Thanks to Louis’s history and to his unconventional, not to say unlawful, intervention in these cases, their successful resolution never made the papers or even the official police reports. It was as if they had never happened. But in every case, justice—which Louis did not believe in, but Renard did—was served.
“Hello, Louis,” said Renard. He was unaccountably happy to see Louis, even though he knew he was about to be distracted from his official duties. “I’ve only got a few minutes.”
Louis smiled and stood, and the two men embraced, as they always did these days. Renard sat down. Christoph brought him coffee.
“Do you know who Bernard Madoff is?” said Louis.
Renard laughed. “Who doesn’t?” he said.
“What about St. John Larrimer?”
“Larrimer? No. Who’s that?”
“Another Madoff on a slightly smaller scale. You should swear out a warrant for his arrest.”
Renard laughed again. “Last night I arrested Guy Labillout. He broke into a house in Villedieu and stole a computer and some money—”
“So why haven’t you sworn out a warrant?” said Louis, ignoring Renard’s implication. It’s just a matter of filling out a form, getting a judge to—”
“You know why,” said Renard, looking at his watch.
“Humor me,” said Louis.
“Okay. Because his crimes, whatever they are, did not occur within my jurisdiction.”
“But they did. Larrimer stole money from me.”
Renard hesitated only a moment. “I’m guessing the money wasn’t stolen here.”
“And if the guy you arrested…”
“Guy Labillout.”
“If Guy Labillout had stolen money elsewhere?”
“Don’t treat me like a fool, Louis.” Renard was getting impatient. “I can only arrest him if he’s here, or if the crime was committed here, or if there is an outstanding warrant. If Madoff or … or…”
“Larrimer.”
“If Larrimer were here, then perhaps I could arrest him.”
“So, if I got him here?” Louis smiled.
“To Saint-Léon?” Renard studied his face to see whether he was serious. You could never tell. “If he were here, and I had an outstanding warrant…” Renard hated discussions like this, although they served as a useful warning that Louis might be up to something. “Why are you interested in Madoff and Larrimer?”
“I already told you. The question is why aren’t you interested?”
“It isn’t my job. That’s why they have the SEC in the United States, Interpol, the OLAF—the Office Européen de Lutte Antifraude—here, and other enforcement entities.”
“And you think they will—”
“Listen, Louis. I don’t have any way of knowing what they’ll do. But they got Madoff, didn’t they?”
“He turned himself in.”
“The main thing is he’s in jail. My guess is they’re after this Larrimer, if he’s defrauded people and stolen their money. There are lots of guys like that, unfortunately. Some French fund manager killed himself in New York. They’re probably after him.…”
Louis reached across the table and touched Renard’s hand to stop him from going further. “Jean, that was Pauline’s brother Jean-Baptiste.”
“Oh, no. Really? Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“You met Jean-Baptiste. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember now.”
“Pauline is heartbroken.”
“But they say he’s being investigated by the SEC. And the FBI.”
“And they’ll probably find wrongdoing,” said Louis. “Even where there’s been none.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s what they do. They’re under pressure from the politicians and the press. Remember: They missed Madoff and Larrimer before it was too late. They have to find somebody to blame. To protect their budgets, to keep their jobs. Who better to blame than somebody who’s dead?”
Renard wished he could say “you’re wrong.”
Louis told Renard about Jennifer’s clinic. Men like Larrimer and Madoff played with people’s lives as though there were no consequences. “They’re sociopaths. They live by taking advantage of the tenderness and decency of others. They see their advantage as the highest good.”
“If I had said that, you would say I was oversimplifying,” said Renard. He sipped his coffee and peered over the rim of the cup, waiting for the reaction.
“Yes,” said Louis. “You’re right. But you would never have said that.” Renard waited. “You,” said Louis finally, “you live in the world, and I live outside it. Your work requires your belief in the prevailing truths. My work—”
“Painting?”
“Okay, not my work, but my … inclination means that I test truths, assault power—”
“That’s a little grandiose, isn’t it? Louis Morgon, the avenging angel?”
“Yes. You’re right too.”
“Too?”
“Pauline said the same thing. It is grandiose. Forgive me.”
The two men sat in silence. They turned their gaze from each other to across the square and into the fields above town. Two tractors crossed back and forth, tilling the ground. The wind kicked up eddies of dust behind them. The farmers—Bernard and Patrick Godin—would be back the next day to plant wheat. In a few days thin green lines would show in the gray soil. The wheat would grow until the cold put a stop to it. In the spring it would grow again, would ripen into a gorgeous golden mass. Then it would fall under the thrasher. The plows would come and turn everything under, and the whole cycle would begin again.
“So,” said Renard, almost afraid to ask. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking many things at the same time. Confused. I’m confused.”
“Do you really think there’s anything you can do?” It seemed a ridiculous question on the face of it. What could any one person do?
“No. Yes. Something. Maybe. I don’t know.” Renard could see that Louis was groping, trying to find a place to put the lever of Archimedes in order to move the world. Louis was over seventy, and yet he was still at war, with the world and with himself. He wanted to interfere, to at least throw handfuls of sand in the works so that malfeasance ground to a halt. Renard admired and loved Louis’s passion and anger. At the same time he feared where they might take him. Louis’s curiosity had turned to a desire that Larrimer pay dearly for his greed, for his arrogance and insolence, for his contempt for others, for everything he and his kind had caused to go wrong.
Of course many other people wanted the same thing with the same intense passion. But it would never have occurred to most of them that they could do anything to bring that about. To Louis’s way of thinking, the massive apparatus of government and order and the economy, the apparatus of the world, was an indifferent monster, a leviathan inching along on its bed of slime, devouring the many and cherishing the few, not out of any feeling for or against them, but because the many were available and the few took massive advantage of the world’s dark realities. One such reality was that the many were available for devouring. Another was that wealth and power protected the culpable.
In some important ways, Louis was like St. John Larrimer, thinking he could turn the prevailing truths to his advantage. “So,” said Louis, “what if one—”
“One?” said Renard.
“All right: I. What if I seek out the gaps, the penetrable moments in Larrimer’s defenses, his self-deceptions and pretensions? That could work, couldn’t it? Then the lavish protection I’m sure he’s built around himself might suddenly become vulnerable. I might be able to get at him.” Renard was looking at him in disbelief.
Where Louis seemed to see only disorder and chaos, Renard saw order, and when order had been disrupted, he struggled to restore it. That must have been what Louis meant when he said Renard lived in the world while he, Louis, lived outside it. Renard’s objective was necessarily more modest. That was where a
rresting Guy Labillout came in, arresting him, bringing him to trial, seeing that he was punished.
But Louis refused to be distracted or intimidated by the size and scope of Larrimer’s infraction, or by what he called “niceties” like jurisdiction or legality. Renard picked up his coffee cup and put it to his lips even though it was empty. He smiled across the table at Louis as though he were not a madman. “And how,” he said finally, “do you propose to go after Larrimer? What does that even mean?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Louis. “Even if I could track him down, then what? After all, how do you translate an insane idea into a plan of action?” And that might have been the end of it, if the answer to Louis’s hypothetical question had not come from a most unlikely source.
XVI
ST. JOHN LARRIMER was a man divided. Richard Smythe, his only true confidant, had seen St. John’s dark side, his venality and coldheartedness and quintessential ruthlessness. He knew St. John as avaricious and aggressive and a surreptitious but vicious bully. St. John would do anything necessary to have his way. Being of a similarly larcenous, albeit more congenial, disposition, Richard did not mind St. John’s dark qualities. In fact, he found them amusing. And St. John kept this side of himself carefully hidden from everyone else.
On the other hand, Lorraine Usher, his longtime and faithful assistant, knew St. John’s other side, his quotidian ways, his efficiencies and inefficiencies, his good and bad moods, his kindnesses and his unkindnesses inside out. She knew from the moment he arrived in the morning what his frame of mind would be, what business he might want to conduct and what he would want to leave for another day.
“Lorrraine, bring me the…” and she would be there with the required file or report before he could complete the sentence.
She knew exactly when to interrupt a meeting. She was able to make hotel or restaurant reservations without instruction beyond “Lorraine, I’m going to Paris on the twenty-sixth.” She arranged for his pilot to have the jet ready, for a Rolls with his favorite driver to be waiting to transport him to Le Bristol, and for the Cuban cigars and single malt scotch whiskey that accompanied him everywhere to be in his suite when he arrived. His favorite valet was on call. So was François, the barber, if he was needed, and it was Lorraine who decided if he was needed. She knew nothing of his prostitutes; that was up to the valet.
Lorraine knew that when St. John tugged at his ear, he was about to make a phone call, as though he were preparing that organ to hear nuances it might not otherwise notice. She knew that he liked his steak buttered, that he did not like vegetables, except potatoes, or fruit, except mangoes. He always kept a hundred-dollar bill folded in his silk pocket square, just in case.
She knew his personal history as well. When his sons were little, he had sat by their beds and read to them. He had read A Tale of Two Cities when they were still far too small to appreciate it, followed by something by Edith Wharton and then Henry James. It didn’t matter that they were too young. He read it all in a lively and vivacious way, even doing all the dialogue in different voices. The boys would drift off to sleep but, when he tried to tiptoe from the room, they would call him back to read some more. When his sons were older and St. John was no longer interested in them, he gave them money instead of attention.
Throughout the years of her employment with St. John, Lorraine became essentially invisible to him. He would sing in a high, off-key tenor when he thought he could not be heard, and she knew he was happy. Of course she did not know that his happiness derived from the latest larceny or a particularly artful and satisfying piece of vengeance.
St. John liked certain cigars for certain occasions. Lorraine thought she could have written his biography with only the butts and ashes he left in the ashtray as her source material. She knew he drank black coffee. Except when he decided he preferred a cup of tea. Before he could ask, Lorraine appeared with the small Limoges teapot. St. John always laughed, discomfited and delighted at the same time. “You read my mind!” he said.
To her great regret, she had not read his mind on the larger questions. However, on making the bitter and belated discovery that St. John was a crook, Lorraine decided she would learn everything she could about his criminal enterprise and how he had done it. After all, it was right there, in those drawers behind where she had sat all those years. And it had been put there—itemized, notated, organized, and alphabetized—by her. She had overseen the files without knowing that they represented the record of a vast criminal enterprise. Every day she had taken files out, updated and inserted documents, stored them away, month after month, year after year.
So, on that morning of her rude awakening, after swiveling around in her chair and after staring through tears at the bank of steel filing cabinets, she had stood up and pulled open the first drawer. “Aaron, Frank; Aaron, Philippa and Marcus; Abaddo, Martha and Joseph; the Abbaccus Foundation…” Lorraine realized she was reciting the names without reading them. And not only that, she was seeing the faces and hearing the voices that went with the names. She had over the years, without ever intending to, learned Larrimer’s entire client list—now victim list—by heart. She knew their investing history, when they had first come to Larrimer, on whose recommendation, how much they had deposited, whether or not they had made withdrawals. She knew whether they took tea or coffee, how they dressed, their manners and ways, and what St. John thought of them.
Lorraine had information in her head that any prosecutor would find indispensable if and when St. John was arrested and the case came to court. It was her civic duty, she believed, to make useful sense of what she knew. As the telephone continued ringing that first morning and then afternoon, Lorraine went through file drawers, seeking particular files, which she now saw revealed irregularities—things St. John had brushed aside when she had tried to point them out, but that now would certainly be of interest to the law. At the end of that long, bitter day, Lorraine stuffed the sheaf of notes she had made into her briefcase and went home to her small house in Queens.
When she returned the next morning to continue her research, the door had been padlocked, sealed, and covered with police tape. She could not enter, but it did not really matter. She had already collected information on over a hundred files that represented a thorough record of St. John Larrimer’s irregular transactions.
Lorraine returned home and studied what she had. She then wrote letters to some of the most grievously afflicted of Larrimer’s victims. She explained who she was and expressed her sympathy for their loss. She explained that she was collecting evidence against St. John Larrimer to present to the SEC. If they knew anything about Larrimer’s crimes that they thought might be helpful in his prosecution, she asked them to please send such information to her at the above address or to the SEC. She spent the better part of two days typing and sending the letters. Then she wrote to the SEC telling them who she was and that she was ready and willing to testify against St. John Larrimer.
Two days after she sent the letters, five agents with pistols on their hips and wearing blue jackets with FBI in huge yellow letters on the back presented themselves at her front door. One held a search warrant in front of Lorraine’s face while the others brushed past and fanned out through the rooms of the house. They took her notes, her computer, and various other papers they thought might be relevant.
“Why are you taking my things?” she said.
The agent in charge gave her a long look. “We’re conducting a criminal investigation, Miss Usher. That should be obvious. These things are evidence.”
“How—?”
“If you read the search warrant, you’ll see that it allows us to collect evidence.”
“But it’s not—”
“May I offer a friendly suggestion, Miss Usher? You should consult with your attorney before saying anything more.”
Lorraine Usher was a small, pear-shaped woman. She wore plain glasses and had her thin gray hair pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail and held
in place with a rubber band. There was nothing remotely intimidating about her. And yet when she stuck her chin out and stepped toward the agent in charge, he paused.
“What is your name, sir?” she said.
“I am Agent Salvator Morconi,” he said and produced his badge. “And—”
“Agent Morconi, I recently contacted the SEC about what I have learned about St. John Larrimer’s theft of his client’s money. My own money is among the millions he stole. I worked for the man for more than twenty-five years. I have collected evidence against him and am prepared to assist in his prosecution.”
Morconi’s hesitation was only temporary. He was going to the Fordham University Law School at night and had already learned, and come to relish using, the vocabulary and syntax of official moral indignation. “First of all, Miss Usher, it is our place and not yours to investigate crimes. As you can see, we are in the process of doing so. If you hinder us in our work, you might be arrested and charged with obstruction of justice. A serious crime has been committed. Now, you will certainly be interviewed about your part in this matter, and you may be asked to give testimony at the appropriate time.”
Morconi paused for effect. He turned away as though to oversee the ongoing operation. Then he turned back. “For now, Miss Usher, I suggest you retain a good criminal attorney. To my eyes, at least, it seems highly unlikely that Larrimer could have done everything he did without your knowing and possibly abetting his crimes. Take it from me, lady: get yourself a good lawyer.”
XVII
ONCE LORRAINE WAS ALONE, the seriousness of her situation began to dawn on her. She had managed to discern a great deal of St. John’s treachery from a quick overview of some of the office files. So one could reasonably wonder why she hadn’t been able to see these things earlier if she could see them so readily now. And what about those letters to St. John’s clients and to the SEC? Wasn’t that an elaborate ruse to mislead investigators and to feign innocence?
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