Manhattan's Ruler: The Return of the Trash Son-in-Law

The Mother-in-law's Greed

Ethan had understood something about Eleanor Hargrove from the very first dinner, three years ago, when she had looked at him across the table and said, with a smile that never once reached her eyes.

"I suppose Serena always did have unconventional taste."

She had introduced him as "Serena's mistake" at a charity event in the second year, loud enough for all the people in the hall to hear, and Serena had laughed it off on the car ride home and told him her mother was simply protective.

"She's calling Serena," Ethan said, adjusting the earpiece and watching the monitor where Serena's phone activity were showing in real time. "She wants to meet for lunch."

Vincent leaned against the wall behind him, arms folded. "Le Bernardin?"

"Where else," Ethan said. "Eleanor has never had a difficult conversation anywhere that cost less than three hundred dollars a plate."

The van was parked on 51st Street, between a florist's delivery truck and a dry-cleaning service vehicle, and from two blocks away, the audio feed came through clean and clear as Ethan sat with his headphones on.

He listened to Eleanor Hargrove order the poached halibut.

The small conversation lasted six minutes. He timed it. Then, Eleanor set down her water glass.

"I know about the inheritance," Eleanor said.

There was a brief silence from Serena.

"I don't know what you think you know, Mother."

She finally said.

"The three hundred million dollars from the Cole family trust," Eleanor said pleasantly, as though she were reading from a menu. "It was transferred four days after Ethan's car accident. I have friends at two of the banks involved." Another pause. "I raised you, Serena and that's worth twenty percent."

Serena let a moment pass before she responded.

"You are telling me that you raised me well and now, you want sixty million dollars as a thank-you."

"I am telling you that I kept you sharp enough to get the job done," Eleanor said. "And I want to be compensated for it."

"Mother." Serena's voice was almost amused. "You are extraordinary."

"I am practical," Eleanor said. "And I am patient, but only up to a point." She let out a little chuckle before she continued. "Pay me what I am asking, or I will have a conversation with your father about you and Julian and the specific nature of Ethan's accident."

"Are you threatening me?" Serena asked, raising her head up to look at her mother.

"I am protecting my investment," Eleanor said.

Another silence stretched between them, and Ethan could hear the ambient restaurant noise filling the gap.

"I will arrange the transfer," Serena said finally.

"I knew you would be sensible," Eleanor said.

Ethan pulled the headphones off and set them on the console, gazing at the ceiling of the van for a moment.

"She agreed too quickly," Ethan said.

"Yes," Vincent said.

"Serena is not going to pay her."

"No," Vincent said. "She is going to do something else entirely."

Ethan nodded and picked the headphones back up. "Then, we will move first."

Vincent's crew had been watching Eleanor's routines for eleven days.

She does yoga every Tuesday and Thursday morning at a studio on Greenwich Street in Tribeca, and she always park in the same spot. She always leave her bag in the car for the ninety minute she would spend inside because she did not trust the studio's lockers.

The burglar who handled her car on Thursday morning was in and out in under four minutes, and by noon, the contents of Eleanor's purse were sitting on the folding table in the warehouse while Vincent's man went through them item by item.

"Phone, wallet, lip balm, two pens, a parking receipt from last week, and this," the man said, setting a small thumb drive beside the rest of the items.

Ethan picked it up.

The drive contained fourteen months of emails between Eleanor and a man named Thomas Wright.

Ethan read through them in forty minutes, and by the end of the forty minutes, he understood that Eleanor Hargrove had been making money off information.

She has been passing FDA approval timelines to a mid-level pharmaceutical executive who had been trading on that information and splitting the profits back with her through a private account.

"This is enough," Ethan said.

"More than enough," Vincent said.

Ethan copied the drive's contents into his laptop, slid the original into a padded envelope addressed to the SEC's enforcement division, and put three copies of the most relevant emails in separate envelopes addressed to the journalists who had been covering the Hargrove scandal most aggressively. He sealed all four envelopes and handed them to Vincent.

"Tomorrow morning," Ethan said.

"Done," Vincent said.

The story was published forty-eight hours later on a Thursday afternoon, and Ethan watched it on three different screens while he ate a sandwich that had gone slightly stale.

Eleanor Hargrove, wife of Richard Hargrove, chairman of Hargrove Industries, had been indicted on four counts of insider trading. Bail was set at five million dollars and a federal prosecutor was quoted saying the evidence was "substantial and well-documented."

Ethan's phone buzzed with a notification from the audio feed he had placed in the Hargrove penthouse three weeks earlier.

"You have been doing this for five years," Ethan could hear Richard talking to his wife. "Five years, Eleanor. While I have been fighting for this company's reputation, you have been running your own operation out of our kitchen."

"I was protecting our future," Eleanor said. "Everything I did was for this family."

"Four counts," Richard said. " Of federal indictment. Do you understand what that means to our position right now? Don’t you know that we are already under investigation and you have just handed them a reason to look at every account we own?"

"I need you to calm down," Eleanor said.

"I paid your bail," Richard said. "I will not be asked to calm down in my own house."

Ethan listened to the silence that followed.

Three days passed and Serena did not visit or even call. Eleanor called Serena seventeen times over those three days and each call went unanswered, and on the fourth day, Serena's publicist released a statement, saying that Serena was "shocked and deeply disappointed" by the revelations about her mother and that she fully supported the legal process.

Ethan read the statement twice and almost felt satisfied with how Serena had cleanly cut the cord.

Vincent came in from outside, stamping cold off his boots before looking at Ethan.

"Eleanor saw the statement," Vincent said.

"I know," Ethan said. "I heard her call Serena four more times after that"

"Serena didn't pick up."

"No," Ethan said. "She didn't." He closed the laptop and leaned back in the chair."The family is eating itself up already”.