by John Gapper
“Thank you for coming,” she said, gazing at a file on her desk rather than at me and reaching for her phone. On the way out I passed her two assistants still rooted to their spots, unwilling to look up.
There was a plop as Felix drew the cork on a bottle of red wine. He poured out two glasses, then took one and rolled the wine around before taking a gulp.
“It’s a 2005 Pomerol. Not a great year, but good enough for pizza. A purist would insist on beer, but I’m not one of those. I brought two bottles because I reckon we deserve it. Cheers,” he said.
We were in my kitchen and I was putting out plates, knives, and forks on the table for the food Felix had brought. He’d called earlier in the day to suggest that we meet, and I’d told myself it was important to find out more about Greene’s death. But as the day had worn on, and I’d straphanged my way back home from the hospital on the 6 train, I’d realized I also wanted his company. Most people at Episcopal had stopped talking to me except for a few pleasantries, out of embarrassment or suspicion, and Rebecca had left me at precisely the moment that I turned out to need her. The people who had talked to me at length-Harry, Pagonis, and Duncan-had all made me feel worse than before.
“Oh, good, cutlery. I knew this was a civilized joint,” he said, squeezing along the banquette. “I am glad I came. Not that it wouldn’t be a pleasure to see you anyway, Ben, but my wife’s tired of all the furor and taken the kids off to visit their grandparents, so I’m on my lonesome.”
“I’m glad. Thanks for all this,” I said as I lifted slices of pizza onto his plate. “How are you doing?”
It wasn’t an idle question. Felix was looking wearier than when I’d last encountered him on the Gulfstream. His face was pasty and his hair needed a trim. He sighed and picked up a fork, with which he speared a slice of pizza. He got it most of the way to his mouth before lowering it to speak.
“You know what? I’d say I was keeping my head above water. The place is in chaos, the last two chief executives having been taken out in one go, and I spend my working days going to meetings with lawyers. What is wrong with this country that you need an entire legal team even if you’re only a witness? When I drag myself home at the end of the day, I get bombarded with calls from journalists.”
“So what did you witness, Felix?” I asked.
He looked at me, munching the pizza, as if I were being tactlessly direct, but I didn’t care anymore-I didn’t have the energy for small talk. He had a smear of tomato sauce on his upper lip, and for an uncomfortable moment the red reminded me of the blood spilling out from Greene’s body in the crime scene photo.
“Not a nice memory, I’ve got to say. Nora called me that afternoon. She was pretty distressed, said Harry had given her the slip somehow and she needed help to find him. He’d vanished from their apartment a couple of hours before. She had visions that he’d topped himself. We almost called you, in fact.”
“I wish you had.”
“It was about five o’clock. We tried Harry’s mobile and the house. Nothing. Finally, at eight, he called from East Hampton. Nora answered. It was dreadful.” Felix closed his eyes and shuddered as he recalled the moment. “Utter fucking mess. I drove her out myself. I didn’t want her to face it alone. When we arrived, there were cops swarming the place. They’d taken Harry away from there already. Nora was hysterical, kept saying it was all her fault-you’d warned her.”
“That sounds terrible.” It did, but there was one consolation. Nora obviously knew that she should have listened to me and was prepared to acknowledge it openly. I hoped she might protect me a little-I needed it.
Felix put some pizza in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully for a minute or two. “It was. So how’s it going at the hospital? I imagine they’re shit scared about the whole thing, aren’t they? I hope they’re supportive.”
“Not exactly.”
“That bad?” He winced, then pushed his plate aside and poured more wine into our glasses.
“I discharged him. My signature’s on the release and no one else wants to share the blame. I only hope it doesn’t get to court.”
He shrugged and raised his eyebrows, indicating that I was out of luck. “I don’t think you should count on that. Put it this way: I think Marcus married Margaret because she was the only person on earth who scared him.”
“I’m screwed, then,” I said gloomily, taking a glug of my wine.
“There’s always Nora. Maybe she could prevail on Margaret. The Wall Street wives’ club. Even if her membership’s expired.”
He glanced at me, not sure whether he’d gone too far, but then we both snorted with laughter, like children sharing a joke out of adult earshot. I stood up and we walked to the living room, where he lounged in an armchair with his shoes off. There was a hole in one of his socks, through which a toe poked.
“Why do you think Harry did it?” I asked. “He didn’t tell me much in Riverhead, just that the bank was going to take the Gulfstream away. I suppose that felt like punishment, but all the same, shooting the messenger was extreme.”
Felix looked into his wineglass as if he might be able to read the sediment like a fortune-teller. “One thing I’ll say about Harry, Ben. You’ve only known him since he’s been ill, but he’s a delicate soul. He’s always felt like an outsider to Wall Street, not part of the club. When he was pushed out, he imagined that everyone was laughing at him.”
He seemed to have a talent as a psych. That might have been what had made Harry flip, I thought-the feeling of being dispossessed by the man who had taken over his bank. It made as much sense as anything in this affair.
“Marcus could be pretty tough when he wanted to be,” he went on. “Maybe he said something that got under Harry’s skin-the guy wasn’t stable.”
I knew as he said it that he didn’t mean any harm, but it made me throw my hands in the air with despair. “God, if anyone else says that to me, I think I’ll scream out loud. I know he wasn’t stable. I shouldn’t have discharged him.”
Felix winced. “I’m sorry-ought to have been more sensitive.”
I gave myself a moment to breathe. “Forget it, I’m on edge.”
“I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t miss him. You can watch him in action if you want. They made Harry and Marcus give evidence together to the Senate last year. There’s a video up on C-SPAN still. That’ll give you the idea.”
Felix left after midnight, when we’d drained both of the Pomerols and half a bottle of whiskey I’d found in a cupboard. I didn’t sleep well, turning back and forth under the duvet as I passed in and out of consciousness. I got up to take an Ambien, hoping it would knock me out, but it only pushed me into a disturbed sleep.
I dreamed of driving down the lane to the Shapiros’ house and turning up the drive at night. The front door was open and I walked into the house from a side I’d never been. The carpet was soft under my bare feet after the pebbled drive. The living room was dark, only a dim light coming from the ocean. Harry was sitting on the living room sofa in a blue gown, with head bowed. As I entered, he looked up. Blood poured down his face from an open wound and he stared at me fiercely, his eyes burning as they had in the ER. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. He’s trying to tell me something. I need to get closer, I thought, but my feet wouldn’t grip the wooden floor.
I woke up sweating from the dream and the alcohol. It was three a.m. and I sat up in bed, my arms around my knees. I have to protect myself-I can’t let them sacrifice me, I thought. I reached for the phone and dialed.
“Dad, it’s me,” I said when he answered.
“You’re up late. Is everything okay?” replied his smooth baritone. I heard Jane’s voice in the background. “It’s Ben,” he told her. “Hold on, I’ll take it in the other room.”
After thirty seconds, he picked up the phone in his study. “Hey, Benny, we’re just having breakfast. You rushed off the other day. What’s up?”
“I’m in trouble, Dad,” I said, my voice starting to
shake. “A patient killed someone and it’s being blamed on me. I couldn’t have stopped it. It wasn’t my fault.”
I felt myself babbling with exhaustion and stress, triggered by the sound of his voice and my nighttime loneliness.
“Whoa, slow down. I’m sure it wasn’t, but take it from the top.”
I told him the whole story. It took twenty minutes, and he interrupted occasionally to ask me a question, but he listened. Just talking to him made me feel overwhelmingly grateful to have someone on my side.
“Hmm,” he said at the end. “Listen, I’ve got a friend over there who’ll be able to help you, but you must promise me something. It’s important.”
“Yes, Dad,” I said, a child again.
“Don’t talk to the hospital or the insurers or the police until you’ve spoken to him. And don’t go visiting any more prisons. You need a lawyer.”
11
In New York City, the Shapiros lived in a tower on Central Park West near Columbus Circle that had been built in retro-classic Manhattan style, all limestone and marble. It had become famous for the bankers and hedge fund managers who’d bought apartments there just before the crash. The address was a symbol of the city’s new wealth, and magazines recorded each $30 million apartment sale in awed detail.
I’d called to arrange a time to see her, and she’d sounded grateful to hear from me. Despite my father’s warning about not talking to anyone, she was-or had been-the wife of my patient and I owed it to her. Besides, I wanted to find out what had gone wrong. She’d kept one gun away from Harry, as I’d insisted to her, but he had slipped away from her and found another one to kill Greene. I still sympathized with her, but what she’d told Felix was true. She should have listened to me and not her husband.
Dusk was falling when I arrived, making the Mercedes sedans and BMWs in the courtyard glow. Everything was polished and shiny, down to the buttons on the coats of the doormen inside who scanned all visitors. After one of them had called upstairs to announce my arrival, another pointed toward the elevator to the thirty-seventh floor. The elevator gave onto a private lobby with a large oak door, which was opened by Anna. She was barefoot and wearing a blue flowered dress, and she gave me a small, pained smile.
“Dr. Cowper?” said a voice from somewhere inside the apartment. Then Nora emerged from a room and walked up to us. Anna stepped a few paces back, ceding her position, and paused briefly before turning away.
“Call me,” she mouthed silently.
I’d hardly had time to register that before Nora kissed me on the cheek again-her flesh cooler than it had felt in East Hampton-and stood back in acknowledgment. She wore gray pants and a cream blouse, and she looked pale and fragile, like a widow in mourning.
“It’s good to see you, Doctor,” she said, her voice wavering.
“And you, Mrs. Shapiro. I’m sorry about everything that’s happened. It must have been very difficult.”
“It has been,” she said simply. I wondered if she was going to cry, but she recovered and gestured for me to follow her inside.
The apartment was grand and high-ceilinged and seemed to recede through endless rooms like a manor house. It was flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows through which I saw the sun casting a glow along Central Park South, its line of hotels and apartment blocks bordering the green block of Central Park. Nora led me to a walnut-paneled study with walls that displayed a mosaic of modern paintings. I saw a Jasper Johns and a Warhol-like lithograph that I couldn’t place. A large photograph hanging over the black marble fireplace dominated the room: a Marlboro cowboy galloping against a vast and cloudy sky.
“It’s a Richard Prince. I bought it for Harry,” Nora said, seeing me look at it.
“It’s great,” I said politely.
“I don’t know what Harry thinks. He was shocked at what I paid.”
“You’re the collector?”
“My mother was a sculptor and I picked up the habit from her, although I couldn’t afford to buy much before I met Harry,” she said. She was sitting on a sofa with the Prince behind her, a shadow cast on her face, and she smiled for the first time. She seemed to want to talk.
“How long have you two been married?”
“Ten years in June. June ninth. Not how I expected to spend our anniversary.”
“How did you meet?”
Nora smiled. “Harry’s first marriage had broken up. He’d waited a long time to end it. They’d been college sweethearts and he’d never been happy. That’s what he told me.” She laughed faintly.
“Perhaps it was true.”
“Maybe. I was kind of a mess then-nothing was working out. I was in my early thirties, no kids, no relationship, a job I hated. A friend invited me to a party in the Hamptons, and I ended up chatting to this twelve-year-old boy in a back room. It was Harry’s son, Charlie. He’s at Harvard now. Harry was a guilty father, grateful that I’d entertained his son. He latched on to me. He’d been married for so long, he had no idea how to talk to women.”
“You liked him, though?”
“I did. I was seeing this guy in his twenties and Harry was such an adult compared to him. On our second date, Harry said he wanted to marry me. I was living in this tiny apartment on the Upper West Side. He came over once and refused to come back. He booked a suite at the Pierre and moved me there instead.” She laughed at the extravagance. “My boyfriend was young and he was like, ‘I want to be an artist, but I’m not sure. I love you, but I’m not sure.’ Harry never had second thoughts. He liked seeing you the other day, by the way,” she said.
I’ll bet he did, I thought, but I tried not to let my resentment show. “He seemed to be bearing up well.”
The fragile look came back to her face and she turned away from me to examine a steel sculpture on a side table. She brushed a tear away with one finger.
“He’s happier with something to work on-his defense, I mean. That’s what I wanted to talk about. We’ve talked to the lawyers and they think he has a strong defense. He wasn’t thinking clearly, that’s obvious to anyone. He was in a bad way, and seeing Marcus was too much. Poor Marcus.”
Poor Nora, poor Harry, poor Marcus. What about poor Ben? I thought. I liked Nora and felt for her, but I suspected that she wouldn’t be any more use to me than Harry or Duncan when it came to it. Her first loyalty was to her husband, and I was Harry’s alibi for killing Greene, his best hope of evading life in jail. I’d let him out of the hospital, and as Pagonis had observed, it had been very convenient. If it came to a choice between Harry and me, I knew she wouldn’t hesitate. Love would triumph over sympathy.
“I spoke to the detectives. They told me Mr. Shapiro left without you knowing. How did he manage that?”
It was a blunt question, and I meant it that way. I wanted to shock her into acknowledging her failure to heed my warnings. It had the intended effect, for she paled.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Cowper. You told me to keep an eye on him. I know you did. I was in the kitchen and Harry was taking a nap. I heard the phone and him answering, then nothing. When I went to check on him twenty minutes later, he’d gone.”
“So Ms.…” I hesitated, not wanting to sound intimate but realizing as I started on the sentence that I didn’t know her second name. “Anna. She didn’t see him leave?”
“She was with a friend in East Hampton. I wish she’d been here-things would have been different. Anna wouldn’t have let it happen, I know she wouldn’t.” She looked at me sadly, but I wasn’t ready to let her off that easily.
“You called Mr. Lustgarten?”
“He came over, but we couldn’t find Harry. The men downstairs said the car was gone from the garage. They’ve got a way of knowing. It was evening before he called. It was terrible. I still don’t understand where Harry got that gun from. You told me to lock up the Beretta and I did that. It’s still in my safe in East Hampton. He got hold of another somehow, I don’t know who from.”
Who from, I noticed she’d said. Not where from. I w
ondered if she was telling the whole truth or if she had more of an idea than she’d admitted. Sometimes in therapy, a single word is a clue to what the patient is hiding.
Nora looked at me penitently. “Dr. Cowper. Ben. I want you to know how sorry I am that I didn’t take your advice in the hospital. I’ve thought about that a lot since then, and I’ll always regret it. If I can do anything to make it up to you, I will.”
They were only words, but after the aggression and blame that I’d faced over the previous few days, they meant something to me. She sounded genuinely mortified by her blunder.
“There is one thing,” I said, not wanting to miss the opportunity. “You know Sarah Duncan, don’t you? She told me you’re friends.”
She looked anxious. “She scares me, to tell you the truth. I tried to leave the board once, but she wouldn’t let me. I guess she saw Harry’s money leaving, too. She took me out to lunch and forced me to stay.”
I smiled at that-I could imagine the scene in some Upper East Side restaurant and how implacable Duncan must have been.
“It’s very important for me that the hospital supports me. If there’s anything you can do to persuade her, I’d be grateful,” I said.
Nora’s face lightened as I said it, as if she welcomed the chance to expiate her guilt. “Of course. She has to do that. It’s only right.”
She walked me out of the apartment to the elevator, and on the way, I glanced into their kitchen in the hope of spotting Anna again. The room was empty. She was somewhere else, deep inside.
Harry sat at a green baize-covered table, his face rigid, his right hand clamped stiffly over his left. In front of him, a scrum of photographers-some standing, others crouching, and two leaning forward so that the tips of their lenses were a couple of feet from his nose-was clicking away, sounding like a swarm of cicadas. Harry looked as if he were only just restraining himself from punching one of them.