Unlike Morris' old office, his jail cell won't have an escape route

e-mail this story Jeanne Brooks • Unlike Morris' old office, his jail cell won't have an escape route (11/21/04) • Dance with one who brung ya, unless it's minor leagues (11/17/04) • Squirrel finds place in family tree (11/15/04) • Rewards await Utah students who swear not to curse (11/07/04) • Take me out to the ballbark, not the cleaners (11/03/04)

Look for the round window on the second floor directly above the big letters that still say CAROLINA INVESTORS. The suite begins there.

Half of all the second-floor windows across the front of the red-brick building were his. Plus the round one. Most of the windows along the side were his, too.

It was a big corner office.

Friday, an assistant to the auctioneer was stationed downstairs in a room just off the elegant black-and-white marble foyer. She was handing out stapled sheets of property information and forms to register bidders.

The front double doors were propped open for potential buyers to come in and walk around the empty rooms.

People came in, some tentatively, some purposefully. Most were not potential buyers. They came for other reasons.

The ones who stopped at the counter, where the woman stood, all had the same question. They asked the way to Morris’ office. They wanted to see it.

Of course, it’s been a good while now since the former lieutenant governor walked across the plush teal wall-to-wall carpeting of his "executive suite w. private bath & wet bar," which is how the auctioneer’s info described it.

Carolina Investors shut its doors suddenly last year, bankrupt. Its estimated 12,000 people had entrusted the company and their good friend, Morris, chairman, with their savings.

They thought they knew him.

They were textile mill workers and farmers and small business owners and such, people who had gone to high school with Morris, who voted for him, who used to shake his hand when they met him on the sidewalk.

They gave pieces of their lives to Carolina Investors, and the pieces turned to dust.

Gone with the money were the houses and retirements and college educations that people had been saving for.

The walls of Morris’ ex-office, the largest of a suite of rooms, are mahogany and walnut. A wide chandelier hangs from the 10-foot ceiling.

There are floor-to-ceiling built-in mahogany bookcases. Some of the shelves have faux books to disguise the hidden compartment behind them.

There’s a fireplace: black marble threaded with veins of gold. And a wet bar. While textile workers and others were depositing their hard-earned savings downstairs, Morris would’ve been able to stroll into this adjoining room.

The counter is the same gold-veined black marble as the fireplace hearth. Rich wood cabinetry holds a refrigerator and a sink. The wallpaper is a deep-red flame pattern like the inside covers of expensive antique books.

The secret door is here, appearing to be another tall bookcase. But once again, with an irony we only get now, the books are false.

The door leads to the back of the building and a rear exit, convenient if anyone didn’t want to, or couldn’t, face friends and depositors in the lobby.

On Friday, the Carolina Investors building in Pickens sold at auction for "four thirty-seven five," as the auctioneer sang it. That would be $437,500.

Or for all the grief and heartsickness, the broken dreams, lost years of scrimping and saving: $437.50 per square foot.

Also on Friday, Morris received his sentence for securities fraud: 44 months in prison, where there are no secret doors out. Jeanne Brooks’ column appears on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at (864) 298-4261.