Vanishing Point

by Morris West

  “Have you told Madeleine?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Have you told Mama?”

  “I don’t have to tell anything to your mother. She reads my mind.”

  “And what does she say?”

  “I’ll give it to you verbatim: ‘Your daughter and her children have to live with what Larry is and what he does. Keep your unhappy thoughts to yourself.’ She’s right, of course. She’s right most of the time. But you’re different.”

  “How different?”

  “You’re a huntsman now, trying to raise a fox. Just be warned: You may raise a wolf instead.”

  2

  DR. ALMA LEVY WAS WHAT MY elders used to call “an impressive woman.” She reminded me instantly of the Raphael study for the muse Erato, which I had seen years ago in Vienna. There was the same aquiline nose, the same opulent mouth, the strong thrusting jaw. Her black hair was streaked with gray. Her eyes were dark. Her skin was swarthy but smooth as fine leather. I judged her to be somewhere in her early fifties, and I was struck both by the unconscious arrogance and the repose of her demeanor. She might have been a desert princess who had consented to sit for a portrait while she made her own critical study of the painter.

  Madeleine, who had made the appointment for me, had also given me a warning: “She can be intimidating. She refuses to waste time fencing. If you’re not frank with her, she’ll break off the interview.”

  So I came to Dr. Levy with a whole list of prepared questions. Much to my surprise she began by questioning me.

  “Suppose you do find Larry Lucas. What will you do?”

  “To be quite frank, Doctor, I’m damned if I know!”

  For the first time her eyes lit up and a faint smile twitched at the corners of her mouth.

  “Do you think you are qualified to deal with him on any level?”

  “No.”

  “But you have assumed that responsibility?”

  “That’s not quite correct. I’ve undertaken to search for him. I’ll have no hesitation in asking for whatever help I need. I am funded to pay for it.”

  “How well do you know Larry?”

  “Come to think of it, not very well. I was already on my way out of the firm when he came into it. His courtship of my sister began after I had left for Europe.”

  “How did you feel about his presence in the company and in the family?”

  “I was happy on both counts. It seemed to solve a problem for my father. Larry was an asset to the organization. Madeleine was happy. For myself, I had everything I wanted: a reasonable income and the freedom to pursue my own career. Until I was summoned back to New York, I had no knowledge of Larry’s ailment. All I know now is what Madi explained to me yesterday.”

  “You may rely on her explanation. She is intelligent and instructed, but, to put it bluntly, you yourself are not competent to give Larry any help.”

  “I agree. All I am really able to do is pick up his tracks, using the Strassberger networks and my own personal contacts in a different world altogether. Even if I find him, I can’t dictate what he does with his life.”

  “After we have finished here, what will you do?”

  “I’ll talk to my father’s investigators and try to follow what the newspapers call the money trail, but you must know better than I that I am chasing a phantom. I asked my sister what sort of a profile she could give me on her husband. She told me I was looking for a great actor who could assume any one of a dozen roles. She also told me, by the way, that she had for a long time come to terms with the possibility of Larry’s suicide. I’d like to know whether you have any comments on that.”

  There was another long silence. She raised her hands from the table, putting her fingertips together and touching them to her lips. She seemed to be staring not at me but at some far point on the horizon. When at last she spoke, there was a tone of gentleness in her voice.

  “I have given a lot of thought over the years, Mr. Strassberger, to what are called professional ethics, particularly as they touch the privacy of the patient. Sometimes there is a clear conflict between the patient’s relative right to privacy and his absolute need of help. I am not talking here in legal terms but in moral ones. I am a healer. I find still that the best guide for me is a line from the Hippocratic oath ‘never to do harm or injury.’ I agree with the family’s decision to exclude the police—for the moment at least. Before you came this morning I knew that I would have to decide on the risks of any communication I made to you. I had to gauge whether you could, now or later, use that information to harm my patient.”

  “And what have you decided, Doctor?”

  “For my patient’s sake, I have to trust you.”

  “Thank you for your confidence.”

  “I have little confidence in human nature, Mr. Strassberger. I see too many of its frailties. I’m betting on you because you were prepared to confess both ignorance and incompetence. What do you think you need from me?”

  “An opinion first. Do you believe your patient is alive or dead?”

  “I believe he is alive. I can’t guarantee it.”

  “If he is alive, what role would you guess he is playing?”

  Her answer came back sharp as a whiplash.

  “The nearest he can get to yours, Mr. Strassberger.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One of the recurrent themes in my sessions with Larry was what he called ‘bond service.’ In periods of self-disgust, he felt enslaved, chained by circumstances in his education, by his ailment itself, and by his own talent, to the job and the family he had chosen. Worst of all, his chains were his salvation. He needed the order and the discipline they imposed. They were, in a fashion, the substitute for the parents he had lost. You, on the other hand, had escaped. You had thrown off the bonds and been rewarded for doing it. He saw you sometimes with resentment but generally with reluctant admiration as the miracle escapee from Devil’s Island. He despised himself as an animal which could only survive in captivity. The greater his self-contempt, the stronger the urge to flee from the self.”

  “By hiding behind a fictitious identity?”

  “By any means available.”

  “How many lives can he live, for God’s sake?”

  “I would guess quite a lot. Your sister estimates his disposable worth at something like five or six million dollars.”

  “He could have himself quite a party with that sort of money.”

  “Unless he chose to make some wild gesture of renunciation and throw it all to the winds.”

  “He knows too much about the money game to strip himself naked like—like an Indian fakir or Francis of Assisi.”

  “I am trying to tell you”—Dr. Levy was grave but surprisingly patient—“that even I would not dare to predict the extremes of manic-depressive behavior. Once you accept that suicide is a possible outcome, you’re left with a big grab-bag of other choices—and all of them will be highly reasoned in the frames of their own distorted logic. The mountain peaks of mania are dizzy ecstatic places, over which the patient, in his illusion, soars like an eagle. The valleys into which he plunges afterward are deep, dark, and noisome with the stink of carrion. He cannot claw his way out because the walls are too steep and too smooth. The horror of that situation is so intense that reason rocks with the pain of it. It is like being manacled to a corpse. The only salvation is in oblivion.”

  “It sounds like a foretaste of hell.”

  “It is hell, Mr. Strassberger, and the torment is increased because most patients cannot find words to express it. You will understand, of course, that I am describing extreme symptoms. You must understand also that the disease—and it is a disease—is by nature cyclical and progressive. It is also, in a certain sense, infectious because everyone who has any relationship with the patient is touched by it in some fashion.”

  “Madeleine put it another way. She said there are times when you run out of love.”

  “Your sister’s a wise woman. She a
lso has great courage.”

  “I hesitate to ask this next question, but I have to guess the company Larry may seek out in his exile. What happens to his sex life?”

  “In general, the libido is seriously diminished in the depressive phases. On the manic swings it is increased and may assume aggressive forms.”

  “Aggressive in what sense?”

  “At one end of the scale, very assertive demonstrations of desire and potency; at the other, resentful violence.”

  “Madeleine told me Larry had never been violent with her or the children. She did admit to witnessing violent outbursts.”

  “Then you should content yourself with that and spare her further questions.” It was a clear warning and I accepted it. Alma Levy went on more mildly. “However, on the larger issue of what company Larry may seek out, consider that he has to create a charmed circle within which his new identity will not be challenged. He will, therefore, avoid long-term intimacies and seek the kind of society in which he can assume, like a chameleon, a protective coloration. He will avoid places and events where a chance encounter or photograph may betray him.”

  “Do you think he’s thought through all these risks?”

  “Yes. That’s what troubles me: the element of premeditation.”

  “Why does it trouble you?”

  This time I was warned very firmly.

  “I don’t think I’m prepared to discuss that at this moment. It could involve speculation damaging to my patient.”

  “Then you should know, Doctor, that other people have begun to speculate.”

  She was instantly alert and hostile.

  “What other people? What are they saying?”

  “My father, who has worked very closely with Larry, has expressed a fear that he could step over the edge of acceptable social behavior and that, quote, I could find myself chasing a rogue.”

  Doctor Alma Levy sat in silence, considering this proposition. Her eyes were hooded and her mouth was closed like a trap. It seemed a long time before she acknowledged my presence again. Her next words were chosen with meticulous care:

  “We are talking here of survival, Mr. Strassberger, survival at the extremity of suffering. The condition of the patient is like that of a victim in a torture chamber. There is no hope of escape. The only hope is that the torturers will tire or that you will die before too long. In this situation there is no morality. No judgment can be passed on what the victim may say or do to win a moment’s relief from torment. In that sense your father is right. In another he is quite wrong, because he is passing judgment on a person whose suffering he cannot share and can never, never understand. So, yes! You may find yourself pursuing a rogue, but you must not presume to sit in judgment on him! The kindest thing you can do is bring him back to me as quickly as possible. I am still his physician. He needs my care.”

  “I believe you, Doctor, but forgive me if I press the point: My father is a shrewd man; he is not a malicious one. His daughter and his grandchildren are involved here. He expressed himself to me in much more serious terms. That suggested, rightly or wrongly, a more active, more hostile situation.”

  The silence this time was longer; the words, when they came, were less eloquent and more hesitant.

  “Mr. Strassberger, please try to understand something. I have certain skills in my profession, but I am not God. I cannot draw you a chart of every human psyche. I walk with every one of my patients through dark and tortuous places. Every new interview brings new perils.

  “You talk about hostility. That’s a word that covers a whole gamut of attitudes. In the case of the depressive the hostility is directed first against the self, but it is expressed against others…sometimes, I regret to say, with tragic results. But this transference is a fact of daily life. The most normal of us understand the ‘why me?’ reaction when tragedy or disease strikes in our lives. If and when you meet Larry Lucas again, will he be hostile to you? Probably. You will have torn off whatever carnival mask he is wearing. Then again, he may be grateful that the whole charade is ended and that his family has cared enough to mount a search for him and coax him back to a more normal existence.

  “Depressive illness can be palliated, if not cured. What can I tell you? Sometimes people do shoot the messenger. Sometimes they even try to kill the healer. I hope you are understanding me, Mr. Strassberger, because there isn’t too much more I can tell you—unless you want to listen to an hour of clinical jargon.”

  Suddenly I was seeing not an arrogant professional but a weary, middle-aged woman carrying the burden of too many muddled lives. The interview was ended. It was twenty minutes past midday, but I felt I should take my leave with something better than a good-bye and a thank you. I asked, hesitantly, whether I might have the privilege of taking her to lunch. She smiled for the first time.

  “It’s very kind of you, Mr. Strassberger; but whenever the weather’s good enough I like to spend my lunch hour in Central Park. I watch the children and envy the lovers and feed the scraps of my sandwiches to the ducks. You’d be bored to tears.”

  “On the contrary, I’d be honored. I’ll buy my own sandwich and I promise not to talk about your business or Strassberger.”

  “On the other hand, I’d be interested to hear how you live your life.”

  And that was how I spent my own private, unpaid session with Dr. Alma Levy. We sat on the grass, ate sandwiches, drank lemonade from paper cups, and never once talked of the demons who haunted her life. I did a sketch of her on a cardboard box lid which I picked out of a trash can. She commanded me to keep in touch with her and promised, on my return, to cook dinner for me in her apartment. When I left her at the door of her office she laid a fleeting hand on my cheek and offered something that sounded like a blessing.

  “Thank you for my portrait. This has been one of the few hours when I have regretted that I am not twenty years younger. God has been good to you, Carl Emil. Be sure you are gentle with my patient.”

  * * *

  At two-thirty in the afternoon I was given a completely different portrait of Larry Lucas. It was displayed to me on a large computer screen in a conference room in the offices of an organization called Corsec Inc. on Madison Avenue. The man who interpreted it to me was named Giorgiu Andrescu—George for short. He was somewhere in his early twenties, dressed in faded jeans, scuffed loafers, and a tired-looking plaid shirt. He peered at me through thick pebble spectacles. He looked like a very scruffy student, but his tone was that of a faintly patronizing lecturer dealing with a dull pupil.

  “Corsec is of course an acronym for corporate security, and we are among the front-runners in the field. We have our own intercontinental networks of surveillance and information. We protect them against hackers with the most sophisticated fire walls available. Strassberger and Company is one of our most valued clients, and I am their account executive. You can contact me on-line through any of our offices around the world. The Lucas file will be updated with any information you send us, while at the same time we can extend our inquiries in any new direction you may indicate.”

  Without comment he punched up on the screen a number of information items: a series of photographs of Larry, specimens of his signature, and a basic biography up to the day of his disappearance.

  “By the use of reimaging techniques we can show you what Lucas would look like with a beard, with spectacles, with his head shaved and so on. Lucas’s wife and Mr. Strassberger senior have both checked the biographical details and pronounced them accurate. Do you have any comments on them, Mr. Strassberger?”

  The only comment, which I forbore to make, was that Larry Lucas was a handsome devil who could turn the heads of most women in a restaurant. If there was misery inside him, it didn’t show in his eyes, and there was a quirky grin lurking at the corners of his upturned mouth. A good companion, you would have said, for work or play; I could understand my father’s puritan impulse to take him down a peg.

  Andrescu then punched up a recall of Larry’s care
er with Strassberger. Again it was a no-comment routine. The records of the internal audit of his activities in Europe were summarized, with an indication that the auditors were prepared to sign off without qualification. Giorgiu Andrescu, however, had a few qualifications of his own.

  “You have to understand, Mr. Strassberger, that we have been greatly handicapped in our inquiries by the fact that Lucas is still an active director, and no mention has been made of his disappearance. That’s an absolute impediment to any further work on our part. It prevents us from seeking any information from office staff or Strassberger clients.”

  “I see the difficulty, of course. We may well have to go public in the end. But let’s not rush that decision.”

  “Of course!” Andrescu the good account executive was in instant agreement. “And our fire-wall system is designed specifically to prevent such leaks.”

  He punched up frame after frame of information—bank records, summaries of legal meetings, credit card statements—explaining each group of items as it came on screen. He summed up wearily. “The guy’s an open book. Even his engagement diary checks out. Everything relates to the job he came to do. The IRS would give him a medal for meritorious conduct. Financially he’s virgin clean.”

  “Did he play at all?”

  “If he did, it was a long way from the office. But think about it! He spent only four and a half days a week in Paris. Given the size of the job he had to do, he didn’t get much playtime.”

  “No office romances?”

  “None we’ve heard about.”

  “After hours?”

  “He jogged every morning from six to seven and generally had breakfast with one or another of his opposite numbers in the negotiating team. At the end of the day he’d work out at the Apollon Health Club near Strassberger’s office. I tell you, Mr. Strassberger, this guy was a good soldier. He kept himself in trim—and, so far as our information goes, kept his hormones under control.”

  “And he spent all his time in Paris?”

  “Most of it. Let’s take a look at travel. Here we are. There were regular trips to London to confer with British attorneys. Most of those were day trips: out early morning, back in time for dinner. There were, let’s see, four trips to Geneva, all except one of those was a same-day return. That’s where Dr. Hubert Rubens pops into the record. The appointments were made in each case by Claudine Parmentier, who was—I guess still is, technically—Lucas’s secretary in Paris. They’re recorded in Lucas’s diary and hers, but they were charged to him and not to the company; that was established in the office audit.”