Restitution

by Lee Vance

  “Years ago,” she says, “my father taught me that the right way to treat other people is to imagine myself in their shoes, and then decide how I’d want to be treated. You think that’s good advice?”

  “I do,” I say, trying to work out what she’s driving at.

  “If I were you,” she says, “I’d want to know the whole story.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, a funny fluttering in my chest.

  “Let me tell you about being a homicide cop,” she says. “Most murders are easy to solve. A guy gets drunk and smacks his wife in the head with a bottle. A woman gets pissed about her husband cheating and shoots him. Simple stuff. The cases that aren’t easy are the ones where the motive isn’t obvious. The way you solve a hard case is to collect as much information as possible and look for contradictions or coincidences. Usually, you realize after the fact that there were any number of things that could have broken it for you, things you forgot to ask about, or didn’t check up on, or just didn’t put together.”

  “So?”

  “I didn’t know Mrs. Zhilina worked at the Metropolitan Museum until I read her obituary,” she says. “Ellis and I visited her at home when we spoke to her about Andrei, and we didn’t think to ask if she worked, or where she worked.”

  “So?” I repeat.

  “Jennifer told the priest how she found out you were having an affair. She said the other woman’s mother called her, and that they met. That would have been Mrs. Zhilina, wouldn’t it?”

  Nothing about Mrs. Zhilina should surprise me at this point, but I can’t help being shocked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why would Mrs. Zhilina tell Jennifer about your affair with Katya?”

  “I don’t know. To punish me for hurting Katya, maybe. What are you implying?”

  “Patience,” she says. “Let’s talk about Lyman for a minute. Mrs. Zhilina didn’t know his name, but she figured out where he was staying. Vladimir must have staked out the hotel lobby and followed Lyman upstairs, grabbing him as he entered his room. Right?”

  “I guess.”

  “It’s a big hotel, though. Lots of people walking through the lobby. How was Vladimir able to pick Lyman out of the crowd?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, my sense of uneasiness growing.

  “Another point,” she says. “If Andrei was already in the hospital on Long Island when he supposedly sent the book to your house, who mailed it, and how did Zeitz know it had been sent?”

  “Goddamn it,” I say, getting to my feet again. “I’m not going to play games with you, Grace. Tell me what you’re saying.”

  She tips her head back, looking up at me.

  “We found an e-mail from Andrei to Jennifer in her in-box, sent the day before she was murdered. The message told her to look out for an important package from him.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I say uncertainly. “Andrei suspected Zeitz was reading his e-mail, and he knew they were looking for him. He’d warned Emily about it.”

  “Which brings me to the phone call,” Grace says. “The one Jennifer got at work the day she was murdered, just before she left the office. We subpoenaed all the phone companies serving the tristate area to see if we could identify the source. It took a while, but we got a hit. The call was made from a pay phone in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum.”

  “Here,” Grace says, nudging my hand with a wad of napkins from the deli.

  I don’t know how much time’s gone by. I feel disembodied, as if I were lying in the street after being hit by a car.

  “You want me to tell you what I think happened?” she asks.

  I nod, wiping my face.

  “I figure it like this. After Lyman tripped Mrs. Zhilina in the street, she realized that Zeitz meant to play rough. She needed leverage to make them back off. She decided to entice Lyman into committing a crime that Zeitz would feel compelled to cover up.”

  “She couldn’t have known that Lyman would kill Jenna,” I say, my voice quavering like an old man’s. “That’s impossible.”

  “True. But I’d bet Mrs. Zhilina had Vladimir watching your house. If Lyman never showed, she wouldn’t have lost anything. When he did, Vladimir got a good look at him and then phoned her. She hung up and called Jennifer from the pay phone. It would have been okay if Lyman had only roughed up Jennifer. That alone would have given Mrs. Zhilina enough to negotiate with. But the result she really wanted was the one she got. Jennifer surprised Lyman and he murdered her.”

  “How could Mrs. Zhilina have tricked Jenna into going home?” I ask, still in denial.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Tilling says. “I’m more interested in why Vladimir didn’t just grab Lyman and Franco when they left your house. It would have saved him a lot of trouble. Here.”

  She taps my hand again, this time with a bottle of water. I open it and take a drink, remembering Vladimir’s apology to me the night he killed Lyman.

  “Vladimir didn’t know what Mrs. Zhilina had planned,” I say, a horrified comprehension dawning. “He let Lyman and Franco leave because he wanted to check on Jenna. He’s the one …” My voice breaks. “He’s the one who smoothed her hair.”

  “Possible,” Tilling says. “Lyman hightailed it out of the United States later that same day.”

  “Mrs. Zhilina deliberately enticed Lyman to harm Jenna,” I say, fresh tears streaming down my cheeks. “Why? Just to punish me?”

  “If she wanted to punish you, she would have let you take the fall for Franco’s murder.”

  “Then what?”

  “Peter.”

  I wipe my face again and look at Tilling. She’s wearing a pained expression.

  “You remember what I said before, about the advice my father gave me.”

  “Yes.”

  “If it were me, I’d want to get it all straight. No matter how bad it was.”

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “Think about it. You told me that everything Mrs. Zhilina did was to protect Andrei’s and Katya’s interests. She tried to break up your marriage, she put your wife in harm’s way, and she maneuvered you into a role where you’d be responsible for Katya’s well-being.”

  “No,” I say, beginning to understand her. “That’s not possible.”

  “How long has Katya been in love with you? Do you know?”

  I can still remember the look on Katya’s face as she held my hand at the TriBeCa bar, pretending to tell my fortune. I’m too overwrought to answer.

  “Mrs. Zhilina wanted to make Katya happy,” Tilling says. “She did what she thought she had to do.”

  “I can’t believe that,” I say, burying my face in my hands. “It can’t be true.”

  “Look,” Tilling says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I’m just a cop. You need a friend. Someone like Tigger. Tell him about it and see what he thinks.” She pats my back gently and then stands. “You’re not a bad guy. I’ll make you the same offer you made me: Call me if you want to talk.”

  51

  LATE-AFTERNOON sun filters through budding trees, making a pattern on the metal café table where Tigger and I sit. We’re in Bryant Park, behind the main branch of the New York Public Library, surrounded by foraging pigeons and a sea of yellow crocuses. He listens silently as I relate the conversation I had with Grace earlier today.

  “I’m sorry, Petey,” he says when I’ve choked to a conclusion. “Mrs. Zhilina was evil. The sad truth is that the world’s full of evil.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  He reaches across the table and takes my hand.

  “There was this guy I used to know who survived the concentration camp. Had a number tattooed on his arm, lost his whole family, everything bad you could imagine. He was married when I met him, had a couple of good kids and a nice business. He used to give talks at the temple on Yom Hashoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day. I asked him one time how he did it, how he could get up every day and live his life after all the evil he’d experienced. He asked
me how could he not? He was livin’ for his family and friends and neighbors who’d been murdered, and he wouldn’t let himself be defeated. He was a brave man.”

  “I hear you, Tigger, but I don’t know what to do.”

  “Rupert lent me an English copy of that book you found in Andrei’s apartment. The one by Tolstoy. There’s a sentence in it that kinda summed things up for me: ‘The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience.’ ”

  “Which means what?”

  “You went to Emily’s clinic with me. You met those people. We got no choice about what we’re gonna do.”

  Touring Emily’s clinic, I’d felt Jenna at my shoulder. The children were the most heartrending, listless and wasted. Tigger’s correct. There’s no way I can turn my back on them.

  “And what about Katya?”

  “I only have two things to say. You can’t blame her, and you can’t tell her what Mrs. Zhilina did. It wouldn’t be fair. Other than that, it has to be about how you feel. There’s nothin’ wrong if you want to be with her, and there’s nothin’ wrong if you don’t.”

  I remember walking Katya through the cemetery after the funeral for Andrei and Mrs. Zhilina, listening to her vent her sorrow and rage, holding her as she wept. A week later, I exercised my authority as Turndale’s controlling shareholder to order her back to work, telling her she was needed to see the company through the SEC investigation and reminding her of her responsibility to her shareholders and employees.

  “What would you do?” I ask Tigger.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says, shaking his head. “This isn’t about me or anybody else. It’s about what you feel.”

  I watch a couple of kids play Frisbee on the lawn at the center of the park, thinking about Tigger’s words. He glances at his watch.

  “You need to be somewhere?” I ask.

  “I’m supposed to meet Rachel at the hospital. She’s havin’ an ultrasound, and she invited me along to get a first look at my grandchild. Why don’t you come with? You can hang out in the waitin’ room and then have dinner with us after. She’d enjoy bringin’ you up to speed on our class action suit against Klein. She’s kickin’ their butts.”

  “No thanks. You go. I’m going to sit here for a while.”

  “You sure? I could go with Rachel another time.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll call you later,” he says, giving my shoulder a squeeze.

  The shadows lengthen as the sun sinks, the park slowly emptying. I plumb my heart, trying to understand how I feel. My phone rings.

  “It’s Katya,” she says, sounding exultant. “One of our lawyers just got a call at home from the SEC’s lead investigator. They’ve decided to hang everything on William and give the company a clean bill of health. The announcement will be made tomorrow morning, before the exchange opens. Our stock’s going to take off like a rocket.”

  “That’s terrific,” I reply automatically.

  “You in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to go out and celebrate. How about dinner at Le Bernardin?”

  A monarch butterfly touches down on a crocus by my knee, a lingering shaft of sunlight firing its orange-and-black wings like stained glass. It explores the flower briefly before launching itself skyward again, clearing the treetops and beating its way north, up Sixth Avenue.

  “Peter?” Katya says. “What do you think? Are you free?”

  “Yes,” I reply, watching the monarch disappear into the twilight. “I suppose I am.”

  Author’s Note

  SOME READERS MAY IMAGINE that my description of bad behavior in the financial community is a veiled jab at my former firm, Goldman Sachs Group. Nothing could be further from the truth. In an industry renowned for its bad behavior, Goldman is notable for consistently adhering to a higher standard. I can’t imagine a more ethical or meritocratic organization, and I’m very, very proud to be an alumnus.

  Acknowledgments

  A GREGARIOUS former colleague of mine at Goldman Sachs once told me that his notion of hell was having to work in a small room all by himself. There were any number of occasions during the writing of this novel when I sat alone in my office, plot snarled and characters recalcitrant, silently agreeing with him.

  Fortunately, I always seemed to get support when I needed it. My wife, Cynthia, was encouraging from my first mention of this project, and her confidence sustained me during several difficult periods. My brother, Terry, generously consented to be one of my first readers, and managed to tactfully highlight the myriad deficiencies of my initial efforts without ever discouraging me. When I felt ready for more experienced guidance, I hired four then graduate students from Columbia’s MFA program to work with me—Mike Harvkey, Jane Ratcliffe, Scott Wolven, and Jennie Yabroff. All were terrific. Mike had a felicitous interest in the darker elements of my plot and a knack for identifying where I’d gone wrong in a scene. Jane aggressively challenged me to know my characters better, insisting on greater self-awareness and clarity of motivation. Scott—whose criticism tended toward the philosophical—earned my eternal gratitude by insisting I purchase The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins and read the introduction by Elmore Leonard. I strongly recommend that any struggling writer reading these words do the same.

  All of which brings me to Jennie. Almost everything good in this book is there because she challenged me to write it. She served as critic, taskmaster, grammarian, therapist, and muse, and it’s no exaggeration to say that I never could have completed this project without her.

  When I thought the manuscript was finished—or, more precisely, when Jennie threatened to brain me with a copy if I didn’t stop tinkering with it—I gave it to select friends to read. Ashley Dartnell was kind enough to return her copy replete with scribbled insights that I drew on heavily in subsequent rewrites. Larry Kramer gave me a brisk professional rundown of what was working and what wasn’t and offered a wealth of tips on the process of getting published. The astute and knowledgeable Maria Campbell thoughtfully suggested a number of agents, eventually steering me to her good friend Kathy Robbins, of The Robbins Office.

  Kathy was a godsend. She’s the best imaginable agent, radiating a reassuring mixture of competence and moxie. She polished the rough edges of my manuscript with her trademark green pen and then led me by the hand through the bruising process of selecting—and being selected by—a publisher. David Halpern, Kate Rizzo, and Coralie Hunter also helped with matters great and small. I’d particularly like to express my gratitude to Rachelle Bergstein, who weighed in throughout the editing process with discerning observations.

  Lastly, I’m grateful to the people at Knopf. Peter Gethers and Claudia Herr, my editors, suggested any number of subtle cuts, adds, and changes that dramatically streamlined and enhanced the story, and Peter Mendelsund designed a fabulous jacket. I couldn’t have been happier with the process, or the result.

  To all the above, my sincerest thanks.

  An Excerpt from

  THE GARDEN OF BETRAYAL

  Coming soon from Alfred A. Knopf

  I WOKE EARLY and listened to Claire breathe. She had her back to me, but she didn’t sound like she was sleeping, so I rolled onto my side and used one hand to gently massage her neck and shoulders. Some mornings she ignored me, some mornings we made love, and some mornings she wept. After a few minutes of no response, I got up.

  Frank, the night doorman, had a taxi waiting by the time I got downstairs. He said good morning and solemnly handed me a few pieces of mail addressed to my son. It was a shock when I first received mail for Kyle about a year after he disappeared—a solicitation from a preteen magazine called Tiger Beat. He would have been thirteen at the time. I spent the day thinking about it and then knocked on the building super’s door. Tears in his eyes, he admitted that he’d been intercepting junk mail addressed to Kyle for the past twelve months and turned over a full
cardboard box. I made myself go through it—Reggie Kinnard, the detective working with us, had mentioned that the psychopaths who kidnap children will occasionally amuse themselves by sending the victim’s family mail. There wasn’t anything unusual in the box. A friendly representative of the Direct Marketing Association who I spoke to on the phone suggested I simply scrawl the word ‘deceased’ on everything and return it to the post office. Instead, I had the super continue intercepting it, so Claire and Kate wouldn’t see it, and arranged for Frank to pass it along. These days, it’s all solicitations for acne products and CD clubs and summer job programs and magazines like Maxim and Outside. The kind of stuff any nineteen-year-old might receive. The kind of stuff Kyle might actually be interested in, if he’s still alive somewhere.

  I stopped to pick up the papers at an all-night newsstand on Seventy-second Street and then went to work. There’s always someone at the office when I arrive, no matter the time—the hedge fund I rent space from trades twenty-four hours a day. There are only about sixty employees, but they occupy an entire floor of a midtown office building, the northern half of which is a single, large, unpartitioned trading room. One corner of the room is taken up by the fund’s namesake, a midnight blue 1966 Ford Shelby AC Cobra that sits on a low dais, halogen spotlights reflecting off its mirrorlike finish. The car had proved too large for the elevators, so Andrew Coleman, the fund’s founder, had arranged to have it hoisted by a crane, after workers cut a garage door–sized opening into the side of the building.

  When Andrew and his son Alex first suggested setting me up as an independent analyst five years ago, I was hesitant. My entire career had been on the sell side, peddling research on oil companies to clients of the investment bank I worked for. The notion of trying to market myself as a freelance energy pundit was intimidating. Two years out of the market and lacking the institutional connections that had made people want to talk to me, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to deliver anything of value. Save one or two old friends, I was right to think that my former sources would abandon me, but wrong to worry that it would matter. Cobra was the grand-daddy of the hedge-fund community, progenitor of multiple generations of firms that gossiped and fought and generally behaved like an extended family. Andrew and Alex made a few calls on my behalf and suddenly I had a dozen clients, all funds that Wall Street was desperate to do business with. These days, there isn’t a sell-side guy on the Street who won’t drop everything to answer my call.