I Cleaned Their Offices for 20 Years. At the Christmas Party, I Fired the CEO.

Part 3: January

They did not go quietly.

I had known they would not. Douglas warned me the morning after the party, over coffee in his office on the twenty-second floor. He said, Diane, he will fight this. He has money. His wife has money. He will hire people. He will try to find something.

I told Douglas that was fine. I told him there was nothing to find.

That was mostly true.

Marcus did not come in on Friday. He did not come in on Monday either. On Tuesday morning, an email went out to the entire staff from an address none of us recognized, a lawyer in Lake Forest, informing everyone that Marcus Halloway remained the CEO of Halloway & Prine Financial and that any communications suggesting otherwise were “premature and unauthorized.”

Sondra called me at nine.

“Diane,” she said. “The phones are ringing off the hook. What do you want me to say.”

“Tell them the truth. Tell them there is a shareholder meeting on January eighth. Tell them Marcus is on personal leave until then.”

“Some of them are asking if their jobs are safe.”

I thought about that for a second.

“Tell them yes.”

The story got out anyway. It always does. By Wednesday afternoon there was a piece on a financial industry blog with the headline Chicago Wealth Manager in Boardroom Shakeup, and by Thursday morning it had been picked up by the Tribune, and by Friday there was a photographer standing outside my apartment building in Bridgeport when I came down for my walk.

I did not talk to him.

I did not talk to any of them.

My grandson Kevin, who is a junior at U of I now, called me and said, Grandma, is it true. And I said, Yes, baby, it’s true. And he was quiet for a long time and then he said, Grandma, why didn’t you ever tell me. And I said, Because it wasn’t mine to talk about yet. He said, Are you okay. I said, I’m fine. He said, Do you need me to come home. I told him no, finish his semester, I would see him at Christmas.

I did not tell him about the letter.

The letter came on the following Tuesday, hand-delivered by a courier, in a heavy envelope with no return address. Inside was one sheet of paper.

It said: I know about the boy. I know what your husband was really doing that night. Withdraw the sale motion or your family finds out.

It was not signed.

I sat at my kitchen table for a long time with that letter in my hands.

Ray had been driving home from a bar the night the truck hit him. He had been drinking. Not enough to be over the limit, the police report was clear about that, and the trucking company’s driver had run a red light, that was clear too, but there was a woman in the passenger seat of Ray’s car who was not me.

Her name was Colleen. She was a waitress at a place on Halsted. She had been in the car for four blocks. She did not die. She walked away with a broken wrist and never contacted me and I never contacted her, and Ellis Prine, God bless Ellis Prine, kept her name out of the settlement paperwork and out of the newspapers and out of my son’s life. My son was fourteen when his father died. He is thirty-five now. He works at a hospital in Denver. He has one son, Kevin.

He does not know about Colleen.

I sat at the kitchen table for two hours.

Then I called Douglas.

I read him the letter.

Douglas was quiet for a while. Then he said, Diane, do you want to withdraw the motion.

I said, No.

He said, Are you sure. Because I can find another way to unwind this. It will take longer and the terms won’t be as good, but we can protect you.

I said, Douglas, my husband has been dead for twenty-one years. My son is a grown man. If Marcus wants to call him up and tell him something ugly about his father, that is between Marcus and my son. I am not going to let a dead man’s mistake buy Marcus Halloway another day in that chair.

Douglas said, Okay.

He said, I am going to find out who sent this. That is a felony, what he just did, and I am going to make sure he knows we know.

I said, Thank you.

I hung up.

Then I sat there for another hour, and I did not cry, because I had done my crying about Ray and about Colleen a long time ago, in a hospital cafeteria in 2003, and I was not going to give Marcus Halloway any of those tears.

I called my son that night.

I did not tell him about the letter. I told him about the firm. All of it. From the beginning. From Ellis Prine and the coat that was too thin and the settlement money and old Mr. Halloway in the hallway asking about a science fair.

My son was quiet for a very long time.

Then he said, Mom. Mom, why didn’t you ever quit.

I said, Because your father’s boss told me not to.

He said, Mom, you could have retired ten years ago.

I said, I know.

He said, Are you going to retire now.

I said, Yes, honey. After the sale closes. I am going to retire now.

He said, Good. I am glad. Come out here. Come see Kevin’s graduation in May. Stay for the summer.

I said, I will think about it.

He said, Mom.

I said, Yes.

He said, I am proud of you. I don’t know if I ever said that. I am proud of you.

I did cry then. A little. In the kitchen, with the phone against my ear, looking at the letter still sitting on the table.

The meeting was on January eighth, a Wednesday, at ten in the morning, in the twelfth-floor conference room.

I wore the navy dress I had bought for old Mr. Halloway’s funeral.

Marcus was there. He had lost weight. He was sitting at the far end of the long table with two lawyers and his second wife, Alison, who would not make eye contact with anyone.

Sondra was there. Douglas was there. The three other shareholders were there, two on video from Arizona and one in person, an old woman named Ruth Landry who had been Ellis Prine’s paralegal for thirty years and who winked at me when I sat down.

I called the meeting to order.

I read the motion.

Marcus’s lawyer objected on four different grounds. Douglas answered all four.

The vote was called.

It was sixty-two percent to thirty-eight percent, in favor of the sale to Northern Trust.

Marcus stood up before the meeting was even adjourned. He looked at me from across the length of that table. He opened his mouth to say something.

Then his wife put her hand on his arm. Just barely. Two fingers on his sleeve. And he closed his mouth again, and he sat back down, and he did not look at me for the rest of the meeting.

When I walked out of the conference room, the entire staff of Halloway & Prine was standing in the hallway.

Every one of them. Even the interns.

They did not clap. That would have been strange. They just stood there, in two rows, along the walls of the hallway, and they let me walk between them to the elevator.

Sondra was at the front. She had a paper cup of coffee in her hand. She handed it to me.

She said, “Diane. Your cart is on the sixth floor. If you want it.”

I said, “Sondra. You get my cart now.”

She laughed. Then she started to cry.

I got in the elevator. I pressed L. The doors closed on forty-one faces and I rode down twelve floors alone with a paper cup of coffee and I did not spill any of it.

Outside, on Wabash Avenue, it was snowing.