Free Down the Shore by Stan Parish Page A

reported anonymously for insider trading, blindsided. I wondered who that would have been. A principled whistle-blower? A former colleague, stuck at Lehman, who resented his success? Or maybe it was someone who stood to gain from being an informant. I knew more about that situation than I cared to admit, and put that thought aside. A raid on the offices turned up piles of falsified trading records. There were large chunks of capital that were either missing altogether or not where Michael Savage claimed. But there had also been two big redemptions that he’d had no trouble meeting, a sign that he was making money and had cash on hand, although no one could be quite sure how. There had been no massive losses and, as far as anyone could tell, no extravagant lifestyle financed by unwitting investors. No polo team, in other words. No private islands. The Savages lived relatively modestly in an old Pennsylvania farmhouse on the Delaware. The
Times
had asked a forensic accounting specialist to comment on how long it would take to untangle the paper trail and figure out where all the cash had gone. Years, he said, especially without cooperation. Decades, even. I tore the article carefully along the fold, tucked it into my wallet, and dropped the rest of the
New York Times
into the trash.
    Clare and I had plans to drive to Maryland that afternoon. Lawrenceville was the southernmost of the old prep schools, and every year the newly minted graduates followed the southern boys to parties at their houses on the Chesapeake and plantations in Virginia, sometimes road tripping as far as West Palm Beach before they went their separate ways.
    I walked into town alongside a stream of women driving alone in expensive cars, which made me wonder how Clare’s mother had spent her days while her husband was doing god knows what with other people’s money. Clare was walking toward me, looking fresh and rested and completely unaware that his family was all over the news.
    â€œHow’d you sleep?” I asked him.
    â€œThat couch is actually really comfortable. And your mom is great. That was the best omelet I’ve ever had.”
    â€œCool,” I said. “Listen, everyone’s meeting behind the field house to drive down to Bethesda. Do you need anything from your room before we go?”
    â€œNothing from my room, but could I borrow your car for an hour?”
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œI need to pick up something at my parents’ place.”
    He wouldn’t say what, and clearly wanted to do this alone, but that, as my mother liked to say, was a personal problem. The
Times
had run a small aerial picture of the house, and there was no way I was passing up a closer look.
    â€œI’ll drive you,” I said. “No big deal.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    â€œThis is it,” Clare said, pointing to a gravel drive that filled a freshly cleared gash in the woods between the Delaware River and the narrow winding road. It was a service road for the construction of an outbuilding behind the house, a capillary connected to the wide main drive. The unfinished guesthouse was covered in DuPont weatherproof sheeting, and bookended by two Dumpsters splattered in that smooth, light-colored mud that’s peculiar to construction, the lifeblood of a building site. No way to know when they broke ground that all the planning and the sketching and the permits and the lumber would lead this far and no further.
    The main house was long and low and made of stone. Clare unlocked the door and led me through the dark entryway into a living room that overlooked a pear-shaped pond. The room was sparsely furnished, and I saw from the marks and discoloration on the wide pine boards of the floor that things were missing—rare antiques, I imagined, family heirlooms that couldn’t be replaced after an asset sale. There was nothing flashy about the house, nothing that looked less than a century old.