The Death of All Things Seen Read Free Page B

something was being asked of her, some grave and purposeful decision. She reached for her pills beside the subpoena. In opening the bottle, she tipped her head back, feeling the reflexive gag of self-preservation. She managed swallowing them, their effect almost immediate in the sudden euphoria of knowing how it would now end.
    In the long corridor of her funneling exit, in the falling snow, she headed south on Columbia. Driving parallel to a desolate Grant Park, she was startled by the wail of a police siren, a sound hard to pinpoint against the tumbling end-over-end effect of the pills.
    In her rearview mirror, she caught sight of something she could no longer face and, closing her eyes, felt the disembodied sponginess of the accelerator pedal beneath her foot. Beyond the broad six-lane stretch of Lake Shore Drive, she imagined the cradling grey of Lake Michigan like a vast subconscious stirring.

PART I
    The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
    —DANTE ALIGHIERI

1.
    N OBODY JUMPED TO their death in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 as they had in the Crash of 1929, and though the losses were equal, there was no run on banks or the chaotic dissolution of so many lives.
    The crisis was more a correction , the lightweights on the morning shows, educating the ignorant about the volatility of the bond, securities and derivatives markets, while down on Times Square, outside the glass enclosure of the TODAY show, the faithful held up signs that said, ‘We Luv U Al!’ or ‘We Luv the Big Apple!’
    In their so doing, it confirmed an undeniable truth for Norman Price: that whatever the outcome of the crisis, life would go on. There would be no revolution.
    In truth, for anybody who gave a shit, it was difficult deciding what had happened and who was at fault . Sometimes too much freedom, too much democracy, too much choice, too much talk could – and did – achieve nothing.
    For Norman Price, in the midst of his own crisis, the financial crisis was a distraction signifying there were no longer any essential truths, no longer a beginning, middle, or end to events; a realization that eclipsed, among other things, the passing of his parents. It spared him mourning them, or otherwise trying to understand the events surrounding their deaths. Their motivations were as convoluted as any accounts related to the financial crisis.
    Initial eyewitness accounts suggested that Helen Price, in hearing a siren, had hit the accelerator instead of the brake. It was a reasonable explanation. Helen Price was old and ill. She had been on her way to a doctor’s appointment. There were, however, other circumstances that told a different story. The officer driving the unmarked police car had been Walter Price. He had witnessed the incident, and yet he had neither assisted at the scene, nor called 911. He had simply driven away.
    There was much made by the police of what was known and when it was known , given how in the early hours of the morning, Walter Price had been granted unrestricted access to a comatose Helen Price at Cook County Hospital, where he had ended her life before taking his own with a single bullet to the head.
    Allegations of racketeering, extortion and money laundering surfaced. Just days before, Helen Price had been served a subpoena in a reconvened grand jury stemming from an investigation into systemic extortion by the South Side police. It was an old story of city corruption, the twists in the story, Walter and Helen’s age, and the fact that Helen had been suffocated. It signaled how brutally unforgiving the system had been, and so, too, underscored the culpability of the police who had allowed Walter unsupervised access to Helen.
    Norman stood apart from it now. Walter and Helen’s respective wills served as eventual directives. He hadn’t participated in their funerals. Helen was cremated. Walter detailed a similar wish. Norman had uncovered it in a