by Louis Begley
Jovan, who’s he? Scott asked.
I apologized, because I should have mentioned the messages right away. Here’s the deal, I said, and told him about my conversation with Jeanette.
Holy Christ! said Scott. I agree that Abner was probably behind the Torcello caper, and if that is true he is also behind this new entrant. That shows me an unpleasant level of activity. Yes, you should talk to Moses and Simon, but for Christ’s sake be careful when you wander about in the city. I’m not crazy about your giving this Jovan guy, if that’s his name, a chance to kill you. It’s true, there are patterns in crime, mostly repetitious, but you can’t be sure that history will repeat itself in your case. When Abner had your uncle killed, and tried to get you killed, he seemed to think it was important to have the murder look like a suicide or an accident. That will not necessarily be the game now. Jovan may have orders to kill you without fucking around. For instance, as I said about a killer in Venice, he may have been told to shoot you. Anywhere. In the street. As you leave the apartment house. Something really banal, without marine hand-to-hand combat.
I said, I read you, brother.
And I meant it. My brain knew he was right.
—
Moses Cohen had been a trusts and estates associate at Harry’s law firm, Jones & Whetstone, at the same time Kerry was making her mark there as a young litigator. They had also been classmates at Harvard Law School and had both been on the Law Review. After four or five years at the firm, Moses decided to strike out on his own, counting in part on J & W clients who might follow him because of the good job he’d been doing, or because his hourly rates would be less than half of what J & W charged, or a combination of both reasons, and also on business that should come to him through his and his family’s connections in the Orthodox Jewish community. Many of those businessmen, he told me, had started small but had become rich, rich enough to realize they needed the kind of estate plan, with a will and a variety of trusts, that they used to think was only for rich WASPs playing golf at clubs they would never be able to join. His calculations proved correct. The office he had in Midtown, on Park Avenue, was a very much smaller and more hip version of the J & W premises. I had taken an immediate liking to Moses, deciding to pay no attention to the suspicion that this strikingly handsome and well-organized lawyer might have been Kerry’s boyfriend as well as colleague.
I was in luck; he wasn’t in a meeting or out of the office when I called him at nine-thirty on Monday morning.
I thought you’d be coming back; in fact, I thought you might come back sooner, he said. I haven’t called you about Kerry because I’m still not over the shock, and I can imagine how you feel. Perhaps that was wrong, perhaps I should have called you right after it happened.
That’s all right, I told him. Your call wouldn’t have changed anything. But can I see you sometime today?
Sure thing, he said. I have a client meeting between ten and one. Otherwise I’m free. I’ll be working on documents and can see you anytime.
Three o’clock then, I replied. Thank you!
Simon Lathrop was the next stop. His secretary recognized my voice—pretty good going for someone who’d heard it perhaps half-a-dozen times—and offered to put me through before I’d asked for him. As I had hoped, he invited me to lunch that very day at the grand club to which Harry had also belonged. He also wanted to ask me to dinner at home, saying that his wife was eager to see me. I explained that I’d scheduled a trip to D.C. to see Scott and asked if we could fix a date after I returned.
That left a couple of hours for work. I finished the part where I described Kerry’s and my first night together. So much heartache, I thought, so unnecessary if only she could have been reasonable. And then her awful, unexpected, unimaginable death. I was sure I would have protected her if she had allowed me to stay at her side.
—
My poor boy, Simon said as we embraced. I’m happy to see you. Not a word about Kerry before we’ve sat down at table and ordered.
We climbed up the two flights of stairs to the dining room, and I had to congratulate Simon on the spryness of his gait.
Yes, yes, he answered, the new hip is holding up pretty well. I wish all my parts could be replaced. You know, the transmission, the shock absorbers, the brain. That day will come, but it will be too late for me.
He wrote out my lunch order: black-bean soup and cold poached salmon. Good choices, he announced. I’ll have exactly the same. And we’ll each have a glass of Riesling.
He handed the lunch and bar chits to the waiter and said to me, I’m afraid it’s time to talk.
He’d made it a point, he told me, to have conversations about Kerry with all the lawyers—partners and associates—at the firm who’d had substantial work contact with her over the past twelve months. It was easy to identify them: he’d asked accounting to analyze the time sheets. To be on the safe side, since he had only limited faith in bookkeepers, he’d also asked a couple of the senior associates who were her principal assistants to make a list of such persons. That information assembled, he’d had one-on-one talks with all those lawyers, asking for their candid assessments of the quality of Kerry’s work; energy levels; moods; relations with clients, opposing counsel, and lawyers at the office; and her deportment in court. She’d had several important appearances and filings during that period in federal and state courts. Finally, he’d asked, though not quite in those words, for an appraisal of her intellectual level and approach to problems. That was the due diligence within the firm. But he’d had as well conversations with her principal clients, Western Industries and a hedge-fund manager she was representing in an SEC investigation. Depending on your point of view, the results were uniformly excellent or depressing (because how and why would someone performing as superbly as she shoot herself up with heroin and Molly and whatever else there was in that cocktail?). There could be no doubt: she had been, until the evening she died, the same admirable Kerry we had known and loved.
And that’s not all, he said. According to normal firm practice, her emails would be on their way to be erased. I’ve arranged to have them saved in an account to which only I and the firm’s general counsel (that’s a new position at the firm, a partner who is essentially our legal compliance and risk manager) have the password, and I’ve had her personal correspondence and notes collected and delivered to me. I’ve got them locked up in my office safe. Everything that wasn’t in the ordinary course of business sent by her or at her direction to client files.
Have you analyzed it?
That’s a big word. I’ve read it all, somewhat hastily, on weekends. There isn’t anything of real interest there. Stuff relating to her investments. Thank-you notes, appointments she was making, letters to her landlord about repairs, lots of correspondence with the facility where her father had been and with the retirement place where her mother is still living, and nothing, absolutely nothing, that hints at a big problem or depression—or anything connected to Abner Brown.
If only, I thought, if only my uncle Harry’s papers had been preserved in this fashion. Instead, those swine, Hobson, then the chairman of J & W, and Minot, his trusts and estates sidekick, at the time already Abner Brown’s vassals, had done their best to destroy them. To say it to Simon would have been to rub salt into a wound. I held my tongue. Instead, I said, This is a difficult question—perhaps “indiscreet” is the better word—to put. Did you get the impression that any of the people in the firm you talked to were also drug users, might have done drugs with Kerry?
No, Simon answered, I was on the lookout for telltale signs, slips of the tongue and suchlike. But no, there was nothing. Not that I suppose it means much. Look at Kerry herself. Neither you nor I suspected she was a user.
I accompanied Simon to his office and, after we’d said goodbye, went to see Moses. He was only a few blocks away.
He greeted me at the reception desk and showed the way to his unnaturally neat office.
Who would have imagined what
happened when you first came here, he said, and made the will that left almost all your property to Kerry? Who would have thought of her dying this way? By the way, while it’s probably not what you had in mind coming here, your will needs to be changed. I don’t think that at the time we discussed it either of us was able to think seriously that she’d predecease you.
You’re right, I said, but as you said a new will is not my big priority. What I would really like to have is an answer to the question you put just now. Who would have thought of Kerry dying of an overdose? You’d known her very well, and for a very long time. What’s your answer? You should know, incidentally, that I’ve sort of assumed that at some point you and she were together.
Moses blushed, hesitated, and nodded. A long time ago, he said, when she came to J & W after her clerkship. It didn’t last very long. Probably I broke it off, because that isn’t the sort of thing that people in my community are supposed to do.
A light went on in my head. Of course, Orthodox Jews like Moses were constrained in their relations with women. That was something Kerry had told me, but without hinting at anything that had gone on between her and Moses.
It’s all right, I answered. You might as well know that when the idea came into my mind I decided I wouldn’t be childish about it.
Thank you!
But what about my question?
It’s a long story, Moses replied. I don’t suppose you know it, but Kerry had been in treatment ever since college, possibly before, with a series of therapists and shrinks, and she’s been on a lot of meds.
No, I didn’t know it. Was it anything specific? I asked, immediately feeling stupid and hating myself for it.
If you know anything about this sort of stuff, Moses said, it was the usual. Anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, certain compulsive traits. They’re syndromes meds can’t cure, but they can make it so that you function.
And hard drugs?
When I knew her, it was an occasional line of cocaine. Nothing much. A lot of people at the firm—and other people I knew outside my community—did that. Do you know that I’m the executor under her will? he asked suddenly.
As a matter of fact, I do, I replied. Simon Lathrop has told me.
Well, strictly on account of that I saw more of her during the last twelve months than during the last ten years. It’s hard to tell you this, but she was really fucked up over you. First because of what you did with this guy Slobo—yes, she told me everything—and then because she left you. She couldn’t figure how she could have stayed with you, and at the same time she thought that when she left you she made the biggest mistake of her life. So she was quite a mess, of course behind that perfect mask she always wore.
I see, I said stupidly, and added that Simon had told me the father was dead but the mother was still alive. Was that right?
Yes, he replied, the father was very deep into Alzheimer’s, but the mother’s hanging in there, in that retirement village. Kerry was very concerned about taking care of them. Of course, that isn’t as much of a problem as in the past, now that the father’s gone.
And is there enough money for the mother?
Yes, Kerry carried a huge amount of term insurance, and there is some money that will come out of the firm.
Moses, I said, have you been through her personal papers, her personal email, and so on, have you looked for clues to what led to this accident? How it happened that she ended up in that hotel with a syringe in her arm?
You know something about law’s delays, Jack. I’m appointed executor, but I haven’t qualified yet. I’ve been through her correspondence that was found at the apartment, checkbooks—all the usual stuff. There was nothing there. I haven’t had access to her email.
Can you do something—like what that J & W fellow Minot did—I think he called it a preliminary appointment, so we could get into her email account?
Do you think it’s that important? I can tell you right now, without checking the law, that it’s a complicated matter.
I do think it’s important.
All right, I’ll look into it.
One more question: who is H. Krohn? I received an email from someone with that name as part of her address. The rest was “@sbw.” She says she is one of Kerry’s closest friends and wants to talk to me. Kerry mentioned a couple of times a friend called Heidi something or other. Is this the same person?
Oh sure, Moses answered. Heidi Krohn. She’s a partner at Silverstein, Brown & White. Kerry, Heidi, and I were all classmates at the law school, and we were on the Review together. Heidi was the president. She’s OK, and it’s true that she was Kerry’s close friend—nobody was closer. Sure, you should talk to her.
—
I went home directly from Moses’s office and found Jeanette so rattled she burst into tears each time she tried to speak.
He called again, she told me, the same guy. I wrote down what he said. Here it is.
She handed me a page from the notepad in the kitchen on which she wrote down messages. It read: Tell fuckhead he’s roadkill.
That’s practically the same message, I said. Some people have no imagination. Poor Jeanette, some people have no manners either. And did you give him my message?
Yes sir, Captain Jack, I sure did. You told me to hang up after I’d given it, but before I could do that he said, I’ll cut his heart out. I’m real scared!
Don’t worry about this guy, I said. Lots of people wanted to kill me in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then Slobo, the guy who murdered Uncle Harry. I’ll be all right.
Just you be sure to take good care of yourself, she replied. You’ve got mail and a package.
I looked at the mail. Except for one letter it was all bills and appeals for money. I opened the one that looked personal, addressed to me by hand in solid capital letters. Inside it, neatly folded, was a sheet of stationery taken from the locanda in Torcello. On the sheet, written also in solid capital letters was: YOUR DAYS ARE COUNTED SHITHEAD.
I put the sheet back into the envelope and turned to look at the package. It was from Amazon, large enough for something like the Bose radio I’d bought online for my bedroom when I moved into the Fifth Avenue apartment or an object of equivalent bulk. I hadn’t ordered anything, but it was possible that someone—who?—had sent me a present. I lifted the package. It was surprisingly light.
Do you want me to open it? Jeanette asked.
I thought quickly. Only Scott and Jeanette knew I was arriving last Saturday. This package wasn’t from Jeanette. Was it from Scott? Why wouldn’t he have said that I should expect a present? Simon Lathrop knew I was coming back soon, but I hadn’t told him when. He too would have told me that his wife Jennie and he had sent me something.
This could be a mistake, I told Jeanette. Please put it—I hesitated about where, because I wanted the package as far away as possible from Jeanette and me—in the guest room. I’ll decide later what to do with it.
It was late enough in the afternoon for a drink. I poured myself a bourbon, took it into the library, and called Scott.
He gave a long whistle after I’d told him about the telephone conversation between Jeanette and the unknown caller, the letter on the locanda’s letterhead paper, and the Amazon package.
Someone’s putting on pressure, he said. The Cipriani paper is a nice touch.
One that required organization and planning, I observed.
I don’t like the package, he continued. It could be nothing, it could be one of Abner’s asshole jokes, or it could be a bomb. One that explodes when you open the package—or a time bomb. Is that guest room really far from where you and Jeanette are apt to be?
I said it was as remote as I could make it in the apartment, and I didn’t want to have the elevator man put it in the mailroom. It had occurred to me as well that it might be a time bomb.
You’re right about not having it moved to the mailroom, Scott told me, just stay away from that guest room and have Jeanette stay away from it too. Leave the package stric
tly alone. Someone from the Agency will come to collect it this afternoon or this evening. We’d better find out what it’s all about. And you had better get over to see me. We’ve got lots to talk about.
Let’s make a plan tomorrow, after your people have examined the package. There is another thing: a friend of Kerry’s, one Heidi Krohn, has gotten in touch and would like to talk. I sort of remember Kerry’s mentioning her name, but I checked with Moses Cohen anyway. She’s genuine, and a good person, and, according to Moses, Kerry’s best friend. I want to see her as soon as possible. We know almost nothing about Kerry’s life during those months after we split except that Simon has told me that she continued to work hard and effectively. Heidi might fill that gap.
Here is a stupid question, Scott said. Have you done something basic, which is to look at Kerry’s Facebook page? You know, her postings and other people’s comments and so forth. Probably it all adds up to nothing, but who knows? You might find something meaningful.
I told him I wasn’t on Facebook anymore, I’d closed my account while I was in Walter Reed, but that was something I’d certainly talk about to Heidi. In fact it was a point I’d intended to raise with Moses and completely forgot.
IV
This is my cell-phone number, Heidi had written. If I don’t answer, leave a message and the time you’ll be available. I’ll call back. As it happened, she answered on the second ring. I told her I’d just gotten back to the city over the weekend and would like to see her very soon. For dinner, if possible.
Good timing, she said. I’m in a car heading back to the office from the airport. The traffic is terrible. Yes, she continued in a warm no-nonsense voice, she was free for dinner, if dinner could be at nine or later and on the Upper East Side, which was where she lived. That would give her a chance to drop off her bag at home and freshen up before meeting me.
