All Cry Chaos (14 page)

    "Was James Fenster his birth name?"

    "That much I know. The first family—the one that planned to adopt him—gave him the name James, or 'Jimmy' Fenster. They actually gave him back after a six-month trial, citing incompatibility. There had been some glitch in the paperwork, and when the time came to make the adoption official, the family balked. Then it was off to four more homes. The name stuck, though. Getting admitted to Princeton was the best thing that happened to Fenster. Altogether rescued him."

    Poincaré reasoned that at some point Fenster must have turned a corner socially. The engagement to Madeleine Rainier, though broken, proved that much. "Was he nervous around you?" Poincaré asked. "Did you sense that he thought himself in danger of any sort?"

    "No. He seemed calm enough."

    "Medical issues, then. Why make a will at so young an age? Was there any indication of sickness?"

    Roy shrugged. "He looked healthy in a sunken-chest sort of way. After the bombing, the police reviewed his medical records— apparently, he used the university's medical and dental schools for routine visits. All that looked fine, I was told. As for his state of mind, he seemed perfectly at ease about making a will. Absolutely no hint of crisis. Fenster sat where you're sitting and said he found me in the yellow pages and now that he was here, he appreciated—what did he call it—my
austerity
. You may have noticed all the mahogany and framed art in my office. My clients regard my services the way they do pizza. One slice is as good as the next, so you buy where you live. I'm the neighborhood attorney. I keep my overhead low and my prices low. Dr. Fenster said that this was just the way he liked things. Simple."

    "What do you charge per slice?" Poincaré was pointing to the diplomas.

    The attorney laughed. "When I was younger, quite a bit. Princeton and Columbia were useful at my last job at a downtown firm— former partner, large salary, larger ulcers. When the practice of law became too much of a business, I left to get back to a scale I understood. Here no one cares where I went to school as long as I can help renegotiate a mortgage or make peace with the immigration police. My services aren't free, Inspector—there are public agencies for that. But I don't charge $500 an hour, either. And if you happen to be short on cash, I'll negotiate. One client paid with a year's worth of homemade jam. So it all works out. Fenster paid by check. He had another $60,000 saved in a bank account, and that went to the Math League, too. He didn't own a car. He rented his apartment. I'm not sure when the investigators are going to release that back to the landlord."

    "His belongings—what will you do with those?"

    "Donate them, eventually. In my disposition of the estate, I've sorted through all his finances, which didn't take much time. He paid most of his bills by check and maintained a credit card only to make occasional purchases online. There was no outstanding debt. Nothing at all remarkable about his estate—except his laptop computer, the one he used at home. Harvard claims it holds Fenster's intellectual property and therefore belongs to the university. One of Fenster's funding sources, Charles Bell, says that it was his foundation's money Fenster used to buy the computer and that, therefore, it belongs to him. Strangely enough, the dispute is headed to court. At the moment, the state is holding the hard drive as evidence."

    "What's on it?"

    "That's just it," said Roy. "No one knows because no one can crack the password. The forensics lab hired a cryptologist, but Fenster apparently invented his own digital lock on the hard drive, so you can imagine how difficult this is going to be. Still, Bell and Harvard have already sued each other and the Commonwealth to release the drive."

    "What are the sums involved? How much did Bell give Fenster?"

    "I've heard the figure $8 million in conversation. Bell insists he's entitled to some return on his investment—return on a hard drive that's likely worth $400. Harvard calls the millions a tax-deductible donation to the university, not an investment. The fight could take years to resolve."

    Poincaré wrote down Bell's contact information as Peter Roy looked on, smiling.

    "What?" said Poincaré .

    "Judge the man for yourself. Let's just say he has a personality consistent with his success."

    Poincaré liked Roy. He liked the idea of accepting homemade jam as payment. He liked the bare walls and the outline of coat hooks under a rough splash of paint. He liked the plastic tables and the care Roy took in knotting his bow tie. He especially liked his mother-in-law. "So what does your lawyerly instinct tell you about Madeleine Rainier?" he asked. "Did you get any sense that she was after Fenster's money? A hundred twenty thousand dollars is not insignificant."

    "Ms. Rainier? I hardly think she was after money. She asked me to fax a letter to the Dutch authorities authorizing her as executor and then immediately hired me to dispose of the estate as quickly as possible, according to the will—in which she had no financial interest whatsoever. After a series of phone calls just after the bombing, I lost contact. The phone numbers I had used went dead, and my e-mails started bouncing back to me. I did get this, though." Roy produced a postcard with a "Welcome to Switzerland" arched in block letters above a photo of mountains and a cow grazing on a steeply angled meadow. On the reverse, in a script the authenticity of which Poincaré had no reason to doubt, was a simple note:
Thank you for your
help in a difficult time. M. Rainier.

    Postmarked Zurich, two weeks after the bombing. So she had slipped out of the Netherlands after all. "I understand the money went to the Math League," said Poincaré, "and that Rainier saw none of it. Still, I'm never surprised when money sits at the bottom of a case. Would you mind if I reviewed Fenster's financial records? Perhaps you could copy his bank statements and canceled checks. Anything along these lines could prove useful."

    "It's pretty sleepy stuff," said the attorney. "But help yourself. He maintained all his finances online with a single bank here in town. I've got the past five years of his savings, checking, and credit card accounts on a flash drive. You're welcome to it."

    Poincaré rose to shake the attorney's hand. "I'll be direct," he said. "I consider Madeleine Rainier a suspect in James Fenster's murder. Interpol has issued a warrant, so at present she's a fugitive from justice. This means that if you hear from her again—"

    "Of course," said Roy. "I didn't share her contact information before—"

    "You were perfectly within your rights, and hers. She wasn't a suspect then. It's just that attorney-client privilege often complicates my work."

    "A necessary complication, Inspector."

    "I know, I know," Poincaré sniffed. "Rule of law."

    Roy walked him to the tiny receiving area. "Give me a moment to copy Fenster's financial records. In the meantime, take a seat. You can watch Gladys abusing my next client."

M
ASSACHUSETTS AVENUE was alive with the bustle of city life in fine weather. Poincaré consulted his map and determined that he could take a Red Line train across the river and then walk to a building near Government Center where the state police kept the contents of Fenster's Harvard office. At the entrance to the subway, he folded his map to music drifting from below—a disembodied saxophone playing "My Favorite Things" in a sad quarter-time.
Raindrops on
roses . . . H
e paused as people hurried up and down the subway stairs; to his left, a line formed for
arepas
at a food cart; across the street, a piano moving company attracted a crowd as large men lowered a baby grand from a third-storey window. City life hummed around him, set to a melancholic tune.
When the dog bites, when the bee
stings, when I'm feeling sad . . .
The musician turned that last note into a plea that shook loose from Poincaré memories of his own favorite things: of Etienne, at six, on his lap explaining the intricacies of a new tower he had designed; of Claire's discovering him at a gallery, each there secretly to buy the other the same gift; of Chloe leading him to a barn door, saying:
Papi, look!
What would he not do for them? If the doors of a jet bound for Paris opened before him that instant, he would have boarded.

    A car horn shook Poincaré back to the moment and he descended the stairs, prepared to thank the saxophonist. Instead, he nearly stumbled into a strange young man with a soft beard, wearing sandals and a robe—and holding a placard. Just as if Poincaré had dropped a coin into the slot of a mechanical fortuneteller, the Soldier of Rapture—for that's who he must be, Poincaré decided—raised a hand and broke into a recitation of the words on his placard, delivered with righteous anger:

— MARK 13: 24-27

    "The Rapture?" asked Poincaré.

    "Verily."

    He stifled a laugh. But then there was nothing funny about the social worker in Barcelona or mutilated children beside an ice cream shop in Milan.

    "Tell me," said Poincaré, "how much time is left?"

    "Enough to save yourself, Brother! Signs and portents are everywhere around us. Armies on the move. Husbands beating wives. Mothers aborting children. Children shooting other children in our streets. Hurricanes, tsunamis, AIDS. Tell me: have the times ever been so twisted? The end draws near!"

    He said it with conviction, at least. Behind him, decades of grime sloughed off metal girders. The platform smelled of machine grease and urine. An approaching trolley on the far tracks screamed against the rails.

    "The Rapture," said Poincaré. "Days away or months?"

    "Look to your faith, not the calendar!"

    "That's hard."

    "Of course, it's hard! Only one question matters anymore: Do you
know G
od in your heart?"

    "I try to make things right, if that counts."

    "Don't we all!"

    On this point Poincaré was perfectly clear. "No, we don't. Not everyone."

    "True, praise God! Yes! Fall on your knees and pray for those who reject His path. Conquer pride. Embrace the redemption that is right here, right now—waiting. God is waiting! Pray for the fallen! Join us!"

    Poincaré did not envy Laurent's making sense of this rant. Instead of bending a knee, he said: "I want to learn more." He leaned close. "What's your name, son?"

    "Simon."

    "Simon, tell me how to learn more. I want to be redeemed. I do!"

    Poincaré expected a phone number scribbled on a piece of paper, but the Soldier surprised him with a brochure dedicated to New Testament proofs of the Second Coming. On a reverse panel was a toll-free number, the addresses of Rapturian welcome centers in New York and Los Angeles, and the URL of a Web site. Laurent would want to see this.

    He pocketed the brochure and stepped through a turnstile onto the subway platform, where he found the saxophone player—a man his same age still singing for his supper. On another day, Poincaré would have taken him to lunch and learned his story. Instead, he dropped a few dollars into an open case. At the approach of a train, a gust blew from the tunnel and lifted the front page of that morning's paper from a trash heap. It spiraled, dipped, then stalled before Poincaré's face long enough for him to read the headline: "Earthquake Shakes Pacific Rim!" The train stopped and he boarded. When he turned, the shepherd smiled and raised a hand in benediction.

That evening Poincaré confirmed that the life of James Fenster, as told by a scrupulously balanced checkbook, was both orderly and unremarkable. A credit report showed that he used a single credit card once or twice a month for internet or phone purchases and to guarantee car rentals when he traveled to conferences. Over the course of two years, on the income side, Poincaré noted automatic deposits of Fenster's Harvard salary; on the debit side, he found checks written at weekly intervals for groceries, two or three checks a year to clothing stores, and monthly rent checks. On Mondays he would withdraw $140 from an automatic teller for the week. The man was an anachronism: he rarely used plastic money, carried no debt, and saved most of what he earned. An Internal Revenue summary of Fenster's tax history and the absence of a criminal record or traffic violations showed James Fenster, private citizen, to be exactly what Peter Roy claimed: modest, quiet, and unexceptional.

    By 2 AM Poincaré had all but concluded this inquiry when, scrolling through the last of the cancelled checks, he found an anomaly. For two years, the man had either cleaned his own apartment or paid someone, perhaps an undocumented worker, in cash to do so. But Poincaré doubted the expense, inasmuch as Fenster gave himself an allowance of only $20 per day—too little to accommodate even a modest man's needs let alone extra for paying a cleaner. Yet during the course of a single week before departing for Amsterdam, he had written three large checks: one for $1,500; another for $2,025; and the last for $2,750—all to local cleaning companies. Poincaré saw no notes written in the memo lines of these checks, so after a few hours of sleep he located the companies and made inquiries. On successive days, it turned out, Fenster had hired professional cleaning crews to work on his apartment—the last specializing in "laboratory and surgical clean room standards" according to its Web site.