Mirror Image (5 page)
“So,” he said. “You gonna start talkin’ or what?”
Noah Frye took another pull from his beer, then went back to noodling at the piano. Built like a bear, he gave equally bear-like grunts as he played, private chortles of delight and encouragement. Like a white Oscar Peterson.
Out here on the deck of the converted barge, the breeze was cool coming up through the oiled boards. The riverfront bar, called Noah’s Ark, was moored at a bank below 2nd Avenue. Every afternoon before the bar opened, Noah sat out here at his old Baldwin upright and played.
Occasionally, like today, I joined him.
“Okay,” I said finally. “I guess you know about—”
“Yeah, I saw it on the noon news. Never miss it. I got a thing for the weather girl.”
“Kevin was my patient, Noah. My responsibility.”
“’Cause he was jumped comin’ out of your office?”
“Because he was wearing my jacket. He’d been trying to look like me, dress like me…”
His hands paused above the keys. “So you figure the killer was really after
you
?”
“It’s a real possibility. Cops think so too.”
“So what can
you
do about it?”
“I don’t know.
Some
thing. I…owe him.”
Noah shrugged. Just then, a shift in the wind lifted his shirt collar, leaving one flap up. He’d never notice it, nor the way his belt had missed a few loops so that his pants bunched at the waist.
Noah Frye was a paranoid schizophrenic. Without his meds, he suffered from delusions of persecution and gruesome death. So every day he swallowed 100 milligrams of Thorazine. Followed by a Cogentin chaser to quell the Parkinsonian-like tremors caused by the Thorazine.
I met Noah eight years ago, when I was working full-time at Ten Oaks. In and out of mental hospitals since his teens, he was a gifted musician who supported himself doing construction work and odd jobs—in between bouts of delusional terror, homelessness, and street violence.
One night, Noah was standing just inside the clinic’s rear gate when he saw one of the staff shrinks, Dr. Nancy Mendors, being manhandled in the parking lot. Her estranged husband had Nancy backed against the hood of her car. Noah ran over, spun him around, and gave him an elbow smash to the face. The crack of jawbone sounded like a rifle shot.
After that, Noah assumed a kind of mythic status at the clinic. It was as if he’d become a trustee, instead of just a patient. After a while, you almost forgot who he was. What he was.
Until something happened to remind you.
Once, a new staffer screwed up his meds and Noah just…slipped his knots. He disappeared, causing a mild panic as therapists and patients alike scoured the building and grounds for him.
He turned up later that day in a diner on Grant Street. He’d found a hammer and some old nails at a nearby construction site, and was going from table to table, asking if someone would please crucify him.
Not long after that, Noah’s insurance ran out and he was cut loose from the clinic.
I was the one who found him, purely by chance, a few years later. Driving to work one morning, I caught sight of a homeless guy digging in a trash dumpster. His eyes were glazed, hair dirty and unkempt. Then he grinned, and I knew who it was. Whether he knew me, I couldn’t be sure.
I contacted Nancy and a couple other colleagues who knew Noah, and we helped find him a job at this run-down coal barge that had just been refitted as a riverfront bar. Ironically the owner, some retired mining executive, took such a liking to Noah that he named the bar after him. While Nancy, still feeling indebted, continued to prescribe and monitor his meds.
Therapeutically, what we did was outrageous. Maybe even illegal. But it was tangible, pragmatic. A nice change for a therapist. And it worked.
Noah stayed Noah, of course. There are no miracles. Just the hope, in the end, of more good days than bad.
Sometimes, that has be to enough.
***
When the wind turned icy, I helped Noah pull the waterproof tarp over his piano and we went inside.
Despite the polished bar stools and hanging racks of glasses over the long, beveled counter, you never forgot you’d stepped into the interior of a former coal barge. Port-holes opened to the river, black tar paper hung from the ceiling. The faint scent of oil-soaked water. What Noah blithely called its “nautical motif.”
Charlene, the bar’s only waitress (and Noah’s main squeeze), was already lighting the shaded candles at the corner booths. I took a seat at the bar while Noah went behind and started setting things up.
At the other end of the bar, a TV was showing the evening news. Over the anchorman’s shoulder was the by-now infamous video of the Handyman’s arrest. This was followed by a shot of Dowd’s lawyer talking to reporters.
“Wonder how the appeal’s going?” I said absently.
“Who gives a shit?” Noah said, stepping over to shut off the TV. His face grew dark.
“I don’t mind the crazies,” he said quietly. “It’s the
evil
fucks I hate.”
A silence fell between us.
A few early patrons walked in then, finding a table. Charlene went over, pad in hand, to take their order. She was from out west somewhere. Big, funny, sexy as hell. She helped run the bar and handle the books. Plus she loved Noah, which could be a full-time job in itself.
I turned back to find Noah staring at me. “Look, this Kevin kid gettin’ whacked…I mean, I’m sorry and all, but this ain’t nothin’ like what happened to Barbara. Fuck it, you weren’t responsible then, you ain’t responsible now.”
“I
know
that, all right?” I kept my voice calm. “Believe me, the last thing I’d do is put myself through that hell again.”
“Glad to hear it. ’Cause nothin’ you can do will bring that kid back.”
“I know that, too.”
Another long silence. Finally, I stood up, pushing off from the stool. I was vaguely conscious of other customers wandering in, their voices wafting like smoke.
I felt light-headed. I realized I hadn’t eaten a thing in over twenty-four hours. Naturally, as soon as I had that thought, my stomach started gnawing.
“You want my advice,” Noah was saying, “fly your sorry ass to Barbadoes and hook up with a couple horny divorcees. Think about it, man. I’m talkin’ tag-team blow-jobs.”
“Jesus, I wish.” I glanced at my wrist; forgot my watch. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Why? Are my fifty minutes up?”
“No, I’ve got a date with the cops. Besides—”
Just then, I saw the color drain from Noah’s face. He was staring at something past my shoulder.
“Well, fuck me,” he said quietly.
I turned, as the last person in the world I wanted to see that day came through the door.
Dr. Brooks Riley, Chief Psychiatrist at Ten Oaks, was drunk. He steadied himself in the doorway, squinting with exaggerated horror into the bar.
“Rinaldi! Are you hiding somewhere in this floating menace to public health?”
I was off my stool and across the room before Riley could take another step. Faces looked up from leather booths. The murmur of voices grew still.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said to him.
Riley was about my height, with the kind of proud, old-money good looks that usually made me think of yacht clubs, not hospitals. At least when he was sober. I’d never seen him drunk before.
“We’re celebrating.” He raked a hand through rich, dark hair. His tie, clasped to his shirt with a Harvard alumni pin, was undone at the throat. Despite the Armani suit, he looked, to my surprise, like hell.
“We?”
He glanced back in the direction of the door. “The boss and his wife. While we’re chatting in here, they’re outside, battling hypothermia.”
“Shit.” I took Riley by the arm and marched us back out the way he’d come in.
Outside on the sidewalk, the night air had dropped a dozen degrees. A clammy chill joined the fog wafting up from the river’s edge.
“We were beginning to wonder,” Albert Garman said pointedly. A slight, balding man in his late fifties, he looked even less imposing swallowed up in an overcoat and thick scarf. Only his eyes, which managed to be both pale and penetrating—especially when presiding over case presentations—betrayed his intelligence and ambition. In only six years as Clinical Director, he’d turned Ten Oaks into the most successful private psychiatric facility in the state.
His wife Elaine, mid-forties, and a full head taller than her husband, shivered next to him in her fur coat. According to clinic gossip, her rail-thin figure was the result of a diet rich in cocaine.
I shook hands with both of them. “Come on, you two, let’s go inside.”
Elaine’s laugh was raw as sand. “Honey, I’ve never been
that
desperate for a drink.”
“We thought perhaps you’d be here,” Garman said. “I wondered if you might like to join us at dinner.”
Highly unlikely
. This had to be about Kevin Merrick.
“We called your office,” Riley sniffed, “
and
your house, looking for you. After hearing on the news—”
“Yes.” Garman glanced past me, at the bar. “Then I remembered your having an interest in this place…”
“We’re on our way to Schaeffer’s for dinner,” Riley went on, oblivious. “This way, you’d get to explain yourself over a nice lobster.”
“Explain…?” I glared at him.
“Look, Dan,” Garman said smoothly, “Elaine and I invited Brooks to join us for drinks and dinner. We’ve got good news to celebrate. Then, of course, when we learned about the death of your patient—”
“He
was
the poor bastard you presented at our last case conference, right?” Riley brayed. “Pathetically
mirroring
you, with your encouragement…”
Garman gave Riley a sharp look, then turned back to me. “Honestly, Dan, I just felt you could use some support. I’ve lost patients myself, and I know how—”
“Hey, guys, I’m freezing my tits off.” Elaine bundled her coat tighter. “Can we get to the point?”
“Elaine…” Garman gazed helplessly at his wife.
But she’d pivoted on a high heel and was staring at me. “Look. My sister is seeing some hot-shot at the DA’s office, and
he
told her, off the record, that the murdered guy was found dressed like you. That the cops think
you
were the one supposed to get killed.”
Garman was shaking his head. “Your sister should learn to keep her mouth shut.”
Elaine bristled. “Don’t blame Kathy. Blame the married prick she’s sleeping with.
He
told her.”
Ignoring them, Riley took a step toward me. “You know what
that
means, don’t you? I objected to your treatment of Kevin from the start. ‘Twinship yearning,’ my ass! Try clinical incompetence!”
He raised a finger, stabbing at me with liquor-fueled conviction. “I was right, I
knew
I was right, and now the kid’s dead!”
Garman looked up. “Brooks, for God’s sake—”
But Riley was on a roll. “His family ought to sue, you know that? Even if they don’t,
I’m
going to see to it you get your license revoked!”
He took another step toward me, glowering with anger.
“Back off, Riley.” I placed my palm against his chest. “You don’t give a damn about Kevin. You’ve had a hard-on for me since you showed up at Ten Oaks, and now you’re seeing your chance to burn me. So fuck you.”
“Oh, this is priceless,” Elaine said. “Three of our city’s finest mental health professionals—”
“Look,” Garman said hoarsely. “Elaine’s right…”
His wife turned and stepped off the sidewalk. “Hell, I’m going to wait in the car. Have fun, boys.” With that, she hurried away across the dark, rain-slicked parking lot.
Riley made a little side step, more like a lurch, then righted himself. No question, an amateur drunk.
I turned to Garman. “Get him out of here, will you, Bert? For his own good.”
But Riley swung his head up, eyes red and angry. “You don’t
get
it, do you, Danny boy? You blew it! The famous specialist screwed up!”
Again, finger poking me. Hard, jabbing. Eyes sheened with bleary indignation. And something else. The thrill of liquor-fueled bravado, carelessness. Unused to the alcohol coursing through that blue blood.
I saw all this. I should have known. And yet I still said it: “You poke me one more time with that finger, I’m gonna
feed
it to you.” Then I batted his finger away.
That’s when Riley and I each made a stupid mistake: He took a swing at me, and I did something about it.
I didn’t mean to hit him so hard, but suddenly he was sitting on the wet pavement, hand covering his mouth, blood dribbling through his fingers. On the sidewalk next to him, like a pair of thrown dice, were two of his teeth.
“Oh my God!” Garman stared, wide-eyed in disbelief, first at me, and then down at his chief psychiatrist.
“Shit,” I said, more or less under my breath. My right fist stung from the blow. I hadn’t struck anyone, or any
thing
, without a glove since I was twelve years old.
“You lunatic.” Riley’s thickening lips found it hard to form words. “You
hit
me! Now
I’m
gonna sue you!”
“Go ahead. But Bert here’s a witness. It was self-defense. You swung at me first.”
“A witness?” Garman could barely form words himself. “What are you talking about? We’re
doctors
, for Christ’s sake. We don’t brawl on the street.”
“Right outside of a riverfront bar, don’t forget,” I added. “Ought to make a nice picture for the evening news.”
“Go to hell!” Riley was struggling to get up, angrily waving away Garman’s offer of assistance.
“You’re
both
insane,” Garman barked at me over his shoulder. “I don’t believe this!”
Just then, behind us, the door opened and Noah stood on the sidewalk. In his hand was a Louisville slugger.
“Do I gotta start bustin’ skulls or what?” he said, raising the baseball bat over his head. I realized with a start that he wasn’t kidding around.
“Sorry, Noah,” I said.
“I run a nice place here. If you shrinks can’t behave yourselves…”
“I mean it, we’re outta here.”
Garman looked as though he were about to explode, but Noah had already turned and shuffled back inside.
I glanced over at Riley, leaning against the wall. The lower half of his face sagged, and the handkerchief he held against his mouth was soaked with blood.
“Look, Riley, I’m sorry. We both acted like jerks. And then I—hell, I should’ve known better. Okay?”
“
Not
okay.” He was breathing heavily but evenly. It wasn’t the alcohol talking any longer. “You’re
toast
, Rinaldi. I’ll have your license. I’ll sue you for assault. Then I’ll figure out some ways to
really
fuck you up.”
He pushed himself off from the wall, legs unsteady beneath him. He squinted hard at Garman.
“You and Elaine go celebrate without me.” His voice was thick with grievance. “I’ll grab a cab home. I couldn’t chew that lobster now anyway. Thanks to Muhammad Ali here, I’ll be drinking through a goddam straw for a week.”
Garman and I stood in silence, watching Riley head toward the parking lot. Behind, from somewhere downriver, you could hear the sound of a tugboat churning the black waters on its way past the Point.
“By the way,” I said finally, without turning, “what are you celebrating?”
Garman gave me a sidelong look, equal parts amusement and exasperation. “Not that it matters much at the moment, but I just closed a deal with UniHealth. They’re acquiring Ten Oaks and plan on making it the flagship for a franchise of private clinics.”
“Franchise? Sounds like McDonald’s.”
“Not now, okay, Dan? I’m getting enough grief about it from the staff. Nancy and the others.”
“My sympathies.” I held out my hand. “Thanks for your concern though. Before.”
His look at me was frank. “Kevin Merrick was
your
responsibilty, not ours. Our weekly peer reviews are merely a courtesy, extended to therapists who used to work at the clinic. Ten Oaks is in no way directly connected with, nor liable for, Kevin’s treatment.” He smiled, and only then shook my hand.
“Thanks for clearing that up. For a moment there, I almost forgot who you were.”
“That would be a big mistake.” Still smiling, he turned toward the parking lot. “I better join Elaine and get going, or we’ll lose our reservation. Corner table.”
“Look, about Riley…”
He shrugged. “Truth is, something about you has always pissed him off. I guess he sees you as some kind of maverick. You know his type. Philly mainline, marinated for eight years at Harvard. Hidebound, judgmental. Knows everything.”
His pale eyes narrowed. “I’d say you’ve made yourself a real enemy, Dan.”
With that, Albert Garman tightened the knot of his scarf and walked off into the night.
