17

“Where are we heading?” I asked after a while. I find distances amazing in the suburbs. I mean, I like to drive, but miles and miles between corner grocery and gas station would make me nuts in no time. I prefer concrete sidewalks, pedestrians on the march.

His voice was soft, muffled. “Make sure you stay on North. Are we past the Police and Fire?”

“Just passing it. Isn’t there any place closer?”

“We could have gone to the Pharmacy, but the whole town hangs out there. Look over on your right. Should be some kind of Chinese restaurant coming up. Big parking lot.”

The lot was fairly empty. I pulled into a sheltered spot near the rear. The place was too close to the police station for comfort. I didn’t want any sharp-eyed uniform watching me assist an elderly gent off the Toyota’s rug.

I half-lifted, half-wrestled him onto the seat. He wore a pale blue knitted sports shirt, dark slacks and shoes. His face was red, his silver hair mussed, his glasses tilted at an odd angle, but he insisted he felt fine. I recommended that he rest a bit before emerging.

“I overheard—” he began immediately. “I needed to tell you—then Garnet came—” He spluttered to a close. “Guess I’d better sit awhile, catch my breath,” he admitted grudgingly.

I surveyed the unpromising frontage of the Dragon King. Chinese/American Cuisine, it promised. I’ve always found “cuisine” riskier than “food.” Cocktail Lounge, said another sign, in smaller print than KENO!, which was plastered across the front door in huge yellow letters with a screamer. The establishment sat next to a chiropractor’s office and a two-by-four real estate agency.

“You want a drink?” I asked Manley. “Takeout?”

Breathing more easily, he regarded his immediate surroundings with disapproval. “The back of your car’s a disgrace,” he said huffily. “I must have been lying on shoes, something sharp. Maybe an umbrella. Smelly, too.”

“I don’t recall inviting you on an inspection tour,” I snapped, stung by his accuracy.

“Please,” he said humbly, holding out a hand by way of apology, “I could use a chance to stretch my legs.”

“Are we going to run into anyone you know?”

He gave the restaurant a dubious glance. “I doubt it.”

I helped him out of the car. He staggered once, muttering about pins and needles in his leg.

The interior was generic suburban Chinese place. I could have described the fish tank, the dark carved wood, the vases filled with plastic carnations, the garish dragon paintings without venturing inside.

A sign said “PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF.” Evidently business wasn’t good enough to keep a lunchtime hostess busy.

We had no trouble finding a small booth. If any cops were drinking in the adjacent red-carpeted lounge, they were plainclothes strangers.

He ordered tea. I ordered hot and sour soup along with hot and spicy green beans, surprised to see both items on the mostly Mandarin menu. He shook his head when the bored young waitress raised questioning eyes in his direction. Maybe she thought I was going to share. I wasn’t planning on it; Tessa hadn’t invited me to lunch.

The sulky girl made a few scratches on her order pad, and disappeared, taking tiny steps that hardly ruffled her long traditional garb. Daughter or niece of the owner, I decided. Less than fond of her job.

“Would you like to know something I’ve learned, something I should have learned a long time ago?” my former client asked as soon as the waitress was out of earshot.

I shrugged and kept quiet since I wasn’t sure whom I was talking to—the seemingly sincere liar, Adam Mayhew, or the battered bewildered liar of the same pseudonym, the one who’d yanked me off the case. Or the genuine Dr. Drew Manley.

He took my shrug for assent. “Never get involved with a patient. No matter how you feel for her, no matter what your heart says, keep your patients at arm’s length.”

“If you’re trying to tell me you’re not Tessa Cameron’s half-brother,” I ventured, “I already knew.”

“I do live there, most of the time. I’m Tessa Cameron’s lover—her paramour, she calls me—which is ‘lover’ in old-fogey talk, or maybe Italian. I have been Tessa’s lover since Franklin died. I was in love with her before that, but I never acted on it. For that long, at least, I resisted temptation.”

From the way he said it, I got the feeling that Tessa would not have been unwilling before Franklin’s demise.

“She won’t marry me,” he stated simply. “I’m not Catholic.”

“What kind of doctor are you?” I asked.

“A good one. Retired.”

“Now that I know your name, Dr. Manley, exactly how long do you think it’ll take me to find out what medical specialty you practiced?”

He made a face. “I’m a psychiatrist.”

“Ah.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t you know?” I asked. “It means I’m going to ask whether Tessa is the only one of the Camerons who was—or is—your patient?”

“Ever heard of doctor-patient confidentiality?”

The waitress slopped tea on the table. I wiped it up with a napkin and gave her the eye. I took a sip of hot and sour soup. Disappointingly bland.

“Ever heard of using an alias?” I asked harshly. Doctor-patient confidentiality, indeed!

“About that, um, about the alias. I never intended to defraud.”

“What did you intend? More to the point, what do you intend?”

He lowered his voice. I had to bend forward to hear him. “I heard what Garnet said. He will convince his mother to change her mind. One thing about Tessa, she has intense emotional swings. She loves that boy of hers, beyond moderation, beyond adulation, listens to him like he was Jesus on the Mount.”

“So he said.”

Dr. Manley took a gulp of tea, eyed the restaurant as though checking for spies. Only two other tables were occupied, and it seemed he found the customers innocuous.

He said, “I want you to … continue with this matter, whatever the outcome. The papers are genuine; I guarantee—”

“Whoa,” I said. “Stop right there. I’m getting whiplash, you know what I mean? Sunday night, it’s ‘please help me find the missing genius,’ then Monday night, it’s ‘oops, I made a mistake. Forget the whole thing.’” I glared at him. “It’s only Wednesday goddam afternoon, and you’re flip-flopping again?”

He didn’t seem to hear me and I hadn’t kept my voice down to any whisper. He stared at the Formica tabletop and spoke slowly, as though he were feeling his way through unfamiliar country. “You know anything about tectonics?” he asked.

“What?”

“Forces, conditions within the crust of the earth, the sort of thing that causes earthquakes.” As he spoke he made flat surfaces of his hands, pushed them together with such force that one slid abruptly over the top of the other.

“What about them?”

“There are places where the crust wears thin, and molten rock and steam break through. Nothing you can do about it. It’s a force of nature.”

“Hot springs,” I said. “Geysers.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

“Young woman, there are times when the simple truth bubbles to the surface. Reputation, fame, money—they all have to take second place to a truth when it’s spoken and heard and finally recognized for what it is…”

If he wasn’t deeply moved by the words he’d just spoken, he was among the best actors I’d seen.

I said, “What is it you want me to go on with? So far, I’ve learned that your ‘live’ Thea Janis is dead and buried. Murdered. Her mother says so, the newspapers say so—”

“Her mother never saw the Berlin poem, any more than she identified the corpse. It’s easy to convince Tessa. I’ve told you that. She’s extremely suggestible.”

“Wait a minute. You’re basing your theory that Thea’s alive on a single poem? One poem? How’s this? Thea wrote it a long time ago, thinking about, imagining a possible future, a time when walls would be broken, borders eliminated.”

“‘Berlin, now,’” he quoted.

“‘Now’ is relative,” I replied.

Damn, his eyes were shining again, so blue and clear behind the silver-rimmed bifocals. He’d regained every pinch of quiet confidence he’d shown at our first meeting.

“She’s not dead,” he said.

“Tell me another one.”

“She phoned me.”

“And you recognized her voice after twenty-four years.”

“She identified herself. She’s coming back. God help her, she’s afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” I asked.

“She didn’t say.”

“Of course not,” I said disgustedly.

He read the disbelief on my face. I didn’t try to hide it.

“Look,” I said. “I’ve read about her big white funeral. Her father and mother went. Her brother.”

“She said she needs to talk to me, as a friend, and as a doctor. She says she has to see me face-to-face.”

“Well, I’d certainly like to be there,” I said, “but I seem to have a problem.”

“No! You can’t be present. She needs to see me alone. At first.”

“No kidding. Well, that’s not my problem. My problem is defining my job. You wanted to hire me to find Thea. Now, she’s coming for a visit. She’s on her way. She found you. No money for me there. Tessa wants me to prove that the notebook and the poem are forgeries. She donated a good-sized check to the cause.”

“Which Garnet will convince her to void.”

“Either way, it looks like I’m out of this.”

“No,” he said. “Please. Work for Tessa till she pulls the plug. Try to prove the documents false. You won’t succeed, but I can’t pay you the kind of money Tessa can pay. I’ve left you something in the backseat of your car, if you can find it in that sty.”

“I don’t need more of your money, not to look for a dead girl.”

“Listen to me: Something went wrong, very wrong, a long time ago. I may have been a part of it, unwittingly. I’m an old man. I don’t want to die with this on my conscience.”

“With what on your conscience? What changed your mind between the first time you called me and the second? Why have you changed your mind again?”

The waitress interrupted to see if we wanted our empty teapot refilled. I waved her away impatiently.

Manley stared at his empty cup. “The moment Thea gives me permission to tell you, I will.”

“In other words, don’t hold your breath.”

“Go to your car, get what I left there. We can discuss it.”

“If it’s a check, I’m ripping it up.”

“Fine.” He flagged the waitress. “I’ll have more tea while I wait,” he said.

Underneath my raincoat and a lone gym sneaker, I found another manila envelope. I glanced inside just long enough to see that several pages were enclosed, typed this time. Brief statements, underlined, like a bibliography.

In the restaurant, the booth was empty. The waitress told me the old guy had gone to the bathroom. I paid the bill while I waited. After a good twelve minutes, I went to the men’s room door and knocked. No response.

I returned to the table. The tiny Chinese girl came to collect her due.

“How much did he give you?” I asked.

“What?”

“To tell me he went to the john?”

She smirked. “Twenty,” she said.

I stiffed her on the tip, drove around Medfield Center for another half hour. The good doctor might have strolled over to the police station, but I didn’t think so.

I remembered the envelope, pulled onto the shoulder of the road abruptly enough to earn a honk and an upraised finger. The papers were a bibliography, articles culled from psychiatric journals, the occasional book-length treatment. Loftus, E. F.; Terr, L.; Appelbaum, P. S.; Gutheil, T. G. One hardback was titled Witness for the Defense, one Recovered Memory Syndrome.

Recovered memory syndrome. Was Manley trying to tell me that Thea suffered from amnesia, that staple of forties Hollywood?

I scanned the bibliography. Another text seemed to be a complex psychiatric and legal document discussing crimes remembered years after the fact, usually under psychiatric counseling, and the admissibility of such remembered evidence in a court of law.

My mind was clicking now, and my memory. As I recalled, such “recovered” memories had enjoyed a brief vogue. In 1990, a man had been convicted of murdering his daughter’s girlfriend twenty years earlier, on the testimony of the daughter, who claimed she’d been present at the crime scene, but had repressed the memory. The case had been appealed, I thought. Reversed. A recovered memory wasn’t something a lawyer would be eager to bring to court …

Dammit. Garnet might succeed in convincing his mom to void the contract. I stopped at the bank to deposit Tessa’s check as a gesture of good faith, then at home just long enough to rip off the panty hose, change to comfortable clothes. Back in the car, I headed for Area D. Before someone pulled me off this case for good, I was determined to discover exactly what had happened to Dorothy “Thea Janis” Cameron twenty-four years ago. My mind hungered for facts—dates, times, places—clearly written in an orderly form.

I would follow Tessa’s mission for the time being. It seemed to me that anyone who knew how to forge Thea’s work so well, to imitate her uniquely compelling voice, must have known her, known her intimately, long ago.

I had the feeling I was going to owe Mooney more than lunch before the day was done.