A Fatal Debt (13 page)

“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.”

A few of the senators released a rumble of laughter, but others stayed stony-faced, not wanting to be seen sympathizing on television with Wall Street, I imagined.

“Then you were enterprising enough to start your own bank. It says here that you got to be a billionaire, is that right?”

“On paper, that might still be true. I don’t feel as rich as I used to,” he said. A few more senators joined in that time.

“So why did you sell your bank to Mr. Shapiro last year? I’d have thought you liked being independent.”

“I didn’t see it that way, Senator. Harry and I joined forces to make a bigger firm, one we believed could compete in the big leagues. I believed I could learn from Harry. He’d teach me a few tricks.”

Harry shot Greene an ambiguous glance, half appreciation for the remark and half unease. I thought of what had happened just six months later—the mess that Harry had made of Greene’s body. Perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed the tension if I hadn’t known the outcome, but there was something unnerving in the stiff way they sat next to each other, as if divided by an invisible barrier.

The next senator was a Democrat, a woman in her sixties who was technocratic and stern. She spat out her questions crisply, hardly looking at the witness who was answering, but Greene didn’t appear bothered.

“Mr. Greene, can you explain to some of us who are still baffled exactly how your bank came to need the taxpayers’ assistance?”

“Senator, it’s complicated and I don’t think that anyone here, myself included, fully understood the risks we were taking. As I said before, mistakes were made and I bear full responsibility for those errors.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that—” she interjected sharply, but Greene carried on talking, and she gave way.

“Let me try to explain this as best I can,” he continued. “Our trading desk held mortgage paper that it considered entirely safe. It was triple-A paper that no one believed was in danger of default. Those positions were not reported to the risk committee.”

“You mean you didn’t even know they were there?”

Greene sighed heavily and closed his eyes for an instant, as if the blunder still pained him. “Unfortunately not. There were flaws in the risk management procedures at Seligman. It examined what it believed were risky assets, and it didn’t include any of these CDOs. That stands for collateralized debt obligations, by the way. There are many abbreviations on Wall Street, I’m afraid.”

Greene had something, I thought. Imperceptibly, he’d managed to seize control of the hearing and was overriding the questions to present the story he’d prepared. He had a natural authority that subdued others without them realizing it. It sounded as if he were giving a lesson to an appreciative audience, rather than defending himself.

“What happened to these CDOs?” the senator asked obediently.

“This spring, mortgage-backed securities started to fall along with house prices in a way that no one had anticipated. In May, the senior management was informed that heavy losses were occurring on the CDO tranches. I believe the projection was a $5 billion loss. Our estimate now …” Greene glanced at a sheet of paper on the desk and read out a figure dispassionately: “is $21.6 billion.”

The senator looked at Greene openmouthed. “And you had no idea about this before you lost those billions? You were in the dark?”

Greene held his right hand half-clenched and thrust out to emphasize his words. “Let me address this, because it is absolutely the right question. When I took over as chief executive, I made a complete examination of our balance sheet. I found we had been using too much leverage and didn’t have a thorough grasp of some of the instruments we had been trading. I put a halt to it immediately.”

The senator still looked astonished, but Greene had managed subtly to deflect attention from himself. He’d become an expert witness explaining the financial complexities, not the one who should be answering for the mess.

“Who ran Seligman while it was doing this and crying to the government for $10 billion to stay in business? Who was in charge?”

Greene paused and looked hesitant. He glanced fractionally sideways at Harry, as if not wanting to say it himself. The camera cut to Harry, who looked crushed. He sat upright and his tongue flicked out of his mouth to moisten his lips, like a reptile. Then, with Greene still silent, he leaned forward to the microphone.

“I was, Senator,” Harry croaked.

She shook her head disgustedly. “It sounds as if there was a very good reason why you resigned, Mr. Shapiro. You’d run your bank into the ground.”

I could see Felix’s eyes focus over Harry’s shoulder as he waited to hear the reply. Harry looked on the verge of losing control, but he mastered himself with a visible effort. As he did, and before he could speak, Greene grimaced and reached across the invisible barrier between them. He put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, apparently in sympathy.

“Harry did what he believed was right at the time,” Greene said. “He wasn’t the only executive on Wall Street who made a mistake.”

Harry stayed stiffly in position, and I heard the rustle of photographers in the background grabbing their shots for the next day’s papers. The camera pulled back to show Harry and Greene stand and huddle in separate knots of advisers. Underwood appeared at Greene’s shoulder. Nora moved up to Harry and held his hand as if he were a child who had to be protected from harm, while he gazed desolately into the middle distance.

I reached for my mouse to click off the hearing, but I stopped as the last frames played. A few yards behind Harry, I spotted Anna. She must have gone to the hearing with Nora and Harry, but she hadn’t walked forward. Instead, she was standing and talking to a middle-aged woman I didn’t recognize, with a sharp nose and gaunt face. They were standing close to each other, as if they were well acquainted, and the last thing I saw before the tape halted and the C-SPAN logo filled the screen was her raising one hand to stroke Anna’s arm. It looked like a gesture of comfort.

M
y father’s lawyer friend kept his office in Rockefeller Center, high above the honking taxis and lost tourists of midtown. A swaying elevator carried me with a whoosh forty-five floors above the gloomy lobby to the light-filled world aloft. I sat in the reception area for a couple of minutes, then heard footsteps and a shout of greeting. A man emerged quickly around a corner and, as I rose, grabbed me in a hug and slapped my back, although we had never met and he was six inches shorter than me.

“Ben, it’s great to meet you,” he cried. “I’m Joe Solomon. You’re the spitting image of your dad. A privilege to meet you. He’s always talked a lot about you. He’s proud of you, you know. Let’s see what I can do for you.”

Up to the neck, he was neatly groomed in a suit and silk tie, but
his hair spilled out in gray curls and his blue eyes bulged from a round, ruddy face, suggesting that the clothes were only just holding him in. His accent sounded southern. I’d never heard of him before now. My father had called him a friend, but I didn’t know if that was really true or if it was just his term for someone who might be useful. Yet I still found my father’s reported words touching. I’d never heard them from the man himself.

We walked to Joe’s office, which was on a corner with a view looking south toward the harbor. Whatever he did for a living, it was treating him well. He leaned back in a chair and put his feet on his desk, one leg crossed over the other.

“How much did your father tell you about me?” he asked.

“Just that you were a friend and he trusted you.”

He beamed. “Well, that’s awful kind of him. He’s a gentleman, your dad. We met at a legal conference in Las Vegas a few years back. It was pretty dry stuff during the day, but we had some fun at night, I’ll tell you.”

I smiled politely. That could mean anything in Las Vegas, and I didn’t know Joe well enough to guess—and perhaps not my father, either. I was relieved to be there and by the thought of having someone to protect me, but I was unsure of how much to tell him. I’d been to see my patient in Riverhead, as I was duty-bound to do, and I’d talked to Harry’s wife. Neither of those had been improper. But I’d also done something he’d probably warn me against if he knew. I’d called Anna, responding to her silent invitation by the door of the apartment. Discussing the case with someone who might be a witness and was close to my former patient wasn’t by the legal or medical book, but I’d been unable to restrain myself. I wanted to know more about Harry. Truth be told, I also craved her presence.

“It’s kind of you to see me, Mr. Solomon.”

“Hell, forget it. Never mind helping out Roger’s son, I’d work pro bono to get on the Shapiro case. Well, on insurance, anyway. It works out much the same. Let me tell you about me. I’m kind of an unusual animal. This firm mostly does civil work, corporate and tax and things like that. Lots of money in it, but no fun. Then they have me.
When any of our clients gets imaginative, I do criminal defense. I’m like those guys who advertise on the subways, except a bit more upscale.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” I said, and he giggled and slapped the desk beside his legs as if he and I were already pals.

“It’s quite a story, isn’t it?” he said, looking serious for the first time. “We’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other. Roger told me about what happened. Sounds to me like you’ve got caught up in something serious, but I know it wasn’t your fault. You were doing your best to treat this guy, weren’t you?”

“I was,” I said. He’d put it better than I’d managed myself. It was comforting to have a professional on my side.

“Roger said you got ambushed by the Suffolk County cops. Next time it happens, tell them you need your lawyer present and nothing else. It’s no surprise they’ve got a ninety-seven percent conviction rate. A lot of people confess to all kinds of things in that place before they get to call a lawyer. And you know what? They don’t use any tapes. They write out the confessions and get the poor guys to sign. They don’t stand a chance.”

I thought of the neat confession Pagonis had showed me outside the Riverhead jail, with its reference to me discharging Harry. It hadn’t looked like his handwriting.

“I didn’t tell them anything,” I said.

“Good, that’s always best. So I’ve talked to the DA’s office, who were as helpful as usual—in other words not at all—and to Henry Barber, who’s his attorney. He’s an old friend and he dropped me a couple of hints. I reckon they’ll admit to the killing and plead extreme emotional disturbance. Are you familiar with that?”

“I’ve heard of it.” We were taught mental health law in residency, although I’d just started going out with Rebecca and I wasn’t concentrating very hard. “Maybe you could explain it again.”

“It’s like a weaker version of the insanity defense,” Joe said. “If he was mad, say hallucinating or schizophrenic, he’d be locked up in a state psychiatric hospital instead of a jail. The defendant doesn’t have
to be crazy for emotional disturbance. It’s being overcome in the moment and not knowing what you’re doing. Like a man who comes home and finds his wife in bed with another guy and kills him. I’d go for that in their shoes, given that he’s confessed.”

“How does that help?”

“Knocks murder two down to manslaughter if a jury goes for it. I don’t imagine the DA would accept a plea. Shapiro could get ten years instead of life, less maybe. Juries don’t like it. It suggests the defendant wasn’t responsible, and he’s not a sympathetic guy, but it could work. The best thing for them is the discharge from Episcopal. They can say the guy was unstable, was on drugs. He’d been admitted to the hospital to protect him from himself. That’s good for them.”

“Right,” I said grimly.

“So that’s the criminal case, then after that there’ll be a civil suit. Greene’s family can sue the hospital and you for wrongful death. They’ll wait until Shapiro’s been convicted so the cops dig up all the evidence first. They’ll say you were responsible for discharging him negligently. There’s a doctor-patient relationship and harm’s been done, so they just have to show a breach of duty of care and a causal link to the killing. The good news is that it’ll take a long time, so who knows what’s going to happen? The suit could get settled out of court. Insurers are risk-averse. They don’t like to fight.”

I felt pummeled by bad news. I’d expected to be told something like this, but hearing him set it out so matter-of-factly, as if there were very little I could do to change my fate, was shocking. Joe had saved the worst until last, though.

“Finally, there’s professional misconduct,” he said. “Mrs. Greene could complain to the Office of Professional Medical Conduct in New York State that you were negligent, and try to get your license taken away. I don’t think that’ll happen, Ben,” he added, seeing me frown worriedly. “You’re young and perhaps you might have made a small mistake. With the hospital on your side, you’ll survive.”