*
It took three days before Einhorn could execute the escape. The professional driver, who had seen his share of intrigue and who had spent the three days a town over, syphoned the gas from the Renault, so it was a great consternation and uproar as a towering Philippe appeared in his nightshirt, like a mythic Cyclops, raging against the night.
They flew home Business Class. They stayed at a suite at The Plaza, looking out on Central Park. The next afternoon, Rachel emerged from a clinic on New York’s Upper West Side. She was pale and disoriented, but on the other side of a great mistake. She held her father’s arm. He hailed a cab, and they were gone toward the bustle of mid-town, while the Rotheneuf legacy, what was left of it, the bits and pieces, the flesh and blood, made its way along East 91st Street, toward the funneling sewers along the East Side River, rounding the Statue of Liberty before being carried out to sea.
Rachel was a better mother for it, years later, when her mind was more determined. She married a doctor with the conscious understanding of what she was doing. Einhorn took her hand and gave her away in an extravagant affair that he paid for because this was how a daughter in some circles was still passed on, in the last shouldering of expense before she became the property and charge of some other man. She would never work a day in her life. It was a great accomplishment, not to have to want for anything of a material nature.
A check Einhorn had left for Philippe was eventually returned, along with the box of woolens Rachel had left behind, in what was the thoughtful evacuation of an American dream and an American girl. Philippe wrote a note in broken English that was heartbreaking. Einhorn read it and tore it up. Some things could never be explained, not by the deceiver, and not by the deceived.
*
They found him — that is, Saul’s men found him — in the closet. It took a matter of an hour, a search methodically conducted room by room. He could hear their voices getting closer. He wet himself and felt a great shame in doing so.
15
IN A SMALL interrogation room, Mr Ahmet, Walter’s former legal counsel, stood in a threadbare suit with a missing button.
Mr Ahmet directed a guard to set a box on the metal table. As the guard did so, Mr Ahmet kept his hands midline with his body, assuming the grim prosecutorial aesthetic of a minor bureaucrat within a Kafka novel. In the folds of softer flesh around his eyes, an inky darkness showed the color of tea leaves. He was of some indeterminate immigrant stock, the Middle or Far Eastern, anywhere from Turkey to Uzbekistan. His receding hairline revealed a high, shiny forehead the color of walnut.
When the box was put down, Mr Ahmet thanked the guard. The door opened and closed again. When Mr Ahmet sat, he drew close to the table and introduced himself. He had been legal counsel to the officers accused in the alleged murder of two drug dealers. He had known Walter Price very, very well, right from the beginning of the case and on through the years.
It turned out that it had been Mr Ahmet’s longest and most complex case, a watershed case when the city was beginning to change in its view of how policing was conducted. He explained it, how he had been hired because of civil rights advances and affirmative action. He was of that generation just past the great sweep of change and all those who came before. It was what interested him in the law, how righteousness could eventually prevail.
He was given to a moment of self-reflection and, shaking his head, said how the years had passed, and so quickly.
Mr Ahmet continued talking. He had made a great many friends in defending those who needed defending on the force. It had been his honor, advising and helping with the case. He stated it like he was giving a sworn testament on the record. He was, in some respects, the most unlikely of allies, his swarthy figure, his diminutive presence suggesting the tokenism of the era, but he took men as they came.
The system, yes, it was corrupt, or had been, rife with a demoralizing cronyism. He understood it. This was not akin to conceding one’s lack of awareness of all that went on around him, but they were the times, and a man had a right to survive as best he might and to make compromises. He was, he declared, without prejudice. He understood the ways of the world. It was important to understand a man’s motivations in all matters and proceed from there. He talked like legal counsel.
His long index finger touched the desk as he enumerated points along a history of his career and his own principles. He was a communicator, but, equally, a listener. His voice held a directness that suggested English was not his first language, not for the paucity of what was expressed, but in how he expressed himself. He came upon words, chose them. He was forthright and direct and spoke in complete sentences. It was a soothing sort of voice that could lull children to sleep.
Mr Ahmet stopped abruptly. He rattled a wet cough, dislodged something, which he turned in his mouth and then swallowed. His eyes were glossed. It took a moment. His breath was a pant. It was obvious he was sick. He recovered and, apologizing, raised his hand, then searched his inside pocket. He retrieved a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, put them on, the wire around the left ear and then the right, his eyes so magnified that he looked like an insect.
He seemed intent on sifting through the box, though he said, without looking up, ‘I must tell you, I just learned this morning that the Daniel Einhorn you contacted with your letter, he is missing.’
Mr Ahmet stopped a moment, his hand on a file in the box. ‘Mr Einhorn’s lawyer, he called 911. The situation, I believe, was quite desperate. Federal prosecutors were ready to indict Mr Einhorn for a Ponzi scheme running into tens of millions. Regrettably, these are the times we live in. There are many like him, these swindlers, but of course, so many more victims. The police are not long arrived from what I gather, but Mr Einhorn is gone. The police interviewed Mrs Einhorn. She was at the house but she alleges that she heard nothing.’
Mr Ahmet shifted and leaned back from the box and, in so doing, removed his glasses with a slow deliberateness as he looked directly at Norman. ‘Can you imagine, Mr Price, living in a house so big your own wife does not know where you are? My wife, she would love a house as big as this Daniel Einhorn’s. But everything comes at a cost, I tell her, and yet she would have it anyway if she had the chance.’
Mr Ahmet held Norman’s stare. ‘I am almost certain this Mr Einhorn has come to great harm. There is a story there somewhere. Maybe you can write it?’
Norman said curtly, ‘I don’t write crime stories.’ Then he qualified his remark. ‘I don’t deal in bodies… in a body count.’
He might have stopped there, but there was something grandiose and blusterous about him, and despite the situation, despite knowing why Mr Ahmet was actually there, he added, ‘As a writer, I am in search of a suspicion of happiness.’
The remark seemed to delight Mr Ahmet, who smiled and said, ‘Ah, yes, I am aware of your talents.’
Mr Ahmed’s myopic eyes were still fixed on Norman. His eyebrows moved of their own accord. ‘If I may suggest it, Mr Price, you should meet my sister-in-law at some point. She is the one in the family with the brains, and she will make a thing complicated when it need not be. She is a Mr Woody Allen fan. She likes the sort of movie you describe, where there’s “a suspicion of happiness…” She likes unease. She has been through two husbands and many more lovers. She is a scandalous, beautiful and very independent woman. It seems little satisfies her, but I have said to her that I believe bad conscience is always tied to bad acts. As proof, I said to her, what this Mr Woody was alleged to have done, sleeping with his daughter, or the adopted daughter of his wife, whatever, something quite despicable. I said to her what I sensed about Mr Woody, this man with the twitching face of a watchmaker’s son, that if you can make your pathology and insights into something others want to pay to see, that’s a definition of a kind of art. There are many ways to proceed in life.’