Man of the Hour

by Peter Blauner

  “I thought I’d start off by asking the two of you what brought you here today,” the doctor said.

  David tensed up in his seat, anxious to impress this man, yet not wanting to show how desperate he was.

  Renee was sitting a yard away in one of the doctor’s other hardback leather chairs, her shoes off, her long legs drawn up in front of her, and an empty Diet Coke can balanced on the armrest for her cigarette ashes. She was in her hunkered-down, defensive mode, the one David found hardest to contend with. A light red welt appeared on the back of her left wrist, as if she had indeed burned herself there, as Arthur had said.

  “I don’t know,” she said nervously, rubbing her leg. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, anymore. I got this call last night from David, accusing me of not taking care of our son! It’s crazy. Crazy.” She took another drag on her cigarette, dribbling ashes on the doctor’s red carpet. “He wants to take Arthur away from me.”

  The doctor studied her a moment, trying to put together the nattering bag-lady voice with Renee’s high-fashion cheekbones and willowy figure. She definitely was deteriorating, David noticed. What happened to the pills she was taking? The thought of Arthur going home with her today made him deeply uneasy. The boy was playing peacefully with the doctor’s wooden blocks in the other room.

  “I’m just concerned about you, Renee,” David said evenly. “That’s all.”

  “Oh, you’re so concerned, David. You’re so concerned. Is that why you’re divorcing me?”

  “I didn’t think I was divorcing you, Renee.” He turned his chair toward her, trying to catch her eye. “I thought we’d made that decision together.”

  “Yeah, right!” Renee took another hard drag on her cigarette. “Tell me about it!”

  Dr. Ferry smiled his brown smile. “Well, okay. Maybe that’s a good place to start. Perhaps we can talk about what brought you and Renee to this point in your marriage in the first place?”

  “But I don’t know. See?” Renee flicked more ashes into her soda can, as her mood softened for a moment. “One minute I was married and I was happy and then I wasn’t. I don’t know what happened. It all blew away, like a dandelion. You ever think of that, Doctor? Love is like a dandelion. I just looked around one day and David wasn’t there. You sure you don’t have a real ashtray?”

  What was driving her today? David couldn’t get a feel for it. When they’d been living together, he could anticipate her wild moods sometimes and prepare for them, like pushing chairs out of the way for an epileptic. But with the separation, he’d lost that sense of continuity and he had no idea what she would do next. He teetered between feeling sorry for her and being a little afraid of her.

  “Okay!” said Dr. Ferry, trying to get back on track. “Let’s try to focus on some issues here …”

  “The issues?” Renee exclaimed, her hands fluttering. “The issues? The issue is David thinks he can take care of Arthur all alone, but he can’t even take care of himself. Have you seen his apartment? Have you seen his Visa bill? He can’t finish his doctorate and get his Ph.D.! You ever see that sign over his desk? ‘God keep me from ever completing anything.’ That’s him!”

  “Okay, hold that thought!” The doctor cut her off with a referee gesture. “I’m thinking maybe it would be more constructive if I continued these conversations with each of you separately. Renee, would you—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She was already gathering up her shoes and papers and going off to sit in the waiting room with Arthur. “Take your pills, Renee. Take your pills.”

  She left her cigarette burning on top of her soda can. Their marriage had always been a coiled and fragile thing. And Renee had always been her own worst enemy.

  “Well!” Dr. Ferry took a deep breath and relaxed into his chair. “What were we talking about?”

  “The divorce and why it’s happening.” David checked the doctor’s degree on the wall. Forensic psychiatrist. Wasn’t forensics about dead people? We’re waiting to get the evidence back from forensics, said the detective.

  “Sometimes I think the more key question is why a couple got married in the first place.” The doctor drew a circle in the air with a yellow pencil.

  “Interesting.” David paused for a second and listened as Renee started talking to Arthur in the waiting room.

  “So why did you get married in the first place?” the doctor prompted him.

  “I don’t know.” David smiled in spite of himself, remembering more hopeful days. “She was in a section I was teaching at grad school at Columbia and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She had this magnetism. She kind of moved like a dancer. It was like the air cut around her in a special way.”

  “So it was a physical thing.” The doctor’s tone was pleasant, soothing.

  “No, there was more than that.” David stroked his beard. “We fit together.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She had this burning need to be an artist of some sort because her mother was this failed big band singer and never gave her any attention. You know, ‘Come-On-A-My-House.’ And I, of course, wanted to be this big writer. So we kind of supported each other in our delusions. You know how it is when you first get together with somebody? It’s like the two of you are in a conspiracy against the rest of the world.”

  “So what happened?” The doctor raised his eyebrows.

  “I guess our conspiracy broke down.” David stopped and stared at his hands for a moment. “The world found out about us and wasn’t that impressed.”

  “And how did each of you deal with that disappointment?” The doctor rolled the pencil against his lips.

  “In our own way.” David shrugged. “It was probably easier for me, because I had teaching and my kids to fall back on. But with Renee, it was different. I remember she went to audition for this Madame Cecile or something, this famous ballet teacher who had a studio on Columbus Avenue, and she came back devastated. This was supposed to be her big break, like it was her mother who was finally going to accept her. And instead, this Madame Cecile videotaped her performance and then made fun of her afterwards, saying she was too old and heavy to be a real dancer. And from that point on, Renee just got worse and worse. She kept trying things and when they didn’t work out, she wouldn’t come back from them. She’d just get deeper and deeper into her hole. I don’t want to oversimplify—there were all these other underlying problems you can’t totally explain away by circumstance … But she just … kind of …”—he toyed with the words, trying to come up with the right expression—“got them old Kozmic Blues, mama.”

  A series of images flashed through his mind. Renee having a fit at her thirtieth birthday party and smashing a glass at an expensive midtown restaurant. Renee pregnant and weeping on the couch, under Margot Fonteyn’s blazing eyes. Renee locked in the bathroom, with Arthur six months old, soiled and screaming in his crib. David grimaced, remembering how he accidentally gave her a black eye when he tried to break the door down.

  “Bi-polar is the technical term,” said the doctor, glancing down at a file.

  “I didn’t know that at the time.” David frowned. “I just knew she was unhappy.”

  “So how did you try to help her?”

  “Well, at first, I did everything I could.” David turned halfway around in his chair, uncomfortable with this part. “I tried to get her to see a psychiatrist. I listened to her, I rehearsed with her, I told her I loved her … anything I could think of.” He sighed. “But then after a while, I guess I just sort of got tired and started tuning her out. You know, I’d just sit in the kitchen, drinking bourbon and correcting papers when she was having her moods. Or I’d throw Arthur in the stroller and take him for a two-mile walk, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with her.” He looked down at his hands. “That wasn’t very heroic of me, was it?”

  “It’s what life is like,” the doctor said, waggling the pencil between his fingers. “A hundred thousand little decisions and then you add them up. You don’t get a chance to
save somebody’s life every day.”

  David touched the armrests of his chair, aware he’d been subtly admonished. “That’s like what my mother used to say to my father: ‘It’s no good being a hero one day a week and a bum the other six.’”

  The doctor wrote that down. “That’s a nice aphorism,” he said.

  “’Tis,” mumbled David. “Didn’t make a damn bit of difference, though. He just stayed in that chair getting drunk all night anyway.”

  “But back to your marriage,” the doctor prompted him again. “So you concluded that after a certain point there wasn’t much more you could do to help Renee.”

  “Well.” David cleared his throat. “I kind of have problems of my own. I felt she was … we were dragging each other down.”

  “In other words, you felt so overwhelmed by these problems of your own that you were unable to save your marriage?” the doctor was asking.

  “Well, that’s not putting too fine a point on it. I mean, I held on for as long as I could, for Arthur’s sake.”

  Renee’s cigarette butt fell into her soda can with a hiss.

  “So what makes you think you’re going to do any better in raising a son all by yourself?” the doctor asked.

  “Oh boy.” David worked his fingers together.

  Busted! As the kids would say. He stared at a Francis Bacon print on the wall, a picture of a man trapped in a glass case.

  “I don’t know,” he began slowly. “I guess you could say my life has this kind of loose improvisational quality … well, some people would call it immaturity. I mean, let’s face it, I haven’t accomplished a tremendous amount, except for being a teacher—though, I’m a damn good teacher, mind you! But I can change.” He felt himself growing stronger as he spoke, turning to face the doctor straight on. “I love Arthur and I’d do anything to make him happy. What Renee said might be true—there may be some unfinished business in my life, but with Arthur, it’s different. This is the one thing I want to complete.”

  He stopped speaking and stared at me doctor, trying to determine if he’d had any effect. He realized his pulse was racing. The urgency of the moment had sneaked up on him. Having lost his marriage, he was terrified of losing Arthur too, especially if Renee decided to move away with the boy.

  “You know, it’s a lot of responsibility taking care of a child on your own,” Dr. Ferry said. “How are you guys getting along this weekend?”

  “It’s fantastic,” said David, puffing out his chest. “We’ve had a blast. We went all over the city and he ate everything you put in front of him, instead of just nibbling on Pretzel Stix. It was the happiest I’ve seen him in months.”

  Dr. Ferry chewed on his pencil for a few seconds with a beaverish intensity, considering what he’d been told. It’s adding up, David thought to himself. He’s starting to take me seriously. Maybe I will get custody.

  “You know, David,” said the doctor. “I’ve seen Arthur a couple of times, and I must tell you he seems much better since your recent little run-in with fame.”

  “You think so?” David tried to sound nonchalant, but in his mind he was straining, waiting to see if this bail would go fair or foul.

  He heard Arthur calling out, “BOOM!” exuberantly as a chair fell over in the waiting room. He could almost picture Renee frowning and lighting another cigarette under the doctor’s no-smoking sign.

  “I mean, he seems much more confident, all of a sudden,” said Dr. Ferry. “Last week, I saw him and he was a wreck. But now he’s beginning to come out of his shell. He sees your picture in the newspaper and hears your name on television. He knows the mayor is going to give you an award soon. His daddy’s a hero. It has to do something for his self-confidence.”

  David resisted the urge to smile. “So what’s the problem?” he asked.

  “The problem,” said Dr. Ferry, chewing his pencil again, “is what happens when it all ends.”

  24

  OH MY GOD, that idiot’s balls are hanging out of his shorts, Detective Noonan said to himself. It’s disgusting.

  He was at John LeVecque’s backyard barbecue in Hempstead, watching his partner get progressively stewed as he lay on a white chaise, sucking down Budweiser after Budweiser with his angry-looking red scrotum dangling out of his loose-fitting jogging shorts.

  If it was up to Noonan, he would have just skipped the whole thing. Work was piling up and he was never much for mixing. But there was no escaping the politics of this case. He’d gotten a call from his old friend Tommy Vaughn in the first dep’s office telling him that this LeVecque had indeed developed a butt-link with the commissioner—and was even ghost-writing a column for the P.C. in the Post—and so attendance at this little shindig was strictly mandatory.

  So now, here was Noonan standing around, trying to make conversation with two dozen cops without saying anything substantial about the school bus bombing. Anybody with real information didn’t need to ask and the rest of them were better off outside the loop.

  Kelly was starting to worry him, though. Standing by the hedges, Noonan watched him polish off his fifth Bud of the afternoon and then grab LeVecque’s wife by the belt loops, begging her to bring him another. The man was a disaster. He was liable to say anything. The wife, however, didn’t seem to mind. She was a slim, hard-faced number in designer jeans and a tight halter top who clearly enjoyed sticking it to her husband a little by flirting with the guests.

  “You have enough to eat?” There was LeVecque trying to shove a hamburger on a paper plate at him.

  Noonan stared at him until he backed off a little. “Ah, no, I’m all right.” He patted his midsection. “I gotta watch what I eat these days anyway.”

  “I’ve got some no-nitrite hot dogs I could throw on the grill.” LeVecque smiled, wanting to be liked. “It’s no problem.”

  “Forget it, I’m a strict plain fish man these days.” Noonan said preemptively. “My last partner had heart trouble.”

  He still remembered trying to give Frank Rowan CPR after he collapsed during a volleyball game on the beach last summer. Poor Frank never even made it to the ambulance. All his partners were doomed, it seemed.

  “So the school bus investigation, how’s it going?” LeVecque asked brightly.

  Noonan turned and gave him the Dawn of the Dead look. “You keep the press off our back and we’ll have it wrapped up sooner instead of later,” he told LeVecque.

  “It’s a lot of pressure, I guess.”

  The detective twisted his mouth slightly, knowing the sympathy was just another pretense for him to see through. “I’ve had plenty of high-profile cases before. Doesn’t mean a thing. They either get solved or they don’t.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Tom Kelly almost falling off his chaise lounge as he tried to play grab-ass with LeVecque’s wife.

  Fortunately, LeVecque had his back turned and missed that little bit of byplay. “You’ve heard that the mayor and the police commissioner have been meeting every day, trying to make sure the FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force doesn’t take this case away from us,” he said quietly to Noonan.

  “Like I said. Doesn’t mean a fucking thing.”

  There was a blast of music and a puff of smoke from the screened window on the house’s second floor. A touch of reggae and a pungent druggy odor joined the fumes from the barbecue. LeVecque’s teenaged son was obviously smoking pot and blowing it out the window onto the party of cops. Christ, thought Noonan, the kid must hate his father’s guts. He thought of his own son, Larry, doing the adolescent rebellion thing, piercing every inch of his body with studs and barely speaking to his parents. For a moment Noonan was filled with sadness, remembering a time when the boy was a sweet five-year-old, pounding a baseball glove and plaintively asking his father to play catch with him.

  “So what should I tell the reporters in the meantime?” LeVecque asked.

  Noonan turned his gaze to the press spokesman’s jugular and raised an eyebrow. “Tell them whatever the hell you want,” he
said. “We’ve got thirty men working on this case full-time, not to mention the FBI, ATF, and God knows who else climbing up our backsides. We’ve interviewed everyone who was on the street that day, all the kids from the school, all the mechanics who’ve ever worked on the bus, and now we’re going through all the recent graduates and former employees. Plus we’ve got the lab working on the wreckage day and night and the bomb squad guys going over the sidewalk with the dogs and the spectrograms.”

  “What about the teacher?”

  “What about him?”

  Noonan felt that vein throbbing in the side of his head again.

  “How do you think it is that he knew enough to keep most of the kids off the bus for thirty seconds or whatever until the bus exploded?” LeVecque pressed on. “Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

  “You asking this for your own information or should I frisk you for a tape recorder?”

  Close with the commissioner or not, Noonan still knew this guy had once been a reporter. And reporters were never to be trusted. Bill Ryan, the old bird from the Trib, had once laid it out for him: in the pursuit of a story, everything must fall.

  “Well, that girl Judy Mandel asked,” LeVecque explained with a grimace of embarrassment. “But I figured it’s worth following up on it, just in case the P.C. asks.”

  Noonan scowled. “If he does, tell him to call me direct,” he said. “How the hell should I know, anyway? He kept them off ’cause he was doing a head count. Maybe it was just a lucky coincidence. Maybe he noticed something was just a little out of place and couldn’t put his finger on what it was exactly. That’s happened to you, hasn’t it?”

  No fucking way was he going to share any leads with some flack before he was ready. He’d told only four other people of his suspicions about Fitzgerald so far.