by Diane Lawson
I waited until seven o’clock to call Mike.
“Were you sleeping?”
“Take a guess,” he yawned.
“Must be nice.”
“Excuse me? I didn’t come off my stakeout until four.”
“You really do that?
“Only in the movies.”
“Who were you spying on?”
“Not your business,” he said. “But you had something important enough to call at this ungodly hour.”
“I had a nightmare. I know it sounds crazy, but I have the feeling it says something about all this.”
The dream, of course, lost its punch in the telling as dreams do.
“You suspect your daughter?” he said. “Little kid in the park with a lethal juice box. Sounds like a winner. And while I have you, let me say that I chose not to wake you up at three in the morning to ask why you failed to mention one of your customers was Special Ops.”
“I thought you were staked out at three.”
“So?”
“So you’re reading my confidential case files in your car. In the dark.”
“Itty Bitty Book Lite. You should get one. If I read, I don’t smoke.”
“And you get to bill two clients for the same time. Is that ethical?”
“210-828-9441. Better Business Bureau. Call them up. Make sure to spell my name right. Z not S.”
“I’m just kidding.”
“I’m just not in the mood. What about this governmental hit man of yours?”
“That happened twenty-five years ago.”
“That kind of thing is like riding a bike.”
“It’s not him.”
“Pardon me for stubbornness, but you have a professional assassin on your client list. That’s of no interest to you?”
“He’s a businessman. What he did was a function of his situation.”
“Most people in that situation would be busy changing underwear. He knows how to research people. He knows how to do people in without a trace. Please don’t tell me it didn’t occur to you.”
“It didn’t occur to me.”
“Shit.”
“It occurred to Alex.”
“Maybe I’ll deputize Alex.” I heard him switch on a light and shuffle some papers. “So I cross the Sniperman off the list. In pencil. Of your patients, who would you favor? Doctor Pervert, Miss Priss, Former Mrs.Rich Bitch, or Mr. Whiner? Sorry. I had to give them identities to keep them straight in my mind.”
“I don’t know,” I said. The thought of any of my patients as a killer wouldn’t compute. But who else would care? Who else would want to hurt me? Want to have me all to himself? Did I believe there was an insight in my dream or not?
“You psychology types think you know all about human emotion,” Mike said. “But you don’t know a damned thing about evil.”
“And you do,” I said, realizing that I sounded like my kids.
“More than I’d like to.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’ve got a busy day. I’ll be by this afternoon. Let you know what I find out.”
The thought of seeing him at the end of the day pleased me. I wondered what to wear.
“It’s a date,” I said, instantly regretting my choice of words.
“And that bad dream,” he said. “Sounds like it’s about that brothers-and-sisters-hating-each-other-thing. Whatever you call it.”
“Sibling rivalry,” I said. “Freud would be proud.”
Chapter Eleven
My Thursday schedule, unlike Mike’s, was too empty for comfort. Howard ten days dead. Allison dead three. Yvette now on her way to Paris.
Lance, of course, was there on the dot. He smiled at me when I let him in and right away started talking about business and family. It was Lance at his best, my indication that the work we’d done on his dream had helped. But despite my adamant defense of him to Mike, I felt uneasy in our session and he took notice.
“You’re jumpy today, Doc.”
“I am?”
“I’d say you are.” He looked hard at me. “You know, I haven’t seen the lady who comes at nine o’clock all week. The one with the Range Rover. She’s usually still sitting in her vehicle when I drive by.” Lance went out of his way to cruise my office every morning en route to The Olmos Pharmacy for pre-session newspaper, coffee and breakfast taco. Reconnaissance, he called it. “Times I’ve thought she was dead the way she slumps over the steering wheel.”
My heart gave an out-of-rhythm thump.
“What’s wrong, Doc?” he asked. “Look like you saw a ghost. Don’t get weird on me. I was just about to think we were making progress.”
Renee pranced into the room for her two o’clock like a football homecoming queen. I was frayed from lack of sleep, from the uneasy mood hangover left by my nightmare, from dealing with Mike Ruiz, from my encounter with Lance’s uncanny intuition, from being yo-yoed by Missy Priss Yvette—she needs me, she needs me not. I was in no shape to receive royalty.
“There is justice in the world,” Renee announced from the couch.
“Really?” I said.
“King offered to give me back my Mercedes. Of course, he’s getting two new ones—for himself and the I-talian whore. But I won’t be petty.”
“You must feel grateful,” I said.
I knew this was far from true, and my comment merits no defense as good analytic technique. I wasn’t trying to model appropriate affect. I wasn’t trying to pull off some fancy paradoxical maneuver. I just hoped Renee felt gratitude. I wanted her to feel something different. Something other than her standard entitled rage.
My threshold for entitlement is low. Entitlement was the only constant about my father. People owed him when he was manic: Dues for the Temple? They should pay me to belong to that place. And they owed him when he was depressed: Rent? I’m unemployed. Why should I give money to some goy bastard who has more than I do. I’d heard enough of that song for a lifetime.
“Hell, no. I’m not grateful,” Renee said. “It was my car. He had it in the corporation’s name to cheat the IRS. For whatever reason, the SOB decided to do something right.”
“He wasn’t obliged to do this.”
Renee expelled a hard-edged breath. “Your insistence on goodness wears on my nerves, Dr. Goodman. Were you out sick the week they taught envy and greed and revenge in analyst school?” For a moment, I thought she had been talking to Dr. Bernstein. “Did I ever tell you why King hates you so much?”
“I didn’t know he hated me,” I said.
“I get a kick out of this story. King tried to schedule an appointment to see you once. It was my idea. You have a good reputation, whether or not it’s justified. Anyway, I told him if he didn’t get some help with his detestable ways, I’d divorce his ass. Obviously, that was long, long ago, when he still cared.”
A memory of a phone contact with a supremely angry man stirred in the back of my mind. “What happened?”
“You told him you weren’t taking new patients. Ha! You didn’t even offer to put him on a waiting list. Just as well have spit in his face. Then, bingo, when I called you a year later, you took me right in. You better believe that stuck in his craw. I’d probably have quit analysis by now if I didn’t get so much pleasure from having the one thing he couldn’t buy.”
“Have you ever wondered what would have happened if I had seen King?”
I don’t know what made me ask that. The question didn’t really follow. Probably I was thinking he’d have been more interesting than Renee and her one-note rage. It did something to Renee though, because she immediately caved into a fetal position. I was as stunned as she.
Neither of us spoke for several minutes.
Then she said, in a voice that tore at my heart, “Maybe you’d have taught him to stand up to me. Maybe we’d still be together.”
Chapter Twelve
As promised, Mike was in the waiting room when I finished for the day. An orange dry cleaner’s tag hung through a buttonhole of his shirt. A tie stu
ck out of the pocket of the sports coat he had thrown over the other chair. He was leafing through a New Yorker.
“I don’t get some of these cartoons, Doc.”
“You can call me Nora.”
“I’ll try. It would be easier if you changed the tone of your voice. It’s just got that doctor sound: So Mr. Ruiz, how long have you had that large, malignant schizophrenia on your personality?” He tossed the magazine onto the table. “I got enough to think about. I’m not going to worry over these.”
He took himself into my office. This time he sat in my place, leaving the patient chair for me.
“The way I see this,” he said, “is that we’ve got to go at this thing from two directions. Ordinarily, when I work a murder case, I look for connections. For patterns.”
“You explained that already,” I said.
“Consider this a review. Okay? Can I go on?” I rolled my eyes. “You’re a connection between Westerman and Forsyth. But you’re not the only one. For example, did you know that Allison Forsyth’s boyfriend took a class under Professor Westerman? Even more interesting is that he flunked Chemistry 101 and had to change his major from Pre-Med to Pre-Law.”
He put this information at my feet like a cat does a prized dead bird.
“Allison didn’t have a boyfriend,” I said.
“She most certainly did.”
“She never mentioned anyone,” I said, my face prickling under his assured stare. We analysts have the illusion that we’re privy to everything about our patients. We know it’s not true. In our heads. “Where are you getting this?”
“Took her attorney’s receptionist to lunch today. At the Sand Bar. The same guy that has that fancy place next door owns it.”
“I know. Le Reve,” I said. “It’s French for dream.” Sometimes I just can’t keep my mouth shut and let someone else have the last word.
“So what? I knew Andrew Weissman in high school. Before he became a celebrity.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I said.
“Just thought you might be interested in some local history,” he said. “Guess I was wrong. The tab goes on the expense account, by the way. It wasn’t cheap.”
“Of course,” I said, annoyed that he’d taken the liberty of spending my money on fine dining, annoyed that he’d highlight my self-centeredness. “What’s this about Allison having a boyfriend?”
“Mrs. Forsyth had a thing going with her divorce attorney. Got his name from my old partner Slaughter, by the way, since you didn’t think the information was relevant. The receptionist said her boss told her not to bother collecting the second payment on his retainer. She swore that was a first-time event. That lapse in routine might suggest he was going for the bigger bucks. Mrs. Forsyth is a wealthy woman. You think she’d have learned. Hopping from one asshole attorney to another.”
“The police already questioned Allison’s attorney and the receptionist.”
“Think, Dr. Goodman. Larry Lawyer wants to acknowledge an intimate tie to a jumper? By the way, it’s not normal for a woman to jump. Did you know that? Probably something to do with the mess. Anyway, even if Billy Barrister wasn’t suspected of giving her a little push, his was not the height of ethical behavior. Would he broadcast it? Forsyth’s would-be ex has a heavy litigating habit on his own behalf. He’ll probably be coming after you. Have you thought about that?”
And, yes, that idea had been preying on my mind since my interview with George Slaughter. The threat of a malpractice suit hangs over every doctor with every patient, putting a wedge in the caretaking relationship. Sometimes the wedge is a near-invisible crack. Sometimes it’s a chasm. But it’s always there, ensuring that trust between patient and doctor remains a relative concept. Ensuring that a dead patient’s doctor has no time for grief.
“Makes absolutely no sense,” I said. “The attorney killed his old chemistry professor, then did Allison in for good measure.
“Did I say that? I didn’t say anything except there is a connection. By the way, don’t you have any interest in knowing the name of this attorney?”
I realized I was holding back, not wanting to ask about something I should have known. “Sure. I’m interested.”
“Robert T. Macon, AKA Big Bobby Tom. Played linebacker for Antonian. Flattened my ass more than once and threw a punch whenever he got the chance. Barely made it through St. Mary’s Law School and had to take the bar seven times, but, hey, who pays attention to that kind of detail when you have the old San Antonio lucky-sperm pedigree?”
What was left of my own lunch, the tuna sandwich Ofelia had made for me, threatened to creep up my throat. “Shit,” I said.
“You sound upset. The couch is available if you want to talk about it.”
“Robert Macon is one of Richard’s friends. They went to school together K through 8, I think. Probably ate paste out of the same jar. Now they play golf once a week, and Richard writes it off as a business expense.”
“They do business together?”
“Refer back and forth. Sure. They’re both experts at milking rich people in the process of divorce.”
“Hmm,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Small town, huh?” He stretched his neck to the left and then to the right. I heard it pop. “You hungry?”
“I thought you had a big lunch.” I hadn’t meant to sound bitter.
“I said it wasn’t cheap. I didn’t say it was big. You like Mexican food?”
I didn’t. I also wasn’t sure I wanted to be seen with him in public.
“The kids are with their father,” I said. “I could make something. We wouldn’t have to stop working.”
“Wrap it in paper and charge me a buck ninety-nine. I’ll feel right at home.”
Chapter Thirteen
I made a wilted spinach salad with polenta croutons, a recipe I’d seen Richard do. I’d bought the spinach with all good intention, but had let it languish too long in the crisper. The ingredients for linguini with white clam sauce came off the shelf. There was a decent loaf of bread from Paesano’s Bakery still in the freezer. I owed something to my gourmand-spouse for the stocked pantry. And for the well-endowed wine cooler from which I extracted a fine white burgundy, violating with knowledge and forethought the clause in our separation agreement that prohibited my consumption of any bottle worth over a hundred dollars.
“If my divorce ever goes to court, just say we determined this would go for about $99.95,” I said, struggling a little with the cork.
“You’re joking.”
“Of course, I am,” I said, having deduced from Richard’s shelving system that it was more like $250. “Try it.”
Mike kept busy watching me cook and pushing his barely touched glass around the counter that divides the kitchen from the breakfast area.
“Wine too dry?” I asked.
“It’s okay.”
“Give me the glass before it ends up broken.” I took it from him, adding the contents to my own and handed him a Moretti beer as a replacement.
He checked the label. “Italian beer? Nothing is simple with you, is it?” As an afterthought, he thanked me.
He was single-minded about eating his salad and first plate of pasta. Richard made conversation over meals. Granted, it was all about the remarkable guy he was, but I’d learned to nod at all the right spots and chew simultaneously. With the kids, the bickering kept things moving along. The silence with Mike felt heavy and unstable at the same time.
Halfway through his second serving, he asked, “So what’s this psychoanalysis thing anyway?”
I startled at his voice. I’d wanted some talking, but this wasn’t exactly what I wanted to talk about.
“Psychoanalysis,” I said, “is a talking therapy for people who are held back in their lives—for reasons they don’t understand or are unconscious of.”
“Held back?”
“They can’t love well. Or work well. Or can’t tolerate success. Can’t allow the
mselves happiness. Usually they’re blind to their own role in their failures and misery.”
“So you make your own fate. That’s what you’re saying?”
“For the most part,” I said. “You don’t agree?”
“Sometimes bad shit happens to people.” The light in his eyes seemed to gutter. “What do I know?”
“Words never capture the therapy process. Let’s just say that analysis helps people know what they don’t know about themselves.”
“If they don’t know what they’re doing, how do they tell you?” The eyes were crinkling again, and I realized I’d been looking for that response.
“It’s in their behavior. In the way their thoughts flow. In their emotional reactions. Their fantasies. The analyst’s fantasies. Their dreams. The analyst’s dreams…”
“Whoa!” He grabbed my gesturing hand. “You dream about your patients?”
“Of course.” I smiled and stretched my right leg. My bare foot brushed his shoe. I let it rest there, lightly rubbing my big toe over the laces for a moment, convinced by my third glass of wine that he wouldn’t necessarily notice.
“Ever fall in love with a patient?” He leaned forward, releasing my hand and pulling his feet under his chair.
“I fall in love with all my patients. And I hate all my patients. If a therapy goes well, you get the whole spectrum of human emotion. Analysis is a deep involvement for both people,” I said, sounding too much like I had something to prove.
“Seems more like a deep pain in the ass from what I read in those reports.”
“Don’t you dream about your cases?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I call it having a nightmare. Just joking. I don’t dream.”
“Everybody dreams.”
“Have to sleep to dream.” He stifled a yawn. “Sorry. Got a crank call at dawn. Some lady with a dream she wanted investigated.” He looked at me and kept looking.
