Shrink Rap

by Robert B. Parker

  We both stared at him.

  “Did you just make that up?” I said.

  “No,” Spike said. “Fred Allen made it up.”

  “Fred Allen?” Melanie Joan said.

  “Spike is a show business person,” I said. “Do you know a man named Dirk Beals?”

  Melanie Joan’s face didn’t pinch at the corners, like Kim Crawford’s had. But it got more angular.

  “I know him,” she said.

  I waited. She didn’t say anything. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Spike look up from his magazine.

  “Tell me about him,” I said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “His name came up in the investigation,” I said.

  Melanie Joan nodded.

  “Can you tell me about him?” I said.

  “Only if I must.”

  “He came to my loft this morning and threatened me,” I said.

  Spike dog-eared his magazine and sat up.

  “My God,” Melanie Joan said. “Was it about me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I had talked with one of your… with one of John Melvin’s patients. The next day Beals comes around and tells me not to talk with her again.”

  “What did you do?” Melanie Joan said.

  “I pointed a shotgun at him and told him I might blow his head off.”

  On the couch, Spike smiled.

  Melanie Joan said, “Oh… my… God.”

  I waited. Everything had become corners and planes in Melanie Joan’s face.

  “What can you tell me?” I said.

  “He is a repulsive human being,” Melanie Joan said.

  I nodded.

  “He tried…” She paused and looked at Spike.

  “You want me to step out?” Spike said.

  Melanie Joan thought about it.

  “No,” she said. “There’s nothing shameful about it. I need to get over that.”

  Spike shrugged and stayed where he was. I was quiet. Melanie Joan stared out the window.

  Without looking at me, she said, “He tried to rape me.”

  “How dreadful,” I said.

  “It was more dreadful than you think,” Melanie Joan said.

  “Did he hurt you?” I said.

  “No. My husband was present.”

  “Present?”

  “He was watching.”

  Spike put his hand on Rosie’s neck and let it rest there.

  “Watching?” I said.

  “It apparently excited him,” Melanie Joan said.

  Her voice was tinny.

  “Good God!” I said.

  “I kneed him,” Melanie Joan said, “and pulled loose and ran out of the house.”

  “The house in Chestnut Hill?”

  “Yes. I never went back.”

  “That’s how you left your husband?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  The room was silent except for the sound of Rosie snoring faintly against Spike’s leg.

  “Have you seen a shrink?” I said.

  “I’ve had quite enough,” Melanie Joan said in her flat tin voice, “of psychiatrists, thank you.”

  We were very quiet. Even Spike didn’t know what to say.

  Finally I said, “I am going to put them both away where they cannot bother you.”

  Melanie Joan’s face was expressionless.

  “Then you might as well put the other one away, too,” she said.

  Her voice was barely audible.

  “Other one?” I said.

  “Barry,” she said. “Barry Clay. He was there. I think it was going to be his turn next.”

  “Are they both friends of Melvin’s?” I said.

  “Yes.” She made a sound that might have been a humorless laugh. “The three musketeers.”

  “The other guy,” I said.

  “Other guy?”

  “I saw Beals and another man leave Melvin’s home late one night, and drive off in Beals’s car.”

  “That was probably Barry,” Melanie Joan said.

  I looked at Spike. He looked as close to shocked as Spike could probably get.

  “These are some sick heterosexuals,” Spike said.

  I nodded.

  “Maybe you ought to bring Richie into this,” Spike said.

  “And Uncle Felix?”

  “Felix would solve your problems the same day you called… and Melanie Joan’s.”

  “I can’t do that,” I said.

  “I could call for you,” Spike said.

  “That’s not the point and you know it.”

  “Just a thought,” Spike said.

  “I can’t be a grown-up detective and call my ex-husband every time I run into meanies.”

  Spike shrugged. He wasn’t much for abstractions.

  “I could call on them,” Spike said.

  “I have to deal with this, Spike.”

  Melanie Joan said, “What is he talking about? Who is this Felix?”

  “My husband’s uncle,” I said.

  “And what could he do?”

  “He’d kill them,” I said.

  Melanie Joan didn’t say anything for a moment, then she looked at Spike.

  “And you,” she said. “Would you kill them too?”

  “Probably not,” Spike said. “But I’d get their attention.”

  “How?”

  Spike smiled. “I don’t go into things with any preconceptions,” Spike said. “I’d ask them not to bother you or Sunny, and I’d see what developed.”

  “These are very dangerous people,” Melanie Joan said.

  Spike smiled. Melanie Joan looked at me.

  “They are very dangerous, Sunny.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. “You’ll be safe with Spike.”

  “I thought gay men were supposed to be, sort of, you know, sissies,” Melanie Joan said.

  “Sometimes I scratch and bite,” Spike said.

  “Maybe you could talk with Uncle Whatsisname,” Melanie Joan said.

  “Felix,” I said. “You want me to have them killed?”

  Melanie Joan looked out the window for a moment at the spot across Huntington Avenue where John Melvin had been standing. Then she looked slowly back at me.

  “Yes,” she said. “I would like that very much.”

  Chapter 41

  Kerry Crawford had an office on Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington, across the street from a restaurant called Flora, where Julie and I went to dinner sometimes. He had wavy black hair and a great tan. There were four desks in the office plus a little alcove in the back where Kerry sat at a slightly bigger desk. There were photographs of houses in the front window, and all over the walls inside. Two of the desks were empty. A sturdy woman with bluish hair and sensible shoes sat at the other one talking on the phone.

  “You’re investigating my ex-wife?” he said.

  He had a voice like a television announcer, with no hint of region to it.

  “Not really,” I said. “She’s peripheral to a case I’m working on.”

  “So what did she do?”

  “Does she often do things?”

  “She’s wacky,” Crawford said. “Hell, I even sent her to a shrink toward the end.”

  “Because?”

  “She was so freaking clingy. It was driving me crazy. ‘I love you do you love me?’ You know? All the time, for crie eye.”

  “Did that help her?” I said.

  Crawford pursed his lips, trying to think how to say it.

  “It sort of ended our sex life,” he said after a time.

  “Do you know why?”

  He shrugged.

  “No. All of a sudden she didn’t want to very often, and even when she’d let me she’d lie there stiff, and not move, you know, like close your eyes and think of England?”

  “Did you ever talk about it?” I said.

  “I raised hell about it. But it didn’t do any good.”

  “How odd,” I said.

  “Yeah. For crissake she wouldn�
��t even say anything about it. Just froze up on me.”

  “Is that why you left her?”

  He nodded.

  “I guess so,” he said. “She used to be hot, always wanted it.”

  “She still tell you she loved you?” I said.

  “Yeah.” Crawford shook his head. “God,” he said. “I can’t figure women out.”

  “Was she always asking if you loved her too?”

  Crawford looked surprised. “Yeah,” he said. “I used to say to her, ‘I married you, didn’t I? And I support you, and I bop you whenever you want.’”

  “And that didn’t reassure her?” I said.

  “Not for long,” Crawford said. “But she’d keep saying she loved me.”

  “That must have been frustrating,” I said.

  “You better believe it,” Crawford said. “I’d say to her, ‘If you love me so goddamned much how come you don’t come across anymore?’ You know?”

  I nodded. “And she froze up after she started seeing this psychiatrist?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Melvin, Dr. Melvin,” Crawford said. “Supposed to be some kind of specialist. I think he’s a fucking quack. Excuse my French.”

  “Certainement,” I said. “Did the freeze come right away?”

  “No. It was after she’d been seeing him awhile, maybe two, three months.”

  “And she never said why?”

  “No. So what the hell was I supposed to do? I don’t get it at home, I get it someplace else.”

  “Anyone would,” I said.

  “You married?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he said. “Maybe we could get together for something interesting.”

  “I thought you had remarried.”

  “So?”

  “So we probably won’t get together.”

  “Hey, Sunny.” He gave me a big lounge-lizard smile. “My wife’s married; I’m not.”

  I stood. And gave him a business card.

  “If you think of anything else about Dr. Melvin or Kim, please give me a call,” I said.

  “Even if I don’t think of anything,” Crawford said.

  I would just as soon have dated a rabid hyena, but I didn’t want to shut him off. I might need to talk with him again.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Chapter 42

  I was having juice and coffee at my counter, opening the mail. There was a big manila envelope. I opened it. Inside was a color Xerox print of a naked woman lying on a couch. Someone had pasted on a grainy picture of my head, with a knit cap pulled down around my ears. I must remember not to wear that hat anymore, pulled down over my ears it makes me look like my mother. I took the picture to the window and looked at it in the daylight. It was obviously a blowup of a picture taken of me outside. I had bought the hat only three weeks ago, so the picture was recent. There was nothing to identify the woman or the room. I looked at Rosie.

  “Her body isn’t so great,” I said.

  She sat on her tail and dropped her jaw and put her ears back and looked more like a bull terrier than I had thought it possible for a bull terrier to look. I looked at the picture again. Then I called Brian Kelly.

  “I have a picture,” I said. “Via the U.S. Postal Service.”

  “And it arrived?” Brian said. “Intact?”

  “If I drop it off, could you get it processed through forensics?”

  “Sooner or later,” Brian said.

  “They’re still promising things by the twelfth of never?” I said.

  “Busy busy,” Brian said. “You trying to establish the origin?”

  “I know the origin. I’m trying to get proof.”

  “Do what I can,” Brian said.

  “The picture is of a nude woman.”

  “Excellent,” Brian said.

  “Someone has pasted my face onto her body.”

  “Your story,” Brian said.

  “It’s not me,” I said.

  “I’ll be able to tell,” Brian said.

  “My God,” I said. “I think I’m blushing.”

  Brian laughed a little bit. “Do you know why the picture was sent?”

  “To discourage me from an investigation,” I said.

  “Are there threats included?”

  “Implied,” I said.

  “Same thing we spoke of before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you need a hand with the threat part, maybe?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m doing fine with it.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

  “I will,” I said. “But I won’t.”

  “Sure,” Brian said. “Bring it by. I’ll find out when I can, as fast as I can get the lab to do it.”

  When I hung up, I finished breakfast and took a shower and put on my face, and got dressed. I took my gun, and said goodbye to Rosie. I went out to my car. I looked around the street. I didn’t see anything. I looked back at my building for a minute.

  “I think I won’t leave Rosie alone,” I said out loud. And went back in and got her and took her with me.

  She was very pleased.

  Chapter 43

  I wore my gun behind my right hipbone on a wide black belt with a nice silver buckle. It was more accessible than it was in my purse, and quick access might be a good thing, following Dirk Beals around. Beals had a townhouse on the flat of Mt. Vernon Street, near Brimmer Street. At 8 A.M. I was parked beside a hydrant a half block up toward Charles Street, drinking coffee. It was early for Rosie. She was asleep on the passenger seat. At 8:10 a traffic warden stopped by the car and waved at me to move. I held up my badge and she nodded and moved on. The badge said BAIL ENFORCEMENT AGENT in lettering around the edge, and there was a big blue seal with an eagle on it in the center. I had bought the badge on the Internet. Few people actually look at badges.

  At 8:35 a brown and white Boston cab pulled up in front of Beals’s townhouse, and the man himself came out wearing a Burberry trench coat and carrying a briefcase on a shoulder strap. I followed the cab down Storrow Drive and up Cambridge Street, down New Street past District 1 Station and on into the financial district. Beals got out and went into 53 State. I left my car by another hydrant, brought Rosie with me on her leash in case they towed the car, went in, and looked at the lobby directory. He was there, Dirk Beals Ltd. on the thirtieth floor. We went back to the car, which had not been towed. Rosie got in the backseat and looked at pedestrians. I used the car phone to call information and get the number and call Beals Ltd. A woman answered.

  “Dirk Beals,” she said.

  “Hi,” I said, “it’s Jenny from the Better Business Control Office. What business do you do?”

  “Financial management,” she said. “Who did you say you were?”

  “Thank you very much,” I said.

  I followed Beals all that day, and the next two, and the fact that he had a financial management company at 53 State Street was the sum of what I learned. He went to work in the morning. He ate lunch with different people every day. He went home at night. For a fiend he lived a boring life.

  On the fourth morning I decided to give it one more day, before I tried something else. And it turned out well for me. Beals did the same old thing: work in the morning, lunch with someone at noon, except this time the lunch was with the guy that had been with him outside Melvin’s office. They strolled down to the Meridien Hotel. I left my dog and car with the doorman, and followed Beals and his friend up the escalator at a discreet distance. They took a table in Cafe Fleuri, and I went back downstairs and lingered obscurely in the lobby until they came down. When they came out I stayed with them on foot. When they reached 53 State, Beals went in and his friend kept walking. I stayed with the friend. He walked on down through Quincy Market to the parking garage. When he went in, I waited outside, and in a few minutes he drove out in a black Saab sedan and drove away. I got the license number. Then I walked back to the Merid
ien, duked the doorman a twenty, and got in my car.

  “I gave Rosie a little walk,” the doorman said. “She did a nice doody.”

  As we drove away I smiled at Rosie, who was sitting in the passenger seat again, looking back toward the doorman.

  “You make friends everywhere,” I said.

  Chapter 44

  I called Tony Gault at one minute past noon, my time. His secretary said he was in a meeting.

  “May he call you back,” the secretary said.

  “Yes,” I said and hung up.

  One minute past nine his time and he’s already in a meeting. It had not occurred to me until now that I didn’t have his home phone number. Why didn’t I?

  It was Richie’s turn to have Rosie, and he showed up, on time, he was annoyingly punctual, at one o’clock. Rosie ran around and chased her tail and jumped on and off the furniture and wiggled. Which was also a little annoying.

  “You want some coffee?” I said.

  “Sure,” Richie said.

  He sat in a chair in my window alcove with Rosie in his lap, a compact muscular man, with thick black hair cut short. There was a stillness in Richie that I had never really understood. He never seemed uncomfortable with quiet. He’d be a good match for Dr. Copeland. They’d probably sit and look calmly at each other for the full fifty minutes. I put his coffee down in front of him and took mine and sat in the armchair across from him.

  “So how’s everything with Ms. Right,” I said.

  “Carrie and I are fine,” Richie said.

  “What’s Carrie’s last name?”

  “LeClair,” Richie said.

  “Carrie LeClair,” I said. “Cute name.”

  Richie nodded.

  “I’ve been seeing a shrink,” I said.

  “Un huh.”

  “Part of a case,” I said. “I’m not getting therapy.”

  Richie smiled.

  “We did that,” he said.

  “You know who Dr. Melvin is,” I said.

  “Melanie Joan’s ex.”

  “And you know I’m seeing him, undercover, sort of, to see if I can get some leverage on him.”

  “You’ve rejected this before, but my uncle Felix could leverage him right out of the picture if you’d like.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” I said.

  Richie nodded.