“1 don’t feel that we’re making any progress,” the portly psychiatrist said, gnawing the stem of his pipe.
“Why is that, doc?” the man on the leather couch asked.
“I’m not sure, perhaps it’s because ...” The psychiatrist paused. “There you go again, asking the questions. I ask the questions. You probe your psyche for the answers.”
“I don’t probe my psyche. The last time I had my psyche probed was in the service, and the guy was wearing a rubber on his finger.”
The frustrated doctor got up and took fresh tobacco out of an ornate cut glass jar on his desk. He tamped the tobacco into the pipe, dribbling a few bits on the carpeted floor.
“I’ve been doing this for fifteen years,” the psychiatrist said. “Everyone has responded to some form of treatment. Gestalt. Jungian. Primal. Even Freudian. Your psychosis is deeper than anything I’ve ever encountered.”
“Is something else bothering you, doc? You’re acting like a guy expecting his first kid.”
“Mr. Jaffe. We must come to an understanding. We’re here to discuss your problems, not mine.”
“I got two problems, and I told you about them already,” the man on the couch said patiently. “I need to find my gal, Fifi La Roche. And I need to get my hands on a mug named Rocco Rico. Fifi I’m gonna marry. Rocco I’m gonna kill. Simple enough?”
“Mr. Jaffe, you must realize—”
“I realize all I gotta realize. And my name’s not Jaffe. It’s Red Diamond.”
That is your problem. You are not Red Diamond. You are Simon Jaffe. You are not a private eye. You are a cab driver.”
Diamond sat up, lit himself a cigarette, and stared skeptically at the doctor. He snorted, lifted his six-foot, 200-plus-pound body up, and headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?” the psychiatrist demanded.
“I got better things to do than listen to the same old story out of you. I been coming to you a dozen times and we always go running around the same track.”
“Do I need to remind you that the District Attorney dropped the charges on those homicides in return for your getting counseling?”
“It was only a recommendation. The charges had already been dropped. And I was just coming to you to make it easier for me to get my ticket back.”
“Ticket?”
“My license. Those bureaucrats up in Sacramento said they couldn’t find any record of a license under my name. And shooting all those people didn’t make me popular with the pencil pushers.”
“What about the homicides? Do you feel any remorse?”
“The bums deserved to die. And I don’t like the D.A. Sending me to get my head shrunk after I was cleared on the beef.”
“Whether you like it or not doesn’t matter. You and your attorneys agreed to it. And I’m sure the District Attorney will be very displeased if I have to notify him that you’ve ended treatment.”
“I wouldn’t want to make the D.A. upset,” Diamond said sarcastically. “He might be so broken up he couldn’t run for the Senate.”
“It doesn’t seem so tough, your coming in and talking to me,” the psychiatrist said. He pointed to the couch with his pipe. “Please have a seat. You have fifteen more minutes.”
Diamond returned to the couch. He grumbled and sat down.
“Let’s confront the facts head on,” the doctor said. “You are forty-three years old, you agree?”
“And feeling every day of it.”
“Very well. Now you claim you began your chase of this Rocco Rico person in 1938?”
“Yeah. And I met Fifi the same year. It was a helluva time. Rocco was wearing a black silk suit, a white tie and a scowl. The suit was nice. His face wasn’t. Especially after I busted up his fruit cart extortion racket pretty good. He wanted his boys to bust me up even better. I showed them. They tried—”
“I’ve heard this story several times. Now the point is—”
“And Fifi. She was working in that club he owned. Called herself a chanteuse. A voice like a warm summer night. A body that sent the mercury right out of the thermometer. All the guys wanted her. Rocco thought he owned her. But then ...”
“The point is, if you’re forty-three, you were born in 1941. Therefore this supposed adventure took place three years before you were born.”
Diamond felt the throbbing begin. “Don’t try and trick me,” he said, pressing his hands against his temples.
“I’m not trying to trick you. I’m trying to help you. We must break through these barriers you’ve erected. Does your head hurt?”
“Just a migraine. Comes from going to a head-shrinker.”
“I want to help you but you keep resisting.”
The pounding was growing worse. Native drums beating while elephants jitterbugged on his skull. Get Johnny Weismuller to call them off. Diamond felt dizzy.
“I ... am…Red…Diamond.”
The psychiatrist hesitated as Diamond grew pale.
“We’ll slow down a bit,” the doctor said. “Let’s assume you are Red Diamond. Let’s try some word associations.”
The pounding was still fierce, but it had stopped getting worse. Diamond tried focusing on the plaques and diplomas that covered the doctor’s wood-paneled walls.
“Shoot,” Diamond said.
The doctor took out a small notepad. “Green?”
“Money.”
“Black?”
“Mail.”
“Male?”
“Mail. Blackmail.”
“Red?”
“Blood.”
“Wife?”
“Beater.”
“Home?”
Diamond paused and lit a cigarette.
“Home?” the psychiatrist repeated.
“Most accidents occur there.”
“Family?”
“Feud.”
“Car?”
“Crash.”
“Love?”
“Death.”
The psychiatrist sighed. “Your responses are extremely violence-oriented. Let’s explore that.”
Diamond had regained his composure. “No surprise. I deal in murder, mayhem. I do people’s dirty laundry for them. Make sure it doesn’t get hung out for the world to see. I’m a shamus. If I was a gardener I could tell you about petunias. Because I’m a dick I can tell you about twists on a bullet or how to kill someone so the coroner don’t know it’s murder.”
“You call yourself a dick. Is your masculine identity tied up in your role?”
“If I call myself a private eye, you gonna think I’m a Peeping Tom?”
“You’re asking questions again.”
“They’re better than the questions you ask. That’s what I do for a living. I ask questions until I get the answers no one wants to hear. A great job if you like seeing people at their worst.”
“Then why do you do it? Do you feel a need to prove you’re better than everyone else?”
“I do it because it’s the right thing to do. Half the time I don’t even get paid. I’m there to make sure the system works. When the cops screw up and the bad guy gets away, someone’s got to clean up the mess. I’m the guy that follows the horses in the parade and cleans up the stuff they leave behind.”
“Do you see the people you deal with as feces?”
“You mean shit?”
“If you prefer.”
“Some, yeah. Some are just decent people who stepped into it. And one of these days I’m going to catch up with the horse that’s making the biggest mess. Rocco. Then I’m going to stop him.”
“How?”
“It depends what’s handy. If it’s a gun, I’ll shoot him. A knife, I’ll stab him. A club, I’ll beat him. If there’s nothing else, I’ll strangle him with my bare hands.”
Diamond’s voice was low, but the vehemence made it sound like a scream. He held up his hands for the doctor to see. They were tensed and looked quite capable of the job.
The doctor failed to hide his distaste. “You’re talking about murder.”
“Do you call it murder when you step on a roach?”
“But you’re talking about a man.”
“A man who laughs when women and children die, a man who listens to screams like they was the best bebop. Anyway, you once said he was a figment of my imagination.”
The psychiatrist fumbled with his pipe. “Yes, but still, I mean you—”
“Pull yourself together, doc,” Diamond said, grinding out his cigarette in an ashtray while a smile played about his lips.
“You are not Red Diamond,” the doctor said after a long pause. “Red Diamond was a character in cheap detective novels. Like Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade or Mike Hammer.”
“They’re all right Joes. They ever been in to see you? That Hammer guy could definitely use a little help. That Manning broad was in the same racket as you, so I guess Hammer might not be too trusting. Turned out she was the killer. I helped Mike out on that case back in 1947. He gets that book [i]I, the Jury[i] and I get left out in the rain.”
“No. No. No. No. They don’t exist. You don’t exist.”
“What do you mean I don’t exist? Who are you having a conversation with? Are you talking to yourself, doc? That’s a bad sign.”
“No. No. I mean these fictional private eyes are not real. They’re fantasies.”
“I wish they were. Sometimes the competition’s tough in this racket. And they get more ink than I do.”
The doctor’s chair squeaked as he jumped up. “Stop it! Right now! You are Simon Jaffe. You developed an obsession with this Diamond character. You had a traumatic experience find you became your fantasy character.”
The throbbing began again.
“Your wife is named Milly,” the doctor continued, waving his pipe and spilling smoldering tobacco. “You live on Long Island. You’ve got two children. A boy and a girl. You abandoned them and took off on—”
“Doc, they say I killed a bunch of people,” Diamond said slowly through clenched teeth.
“Yes. In California and New York.”
“Some real tough characters.”
“Yes.”
“Then how come some dumb cabbie took on these bad eggs and came out in one piece?”
“You were lucky. You were nearly killed. I’m trying to help you.”
Diamond got up and walked to where the doctor stood. The P.I. ground the glowing tobacco embers underfoot.
“I know. You’re here from the government and you’re here to help me.”
“I’m an accredited, court-appointed psychiatrist.”
“You know what goes with that?”
“What? Court-appointed?”
“No, the saying is the biggest lies are I’m here from the government to help you,’ ‘your check is in the mail,’ ‘this won’t hurt,’ and ‘I promise I won’t come in your mouth.”‘
The small digital timer on the psychiatrist’s desk made a few beeps and Diamond moved toward the door.
“Time to go,” Diamond said happily.
“Mr. Jaffe, we haven’t made any progress,” the doctor said petulantly. “I’m going to recommend we discontinue treatment. Perhaps someone else can be of more help.”
“Don’t bother unless you know someone who might be able to clue me in to where Rocco is.”
“There is no Rocco. There is no Fifi. There is no Diamond,” the psychiatrist insisted.
“If there’s no Red Diamond then there’s no point in wasting fifty minutes of your time,” Diamond said as he reached for the brass doorknob.
“Don’t you understand, you believe this so you can escape—”
“Speaking of escape,” Diamond said, opening the door.
A fidgety middle-aged woman, nibbling on silvered nails that matched her hair, sat in the waiting room.
“A nice-looking doll like you shouldn’t have too many problems,” Diamond said to the woman.
She blushed and bowed her head.
“Listen, go easy on the doc. He’s had a hard afternoon.”
“Mr. Jaffe, I don’t need you to tell my other—”
Diamond handed the woman one of his business cards.
“You see, my name is Diamond. The doctor has a fixation. Delusions. Reminds me of this case I had once. Guy going around saying he was the king of France. Tried to have me guillotined.”
“What happened?” the woman asked.
“I crowned him,” Diamond said with a wink.
She tittered. Diamond smiled. The doctor frowned.
“Go in and talk to the doc,” Diamond said to the woman. “Maybe it will help him.”
Diamond took his rumpled gray snap-brim fedora off the wall rack, placed it jauntily on his head, and walked out.
He tipped the haughty valet who got his car a buck. The kid pocketed the money without acknowledging it.
Beverly Hills, bah, Red thought. He got in his Plymouth and drove back to Hollywood.