Bad Blood

by E. O. Chirovici

  I felt tired and sleepy, so I signaled to the waiter to bring me an espresso. “I don’t buy this story, Ken, no offense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why did Josh not tell me anything about his showdown with Abraham in 1998? That information was very important, but he intentionally omitted it. He also must have been informed by the police that Abraham killed a woman later that night, the evidence that he was capable of murdering Simone too. And there’s another thing: why didn’t the French police question Josh and Abraham at the time? I’m not a detective, but it’s pretty clear that both of them should have immediately been considered as persons of interest or even suspects when Simone went missing. But no, the police just let them go away, despite everybody knowing they’d been so close to Simone and might have had some information regarding her disappearance. And why did Lucas Duchamp not try to contact them after his stepdaughter disappeared?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe he tried, but they’d already left France.”

  “Come on, a guy like him …”

  “Well, the police didn’t put those guys on the lamp. So what? These things aren’t like in the movies. If the missing person isn’t of tender age and if there are no obvious signs of foul play, then a couple of phone calls and the introduction of his or her name into a database is all that’s going to happen, even today, depending on the cops’ availability and how many open cases they have on their desks. People vanish all the time. Over ninety percent of so-called missing adults, men and women, actually disappear voluntarily, popping back up like a jack-in-a-box after weeks, months or even years. And back in the day, there were no security cameras to check, cellphones to track down, or credit cards to follow their statements.”

  “Right, but Josh’s family was very well known, and it would have been a piece of cake for someone to track him down, even after a few weeks. Another thing: for a while, Josh went to Mexico. Was he thinking of a possible extradition to France, which would have been possible from the States, but not from Mexico, as far as I know? Lucas Duchamp was a famous lawyer, and he’d have been able to pull a lot of strings if he’d wanted to. He could have pressured the French authorities to do their job.”

  “Okay, what’s your point?”

  “I believe that we still don’t know what really happened that night, not even whether Simone is dead or alive. That story Josh told me, for example, about the suitcase which disappeared the next day, doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t buy it. Anyway, I could go to France for a couple of days, to talk to those women, Claudette Morel and Simone’s sister, Laura.”

  A man wrapped up in a thick overcoat came inside and sat down at the table next to us. When our eyes met he winked at me and smiled.

  “If I were you, I would stop wasting my time and money on this story,” Mallory said. “I’m not even sure whether those women know something.” He put a twenty on the table and stood up. “This is on me. I’ll keep the ball rolling, and if you need anything, call me. I’ll be on the West Coast for a couple of weeks.”

  “Thanks and good luck with your diet.”

  sixteen

  OVER THE WEEKEND I grabbed a notepad and wrote down the questions that still remained unanswered. I’d read Abraham’s diary twice and I’d also made a summary of Mallory’s reports. One of the questions was: Had Abraham already been profoundly unstable in Paris, as Josh had described, or did he deteriorate significantly during all those years he spent living in need and fear, his heart broken because of the tragedy he’d experienced? What if he was telling the truth, and back in the nineties Josh had indeed used his money and power to set him up and send him once and for all to a prison for insane criminals? If Abraham had ever tried to reveal the truth to the police, no one would have believed him.

  I invoked the Google spirit and discovered the White Rose’s website. According to the presentation, the foundation was run using a bequest left by Mr. Salem H. Fleischer, Josh’s father. But something grabbed my attention: Josh had told me that his parents had died in a car crash in June 1973, but the foundation had been created about four years later, in February 1977.

  I jotted down the number of the president of the board, a man called Lionel J. Carpenter. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to get him on the phone, a surly assistant finally put me through. I introduced myself and told him that I was calling on behalf of the late Joshua Fleischer. He was immediately interested.

  “Dr. Cobb, have you recently spoken to Joshua? In person, I mean …When?”

  “Yes, Mr. Carpenter, I met him in Maine, when I was his guest for a few days, in October last year.”

  “I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing him over the past forty years or so,” he informed me, to my surprise. “I took on the running of the foundation from its inception, at his behest, but then we didn’t really keep in touch … His attorney called me a couple of weeks ago and told me he had passed away.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s true,” I told him. “He had leukemia. It was in this context that he called upon my professional services. I’m a psychiatrist and Mr. Fleischer was one of my patients.”

  “I’ve heard of you, Dr. Cobb. I saw you recently on TV, I think. You’ve published a book, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Mr. Carpenter, I’d like to ask you a question, if you don’t mind: was the White Rose Foundation set up by Joshua or by his father?”

  There was a pause.

  “To a certain extent,” he said, cautiously, “it was Joshua’s idea. But I wouldn’t want to discuss such matters over the phone. If your schedule allowed, I could meet you this afternoon. I’m leaving town tomorrow for a few days. Why don’t we meet here, at my office, at five o’clock?”

  “Sure, thank you, I’ll be there.”

  Carpenter was a man in his seventies, tall, slim, and emaciated. He invited me to take a seat, asked his assistant to bring us coffee, and said, “I joined Salem’s law practice in the mid-sixties, eight years before the tragedy. After he passed away, we didn’t change the name of the company, Fleischer and Associates, for five years. Later, new partners joined us and we had to change it. Sal was an extraordinary man, loved by all and highly intelligent. His parties were Manhattan society events back then. He’d been close to the Kennedys and kept in touch with Jackie to the very end.”

  “Mr. Carpenter, what kind of relationship did Josh have with his parents, if I may be so bold?”

  He took off his glasses and began to polish them with a handkerchief.

  “To be honest, he was a strange teenager. He was brilliant and all his teachers agreed that he had a wonderful mind, but sometimes he acted … oddly. There were situations when Sal had to exert his influence to keep a lid on certain scandals. The late sixties and early seventies were strange times, and young people used to glory in being rebels and showing the older generation that they were emancipated, but with Josh it wasn’t a question of the usual problems—you know, drugs, drinking, or speeding. On the contrary, he was very levelheaded for his age. He didn’t even smoke, as far as I can remember.”

  “And …?”

  He finished cleaning his glasses, put them back on his nose, and sipped his coffee.

  “Well, Joshua was handsome, rich, and cultured, so the girls were attracted to him,” he said, seeming vaguely embarrassed. “As far as I know he had a number of girlfriends. But there was something not quite right about him, and some of the girls talked to their parents, and certain things came to light. It seems that he had some … unusual inclinations. A girl claimed, for example, that he had sadistic tendencies. Obviously, Sal never went into detail with me, and in any case he was convinced that his son’s big mouth was to blame, and his desire to provoke by fantasizing, not realizing that his girlfriends didn’t have an imagination as fertile as his own and might take seriously stories he’d made up to impress them. It was my understanding that his father was the one who had refused to let him go to Harvard, thereby breaking the family tradition. He was afraid of
the talk in a place where his name was so well known.”

  I got the feeling that he’d been waiting years for an opportunity to talk about the Fleischers. Their story had obviously preoccupied him more than he was willing to admit. Gradually, he also revealed how the foundation had come into being.

  “After he graduated, Joshua went to Europe—to France, as far as I can remember. When he came back, a couple of months later, he called me from a hotel room in New York. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in two years, since I’d already dealt with the will and he’d come of age. In short, he told me that he didn’t need any of his parents’ money, and that he wanted to take his life into his own hands and donate the inheritance, everything down to the last cent, to a foundation, which he asked me to found and administer with persons of my own choice. I was shocked, as you can imagine. I tried to make him reconsider, or at least take time to think it over. I was convinced that something must have happened while he was in Europe, and I didn’t want him to act on impulse and then come to regret it later.”

  “What kind of sum are we talking about?”

  “Taking into consideration all the assets, including the house, it was a sum of more than thirty million dollars. It’s still quite a fortune, even by today’s standards.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Joshua assured me that his decision wasn’t a passing whim, but the result of calm and lucid analysis. He gave me the phone number of a lawyer he’d spoken to and told me that in the event that I refused to take over the running of the foundation, there were plenty of other people who would be willing to do so. I thought of Sal and Sandra, of our friendship and the possibility that their legacy might fall into unsuitable hands, and I accepted. So that’s how the White Rose Foundation was born. I retired two years ago, but I’ve retained my position as honorary president of the board. Josh decided that the foundation should devote itself solely to helping abused women, materially and psychologically. And that’s what I’ve been doing all these years, with very good results, I would say. After the foundation was set up, I didn’t hear from Joshua for a while. He’d informed me that he was going to leave the States for a period and I discovered—I no longer recall how—that he’d gone to Mexico. A few years later, I read in the newspaper about a businessman by the name of Joshua Fleischer, who had made a killing on Wall Street. I called him, spoke to him. We kept in touch over the phone, but we never met each other face to face again.”

  I thanked him and he showed me to the door. Before I left, he tossed his head and said, “Oh, there’s one important detail I forgot to tell you about. Sal had changed his will shortly before he died, adding a very curious stipulation: Joshua was to lose his entire inheritance if he was ever mixed up in an incident involving violence against women, with the exception of self-defense.”

  I was amazed. I’d chosen a profession that had already taught me from way back that if you dig behind a beautiful picture deep enough, more often than not you’ll come across a mound of garbage, and probably the Fleischers were no exception. But in their case, the garbage seemed to contain a few unexploded bombs, too.

  “But why would Mr. Fleischer have done that? Did something happen which suggested to him that his son might be capable of something like that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’re too young to know, but back in those days lots of things were seen as just unfortunate incidents, and nobody talked about them afterwards. A decent family used to keep its incidents locked up in a safe place, where even their best friends weren’t allowed to enter under any circumstances. Sal and I were very close, as I told you, but he knew well how to protect his privacy and nobody, including myself, would have had the guts to question him on something like that. But to be honest, I’ve always thought that Joshua’s decision regarding his inheritance must have been related to that stipulation in his father’s will. I didn’t want to dig deeper, because it was none of my business. Have a good day, Dr. Cobb.”

  I called Claudette Morel the next day, first thing in the morning, and after just two rings a hoarse, smoker’s voice answered the phone. I asked her if we could speak in English and she said yes. I introduced myself and she confirmed that she knew the Maillot sisters very well.

  “Ms. Morel, I understand that a couple of days ago you spoke with Inspector Henri Solano, from the French police. As he probably told you, I’m very interested in discussing the circumstances under which Simone Maillot, or Duchamp, went missing in October 1976.”

  “I see ... Have the police found out what happened to her? The inspector refused to give me any details.”

  “Unfortunately, they haven’t, but—”

  “He also mentioned your employer, a man named Joshua Fleischer, is that right? I met him a long time ago.” Her voice sounded cautious and hostile. “Why is he interested in this story, after so many years? Did he tell you that? Are the police involved?”

  “No, they aren’t involved, it’s a private affair. As for Mr. Fleischer’s interest in this story, well, it’s a bit more complicated. He was one of my patients, and—”

  “I understand, Dr. …”

  “Cobb, James Cobb. Please call me James.”

  “Well, Dr. Cobb, this whole story sounds very odd. I don’t know why I’d agree to talk to you. I don’t know who you are and what you really want from me. Do you have a warrant from the authorities, or is there something you’d like to tell me on behalf of Joshua Fleischer?”

  “I’m calling because I need your help, Ms. Morel. As far as I know, you met Mr. Fleischer in seventy-six, and you also met Mr. Abraham Hale, his best friend. And they both were in love with Simone, weren’t they?”

  She laughed—a snotty, joyless laugh.

  “I’m not sure who was in love with whom, Dr. Cobb. It wasn’t until many years after Simone disappeared and Laura refused to talk to me again that I put two and two together. Laura and I were very close at the time, but she had her secrets, like all of us. We were university students. Laura had asked Simone to recommend me to the foundation she was working for and she’d helped me get a part-time job there. Then …”

  “So you worked with Simone … I didn’t know that. For a while, Abraham Hale worked at the foundation too, if I’m not mistaken, so you must have known him quite well.”

  “Of course I knew him very well. And I knew Fleischer, too.”

  I heard her lighting a cigarette.

  “By the way, how’s Fleischer doing? Is he well?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have good news. Mr. Fleischer died a couple of months ago from leukemia.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Ms. Morel, I’d like to ask you something: after Mr. Fleischer visited Simone in Lyon, he—”

  “Sorry for interrupting you, but those boys came to Lyon together, I remember it well. I was there that weekend. Abraham was a very handsome guy, shy, quiet and polite, the exact opposite of Fleischer, who was a strange man. As I’ve told you, I went out with them a few times, but I eventually stopped joining them mostly because of Fleischer’s behavior. Especially when he was drunk, he became unbearable. And he used to drink a lot.”

  “I understand … Shortly after that weekend in Lyon, Simone disappeared. Do you remember the circumstances? Were you in Paris at the time?”

  For a while she said nothing and I could hear her breathing heavily.

  “I see you know quite a bit already … As I said before, Laura used to tell me lots of things about herself and her sister. Yes, I was in Paris when Simone went missing. Laura and I were sharing an apartment. Simone wasn’t answering the phone and she didn’t go to work, so her parents alerted the police. It was awful. She just vanished … For years, I thought that she might be alive, living in another country under a false identity, you know, like in films.”

  “Why would she have done such a thing?”

  “I don’t know why, but the Duchamps forgot about her very quickly, too quickly. So I said to myself that maybe they knew something. That family h
ad many secrets, Dr. Cobb.”

  “What about Laura? Are you still in touch with her? I’d like to talk to her too, if possible.”

  “After Simone disappeared, Laura dropped out of university, went back to Lyon, and completely withdrew from the world. She refused to talk to me or anybody else, as far as I know. I heard that she’d had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland for a couple of years. Their parents must have spent a fortune. I’ve tried to contact her many times, but her father told me to stop calling, and eventually I did. Then my family sold our house and moved to Alsace, so I never went back to Lyon. All I know is that her father is paralyzed and she’s looking after him ever since. So I can’t help you to get in touch with her, I’m sorry.”

  Abruptly, she changed the subject and asked me about Abraham’s whereabouts.

  “It’s more bad news, I’m afraid. It seems that he lived in California for a while, and then in New York City. In the fall of 1998, he killed a woman. He was found insane and committed to a forensic psychiatric hospital, where he died a few years later.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Are you sure we’re talking about the same person? It must be a mistake.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Abraham was the kindest person I’ve ever met and I don’t believe he could have done such a thing.”

  “Unfortunately, what I’m telling you is true, Ms. Morel. He was diagnosed a dangerous paranoid.”

  “Abraham? Oh my god … Listen, I don’t know you, but I want to ask you something: Has it ever crossed your mind that you might be in danger? That your reputation, your career, even your life might be threatened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this story … You say you’re a psychologist.”