and handsome as he entered his late sixties, Farr looked more tired than Darrow could remember, the flesh beneath his eyes appearing slack and a little bruised. They sat in Darrow’s wing chairs, Farr appraising the younger man with affectionate curiosity.

  “So,” Farr inquired after a time, “how are you?”

  Darrow shrugged. “All right. I’m still living out the clichés of grief: anger, pain, acceptance. Some days are okay. Then, on a random morning, I’ll wake up and, for a moment, Lee’s still alive. I reach across the bed, touching where she used to sleep, and feel her loss all over again. I suppose someday that will stop.”

  Farr nodded in sympathy. “Eventually. Does your work help at all?”

  “Sometimes.” Keen to change the subject, and curious about the unstated reason for Farr’s visit, Darrow asked, “How’s your life as provost?”

  Farr gathered his thoughts. “Troubled, as is the school. You remember the impact of Angela Hall’s murder: we experienced it as no one else could have—except, perhaps, Steve Tillman. When I recall the loss of a young woman with so much promise, murdered in such a terrible way, I still feel disbelief.

  “But what remains is the impact on Caldwell College. Sixteen years later, it still lingers: however unfair to the school, the perception of a murder tinged with race caused a falloff in applications, donations, minority students, and—as a result—the quality of the student body. For a short but crucial period, our endowment dipped, limiting our ability to give the kind of scholarships you and Angela received. We’ve never really recovered.”

  Darrow was surprised. “I thought the place had stabilized.”

  “In a fashion,” Farr answered sardonically. “We’ve achieved a slower but steady decline. You’ll recall that you turned down an appointment to the board of trustees, enabling you to preserve your sense of optimism. But the precise rate of decline hardly matters now, for reasons you must keep in strictest confidence.”

  A bit stung, Darrow answered, “Who would I tell?”

  “ ‘Who would give a damn’ do you mean? Both of us, I hope.” Farr stood, reminding Darrow of how restless he could be. “Mind if we take a walk, Mark? It’s been years since I strolled through Boston.”

  It was a fine spring day, breezy but sunny. Passing the pond in the Public Garden, filled with tourists in swan boats, they stopped at a food stand to buy Polish dogs smothered in grilled onions. Sitting on a park bench, Farr observed, “I always liked this city. You chose well, Mark.”

  Finishing his hot dog, Darrow saw a nun glance at them, smiling to herself—even now Darrow could be taken for Farr’s son. Still, the resemblance was not precise. Even before Farr’s hair grayed, Darrow’s had been blonder; his face, however well proportioned, lacked Farr’s striking angularity, the look of warriors; though obviously fit, little about Darrow, now prone to cuff links and Savile Row suits, suggested the Spartan bearing of a soldier. But the most striking difference was in their smiles. Orthodontics, Darrow’s mother’s last sacrifice before descending into schizophrenia, had purchased what Lee once called his killer smile, which before her death had marked the chief difference between Darrow and Farr. Farr’s smile, when it came, was less a show of teeth than a manifestation of his pervasive sense of irony.

  “So,” Darrow said. “Caldwell.”

  They began walking again. “Put simply,” Farr responded, “nine hundred thousand dollars of endowment money has vanished.”

  Darrow turned to him. “How is that possible?”

  Farr looked off into the distance, as though pondering the question. “Deciphering financial chicanery isn’t my specialty. But as provost, I’m obliged to try. From what I know, the signs point to our president. You’ll recall Clark Durbin.”

  “Durbin?” In his astonishment, Darrow almost laughed. “The man’s a classic academic—remember how you had to prop him up after I found her body? I can imagine him writing a paper about embezzlement, complete with footnotes. But not stealing.”

  “Clark’s weak.” Farr’s voice was etched with disdain. “Faced with hardship, the weak step out of character—or, perhaps, discover it. Clark’s wife is an invalid, and his son’s a drug addict who needed extensive treatment; heroin, as I observed in Vietnam, grips a man by the throat. Add that Clark has the investment skills common to many of my colleagues: none.”

  “So how did a man who can’t pick stocks develop a talent for theft?”

  Farr stopped to contemplate a dog chasing a Frisbee thrown by his youthful master, the animal’s stubby legs leaving him endlessly short of the red plastic disk. “That dog,” he observed, “will have a coronary. It’s the downside of trying too hard to please. As for Clark, our board has an investments committee, with your old friend Joe Betts as chairman.”

  “Joe?” Darrow felt his amazement growing. “In college, his idea of high finance was sending his bloated credit card bills home to Dad.”

  “People change,” Farr responded. “As you’d be the first to acknowledge. Joe Betts is now a partner in a respected investment advisory firm that oversees our endowment. Durbin was on Joe’s committee, each of whose members was entitled to direct transfer of endowment funds beneath one million dollars.

  “The funds in question were certificates of deposit. What seems to have happened is that Durbin e-mailed Joe’s firm, directing that the CDs be transferred to a bank account in the name of Caldwell College, set up by Clark himself. From which, at his direction, the money was transferred to a bank account in Geneva—”

  “Then you can forget it,” Darrow said flatly. “The Swiss are a black hole.”

  Farr nodded. “In theory, everyone on the investment committee is suspect. But Durbin sent the e-mail, and his signature is on the papers used to open the bank account in Wayne that received the money.”

  “Are there other possibilities?”

  Farr shrugged. “The other person seemingly involved is Joe himself, who transferred the money based on Durbin’s e-mail. But it’s hard to see how Joe could send that e-mail to himself, or gain access to Durbin’s computer. It all comes back to Clark.”

  Pausing, Darrow watched a young couple walking hand in hand, careless of anything but each other. “Still, nine hundred thousand isn’t that much. How large is our endowment?”

  “Less than seventy million. The timing of Angela’s death killed a capital campaign we desperately needed. And historically the school has never done well with its money—until the last few years, our investment committee might as well have put it under a mattress. We got heavily into equities just in time for the dot-com meltdown, then the near collapse of our financial system—too heavily, it turns out. By the time Joe’s firm took over, we’d lost over a third of our endowment. And now this.” Farr shook his head in disgust. “Stupidity and criminality are a lethal combination. Piety is even worse: church-related schools, I’m finding, don’t have the financial safeguards they should—they were founded on notions of man�
�s goodness. What pure-hearted Christian would suspect Clark Durbin of being a crook?”

  “Or just clever enough to be a fool,” Darrow answered. “Embezzlement’s a dead-end crime: sooner or later, the thief always gets caught.” He faced Farr again. “If it’s money you need, I can make up the nine hundred thousand. More, if you like.”

  Farr smiled faintly. “Who would have ever thought, Mark? I guess lawyering does pay better than coaching, your original ambition. But, with deepest thanks, the missing money is not Caldwell’s problem. It’s reputation.

  “As the events surrounding Angela’s death suggested, reputation, once lost, is hard to regain—especially among the donors we need to survive. We were planning a hundred-million-dollar capital campaign when the board got wind of this. All that’s needed for disaster to strike, I’ve realized, is for Caldwell to dream up a new fund-raising effort.” Farr’s voice softened. “Clark’s embezzlement has become an existential threat. How do you ask people for money when they don’t believe you can safeguard what you have?”

  Darrow stopped, hands in his pockets, facing Farr. “You’ve just redefined your problem, Lionel. It’s public relations. How much does the media know?”

  “Nothing, yet. That problem is still hanging over us.”

  “Then if you’ve come to me for advice, I’ve got some. I assume the board is hiring a forensic accountant to sort out how Durbin’s supposed to have done this.”

  “As we speak.”

  “Have them draw up a new system of financial controls, to assure the alumni—and the media—that nothing like this can ever happen again.” Squinting into the afternoon sun, Darrow put on his sunglasses. “The next thing is to engage an outside public relations firm. You’ll need to write this story before somebody else does.”

  Farr folded his arms. “The board’s current hope,” he responded in a dubious tone, “is to keep this quiet until we find out all the details. There’s some thought that Clark will help us retrieve the money in return for a low-key resignation because of ‘health.’ Durbin has reason to cooperate—if he refuses, and this leaks out, some on our board want to press criminal charges. I doubt a mild-mannered heterosexual like Clark will want to make the kind of ‘special friends’ he’ll encounter in state prison.”

  Reflexively, Darrow thought of Steve Tillman. “At least Durbin won’t have spent his life there.”

  From the glint in Farr’s eyes, Darrow saw that he’d grasped the reference. “True enough. But let’s hope, for Clark’s sake, that one prisoner from our community is enough.”

  “Whatever the case,” Darrow said, “get all the facts, then make a complete disclosure. Dribbling out partial information is almost as bad as stonewalling.” He looked at his mentor keenly. “But you know all this, I’m sure. So tell me what else I can do.”

  Farr was silent for a moment. “That depends, I suppose, on how you feel about your current life. And what plans you have for the future.”

  Darrow slowly shook his head. “I can’t help but think about the first time you asked me that question. My answer’s much the same: I don’t really know. Before she died, Lee and I talked about what we’d do if she got tired of chasing after campaigns. But all that was complicated by the idea of starting a family . . .”

  His voice trailed off. “What about the law?” Farr asked.

  Darrow shrugged. “I’m a very good trial lawyer, no doubt. I’ve proven that. But there are other talented lawyers who can bring these cases, and I can’t tell myself that I’m doing God’s work. My dilemma is that it’s easier to feel restless in the present than to define a different future.” Giving Farr a fleeting smile, he finished: “It’s like you said when we first met. I’m lacking in direction. But if you still want me to join the board, I will.”

  Briefly, Farr paused. The look in his eyes struck Darrow as speculative. “Actually, I want you to consider becoming president of Caldwell College.”

  This time Darrow did laugh. Removing his sunglasses, he said, “You’re joking.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Then you should be. I’ve got no academic credentials; no administrative experience; no background with an educational institution of any kind. I haven’t even kept up with the school. I’ve already offered the only thing I’m good for—money.”

  Farr folded his arms. Fleetingly, Darrow imagined how they looked to others: two men in business suits in the middle of the Public Garden, talking quietly but forcefully about something very serious. “If your model of a college president is someone like Clark Durbin,” Farr said bluntly, “God help us. That’s the last thing we need. Even colleges that aren’t in trouble are making nontraditional hires: Oberlin just hired Michigan’s outside lawyer, and the Stanford Business School’s run by a former CEO.”

  “That makes a kind of sense,” Darrow said. “This doesn’t.”

  “No?” Farr countered dryly. “You spent five years prosecuting criminal cases—including homicides—and eight more years untangling every financial scam known to man. Given Caldwell’s recent history, some might say you’re perfect.”

  “That’s pretty sad.”

  “But true. More fundamentally, you embody the best of Caldwell College: a small-town boy who made good through attending a school that stresses teaching instead of research. To be plain, you’re here because of Caldwell.”

  “And you,” Darrow answered softly. “I’m well aware of that.”

  “As the alumni are of you. You’re an athletic hero, enshrined in our Sports Hall of Fame. You’re a graduate of Yale Law, a nationally renowned lawyer. You’ve been on the cover of U.S. News, the ABA Journal, American Lawyer, and—three times already—our alumni magazine.” Farr spoke with quiet urgency now, brooking no interruption. “You’re young, attractive, and gifted with considerable charisma. You know the school. And what the school needs is a leader with élan and a sense of humor, the vitality to lift our morale, redefine our message, refocus Caldwell on its future, and, in a year or so, help restart the capital campaign required for us to have a future.

  “For you, the job wouldn’t be a stepping stone to somewhere better. You’d be saying you believe in Caldwell College—that if you invest, others should.”

  Darrow held up his hand. “You need more than a symbol. You need someone with qualifications.”

  “The first qualification is judgment, which you have. Critical for the fix we’re in, you’re not remote, authoritarian, or rigid—in fact, you’ve always been adaptable, the quickest study I know. You won’t have to learn the culture of Caldwell or the town.” Farr’s tone became emphatic. “With you as president, we can address our problems squarely. You’re more than just a symbol, Mark. You’re a human Hail Mary, a concrete sign that Caldwell can rise again. Anyone else is second best.”

  Stunned, Darrow felt a surge of doubt, the stubborn urge to dissent. “ ‘Anyone,’ Lionel? What about you?”

  “The board will make me interim president, if that’s necessary. But I’m too old to do what’s needed. We need a fresh face, one that doesn’t look like a relief map of Afghanistan.” Seeing Darrow smile, Farr added swiftly, “If you wish it, I’ll stay on as provost—for any president, a good relationship with the provost matters. I can walk you through the budget, issues regarding the faculty and board, where the figurative bodies are buried. Whatever you need to ensure that you do well.”

  “You talk like all you need is my consent. Don’t you have a search committee?”

  “To be sure, and you’d have to meet with them. But I’m not here on some frolic of my own. There’s substantial support for this idea—starting with Joe Betts, who seems to recall you more admiringly than you remember him.”

  “We were friends,” Darrow demurred. “With a reservation here or there, I liked Joe, whatever his role in Steve Tillman’s trial. But Joe no more knows me in the present than I know him.”

  “He thinks otherwise. So do I. By your senior year, your essential character was apparent. You were, and are
, a leader.”

  “Of what, precisely? The football team?”

  Farr looked nettled. “Don’t be obtuse. People were drawn to you; you had a gift for empathy rare in someone your age. You can’t be in the dark about why you’ve done so well with juries.” Farr softened his speech. “Even the timing is right. It’s April—if you start in June, you’ll have two months of paid rehearsals before the students arrive. During which you can focus on our alumni.”

  Darrow smiled at this. “As usual, you’ve thought of everything. Except whether the timing’s right for me.”

  Farr’s face clouded briefly. “Only you can say for sure.” Glancing at his watch, he said, “It’s past four-thirty. Suppose I buy you a drink at the Ritz Carlton.”

  “Won’t help, and the Ritz is now the Taj, a cog in the global economy. But sure—the bar’s the same, and it still makes a good martini.”

  Silent, they walked across the gardens in lengthening shadows, crossing Arlington Street to enter the hotel. The first-floor bar faced back toward the gardens; its paneled walls, leather chairs, and oil paintings of hunting scenes reminded Darrow faintly of Farr’s study. With a look of satisfaction, Farr sat across from him at a marble table by the window and ordered dry martinis for them both. Farr permitted Darrow a first bracing sip before saying, “About your timing, I do have thoughts.”

  “So do I. My life in Wayne, Ohio, seems like a thousand years ago. And as you confessed after Lee’s memorial service, the dating pool is not exactly infinite.”

  Farr raised his eyebrows. “At last, you refer to a personal life. Is there one?”

  Darrow pondered this. “Call it a half life. On a good day, three-quarters.”

  “There’s a woman, then?”

  “Plural.” For a moment, Darrow fell quiet. “Physically, I function well enough. But my emotional equipment feels a little stuck.”

  Farr contemplated the table, considering his next words. “Forgive me if this sounds tactless. But it seems you’re free to leave Boston without uprooting anyone, including yourself. This may be your time for something new.”