After the stranger left, Howard sat alone absorbed in his thoughts on the sordid scheme his boss had foisted upon him and Whitney. This could never have happened if I hadn’t turned out to be a petty liar and a cheat. My blind ambition created this nightmare.
Howard believed the stranger’s story. It all made sense to him now. His boss reveled in pathetic schemes such as this. He often contrived bogus deals to have his way or secure the inside track on something that piqued his interest at the moment. He had an insatiable appetite regarding money, sex, power, and position. He wanted everything, and he wanted it now. He offered a favorite piece of advice to associates. “Always get to the money side of the deal, and always get there first.” He preached that most people only talked about deals, and ninety-nine percent of all deals never got completed or made any money. He said, “Do everything possible to make sure that your deals get done and that you get the biggest or best part even if that means losing friendships or changing the deal to better suit your interest. You can always come back later with the money in your pocket to patch things up. If you can’t, don’t worry about it. New friends are always out there—if you have the money.”
The longer Howard sat there, the more subdued he became. His initial rage subsided. The bile receded back into the pit of his stomach. Clarity of purpose replaced the rage. His mission was before him. The people who participated in the destruction of his and Whitney’s lives must be held accountable. They, too, must suffer.
Howard planned to turn over to the FBI all the information he secretly collected for his own safety, proving beyond any doubt he worked for a bunch of crooks. He had everything: addresses, phone numbers, bank accounts, off shore locations of shell corporations, banks used to funnel the illicit profits through to prevent their being traced, and most importantly, names, starting with his boss, Richard Whiting.
Howard then needed to vanish from the face of the earth forever, leaving everything behind—all of his possessions, his few friends, and most importantly, his name. The criminals he intended to expose would never stop looking for him. They would track him down and kill him, no matter how long it took or how far they had to go.
Howard needed to do one additional thing before leaving town after he posted the criminal evidence to the local F.B.I. office. He would take the nine shot hand gun he carried with him for protection when traveling and fire every one of the bullets into the sick brain of Mr. Richard Whiting.
Howard experienced complete calm. He felt at peace with his mission. Only the hurt from Whitney’s death and an intense desire to seek vengeance remained. Once he got up from the couch, he intended to proceed without interruption to execute his plan. With no other reason to live, nothing stood in his way. But, before Howard Douglas ceased to exist, he felt a compulsion to reflect on his short life, if only for a moment.
Pertaining to his personal life little mattered prior to him meeting Whitney. He had little memory of his parents who died during his childhood. He remembered them mostly through the events and descriptions he heard from the aunt and uncle he lived with afterwards. They lived in a small Illinois town right down the road from where he lived now. They raised him as best they could, with money always being tight and hard to come by. They seldom had any extra, so he learned to get along on the bare necessities. He never owned a good bike or a ball glove, nice shoes, clothing, or any of the neat things that come along from time to time that kids go nuts for, like stereos, cassette recorders, electronic calculators. He knew he placed a burden on his aunt and uncle, so he never complained.
As a result of this, Howard determined never to be a burden on anyone again. He would work hard to become somebody, be respected, and be able to afford all the things denied to him as a kid. When he had a family, he would make sure they, too, had all the things that made people happy. Those goals caused him to focus his efforts while he attended school. He worked, hustled, and borrowed his way through college and graduate school, earning an MBA, which he was sure, would earn him respect and provide him the opportunity to make his fortune.
Howard’s plan went as designed until he met Whitney after his second year of graduate school. Only three years younger than his twenty-four years of age, she had just finished her third year of college. She operated her own lawn cutting business during the summer, and she worked her rear end off. She did a great job, charged a fair price, and received more offers for work than she could handle. Her good looks and disarming personality helped, also. Many red-blooded males who lived to get out of mowing their yards for whatever reason jumped at the chance to have a very pretty, well-endowed, five foot five inch tall, tanned, naturally blond, twenty-one-year-old coed, clad in cut off jeans and halter top work in their yard every week—all summer long.
Howard sure noticed her, and he didn’t even have a yard. He worked as an intern in the office of a real estate development and syndication company during the summer and rarely found time to do anything. His job as an intern loaded him down with all the unglamorous work that can go on in a busy organization: research, copying, court filings, personal errands, and anything else employees of the company came up with to keep his days filled. When he did get out during the day, he often saw her either in her truck or cutting the lawns. He was smitten right from the first moment he saw her cutting one of the largest, most beautifully landscaped lawns in the community. After awhile, he knew what days to expect her at any of several lawns located on his normal route.
Fate played a hand in bringing them together. Howard gazed longingly at her every single time he saw her going about the business of mowing yards and ignoring the hordes of gawking males who happened by her work sites with regularity. Because of his shyness, it took nothing less than a wreck to bring about their initial meeting, and it came about quite innocently.
Out and about one sunny afternoon, Howard anticipated seeing her at one of her regular jobs. Forgetting to watch the traffic, he stared too long at a yard hoping to catch a glimpse of her working and failed to see her pull out in front of his barely drivable 1963 Ford Falcon. He crashed into the rear of the small pickup truck she used to haul her lawn equipment from job to job. Both vehicles sustained minimal damage, but Howard got his ears burnt. She told him to pay attention to his driving or get that scrap heap off the street. Howard took no offense as he relished having a reason to be talking to her. A suspiciously large number of additional meetings followed to work out the myriad details of getting her vehicle repaired. Over time, she eventually warmed to the unassuming and pleasant personality of this shy, nice looking young man.
Soon after that they started seeing each other regularly and within six months they moved in together. It didn’t make any sense on the surface; she was energetic, vivacious, outgoing, and a practical joker. Howard, on the other hand, all six foot, one hundred seventy-five pounds of him including the shoulder length dark brown hair he wore until he got his first and only job after graduate school and the ever-present brown corduroy jacket with the padded elbows, possessed all the charm and personality of his favorite slide rule.
She was quick smart, not like Howard who needed time to think things through. She looked at something and made her decision about what to do with it or about it and moved on. Howard needed to complete a research project on the subject. For some weird reason, though, they both brought something to the table that the other needed, and it worked.
“How did I ever let something so wonderful get away?” Howard remarked as he sat on the couch reminiscing. “How is it I didn’t see this coming? What happened to my brain at the time?” Again, he drifted back to the year of his graduation when the future looked so wonderful.
Back then Howard reveled in his good fortune as his plan neared completion. He had a wonderful girlfriend plus the essential MBA degree. Now, the money must surely follow along soon; he felt confident of it. His primary ambitions neared completion. He would be somebody, be respected, and have everything he wanted, including the money.
Howard realized now it wasn??
?t fate that brought him together with a successful local businessman who took him under his wing and began to provide him with many valuable insights regarding getting ahead in the world. He concluded two things as he recalled the experience. First, the setup began way back, well before the Cancun incident with the beautiful young woman. He’d been picked out as an easy mark before he ever got going. That’s why Richard had seemingly chosen him from out of nowhere. Secondly, his personal obsession to obtain material wealth blinded him to many things.
That explained why Richard early on related to him the story of his personal transformation from a guy not going anywhere fast by trying to go by the rules. Somehow, according to Richard, it had always worked out that he and all the other losers who tried to be good Boy Scouts ended up with nothing or, at most, the dregs. He finally tired of this exercise in futility and decided not to be the flag bearer for that weary army of poverty stricken idealists any longer. Richard started looking around for people going places and getting things accomplished and being financially rewarded for their efforts. As soon as he cleared those idealistic notions of fair play from his thinking processes, he found those people. He watched them to ascertain which direction they traveled, and then he did the smartest thing he’d ever done in his life. He stepped in line with the winners, went along with them, and never looked back.
Howard saw his mistake too late. He sold out before he started. Honesty and integrity are not concepts you leave on a shelf until they suit your purpose. They must be applied rigorously, daily, in all phases of one’s life. Once you make an exception, from then on, you’re for sale. A special situation will always arise to justify another exception. Eventually, those exceptions add up, and the accumulative result will be that your life is a fraud. Your life, built upon sand, will lack a stable foundation to help you weather the inevitable storms of misfortune and undeserved opportunity, alike. Admiring honesty and understanding honesty doesn’t automatically make you honest. Your personal conduct determines that.
Howard returned to the present prepared to go forward and do, in his mind, the right thing. Certain people needed to be held accountable for what happened to Whitney, including him. His mind now clear, he realized a number of important things that needed to get done, and it was time to get started.
As he began to extricate himself from the deep folds of the soft leather couch he remembered the envelope given to him by the stranger. He recalled the gist of the stranger’s parting remarks relating to this envelope containing information he may have some interest in doing something about. He opened the envelope and extracted a tattered and torn single page filled with an abundance of typed legalese. He scanned the document. Then he read and reread each line.
PARENTS DENIAL TO RELEASE INFORMATION TO ADULT ADOPTEE. TEXAS CENTRAL ADOPTION REGISTRY. I state that I am the birth mother of the child listed below. On this Second day of May, Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Nine, I hereby deny consent to the release of my name and address to this child when he is eighteen years of age or older.
Travis Howard McClain
Born: May 1, 1979
Birthplace: Dallas, TX
Birth Mother: Whitney Ann McClain
Birth Mother DOB: May 21, 1954
Current City of Residence: Dallas, TX
Parent Signature: Whitney Ann McClain
The stranger wrote in long hand on the bottom of the wrinkled and soiled page, “Do the math. If you decide to look into this you will want to begin your search in Lawrence, Kansas. This wasn’t Whitney’s idea. She deeply regretted allowing Richard to pressure her into going through with this. In the end, I’m sure this contributed to her decision to end her life.”
First, the excruciating pain of Whitney’s death devastated Howard. Then after he learned of Richard’s deceit, he experienced the blackest, vilest form of anger imaginable. Now, the microscopically small amount of sanity he yet retained came under assault from another unexpected direction. He had a son—a living manifestation of the love he and Whitney once shared, and even this was denied him.
Howard intended to exact retribution, but this new information required patience. He needed time to affect a scheme. Could he do it? Could he see Richard and not let on that he knew what he’d done to their lives? Could he prevent himself from blowing Richard’s brains out at first sight? “Yes, I can and I must. I have a son to think about now, and I intend to do everything within my power to ensure he is cared for, and safe from harm.”
CHAPTER SIX