John Gapper - A Fatal Debt

“You enter these numbers in the model and guess what comes out?” Gabriel asked.

“I don’t have to,” I said, knowing already what Lauren had found.

“Negative $21 billion. Marcus already knew.”

We gathered at Green-Wood Cemetery, a grand affair spread out on a hillside in a scrappy neighborhood of Brooklyn, with a view over the docks, the harbor, and the Statue of Liberty glowing copper green in the distance. It was a wet spring day, but the clouds parted as I got there and the sun emerged on the blossom trees and mausoleums on the slopes. Felix couldn’t have asked for more , I thought. Maybe he’d chosen it: I wouldn’t have been surprised.

I walked up the hill to the cemetery through a stone arch on which was a bas-relief of Jesus being laid to rest following the Crucifixion. Unlike Christ, or even Harry, Felix wasn’t coming back. He had drowned off Southampton and washed up on the long, broad beach among the seashells. He’d left a note for his wife and children, I’d been told, which was brief, remorseful, and blessedly vague.

To my left was a field with low gravestones set into it and a multitude of tiny Stars and Stripes fluttering in the breeze. A pair of Canada geese was waddling defiantly past, and when I bent down to scan a couple of stones, they turned out to be the graves of Civil War veterans. In death, Felix had transcended obscurity and was being sent to the afterlife accompanied by high technology and higher security. I passed a dozen or so huge trucks with satellite dishes on their roofs and burly technicians watching over a cardiovascular array of cords.

A couple of reporters leaned by them, take-out coffees in hand. One of them was my friend Bruce Bradley, who’d led me astray on Fox News about Harry. He was wearing either the same blazer or another like it and was laughing overheartily at his producer’s joke. Higher up the slope, near the arch, were five or six black Lincoln Navigators and Chevy Suburbans with another group of burly men clustered by them, these in suits rather than casual gear. They had translucent wires stuck into their ears, carrying Secret Service radio chatter. Someone important had turned up for Felix. Finally, there were three Suffolk County sheriff’s cars filled with uniformed officers trying not to be overawed by the Feds.

All in all, it was quite a show. Felix would have liked it, or found it entertaining. My feelings were still raw, but I’d found that despite everything he’d done, I’d come to miss him. Although he’d betrayed Harry, he’d been the nearest I’d found to a kindred spirit, at least until our last meeting. I didn’t count Anna-she came under miscellaneous.

A familiar vehicle was parked under a tree beyond the arch, which marked the border between the gawkers and the mourners-Nora’s stone gray Range Rover. I felt odd seeing it, and I peered into a window as I walked past to check if she or Anna was inside. It was empty, but I saw Nora as I looked up again. She was standing on a hill thirty yards away by a pink blossom tree, dressed in black with a small cap fixed to her hair. I watched her turn away from the scene to walk farther into the cemetery.

I’d entered a minefield of encounters by being there, but I hadn’t felt able to avoid it. I hadn’t done much for Felix, so I could at least attend his send-off. Walking after Nora, I came over the brow and looked into a bowl-shaped arena with a chapel at the bottom like a bonsai version of Christ Church in Oxford, in the same limestone with ornate carvings leading up to its dome. It was overlooked by rows of mausoleums and graves set along pathways.

As I got there, I saw an encounter unfold below me. Two vehicles were parked near the steps by the chapel. One was a heavy black limousine from which Tom Henderson had emerged and was shaking hands with two men I didn’t recognize. The other was a Suffolk County sheriff’s truck holding Harry. As Harry emerged, wearing a dark suit and handcuffs, they gazed at each other, but I couldn’t see their expressions from a hundred yards away. A Secret Service man stepped in front of Henderson, as if to protect him from a felon, and he sprang up the steps while Harry was held behind. Finally, Harry was allowed to proceed and he walked slowly through the wooden doors of the chapel.

By the time I arrived, most people were in place on the seven rows of benches in front of the altar, under a brass ring of blazing electric lights. It suited me, for it allowed me to slip into a backseat and scan the mourners. Nora was in the same row as Harry but a few seats down from him, as if jail protocol had to be observed, and Henderson was on the far side. Gabriel was on the same bench and gave me a nod. There was no organ, so we sat there in silence until the doors opened and a minister in white robes led a procession into the chapel: first the coffin and behind it Felix’s wife, black-haired with an ashen gray face, and their two children. The little boy had Felix’s molelike nose.

When the priest spoke, I realized he was reading from the Book of Common Prayer, as if we’d been taken back to an English church. It’s Episcopal , I thought-my brand. It was the first time I’d seen the religion in action, rather than treating patients in its name.

“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,” he intoned. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

I looked across at a stained-glass window that was backlit by the sun and attempted to ignore the sound of Felix’s wife weeping. It wasn’t easy; she had a low-pitched, agonized gulp that sounded as if she were dying herself, the body’s last effort to fill the lungs. I wanted to place my hands over my ears to block the sounds of pain, but it was impermissible. The first psalm was a relief-it was a cue for her to blow her nose and for the rest of us to cough and shuffle before the reading started. It was De Profundis, and I listened unthinkingly.

I look for the Lord; my soul doth wait for him;

in his word is my trust .

My soul fleeth unto the Lord before the morning watch

I say, before the morning watch .

We spilled out into the sunshine at the end of the service, and I drifted to one side so as not to intrude. The coffin was put back in the hearse and the priest led the mourners up a path to a lawn with a view over warehouses and docks. By the grave, I caught a glimpse of the little girl whose toys I must have seen in their apartment, holding her mother’s hand while the minister read the committal.

The priest hesitated fractionally on the last lines of the committal: “Suffer us not, at our last hour, through any pains of death, to fall from thee.” The widow started to weep again; the sound of her gulps mingled with those of clods of earth falling on the coffin.

I had gotten about fifty yards back down the path toward the arch, my duty to Felix done, when I heard footsteps behind and two Secret Service agents fell in beside me, making me jump with alarm.

“Dr. Cowper?” The agent who spoke had a shaved head and wore aviator sunglasses, making it impossible to see any impression of humanity in his eyes. “Secretary Henderson would like to speak with you.”

The pair led me back toward Felix’s grave, where a clump of mourners was still gathered, including Harry, who was talking to the priest and seemed to be making the most of his day out from jail. Halfway there, they deviated toward a concrete-and-glass building surrounded by water. The aviator led me across a bridge, while his companion hung back.

At first, I didn’t know what the building was. It was like a library, with rows of floor-to-ceiling stacks lining a corridor and chairs in the empty spaces. But instead of shelves, the stacks held rows of boxlike cubicles, each with a glass door. Then I realized-it was a columbarium. There were urns in each cubicle, with the remains of a dead person in each one. Some were brass and others were jade. Most of the names were Chinese or Asian, and I saw small portrait photographs propped by some of them, with artificial flowers on the other side.