Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

“You know me too well,” he said with a laugh.

The summer before Roger went off to Harvard, we were hanging out in the body shop of Norman Lang Motors, the used-car dealership owned by a buddy of mine.

Timmy Lang was watching a guy spray-paint an orange-and-yellow flaming pony on the side of a red Mustang. The paint fumes smelled bad, and we’d always thought that Timmy, not the brightest bulb, had probably breathed too much of them over the years, so Roger and I were standing as far away as we could get. I was going on about how unfair it was, what they’d done to Dad. The way he’d had to go on the lam, become a fugitive somewhere in Switzerland, and all because he’d made some powerful enemies. He was innocent: He’d told us so himself.

Roger cut me off. “Look, Red Man,” he said, “you really shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“All I’m saying, Nick, is that sometimes things are… complicated, that’s all.”

“What are you saying?”

“Figure it out,” he said.

Then I did something I’d never done before: I slugged Roger in the stomach. He doubled over, came back up a minute later, red-faced. But he wasn’t angry. He smiled. “You’re the last true believer, aren’t you, Nick?” he said. “You’ll learn.”

If a cynic is just a bruised idealist, then Roger wasn’t really a cynic. He was no idealist. He was just more clear-eyed than me.

See, I’d taken Dad at his word.

“ALL PHONE calls here are monitored and recorded,” I said to my father. “So if you want to talk about something sensitive, it’s got to be in person. What did Roger want to talk about?”

He raised his chin slowly, pursed his lips a few times. “Yes, why in the world would he waste his time coming all the way out here to talk to an old fart like me?”

“Dad,” I said, refusing to give in to his rancor, “this is important. It’s for Roger’s sake.”

But he didn’t want to be deterred from his tirade. His voice rose steadily. I could smell the goatish fug of his body odor.

“There was a time when you worshipped your brother. You thought he peed Perrier. You thought he hung the moon. But I understand why you despise him now. You can’t stand the fact that he stood by me all these years while you did the easy thing and succumbed to all the peer pressure and turned against me.”

“Are you finished?” I said patiently. The mother with two little kids had stopped arguing with her boyfriend or husband. Her kids had gotten tired of exploring the featureless room and were sitting on the floor with markers and coloring books.

“Do you know that I still get producers from Fox News and CNN and even 60 Minutes calling the prison and writing me, wanting to interview me? MSNBC wants to feature me on some show called Lock-up. And do you know why I refuse? Because of you. And your mother. And Roger. And my grandson. Because I don’t want to stir things up. I don’t want to embarrass you. I want people to forget. I know what they want. They want a nice juicy video segment, a tight close-up of the billionaire in his prison uniform, brought low, humiliated and filled with regret and expressing remorse for his terrible crimes. They want a morality play. So their viewers can feel a little better about their lives of quiet desperation.”

“Dad–”

“Do you know – do you know – that I’m locked up in the same cell-block as murderers and rapists? I’m in here for thirty years , Nicholas. There are child molesters who will be out long before me.”

“You can be released early for good behavior,” I said.

He smiled bitterly. “If I’m very very good, they’ll put me on a prison bus and let me pick up garbage on the side of the road. Are you aware that there’s a man in here who murdered his own father? Beat him with a baseball bat, then gutted him with a fish knife and put the body in the woods, and this lovely fellow was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree, and he’s serving five years. Five years . While I’m in here for three decades. And do you know why?” A gob of spittle had formed at the corner of his mouth.

I nodded. “Securities fraud and grand larceny.”

He waggled a finger. “Wrong. I’m here because of ambition.”

“I suppose that’s one way of putting it.”

“Oh, not my own ambition. Believe me. I’m here because some very greedy and grasping young turks in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan wanted a scalp. They wanted to advance their grubby little careers. They wanted to land a plum job at some white-shoe law firm. Or run for mayor. Or governor. It’s all about ambition, Nicholas. Theirs versus mine. I was merely a stepping-stone on their path to greater glory. There’s no more Mafia, so now they go after the rich guys. ‘White-collar crime,’ they call it. Isn’t that what you do for a living now? Some sort of gumshoe? A private dick? You don’t think that’s beneath you, Nicholas? A little déclassé?”

I let my eyes roam the visiting room slowly, pointedly. “It’s hard to measure up to your accomplishments,” I said. “You set the bar awfully high.” I smiled. “Also, Stoddard Associates wasn’t too déclassé when you wanted them to save your ass.”

“When you need a plumber, you call a plumber. Doesn’t mean you become one.”

I shrugged.

“And yet you dare to pass judgment on me,” he said.

“Not at all. I don’t need to pass judgment on you. I already know what I think of you.”

He gave me his raptor’s smile.

“Anyway, I wasn’t asking about you,” I said. “Fascinating as you are. I need to know what Roger came here to talk about.”

He licked his lips very precisely, with just the tip of his tongue. “Your brother and I spoke in confidence. I won’t betray that confidence. You can ask him yourself.”

“I wish I could. But he’s gone. And I’m thinking it had something to do with whatever you two talked about.”

“That’s between father and son.” He said it with a cruel twist, as if he and I had a different, less privileged relationship.

“Okay,” I said. I pushed back the chair and got up. The guard looked up from his small wooden table at the door. “Nice to see you, Dad. A pleasure as always.”

“Sit down,” he said. “Don’t be silly. Your brother can tell you whatever he chooses to tell you.”

“Not likely. He and Lauren were attacked in Georgetown a couple of days ago, and when she woke up in the hospital–”

“Hospital? Is Lauren all right?”

I nodded, backed away from the counter a few steps.

My father stared at me levelly. Blinked a few times. “And Roger?”

“No one’s been able to find him since then. No one’s heard anything from him.”

A look of panic darted across his eyes, and he suddenly gave a loud, guttural cry. “No! Dear God, no ! God damn it, I told him not to do it.”

My father ran a hand over his forehead, his eyes, flecking off some snowflakes of dead skin. “What does this mean, no one’s been able to find him? They haven’t found a–?”

“No body, Dad. Maybe he’s alive. Maybe he’s just fine. Then again…” I returned to the plastic chair and sat down. “So tell me what you and Roger talked about.”

He cradled his scaly forehead in his hands. His large blunt fingers massaged the skin deeply, and I had to look away. Psoriasis often flares up at times of severe emotional stress. I imagined that being in prison might be stressful. Funny how the condition made him more repellent, more reptilian, rather than more sympathetic or vulnerable.