"It's all in the final footnotes, David. His madness is in those footnotes."
Dr. Isadore Mendoza gazes at me intently. We're sitting in the living room of his house on Taschen Drive, a house he and his late wife built in the 1950s, one of only a dozen private residences designed by Eric Lindstrom, Calista's famous mid-century architect.
Izzy, as my father called him, is eighty now. His hair still hangs across his forehead, but now the bangs are white, giving him the appearance of Roman senator. His blue eyes sparkle fire no less than on those evenings when he and Mrs. Mendoza would come to our house for Sunday dinner. Founder of the Calista Psychoanalytic Institute, he had been my father's mentor and training analyst.
"Of course Tom had Freud's The Case of the Wolfman in mind," Izzy continues, "the most famous case study in psychoanalytic literature. He believed that with Mrs. Fulraine he'd latched onto a case of equal importance that would propel him into the top rank of our profession. Was that grandiose? I think so . . . though the case was certainly interesting. I told him as gently as I could that I thought his draft was promising, but his enormous counter-transference problems were standing in his way. I loved him as a son. I wanted desperately to help. But I believe he was beyond any kind of help I could give. After Mrs. Fulraine was killed, he completely fell apart, fell into a deep depression."
As Izzy peers at me, I detect traces of an old grief. Perplexity too, for even after so many years he still hasn't reconciled himself to Dad's suicide.
I wrote him, as I did to my old art teacher, Hilda Tucker, to say I'd be back in Calista over the summer and hoped he'd find time to meet with me and talk. Izzy answered right away. He remembered me well, he wrote, was sorry to hear of my mother's passing. My father, he wrote, had been his most promising protégé, the man he'd hoped would build upon his legacy.
Izzy's gaze is kindly. "You look so much like him, David. Uncannily so. Even your gestures and the way you hold your head. I understand why you changed your name, but to me you'll always be Tom Rubin's boy."
There's only one piece of art in the room. It hangs above the fireplace: a large black and white etching of six wolves' heads peering out of the branches of a tree, with the words "The Wolfman's Dream" inscribed across the bottom in brilliant red.
As we talk, my eyes keep wandering to this picture. What is it, I wonder, about the Wolfman Case that so intrigued Dad? Izzy notes my interest.
"The etching's by Jim Dine, a gift from colleagues when I gave up directorship of the Institute. Perhaps you know that the patient Freud called The Wolfman made his own sketch of the wolves he saw in his famous dream. Here Dine reinterprets that vision, matching, I think, the artistry one finds in Freud's case study. Freud, of course, wrote many great papers, but in certain ways for us in the profession, The Case of the Wolfman is the holy grail." Izzy pauses. "How arrogant of Tom to think his analysis of Mrs. Fulraine could match such a dazzling penetration."
Izzy, I know, is a generous man. And he truly loved Dad as he said. But in this last remark, he shows his ambivalence. Dad, it seemed, had overreached, dared to fly too close to the sun, and so he had fallen—literally, in fact, from the window of his office into a snow-covered doctor's parking lot below.
"Let me tell you about that dream," Izzy says. "Tom thought he had it figured out. You probably saw where he was heading—toward a father/infant daughter seduction interpretation. As a child, Mrs. Fulraine was sexually touched by her father. Her 'Dream of the Broken Horses' was a vision of that trauma triggered by a deep sense of guilt and loss brought on by her own daughter's abduction. Tom felt that a good interpretation along those lines would help her overcome her erotomania. I had my own ideas. I still remember Tom coming to me after their first session. He was so excited. 'Izzy, this is what I've been waiting for my entire professional life, a multilayered dream with rich erotic content that cries out to be solved and written up.' "
Izzy smiles. "Of course, I encouraged him. No question he'd lucked into a glamorous patient. So many of our patients are tiresome. Listening to their drivel three and four hours a week—you can imagine what a drain that is. Now, of course, there aren't enough patients, with psychoanalysis so out of fashion."
Izzy's sharp eyes tear up. His voice, soothing till now, starts to break.
"For all Tom's hopes, things didn't work out. He had this screwy idea he should 'enter in,' step inside her neurosis, work on it from the interior. He wasn't the first to try a move like that. But before you attempt something so extreme, you must closely examine your motives. Are you in love with the patient? In lust with her? Has she so entranced you that you're looking to therapeutically justify an affair? If she hadn't been murdered—God knows how it might have ended!"
He excuses himself, returns with two bottles of German beer, then suggests we sit outside.
His garden is subtly beautiful, a medley of muted greens and grays. A lively creek, winding though the property, creates a soothing sound. We sit on an old wooden bench, stick out our legs, and listen to the water running over smooth stones.
The garden, he tells me, was crucial to Lindstrom's concept for the house.
"I explained how my work involved me in turmoil. 'Give me a safe haven,' I said, 'a place to escape from other peoples' craziness.' Lindstrom liked that. It was a way to create a contrast to the clean, sharp lines of the building."
He turns to me. "Martha loved this place. That final summer, when she knew she was dying, she'd have me wheel her out here, then we'd sit for hours just listening to the water."
I remember Martha Mendoza, a quiet, sad-eyed lady, a talented art weaver who'd had several successful shows in New York. We had one of her strange, dark yarn sculptures hanging in our house.
"Listen, David, you have every right to look into your father's life. But I must advise you that the deeper you delve, the greater the possibility you'll become upset and depressed. So . . . as long as you're aware. . . ."
I assure him I am.
"Well, then, I'll tell you what I know. As I said, Tom was devastated when Mrs. Fulraine was killed. In his paper, he tells us proudly how he parried her seductions. In fact, I believe, he was seduced. It was the most severe case of counter-transference reaction I'd ever seen."
Izzy shakes his head. "He knew what was happening. At first he tried to convince himself it was just sex. She aroused him—simple as that. But it was so much more. He wanted her, needed her, lived for their sessions. When he came to me for help and I put him back on the couch, he told me his fantasy: that he'd solve her dream, show her how she could be happy, then, after a decent interval, divorce your mother and marry her. They'd become this great romantic couple, the rich girl and the shrink who'd cured her. I told him that was pretty much the story Scott Fitzgerald had written in Tender Is the Night, except the marriage in that novel turns out badly and in the end the shrink finds himself used up and destroyed."
Izzy takes a deep breath. "Then something happened, a clue to what she was up to. There was this columnist—"
"Waldo Channing?"
Izzy nods. "Nasty man, but he could turn a phrase. One day that summer Channing ran what they call a blind item. Knowing you were coming today, I dug it out."
He pulls a yellowed clipping from his breast pocket, puts on his glasses, reads the item aloud:
"'A little birdie tells us a certain well-known divorcée, one of Our Happy Few, has lately been making whoopee-do with her shrink. We know those weird guys use couches and get their patients to yap about sex, but this is the first we've heard of one getting down and dirty in the office. Guess all that sex talk can stir the bodily juices . . . so to speak.'"
Listening, I'm struck again by Channing's viciousness.
Izzy takes a sip of beer. "It hit Tom and your mother very hard. The giveaway was Channing's 'Happy Few.' Since his crowd consisted of a couple dozen people, it was obvious whom he meant. So was Tom making 'whoopee-do' with the lady? I asked him point-blank. That's when he told me she'd masturbated in his office. 'For God's sake,' I told him, 'you've got to get out of this! She's unstable. She'll end up suing you for malpractice!'
"Tom assured me that wouldn't happen, that he and Barbara were on the verge of a breakthrough." Izzy shakes his head. "For me it was clear. The woman was malicious. Her relationship with the gangster was part and parcel of her fantasy that she was some kind of femme fatale in a real-life film noir. Most likely she'd planted the item with Channing. Now she was pulling Tom into her vortex, and he was so besotted he didn't see it. 'She'll destroy you,' I told him. 'That column item's just a taste. Turn her over to someone else. If you like, I'll take her on myself.'
"Tom, I can tell you, was not at all happy to hear that. This was going to be his Great Case, and he wasn't turning it over to anybody, least of all me." Izzy looks at me. "You know about the condom?"
I shake my head.
Izzy gives me a quick glance. Over the last weeks of her life, Mrs. Fulraine received a number of envelopes addressed in block capitals. No writing inside, just artifacts, including, in one case, a condom."
I stare at him. "In what condition? I mean, was—?"
"—it used?" Izzy shrugs. "It was filled with some sort of substance, then tied off at the top. Today, of course, with DNA testing, a semen sample, if indeed it was semen, would make powerful forensic evidence. But it was the sequence of those envelopes that was so disturbing, the ascending expression of rage. To Tom it looked like a cleverly contrived campaign of intimidation and terror."
"That's so vile! Why didn't Mrs. Fulraine go to the cops?"
"Tom urged her to, but she refused. She told him she believed the letters came from someone with whom she'd had a major falling out, that they were some sort of complex message about her daughter, money, and sex. I didn't believe that. I thought it was much too pat. I suggested to Tom that the letters were bogus, that she may have sent them to herself. He insisted that wasn't true, too adamantly, I thought. Then I wondered if Tom had gone off the deep end and sent them to her himself"
"Why? What could he have gained?"
"Drawn her closer. She brought out strange things in him. Since he was smitten by her, any behavior, even the most improbable, couldn't be ruled out. There's a reason I bring this up. It has to do with Mrs. Fulraine's dream and the possibility that, like the letters, the dream may have been bogus, too."
Bogus! I find this notion disturbing, perhaps because it reminds me of how once I was disbelieved. Following Izzy back into the house, I'm drawn again to the "The Wolfman's Dream."
What if, I ask him, the patient Freud called The Wolfman made up his dream to gain Freud's attention? Or what if Freud made up the entire case to show off his brilliance? Can any dream be trusted? Any story? Don't humans depend on trust as a moral necessity? Isn't that why any breach, such as a shrink who sends crude anonymous letters to a patient or a patient who fabricates an erotic dream to seduce a shrink, strikes us as an outrageous breaking of a compact?
Izzy nods at each of my points.
"You're right to feel outraged," he says. "After all, how dare I question your father's integrity? But these are human failings I'm talking about, not issues of good and evil. No, I don't think Tom sent those letters and I don't really believe Mrs. Fulraine counterfeited her dream. I just raise those possibilities to show you how complicated the case was and the extent to which I'm still confused by it."
He positions himself before his fireplace, the Wolfman etching looming above his head.
"If I've learned anything," he says, "in all my years of practice, it's what my own training analyst, V. D. Nadel, told me when I started out—that the best interpretations, like the best equations in physics, are always the simplest, most aesthetic, most direct.
"I disagreed with your father's interpretation. I found it tortuously complex. For me, the dream of the broken horses was not about a girl being sexually touched by her father but was simply about sexual guilt.
"The elusive man on the horse ahead is Barbara's father, whom she lusts after and adores. The pursuing posse behind, horsemen of the apocalypse if you will, personified by the lone horsewoman with the red-lined hood, is her mother hounding her, threatening to punish her for her sexual feelings toward her father and by extension toward all men.
"The horse she rides is a generic lover, a stand-in for all the lovers she rode hard and crushed with her sex. The excitement-pain she feels as she rides is the pain of sex her mother warned her about when she explained menstruation and which her riding instructor so memorably referred to as her 'wound.'
"As for the end, the breaking of the horses—that's the crack-up, the destruction she brings to all her relationships, with parents, lovers, even her own children. In short, the broken horses are the wreckage she's made of her life."
He stops, looks at me as if to say: Well, there it is! But I'm not impressed. There's something stolid about his interpretation that compares poorly with what I believe Dad was grasping toward. Anyway, it's time for me to leave. I'm to meet Pam in half an hour.
At the door, I hesitate. "Dr. Mendoza, I can't leave without asking you this. Did Dad and Mrs. Fulraine have an affair?"
Izzy looks away. "She was a complex and highly sexed woman. Beside her Tom was relatively naive. So—did they make love? Tom never said they did, so I honestly don't know. Do I think they did? That's another question. Sadly my answer is—I do."
I feel the encroaching darkness as I drive through the silent tree-lined streets of Van Buren Heights, streets with British-sounding names: Woodmere, Tawsingham, Clarence, Exeter, Greenwich, Oak Hollow, Somerset, Dorset Lane.
With the dusk, the oaks and maples cast heavy shadows upon the lawns, while the houses behind show well-made false fronts: Tudor, Georgian, Spanish colonial; there're even several little Norman chateaux with turret staircases and mansard roofs. Only occasionally do I pass pedestrians: a middle-aged man walking a tired dog; a girl on a bicycle, ponytail whipping behind, pedaling one-handed down a dark, tree-lined street.
Our old house on Demington is just blocks away. It won't take but a few extra minutes to stop by. I turn the corner at Winslow, drive a block, make a left on Stuart, a right on Oxford, then take the right fork where it intersects with Demington. The street curves gently here, winds its way between park land and the Pembroke Country Club golf course. After Talbot, it becomes residential again. This first block is where we lived. I used to know it cold, every bump in the street, every break in the sidewalks. "Step on a crack, your mother gets a broken back," we kids on Demington would chant.
The windows in our old house are dark tonight, except for a flickering in what used to be my parents' bedroom on the second floor. It's a TV set, probably placed where my parents kept theirs, on a bureau facing their bed.
I pull over to the curb, cut my engine and lights. No sounds outside except the whisper of the hot August night wind. In the darkness I catch the trails of fireflies dancing in the sticky air above the front lawn. Then I hear crickets chirping in the hedges. Somewhere in the distance a dog howls sorrow.
We were happy here, I think. Or was that our family myth? Remembering Izzy's last words to me minutes ago, I think: Perhaps that summer we were the unhappiest family in all of Calista.
A light comes on across the street. I turn, spot a man poised upon his stoop, silhouetted against the interior of his house. He's staring at me, doubtless wondering what a stranger is doing at this hour sitting silent in a darkened car. Burglar scouting the neighborhood? Private detective collecting evidence? Or a kidnapper perhaps, an abductor of prepubescent girls? Best, I decide, to be on my way.
When I step into Waldo's, Tony tells me Pam called minutes before to say she was running late.
"She's in a meeting with Mr. Starret. Says she'll be down soon as she's finished," Tony says, planting a perfect margarita before me on the bar.
I pull out my sketchbook and start to draw. I'm halfway finished with a sketch of Dad sitting in his car in the Flamingo parking lot, when a shadow crosses the page and a hand descends upon my shoulder.
"How's it going, old boy?"
I look up to confront the cloying grin of Waldo's successor, Spencer Deval, flaunting his trademark open collar and silk ascot.
"Mind if I join you?" he asks.
"Actually I'm waiting for someone," I tell him, covering my drawing while easing my shoulder from his grasp.
"Oh, I know. She'll be down in a bit. Meantime, I thought we might chat." He perches uninvited on the bar stool to my right. Though he's short and stout, I notice he sits erect, angling up his chin to assert dominance.
"What about?" I ask him. "We don't really know one another."
"I'd rather like to get to know you," he says, voice warm, unctuous. "I'm a great admirer of your work."
I make a point of not returning his compliment. His raspy pseudo-British accent amuses me, but his transparent attempt at flattery annoys. Having long disdained him from a distance, I find I'm not yet ready to join his following.
"Rumor has it you're looking into one of our old unsolved murder cases. Fascinating city, Calista, from the unsolved crime point of view. That old Flamingo Motel case, for instance. Lot more interesting than Foster-Meadows. Or maybe you just feel that way because you're bored."
How would he know how I feel? "Who told you I was looking into it?" I ask, wondering if Deval was the man who'd asked Johnny whether I'd been around the Flamingo Court.
"Oh . . . a little birdie told me." He lisps out the words in a musical birdlike voice, then adds a silent tweet-tweet with his lips.
A little birdie: the same phrase Waldo used to source the blind item he ran about Dad and Barbara in his column.
"Tell me something—when you say a little birdie, are you referring to a female source? Because if it was a guy who told you, you'd say 'a little bird,' right?"
"Would I? Never actually thought of it that way."
"You still haven't answered my question."
His voice hardens. "A good newsman doesn't reveal sources."
"Way I hear it you deal in gossip."
" 'Gossip is news, old boy'—that's what dear old Waldo used to say whenever some scamp challenged the honor of his profession. Then he'd instruct by naming several of the great gossip-mongers: Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Madame de Sévigné . . . even Shakespeare, if you know how to read him. The list is long, a roll-call of greats. So let there be no mistake—what I write is news. What people say and do and think at social gatherings—that's the very essence of news. And now—would you believe it?—they study Waldo's old 'About the Town' columns in a course on local social history at Calista State. He was not only this town's anecdotist, he was its chronicler, its Boswell." Deval squints, makes an I'm-a-modest-fellow face. "I like to think my own raconteuring, if there is such a word, meets the high standard he set."
Taking in this little oration, I begin to understand why some of my media colleagues are so bedazzled. It's a style that either seduces you or totally turns you off. I put myself in the latter category.
"When you're ready to identify your little birdie, Deval, I'll consider having a chat. Until then, please leave me alone."
He stares at me astonished. Watching his throat contract beneath his ascot, I know he's thinking up a rejoinder to save face. Finally, he comes out with it:
"'Have you no decency, suh?' " he asks, switching to a Southern accent. " 'At long last. Have you no decency?' " Then, resuming the phony British intonation: "Those were Army Counsel Welch's words to Senator McCarthy back in the Fifties, days when class still reigned and a gentleman didn't behave rudely toward his betters."
He displays a steely little grin, picks up his drink, and, with studied dignity, withdraws.
Pam arrives, panting and apologetic. Seems some CNN honchos flew in unexpectedly this afternoon. She pecks my cheek, says she hopes I'm not annoyed.
"Not at all," I tell her. "By the way, have you been talking to Deval?" She shakes her head. I recount our conversation. "Do you think he was the guy who talked to Johnny at the motel?"
"Probably not. I doubt he'd strike anyone as a cop type. But let's face it, he's a pro. He's got his antennae out. You've been asking a lot of people a lot of questions."
"I wonder why he's interested?"
"Probably because the Foster case is a dog and he's always on the lookout for a juicy item. Look at it from his point of view—this weird guy, David Weiss, turns up in town asking questions about an old murder case. When he finds out you're Dr. Thomas Rubin's son, then he will have something juicy, won't he?"
"I hate the way he calls me 'old boy.' "
"He calls everyone that. And I got news for you, darling—I can't stand him either."
I drive her out to Covington, show her the Gold Coast, then turn onto Indiana where I park. Walking past the coffeehouses and boutiques, Pam responds to the neighborhood.
"Gays with poodles. Dykes with German shepherds. Kind of a mini Greenwich Village." Outside Spezia, she sniffs the air. "Um! smells good! Is this the place?"
Jürgen Hoff's greeting is smooth and warm.
"Mr. Weiss, how nice to see you again."
He leads us to a small table in back. "This is absolutely our best table . . . from the romantic point of view," he adds.
Almost immediately we receive two complimentary kirs, apparently standard treatment for friends of the house.
Pam lets me know she's impressed. "He's handsome and oh-so suave," she says, gesturing at Jürgen, now chatting with a middle-aged couple at the bar.
"He served in the French Foreign Legion. They say he killed a man in Mexico."
"I get it, a Bogart type. He looks like a womanizer, too."
"He likes black call girls. Doesn't get it on with white chicks."
"Hmm, kinky Bogie. Interesting. . . ."
I've got to hand it to Pam, the way she takes in everything I say without asking where I heard it. This, I realize with admiration, is her trademark technique—getting people to talk by not asking questions.
Near the end of our meal, Jürgen stops by to ask if everything's been all right. As Pam assures him it has, I start a quick sketch of his face. "You know Tony the bartender over at The Townsend?" I ask.
"Sure, known him for years."
"Please, Jürgen, hold it like that. I want to get the line of your nose."
Jürgen, suave as always, indulges me with an ironic grin.
"Good." I draw his eyebrows, then his chin. "I gather you and Tony worked together out at The Elms?"
Jürgen nods. "Tony did a stint there. Most of the better old-time barmen did."
"I like his mouth," I tell Pam as I sketch. "You've got a sensual mouth, Jürgen." I glance at Pam. "Don't you think?"
"Oh, very sensual," she agrees.
"The other night, after I left here, I dropped in at Waldo's to ask Tony about Rakoubian. Tony said Max was kind of a sleazeball, that he did 'bust-in stuff.' Said he was close to Waldo Channing too."
"That sounds about right," Jürgen says. He appears unfazed by my questions.
"The other night you described Max as 'one of the best.' "
"He was an excellent photographer, Mr. Weiss—one of the best in town." Jürgen raises an eyebrow. "Oh, I see, you thought I meant he was the best in—what? Human values?" Jürgen chuckles. "Max was a good guy, but ethics weren't his strong suit. One time he showed me some private stuff he'd shot. Not nice pictures." Jürgen winks at Pam. "Okay now if I move?"
I release him. Jürgen lets his arms hang loose. "Tough work, modeling. I had no idea."
"I'd like to come back one day and do a serious portrait, sit you down, get you into a comfortable position. It wouldn't take more than half an hour."
Again he looks at Pam. "Sounds like fun."
"I'll call you."
"Please." He moves away.
Pam leans forward. "God, what was that about?"
"Just one of the curious contradictions surrounding the cast of characters."
"Characters in the Flamingo thing?"
"Uh huh."
"And am I going to be privy to these contradictions?"
"You'll be privy soon enough," I assure her.
"You know, you're quite the bad cat in bed," Pam tells me, a couple hours later. "Tomcatty, frisky." I start to laugh. "What's so funny?" she demands.
"The first time I slept with you I thought: 'Making love with her's like driving a Lamborghini, so smooth and elegant.'"
She pouts. "I'll have to consider whether I like that."
I kiss her to let her know I never thought of her as a machine. Then, changing the subject, I remind her of what she said about Barbara being too stylish a woman to enjoy spending much time at the seedy Flamingo.
"I thought it was too tacky for more than a couple of nights," she says, "There must have been something else made her want to keep going there."
"Something dangerous, you said. Well, try this. The woman drove a Jag, a fairly flashy car. She and Jessup arrived separately. She parked her Jag in the motel lot. Not exactly secretive behavior."
Pam, alert, props her head up on her elbow. "Not at all," she says. "And that's interesting."
"Now try this: She met Tom Jessup the same day she engaged my father as her analyst. In the paper he was writing about her case—"
"He wrote about her?"
"Just a draft. In it—"
"David, you didn't tell me!"
"I'm telling you now. In his paper, Dad calls Jessup 'my double' and 'my love-proxy.' He found it significant they both had the same first name. He had some suspicions she might be fantasizing the affair, so he followed her out to the motel."
"Your father stalked her!"
"He was very attracted to her. This old shrink, Dr. Mendoza, Dad's mentor—I met with him this afternoon—he thinks they may have had sex. He's not sure, but one thing that's certain is Barbara masturbated in Dad's office right on his analytic couch. He mentions it in his paper. In fact, that's where the paper breaks off."
"Jerked off in front of him! I think that's the kinkiest thing I've ever heard!"
"Suppose they did have sex—but not in his office? Suppose she lured him out to the Flamingo, the same room where she and Jessup shacked up? How's that for 'dangerous'?"
"Oh, that's dangerous, David! Creepy, too. So you're saying there was a second love triangle—between Barbara, Jessup, and your dad?"
"Maybe."
She winces. "That means your father could have . . . you know. Do you think it's possible?"
I tell her about my sketching session with Kate Evans and the drawing that came out of it, also how closely I resemble Dad and the phenomena of eyewitness transference and screen memories.
"There're pros and cons," I tell her. "The biggest con being I knew the man. He was totally nonviolent. He never raised his hand to me, rarely raised his voice. Not the type to commit a premeditated murder. Still, I'd have to put him on my list."
"Who else is on it?"
"Cody, of course. He stays suspect Number One. Andrew Fulraine's up there, too. Both had motives and both could've paid a hit man to do the job. There's also Jürgen, who could've acted as Cody's henchman or done it on his own. He refuses to talk about it even to this day, which I find odd. Then there's Max Rakoubian, the 'bust-in' guy. He'd been known to bust into love nests with his camera, so why not, if he were obsessed enough, bust into this love nest with a gun? Then there's the woman Tom Jessup befriended, the one Hilda Tucker told me about who lived next door in his rooming house. Suppose she was a stalker? She found out he'd been lying to her, not only that he wasn't gay but was having a secret affair with a haughty socialite. If she was nutty enough, she might have killed them, dressed up in a man's raincoat and fedora. So she's a possible though not a likely. Even, I hate to say it, less of a likely than Dad."
"How will you narrow the list?"
"Talk to more people, reinterview a few. There're still lots of loose ends. If Dad had something to do with Flamingo, I have to know. If he didn't, I need to know that, too."
She nods. "This is why you're doing all this . . . this is why you've come home. Now I understand."
Pam, up at dawn, asks if I'd like to accompany her to the penthouse gym. Feeling lazy, I decline. After she leaves, I go back down to my room, shower, then finish the drawing I was working on when Deval interrupted me at the bar. It's a moody sketch full of long late-afternoon shadows, with Dad nearly lost in the dark interior of his car, and, in the background, the half-closed blinds of room 201 reflecting back brilliant light.
As I work on Dad's features, seeking an appropriate expression, I darken his face more and more. What was he feeling that day? Anger? Bafflement? Frustrated lust? Or did a look of cunning enter his eyes and turn the corner of his upper lip?
Unable to decide, I finally render him in silhouette, then finish up with some detail work on his car, a dark blue Volvo, so appropriate for a shrink, so sensible and well-engineered yet so unrevealing of its owner, an analyst's classic "empty vessel" beckoning his analysands to fill as their transference fantasies would permit.
The Foster trial won't begin for another hour, giving me time to draw the scene in Dad's office, the one described at the end of his truncated paper: Barbara on the couch, one hand thrust beneath her skirt, mouth twisted as she spills out her fantasies, while Dad sits listening with weary patience behind.
Except, of course, that I only have his word as to how he listened to her.
I try another version, this time depicting Barbara with her skirt raised to her waist, labia visible as she manipulates herself with her hand. In this sketch, her expression's lascivious, the Great Seductress at work. And Dad: I draw him as a poor schmuck seducee tormented by her ravings.
These images, each contradicting the other, fill me with despair. Better, I think, to concentrate on setting the scene, rendering Dad's office as best I can recall it—his oriental carpet, reproduction English desk, china vase lamp, dark-stained shelves groaning beneath psychiatric texts, quartet of diplomas clustered in a neat rectangle on the wall. I even work in the collection of primitive masks he displayed opposite his recliner, to which his analysands, in search of self-knowledge, could conveniently free-associate.
The room phone rings. It's Pam asking if I'd like to walk her over to the courthouse.
"I'm in the elevator. I'll pick you up," she says.
A few moments later, she knocks on my door. I open it, prepared to slip out, but then she asks if she can come inside.
"Just for a minute," she says. "I haven't been in here since the day I bribed the maid."
She goes straight to the wall where I've posted my Flamingo drawings.
"David, these are wild!"
I show her the sketches I made this morning. Her first reaction is amazement that I've mounted my head on Dad's body.
I show her the photo of him taped to my bureau mirror beside my Kate Evans eyewitness sketch.
"Yeah, you're definitely spitting images of one another." She turns to me. "These drawings, David—they're so bleak and full of shadows. That's how you see all this, isn't it?"
"Well, it's a pretty dark story, don't you think?"
Outside the hotel, it's blistering hot. The short walk to the courthouse raises a gloss of sweat upon our brows.
"The honchos who flew in yesterday want to pull me out." Although Pam speaks with studied carelessness, I pick up on her stress.
"Why? You're doing a great job. According to Harriet, you're blowing us away."
"Your drawings are stronger than Wash's."
"Big deal! That evens things out."
"It's not that they don't like my reporting, David. They like it too much. They think I'm wasted here. They want to try me in an anchor position. I've got mixed feelings about that."
"You'd make a great anchor," I tell her. "Probably triple your income, too."
"Double's more like it. But that'll mean moving back to New York. And I love reporting. I'm not ready yet to give it up." She stops on the corner. "I told them I have to think it over. They didn't look happy. They're not used to being turned down. My agent says if I refuse, they'll regard me with contempt. Like who turns down a big raise and regular national exposure? I'd have to be a jerk to do that, right?"
She turns to me, hugs me tight. Hugging her back, I feel her small, hard body tremble against my chest.
"I'm so sorry," she says, breaking from our embrace. "I didn't mean to go squishy on you. Now I've got to get my hair and makeup done.
"Let's have lunch, talk it through."
"Sure, lunch!" she says cheerily, striding off toward the CNN trailer in the alley.
Today's court session is typically dull until Kit Foster's lawyer, launching into his cross-examination of Caleb Meadows's manager, introduces the notion of stalker. I find myself electrified. Dad, in Pam's words, "stalked" Barbara, and several anonymous letters implicit with threat, including one containing a condom, were received by her in the weeks before she was killed.
Suddenly everything is cutting too close.
I quickly finish my drawings and hand them off to Harriet, then find Pam on a bench in the corridor finishing up a call. As we walk to Plato's, a lawyers hangout two blocks from the courthouse, she tells me that after we parted this morning she spoke again with her agent.
"He wants me to come to New York, says it's time to put me into play. I'll do my afternoon stand-up, then take the early evening flight. Starret's got a temp reporter flying in. I'll be gone through the weekend at least."
"So your agent's going to shop you around. Reporter or anchor?"
"Either or both. High bidder gets the girl."
"You'll go with the money?"
"In this business that's the only way to go."
Pam's not squishy now; she's tough and on a roll. I think she's right, and I tell her so.
She reaches for my hand, leans over her plate of spanakopita, and plants a kiss upon my palm.
"I'm really glad I hooked up with you."
"We have a lot of fun."
"Will continue to, I hope."
"Let's see how things play out."
She winces. "I'm not a location-affair-type person, David. I'm a relationship girl." She grins. "Anyway, no matter what happens in New York, I'll be back to finish out this gig. And, if you let me, to stay here with you until you finish yours."
With Judge Winterson's decision to devote the afternoon to an evidentiary hearing, I find myself with nothing to draw. Fine with me; my hand's tired. Already today I've executed three dramatic courtroom sketches plus three fantasy drawings based on Dad's case study.
As I'm making my way on foot down Spencer Avenue toward Harp, the sky darkens, then suddenly lets loose. Within seconds the street gutter becomes a stream. I run the final block to the Doubleton Building then dash into the lobby soaked and out of breath.
The black elevator attendant with jaundiced eyes sadly shakes his head.
"You're one wet doggy," he tells me. "You got a minute, I'll fetch you a towel."
Nice man. The towel he brings me isn't all that clean, but I use it anyway then tip him a couple bucks. On the ride up to the seventh floor, I use my fingers to smooth down my hair.
I'm making my way along the corridor toward PHOTOS BY MAX, when suddenly I halt, caught by the words MARITZ INVESTIGATIONS neatly painted at chest level on a pebbled glass door.
Walter M. Maritz: That was the name of the former-cop-turned-private-investigator hired by Andrew Fulraine to build a dossier on the promiscuity of his ex-wife, the same Maritz who confessed to Mace Bartel that he'd gone straight to Barbara to warn her and sell his client out.
Calista, a city of over half a million people, must have at least two hundred office buildings downtown. Isn't it a neat coincidence, I think, that private investigator Maritz and bust-in photographer Rakoubian not only worked from the same building but also from the same floor?
Though undergroomed for an office visit, I knock on the door. A short, dumpy, middle-aged Asian woman opens up. She peers at me through half-moon spectacles.
"Is this Walter Maritz's agency?" I ask.
"This is Maritz Investigations," she says. "Mr. Maritz is retired."
"But this was his firm?"
"Were you acquainted with Mr. Maritz?"
"I'd like to talk to him. Can you tell me where he is?"
"He moved to Florida. I'm afraid I can't tell you more than that."
I show her my courthouse press pass and my Society of Forensic Scientists ID. She studies them a moment, introduces herself as Karen Lee and invites me in.
No seedy private eye's clutter here, rather a minimalist decor—stark filing cabinets, steels desks, Singapore Airlines calendar on the wall, and a large white Formica conference table where three young Asian males, each facing a computer screen, continue whatever they're doing without looking up.
Karen copies Maritz's Sarasota retirement address on the back of a business card.
"I bought the agency from him two years ago for the lease and the goodwill," she tells me. "The lease was okay. The goodwill didn't exist." She pauses. "We don't do the same kind of work as Mr. Maritz."
"What kind was that?"
"Gumshoe." She snickers.
"And you?"
She gestures toward the young men at the consoles. "We locate people using electronic resources."
"Interesting."
"Are you looking for someone, Mr. Weiss?"
"Suppose a woman worked at Merrill Lynch in New York twenty-six years ago. She might be married now, she might not. Could you find her from her maiden name?"
"If she's alive, we can find her. That's what we do. A search like that will run you two to four hundred dollars, depending on how long it takes."
I give her Susan Pettibone's name, then write out a check for two hundred as a deposit.
Karen Lee escorts me to the door. I turn to her as I'm about to leave.
"Walter Maritz had an associate."
"Yes, a Mr. O'Neill. He didn't fit in with our concept so we let him go. The business has changed. We don't use any of Mr. Maritz's people. When we find Ms. Pettibone, I'll give you a call."
This time the door to the reception room of PHOTOS BY MAX is open. I figure Chip hears me, because a moment after I enter I hear the blowtorch in the inner studio shut off.
"Someone out there?"
"It's David Weiss, Chip. Gotta minute?"
"Sure, come in. Watch the pigeon shit."
Chip, welder visor up, wearing a grungy, gray tanktop, picks up a broom and makes menacing motions toward a trio of pigeons perched on his windowsill.
"Shoo! Shoo!" he yells, waving the broom. "Fuckin' rats with wings," he calls after them.
Though I took in his sculpture during my first visit, this time, I find, I'm unable to pull my eyes away.
"What do you think?" Chip asks.
"Strong work," I tell him.
He smiles; he likes that. "Couple more weeks of welding before it's finished."
"Then what?"
"Out to the synagogue for the installation. She'll weather nicely, I think. I'll leave her a little ragged here and there. I'm working for a sense of timelessness."
"Your old man's why I'm here, Chip. I'm hearing stories that don't match up. You told me he was a fine photographer. No one disputes that. But they're some who say he did bust-in work, in flagrante photographs."
"I don't know what that means."
"It's Latin for 'in the act.' Say a couple of lovers are making it in a motel room, then suddenly Max busts in. Flash-zap! He's got proof that can be used against them in, say, a custody battle, or used to make them pay blackmail so the pictures won't be shown around."
Chip scratches his head. "I heard the old man did stuff like that."
"Sort of a far cry from gorgeous still lifes of shiny objects."
He shrugs. "What can I tell you? Dad was an all-around photographer. He did what he had to do to support his family."
"Did he know Walter Maritz?"
"The PI down the hall? Sure, he and Walt were old friends."
"Did they work together on the bust-in stuff?"
"You know, David, I think you ought to talk to my mom about this. She may be able to help you."
"I would definitely like to talk to your mom. I'd also like to see your father's Fessé album."
Chip is fine with both requests. He'll speak to his mother, set up a meeting, and leave word for me at the hotel.
There are messages Mace and Kate Evans at the desk. From my room, I call Mace first.
"That case study—quite a document," he says. "Puts your dad in a whole different light."
"Does it put him on your suspect list?"
"Does it put him on yours?"
"You know as much as I do, Mace."
"Yeah. Too bad he didn't finish writing up his case. Too bad he killed himself just at the pivotal point."
I know what he's thinking—that Dad took his life because he couldn't cope with writing down what finally occurred between him and Mrs. F.
"What strikes me," Mace continues, "is he wrote this after she was dead. He mentions that she was killed at the start. Obviously he was a very troubled man. It's like he was trying to make sense of everything that happened, but hard as he tried, he couldn't manage it. That makes me feel sorry for the guy."
Hearing that, I'm gratified. Mace is showing himself to be a lot more sensitive than he lets on.
"Those footnotes are amazing," he says.
"Dad's old training analyst says that's where his madness shows."
"I don't know about madness, but I don't think he killed her."
"You're not saying that to make me feel better?"
"I'm saying it because it's what I think. What happened between them may have been crazy, but it wasn't murderous-crazy. Call it a cop's hunch."
"Well, thank you . . . because that does make me feel better."
And I continue to feel good after I put down the phone.
I pull a vodka out of the room minibar, pour it over some ice, then call Kate Evans.
"The man who was asking about you, he's been around again," she tells me. "Johnny didn't tell him anything of course."
She says Johnny will be on duty tomorrow one to five. I ask her to tell him I'll be dropping by.
"David, about that sketch we did—I wasn't that helpful, was I?"
"That remains to be seen.
"He looked a lot like you. I realized that after you left."
"That happens sometimes, Kate. People get faces mixed up. Or else they forget what someone looked like and end up describing the artist."
"I don't think I did that—describe you, I mean. But the other thing—"
"What?"
"Getting faces mixed up."
"Yes?"
"I think that could've been what happened—I got two people confused."