Chapter 20: The Auction

At nine on Friday, the auction room in Stamford held a thousand people and one empty chair.

The chair at the head table was Lawrence's.

His name card was still in front of it.

Anson sat in the second row with his hands between his knees.

Behind him sat four hundred of his own employees in work jackets and wrinkled shirts, with their families.

The driver who had asked him about another job sat on the aisle, holding his cap.

I stood at the back of the room with a folder, and Dot beside me, and my mother in a wheelchair with the butler at the handles.

"Lot one," said the auctioneer, a small man with a gavel. "Rotherham Logistics, all assets and debt. Opening bid, one dollar."

A woman in cream silk raised a paddle in the third row.

I knew her.

She was the one who had folded a dollar bill and held it out to me at the charity luncheon.

"One dollar," she said, and smiled at the room.

Somebody gasped. Somebody laughed, bitterly.

She was bidding for someone else, and everyone in the room knew who.

"Do I hear a higher bid?"

"Ten million," I said from the back.

Every head turned.

"Ten million from the lady at the rear. Do I hear eleven?"

"Eleven," said the woman in cream.

"Thirteen," I said.

"Fifteen."

"Twenty."

"Twenty-two," said the woman in cream, and her paddle shook.

I looked at her.

She was not bidding her own money, and she was running out of someone else's.

"Twenty-five," I said.

She looked at her phone.

Somebody was texting her instructions, and she read them with her lips pressed white.

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