The Death of All Things Seen

by Michael Collins

  *

  It took three days before Einhorn could execute the escape. The professional driver, who had seen his share of intrigue and who had spent the three days a town over, syphoned the gas from the Renault, so it was a great consternation and uproar as a towering Philippe appeared in his nightshirt, like a mythic Cyclops, raging against the night.

  They flew home Business Class. They stayed at a suite at The Plaza, looking out on Central Park. The next afternoon, Rachel emerged from a clinic on New York’s Upper West Side. She was pale and disoriented, but on the other side of a great mistake. She held her father’s arm. He hailed a cab, and they were gone toward the bustle of mid-town, while the Rotheneuf legacy, what was left of it, the bits and pieces, the flesh and blood, made its way along East 91st Street, toward the funneling sewers along the East Side River, rounding the Statue of Liberty before being carried out to sea.

  Rachel was a better mother for it, years later, when her mind was more determined. She married a doctor with the conscious understanding of what she was doing. Einhorn took her hand and gave her away in an extravagant affair that he paid for because this was how a daughter in some circles was still passed on, in the last shouldering of expense before she became the property and charge of some other man. She would never work a day in her life. It was a great accomplishment, not to have to want for anything of a material nature.

  A check Einhorn had left for Philippe was eventually returned, along with the box of woolens Rachel had left behind, in what was the thoughtful evacuation of an American dream and an American girl. Philippe wrote a note in broken English that was heartbreaking. Einhorn read it and tore it up. Some things could never be explained, not by the deceiver, and not by the deceived.

  *

  They found him – that is, Saul’s men found him – in the closet. It took a matter of an hour, a search methodically conducted room by room. He could hear their voices getting closer. He wet himself and felt a great shame in doing so.

  15.

  IN A SMALL interrogation room, Mr Ahmet, Walter’s former legal counsel, stood in a threadbare suit with a missing button.

  Mr Ahmet directed a guard to set a box on the metal table. As the guard did so, Mr Ahmet kept his hands midline with his body, assuming the grim prosecutorial aesthetic of a minor bureaucrat within a Kafka novel. In the folds of softer flesh around his eyes, an inky darkness showed the color of tea leaves. He was of some indeterminate immigrant stock, the Middle or Far Eastern, anywhere from Turkey to Uzbekistan. His receding hairline revealed a high, shiny forehead the color of walnut.

  When the box was put down, Mr Ahmet thanked the guard. The door opened and closed again. When Mr Ahmet sat, he drew close to the table and introduced himself. He had been legal counsel to the officers accused in the alleged murder of two drug dealers. He had known Walter Price very, very well, right from the beginning of the case and on through the years.

  It turned out that it had been Mr Ahmet’s longest and most complex case, a watershed case when the city was beginning to change in its view of how policing was conducted. He explained it, how he had been hired because of civil rights advances and affirmative action. He was of that generation just past the great sweep of change and all those who came before. It was what interested him in the law, how righteousness could eventually prevail.

  He was given to a moment of self-reflection and, shaking his head, said how the years had passed, and so quickly.

  Mr Ahmet continued talking. He had made a great many friends in defending those who needed defending on the force. It had been his honor, advising and helping with the case. He stated it like he was giving a sworn testament on the record. He was, in some respects, the most unlikely of allies, his swarthy figure, his diminutive presence suggesting the tokenism of the era, but he took men as they came.

  The system, yes, it was corrupt, or had been, rife with a demoralizing cronyism. He understood it. This was not akin to conceding one’s lack of awareness of all that went on around him, but they were the times, and a man had a right to survive as best he might and to make compromises. He was, he declared, without prejudice. He understood the ways of the world. It was important to understand a man’s motivations in all matters and proceed from there. He talked like legal counsel.

  His long index finger touched the desk as he enumerated points along a history of his career and his own principles. He was a communicator, but, equally, a listener. His voice held a directness that suggested English was not his first language, not for the paucity of what was expressed, but in how he expressed himself. He came upon words, chose them. He was forthright and direct and spoke in complete sentences. It was a soothing sort of voice that could lull children to sleep.

  Mr Ahmet stopped abruptly. He rattled a wet cough, dislodged something, which he turned in his mouth and then swallowed. His eyes were glossed. It took a moment. His breath was a pant. It was obvious he was sick. He recovered and, apologizing, raised his hand, then searched his inside pocket. He retrieved a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, put them on, the wire around the left ear and then the right, his eyes so magnified that he looked like an insect.

  He seemed intent on sifting through the box, though he said, without looking up, ‘I must tell you, I just learned this morning that the Daniel Einhorn you contacted with your letter, he is missing.’

  Mr Ahmet stopped a moment, his hand on a file in the box. ‘Mr Einhorn’s lawyer, he called 911. The situation, I believe, was quite desperate. Federal prosecutors were ready to indict Mr Einhorn for a Ponzi scheme running into tens of millions. Regrettably, these are the times we live in. There are many like him, these swindlers, but of course, so many more victims. The police are not long arrived from what I gather, but Mr Einhorn is gone. The police interviewed Mrs Einhorn. She was at the house but she alleges that she heard nothing.’

  Mr Ahmet shifted and leaned back from the box and, in so doing, removed his glasses with a slow deliberateness as he looked directly at Norman. ‘Can you imagine, Mr Price, living in a house so big your own wife does not know where you are? My wife, she would love a house as big as this Daniel Einhorn’s. But everything comes at a cost, I tell her, and yet she would have it anyway if she had the chance.’

  Mr Ahmet held Norman’s stare. ‘I am almost certain this Mr Einhorn has come to great harm. There is a story there somewhere. Maybe you can write it?’

  Norman said curtly, ‘I don’t write crime stories.’ Then he qualified his remark. ‘I don’t deal in bodies... in a body count.’

  He might have stopped there, but there was something grandiose and blusterous about him, and despite the situation, despite knowing why Mr Ahmet was actually there, he added, ‘As a writer, I am in search of a suspicion of happiness.’

  The remark seemed to delight Mr Ahmet, who smiled and said, ‘Ah, yes, I am aware of your talents.’

  Mr Ahmed’s myopic eyes were still fixed on Norman. His eyebrows moved of their own accord. ‘If I may suggest it, Mr Price, you should meet my sister-in-law at some point. She is the one in the family with the brains, and she will make a thing complicated when it need not be. She is a Mr Woody Allen fan. She likes the sort of movie you describe, where there’s “a suspicion of happiness...” She likes unease. She has been through two husbands and many more lovers. She is a scandalous, beautiful and very independent woman. It seems little satisfies her, but I have said to her that I believe bad conscience is always tied to bad acts. As proof, I said to her, what this Mr Woody was alleged to have done, sleeping with his daughter, or the adopted daughter of his wife, whatever, something quite despicable. I said to her what I sensed about Mr Woody, this man with the twitching face of a watchmaker’s son, that if you can make your pathology and insights into something others want to pay to see, that’s a definition of a kind of art. There are many ways to proceed in life.’

  Norman flushed. ‘If this is about me being gay...’

  Mr Ahmet laughed. ‘Please, Mr Price. In my homeland, we invented the fucking of g
oats. It was our national pastime. You cannot scandalize me, but this is the problem your father talked about, your perception that the world is against you. I will be honest with you, if I may. I went to see your show for myself, and what I believe is that all artists should know the story of others as much as their own. As legal counsel, this is what I am tasked with every day. Where are your sympathies for others, I ask you, Mr Price? I am not a critic, but you cannot dig half a hole. That is what I suspect you have been digging all these years! We must have the entire story Mr Price!’

  The accusation had the sting of truth, the second time in a few days that Norman had been chastised for an apparent shortcoming, his lack of understanding of life around him.

  ‘Your father, I will tell you, was a friend. We discussed you often. If I may have your attention a moment, Mr Price, this might be of use to you in your writing. I might tell you about real discrimination. It will take but a moment.’

  He didn’t wait for Norman’s permission.

  ‘My parents and I, we are immigrants. When we arrived first in Chicago, we found the Irish, the Italians and the Poles had it sewn up between them. The Irish and their famine, it is known the world over what they suffered, yet they held power like they had never known hardship. America was not what my parents had expected, but they had lived through the alternative. We left our country on the backs of donkeys, Mr Price. I swear it.’

  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 A
hmet 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.

  A magnified series of shots showed her head turn, looking back before she abruptly changed lanes and advanced across the six lanes of Lake Shore Drive. Her foot had not, as was initially theorized, inadvertently slipped in a moment of confusion from the brake to the accelerator pedal. Helen had deliberately changed lanes.

  Mr Ahmet pointed, the steering wheel turned in a hand-over-hand manner. It was caught on a sequence of shots, the deliberateness of her action.

  Helen Price had actively attempted suicide.

  Mr Ahmet gathered the files like a dealer gathering a fold of cards at the end of a long deal. He said, without looking up, ‘Maybe, sometimes the secrets we withhold reveal more about us than what we ever say. It is perhaps better understood by greater minds. Maybe you can say it better, Mr Price. I am simply a gatherer of evidence.’