Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART I
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
PART II
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
PART III
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
PART IV
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Acknowledgements
ALSO BY JED RUBENFELD
The Interpretation of Murder
Freedom and Time
Revolution by Judiciary
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 50 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Originally published in the UK by Headline 2010
First published in the United States by Riverhead Books 2011
Copyright © 2010 by Jed Rubenfeld
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rubenfeld, Jed, date.
The death instinct / Jed Rubenfeld.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-46150-1
1. Physicians—Fiction. 2. Terrorism—New York
(State)—New York—Fiction. 3. Wall Street (New York,
N.Y.)—History—20th century—Fiction. 4. Terrorism
investigation—Fiction. 5. Psychoanalysis—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3618.U233D
813’.6—dc22
This is a work of fiction.
http://us.penguingroup.com
To my brilliant daughters, Sophia and Louisa
On a clear September day in lower Manhattan, the financial center of the United States became the site of the most massive terrorist attack that had ever occurred on American soil. It was 1920. Despite the then-largest criminal investigation in United States history, the identity of the perpetrators remains a mystery.
PART I
ONE
DEATH IS ONLY THE BEGINNING; afterward comes the hard part. There are three ways to live with the knowledge of death—to keep its terror at bay. The first is suppression: forget it’s coming; act as if it isn’t. That’s what most of us do most of the time. The second is the opposite: memento mori. Remember death. Keep it constantly in mind, for surely life can have no greater savor than when a man believes today is his last. The third is acceptance. A man who accepts death—really accepts it—fears nothing and hence achieves a transcendent equanimity in the face of all loss. All three of these strategies have something in common. They’re lies. Terror, at least, would be honest.
But there is another way, a fourth way. This is the inadmissible option, the path no man can speak of, not even to himself, not even in the quiet of his own inward conversation. This way requires no forgetting, no lying, no groveling at the altar of the inevitable. All it takes is instinct.
At the stroke of noon on September 16, 1920, the bells of Trinity Church began to boom, and as if motivated by a single spring, doors flew open up and down Wall Street, releasing clerks and message boys, secretaries and stenographers, for their precious hour of lunch. They poured into the streets, streaming around cars, lining up at favorite vendors, filling in an instant the busy intersection of Wall, Nassau, and