Shrink Rap

by Robert B. Parker

  “What was Mandy’s last name?” I said.

  “Mandy,” Tony said, and we laughed.

  “Seriously, now what happens at Paramount?”

  “Seriously?” Tony said. “You’re in the wrong business for seriously. Resnick will either have Mandy call me tomorrow and tell us they pass, or he’ll buck it along to Sam Kramer.”

  “Who, in a few days, will have somebody call Tony to tell him they pass.”

  “Melanie Joan,” Tony said, “movies do get made.”

  “What would you say the percentage was?” Melanie Joan said.

  She probably was feeling the effects of the margaritas. She looked like I felt. Tony smiled at her, and me.

  “Let’s not go there,” he said.

  “If he passes it along to this Sam Kramer guy,” I said, “whoever he is. Does that mean he endorses it?”

  Tony laughed. “Not bloody likely,” he said. “Sam is head of production. Resnick will buck it along to Sam, with a note saying that, with the right director, and the right screenplay, properly cast, if we had the right budget, this property might be one on which we could consider going forward.”

  “Daring,” I said.

  “And Sam can green-light a project?”

  “Or not,” Tony said.

  Chapter 28

  Tony Gault dropped us off in front of the Beverly Wilshire and promised to pick us up at nine the next morning.

  “I need a nap,” Melanie Joan said as we walked through the high lobby. We were staying in front, in the original part of the hotel.

  “Margaritas at lunch,” I said. “This could screw up our sleep patterns for days.” I rang for the elevator.

  “Resnick would drive Carrie Nation to drink,” Melanie Joan said.

  The elevator door opened silently and we stepped in. I pressed five for our floor. As the door started to close a man outside stopped it with his hand and stepped into the elevator, and smiled at us and pushed the CLOSE DOOR button. It was John Melvin. The doors closed. He looked at the lighted button at floor five and smiled at us. I moved my shoulder bag around in front of me and unzipped it.

  Melanie Joan seemed to contract. I moved a little so I was fully between her and Melvin, and slid my hand into my unzipped purse. Melvin was wearing white slacks and a raspberry blazer over a white silk tee shirt. His sunglasses were on the top of his head. His hair was perfectly brushed, his skin clear and tanned. He seemed large. The elevator seemed small.

  “Hello, ladies,” Melvin said.

  Melanie Joan was tight into the corner of the elevator behind me. She made a little squeaky sound. Melvin looked at her over my shoulder. His eyes were dark and deep. He seemed to be looking entirely at Melanie Joan, as if I weren’t there.

  “Isn’t this a piece of serendipity,” he said.

  “I’m going to have to do something about you pretty soon,” I said.

  His gaze shifted from Melanie Joan and settled onto me like something tangible. He didn’t seem to connect me with his doofus new therapy patient who wouldn’t remove her sunglasses.

  “Or,” he said, “vice versa.”

  The elevator stopped. The doors opened. Without taking my eyes off Melvin, and with my right hand on my gun, I moved Melanie Joan toward the elevator door and followed her out. Melvin stared at both of us as the elevator doors slowly slid shut between us. I watched the arrow on the floor indicator, but it told me nothing. The elevator simply went back down to the lobby.

  Behind me Melanie Joan made that little squeak again. I turned.

  “You’re going to be fine,” I said.

  “I have to throw up,” she said.

  “Hang on,” I said, “until we get to the room.”

  She managed to do that. While she was in the bathroom I called down to the desk and asked to be connected to Dr. John Melvin’s room. The front desk told me he was not registered at the hotel. I hung up. There was quiet in the bathroom. I went to the door.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Do you need me to come in?” I said.

  “No.”

  I was quiet, listening, I heard the water running in the sink.

  “Melanie Joan?” I said.

  Her voice was hoarse and shaky. “What?”

  “I will not,” I said, “I will not let him hurt you.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Chapter 29

  We sat in the suite’s living room now with an LA sheriff’s deputy who had come over from the substation on San Vicente.

  “There is a restraining order on Dr. Melvin,” I said.

  “In Massachusetts,” he said.

  He was young and blond with a thick mustache. His arms bulged under the short sleeves of his uniform shirt. He wore his gun high on his right side.

  “Yes,” I said. “But I assume you honor that.”

  “Probably do,” the deputy said. “I’ll need to check.”

  Melanie Joan had gotten her makeup back intact and combed her hair. But her eyes still hinted red, and her face seemed tight against her skull.

  “Can you arrest him?” she said.

  Her voice was small and hoarse.

  “Once we got our facts in place,” the deputy said, “we might be able to do that.”

  “What facts?” Melanie Joan said.

  She was hard to hear, and the deputy leaned toward her as she spoke.

  “That there is a restraining order,” he said. “That we do honor them from Massachusetts. That he is stalking you.”

  “Why would we make it up?” Melanie Joan said.

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t, ma’am, but we still have to check.”

  “Ask her,” Melanie Joan said, and nodded at me.

  The deputy said, “Yes, ma’am,” and looked at me. “You talk with hotel security?”

  “Yes.”

  “He registered here?”

  “Not under his name,” I said. “They told me they require credit card or other ID when a guest registers.”

  “And certainly nobody ever fakes it,” the deputy said.

  “Fake?” I said. “Here in Los Angeles?”

  The deputy grinned. “I know the security guy here,” the deputy said. “I’ll speak to him, have him put a man in the hall.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  The deputy looked at Melanie Joan. “This guy dangerous?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “He ever try to hurt you physically?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe he won’t,” the deputy said.

  Melanie Joan was silent. The deputy looked at me. “You got a gun?” he said.

  “I’m not licensed in California,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Can you arrest him?” Melanie Joan said again in her small voice.

  “If he violates a valid restraining order and we are reciprocal, then yeah, we can arrest him,” the deputy said.

  He took a card out of his pocket and handed it to me.

  “He bothers you again, call me. Meanwhile I’ll check out the restraining order.”

  “Does that mean he has to make another attempt on me before you can do anything?” Melanie Joan said.

  “Be nice to catch him doing it,” the deputy said.

  “And then you’ll arrest him?” Melanie Joan said.

  “You bet,” he said and grinned at me again. “Probably slam him up against a cinder block wall two or three times while we’re doing it.”

  “That would be nice,” I said.

  Chapter 30

  After the deputy left I looked at his card. His name was Raymond Black. I put the card in my purse. I turned back to the room and sat across from Melanie Joan on the couch.

  “He terrifies you,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Other people don’t,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “What is it about him?”

  She shook her head.

  “Has he hurt you? Physica
lly?”

  She shook her head.

  “But you’re afraid he might.”

  “I’m afraid he’ll get me,” she said.

  “Get you how?”

  She shook her head.

  “Get me,” she said.

  “Since I’ve been with you,” I said, “he has made no effort to hurt you.”

  “He’s trying to get me.”

  “To frighten you?”

  She shrugged.

  “What does he want from you?” I said.

  She was quiet, as if I hadn’t spoken. I waited. She stared across the room as if she could see through the wall.

  “Do you know what he wants?” I said.

  She nodded. I waited some more. She didn’t speak, or look at me, or move.

  “Melanie Joan,” I said. “Look at me.”

  She kept staring through the wall.

  “Look at me,” I said.

  She turned her head. Her eyes were unfocused, her pupils very big.

  “What does he want from you?” I said.

  “Submission,” she whispered.

  I leaned forward to hear better.

  “Talk about that,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “Melanie Joan,” I said. “You need to be able to talk about this.”

  “You are not my shrink,” she whispered.

  “Do you have one?”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t you think you ought to?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I know a wonderful psychiatrist,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything. She simply sat, unmoving, looking back through the wall again. She began to cry, tears on her blank face. She stood suddenly and turned and walked to her bedroom.

  “I’ll be here,” I said. “Right here.”

  She didn’t say anything. She went into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

  My God, what has he done to her?

  I went and opened the suite door a crack with the chain still on. I could see a hotel security man standing at the end wall of the hallway. One point for Ray Black.

  Then I went to bed and slept with my gun on the night table.

  Chapter 31

  “I’m sorry about last night,” Melanie Joan said.

  We were having breakfast in the dining room, in a window bay that gave us a view of the carport.

  “Did you sleep?” I said.

  “I took two Ambien,” she said.

  “That’s a good idea,” I said.

  “You’ve tried it?”

  “There have been nights,” I said, “when I couldn’t sleep.”

  “I’m not going to let him do this to me,” Melanie Joan said.

  “Frighten you?” I said.

  “I will not let him reduce me to what I was last night.”

  “Can you talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “If you ever want to,” I said, “I’d like to listen.”

  “I know.”

  I drank my orange juice.

  “I think Tony is smitten with you,” Melanie Joan said.

  “Tony Gault?”

  “Un huh.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I can tell.”

  “Really?” I said.

  Melanie Joan smiled. “Really.”

  “Well,” I said. “He seems quite nice.”

  “He is,” Melanie Joan said. “I mean he’s a Hollywood agent, of course.”

  “And that makes him suspect,” I said.

  “It does. But I like him.”

  “Well,” I said. “Let’s not discourage any advances he might attempt.”

  “Tony is picking us up at nine. To go to Universal.”

  “Is the dress code still the same?” I said.

  “Yes. Just like yesterday. We dress up in a dressed-down way.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  We drove down to Culver City in Tony Gault’s BMW.

  “This is the old MGM lot,” Tony said as we picked up a drive-on pass at the gate. “That’s the Irving Thalberg building over there. Hal and Murray will meet us in Grady’s office. Which used to belong to Louis B. Mayer.”

  I never did quite know who Grady was, or the woman named Alice that was with him. I had stopped paying attention to the pitch. But I’d have to be a more sophisticated girl than I am not to be impressed sitting in Louis B. Mayer’s office.

  On the drive back to Beverly Hills, Melanie sat up front with Tony and I sat in the backseat. Tony asked us to dinner.

  “You go,” Melanie Joan said to me. “I’d really rather have a little room service and watch something really awful on television.”

  “You’ll have a wide choice,” Tony said.

  “I can’t leave you alone,” I said to Melanie.

  “You can. I’ll lock my door. There’s the lovely hotel security man in the hall. I’ll be fine.”

  “You weren’t fine yesterday,” I said.

  Tony looked at us, and went back to his driving, and said nothing.

  “I told you,” Melanie Joan said. “I will not let him do that to me again. You need to give me a chance to prove it to myself.”

  “By leaving you alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “I could leave you my gun,” I said.

  Tony, with his eyes still on the road, said, “Yikes!”

  Melanie Joan was half-turned in the front seat, talking to me. She shook her head violently.

  “Oh God, no,” she said. “I’d be more afraid of the gun than I would be of the evil one.”

  “No reason to be,” I said.

  “I won’t touch a gun,” Melanie said.

  A lot of women were like that. It was as if the gun were alive and might fire itself at any minute, killing everyone within range. I knew that guns untouched were inert. For me a gun was a way to equalize disparities in strength and size. Guns could protect people. Me included. If used badly they could be deadly. But that was true of automobiles and scotch whiskey.

  “I assume all of this is none of my business,” Tony said as we waited for the light on Olympic Boulevard.

  “Sunny will tell you at dinner,” Melanie Joan said.

  Chapter 32

  We had dined at Spago on North Cañon Drive, and Tony had spoken to half a dozen celebrities including Magic Johnson and Jon Bon Jovi. We had drunk cocktails before dinner, and wine with dinner, and neither of us probably needed the Baileys Irish Cream over ice that we were now sipping in the bar of the Beverly Wilshire at 11:20. But we liked it anyway.

  “Are stalkers usually dangerous?” Tony said.

  “John Melvin is certainly dangerous in some way to Melanie Joan.”

  “Physically?”

  “I don’t know. Being stalked puts you in danger. Being terrified by someone is dangerous. The question is not will he do something. He’s already doing something.”

  Tony nodded. “Whether or not he ever touches her,” he said.

  “He is touching her, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Yes. I see that,” Tony said. “Can he be arrested?”

  “In theory, if he violates a restraining order, he can be arrested. In practice stalkers get a lot of second and third chances. Particularly former husbands. A lot of judges see it as a domestic dispute.”

  “So what can you do?”

  “Me? I can protect her physically, give her emotional support, try to demystify the son of a bitch, until I can find a way to put him out of business.”

  “You’re not afraid of him?” Tony said.

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s what you get used to,” I said. “My father was a cop. I was a cop. I know a lot of bad guys.” I laughed a little. “Some of my husband’s, former husband’s, family are criminals.”

  “Really?”

  “Not my husband,” I said.

  “It’s hard to imagine you a policeman,” Tony said.

  “Because I’m so
cute and perky?”

  “Exactly,” Tony said.

  We both laughed.

  “Melanie Joan says you’re an artist,” Tony said.

  “I paint a little,” I said.

  “I’d love to see some of your work,” Tony said.

  “You’ll have to come to Boston,” I said. “I don’t carry them with me.”

  “Maybe I will,” Tony said.

  Uh oh.

  Tony nodded at the waitress and she brought us two fresh drinks. The bar was crowded but not noisy. He raised his glass toward me. I raised mine and we drank.

  “So,” he said. “You live alone in Boston?”

  “I live with Rosie,” I said.

  “And Rosie is?”

  “A miniature English bull terrier.”

  “And she’s cute,” Tony said.

  “She’s startlingly beautiful,” I said.

  “Like her mother,” Tony said.

  He was looking at me steadily. I knew where we were going, and I knew I had to decide if I wanted to go there. I took in a silent breath. Was I ready once again to take my clothes off in front of someone I didn’t know terribly well? I took in another breath. At least my body was pretty good.

  “Just like her mother,” I said.

  We were both quiet. He knew where we were going, too. And he knew I knew. We could feel it in the space around us.

  “Are you someone who kisses on the first date?” Tony said.

  “Depends on who the first date is with,” I said.

  “This first date is with me.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “And?”

  “I might kiss on the first date.”

  “Is there somewhere that we can test the hypothesis?” Tony said.

  I liked Tony.

  “Melanie Joan and I have separate bedrooms,” I said.

  “And you think Melanie Joan will be in hers.”

  “I do.”

  “Wanna test the hypothesis?” Tony said.

  “We’d be fools not to,” I said.

  The security guard in the corridor recognized me and nodded slightly as I unlocked the suite door. Melanie Joan had left the chain off. The living room was immaculate, and, on the small table in front of the window, there was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket.

  “Melanie Joan appears to have anticipated something,” I said.

  “Is it because she knows me?” Tony said. “Or because she knows you?”