John Gapper - A Fatal Debt

“Hey, Joe,” I said lightly. “I thought you’d fired me.”

“Hell, no. I’m still here. I just thought you’d want a lawyer who could do a better job for you, that’s all. I spoke to your father. He told me you guys had talked and I didn’t want to get in the way. Have you seen the news?”

“What news?” I said.

I think I knew immediately. I’d stepped irretrievably beyond the psych’s frame and I’d feared what could result, although I’d tried to block it out.

“Turn on the television. Try CNN.” His voice sounded strained and I hurried across the room to obey him.

It felt like being transported back to my gym that Sunday morning. There was no helicopter this time, but the anchors were babbling just as incoherently about a death, and the scene was similar as well-a street in a Long Island beach town where a reporter stood, her back to a cordon. There was a ticker at the bottom of the screen, this time with the headline SELIGMAN TRAGEDY. I sat down unthinkingly and found I was still holding the phone. My brain couldn’t make sense of it.

“What happened? What’s going on?”

“Have you heard of this guy? Felix Lustgarten,” he said, pronouncing the second half of the name with a soft t , like garden. “He worked with Shapiro, they say he was a friend. He just killed himself, walked into the sea off Southampton. They just fished him out. I got a call at dawn from Baer. He’s gone crazy.”

“Oh God,” I said weakly.

“Ben? … Are you there?”

I’d slumped forward with my head in one hand and the phone in my left, and I heard his voice only faintly. It felt as if someone had blown a dog whistle nearby, sending a high-pitched whine through my brain. I should have known it. I should have stopped him , I thought. He was close to suicide. Of course he was . I remembered how I’d walked out of his apartment in a fit of pique because of what he’d done, without stopping to help as my profession required. Why hadn’t I stayed to save him? He’d sat in front of me, drinking, confessing. How much louder could he have cried for help? Then I had another thought. Suicide? Last time, it was a murder. I went through this with Harry and he came back to life . I tried to believe that Felix would rise again, too.

“Ben!” It was the distant voice of Joe in the receiver, yelling so loudly that he finally broke through.

“I’m fine,” I said, struggling to pull myself around. “It’s a bit of a shock. I knew him. He was the one who came with me in the Gulfstream. I saw him a couple of days ago. He was a decent man.”

“Where did you see him?” Joe said, sounding tense. His estimation of me as a client had clearly tumbled farther, if that were possible.

“In his apartment on the Upper West Side. He asked me over for a drink.”

“Do you know why he did this? Did he tell you anything?”

As he asked the question, I saw from the corner of my eye the television screen turning another color, and I looked up to see them playing the tape of the hearing in Washington. Felix’s face had been circled in red to identify him as he sat behind Harry and Greene. That’s how he’ll be remembered , I thought-the man in the background. I recalled his defeated expression as he’d raised his glass to me. Faithful servants , he’d said.

I wondered if I should tell the truth, but I excused myself with the thought that it would defile Felix’s memory without doing me any good.

“Nothing important,” I lied. “He seemed okay.”

That might have been it but for Gabriel, who was waiting for me when I left my office for lunch three days later. He sat on the sofa by the elevators, under a notice board on which some guides to mood disorders were pinned. He drew my attention because he was lounging easily-not like an anxious patient or a parent who was waiting for a child in treatment-and because I vaguely recognized him. As I walked by, I saw him scan my badge and look at my face, appraising me with narrow eyes. Then he got to his feet.

“Dr. Cowper? My name is Gabriel Cardoso. We had a friend in common, I think. Felix Lustgarten.”

He spoke unhurriedly, in a rich voice with an accent I wasn’t sure about-it sounded Spanish. Gabriel, that’s it . I remembered him standing on the balcony of his TriBeCa apartment at his party on the night of Greene’s death. I’d been talking to Lucia before we’d left together, and she’d pointed him out. I recalled his air of detachment, as if he didn’t know most of the guests but enjoyed having them fill the place.

“I was saddened by his death,” he went on. “We were not close friends, I would say, but we were once colleagues. He was a man I liked.” He gave the impression that he didn’t say it lightly: he had standards.

“I’m sorry, too. I’d just gotten to know him. Shall we?”

I gestured at the sofa and took a seat-I didn’t know how long I would want to stay. Gabriel reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope with his name and, I assumed, address scrawled on the front. Inside were two sheets of paper, well thumbed, and a small metal block: a computer flash drive.

“I got this in the mail yesterday,” he said, frowning. “It’s a letter from Felix, and he’d enclosed this.” He held the drive between thumb and finger. “There are a bunch of documents on it. I looked at them last night and found them interesting. Disturbing, in fact. Felix asked me to show them to you. Just you, no one else.”

I looked at the drive, now nestling in Gabriel’s hand. Felix had given no indication of having this in mind, and I couldn’t understand why he had sent an emissary from beyond the grave.

“If he wanted me to see them, why did he send them to you?” I said.

“Ah, well … They require some explanation.”

It dawned on me then. When Felix had talked of Greene trying to hide the losses in the Elements, he’d said they were hard to grasp. He’d sent Gabriel to help me, I realized. I was touched by his posthumous gesture: he hadn’t just written me off after I’d walked out on him. Yet it worried me to be entrusted with this legacy.

“You’re a rocket scientist?” I said, remembering Felix’s words.

“I am indeed,” he said, beaming. “Do you have some time to talk? Maybe somewhere private. I will need a computer for this.”

I hesitated for a few seconds, but I didn’t really have a choice. I owed it to Felix in death, no matter what he’d done in life.

I could have wasted hours in Gabriel’s apartment just looking around. Maybe that’s how he spent his time, since he seemed to have plenty to spare. In the sunlight, with the view of Manhattan I’d seen from his balcony only at night, it was captivating. It was long and wide, with a dovetailing maze of rooms into which light spilled from high windows. A couple of rooms seemed devoted entirely to art, with blinds drawn to protect his collection of drawings. There was no sign that he shared it with anyone: it was just him in his monument to Wall Street wealth.

“You have an unusual name, Mr. Cardoso,” I said, making small talk as he slotted the flash drive into a computer in his study and tapped at the keyboard, manipulating a baffling array of numbers.

“It’s Portuguese,” he said, smiling. “I am originally from Brazil, you see. I came here to teach mathematics at NYU. Wall Street head-hunters kept calling me. Trading is all mathematics now, based on models. Traders don’t understand it properly, so they need people like me. Rocket scientists, like you said. Most traders don’t have a clue what they’re doing.”

He sounded pleasantly amused by the idea rather than outraged. I began to realize why he looked so bemused by his surroundings and his wealth. They had been handed to him through a twist of educational fate.