Текст книги "A Fatal Debt"

Автор книги: John Gapper

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Back at ground level, Hodge pulled aside the metal elevator door and watched me as I walked back to my car. My fingers were shaking as I tried to put the key in the ignition, and I managed it only at the third attempt.

10

Duncan’s assistants were buried in their work when I obeyed her summons to her office two days later, as if they’d been stuck in that position since I’d last seen them. The clicking of keyboards was interrupted briefly by one of them opening a can of Coke Zero with a hiss while the other waved me to a chair to wait.

My feelings about her, never warm, had worsened since Greene’s death. If she hadn’t interfered, if she’d left me to treat Harry, I could have averted this disaster. I’d have kept him in York East until the drugs had started to work and he was less dangerous. He’d fooled me about the person he’d intended to kill-I’d believed it was himself and not Greene-but I’d known he was dangerous and we ought not to risk freeing him in that condition. Although I was angry at the way he’d blamed the whole thing on the drugs and his condition, it would carry weight with a judge. He’d been my patient and I hadn’t done my duty.

After my ten-minute quarantine was up, Duncan once again peered around the door and ushered me into her room.

“Well,” she said, offering me a tight grimace as she stood and looked at me, “this is a mess, isn’t it?”

Her expression was a cocktail-one measure of sympathy to three measures of iron determination that if anyone at Episcopal ended up suffering as a result of Greene’s death, it wouldn’t be her.

“It’s very unfortunate. I-”

“I’ve had a call from the insurers,” she said, cutting me off and walking to a window. “They’re expecting a lawsuit, of course. There’s always one of those.”

I tensed for the worst. “Who’s going to sue?”

“The victim’s family. Maybe the Shapiros. Wrongful death, malpractice. There’s a range of possibilities.” She paused briefly. “This has been very upsetting. Nora is my friend and I can only imagine what she’s suffering, but I must put my own feelings aside.”

I didn’t imagine she’d find that too difficult-they would fit comfortably into a small box. Anyway, what about my feelings?I thought. She didn’t seem bothered about them. She strode back and sat opposite me on the sofa.

“You’ll get your own lawyer-our insurer will pay for it. They’re not expecting a civil suit until the criminal case is settled, but you’ll need to be prepared. Have you been through this kind of thing before?”

“Nothing like this.”

A couple of patients had launched halfhearted malpractice suits against me-those were impossible to avoid in New York-but they had not bothered me too much. The cases were weak and the hospital’s lawyer had hardly broken a sweat as he’d swatted them away. They’d mainly been legal therapy for troubled souls.

“There is one question I must ask,” she said. “Did Mr. Shapiro give any indication of homicidal intent? I’ve looked over the notes, but there’s not much there.”

That could have been a neutral observation, but she managed to make it sound like an allegation of professional misconduct.

“I admitted him because I believed he was a danger to self,” I said carefully. “That was why Mrs. Shapiro brought him to the hospital, as you know. There were no indications that he was a danger to others.”

“That’s good. I’m sorry to ask, but I must be clear. There are some aspects of the case that I don’t feel fully informed about.” She reached forward to brush a piece of fluff from her skirt. “Nonetheless, I want you to know we’re right behind you. You’ve got our full support.”

I didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. What was this about me needing to be prepared and Episcopal being behind me? Surely it should be right beside me, or out in front, given her involvement. I decided I couldn’t simply sit there passively and allow her to evade responsibility.

“I hope this case won’t affect the hospital too much. You mentioned that Mrs. Shapiro was considering making a large donation to the hospital. To build the new cancer wing, you said.”

My reminder of how she had pushed me into obeying Harry made her blink a couple of times, like a computer pausing to absorb data. She regarded me impassively, as if from a long distance.

“I don’t recall that,” she said.

The brazenness of the lie shocked me-she didn’t appear at all embarrassed by it. It was as if she’d managed to rewrite the past so quickly and so neatly in her mind that there was no memory left. Professionally, I would have called it adaptive, the ability to suppress threatening reality.

“But we talked about-”

“What I remember,” she cut in, “is that Nora spoke to me as a friend about her husband’s distress, and we discussed it. At no time did I instruct you, or place you under pressure, to discharge Mr. Shapiro. In fact, I specifically emphasized that it was a matter of medical judgment, for you alone to decide.”

We gazed at each other for a few seconds and I saw nothing but cold determination in those gray eyes. Fuck you, I thought. That’s why you got me up here so fast. Not to reassure me or stand behind me, but to force this false version of the past on me and to wriggle out of responsibility.

“That’s not how I remember it,” I said.

She stared at me and the room temperature seemed to drop several degrees. She spoke slowly, as if she’d rehearsed what she had to say. “I’ve gone back over the events since then, and I’m confident I acted correctly. I’m sure that once you’ve had a chance to reflect, you’ll realize that’s true. You wouldn’t want to place any wild accusations on record, I’m sure, Dr. Cowper. That wouldn’t help your career.”

Her threat was as blatant as her original lie, and I had to struggle not to lose my temper. “I wouldn’t say anything untrue about Mr. Shapiro’s case. I’d tell the truth.”

Duncan opened her mouth as if about to say something more but seemed to have second thoughts. Instead, she leaned back and breathed out, deciding not to take the confrontation any further. She’d let me know how tough she was prepared to get. Instead, she rose and walked back to her desk, resting the fingers of both hands stiffly on the surface.

“Don’t be upset about this, Dr. Cowper,” she said, as if it were my intemperate nature rather than her lie that had caused the trouble. “The insurers will be in touch and hopefully it won’t get to court. We have a strong defense.”

“Yes, Mrs. Duncan,” I said, getting up. I wondered whether we were supposed to shake hands, but she didn’t make a move in my direction. After a couple of seconds, I retreated to the door in confusion.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, gazing at a file on her desk rather than at me and reaching for her phone. On the way out I passed her two assistants still rooted to their spots, unwilling to look up.

There was a plop as Felix drew the cork on a bottle of red wine. He poured out two glasses, then took one and rolled the wine around before taking a gulp.

“It’s a 2005 Pomerol. Not a great year, but good enough for pizza. A purist would insist on beer, but I’m not one of those. I brought two bottles because I reckon we deserve it. Cheers,” he said.

We were in my kitchen and I was putting out plates, knives, and forks on the table for the food Felix had brought. He’d called earlier in the day to suggest that we meet, and I’d told myself it was important to find out more about Greene’s death. But as the day had worn on, and I’d straphanged my way back home from the hospital on the 6 train, I’d realized I also wanted his company. Most people at Episcopal had stopped talking to me except for a few pleasantries, out of embarrassment or suspicion, and Rebecca had left me at precisely the moment that I turned out to need her. The people who had talked to me at length-Harry, Pagonis, and Duncan-had all made me feel worse than before.

“Oh, good, cutlery. I knew this was a civilized joint,” he said, squeezing along the banquette. “I amglad I came. Not that it wouldn’t be a pleasure to see you anyway, Ben, but my wife’s tired of all the furor and taken the kids off to visit their grandparents, so I’m on my lonesome.”

“I’m glad. Thanks for all this,” I said as I lifted slices of pizza onto his plate. “How are you doing?”

It wasn’t an idle question. Felix was looking wearier than when I’d last encountered him on the Gulfstream. His face was pasty and his hair needed a trim. He sighed and picked up a fork, with which he speared a slice of pizza. He got it most of the way to his mouth before lowering it to speak.

“You know what? I’d say I was keeping my head above water. The place is in chaos, the last two chief executives having been taken out in one go, and I spend my working days going to meetings with lawyers. What is wrong with this country that you need an entire legal team even if you’re only a witness? When I drag myself home at the end of the day, I get bombarded with calls from journalists.”

“So what didyou witness, Felix?” I asked.

He looked at me, munching the pizza, as if I were being tactlessly direct, but I didn’t care anymore-I didn’t have the energy for small talk. He had a smear of tomato sauce on his upper lip, and for an uncomfortable moment the red reminded me of the blood spilling out from Greene’s body in the crime scene photo.

“Not a nice memory, I’ve got to say. Nora called me that afternoon. She was pretty distressed, said Harry had given her the slip somehow and she needed help to find him. He’d vanished from their apartment a couple of hours before. She had visions that he’d topped himself. We almost called you, in fact.”

“I wish you had.”

“It was about five o’clock. We tried Harry’s mobile and the house. Nothing. Finally, at eight, he called from East Hampton. Nora answered. It was dreadful.” Felix closed his eyes and shuddered as he recalled the moment. “Utter fucking mess. I drove her out myself. I didn’t want her to face it alone. When we arrived, there were cops swarming the place. They’d taken Harry away from there already. Nora was hysterical, kept saying it was all her fault-you’d warned her.”

“That sounds terrible.” It did, but there was one consolation. Nora obviously knew that she should have listened to me and was prepared to acknowledge it openly. I hoped she might protect me a little-I needed it.

Felix put some pizza in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully for a minute or two. “It was. So how’s it going at the hospital? I imagine they’re shit scared about the whole thing, aren’t they? I hope they’re supportive.”

“Not exactly.”

“That bad?” He winced, then pushed his plate aside and poured more wine into our glasses.

“I discharged him. My signature’s on the release and no one else wants to share the blame. I only hope it doesn’t get to court.”

He shrugged and raised his eyebrows, indicating that I was out of luck. “I don’t think you should count on that. Put it this way: I think Marcus married Margaret because she was the only person on earth who scared him.”

“I’m screwed, then,” I said gloomily, taking a glug of my wine.

“There’s always Nora. Maybe she could prevail on Margaret. The Wall Street wives’ club. Even if her membership’s expired.”

He glanced at me, not sure whether he’d gone too far, but then we both snorted with laughter, like children sharing a joke out of adult earshot. I stood up and we walked to the living room, where he lounged in an armchair with his shoes off. There was a hole in one of his socks, through which a toe poked.

“Why do you think Harry did it?” I asked. “He didn’t tell me much in Riverhead, just that the bank was going to take the Gulfstream away. I suppose that felt like punishment, but all the same, shooting the messenger was extreme.”

Felix looked into his wineglass as if he might be able to read the sediment like a fortune-teller. “One thing I’ll say about Harry, Ben. You’ve only known him since he’s been ill, but he’s a delicate soul. He’s always felt like an outsider to Wall Street, not part of the club. When he was pushed out, he imagined that everyone was laughing at him.”

He seemed to have a talent as a psych. That might have been what had made Harry flip, I thought-the feeling of being dispossessed by the man who had taken over his bank. It made as much sense as anything in this affair.

“Marcus could be pretty tough when he wanted to be,” he went on. “Maybe he said something that got under Harry’s skin-the guy wasn’t stable.”

I knew as he said it that he didn’t mean any harm, but it made me throw my hands in the air with despair. “God, if anyone else says that to me, I think I’ll scream out loud. I knowhe wasn’t stable. I shouldn’t have discharged him.”

Felix winced. “I’m sorry-ought to have been more sensitive.”

I gave myself a moment to breathe. “Forget it, I’m on edge.”

“I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t miss him. You can watch him in action if you want. They made Harry and Marcus give evidence together to the Senate last year. There’s a video up on C-SPAN still. That’ll give you the idea.”

Felix left after midnight, when we’d drained both of the Pomerols and half a bottle of whiskey I’d found in a cupboard. I didn’t sleep well, turning back and forth under the duvet as I passed in and out of consciousness. I got up to take an Ambien, hoping it would knock me out, but it only pushed me into a disturbed sleep.

I dreamed of driving down the lane to the Shapiros’ house and turning up the drive at night. The front door was open and I walked into the house from a side I’d never been. The carpet was soft under my bare feet after the pebbled drive. The living room was dark, only a dim light coming from the ocean. Harry was sitting on the living room sofa in a blue gown, with head bowed. As I entered, he looked up. Blood poured down his face from an open wound and he stared at me fiercely, his eyes burning as they had in the ER. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. He’s trying to tell me something. I need to get closer, I thought, but my feet wouldn’t grip the wooden floor.

I woke up sweating from the dream and the alcohol. It was three a.m. and I sat up in bed, my arms around my knees. I have to protect myself-I can’t let them sacrifice me, I thought. I reached for the phone and dialed.

“Dad, it’s me,” I said when he answered.

“You’re up late. Is everything okay?” replied his smooth baritone. I heard Jane’s voice in the background. “It’s Ben,” he told her. “Hold on, I’ll take it in the other room.”

After thirty seconds, he picked up the phone in his study. “Hey, Benny, we’re just having breakfast. You rushed off the other day. What’s up?”

“I’m in trouble, Dad,” I said, my voice starting to shake. “A patient killed someone and it’s being blamed on me. I couldn’t have stopped it. It wasn’t my fault.”

I felt myself babbling with exhaustion and stress, triggered by the sound of his voice and my nighttime loneliness.

“Whoa, slow down. I’m sure it wasn’t, but take it from the top.”

I told him the whole story. It took twenty minutes, and he interrupted occasionally to ask me a question, but he listened. Just talking to him made me feel overwhelmingly grateful to have someone on my side.

“Hmm,” he said at the end. “Listen, I’ve got a friend over there who’ll be able to help you, but you must promise me something. It’s important.”

“Yes, Dad,” I said, a child again.

“Don’t talk to the hospital or the insurers or the police until you’ve spoken to him. And don’t go visiting any more prisons. You need a lawyer.”

11

In New York City, the Shapiros lived in a tower on Central Park West near Columbus Circle that had been built in retro-classic Manhattan style, all limestone and marble. It had become famous for the bankers and hedge fund managers who’d bought apartments there just before the crash. The address was a symbol of the city’s new wealth, and magazines recorded each $30 million apartment sale in awed detail.

I’d called to arrange a time to see her, and she’d sounded grateful to hear from me. Despite my father’s warning about not talking to anyone, she was-or had been-the wife of my patient and I owed it to her. Besides, I wanted to find out what had gone wrong. She’d kept one gun away from Harry, as I’d insisted to her, but he had slipped away from her and found another one to kill Greene. I still sympathized with her, but what she’d told Felix was true. She should have listened to me and not her husband.

Dusk was falling when I arrived, making the Mercedes sedans and BMWs in the courtyard glow. Everything was polished and shiny, down to the buttons on the coats of the doormen inside who scanned all visitors. After one of them had called upstairs to announce my arrival, another pointed toward the elevator to the thirty-seventh floor. The elevator gave onto a private lobby with a large oak door, which was opened by Anna. She was barefoot and wearing a blue flowered dress, and she gave me a small, pained smile.

“Dr. Cowper?” said a voice from somewhere inside the apartment. Then Nora emerged from a room and walked up to us. Anna stepped a few paces back, ceding her position, and paused briefly before turning away.

“Call me,” she mouthed silently.

I’d hardly had time to register that before Nora kissed me on the cheek again-her flesh cooler than it had felt in East Hampton-and stood back in acknowledgment. She wore gray pants and a cream blouse, and she looked pale and fragile, like a widow in mourning.

“It’s good to see you, Doctor,” she said, her voice wavering.

“And you, Mrs. Shapiro. I’m sorry about everything that’s happened. It must have been very difficult.”

“It has been,” she said simply. I wondered if she was going to cry, but she recovered and gestured for me to follow her inside.

The apartment was grand and high-ceilinged and seemed to recede through endless rooms like a manor house. It was flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows through which I saw the sun casting a glow along Central Park South, its line of hotels and apartment blocks bordering the green block of Central Park. Nora led me to a walnut-paneled study with walls that displayed a mosaic of modern paintings. I saw a Jasper Johns and a Warhol-like lithograph that I couldn’t place. A large photograph hanging over the black marble fireplace dominated the room: a Marlboro cowboy galloping against a vast and cloudy sky.

“It’s a Richard Prince. I bought it for Harry,” Nora said, seeing me look at it.

“It’s great,” I said politely.

“I don’t know what Harry thinks. He was shocked at what I paid.”

“You’re the collector?”

“My mother was a sculptor and I picked up the habit from her, although I couldn’t afford to buy much before I met Harry,” she said. She was sitting on a sofa with the Prince behind her, a shadow cast on her face, and she smiled for the first time. She seemed to want to talk.

“How long have you two been married?”

“Ten years in June. June ninth. Not how I expected to spend our anniversary.”

“How did you meet?”

Nora smiled. “Harry’s first marriage had broken up. He’d waited a long time to end it. They’d been college sweethearts and he’d never been happy. That’s what he told me.” She laughed faintly.

“Perhaps it was true.”

“Maybe. I was kind of a mess then-nothing was working out. I was in my early thirties, no kids, no relationship, a job I hated. A friend invited me to a party in the Hamptons, and I ended up chatting to this twelve-year-old boy in a back room. It was Harry’s son, Charlie. He’s at Harvard now. Harry was a guilty father, grateful that I’d entertained his son. He latched on to me. He’d been married for so long, he had no idea how to talk to women.”

“You liked him, though?”

“I did. I was seeing this guy in his twenties and Harry was such an adultcompared to him. On our second date, Harry said he wanted to marry me. I was living in this tiny apartment on the Upper West Side. He came over once and refused to come back. He booked a suite at the Pierre and moved me there instead.” She laughed at the extravagance. “My boyfriend was young and he was like, ‘I want to be an artist, but I’m not sure. I love you, but I’m not sure.’ Harry never had second thoughts. He liked seeing you the other day, by the way,” she said.

I’ll bet he did, I thought, but I tried not to let my resentment show. “He seemed to be bearing up well.”

The fragile look came back to her face and she turned away from me to examine a steel sculpture on a side table. She brushed a tear away with one finger.

“He’s happier with something to work on-his defense, I mean. That’s what I wanted to talk about. We’ve talked to the lawyers and they think he has a strong defense. He wasn’t thinking clearly, that’s obvious to anyone. He was in a bad way, and seeing Marcus was too much. Poor Marcus.”

Poor Nora, poor Harry, poor Marcus. What about poor Ben?I thought. I liked Nora and felt for her, but I suspected that she wouldn’t be any more use to me than Harry or Duncan when it came to it. Her first loyalty was to her husband, and I was Harry’s alibi for killing Greene, his best hope of evading life in jail. I’d let him out of the hospital, and as Pagonis had observed, it had been very convenient. If it came to a choice between Harry and me, I knew she wouldn’t hesitate. Love would triumph over sympathy.

“I spoke to the detectives. They told me Mr. Shapiro left without you knowing. How did he manage that?”

It was a blunt question, and I meant it that way. I wanted to shock her into acknowledging her failure to heed my warnings. It had the intended effect, for she paled.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Cowper. You told me to keep an eye on him. I know you did. I was in the kitchen and Harry was taking a nap. I heard the phone and him answering, then nothing. When I went to check on him twenty minutes later, he’d gone.”

“So Ms.…” I hesitated, not wanting to sound intimate but realizing as I started on the sentence that I didn’t know her second name. “Anna. She didn’t see him leave?”

“She was with a friend in East Hampton. I wish she’d been here-things would have been different. Anna wouldn’t have let it happen, I know she wouldn’t.” She looked at me sadly, but I wasn’t ready to let her off that easily.

“You called Mr. Lustgarten?”

“He came over, but we couldn’t find Harry. The men downstairs said the car was gone from the garage. They’ve got a way of knowing. It was evening before he called. It was terrible. I still don’t understand where Harry got that gun from. You told me to lock up the Beretta and I did that. It’s still in my safe in East Hampton. He got hold of another somehow, I don’t know who from.”

Who from, I noticed she’d said. Not where from. I wondered if she was telling the whole truth or if she had more of an idea than she’d admitted. Sometimes in therapy, a single word is a clue to what the patient is hiding.

Nora looked at me penitently. “Dr. Cowper. Ben. I want you to know how sorry I am that I didn’t take your advice in the hospital. I’ve thought about that a lot since then, and I’ll always regret it. If I can do anything to make it up to you, I will.”

They were only words, but after the aggression and blame that I’d faced over the previous few days, they meant something to me. She sounded genuinely mortified by her blunder.

“There is one thing,” I said, not wanting to miss the opportunity. “You know Sarah Duncan, don’t you? She told me you’re friends.”

She looked anxious. “She scares me, to tell you the truth. I tried to leave the board once, but she wouldn’t let me. I guess she saw Harry’s money leaving, too. She took me out to lunch and forced me to stay.”

I smiled at that-I could imagine the scene in some Upper East Side restaurant and how implacable Duncan must have been.

“It’s very important for me that the hospital supports me. If there’s anything you can do to persuade her, I’d be grateful,” I said.

Nora’s face lightened as I said it, as if she welcomed the chance to expiate her guilt. “Of course. She has to do that. It’s only right.”

She walked me out of the apartment to the elevator, and on the way, I glanced into their kitchen in the hope of spotting Anna again. The room was empty. She was somewhere else, deep inside.

Harry sat at a green baize-covered table, his face rigid, his right hand clamped stiffly over his left. In front of him, a scrum of photographers-some standing, others crouching, and two leaning forward so that the tips of their lenses were a couple of feet from his nose-was clicking away, sounding like a swarm of cicadas. Harry looked as if he were only just restraining himself from punching one of them.

He was in banker’s garb, which I hadn’t seen him wearing before-black suit, white shirt with a button-down collar, and a red tie with a pattern it was hard to make out on my computer screen. I’d located the recording of the Senate hearing, as Felix had said, in the C-SPAN archive. It had taken place the previous fall, just after Seligman had been rescued and Harry had resigned. I sat alone that night, searching the past for what had driven Harry to murder.

The man to Harry’s right on the screen was at ease. He was tall-or looked as if he would be standing up-and trim. His brown hair was so neat that it looked molded, like that on a Ken doll. He had pale, clear skin and a strong jaw with a cleft in his chin. The snappers were mauling him, too, but he didn’t look stressed. His bearing suggested that he was sure everything would work out fine for him. He leaned forward and minutely adjusted the card in front of him: MARCUS GREENE. I hardly recognized him alive.

The snappers hurried back to crouch in front of a curved table on a dais at which the twenty senators sat. The room was vast and ceremonial, richly paneled in mahogany and marble, and above the dais was a spatchcocked eagle and the American flag. Pasty-faced staffers in boxy suits who looked light– and sleep-deprived were passing through a brass-engraved door beneath the eagle. The chairman looked unhealthy-plump and rumpled, with thick white hair, jowls, and a pug nose-but he exuded satisfaction at being the center of attention, as if this moment were enough to repay his slog to seniority. He rapped his gavel.

“I will remind everyone that this is a hearing, so we will not have any disruptions, no matter what they feel,” he said croakily. “Believe me, I feel as strongly as anyone here about curbing the excesses we’ve witnessed on Wall Street. We will ask the Treasury secretary about that later, but our first panel has many questions to answer. I urge them to talk openly, not to attempt to hoodwink the American people.”

The camera cut to Harry and Greene and showed the lawyers and officials arrayed to their rear in mute support. Just left of Harry’s head, about two rows back, was Nora. In the front row, precisely between Harry and Greene, as if to emphasize his neutrality between his old and new bosses, was Felix. Sitting in my apartment, months after this show trial had been enacted, I found myself urging Harry to stay calm. It was useless to try to influence the past, but I couldn’t stop myself. As if hearing me, Harry nodded as Greene took the microphone.

“Senator, I pledge the full cooperation of Seligman Brothers in uncovering the mistakes that were made, because there were significant errors that we all regret, and in ensuring that the taxpayers’ investment is repaid,” Greene said sternly.

Not having bothered to follow a congressional committee hearing before, I didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out that the first order of business was to let all the senators make a speech while the witnesses sat silently. Greene composed his face in a supportive expression, while Harry glowered. I skipped through this interlude until I saw the camera focus on Harry, who was reading from a piece of paper clutched in both hands, wearing his spectacles. Once I’d slowed down the video to listen, his speech sounded good. I assumed that Felix had drafted something contrite.

“I would like to assure the committee that, while I regret bitterly what happened, I always did what I believed was best for Seligman Brothers and for this country.” His voice was calm, but his shoulders slumped in relief as he came to the end of the sentence. He’d obviously been tensing himself to get through it.

The first senator to ask questions had a crew cut, a beaky nose, and a rough gaze. He stared at Harry and Greene as if they were beneath him, not just physically but morally, and thrust a hand up to scratch his temple as he spoke.

“Mr. Shapiro, that all sounds dandy, but I’m puzzled by one thing. If everything you did was fine, then why did you step down?”

“Senator, I believed Seligman needed a fresh start after-”

“Come on, you didn’t resign, did you? You were fired. You were forced out because you’d made a mess of it, hadn’t you?”

Harry flinched, but then the accusation seemed to fire him up. He tilted his head toward the senator like a bull getting ready to charge toward the matador’s red cloak and spoke in a fierce, controlled tone.

“Given the failure of the firm and our need to accept capital from the taxpayer, I resigned as a matter of honor.”

Good line, I thought. As the camera lingered, I peered past Harry at Felix, but his face was inscrutable. The questioning passed to the Republican side of the table, led by a roly-poly senator with a bulging shirt who lolled back in his chair. He smiled at Greene apologetically, as if he’d been shocked by the preceding rudeness.

“Mr. Greene, you told us in your opening statement that you came from a middle-class family?”

“That’s right, Senator Highfield. My father was not a Wall Street guy. He worked as a mechanic. I managed to win a college scholarship and I supported myself by working during vacations.”

“I expect you worked hard,” the senator said encouragingly.

“I did, Senator. My father always wanted me to get a good job, to achieve more than he’d been able to. He was a GI, fought in Normandy. He was a hero to me.”

“So you got to Wall Street. How’d that happen?”

“I was lucky. Rosenthal recruited me out of Rutgers. They had an open mind, took people from all kinds of places as long as they were bright and scrappy.”