Michael Collins - The Death of All Things Seen

Mr Ahmed crossed his heart. ‘By the time I got to high school, I was ambitious. I wanted to be a lawyer. My parents said, “Ahmet the lawyer, ridiculous!” They had their religion, their community. They kept to the old ways. They were Christians, a minority among minorities. They had endured Stalin and the purges. The Child of Prague visited our Chicago church for a week of devotionals when I was young not long after we were arrived in Chicago. I remember it still, the bitter cold, and yet we went for the absolution of our sins and prayed to a doll in an ermine coat. Such extravagance! The doll set in a gold tabernacle. Oh, to see it, Mr Price, this doll ferried cross-country in what I learned later was a school bus more commonly used to transport those with mental retardation.

‘My point, I am getting to it. I was ashamed of my heritage, Mr Price. Everybody wanted to touch the doll. This is how they gained access to heaven, and I thought, years later, when I was better educated, how I was all the more satisfied with Karl Marx’s explanation of the world. Alas, I became a high priest of a civil law. This is what my education did. It liberated me, but it also robbed me of a greater salvation, perhaps, but I am happy, Mr Price, in my own way. This is what counts, what the heart feels, is it not?’

Norman said, as though he was essential to the continuation of the story, in the way a listener is, ‘So you became a lawyer?’

Mr Ahmet nodded. ‘Yes… thank you for kindly listening. Yes, I became a lawyer, first a night court clerk and then, much, much later, Law School, at the prompting of a woman who supported me. I was in love, but there was a catch. The woman was divorced with two boys, a second-generation Romanian with hair black as coal, a stenographer at the county courthouse. She kept her hands in gloves like a pianist. “The Gypsy”, my parents called her when they saw her. The sacrifices they had made for me. I hid my education. I went on supporting my parents after my marriage. At forty-four, I was the oldest graduate. I was a laughing stock. I was the one laughing the loudest, Mr Price, I can tell you. I have no use for irony or any of the mechanisms of self-deception. I know what I was, and what I became.

‘My parents, they said again as they always did, “Ahmet the lawyer, ridiculous!” I was in a cap and gown and in a great amount of debt. All my parents wanted to know was what money I might have made if I had just worked and not studied and not married the gypsy. They were, of course, right, but money is not everything. Dignity and satisfaction count in ways that cannot be measured. They could not appreciate it. You stop learning, or your understanding of the world ends at a certain point. I was their son, and not their son. I became a married man, a husband, a father, and then a lawyer. My father, regrettably, he remained all his life a goat herder, or, more tragically, an ex-goat herder, and my mother, the wife of an ex-goat herder. It takes a generation perhaps. I believe this. They had found the courage to leave, but the language was a great obstacle. In the end, I broke free and had my own life. It is the same already with my sons, and now my grandsons. It begins with the music they listen to. That is how you know when life has passed you by.’

In this appraisal, there was a connected sense of why Mr Ahmet was here, that it connected to a view of parents, or it was the best Norman could assess. He simply waited.

*

It wasn’t established why so much information had been gathered in the box related to Walter’s suicide and his killing of his wife. There could be no case, and yet it was evident a great deal of time had been given to establishing a timeline related to Walter’s last day alive. The writing was all the same hand, a looping cursive. Norman understood in viewing it that this had been Mr Ahmet’s work alone.

Mr Ahmet set the glasses around his eyes again. He was more direct. He began with a review of Helen’s movements on the day of the accident, captured in still photographs by a series of street cameras. Both Helen and Walter’s cars were circled.

Mr Ahmet pointed. In a photograph, Helen’s car was in the turn lane. Then, she pulled out again. ‘You see, how she changed her mind.’

Helen, at that point, was ten minutes from her appointment. She had been charged for the no-show at the appointment. ‘Office policy,’ Mr Ahmet said, without looking up.

There was testimony, too, regarding what happened much later at the hospital. Mr Ahmet sifted through folders in the box. He produced a piece of paper. A nurse had spoken with Walter minutes before he went into Helen’s room. She described him as in deep shock. A security camera shot caught Walter buying coffee from a vending machine. Nothing indicated what would happen minutes later.

Mr Ahmet set the shot back with other photographs. He took out another folder. After the original trial and acquittal, the District Attorney’s office had continued following Walter and the others. There had been talk of money being spent extravagantly. Corruption was endemic. It was the order of business, how the city was organized. Extortion rackets were generally accepted.

Mr Ahmet leaned forward again. He said pointedly, ‘Nothing was linked directly to Walter, but it emerged that Helen had purchased a fur coat for over two thousand dollars. She had paid in cash.’

Mr Ahmet thumbed through the invoices. ‘The coat triggered a deeper inquiry, challenging the veracity of sworn testimony and alibis as provided by Walter and the other officers in the original case. The families of the two victims got the support of a bombastic community activist preacher who challenged the impartiality of the judiciary. A young district attorney with rising ambitions entered the picture. Suspicions were aroused about Walter. This was the underbelly of how the system worked. It was known and accepted, and then, of course, it wasn’t. Times change, Mr Price.’

Mr Ahmet stopped for a moment in the quiet assessment of the statement.

He began again. He had interviewed Helen at the time. She had refused to explain how she had come to spend more than $28,000 over a number of years at a variety of upscale stores. Much of the evidence gathered was from sales clerks who were familiar with Helen. She had a reputation for being disdainful and for always paying with cash.

Helen had despised Mr Ahmet. She had called Mr Ahmet an ant.

In her non-cooperation, Mr Ahmet conceded, ‘It was, of course, the most indelicate of situations. I approached Walter with what I felt was at issue. There was a witness at the company where Helen worked who suggested improprieties and favors gained between certain parties. There was allegedly an affair going on between your mother and her boss, Mr Feldman. Walter ended up shouting at me. It could not be discussed. It was difficult terrain to navigate. It was so very complicated, Mr Price. Your father was a friend of mine.’

Mr Ahmet shook his head at the memory of it. ‘I will tell you, I sided with your father always, because there was, in fact, systematic extortion going on in the South Side, and I thought, “Let it be uncovered in another way and not mixed up sorting the wheat from the chaff of Walter Price’s personal life.” What I can tell you, in looking back on it, your parents, they were preoccupied with a crisis in their own lives, and quite beyond the reach of reason. Regrettably, when two drowning people are locked in a struggle, inevitably, they will take each other under. Both will die.’

Mr Ahmet was quiet a moment. He then came back to certain points like a lawyer at the end of a long trial. He laid out a sequence of shots taken from camera footage along Lake Shore, essential to establishing a better understanding of Helen’s emotional state. Walter’s unmarked car was seen with its lights flashing. Helen was just a car ahead of him.