Restitution

by Lee Vance

  “Go ahead, then,” she says crisply.

  “Suppose a senior manager at a publicly traded investment firm began using the company’s money to purchase securities he’d counterfeited. Suppose the amounts became so big that it threatened to destroy the company’s reputation and business.”

  “I can’t believe a senior manager would do that,” she protests.

  “Suppose the senior manager had personal investments that weren’t working out. He might have borrowed a little money and played the market, trying to get even. He might have gotten unlucky.”

  Katya’s silent. The well-intentioned embezzler is an all too familiar figure in the financial world, a trusted employee who fiddles a few bucks to cover a pressing need, pays it back, and then fiddles some more, with every intention of making full amends even as the “borrowed” sums grow vastly beyond his means to repay.

  “If the senior manager were fired, though,” she says slowly, “say because the head of the company figured out what he’d done, then the head of the company would be legally obligated to call in the regulators and make a clean breast of it. The fraud would become public knowledge.”

  “Maybe the head of the company isn’t willing to accept the consequences. Maybe he’s decided to cover up the fraud, thinking that as long as no one else knows what’s happened, he can sell his shares in the company for a premium price and then use the proceeds to make good the hidden loss.”

  There’s another, longer silence.

  “I’m hanging up,” she says. “I have to get hold of William.”

  “Wait. I’ve already spoken to him.”

  “When?” she asks, sounding confused.

  “Earlier today. He intercepted my voice mail to you and had Debra invite me to your office. We met in the Turndale boardroom and he confirmed everything.”

  “William’s been monitoring my voice mail?”

  “Since Andrei disappeared. You’ve got to be careful, Katya. He’s dangerous.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” she says sharply. “This is disastrous enough as is. Whatever William might have done, he’s not a thug.”

  I don’t want to upset her any more than I have to, but she has to appreciate what she’s up against.

  “William has a big guy named Earl working for him. A former cop?”

  “Ex-FBI. Why?”

  “William was keen to persuade me to keep quiet about what I’d learned. Earl helped. That’s why I’m driving one-handed.”

  “You’re saying Earl hit you?” she asks incredulously.

  “At William’s instruction.”

  “Jesus. Are you all right?”

  “I’ll live,” I say, unwilling to admit how hurt I am.

  “Give me a minute.”

  I hear the click of her handset being placed on a hard surface and then the sound of running water. The snow’s falling more heavily now, and I fumble with the levers on the steering column, trying to make the wipers go faster.

  “I’m back,” she says.

  “You okay?”

  “How I feel isn’t the issue,” she says tersely. “What are you doing out on Long Island?”

  “I got a lead on Andrei.”

  “Peter. Listen to me. I want you to go home.”

  “That’s not an option any longer.”

  “Don’t argue with me,” she pleads. “It was wrong of me to get you involved. I’ve been a coward. I should have confronted William myself.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. Because if William or Earl hurt you, I’d have to do something about it, and that would really mess up my plans.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “Not in the least.”

  A silvery fox comes into view, trotting along the shoulder with something limp hanging from its mouth. I swing the wheel left, giving it a wide berth.

  “Peter …” She sighs. “Take my word for it. You don’t have to worry about William or anyone who works for him hurting me.”

  “But I do. Nobody’s going to believe you weren’t a part of this unless you’re the one who blows the whistle. You’ve got to get a lawyer and open a line to the regulators. Tell them you don’t know anything for sure but that what you do know has you concerned.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It is that simple,” I insist. “Your only responsibility is to yourself.”

  “What about Andrei?”

  “You can’t cover for him. It isn’t right for you to put yourself at risk.”

  “Is that really what you believe?”

  Her question hangs in the ether between us. I don’t know what I believe right now.

  “I think this is all going to come out one way or another,” I say, managing to avoid a direct answer. “It’s only a question of whether or not you survive it.”

  “And Andrei?” she asks, not letting me off the hook.

  “The best you can do is be there to help him pick up the pieces.”

  “But what if the head of our hypothetical company is right? What if he can make good the loss without the regulators or anyone else being the wiser?”

  “Don’t you get it, Katya? William has everything on the line here—his company, his wealth, his reputation, and his freedom. This is a desperation move: I wouldn’t put anything past him at this point. You’ve got to protect yourself.”

  “I told you,” she says. “He’d never hurt me.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I demand, mystified by her certitude. “He’s been listening to your voice mail. He …”

  Headlights reflect in my rearview mirror. A cop’s turned in behind me.

  “Hang on,” I say.

  The police car follows me as I creep through the empty downtown district of Bridgehampton, trying not to go too fast or too slow. My heartbeat’s at least 160, and the steering wheel feels alien in my grasp. The cop takes a right at an intersection and I exhale loudly in relief.

  “Katya?”

  “I’m still here. What was that about?”

  “Nothing,” I say, wiping my face on the sleeve of my coat.

  “Why did you go see my mother?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject.”

  “I don’t know that I am.”

  I pause for a second, not following her. A sign looms through the snow, indicating the Easthampton Airport a few miles ahead on the left.

  “Just tell me,” she says.

  “Okay,” I say, explaining to her about the Luxembourg bank account as succinctly as possible. “I visited your mother to ask if she knew who the ‘bon papa’ Andrei’s security question referred to was. She said no, but then later I figured out that it was a guy named Frederic von Stern. Have you ever heard of him?”

  “He was my mother’s professor when she was at university,” she answers, her voice difficult to read. “Her mentor. How did you figure it out?”

  I tell her about the painting, and Mr. Rozier’s knack for research. “What I don’t understand is why your mother would have lied to me.”

  “You’ve heard me talk about her over the years. Why did she ever lie?”

  To conceal the identity of Andrei and Katya’s father.

  “You’re not suggesting that von Stern was actually …”

  “No,” she says, laughing mirthlessly. “The little she told us about our father was true. He was an American she met when she was a student in East Berlin, studying under von Stern. Think. You’re almost there.”

  One quadrant of the inscrutable puzzle I’ve been wrestling with abruptly resolves, the linkage between certain facts breathtakingly obvious.

  “William Turndale,” I say. “He was in Berlin with the army when your mother was there, and he was interested in art. He and your mother might have met.”

  “They did. And he helped her escape to the West, and he supported our family when I was little, and he arranged for my mother to be hired by the Metropolitan Museum. And then, when I was twenty-one, he sought me out and offered me a job.”

&
nbsp; “Because he’s your father.”

  “He is.”

  Stunned as I am, it occurs to me that this may put an entirely new spin on things. Maybe Andrei wanted to wound the father who never acknowledged him, and William covered up the theft to protect his son. Imagining Andrei vengeful is as difficult as imagining William selfless, but people don’t always think clearly when family’s involved. Regardless, they’ve both put Katya in an impossible position.

  “When did you figure it out?” I ask.

  “I didn’t.” She pauses, ice rattling again on her end of the phone. “Ever since I was a teenager, I’d suspected that my mother was still in touch with my father. There were too many things that didn’t add up. My mother worked for the Met as a conservator, but she raised us in a nice town house on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She sent us to good private schools, and bought us expensive clothing, and took us to Europe on vacation. It was obvious that someone else had to be paying the bills, and who the most likely candidate was. I used to follow my mother around the house, shouting at her, demanding the truth. But I never considered William as a possibility until a few months ago. Andrei sent me a letter right before he vanished.”

  “That’s incredible,” I say, still trying to read her mood. “What did the letter say?”

  “Just that William was our father, and that I should tell our mother I knew and ask her to explain the details.”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Tell your mother you knew.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. That’s one reason I’ve been so keen to speak with Andrei, to learn the rest of the story.”

  “Then why did you tell your mother about us?” I ask, the question slipping out before I can catch it.

  “I never,” she responds vehemently. “Did she say something?”

  “She referred to our ‘liaison.’ ”

  “The only person I ever mentioned anything to was Andrei,” she says, sounding embarrassed. “I wrote him an e-mail late one night, when I was upset because I couldn’t reach him. He shouldn’t have told her.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, wondering if Katya’s e-mail explains why Andrei never reached out to me after he fled. “And none of this changes anything. You’ve still got to look out for yourself.”

  “You’re wrong, Peter. Don’t you see? This is about my family. My brother embezzled from my father, and I’m the one who has to decide what to do about it.”

  “Katya—”

  “Don’t,” she says, her voice breaking. “Everyone I love has betrayed me, Peter. Even you. But that doesn’t mean I can turn my back on them.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say helplessly.

  “If you’re really sorry,” she says, “if you really want to do something for me, then please just go home and let me sort this out myself. At least I’ll know you’re safe.”

  “I wish I could,” I say, not wanting to tell her there’s nowhere safe for me now.

  “I’m serious, Peter,” she says pleadingly. “Please.”

  “I can’t.”

  “There’s a lesson here, isn’t there?” she says, her voice fading. “I can always count on you to let me down.”

  The phone clicks and she’s gone.

  35

  THE CAR’S TWICE AS COLD AND EMPTY after Katya hangs up. I’d give anything to be able to call her back and set things right, but it’s not fair to burden her with my problems tonight, and I can’t explain away what happened between us. Her accusations hit home. I hurt her, and I let her down.

  It was less than a week after I raised my hand to Jenna in front of the shrink’s office. One of the Gulf State embassies was hosting a reception for their finance minister, and Katya and I bumped into each other in a banquet room done up like a petro sheikh’s tent, ivory silk panels draped from an ornate gilded frame and ice sculpture of oil tankers. We drank champagne and gossiped about the market and mutual acquaintances until a military band began playing a medley of Andrew Lloyd Webber, half a dozen silver flutes shrilling “Memory.”

  “I don’t care how good the food is,” Katya whispered, polishing off a caviar-laden blini. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  We ended up at the Harvard Club. A solitary barman polished glassware and willed the clock toward midnight while Katya and I sat at a corner table in the near-empty lounge, sipping whiskey and gambling at backgammon. Moth-eaten taxidermy and portraits of long-dead Fellows stared down from the walls as she twirled her dice cup pensively.

  “I’m going to fall asleep—this game’s too slow. What do you think about a little craps before we call it a night? Say a hundred bucks a pass?”

  I laughed.

  “What?” she demanded teasingly. “You don’t know how to play?”

  “I know how to play. It’s just that I don’t think of craps as a girl’s game.”

  “ ‘A girl’s game,’ ” she repeated, mock sternly. “I hope you’re trying to piss me off, because I’d be disappointed to learn you’re so clueless.”

  “Forgive me,” I said, laughing again. “It goes without saying that you’d play.”

  “Hmmm.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “That felt kind of backhanded. You think of me as one of the guys?”

  Katya was wearing a black linen dress scooped low at the neck, with an elaborately embroidered white shawl draped loosely over her shoulders. Her outfit probably cost more than my entire wardrobe, but it was still easy to picture her in the jeans and boots she’d worn the first time I’d seen her. Nothing about her had changed.

  “Never.” I nudged her knee with mine. “You’re beautiful. I’ve always thought so.”

  “Ha. I’m just Andrei’s sister to you.”

  “There goes your clairvoyant act,” I said, alcohol and unhappiness making me reckless. “Even married guys have fantasies.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” she said, giving me a small smile. She upended the dice cup on the board and tapped the bottom ruminatively, as if conjuring a combination from the dice hidden within. “I always wondered what would have happened if we’d met before you and Jenna.”

  I felt my perspective lurch as Katya’s words settled. The last few days had been rough. Jenna had barely spoken since our fight, and I wasn’t sure there was anything left to say. Maybe Jenna had been right all along. Maybe it had been a mistake for two people as different as we were to have gotten together.

  “I’m sorry,” Katya said, misinterpreting my silence. “I’ve said the wrong thing.”

  “You haven’t.”

  “I have,” she insisted. “I should go.”

  She stood, gathering her shawl around her as I wrestled with the implications of my thought: If Jenna and I really are done, if this is the end of my marriage …

  “Stay,” I said. “I can get a room here.”

  Katya was quiet for a long moment, her eyes lowered.

  “I haven’t got any use for pity.”

  I stood up and moved toward her until our bodies were almost touching. I could feel her breath on my neck as I bent forward to speak softly into her ear.

  “I admit to being confused right now, but I know I want you. Pity doesn’t enter into it.”

  “Confused about what?” she asked, barely audible.

  “Confused about us. I’ve wanted you since the night we met,” I said, hearing the truth as I spoke it. “I couldn’t let myself own up to it before, but things are different now.”

  “Andrei told me that you and Jenna were having trouble,” she said, looking up at me. “He said you were trying to work things out. You have to understand, Peter. I can’t let myself get between you.”

  I wondered fleetingly how much Andrei had told her. It didn’t matter. An instant’s hesitation on my part and Katya would be gone.

  “You won’t be. It’s over between me and Jenna. We’re going to separate.”

  It didn’t feel like a lie at that moment. My h
ands hung heavily as I waited for her response. I didn’t dare reach for her. Katya dropped her eyes again and then leaned toward me very slowly, her head coming to rest on my shoulder.

  “Then let’s go upstairs,” she said.

  I woke to a dark bedroom. The shower was running, and enough light leaked through the blinds to see that it was morning. My first thought was of Jenna. I hadn’t called to tell her not to expect me. Angry or not, she was bound to be worried.

  A fuller realization of what I’d done crashed over me like a wave and I sat up, panicked. I knew how hurt and humiliated Jenna would be if she found out I’d spent the night with Katya, regardless of our estrangement. My infidelity would finally prove me exactly the selfish prick she’d never wanted to marry, all my promises false.

  The shower fell silent, prompting a second surge of panic. I had no idea how to handle things with Katya. The bathroom door opened and a blaze of light dazzled me.

  “Hey,” Katya said. She had a white towel wrapped around her body, damp shoulders gleaming. I couldn’t make out her expression. “When’d you wake up?”

  “A few minutes ago.”

  “The amenity kit only had one toothbrush, and I used it. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” I said, attempting a smile.

  There was an uncomfortable pause.

  “I understand that you must be going through a difficult time,” she said. “Last night doesn’t have to be anything more than it was. No harm, no foul, okay?”

  “I guess,” I said, feeling a pang completely at odds with my guilt.

  “You guess.” She twisted her hair into a loose braid and tossed it over her shoulder. “I’m standing here in a towel, Peter, with wet hair and no makeup. Could you say a little more than ‘I guess’?”

  “You’re beautiful,” I replied, falling back on truths I felt confident of. “I meant what I said in the bar. I’ve always wanted you.”

  “I never doubted it,” she said, shaking her head ruefully. “Self-esteem’s not my problem. But if last night was just about you feeling lonely, then there can’t be an encore.”

  Her voice quavered the tiniest bit as she finished, and she shifted nervously on bare feet. The logic of the previous evening reasserted itself: Jenna wasn’t going to forgive me. My failings with her were no reason to wound Katya. I stood up naked and walked across the room, my hand rising to catch the top of her towel.