ER - A Murder Too Personal
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When I woke, the clock said six-thirty, but I wasn’t sure if it was AM or PM. I didn’t really give a rat’s ass. All I wanted was a hot shower and a rare steak. The shower was hot, but I had to settle for a couple of franks instead.
While I ate, I turned on the TV. The local news was on, so I knew it was the evening. I was beginning to feel relatively close to an approximation of a human being again. The doc had put my left arm in a sling and the shoulder still throbbed. My right side gave me a twinge every time I moved the wrong way.
Laura called about eight and, when I filled her in on what happened, she said she was coming right over. She rang the bell a half hour later. When I opened the door, she was standing there like an angel of mercy with a pot of soup in her hands. She was wearing a short flowered cotton dress and she had a white crochet shawl draped over her shoulders.
She made me go back to bed while she put the soup in a bowl. At least she didn’t insist on feeding me. But she did sit on the edge of the bed watching me with troubled eyes as I wolfed it down. She didn’t say a word. It was some kind of home-made vegetable soup. I had always felt that home-made soup was somehow magical. I didn’t know anyone who actually made soup.
When I looked into those eyes, I understood how some men who needed mothering could be attracted to her. There was the kind of warmth of the eternal feminine.
But when she leaned over me to get the bowl, I caught the sweet smell of her perfume. It was Shalimar. It ticked off a distant memory of a fragrance. A remembered scent. And the possibility of a girl who wasn’t telling me everything she knew.
I caught her off guard.
“Why didn’t you tell me you screwed Chisolm in Alicia’s sofa bed?”
Her eyes gave her away. She was incapable of guile.
“Oh my God. He told you,” was her reflex response.
I nodded. “He told me everything.”
“Oh my God,” she repeated.
“Why did you do it?”
She covered her face with her hands. “I’ve never done anything like that before. It was so bizarre.”
The next guess was easier. “It was the coke, wasn’t it?”
She wanted to find something to blame. “Yes,” she said. “I’d never taken cocaine before then… or since. I can barely remember what happened. It was Alicia’s fault. She said he wasn’t satisfied with her alone. That he wanted someone new to stimulate him, so she made me get into bed and do it with them.”
I almost repeated the word, “Them.” I caught myself in time. I was almost surprised. But, hell, I stopped being surprised a long time ago at the meaning and variety of peoples’ sexual habits—about the time I stopped wetting my drawers.
“Go on,” I said.
“I’m so ashamed,” she said as she tried to look at me and failed. I believed her. I put my hand on her arm. She didn’t shrug it off.
“It was the cocaine,” she insisted. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I did it for her.”
“Sure you did.” Was I a cynical, unfeeling son of a bitch? “You got into bed and did it with them, after you sniffed some coke.”
She nodded. “First he did it to Alicia, then he did it to me, then he did it to Alicia, and then he did it to me…”
I was truly impressed. “That must have been an outstanding brand of coke. The guy’s prowess amazes me.”
She shook her head in confusion. “Oh no, no. You misunderstood me.” Her face flushed. “He didn’t finish with Alicia and then finish with me.” She seemed to want to set the record straight.
“What do you mean?”
She studied the empty bowl. “Well, I mean, he did a few strokes with me, then a few strokes with Alicia, and so on. I mean, he didn’t actually…you know…”
“I see.” This was a new color in my paint box. “You mean, sort of, like musical chairs?”
She flushed. “He said he couldn’t decide which one to …you know…so he…you know, by himself.”
“Oh really?” I raised one eyebrow. What the hell else could I say?
I think that was about all the truth or consequences she could handle. She got up and retreated to the kitchen. I could hear the water running as she washed the bowl.
It took her ten minutes to wash out one bowl. Then she reappeared and stood in the doorway and stared down at me. But she didn’t move from where she stood.
“Come over here,” I said to her in the most supportive brother-in-law voice I could muster.
She hesitated, then finally did come over.
“Sit down.”
She did.
“Listen. I don’t blame you for what happened. And I don’t judge you.” I tried to assuage her, what?, guilt. “But you have to tell me everything you can. It’s the only way I can find the killer.”
She considered that. “You think that what I just told you will help?”
I was honest with her. I didn’t know what that little tidbit of perversion meant.
“Who knows? Every piece helps. My job is to ask questions. Asking questions, getting answers, finding the ones that don’t fit…”
“Are you going to ask Chisolm more questions?”
“You bet. Him and his wife.” I examined her face, but all I saw were eyes that trusted me. “What’s her name?”
“Constance…it’s Constance, I think. She’s from Greenwich. I know she was married before.”
“So was Chisolm. This is the second marriage for both of them.” I grinned at her. “You know what Samuel Johnson called a second marriage?”
She looked at me carefully. “No,” she said. I wasn’t sure she knew who Samuel Johnson was.
“He called it the triumph of hope over experience.”
She laughed. “I like that.” Then her tone turned serious. “Do you think you’ll ever get married again?”
I hadn’t anticipated the question. I was going to say, “If I had a girl like you..,” but I thought better of it. I didn’t want to tease her.
I’d been alone so long I didn’t know if I could handle another marriage. I was coming around to the point of view that women were creatures from another universe, someplace with a methane-based ecosystem. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t think I’m right for marriage. Too much of a lone wolf, I guess.”
There was disappointment in her gaze. “That’s a shame. A real catch like you.”
“Yeah. Catch of the day. Fresh from the bay to your table in one day—skinned, de-boned, and split wide open.”
CHAPTER XXIII
Rachel said Dr. Pasternak left New York every weekend, so I waited until late Friday night to make an unsolicited visit to review his files. It was a bitch climbing in the window with my bad arm. But at least there was a toehold to ease my way up to the ledge. And all the while I kept thinking this used to be a lot easier in Parris Island when I was a green youth, full of energy and innocent enthusiasm. Then I had the same flashback I always got of clawing my way up an incline in the Au Shau valley while we took enfilading fire, scrambling for a crevasse to squeeze into, shaking like a madman with palsy, dirt in my face, cursing Charlie, smelling acrid napalm from the treeline, half-deaf from incoming, wishing, just wishing we were home, warm and safe. Every time I climbed, that same godforsaken scene came back to me.
Once I got onto the ledge it was easy. I cut the glass, opened the latch and slid the window open. Inside the house I skirted the ancient motion detectors without any trouble. There was nothing of interest on the first floor. The house was so cold and spare and devoid of any sign of humanity that it looked like it had never been inhabited. The file cabinets weren’t in the consulting room on the second floor where Pasternak had started bawling like a little old lady, but after a quick search I located them in his private office. It was furnished in the same way as the rest of the house—sparse and uncomfortable. The desk was just a glass top with saw-horse chrome legs, and the chair was a couple of leather thongs on a metal frame. The decor was what you could call early masochist.<
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There were three metal file cabinets. The kind where the drawers swing out. I tried a few master keys before I found one that worked. Obviously he didn’t think anyone was interested in breaking into his files. They were locked for privacy—not security.
Alicia’s file wasn’t there. It wasn’t where it should have been alphabetically. I tried every possible combination for her name. There was plenty of time so I went through every patient’s file, but it was missing all right. In my search I came across Rachel’s file. Was I human? Sure, I was human. Were human beings curious? Does a fish swim? Does a bird fly?
Later, I said.
There was no other place in the office where Pasternak could have put Alicia’s file. There were no drawers in the desk.
I scanned the bookcases, but there were no files tucked away between the books. Everything was neat and clean and in its proper place. The books were even arranged by subject. The guy was evidently fastidious about cleanliness and order.
The file wasn’t in this room.
Pasternak could have removed it or the police could have subpoenaed it. I’d make a search of the house later but, for now, Rachel’s file kept calling me like a big slice of chocolate cake with a side of vanilla ice cream.
There were many pages of handwritten notes in a tiny tortured scrawl, densely packed, difficult to read. She must have been seeing him for some time. I didn’t understand most of the terms and the notes were in some kind of shorthand that probably only he could decipher. But I got the gist of the analysis.
What I read added a new twist to my perception of that delightful little creature. Laura had been speaking literally, not figuratively, when she referred to Rachel as a whore. She had been a dues-paying member of that noble profession for a few years. It wasn’t clear if she was actually practicing her calling when she started going for psychotherapy.
Anyway, that’s when Daddy’s trust fund kicked in. The notes showed that Rachel was thirty when she was able to have access to the money. She didn’t have to be a working girl anymore and she settled into retirement without a pension or a gold watch. But the profession had left scars on her psyche, and I guess on her body too.
Her condition, as she delicately put it, was obviously the result of her work. And Dr. Pasternak was trying to exorcise the twin demons of lust and greed. To open up those tightly grasping labia.
Jesus, what a story. Poetic, wasn’t it? She could do it when she didn’t enjoy it, had to do it to survive in a style she wanted to become accustomed to. She didn’t want to work in a normal job or couldn’t earn enough for that style, so she earned it the easy way—on her mattress. Now, when she wanted to enjoy the good old in-out, she couldn’t. Fate had decreed, now that she had all the money she wanted, no one could get into her.
It was a tough one to accept. I thought of those eyes.
I closed the file. I’d have to sort it out with her.
CHAPTER XXIV
The martini was dry and cold going down. I tossed it back and asked the barkeep for another one. Laura was still delicately sipping her first.
I hadn’t worn my tuxedo in a while and it was feeling a little snug. Either I’d have to let it out or pull myself in. I sucked up my gut. Did a daily diet of fermented barley, malt and hops over a couple of decades cause you to generate excess avoirdupois?
I took Laura by the arm and guided her through the French doors outside to the floodlit swimming pool.
“Where’s Mrs. Chisolm?” I asked her.
She shrugged and spread her hands. The night was cool and she shivered as she rubbed her bare arms to warm herself. She was wearing a little black cocktail dress that made her look like a refugee from one of those Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn movies.
“Have you been here before?”
“Yes,” she said. “That was when I met Chisolm for the first time. Alicia invited me to a cocktail party just like this one. I thought he was a dreamboat.”
I fought it, but there was still that hard edge of jealousy. I wanted her to be virginal, even though the horse had already bolted from the barn.
“Tell me about Mrs. Chisolm. What’s she like?”
“A perfect bitch,” she said with a perfect giggle. “All the men love her and all the women can’t stand her. She’s a gorgeous society lady whose family made oodles of money during the First World War selling some sort of inferior supplies to the army. At least, that’s what Chisolm told me in a weak moment.”
Two couples ambled out onto the patio. The men were talking to each other and the two women were following behind chattering, oblivious to their surroundings. The men’s heads were close together and it looked like they were involved in some kind of business negotiations. The band was playing a Cole Porter song inside the house and the sound drifted out to where we were standing.
We stepped back inside the house. I recalled the upstairs bedroom with the lavender sheets and the balance bar and wondered how many more workouts they’d been given. Justine had been standing near the entrance when Laura and I came in, and we exchanged a glance that was as old as civilization itself, maybe even older.
“Show me Chisolm’s wife,” I whispered into Laura’s ear. I didn’t have to whisper. The band was playing Begin the Beguine loud enough to drown out any casual conversation.
There were maybe a hundred people in the house, the men in tuxedos, the women in long dresses. Sleek, smooth, successful. The place was drowning in new money, freshly minted in the Nineties. These were the people who hadn’t given it back.
Laura shot a glance of recognition at someone across the dance floor.
“Let me introduce you to Robert.”
She led me through the crowd and stopped in front of an even-featured young man with an easy smile.
“Ed, this is Robert McCormack. He was a colleague of Alicia’s. They worked on several projects together.”
He took my hand and shook it gently, a handshake that spoke of indeterminate sexuality.
“I’m happy to meet you,” he said in a silky voice. “I liked her a lot. I’m terribly sorry she’s dead.” He dropped his gaze and inspected my shoe shine closely. His sandy hair was blow-dried and thinning.
“What kind of jobs did you do together?”
He looked back up at me and then away. “We wrote research reports. We did some on REITS and a few on defense contractors.”
“That’s an odd combination,” I said.
“Yes, it is. I specialized in real estate and she specialized in defense, but we enjoyed working together. She was a great investigator, very thorough, and she often came up with a slant that was unique.”
He checked my shoes again and said, “She was a valuable analyst. That’s why I was surprised when Stallings wanted to fire her.”
He had pale blue eyes that looked like they were always ready to cry. He was in his mid to late twenties and a full-fledged member of that new generation of young men and young women that you saw so often in the workplace—neat, clean, hard-working, politically correct, and so gender-neutral that you couldn’t tell the males from the females. The boys looked the same as the girls, they spoke the same way and they espoused the same philosophy. No one must ever be offended at whatever cost. Organically, ecologically, historically-correct, even though they had trouble reconciling that with their notion that history began on the day they were born.
“Why did he want to fire her?”
McCormack looked at Laura and then at me like he was giving out a deep, dark secret. “She was going to be fired because she offended one of the firm’s clients, a big real estate developer named Jergens. Alicia found out that the free cash flow on one of his buildings was artificially inflated and that made all of his other projections suspect. He was pissed off beyond belief. He went to Stallings and said if she wasn’t fired, he wasn’t going to float the new stock issue with us. And he said he was going to sue Stallings into bankruptcy court. Stallings panicked—he’s that kind of a guy,” he said with an ugly snicker.
Laura looked at him in disbelief. Or maybe it was a look of hurt. “She never told me about this.”
A waiter came up and asked for our drink order. Laura ordered another martini and I seconded the motion—extra dry. McCormack pointed at the yellow-green concoction in his hand and wordlessly ordered a refill.
The violins had segued into a medley of Noel Coward songs and had picked up the tempo. Some delicious aromas were drifting out from the kitchen, curry and garlic and something else I couldn’t identify, and my stomach was starting to make rude noises.
I watched as a tall thin female sliced her way across the dance floor and stopped in front of us. I recognized her as Mrs. Chisolm, only older and more bitter than her photos. She was wearing a full-length red gown pulled in at the waist, and it was a tiny waist. Her hair was honey brown and fluffy. She had a small straight nose, a pinched mouth and smooth skin, except for some fine lines at the corners of her eyes.
She grabbed my hand with a cool grip and said to my face, “Laura, my dear. You didn’t tell me you were bringing such a good-looking date. Wherever did you find such a luscious specimen?”
Without waiting for an answer, she squeezed my good arm and edged me onto the hardwood floor.
“You poor baby,” she said, as she eyed my sling. “What happened to your arm?”
“I sprained it opening a beer bottle.”
She must have been well-oiled because she thought that was very funny. She gave me a big laugh, more like an extended snort.
“Do you like to dance real close, lover boy,” she hummed into my ear in time with the music.
“Only if I can lead.”
She stepped back and looked at me in mock horror. “My God, you’re so forceful..so eloquent.”
With a pronounced lack of subtlety, she snuggled up to me so tight her body had no secrets. I moved her around the dance floor to the beat of a fox trot. As we danced, she ground her crotch into mine like an eight-hour drill press operator on a four-hour shift.