Audio tape of the Czechs
Medical Care
House arrangements
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She doesn't like me
Keeping her from the police
The idea of abandoning our houses posed so many problems that I wondered if this may
be the biggest hurdle for all parties. We all could rent our homes for a year or two, but that would be too easy for the Czechs to ferret out. We all needed to believe that we were never coming back
if we stood any chance of selling this to the Czechs.
We needed to be harsh to ourselves, in other words, and this included significant financial
loss – particularly for Joan who had much of her net worth tied up in her house – not to mention
emotional despair.
We all could put much of our belongings in storage, hoping not to tip off the Czechs. I
believed that everyone would insist on this point. Susan certainly would. We had a mortgage to
consider but nobody else did. I thought it was around $102,000 and we would obviously have to
keep paying our bank each month lest the bank start foreclosing on the house 60-90 days after the
first missed payment. The monthly payment was drafted out of one of our checking accounts, so
we would need to leave enough cash in that account for at least a year or two.
Joan lived mainly off a fixed annuity that she set up ten years ago and I thought her only
remaining key asset was her house. Mom funded her lifestyle via Dad's pension that transferred
to her upon his death.
I inherited a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan that Mom and Dad owned for twenty
five years. I remember Dad spending a weeknight every few weeks in the city during the heyday
of his career. My mother never liked the apartment and would often sob herself to sleep during
Dad's nights in the city, so, a few weeks following Dad's funeral, Mom asked me to sell the
apartment. I understood why.
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I did sell the apartment in the late „90s for $910,000, or roughly $575,000 after taxes.
Susan and I had about $1.6 million in assets, not including our home equity. This should have
been enough for us to fund a new life somewhere else, far away from the Czechs.
The Czechs probably didn't have access to our financial accounts, at least I hoped not.
But I needed to figure out how much money we would transfer to the new location and leave in
the New Jersey banks and brokerage houses.
****
“You know, Nicholas, before it's too late, you should consider taking the pre-med
classes,” Dad flatly stated as he pulled the pipe out of his mouth.
I was a freshman at Princeton and hadn't truly considered going down the path of
medical school. Hadn't really considered any path at that point in my life.
“Why not the legal profession? You've done well for yourself and us.” I queried.
Earlier that year, I started to note a change with Dad, as he was a man who was in charge
of one of NY's premier law firms becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his stature. Granted, it
wasn't like he was going to give up his prominent position or leave the legal field, far from it, but some indirect comments that he made about his career took me a back a bit. And this was one of
them, so I pressed Dad a bit.
“Do you remember Frank Peters?” Dad asked rhetorically.
How could I forget? Mr. Peters was the center of one of my key childhood memories.
Everybody has an event in their childhood upon which they draw an internal verdict for our
parents, something that reveals their true character, their core being.
Dad and I were jogging one Saturday morning after I had just turned eleven. There was
nothing particularly special about the morning, you could smell the dew on the ground and the
leaves were starting to fall. There were very few cars on the road. We started jogging together
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every Saturday morning when I was nine. On these jogs we would head downtown to the bagel
shop, pick up one half dozen, and jog back. The journey was a little over two miles.
On this Saturday morning, we were running up the west side of Washington Boulevard,
returning home after picking up the bagels, when we saw a car coming down the hill at an
accelerated pace - it was an old Ford pickup. The truck quickly veered to the east and jumped the
curb. It may have struck the nearest house were it not for a big oak tree standing several feet
inside the sidewalk. The vehicle slammed into the tree leading the tires to spin madly. The
collision made the loudest thud that I had ever heard, rocking the surrounding earth.
Dad grabbed my shirt and yanked me in the direction of the vehicle. We sprinted across
the street. As I held the bagels, I just stood there watching Dad take action. He pried open the
driver side door, undid the seat beat of the driver, and pulled the driver out of the Ford. He rested the man down on the grass, then started CPR, breathing several breaths into the man. Next, Dad
started pumping his chest.
A woman came running out of the house whose yard the Ford pickup had violated and
shouted to us that she had called the accident into the police. She had told them to bring an
ambulance.
At first, I thought she was going to raise a ruckus over the tree the Ford truck had just
dented, but the woman was carrying a blanket and a medical kit – she was there to help.
It seemed like Dad banged on this poor guy's chest for an hour before the first police car
arrived, quickly followed by an ambulance. Dad walked back to me.
“Do you know who that was?” he asked, grabbing one of the bagels out of the bag. His
hair was mussed up and he was out of breath.
“No clue, who was it?”
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“That was Frank Peters. He just retired last year from Dean Witter. I thought he and Lucy
had moved to Florida…”
Dad rubbed his chin, he often got people's „stories' confused. He was not blessed with
too many social graces but Dad knew it and really could not care less.
“What was wrong with him?”
Dad looked at me, then paused. He had to remind himself that he was talking with an
eleven year who could easily get freaked out about medical illnesses and death.
“He had a heart attack, but the medics were able to revive him. He should be just fine.”
Dad smiled and gently shook my right shoulder. “Let's head home.”
Eight years later, Dad hadn't forgotten about the Frank Peters event either.
“Of course I remember Frank Peters,” I replied.
“Well, I've been thinking a lot about that morning recently. “I'm not saying you can't do
great work for society as an attorney, but a career where you keep people healthy and help save
lives…that seems to be very enriching.” Dad smiled at me.
I hadn't yet picked out my schedule for the Spring semester, so I told Dad that I would
talk with my advisor and come up with an arrangement. That was the first time I considered
becoming a doctor, but, I was fully aware that the grueling Organic Chemistry course was staring
right at me. I had a pre-med roommate, Andy Dwight, and I quickly realized during the first
semester how much harder Andy worked than I.
****
A headache was quickly filling my temples and I put the laptop down. The young couple
with the baby was pulling the child in a plastic wagon down the street. When I heard the squeals,
it was hard to tell if the baby was laughing or crying. Bill, his son Danny and a friend of Danny's
were throwing the football in the front yard. It was nice to see Bill smiling, having a good time
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with his kid. I thought about asking Tom to throw the ball around when he got home. We hadn't
done that in a while, but I had no idea how long Susan and Tom would be that morning.
I picked back up the laptop to re-log into the chat room.
“I actually lost sleep on your problem last night, but a real cool plan hit me around 3am,”
Tiger87 wrote.
Four other parties had now commented on my ordeal and it made me feel kind of queasy
to think that this many people knew my business. Yet, this was what I wanted – to get ideas – so
who was I to complain? I was sure they viewed me as almost fictional given no one on the site
was privy to any real names or addresses. Since the service was free, there was no way for the
service to track a chatter down unless they talk to the telecom company and identify the phone
line the chatter was using. I didn't think even my „fictional' problem would warrant that kind of
action.
“What are you all discussing?” I typed.
T-man responded. “We all think you should fake your death.”
Fake my death? What, was I some kind of super spy? I'd seen this done in movies but
those people knew what they were doing.
I stood up and started rubbing my face.
“Bud, listen to us…this will work and it involves no police or harm to your family,”
Tiger87 wrote.
“I'm listening,” I typed.
“If you can convince the police that you are dead, we are all guessing that these guys
threatening you will pick up on that and move on. You'll probably have to disappear for a year or
two but it buys you some time and your family safety,” Tiger87 typed.
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T-man chimed in. “Start collecting your blood, because you'll need it to spread around
whatever death scene you create.”
Suddenly feeling nauseous, I folded my arms against my stomach.
How the hell was I going to create a death scene? Who did these „chatties' think that I
was? Who did I think I was?
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Saturday, November 9th