With Katherine Hallaby and Rick Townsend sitting beside him at the preliminary hearing, I never worried for a minute that Ozymandias Newcombe would not walk out of the courthouse in Montrose a free man. Enough of Ozzie’s friends in the right places had written the judge to make any prosecution for the killing of Dominic Picatti a moot point. Amanda Madison had videotaped her statement for Katherine Hallaby with all the graphic details about all the unspeakable things they had done to her. Katherine Hallaby snuffled hard and had to wipe away tears from both eyes on the video and now again in real life.
I didn’t cry just then in the courtroom but it made my hurt physically to hear it all. I knew it was bad but this was worse. I wondered how long, Lord, before the Amanda Madison I once knew would come back to me. I had to wonder if she would ever come back from the place she had gone to.

The judge dismissed the case and scolded the prosecutor. Rick Tennyson clapped his hands once. Katherine Hallaby snuffled. Ozzie let out his breath. The only thing left was for Bruckman and Charles Evans to go down, and we were all working on that.

“You play the hand you’re dealt,” Rick Tennyson shouted.

That’s what Rick Tennyson had been telling me for years, and that’s what he was telling me now back on the ground in Aspen as his chopper whopped slowly to a stop.

Fact: Dominic Picatti, Skip Taylor, and Sam Albright were dead and buried.

Fact: Amanda Madison was still alive.

Fact: Amanda Madison and I were this close to what we always wanted to be when she was kidnapped.

Fact: She had been kidnapped, brutalized, raped God knows how many times by her captors, and thrown into a closet like a rag.

Fact: She was no longer the Amanda Madison I had known.

Fact: The Amanda Madison I had known no longer existed.

“What if the facts are just shit,” I said.

“What do you think?” Rick Tennyson said.

“I think that’s when you better not ignore them.”

“Amen,” Rick Tennyson said. “And the fact is she’s still alive. And unless I’ve gone completely senile you still love her.”

“What’s not to love?”

“You know what to do.”

“I do,” I said.

Ozzie was waiting for me in the car but there was no hurry. He leaned back, folded his hands behind his head, closed his eyes, and started to breathe slowly and evenly, like he was floating on air. The man had skills.

“The fact is it’s going to be very, very hard,” Rick Tennyson said.

“I know,” I said.

“You may never get her back.”

“No.”

“It may never be the same. It won’t ever be the same.”

“No,” I said. “It won’t.”

“But there is a slight chance you could find something even better.”

I didn’t think there was anything that could be better than what we had.

“Odds?” I said.

“Three-to-one against.”

“Tactics?” I said.

“God knows,” Rick Tennyson said. “That’s up to you two. You have to see her for what she is instead of what you want her to be. Or what she was.”

Rick Tennyson came up short with the rest of what he had to say. He gave me a look that made me shiver, the kind of look I had seen him give perpetrators on the stand.

“She has to forgive you. Even if it wasn’t your fault.”

“It was my fault. It is my fault. The O’Kells come from my world.”

“You have to forgive yourself,” Rick Tennyson said.

“That won’t be easy.”

“You’re Catholic, aren’t you?” he said.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned.”

“So go to Confession.”

“Maybe it’s too late for that.”

“It’s like chicken soup,” Rick Tennyson said. “It can’t hurt.”
Diana Campobello was as good as her word. Upon her release and the release of Amanda Madison she instructed Bruckman and Charles Evans to settle the disposition of Eleanor O’Kell’s assets without delay and without further debate. Half went to her, and, ultimately, to her son Gino Campobello. A billion went to the godforsaken, bastardized children of Eleanor O’Kell. The remaining billion went to me.

That’s right: Arnold Bagdikian – former prosecutor, erstwhile television commentator, ex-radio talk show host – was now as rich as it gets.

Two weeks later Diana Campobello took Confession and took the bottle of pills with a tall vodka chaser that stopped her heart and ended her immediate quest for immortality. Memorial services were held at the Frank Campbell Funeral Home in Manhattan. I did not attend. Eugene Koksher did.

“You went to her funeral?” I said.

We were sitting outside on the terrace of the Hotel Jerome on Main Street in Aspen on the first day it was open for the summer season. I was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Eugene Koksher was dressed in a stiff shirt striped both too big and too bright. His new khakis still had the crease in them. He still had no real color in his face but at least it looked like the blood was flowing. On the ground around him were as many bags from The Gap on East Hopkins as he could carry.

“Nobody who lives here shops here,” I said. “Nobody can afford it.”

“I got these on sale.” He pointed at the bags. “Sixty percent off. Even in Aspen that’s a bargain.”

“When was the last time you bought clothes?” I said. “I mean more than a pair of socks or some underwear?”

“I don’t remember,” Eugene Koksher said.

“What about everybody else? What are they buying?”

“You’d be surprised. A few cars, one or two downpayments on a house. But I put together some financial counseling for us. A lot of people have bought T-bills and annuities. Things like that. I mean it’s not like we’re billionaires.”

Eugene Koksher smiled. I had never seen him smile or tell a joke, and I was surprised at how naturally it came to him. He looked like he might have done it before.

“And what about you?” he said. “What’s next?”

Eugene Koksher looked like he might never stop smiling.

“Whatever it takes,” I said.