The Night, The Day (23 page)

chapter 44

M
artin Rosen entered his office
and bent over to pick up the manila envelope on the welcome mat. He reached for the light switch with his free hand and proceeded into his consultation room.

It was just past 7 a.m. and his first patient, a pleasant young divorcee suffering from panic attacks, wasn’t due for at least twenty minutes. Outside, torrential rain pounded on the window, leading him to anticipate the patient’s tardiness. For a brief moment, he imagined the poor woman screaming and slamming her dashboard, wishing she had called to cancel.

Usually, the first thing he did was pick up the phone and order a bagel and a cup of caffeine from the deli down the block. But his curiosity drew him immediately to the envelope.

He sat down at his desk and tore it open, then pulled out a pile of papers, at the top of which was a picture of a young man in a strange-looking uniform. The picture was black-and-white, and the man seemed in his early 20s. Beneath it appeared the name
Theodore Lemieux
. The face of the man bore uncanny similarities to Jacques Benoît, and Martin knew what he was about to read. What he didn’t know was who had slipped it under his door.

He turned the page and began his education about the collaboration of the French Vichy government in the roundup of the Jews of France for the Nazis, and specifically the role of one Vichy police captain, Theodore Lemieux, in atrocities against the Jews of the city of Lyon. He read about Drancy, the internment camp located just three miles outside Paris, where the Jewish men, woman and children of Lyon were sent until they, along with Jews from all over France, were eventually shipped by freight trains directly to Auschwitz.

Martin had known little of the plight of French Jews during the war. He had, at best, vague notions of the Vichy’s role in assisting the Nazis. But nothing had been as poignant a testimony to the connection between these “partners” as the railroad lines running directly from Drancy, eastward through France, Germany and most of southern Poland, straight into the main Katowice-Auschwitz-Krakow line. This tidbit was probably included to give him a clear sense of Benoît’s handiwork.

The first part of the dossier chronicled the proclivities of Theodore Lemieux, based on interviews with people who had known him. It portrayed a social-climbing womanizer, a frequenter of brothels and nightclubs who most likely would have wound up an embarrassment to his uniform had he not been so ambitious when it came to the Jews.

The next part dealt with Lemieux’s alleged crimes against humanity. There were close to fifteen separate incidents listed. Most of these were brief descriptions, gathered from historical documents consisting mainly of eyewitness accounts from survivors who were no longer alive; only two were based on the testimony of living survivors. Those two, primarily because they concerned children, were the ones that Martin found most disturbing.

The first involved the family of a well-known Jewish banker, Philip Saifer, and described how Lemieux managed to apprehend the two children, who had been hiding in a basement crawlspace. The family had been shipped to Drancy, and from there to Auschwitz. Only the younger brother, Henry Saifer, survived. He presently lived in Jerusalem, working as a writer for an Israeli periodical, and had been the first to pick out a photo of Benoît from the international media years ago and match it to Lemieux.

Martin swallowed hard, recalling Benoît’s words about the brooch sitting in his drawer.

I believe the husband was a banker…

It says, ‘To Leila, all my love, Philip’…

Sickened, Martin forced himself to read on.

The second incident was a description of a raid on a Jewish orphanage in Izieu, a small village in the hills outside the city of Lyon. The operation was led by Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief in Lyon, in April of 1944, only a few months before the Allied liberation of France. The Nazis had apparently been growing restless with the speed at which France was being “purified,” so they solicited select Vichy leaders to step up their campaign to round up Jews. At the top of their list, Captain Theodore Lemieux was described as an ideal candidate because of his past “ingenuity and tenacity in dealing with the Jewish problem.”

It was Lemieux who stood beside Barbie, supervising his Vichy underlings in assisting the Gestapo’s capture of forty-four children and seven adults, all of whom were sent to Drancy. One child escaped during the raid, and one adult was captured but managed to survive. Of the rest, forty-two children and five adults were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, while two other children and the superintendent of the home were executed by a firing squad in Estonia.

The last part of the dossier contained the case against Jacques Benoît, tracing Benoît’s roots back to Lemieux and presenting compelling, though circumstantial, evidence that the two men were one and the same. It also contained some early photographs of Benoît, accentuating the similarities to the picture of Lemieux.

Martin placed the pages on his desk and looked at the clock. He had gotten so engrossed in the dossier, he hadn’t noticed that his patient was already half an hour late. He knew that at any second, he would hear her enter the waiting room, and he also knew that the last thing he was capable of doing right now was conducting a therapy session. He was thankful that the session would be short.

He opened his address book for the phone numbers of his remaining patients for the morning. He picked up the phone and started dialing, realizing that, in his fifteen years of practice, the only other time he had cancelled patients was immediately after the deaths of Katherine and Ethan. He continued dialing, gazing again at the papers on his desk and thinking that, once he finished these calls, he would first have to deal with whoever had left this for him.

chapter 45

D
an Gifford looked up from
his desk at his secretary standing in the doorway. Over an hour ago, he had given her firm instructions:
no calls, no interruptions
. Less than a week away from the trial of his career, he’d gotten sidetracked on this Nazi business to the point where he was far behind, and he desperately needed to get up to speed. Yet, here she was; no doubt about to tell him something that would distract him once again.

“Yes,” he said, drawing out the word as if to appear mildly annoyed.

She grinned at his seemliness. “There’s a man here who says he has to see you. Says if I told you who he was, you’d want to…”

“And who might he be?”

“Martin Rosen.”

Gifford was stunned. “Martin Rosen?”

“Should I show him in?”

“Yes… please.”

The few seconds between the secretary’s slipping away and reappearing with Martin Rosen passed like a flash in Gifford’s mind, leaving him no time to gather his thoughts.

Martin entered the office looking weary. Gifford also had to admit that he was discomfited, even though he was on his own turf. Martin took a seat in front of Gifford’s desk. Neither of them spoke until the secretary left.

“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, Dan,” Martin said.

“No, Doc, don’t be sorry. If I seem a little…” Gifford struggled to find the right word.

“Surprised?” Martin said.

“Yeah, surprised. It’s only because this is… I mean, you, my shrink, coming to
my
office. It’s unusual.”

“Yes, it is,” Martin reflected. “I know I’m breaking all the rules by being here, but it seems a lot of unusual things are happening these days.”

Gifford leaned back in his chair. “Rules are sometimes meant to be broken.”

“I was going to call you instead of coming by, but I thought it would be best to do this in person.”

“Do what?”

“Talk about the contents of the envelope.”

“Envelope? What envelope?”

Martin appeared bewildered. “You mean you didn’t leave a manila envelope for me under my door?”

“Why would you think I did?” Gifford stopped, considered what was happening, then added, “Unless the envelope contained something concerning what we talked about.”

Martin suddenly stood up. “Look, Dan, I’m sorry I barged in on you like this.”

Gifford gestured to the chair. “Doc, sit!”

“I can’t. I really must leave. In fact, I should never have done this in the first place. It was very unprofessional of me.”

“Look, Doc. Whatever is going on, I would guess that nobody could handle it in a strictly ‘professional’ way. I can assure you that whoever sits up there in that ivory tower and mandates professional conduct
never
had this scenario in mind. Now you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if I’m right, you need help.”

Martin considered Gifford’s point. “Dan, I like you and I respect you, and I don’t want it to seem like I’m putting you off. But you have to understand, in the relationship that you and I have, it is my job to help you, not the other way around.”

“Forget that relationship stuff, Doc, it’s all bull,” Gifford said, becoming more animated. “The only reason you’ve helped me is because of
who
you are, not
what
you are. The fact that you’re the shrink and I’m the patient is incidental as far as I see it. The fact that you’re a good guy who I trust and respect is what it’s all about. And now you’re telling me
you
can’t trust me? What am I supposed to do with that?”

“You’re right, Dan, about
most
of what you said, but you’re wrong about my not trusting you. As for your claim to trust
me
, that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do.”

“You’re asking me to let you handle this by yourself, even though it’s clear that you’re in over your head?”

“I’m obviously not alone.”

“Yeah,” Gifford said, sighing. “It would seem you’re not.”

Martin turned toward the door. “I know that this whole thing is bound to impact your therapy,” he said. “It would be sad to see that end, but if you’re having second thoughts about continuing with me, I’ll understand.”

Gifford stood up and faced Martin eye to eye. “The only thing I’m having second thoughts about, Doc, is your ability to handle this thing without me.”

“Like I said, Dan, you’ll just have to trust me on that one.”

“I guess I have no choice,” Gifford said, seemingly resigned. He held his hand out for Martin, and the two men shook. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Gifford added, referring to his next session.

Martin responded with a slight but heartfelt smile, then turned and left.

Driving along the Long Island Expressway, Martin was infuriated with himself. He had acted impetuously, jumping to conclusions about Dan Gifford and going to Gifford’s office. And he had placed his professional relationship with Gifford in jeopardy. Sure, Gifford’s ability to rationalize professionalism out of the picture was compelling, but for Martin it wasn’t that easy. Too much of
who
he was was wrapped up in
what
he was.

He thought about tomorrow, confident that Gifford would indeed show and that they would somehow get back on track with what they were supposed to be doing together. Then he thought about Benoît. He already knew how he was going to deal with that; he had come to his decision the moment he had finished the dossier. Gifford was certainly right about one thing: “Whoever sits up there in that ivory tower and mandates professional conduct
never
had this scenario in mind.”

As for now, there was still the matter of who had slipped the manila envelope under his door. It could have been the FBI or the Israelis, but
why
would they want to involve him? What could they have had in mind?

His first hypothesis was that perhaps his office was bugged, and they were hoping he would confront Benoît, who in turn would confess. But that was unlikely; such evidence would never be admissible in a court of law. A patient’s privilege of confidentiality, as Martin had pointed out in his own book, was actually rooted in the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Things divulged to therapists, lawyers and clergy were thus deemed “protected” precisely because they had the potential to be self-incriminating.

So what could their intent have been?

Between this, and last night with Cheryl, Martin’s head was in disarray, a state that he loathed more than anything in the world. He felt lost, almost paralyzed, until suddenly, something struck him.

He replayed his last conversation with Cheryl:

“Marty… I’m one of those people.”

“What people?”

“People who pretend to be what they aren’t.”

“I wasn’t talking about you.”

“But you were.”

At once, the events of the past few weeks flashed through his mind:

Meeting her the same time he had met Benoît.

His sense from his first time in her apartment that something was amiss.

Never being able to reach her at her workplace.

Last night’s scene.

This morning’s delivery.

A harrowing picture was taking form as a nauseated feeling began raging through his gut. He sensed himself about to lose control, and pulled the car over to the shoulder of the highway. He sat there for minutes, trying to collect himself, wondering if this was all mere coincidence, if the stress was making him paranoid.

In the end, only one thing was clear: there weren’t too many people he could trust. And, for the first time in his life, it wasn’t clear to him if he, himself, was among them.

He placed the car in drive and eased his way back into the right lane. It was time to learn the truth.