False Allegations

by Andrew Vachss

  "Yeah. Give me a beer."

  "What's 'a beer'? You want draft, bottle, what?"

  "Whatever you got?"

  "You ain't particular, huh?"

  "Not about beer."

  "Ah, I heard about you private eyes," she said, twitching her hips a little, smiling to let me know she was just playing.

  "How come she left?" I asked her when she came back with the beer.

  "Left? She got canned, honey. Dumped out on her skinny ass. The customers here, they ain't too choosy, you know what I mean? But they don't go for screw–ups all the time. I mean, maybe they would if I was doing it,"—she grinned—"but I know how to talk to customers. Men, especially—that's about all we get in here. Jenny, she didn't know squat. Girl probably didn't make five bucks a night in tips, even on a full shift."

  "You do much better than that yourself?"

  "Me? Honey, any night I don't go home with an extra fifty, I figure I'm losing it, you know what I mean? A joint like this, the guys like you to clown around a bit with them, you know what I mean? Jenny, she walked around like she had a sharp stick up her ass. Customer says something to her, she don't even come back at him. Me, I know how to handle myself. I know how to keep them in line, and I know how to play them too. That's part of the business…"

  "Ever had any other trouble with her? Before she split?"

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know…swiping tips from other tables, dipping in the register…"

  "Jenny? She was one of those Christian freaks, you know what I mean? One time, she was about ten minutes late. Anyone else, they woulda just told Mack the bus was late or something. You know what she says? She says she didn't get up on time, that's all. Mack told her he'd have to dock her pay. Just kidding around. You know, get a rise outta her. She says, that's okay—that's only fair. A real space cadet, like I told you."

  "Thanks for your time," I said.

  "You gonna drink that beer?"

  "No."

  "So why'd you order it, then?" flashing me another come–on smile.

  "So I could leave you a bigger tip," I said, tossing an extra twenty onto the greasy formica tabletop.

  "She always paid the rent on time," the stolid–looking middle–aged woman in the dull blue housedress told me, the chain on the door to her apartment still latched. "Every Saturday."

  "She paid in cash?"

  "You a bill collector?"

  "Private investigator," I told her.

  "What'd she do?"

  "She didn't do anything. I'm just checking background. She might be in for an inheritance."

  "Like in a will?"

  "That's right. But we want to make sure she's the actual party."

  "Huh?"

  "Well, it's a common name, Jennifer Dalton. There could be more than one."

  "Well, she's real thin. Scrawny, like. Never took care of herself. Real pasty–faced, like she never went out."

  "Did she?"

  "What?"

  "Go out?"

  "I mind my own business," the woman lied. "All I care about, they don't have nobody over in their rooms, that's all."

  "Did she ever get mail?"

  "Utilities included in the rent," the woman said. "And she didn't have no phone in her room."

  "But…?" I asked, letting her see the fan of ten–dollar bills in my right hand.

  "She got two, maybe three letters all the time she was here."

  "Personal letters?"

  "How would I know that?"

  "Were they window envelopes? Like you get from a company? Did they have stamps on them, or a postage meter? Were the envelopes colored or white? Regular size or—?"

  "Okay, I see what you mean now. They was little envelopes. And they wasn't typed. You know, handwriting. With stamps."

  "Who were they from?"

  "That wasn't on the—"

  I stood there waiting, holding the money.

  "There wasn't no name besides hers," she said. "All I could see, they come from New York."

  "I could get in trouble for this," the black man with the shaved head said. "Real trouble, man." His arms bulged from the short sleeves of his white cotton orderly's shirt. A dull white patch of skin ran across his lower cheek. Knife scar.

  "They're just photocopies, right?," I told him. "No big deal."

  "Fuck if it ain't, man. They catch me doing it, I'm gone. His–tor–ee, Jack. Just like that."

  "Yeah. Well, it's already done, true? You got them right there in your hand."

  "That's right," he said, neck muscles rigid. "And they ain't going in your hand unless I see some green."

  "Five yards, like I said. I'm holding the coin—let me see the goods."

  He spread the paper out across the scarred wood table in the barbecue joint, glancing over his shoulder as he did. I didn't touch the paper, just scanned it quickly with my eyes: the name and Social Security number matched against what I had. Date of birth too. Okay.

  "Let's do it," I said, reaching into my pocket.

  "Hold up, man," he said, covering the paper with a large, thick hand. The nails were long, yellowish and horny, starting to hook. "Like I told you…this is hot stuff. Seems like there oughta be something more in it for me."

  "There isn't," I said flatly.

  "A couple more yards won't hurt you," he said sullenly.

  "It's not in the budget."

  "Yeah, well fuck a whole bunch of that 'budget' shit. Man, that's all I hear at the hospital: 'Budget.' I got me a budget too."

  "We had a deal," I reminded him.

  "Yeah, well, deals get changed."

  I held his eyes for a few seconds, the brown iris running into the yellowish white. The last time he'd been to prison, he probably got some strange ideas about white men—if I went a dime over what I'd agreed, he'd be thinking "fish," and that wouldn't do. "Maybe some other time," I said, ice–polite, getting up.

  "Wait up, man! Don't be so cold."

  "Those papers are no good to you," I said quietly, still standing. "They aren't worth a dime. Fact is, I don't take them off your hands, you got to burn them. I got five hundred dollars in my pocket. I'm gonna trade or fade, pal. Pick one."

  He held out his hand for the money, muttering something under his breath.

  I got what I paid for. The hospital had wanted to hold her after the emergency admission, but the "AMA" note at the bottom of the chart told the story. She had signed herself out Against Medical Advice. She hadn't opened up to the social worker who'd interviewed her—not a single mention of the hair–pulling. And not a hint of Brother Jacob anywhere in the slim file of papers.

  A psychiatric resident had written up the case after speaking to her, laying it out in the cold language shrinks use to label human beings.

  DSM III–R DIAGNOSES (DISCHARGE)

  A) POST–TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER, 309.89

  B) R/O DYSTHYMIA

  C) R/O MAJOR DEPRESSION, RECURRENT, UNSPECIFIED

  A) HISTRIONIC PERSONALITY FEATURES

  B) R/O BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

  A) SUICIDE ATTEMPT

  B) ASTHMA

  Back in my office, I used my own copy of the DSM—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—to decode the shorthand. The suicide attempt was the "presenting problem." The clinical picture was mostly guesses: "R/O" means "rule out"—a possibility they wanted to consider once they got her into treatment.

  But that never happened.

  They put down getting fired and breaking up with her boyfriend as "psycho–social stressors," writing it like they happened at the same time. Probably the way she told it.

  And the GAF was "Global Assessment of Functioning." The score was her highest level in the last year. A 55 meant "severe symptoms; significant interference in functioning." Good guess.

  The whole file was nothing but outline sketches. Except for one handwritten note: "Patient states she has attempted suicide at least twice before. Expressed regret only in her lack of success�
��'I even failed at this.' No insight exhibited during interview."

  If Jennifer Dalton knew why she tried to take herself off the count, she wasn't telling.

  Not them. And not then.

  "Doc," you remember that guy you told me about, Bruce Perry? The one working on the brain–trauma stuff?"

  "Yeah," he said slowly, waiting for the punch line. "You got a good memory, hoss."

  "I got a case. A legit case," I assured him quickly. "And I think he's the man for me to talk to. Can you set it up?"

  "I'm listening," Doc said, his wrestler's upper body shifting behind the cluttered desk, eyes homing in the way they did years ago when we first started talking. When I was inside the Walls. Telling me there better be more.

  "I've been doing a lot of that myself—listening," I told him. "A girl says something happened. A long time ago. It happened, but she didn't know it. Or didn't remember it, anyway. Until now."

  "Recovered memory?"

  "That's what she says."

  "And you say…?"

  "I don't know what to say. That's the job—for me to say."

  He leaned back in his chair, eyes still on mine behind the wire–rimmed glasses he always wears. "We go back a long way, Burke. You've spent more time studying child abuse than any Ph.D. I know. Your gut's as good as anyone's. What do you need Perry for?"

  "He's a science guy, right? Hard science, not the blah–de–blah stuff."

  "Like I do?" Doc asked. Not challenging me, just getting at it, the way he always did.

  "What you do…it's only as good as the guy doing it, right?"

  "Sure. Same as building a house. Or fixing teeth. Or playing the piano."

  "But there's a truth somewhere, Doc. A true truth. Like the way they test for gold—you drop the chemicals on the metal and you see the truth."

  "You think Perry's stuff is like that?"

  "Don't you?"

  "I'm not sure yet, hoss. Could be. Tell you what—I'll give him a call and tell him the truth. About you too, understand? He wants to go for it, that's up to him."

  "Thanks Doc. I owe you."

  "Yeah, right," he said, waving me out of his office.

  The flight touched down at Houston International at two–thirty, on time even with the transfer from DFW—there were no nonstops out of New York and you couldn't pay me to fly out of Newark. When I got to the hotel, there was a note waiting for me at the desk.

  "Hi! We're already here, me and Jennifer. It's all set up. Dr. Perry said to call him as soon as you're settled."

  The handwriting was rounded, immature. Signed: "H."

  "The best predictors of current functioning are past experiences. The most critical part of any evaluation, then, is getting a thorough, accurate history," the man said, smiling sheepishly as though he knew how pompous the words sounded. He was tall, well put together, with a frank, open face and thick tousled hair. Looked like a recruiting poster for North Dakota. "Childhood experiences have a grossly disproportionate effect on adult functioning…and those experiences are almost exclusively provided by adults."

  "But what if the patient is the only source of that history, Doctor?" I asked him, watching my language, wondering what he'd been told about me. I'd already guessed the dress code wrong: I had on a dove–gray silk suit and a conservative tie; he was wearing a blue chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of weathered jeans over scuffed cowboy boots.

  "It's doesn't matter. I would still look for a set of emotional or social characteristics in the family which would increase a child's vulnerability—those factors which make children feel isolated, inadequate, lonely, unattractive, incompetent…different," he said, leaning forward, engaging me, telling me to ignore the heavy language and listen to the core. "A harsh, demanding, cold parent…an overwhelmed, depressed parent…absence of supportive extended family…social isolation…a parent who was raised abusively who hasn't come to terms with it—"

  "Most families weren't the Brady Bunch," I said, cutting him off. I know there's always a price to pay for information, but I hadn't come all that way to listen to what I'd learned before this guy had been born.

  "Sure," he replied, nodding. "But those factors tend to be transgenerational. It's rare to find an adult who was neglected, humiliated, unloved—made to feel worthless for whatever reason—who can easily provide optimal nurturing. You can't give something you never received."

  "Yeah you can," I said, greeting his sermon with a flat prison–yard stare.

  He was quiet for a minute. "You think I'm sugar–coating it?" he asked.

  "I don't know what you're doing," I told him. "It sounds like you're telling me someone like Jennifer could be an easy target because—"

  "Look," he said, cutting me off. "Not all stealth predators are successful. Many are rebuffed—"

  "Stealth predators?"

  "Those who don't use force. They operate from within what the child believes is a safety zone—they're always people the child has been told can be trusted—and they proceed in highly stylized ways. They would call it 'seduction.' We call it what it is: hunting."

  "And some kids just blow them off?"

  "A good many do just that, in one way or another. But if the child were reared in a highly competitive or consistently humiliating environment, if the child's primary caregiver was overwhelmed or emotionally distant, that child might be susceptible to what feels like…caring."

  "So for the kid to be set up, he doesn't actually have to be abused?"

  "Emotional abuse is as devastating as any other form, Mr. Burke," he said, his voice not open to argument. "And it leaves as indelible a physical scar on the developing brain as a brand would on the skin."

  "So your mother telling you you're a piece of shit is the same as your father fucking you every night?"

  "Children don't react to inputs the same way adults do," he said, turning aside my deliberately coarse language, waving his hand to tell me to wait until he was finished. "Let me put it this way: The nearer the target, the more damaging even the slightest blow can be. And when the target is the developing human heart…"

  "You think that's what turned her into a puller?" I asked, trying to get him off the soapbox and on to the reason I came.

  "The trichotillomania? Most likely. That's very primitive, self–soothing behavior. You remember your college psychology? The 'fight or flight' reaction?"

  I nodded so he'd keep going. I guess Doc hadn't told him everything when he'd vouched for me. Me, I had what you'd call a lower education. But the tuition had been a lot more costly than college. Started much earlier too.

  "Well, it's palpable ignorance to believe a baby has those options," Perry said, anger flashing across his handsome face. "When a baby is threatened, she can't fight and she can't flee. And when the threat actually induces terror, sometimes the only option is to run to a 'safe' place…to dissociate. Cut off the pain and threat from the outside world and stay inside. Deep inside. Dissociation is connected to a release of endorphins—you know, natural opiates—and the result is soothing, pleasurable. The inner retreat 'feels' good to the baby. It is, if you will, rewarding."

  I thought about Fancy, a girl I knew a long time ago—Fancy telling me how the taste of the whip got all the endorphins racing through her brain. Made her feel good. But I didn't say anything, just shifted my body posture enough to let him know I was listening.

  "And because the brain 'learns' from experience," Perry went on, "behaviors and emotions that result in 'reward' are repeated. Eventually, the child continues to seek that reward even if the original stimulus—the threat or the terror—isn't present. That's one of the keys to the survival of our species. Would it surprise you to know that those same biochemical 'rewards' can be released when a baby smiles at a woman holding her?"

  "The mother gets an endorphin rush?"

  "If you like," he said, ignoring my tone of voice. "The point is that the woman holding the baby is rewarded for the baby's smile…and seeks that smi
le the same way a terrorized child seeks safety. That's part of the reason why mothers protect their children. But that capability, it's only a genetic potential. If the caretaker herself was never fed or held, never nurtured or loved as an infant, those biochemical 'reward' systems in her brain don't develop to the maximum. So when her baby smiles, the 'reward' isn't as powerful. And she's not as impelled to seek it again."

  So maybe my mother's mother hadn't…I threw that thought into the garbage can I keep in my mind for things like that, looked him in the face and took him back to Jennifer Dalton: "What if this 'reward' gets thin after a while?" I asked him.

  "Thin?"

  "Like dope. After a while, what used to get you high doesn't even get you off the ground."

  "Dose–related, right," he agreed. "Are you asking if—?"

  "If pulling didn't give her enough, make her feel good enough, could she start cutting on herself?"

  "That happens sometimes," he answered, temporizing. "It's not always so progressive—we don't see that all the time. It does happen, but…"

  "But it's rare, right?"

  "Trichotillomania is rare, sure. So is self–mutilation. Pain signals have the ability to turn on the brain's endorphins, like I said earlier. Children living in a constant state of terror may overdevelop those systems, like a bodybuilder overtaxing a muscle to make it grow. The more you use any part of the brain, the more it develops. So instead of feeling more 'pain' when they pull their hair or cut themselves, they actually feel more soothed. Their brain systems are organized differently from the rest of us."

  That's you, not us, I thought, thinking how violence had soothed me so many times when I was younger. Not my pain; someone else's. Sometimes anyone else's…

  "What we're looking for is…plausibility," he continued. "A set of circumstances that could account for high vulnerability. We look for evidence in the individual's ability to give their own history…and then we look for 'dissociative' gaps," he said, using two fingers tapping against each thumb to make quote marks around the word, "spaces where recollection of key experiences is fuzzy, incomplete—or even missing entirely."