Savings Galore as They Sever the Family Ties
A cardboard box is stuffed with 300 neckties, coiled like snakes. Nicole Miller. Gianni Versace. Top designer brands. The ties are all Bruce McNall’s--black ties, silver ties, paisley ties, Snoopy ties, Goofy ties, striped ties, polka-dot ties, ties to a checkered past. Take your pick. Take a fistful, why don’t you? Hunched into the carton, bobbing for neckwear, a couple of women help themselves, arms draped like rods.
“How much?†Jane Cody is asked.
“Ten bucks each.â€
A thick-slice toaster sits on a table. Seventeen dollars and it’s yours. A plastic, inflatable dinosaur, $3. A box of books, 25 cents for paperbacks, half a buck for hardbacks. A child’s toy choo-choo. Four sets of golf clubs. A Mary Hart fitness video. An electric mixer. Glossy photos of Wayne Gretzky, the hockey star. A board game: Beverly Hills (A Game of Wealth and Status).
“I sold the train,†says McNall’s son, P.J., age 10.
“Great,†says his mom.
Jane Cody is having a yard sale.
A guide from Sotheby’s auction house on antiquities. A horse rider’s velvet helmet. A framed poster from Michael Cimino’s “The Sicilian,†a movie that McNall’s company produced, $15. A vampire bat stuffed by a taxidermist, $15. A toy Hot Lixx guitar, $10. Several packs of cassettes, “Anthony Robbins’ Power Talk: Strategies for Lifetime Success,†seals still unbroken. No price tag.
Strangers forage through a family’s belongings.
Such sales are commonplace come Saturday mornings. Even the next-door neighbors are having one. Except the one Jane Cody and her kids are having, here in affluent Studio City, is a little uncommon, a little eerie, because Jane was married to Bruce McNall, the lyin’ King, a man whose 1993 financial statements put his net worth at $133,018,496, a man who owned seven homes, nine luxury cars, a private 727 jet, champion racehorses, a pro hockey team in Los Angeles and pro football team in Toronto.
A man multimillions in debt.
A man bound for prison.
“What else can I do?†says McNall’s ex-wife, feet planted firmly on her front lawn, face to face with disgrace and disestablishment. “The creditors want everything I have and everything I don’t have. There are three banks after me. They want this house, where I’ve lived myself since 1975, before I ever even knew Bruce. They want to garnish my wages at work.
“I’m down to doing this. I have to do whatever it takes for my family to survive.â€
She didn’t bilk the banks. She didn’t defraud the government. She’s not the one who coaxed subordinates to lie, cheat and deceive. Jane Cody is an administrator at USC, mother of two, second wife of a scoundrel. He’s the one who smuggled foreign treasures. Who borrowed on nonexistent collateral. Who formed 67 subsidiary companies, 10 of which were fakes. Who flimflammed, scammed, thank you, ma’am.
Leaving his loved ones in the lurch.
“You like the ties?†asks his 12-year-old daughter, Katie. “Most of them are black and silver, like the Kings.â€
On one side of the box is written: Katie’s Room Clothes.
“Yeah. They’re nice,†a scavenger in her driveway replies, fingering the fabric.
“Take them,†Katie says. “Take them all.â€
The yard sale was the children’s idea. They no longer wanted these things around their house. If, indeed, this still was their house.
Empty vases and busted lamps. Nintendo games and Fisher-Price toys. A John Elway-model football. A porcelain H.M. Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee souvenir ashtray. A gold-plated Team USA Hockey vs. Los Angeles Kings Dec. 10, 1991 quartz clock. A bound edition of a Bible, monogrammed with McNall’s name and the emblem of Canadian football’s Toronto Argonauts. A stack of laser discs. A Cuisinart.
“Restocking,†Jane Cody announces, bringing new objects from the house.
In her hand is a photograph of her son, P.J., at age 2 1/2, in a silver frame.
Katie says: “You’re not selling P.J.?â€
P.J. says: “You’re not selling me? “
They laugh as their mom extracts the photo from the frame.
“How much could I get for you?†she teases.
They are holding their own. Doing the best they can. Three blameless people, reduced to this. They weren’t the ones who bought a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, an Aston Martin, a Masterati, a Range Rover and Mercedeses galore with money that wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. They weren’t the ones who went bankrupt while owing a nine-figure debt, estimated at $200 million minimally.
Yet they are the ones with a bankruptcy trustee’s attorney in their driveway, observing their yard sale.
They are the ones being billed by lawyers while trying to stay out of hock, a Catch-22 if ever there was one.
“A lawyer answers the phone and it’s $200,†Jane Cody says.
She does not think of the creditors as predators. She understands that all they want is what’s coming to them.
She simply doesn’t know where it will come from.
The ice cracked beneath the man she divorced. He is treading water. He is a man who, bankruptcy notwithstanding, clung to a percentage of his hockey club, plus a reported $487,500 yearly income as a King consultant, whatever that is. He sold his plane to Andre Agassi, sold his half of a Honus Wagner baseball card to Gretzky, sold things he had and things he never had. The great impostor Bruce McNall even paid for worthless memorabilia and passed them off as priceless relics, going so far as to have them smudged and stained to simulate authenticity.
Only now, it is his life up for sale.
His bric-a-brac. His knick-knacks.
His hand-me-downs.
An adult male’s black leather shoes, scuffed, sit atop a table in his ex-wife’s yard.
“These aren’t . . . ?†a customer asks.
“Bruce’s?â€
Yes, they are.
At which point Jane Cody asks, “So how’d you like to be in Bruce McNall’s shoes?†And the smile is on her face because the laugh is on him.
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