Hope to Die (19 page)

"But that's ridiculous! Why not go all the way, why not sue the gun's manufacturer, for God's sake?"

"Matter of fact," I said, "that's been done a couple of times. Made a product-liability case out of it and got a judgment against the weapons manufacturer. It's likely to be overturned on appeal, but- "

"Are you saying somebody who was shot with my gun is going to sue me?"

"Well, in this case the primary victims are all deceased. If a suit were brought, the plaintiff would be an heir of one of the victims."

"That couple's daughter..."

I certainly didn't want him calling Kristin, trying to head off a mythical lawsuit. "In this instance," I said, "our concern is that one of the other parties might bring suit."

"You don't mean one of the criminals? Someone breaks into my home, steals my personal property, including my lawfully registered pistol, and kills several people with it, himself included, and you're saying some relative of his is entitled to sue me?"

"Dr. Nadler," I said, "anyone can instigate a lawsuit, and some lawyer will always turn up to take the case."

"Ambulance-chasing shysters," he said.

"No suit has been brought, and in the unlikely event that one is, it's almost certain to be dismissed, or resolved in our favor. I'm just here to gather information that will help us nip such a legal action in the bud."

It had been surprisingly easy to stir him up, and it wasn't as easy to calm him down again. I didn't want to waste time, either; he kept looking at his watch, and I knew he'd send me on my way at ten to two.

I asked him again which drawer had held the gun, and had him show me how it was locked and unlocked. The desk was an oval kneehole desk, mahogany, with a tooled leather top. There was a center drawer with three drawers on either side, and the gun had been kept in the second of the three drawers on the right. He was right-handed, he explained, so that would be most convenient, if he were at his desk and needed the gun.

All of the drawers were fitted with locks, although the locking mechanisms on two of them had failed with age and rust. The small skeleton-type key was in the center drawer, with a piece of red yarn tied to it, I guess to make it easier to find.

"During the burglary," I asked, "were all the drawers unlocked? Or only the one with the gun?"

"It was the only one locked in the first place."

"Who knew about the gun?"

"Who knew about it?"

"That you owned it," I said, "and where you kept it."

"No one."

"Your wife? Your receptionist?"

"My wife knew, yes, knew that I owned it but not where it was kept. My wife is somewhat phobic about guns and was opposed to my obtaining one in the first place." He frowned. "I suppose that's one reason I didn't amend the insurance claim. As for Georgia, my receptionist, she wouldn't even have known the gun existed, let alone where it was kept."

Georgia was a middle-aged black woman with cool eyes and a warm smile, and I had the feeling she didn't miss much. I let that pass and asked about his patients. Had he ever had occasion to show the gun during a session?

"Absolutely not," he said. "I never so much as opened that drawer with a patient in the room. I never even unlocked- no, that's not true. Twice, with a patient who was going through a critical time, I prepared for the session by unlocking the drawer. Because of my own anxiety, you see. But in the event I never even opened the drawer, let alone showed the weapon."

"And that patient..."

His face clouded. "Took his own life, I'm sorry to say. Lived in a second-floor apartment, rode the elevator up to the roof and threw himself off it. He left a note, said he was afraid if he didn't do this he might kill someone. So perhaps my anxiety hadn't been entirely misplaced."

"And this happened recently?"

"His suicide? No, it was last winter, the week between Christmas and New Year's. Not an unusual time for it."

"Before the gun was taken, then."

"Oh, yes. Months before."

"The two burglars," I said. "Their names were Jason Bierman and Carl Ivanko."

"Yes."

"Was either a patient of yours?"

He didn't even hesitate. He might have refused to answer if he'd thought I was a cop, but he wouldn't hold out on a guy from the insurance company looking to head off a lawsuit. "No," he said. "The first I heard of either of them was when I read about them in the newspaper."

"Of your other patients," I said, "can you think of any who might have served time in prison?"

He shook his head. "My patients are middle-class professionals," he said. "Two-thirds or more of them suffer from depression. Several are young women with eating disorders. I have a blocked writer, the author of five novels. The fifth was his breakthrough book, a bestseller. It was published nine years ago and he hasn't been able to finish anything since. I have patients who are unhappy in their marriages, patients who feel their careers have dead-ended."

He came out from behind his desk, walked over to the window, looked out at the park. With his back to me he said, "When I was in medical school they talked admiringly of dermatology. The skin game, they used to call it. 'Nobody ever dies, nobody ever gets well.' " He turned to face me, one hand holding the other. "You could say that about what I do, dabbing ointment on psoriasis of the psyche. Of course it's not really true of a dermatologist. Some of his patients do recover, certainly, and some die of melanoma. And many of mine are better for having treatment. Their depression is lessened, their neuroses less debilitating. And, of course, now and then one flings himself off a roof."

He returned to his desk, picked up a letter opener, brass, with a handle of green malachite. "I had a patient who molested all four of his children, three girls and a boy," he said. "I had another who embezzled a quarter of a million dollars from his employer to finance an enthusiasm for sports gambling and cocaine. Neither of them went to jail. I suppose the work I do might benefit a criminal, an ex-inmate, but none has ever come to me." He started to add something, then drew himself up short and looked at his watch.

"It's ten minutes of two," he said. "I really can't spare you any more time. No one could have known the gun was there. No patient of mine ever saw it. If there's nothing else..."

"You've been very helpful," I said. "I'm sorry to have taken so much of your time. Unofficially, let me just say that I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"Then I won't," he said, and gave me a wintry smile. I can't say he looked too worried. We shook hands, and he showed me to the door.

It was drizzling when I left Nadler's office, but not enough to make me sorry I'd left the umbrella home. We had a concert that evening and I wanted to fit in a meeting first, so I walked through the raindrops to Broadway and took the subway down to the Village. There's a storefront on Perry Street that's been leased to an AA group for twice as long as I've been sober. Back when I came in they used to hold two or three meetings a day there, and now they run pretty much continuously from early morning to late at night. I got there halfway through one meeting, went out for coffee when it ended, and came back for a little more than half of the next one. I heard a lot of the neurotic self-absorbed drivel that Seymour Nadler had to listen to all day, and I wasn't getting paid, either. But when I walked out of there I was sober.

T J called in, reporting that no one had questioned his performance as a deputy inspector for the Department of Buildings, City of New York, Borough of Brooklyn. He'd had no trouble finding the house on Meserole Street, but said he'd have felt more comfortable in that part of town if he'd stayed with the camo shorts. There were Dumpsters here and there and a lot of renovation going on, so the neighborhood was evidently in the process of improving, but it looked to him like it had a ways to go.

He'd met Peter Meredith, and three of his four housemates, and he'd report at length face to face, but for now he'd summarize it by saying Meredith might not have gained weight since Kristin saw him last, but it didn't look as though he'd lost any, either, and he wasn't about to fit into Jason Bierman's shirt and jeans. And two of the other people he'd met were women, and the other man was black, and, while we'd never actually spelled it out, he more or less assumed our mystery dude was of the Caucasian persuasion.

That left one member of the team he didn't get to see, I told Elaine, and another visit from the same buildings inspector might arouse suspicions. But he had the name of the missing man, and we could figure out some way to check him out.

"I know it's never a complete waste," she said, "but it sounds as though he had a long trip for nothing."

"That's what I said. He said it wasn't that long a trip, and he got to see a part of town he hadn't known before. Besides, it wasn't for nothing."

"Because you get to rule these people out."

"That's only half of it. He got paid. They believed he was a genuine buildings inspector, and evidently they'd had dealings with the breed before, or knew someone who had. So, when he kept hanging around, wanting to look at one thing after another to no particular purpose, Peter Meredith took him aside and slipped him a hundred-dollar bill."

"And of course T J took it."

"If he hadn't," I said, "I don't know what I would do with him. Yes, of course he took it. It would have spiked his whole act to turn it down, and on top of that it would have contravened a fundamental principle."

" 'When they give you money, put it in your pocket.' "

"That's the one."

We ate at home and walked up Ninth to Lincoln Center. It was raining in earnest by the time we set out, so we might have taken a cab, but the rain made it impossible to get one. It was only half a dozen blocks, and we both had umbrellas, and stayed dry under them.

The concert featured a Belgian pianist who performed on a Mozart piano, which was evidently some intermediate stage in evolution between a harpsichord and the modern piano. The program notes told me more than I cared to know about the differences and similarities involved. The Mostly Mozart orchestra provided accompaniment, and what they played was certainly easy to listen to.

And, in my case, easy not to listen to, because I couldn't keep my mind on it. I kept playing different conversations through my mind- with Nadler, with Kristin Hollander, with my police contacts in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I ran switches on the scenario I'd spun out for Kristin ("Scudder's variations on the Third Man Theme") until they became a dream I couldn't wake up from, or a song I couldn't get out of my head.

At intermission Elaine asked me if I wanted to go. "You're not squirming in your seat," she said, "but your mind's miles away, isn't it?"

I said I'd stay. The festival had only a week to run, and we had tickets for two of the remaining concerts. She'd be taking a friend to one of them, and then there'd be the last night, and eleven months before we did it again. It was early, and Danny Boy's day was just starting. It wouldn't hurt me to sit back and let them play beautiful music for me, whether I listened to it or not.

A Ninth Avenue bus pulled up just as we were leaving. The rain had lessened and she said she'd walk, and I said either she'd take the bus or I would walk with her.

She said, "And then turn around and walk all the way back to Seventy-second Street?"

"So take the bus," I said, and she did.

Poogan's is on Seventy-second east of Broadway, a dark little hole in the wall with precious little to recommend it, as far as I'm concerned, aside from the frequent presence of Danny Boy Bell. I've known him for years- Elaine was sitting at his table the night I first laid eyes on her. I'd say he hasn't changed, that he looks exactly the same, but I know that can't be true. He was around twenty-eight when I met him, and looked much younger. He still looks young for his years, but there are more of them, and it shows.

Back then he looked like nobody else in the world, and that hasn't changed. He's African-American, a term I don't tend to use much, but it fits him better than "black," which doesn't fit him at all. Danny Boy's a true albino, his skin whiter than white, his hair colorless, his eyes pink and light-sensitive. Even in the summer, he manages to see about as much daylight as an overly cautious vampire.

Nights, he generally holds court at one of two places where the lighting and sound are both muted. Mother Blue's, farther uptown, has live music and a more upscale salt-and-pepper clientele; Poogan's, with a tasteful if eclectic jukebox, is a little more raffish. At either place he takes his usual table and waits for people to come join him. Some bring him information and others take information away with them. If this is the Information Age, Danny Boy's up to date- information is his stock in trade.

I nursed a Coke at the bar while he chatted with a woman who looked too chubby to be a working girl, but who, dressed and made up as she was, could hardly be anything else. She was an overstuffed kewpie doll fresh out of a Stephen King novel, but any sense of malevolence was dispelled by her obvious jollity. She laughed with good humor, and at the conclusion of the interview she stood up, leaned over, and kissed Danny Boy smack on the mouth. She laughed again and strode out of the place, and when she passed me I got a whiff of her perfume. It was as demure and understated as everything else about her.

When I got to his table Danny Boy was dipping a white handkerchief in vodka and wiping his lips with it. "Becky has a lovely mouth," he said, "but God only knows where it's been. It's good to see you, Matthew. It's been too long."

"Time flies," I said.

"When you're having fun," he said, "and also when you're not." He cocked his head, looked me over. "You're looking well," he announced. "Sobriety evidently agrees with you. I can't think it would agree with me."