in dark suits were constantly coming and going, meeting with his father. The fact that the office was off-limits to Tyler made it irresistible.
One day when his father was away, Tyler decided to go into the office. The huge room was overpowering, awesome. Tyler stood there, looking at the large desk and at the huge leather chair that his father sat in. One day I’m going to sit in that chair, and I’m going to be important like Father. He moved over to the desk and examined it. There were dozens of official-looking papers on it. He moved around to the back of the desk and sat in his father’s chair. It felt wonderful. I’m important now, too!
‘What the hell are you doing?’
Tyler looked up, startled. His father stood in the doorway, furious.
‘Who told you you could sit behind that desk?’
The young boy was trembling. ‘I … I just wanted to see what it was like.’
His father stormed over to him. ‘Well, you’ll never know what it’s like! Never! Now get the hell out of here and stay out!’
Tyler ran upstairs, sobbing, and his mother came to his room. She put her arms around him. ‘Don’t cry, darling. It’s going to be all right.’
‘It’s … it’s not going to be all right,’ he sobbed. ‘He … he hates me!’
‘No. He doesn’t hate you.’
‘All I did was to sit in his chair.’
‘It’s his chair, darling. He doesn’t want anyone to sit in it.’
He could not stop crying. She held him close and said, ‘Tyler, when your father and I were married, he said he wanted me to be part of his company. He gave me one share of stock. It was kind of a family joke. I’m going to give you that share. I’ll put it in a trust for you. So now you’re part of the company, too. All right?’
There were one hundred shares of stock in Stanford Enterprises, and Tyler was now a proud owner of one share.
When Harry Stanford heard what his wife had done, he scoffed, ‘What the hell do you think he’s going to do with that one share? Take over the company?’
Tyler switched off the television set and sat there, adjusting to the news. He felt a deep sense of satisfaction. Traditionally, sons wanted to be successful to please their fathers. Tyler Stanford had longed to be a success so he could destroy his father.
As a child, he had a recurring dream that his father was charged with murdering his mother, and Tyler was the one who would pass sentence. I sentence you to die in the electric chair! Sometimes the dream would vary, and Tyler would sentence his father to be hanged or poisoned or shot. The dreams became almost real.
The military school he was sent to was in Mississippi, and it was four years of pure hell. Tyler hated the discipline and the rigid life-style. In his first year at school, he seriously contemplated committing suicide, and the only thing that stopped him was the determination not to give his father that satisfaction. He killed my mother. He’s not going to kill me.
It seemed to Tyler that his instructors were particularly hard on him, and he was sure his father was responsible. Tyler refused to let the school break him. Although he was forced to go home on holidays, his visits with his father grew more and more unpleasant.
His brother and sister were also home for holidays, but there was no sense of kinship. Their father had destroyed that. They were strangers to one another, waiting for the holidays to be over so they could escape.
Tyler knew that his father was a multibillionaire but the small allowance that Tyler, Woody, and Kendall had came from their mother’s estate. As he grew older, Tyler wondered whether he was entitled to the family fortune. He was sure he and his siblings were being cheated. I need an attorney. That, of course, was out of the question, but his next thought was, I’m going to become an attorney.
When Tyler’s father heard about his son’s plans, he said, ‘So, you’re going to become a lawyer, huh? I suppose you think I’ll give you a job with Stanford Enterprises. Well, forget it. I wouldn’t let you within a mile of it!’
When Tyler was graduated from law school he could have practised in Boston, and because of the family name he would have been welcomed on the boards of dozens of companies, but he preferred to get far away from his father.
He decided to set up a law practice in Chicago. In the beginning, it was difficult. He refused to trade on his family name, and clients were scarce. Chicago politics were run by the Machine, and Tyler very quickly learned that it would be advantageous for a young lawyer to become involved with the powerful central Cook County Lawyers Association. He was given a job with the district attorney’s office. He had a keen mind and was a quick study, and it was not long before he became invaluable to them. He prosecuted felons accused of every conceivable crime, and his record of convictions was phenomenal.
He rose rapidly through the ranks, and finally the day came when he received his reward. He was appointed Cook County circuit court judge. He had thought his father finally would be proud of him. He was wrong.
‘You? A circuit court judge? For God’s sake, I wouldn’t let you judge a baking contest!’
Judge Tyler Stanford was a short, slightly overweight man with sharp, calculating eyes and a hard mouth. He had none of his father’s charisma or attractiveness. His outstanding feature was a deep, sonorous voice, perfect for pronouncing sentence.
Tyler Stanford was a private man who kept his thoughts to himself. He was forty years old, but he looked much older than his years. He prided himself on having no sense of humor. Life was too grim for levity. His only hobby was chess, and once a week he played at a local club, where he invariably won.
Tyler Stanford was a brilliant jurist, held in high esteem by his fellow judges, who often came to him for advice. Very few people were aware that he was one of the Stanfords. He never mentioned his father’s name.
The judge’s chambers were in the large Cook County Criminal Court Building at Twenty-sixth and California streets, a fourteen-storey stone edifice with steps leading up to the front entrance. It was in a dangerous neighborhood, and a notice outside stated: BY JUDICIAL ORDER, ALL PERSONS ENTERING THIS BUILDING SHALL SUBMIT TO SEARCH.
This was where Tyler spent his days, hearing cases involving robbery, burglary, rape, shootings, drugs and murders. Ruthless in his decisions, he became known as the Hanging Judge. All day long he listened to defendants pleading poverty, child abuse, broken homes, and a hundred other excuses. He accepted none of them. A crime was a crime and had to be punished. And in the back of his mind, always, was his father.
Tyler Stanford’s fellow judges knew very little about his personal life. They knew that he had had a bitter marriage and was now divorced, and that he lived alone in a small three-bedroom Georgian house on Kimbark Avenue in Hyde Park. The area was surrounded by beautiful old homes, because the great fire of 1871 that razed Chicago had whimsically spared the Hyde Park district. He made no friends in the neighborhood, and his neighbors knew nothing about him. He had a housekeeper who came in three times a week, but Tyler did the shopping himself. He was a methodical man with a fixed routine. On Saturdays, he went to Harper Court, a small shopping mall near his home, or to Mr G’s Fine Foods or Medici’s on Fifty-seventh Street.
From time to time, at official gatherings,
