Fiduciary Duty Read online

  The result of Brazil’s reciprocity policy is that Brazil loses out on a lot of American tourist dollars. Fortunately, I had gotten a five-year tourist Visa when H and I had visited South America a few years earlier. H wanted to see the cities where I grew up, and I insisted that no trip to South America was complete without seeing Iguazu (or, if you’re a Brazilian, Iguaçu) Falls, which is partly in Argentina and partly in Brazil.

  Between our savings, H’s business, and a half a million dollar life insurance policy we had on her, I had no money worries for a while and could easily spend however long I needed in Brazil, or anywhere else for that matter. But I couldn’t just get up and go. I had responsibilities. I looked around. I was sitting in my favorite room in the house – the sunroom. I don’t know why – perhaps because of all the windows which reached almost to the floor – but being in the sunroom always felt like being on boat to me. H realized from the beginning how much I liked the room, and she had made it into my office, with my desk and my laptop. The room also had an easy chair with an ottoman, and two cat trees.

  As usual, most of the cats were there with me. The herd was an eclectic bunch, each with a distinct personality. Faraday sat in the short purple cat tree. She was an enormous Maine Coon who weighed a mere 16 pounds when I found her behind a dumpster just north of Los Angeles. Her face had been caked with blood back then and she was starving to death. Now at 22 pounds and 44 inches long from nose to tail, she spent most of her time playing the role of gentle giant. Leaning up against Faraday slept Little Newton, the only member of the feline pack from Ohio. He had been the size of my hand when H and I spotted him shaking with hunger, cold and fear under a bush on a busy street. He had since grown large and very handsome, even if he always bore an air of surprise about him.

  Kepler, a slim, shy cat with leopard markings, was sprawled out on the ottoman. Kepler was the great hunter of the house, the one who tracked down and killed anything that came in from the great outdoors, from mosquitoes to the errant squirrel that once entered through an open window. Finally, on my lap was Tycho, the most outgoing cat I had ever met. Tycho, who happened to be the size and shape of a teacup Chihuahua, had been Jeremy’s cat. By the time Jeremy was a year old, we noticed that almost every picture and video we took of him featured a cameo appearance by Tycho. Not surprisingly, “Tycho!” pronounced with a high-pitched squeal and an exclamation point, had been Jeremy’s first word. Daddy, his second word, had for several months been applied to every creature, animate or inanimate, that didn’t happen to be Tycho. Those four little souls had always been great companions, but since H and Jeremy had died, they followed me from room to room whenever I was home.

  Characteristically, the only one not there was Dill Pickle. H had had Dill Pickle long before I met her, and the Pickle didn’t like anyone except H. Dill Pickle wasn’t her original name, but even H recognized the sour disposition early on and renamed the cat according to the creature’s perpetual mood. For a very long time, Dill harbored an almost pathological dislike for me, going so far as to leave droppings in my shoes whenever I forgot to put them out of reach. This despite the fact H slept late, so most days I was one feeding her, cleaning the litter box, and most importantly, rescuing her whenever she picked a fight with Faraday. I knew Dill Pickle would be in the Master bedroom, sleeping on the pillow on H’s side of the bed. Partly for Dill Pickle’s sake and partly for mine, I hadn’t washed that pillowcase since H’s death.

  We had always hired a cat sitter whenever we had traveled in the past, but this time I was probably going away for a long but indeterminate amount of time. The cats deserved better than a sitter who showed up once a day. Heck, they deserved better than what I’d given them for the past six months. So I made a few calls. My sister and my mom, who lived close to each other in San Diego, agreed to share custody of Tycho and Kepler. Little Newton and Faraday were headed to Florida’s Space Coast, where my father and stepmother lived. My father disliked cats and reluctantly agreed to accept Little Newton and Faraday on a temporary basis. My stepmom, on the other hand, said she was eagerly looking forward to seeing the two furry bundles of joy and I knew she’d smother them with attention.

  “Don’t worry about what your Dad said,” she told me, “They can stay as long as you need to leave them.”

  I thought Dill Pickle would be a problem, but H’s best friend April, clearly suffering from some sort of delusion that the Pickle actually liked her, said she would adopt the grumpy critter “for the duration.” I had a twinge of regret on behalf of her dog, a very sweet pushover who wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Two days later, I was at the airport sending the cats out. I didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be. I kept it together in the shipping office, and even joined in as the two clerks were making jokes about how the other cats were being sent along merely to assuage Faraday’s appetite. But when I got back to my car, I cried. I’ve never cared much for material things, but the cats really were part of the family. I loved the cats, but more than that, all the home life I shared with H and Jeremy, I also shared with the cats. They had been there Jeremy’s whole life, every single day. Even Dill Pickle was a reminder of H. With the cats gone, so were the last remaining living ties to my wife and baby boy. I was now completely alone.

  When I got home, I took a pen and a pad of paper and went from room to room, cataloging what I had in the house. It was time to go lean, not just to minimize expenses and free up resources, but also to eliminate the need to have to keep track of things that no longer meant anything to me. All that stuff was just tying me to a place that I no longer needed or wanted to be.

  The big items were the house itself, two cars, the rental properties and the lawsuit. Starting in reverse order, I called my attorney. He assured me that the lawsuit would proceed apace, and I wouldn’t be needed in person unless and until they went to court. Furthermore, he expected they would settle before then. As long as I remained in communication or otherwise gave him specific instructions about the terms I was willing to accept, my presence wasn’t necessary or even helpful.

  The rental properties were H’s business. When I first got the job at Michigan and Ohio Telecom, the giant phone company based in Canton, Ohio, we thought H would also get a job in the area. Sure, even from the vantage point of Los Angeles, we knew Northeast Ohio wasn’t exactly a hotbed of employment, but Greg Farmer, the recruiter, insisted the company had a great “trailing spouse” program. In the unlikely event, as he put it, that M & O couldn’t use her, he had the right contacts at just about every big company in the area to ensure she’d find something. That turned out to be the first big lie in the huge pile of them that I got fed by Michigan and Ohio Telecom. It might have been the worst of the lot, as we wouldn’t have moved to Canton if we hadn’t believed it. The Pro Football Hall of Fame wasn’t much of a draw to us. Neither was the William McKinley Presidential Library/National Monument, nor even, come to think of it, the National First Ladies Library and Research Center.

  At first everything seemed to be going according to plan. Three months after we arrived, H found what she considered the “potentially perfect home”: a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2700 square foot brick house with a white picket fence enclosing half an acre. I was a little concerned by the size of the lawn, knowing full well who would have to mow the grass in the summer, rake leaves in the fall and keep the driveway clear of snow in the winter. Regardless, we could never afford a place like that in Los Angeles, even with all the money I had made (and saved) as a consultant. After six months H had the place fixed up and declared it a success. It was now the “perfect house” for our family, at the time made up of two adults and four cats. But by then it was becoming evident that despite many calls, Greg Farmer wasn’t coming through when it came to helping H find a job. A chance conversation with a different manager in the Human Resources department made it clear that the trailing spouse program Farmer had so frequently touted didn�
�t even exist.

  “That son of a bitch looked me in the eye at Danny’s Bagels and lied to me,” H yelled in frustration when she heard, “And they lied to you, too. What happened to the group you were promised? Where is your staff? Nobody even listens to you. You’re completed wasted here.”

  And yes, most of what the company had promised hadn’t come to pass. But what do you when they’re paying you well? What do you do when you’ve already bought and fixed up “the perfect house?” If I had been single, I would have simply left, but things were different now. I had responsibilities, and those responsibilities had changed me. I was willing to wait around and hope that things would change. And maybe I kept hoping, even as the evidence piled up that the company was just going to stifle and waste me. After a while, hearing “This is not your job” in response to your latest proposal becomes a routine part of yet another boring day.

  “Just another day in paradise” as one of my colleagues at work often said.

  And meanwhile H had realized she liked buying houses and fixing them up. She did a lot of the work herself and she was very good at managing contractors for the rest. Having lived through two stock market meltdowns I was more than happy to see my savings come out of stocks and bonds and into real assets like houses managed by H. H was a smart cookie – we met in the MBA program at UCLA, and she quickly figured out how to buy foreclosed houses, and more importantly, which houses could be bought and fixed up on the cheap and which couldn’t. A few simple rules made all the difference. Cedar shingles were a no-no because they required expensive paint jobs. Large roofs were costly when replacement time came. Replacing old windows wasn’t worth it when you could just as easily buy a foreclosure with new ones. Most importantly, use your nose to smell for water damage water in the basement since disreputable sellers often simply cleaned up the mess and painted over it. The MBA program didn’t teach any of this, but H somehow figured it all out very quickly.

  She also knew how to squeeze the banks. It was almost uncanny how she could somehow zero in on the lowest price that the banks were willing to accept for any given house. And she was a great schmoozer too, so she quickly learned who to talk to when a given bank had something she was interested in. After three years she had twelve rentals, and her annual net returns were precisely (she was an MBA after all) 14.7%. Fortunately, she had long ago realized she was better at fixing up properties than dealing with the tenants day to day, so she hired a management company for the day-to-day stuff. That arrangement could be left in place.

  On the other hand, I figured I’d get rid of one of the cars, the Chevy Malibu sedan, and keep the Ford Explorer. The Explorer had been H’s car, but it occurred to me that I might have to do some hauling at some point. I put aside the few keepsakes in the house that meant something to me. I also boxed up and mailed out the things that I thought would mean something to my family or H’s uncle, her closest living relative. I sold almost everything else at a garage sale that weekend and what was left went to the Salvation Army. Monday morning, I put my toolbox full of Craftsman tools and a few other odds and ends I wanted to keep in the Explorer, drove to the real estate agent’s office and handed over the keys to the house. From there I headed south, to my father and stepmother’s house. I had a flight to São Paulo at the end of the week, and the Explorer was going to stay with them until I got back. It was a long drive, and it gave me time to realize I was kind of numb. But numb was good, it dulled the pain.

  I didn’t have a plan for how to kill the Prince, but I had a feeling there would be times I would need to be anonymous. I was going to take the first step to getting that anonymity before leaving the US. On the way to my father’s house on Merritt Island, I stopped at a hotel parking lot in Orlando. One of the items I had taken with me was a pair of crutches from when H had broken her leg a year earlier. I got out the crutches and hobbled my way into lobby. After sitting for ten minutes, I hobbled out and got into a cab.

  “I need to buy prepaid credit cards,” I told the cabbie in broken English, heavily pushing my best Argentine accent.

  “Must be anonymous credit card,” I told him, “Cannot use normal card or my government tax my purchases.”

  The cabbie, an immigrant from Southeast Asia with a stronger accent than mine, didn’t seem to care either way. He grunted, and started driving toward downtown.

  Ten minutes later, we pulled into a small store that catered to tourists. I didn’t want to appear on any security cameras, so I asked the cabbie if he could have one of the store clerks come out to the cab.

  “Ees my leg,” I said, “Ees bad today.”

  After some back and forth, I ended up buying twenty pre-paid $500 anonymous Visa cards, which the clerk assured me could be used anywhere that Visa was accepted. I paid for the credit cards in cash. Then the cabbie then drove me back to the hotel. Before hobbling in, I gave him a $50 tip. After another ten minute sojourn in the lobby, I hobbled back to the Explorer and drove the rest of the way to Merritt Island.

  Chapter 3. Beaches

  My plane landed at the airport of Guarulhos just outside São Paulo. It was good to be back in Brazil. I felt as if I was on an adventure, but one that was deadly serious. I thought of what H would have said. H had been such a stickler for doing the right thing. She would have told me I was on a just cause. But she would also have warned me that a just cause meant more responsibility. A person who failed on a just cause was inadvertently allowing an injustice to continue. There was almost nothing I would not do to minimize the injustice to H and Jeremy.

  I picked up my bag and quickly got through customs. I had packed light – a bagful of clothes, some toiletries, my laptop and that was it. That was lucky, as my rental, a tiny Fiat hatchback, was smaller than I had anticipated. It would never even have accommodated the crutches that were, at the moment, still sitting in the trunk of the Explorer halfway up the Atlantic coast of Florida. Another surprise to me was that the Fiat was tri-flex. That is, it had two fuel tanks, one for compressed natural gas and the other could accept any mix of ethanol and gasoline. Most cars, trucks, and buses, and even a few motorcycles on the road in Brazil could run on two or more fuels allowing the driver to select whichever got the most miles per gallon, or rather, the most kilometers per liter when they pulled into a service station.

  The history of those tri-flex vehicles dated back to the second Oil Embargo following the overthrow of the Shah in Iran. Brazil had the same gas lines as we did in the US, but the Brazilian government vowed never to get caught with its pants down. Surprisingly, despite the ineptitude of the Brazilian government, it followed through very successfully. They began by trying to encourage the production of vehicles that ran on ethanol. The government quickly realized that nobody would buy such cars, and thus no company would make them if the fuel wasn’t available. Since the government happened to own a chain of gas stations, it simply started selling ethanol even though the demand wasn’t there. For good measure, the government also placed an order for a few thousand vehicles that ran on ethanol. There were fits and starts, but as the number of vehicles that ran on something other than gasoline increased, competing service stations like Shell and Texaco began selling ethanol as well. That in turn further encouraged car buyers and car makers, and thirty some years later, the typical Brazilian driver had choices Americans didn’t.

  As I thought about that, I realized there was a lesson in there for me. If I was going to get results, I would need to think far ahead, and I would need to be flexible.

  I had already taken the first step with the anonymous credit cards purchased in Orlando. The next step was to obtain a completely anonymous phone. And just like in Orlando, complete anonymity meant not showing up on a store’s security camera. São Paulo, a disorganized megalopolis seemed like a good place to get these items. I drove around the city more or less randomly until I stumbled upon the Marriott Hotel just off Santo Amaro Avenue, a busy t
horoughfare. I found a place to park and walked into the Marriott, all the while wondering who Saint Amaro was and what he did to attain Sainthood. After ten minutes in the lobby doing my best imitation of an American just off the plane, I got up, slipped my wedding ring into my pocket, walked out and hailed a cab.

  I told the cabbie in broken Portuguese that I was an Argentine businessman who would be in Brazil for three weeks and I needed a temporary cell phone. Not surprisingly, he knew just the place to take me. Ten minutes later, we were outside a convenience store with music blaring into the parking lot. I told the cabbie I had too much of a headache to deal with the music, and asked him to pick me up a phone with three “chips” on it, with 300 reais of credit on each one.

  To be honest, the real headache came from understanding the Brazilian cell-phone system. I had spent some time on message boards before leaving the US, and I never quite figured it out, but then it seems nobody else understood the Brazilian cell-phone system either. It was, however, readily apparent that if you didn’t know what you were doing, you could spend a fortune making cell-phone calls in Brazil. Each of the major phone operators charged different prices per minute depending on whether the phone call was to an in-network number and whether the phone call was to a local number. Adding to the complication, at least one and perhaps all three of the major operators (as with many things in Brazil, it was never quite clear) had instituted a very opaque system of “bonuses” whereby one “earned” credit back depending on, well, I had no idea and had never been able to track anyone who did.