Rain

I admit that we had our moments of excess. We had an extravagant house and more than a few wild parties. Really, if you can’t have both Barnum and Bailey and all of their animals at your kid’s birthday party, then what exactly is the point? I squirreled money away--lots of money--for a rainy day, as I knew one day I would be damn grateful for an impenetrable umbrella. I’ve been watching the weather channel and it’s calling for rain. In fact, it just might be a monsoon.

I just had to act normally through one last dinner party. Just one more evening of expressing interest on the lives of the rich, vapid and empty “friends” with whom we surrounded ourselves in this hick town in the Rockies. Luckily it was a hick town that only the wealthiest could afford to play in, so they were wealthy hicks. All the better.

Acting perfectly normal when such a momentous event is at hand is quite difficult, especially when the goal is to arouse no suspicions. Not even my wife’s. They say money can’t buy happiness, but I’m guessing that ‘they’ don’t have any money or they would never say such a thing. Not only can it buy happiness, even by the hour when necessary, but it can also buy creative solutions to problems. Even life’s biggest problems. Talk about thinking outside the box.

Everything and everyone has their price and the reason most folks get nowhere all their lives is that they cannot pay the price. Can’t or won’t, I’m not sure which. That and they don’t have the drive to succeed at all costs, like me. I wasn’t born filthy rich. I worked extremely hard all my life to get where I am. That money wasn’t going to steal itself and migrate to my bank account, you know. Someone had to be out there, actively stealing nest eggs from those little old ladies and socking it away in Swiss bank accounts. And Cayman Island accounts. And anywhere else I could think of. Call them insurance policies. Call them whatever you like, just as long as there’s no paper trail, not that anyone will be looking for one.

So tonight is the big score. I am to be on the plane at 2:05 at the private airstrip and the plane will fly me to the aforementioned Cayman Islands. But, I have to walk through the woods, as I can’t be seen. And I can’t take more than a briefcase of passports, identities and bank account numbers and passwords. Of course, I won’t need anything else, and if I do, there’s American Express. In the name of my new identity.

From the Caymans, I will pick up my new boat and start a new life. It does sound appealing, doesn’t it? Everyone should get the chance to start over with a clean slate (and lots of dough in the bank). After all, think of all the mistakes you’ve made in your first 64 years. Tons of them, right? So, if you have half a brain, then you’ve learned from them and wouldn’t make those same mistakes again. And having all that cash to begin again….it boggles the mind to think of it.

Anyway, I digress. At about midnight, with a little help from his friends, my newest friend will ingest a fatal dose of nitroglycerine in his nightly shot of whiskey. It will be enough to throw his heart into a fatal arrhythmia and though help will be called, in this podunk town, that means an ambulance that mostly serves to scrape up road kill. There will be no chance of revival. They will try, but two electrodes attached to a car battery probably won’t help anyone, not even the road kill, unless you’re ready to cook it. But it will look quite convincing. Hell, a 64 year old man, tons of stress over the last few years, horrible diet, no exercise. Men like that drop dead every day. And today will be no different. Except that, I will be an extremely wealthy man because of this one man’s date with my destiny.

I am already insanely wealthy, but the gods are fickle and my fortune is at risk. So is my freedom. This is my way out. This is the only way to be sure that the money I have so carefully stolen and hidden all of these years remains with its rightful owner- me.

I have made the necessary arrangements, made the elaborate plans that allowed for contingencies. I had a back up plan- another “victim” the following night if for some reason this didn’t go according to the plan. And I am on my way to the Caymans.

Me, and that guy, what’s-his-name, are both on our final journeys. Mine is a nicer place, however. His ashes will conveniently be scattered in my stead where no DNA can ever be recovered -in the ocean- from my favorite yacht by my favorite wife. But he won’t get an obituary, only I will. Mine will be on the front page of every newspaper in the world, as it is not every day that one of America’s most creative, most reviled thieves dies. Especially after being convicted but before being sentenced. It’s almost like dying in a state of grace.

Actually it turns out that it IS dying in a state of grace. Just ask my extraordinarily well-paid lawyers. They will soon argue that Ken Lay, since he died before he could exhaust the appeals process, deserved to have his name cleared posthumously, and thus the government does not have a right to his estate as restitution for his crimes. And, they will win.

And, if someday, I were to appear on US soil again, I am merely a dead man, and I'm not even a felon. And even if my picture were on the front page of every paper, how many of you would recognize me when you pass me on the street? I’m just another white haired old coot in plaid pants sporting a great tan.

My old friend Jeffrey Skilling will spend the next two and a half decades in prison. I bet he was ticked when he read the news--I always was one step ahead of the game and at least three steps ahead of that pinhead. That would be why I was CEO and he wasn’t. Maybe I’ll pay him a visit in a few years- THAT would be fun.

Copyright 2007 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.