Although Gurney could not have articulated it at the age of six or seven when they took those three-mile Saturday walks from their Bronx apartment out over the City Island Bridge, the problem was that he didn’t feel that his father was anything. His father, even on those walks together, was an enigma—a quiet, secretive man with no overt interests—a man who never spoke of the past or revealed any interest in the future.
Parking in the narrow, shaded side street in front of Malcolm Claret’s weathered clapboard house, Gurney felt the way he always felt when he’d been thinking about his father—empty and alone. He tried to shake the feeling as he approached the front door.
He naturally expected Claret to look older, perhaps a bit grayer or balder, than the image, nearly two decades out of date, that he carried in his memory. But he wasn’t prepared for the shrunken physique of the man who greeted him in the unfurnished foyer. Only the eyes at first seemed the same—soft blue eyes with an even, unblinking gaze. And the gentle smile—that was the same too. In fact, if anything, those two defining elements of Claret’s wise and peaceful presence seemed to have become more pronounced, more concentrated, with the passing of time.
“Come in, David.” The frail man gestured toward the same office Gurney had visited years earlier—a space that gave the impression of having once been, along with the foyer, an enclosed sun porch.
Gurney went in and looked around, struck by the instant familiarity of the little room. Claret’s brown leather chair, showing fewer signs of aging than the man himself, was in the same position Gurney remembered, facing two other small armchairs, both of which appeared to have been reupholstered in the intervening years. A short-legged table sat at the center of the rough triangle formed by the chairs.
They took the same seats they’d occupied for their conversations following Danny’s death, Claret easing himself down with evident difficulty.
“Let’s get to the point,” he said in his direct but soft voice, bypassing any preamble or small talk. “I’ll tell you what Madeleine told me. Then you can tell me whether you think it’s true. Is that all right with you?”
“Sure.”
“She told me that on three occasions in the past two years you walked into situations where you could easily have been killed. You did this knowingly. In all three, you ended up with a gun pointed at you. In one, you were shot multiple times and put in a coma. She thinks you’ve probably taken these extraordinary risks many times before, without telling her. She knows that police work is dangerous, but she thinks that for reasons of your own you welcome that danger.” He paused, perhaps to observe Gurney’s reaction, perhaps to await some response.
Gurney stared down at the low table between them, noting numerous scuff marks, which suggested clients often used it as a hassock. “Anything else?”
“She didn’t say it, but she sounded confused and terrified.”
“Terrified?”
“She thinks you want to be killed.”
Gurney shook his head. “In each situation she’s talking about, I’ve done everything possible to stay alive. I am alive. Isn’t that prima facie evidence of a desire to survive?”
Claret’s blue eyes seemed to be looking through him.
Gurney went on. “In every dangerous situation, I make every effort—”
Claret interrupted, almost in a whisper, “Once you’re in it.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Once you’re in the situation, once you’re fully exposed to the danger, then you try to stay alive.”
“What are you saying?”
Claret said nothing for a long while. His tone when he finally spoke was mild and even. “Do you still feel responsible for Danny’s death?”
“What? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Guilt has tremendous power.”
“But I’m not … I’m not guilty of his death. Danny stepped into the street. He was following a goddamn pigeon, and he followed it off the curb into the street. He was killed by a hit-and-run driver, a drunk in a red sports car. A drunk who just came out of a bar. I’m not guilty of his death.”
“Not of his death. But of something. Can you say what it is?”
Gurney took a deep breath, staring at the scuff marks on the table. He closed his eyes, then opened them and forced himself to look at Claret. “I should have been paying more attention. With a four-year-old … I should have paid more attention. I didn’t notice where he was walking. When I looked …” His voice trailed off, and his gaze descended again to the tabletop.
After a while, he looked up. “Madeleine insisted I see you, so I’m here. But I don’t really understand why.”
“Do you know what guilt is?”
Something in Gurney’s psychological makeup welcomed the question, or at least welcomed the opportunity to escape into abstraction. “Guilt as a fact would be personal responsibility for wrongdoing. Guilt as a feeling would be the uncomfortable sense of having done something you shouldn’t have done.”
“That uncomfortable sense—what exactly do you think that is?”
“A troubled conscience.”
“That’s a term for it, but it doesn’t explain what it really is.”
“All right, Malcolm, you tell me.”
“Guilt is a painful hunger for harmony—a need to compensate for one’s violation, to restore balance, consistency.”
“What consistency?”
“Between beliefs and behavior. When my actions are inconsistent with my values, I create a gap, a source of tension. Consciously or unconsciously, we seek to close the gap. We seek the peace of mind that closing the gap—making up for the violation—will provide.”
Gurney shifted in his chair, feeling a surge of impatience. “Look, Malcolm, if your point is that I’m trying to get myself killed to make up for the death of my son, then why haven’t I let it happen? It’s pretty damn easy for a cop to get himself killed. But, like I said before, here I am. Very much alive. How could someone with a serious death wish manage to be in such good health? I mean, that’s just plain nonsense!”
“I agree.”
“You agree?”
“You didn’t kill Danny. So getting yourself killed wouldn’t be a rational goal.” A subtle, almost playful smile appeared. “And you’re a very rational man, aren’t you, David?”
“You’re losing me.”
“You told me that your offense was lack of attention, that you let him wander into the street, where he was hit by a passing car. Listen to what I am about to say, and tell me if it describes the situation accurately.” Claret paused before going on in a slow, deliberate way. “With no one protecting him, Danny was at the mercy of a blind, uncaring universe. Fate flipped the coin, a drunk driver appeared, and Danny lost.”
Gurney heard the words the man was speaking, sensed the truth in them, yet felt nothing. It was like a beam of light passing through shatterproof glass.
The rest of what Claret said flowed with a similar directness. “The way you see it, your distraction—your focus on your own thoughts—put your son at the mercy of the moment, at the mercy of fate. That, you believe, was your offense. And every once in a while, a situation arises in which you see an opportunity to place yourself in the same peril in which you placed him. You feel that it’s only fair that you should do so—only fair that you should expose yourself to the same flip of the coin—only fair that you should treat yourself as uncaringly as you treated him. This is your way of pursuing balance, justice, peace of mind. This is your search for harmony.”