“She wasn’t, though.”

“Nope. There were huge losses on the Elements already-running into the billions. Greene tried to hide it from Harry, but she spotted it. She’s a smart cookie, that woman. I couldn’t have figured it out, I’ll tell you.”

I’d known that Underwood’s story couldn’t be correct. Lauren wouldn’t have missed it. If she’d been Harry’s adviser, it would only have been a matter of time before she found the weakness at the heart of Greene’s bank.

“How would you hide billions of dollars? I don’t understand.”

“Beats me. I’m no rocket scientist. Anyway, Greene was on to her before she could tell Harry. They keep the documents for mergers on computers these days. There used to be a data room in the lawyers’ offices, but it’s all online now. The bankers on the buy side have a security key and they download what they want. Most of it’s deadly dull, but you’re supposed to look at everything just in case.

“Trouble is, it leaves a footprint. The sellers know what you’re interested in. Underwood knew Lauren was suspicious about the Elements from the amount of material she’d downloaded, and he told Greene. Greene came here one night. He said the merger was at risk and I had to fix Lauren somehow. He was sitting right where you are. ‘We’ve got to screw the bitch,’ he said. Charming man.”

“So you told him.”

It all made sense, suddenly-it reconciled the kind of person Lauren was with what she’d done. She hadn’t drifted off at the end of an affair or failed to notice what was wrong. She’d known everything, but Greene had blackmailed her.

Felix nodded, his head down. His face looked red and swollen, as if something were welling up inside. “Tom talked me into it. Marcus told Lauren he’d make the affair public if she didn’t keep quiet and leave. That’s what she did. She didn’t tell Harry about the Elements and he only found out after it was too late.”

I thought of Lauren telling me how her career would have been ruined if others knew of her relationship with Harry. Stupid, she’d called it, but the word hardly described the disaster it had caused. Then I remembered what Anna had witnessed-the two of them together in East Hampton, his head in her hands. Lauren must have just told Harry what Greene had done and why she’d abandoned him. It wasn’t hard to understand what happened next.

Of all the lies I’d heard, I found this one the most shocking. Felix was Harry’s friend, but he’d abandoned him. “Why did you do it, Felix?” I said.

“Because Tom was right,” he said slowly. “Harry thought he could match Rosenthal, but I didn’t believe him. He’d been fine for Seligman in the good times, but it wasn’t like that anymore. The markets were falling and I was frightened. I’d been there before. If Marcus was in charge of the place, Rosenthal would be behind him and Treasury, too. I had all my money tied up in the stock. I couldn’t afford to lose it.”

“You betrayed him for money?”

It was a harsh thing to say, tougher than I should have been, and I think about it still. I wish I could take those words back. My excuse is that I was angry, not only that he’d deceived me but that he’d broken Harry’s trust in a heartbeat, hardly thinking about it. I felt as if I’d struggled to keep other people’s secrets and had suffered for it, while he’d just looked after himself.

“Oh, Ben,” he said reproachfully, “what do you think we are, you and I? We’re helpers and servants. They say ‘whistle’ and we pucker up our lips and blow. Harry was in Tom’s way and I moved him for his own good. What would you expect me to do? I tried to make it up to Harry afterwards.”

“What did you do?”

Felix gazed into his whiskey, his eyes as cloudy as the spirits, and gulped it down. “That’s a story for another night,” he said.

“Take care of yourself, Felix,” I said, getting up.

“Too late for that.”

When I reached Riverside Drive, I walked toward the George Washington Bridge in the clear night. I’d traveled as far as I could and found out all I could about Greene’s death. For a long time, I’d kept some hope alive that it might save me, but I’d abandoned it now. Greene had deceived Harry and blackmailed Lauren, but he was in the ground and beyond justice. There was no evidence of Henderson doing wrong: in fact, there wasn’t evidence of anything unless Lauren and Harry talked. She’d gone out of her way to hide her actions, and he wouldn’t admit to murder.

It was time to find myself another job.

24

My first reaction when I heard Joe’s voice was relief. I thought he had abandoned me, but he didn’t sound annoyed. His voice was friendly, but low and sober, as if he didn’t want to startle me. It was two days after my encounter with Felix, and I’d thought a lot since then about how he’d betrayed Harry. I’d wanted to despise him, but the feeling hadn’t stuck-his excuse about us being servants rang uncomfortably true.

“Hey, Joe,” I said lightly. “I thought you’d fired me.”

“Hell, no. I’m still here. I just thought you’d want a lawyer who could do a better job for you, that’s all. I spoke to your father. He told me you guys had talked and I didn’t want to get in the way. Have you seen the news?”

“What news?” I said.

I think I knew immediately. I’d stepped irretrievably beyond the psych’s frame and I’d feared what could result, although I’d tried to block it out.

“Turn on the television. Try CNN.” His voice sounded strained and I hurried across the room to obey him.

It felt like being transported back to my gym that Sunday morning. There was no helicopter this time, but the anchors were babbling just as incoherently about a death, and the scene was similar as well-a street in a Long Island beach town where a reporter stood, her back to a cordon. There was a ticker at the bottom of the screen, this time with the headline SELIGMAN TRAGEDY. I sat down unthinkingly and found I was still holding the phone. My brain couldn’t make sense of it.

“What happened? What’s going on?”

“Have you heard of this guy? Felix Lustgarten,” he said, pronouncing the second half of the name with a soft t, like garden. “He worked with Shapiro, they say he was a friend. He just killed himself, walked into the sea off Southampton. They just fished him out. I got a call at dawn from Baer. He’s gone crazy.”

“Oh God,” I said weakly.

“Ben? … Are you there?”

I’d slumped forward with my head in one hand and the phone in my left, and I heard his voice only faintly. It felt as if someone had blown a dog whistle nearby, sending a high-pitched whine through my brain. I should have known it. I should have stopped him, I thought. He was close to suicide. Of course he was. I remembered how I’d walked out of his apartment in a fit of pique because of what he’d done, without stopping to help as my profession required. Why hadn’t I stayed to save him? He’d sat in front of me, drinking, confessing. How much louder could he have cried for help? Then I had another thought. Suicide? Last time, it was a murder. I went through this with Harry and he came back to life. I tried to believe that Felix would rise again, too.

“Ben!” It was the distant voice of Joe in the receiver, yelling so loudly that he finally broke through.

“I’m fine,” I said, struggling to pull myself around. “It’s a bit of a shock. I knew him. He was the one who came with me in the Gulfstream. I saw him a couple of days ago. He was a decent man.”

“Where did you see him?” Joe said, sounding tense. His estimation of me as a client had clearly tumbled farther, if that were possible.

“In his apartment on the Upper West Side. He asked me over for a drink.”

“Do you know why he did this? Did he tell you anything?”

As he asked the question, I saw from the corner of my eye the television screen turning another color, and I looked up to see them playing the tape of the hearing in Washington. Felix’s face had been circled in red to identify him as he sat behind Harry and Greene. That’s how he’ll be remembered, I thought-the man in the background. I recalled his defeated expression as he’d raised his glass to me. Faithful servants, he’d said.