Wallflower (3 page)

She smiled as she waited for his response, and again he was struck by the beauty of her eyes. Also by her confidence.
She got me, and she knows it. No choice. I'll have to own up.

"I'm embarrassed. . . ." He grinned foolishly, feeling himself tongue-tied.

"American?" He nodded. “Do you know me? Have we met?" He shook his head. "I must interest you very much," she said, rolling her eyes in mock wonderment.

He grinned again, then caught himself. She was making him feel like a boy. "To tell the truth—"

"The truth! Yes, we must definitely have the truth!" she purred. "Because, you must know this, it is very rude to follow a woman through the streets. Adolescent Italian males do it, but a mature
man and an American—that's quite unexpected. Frankly I would not have thought an American gentleman capable of such a thing."

She stared at him, levelly, waiting for his reply. And this time, he knew, she would wait until he gave her satisfaction.

"Yes," he admitted, "I was following you. I apologize. It was stupid of me and very rude. But please believe me, I intended no harm. I hope you won't call the police."

"Why should I want to do that?" she asked with a slight smirk. She was amused now, enjoying his discomfort.

Fine with me,
he thought.
Keeps it between us. I'll take any humiliation so long as she doesn't bring in the cops.

"You took my picture," he said. “If you felt harassed, then I understand you might want—"

"But I didn't feel harassed. I was flattered. You have a kind face. I knew you wouldn't bother me. If I ask you now, you will leave me alone. Correct?"

"That is certainly correct," he agreed.

She paused, then introduced herself. "My name is Dr. Daskai."

A doctor!
He would never have guessed it. "Mine's Janek," he replied, again feeling dumb.

She offered her hand. He took it. They shook.

"And what do you do, Mr. Janek?"

"I'm a tourist—"

She shook her head; she would not accept evasions. "You know what I'm asking. In your professional life?"

He hesitated. "I'm a New York City detective."

"Do you have credentials?" He nodded. “May I see them?"

He showed her his ID and shield. She examined both carefully.

"A New York City lieutenant of detectives following me through the streets of Venice." She shook her head and rolled her eyes again. "I would
never
have imagined this."

"It was a bad mistake."

"Really?" She was skeptical. "Did you think I was someone else?"

"I was attracted to you, I wanted to meet you, but I was too shy to approach. We kept running into each other, and you didn't seem to notice."

"Oh, but you're wrong. I noticed," she said.

Janek stared down. "Look, I'm really embarrassed. First, because I followed you, which I had absolutely no right to do. And secondly, because, well . . . I'm supposed to be able to follow people without their knowing I am."

"In New York perhaps. Here you stand out."

"I understand that now."

"Well?" She stared at him.

"I guess I'm not as good a detective as I thought," he offered humbly. Perhaps there was still hope; he could see another smile growing on her face. "I realize under the circumstances what I'm about to ask will seem like a pretty shameless question."

"What question?"

"You have every right to refuse." She stared at him curiously. He paused, then took the plunge. "Would you let me buy you a drink?"

She reacted with mock horror. "Now he wants to offer me a drink!"

"You're right. Enough is enough. I'm sorry." He stepped back, ready to withdraw. "I won't follow you again. I promise. I feel like such a jerk—"

"Actually I am thirsty," she said.

Startled, he studied her face. She was smiling broadly now.
What does she think of me?
he wondered.
Attractive and shy? Or a lonely American buffoon?

"I'm staying nearby, at the Danieli. The bar there seems very pleasant." She stared into his eyes. "Shall we try it? Of course, I insist on paying for myself."

H
er first name was Monika. She was a psychiatrist. She lived just outside Hamburg and was a member of the medical school faculty there. She also had a specialized psychoanalytic practice—private patients she saw in the afternoons. She had written two books, one about the nature of rage, the other about narcissism and art. She was thirty-nine years old, widowed and childless. Her husband, an older man who had been first her teacher and then her mentor, had died of cancer the year before.

She didn't travel much; she didn't have the time. Her work was demanding, and she thrived on it. She had come to Venice on a private visit; she and her husband had taken their wedding trip here ten years before.

She had been hesitant about returning, afraid she would be haunted by memories, fearful she would slip back into the depression that had seized her after her husband had been buried and that had only begun to lift the last few months. So, in a certain sense, coming to Venice had been a test. Could she rediscover the city by herself, take pleasure in its beauty and art, or would it forever be tainted for her by nostalgia and regret?

He told her as much about himself as she had told him. And the longer they talked, the more he felt that there was nothing he would want to keep hidden. But then, on account of a few little things she let drop, he realized she knew more about him than he'd revealed.

"
Yes," she admitted when he confronted her, "as soon as I saw
your credentials, I knew who you were. I read a
book
, Tödlicher
Tausch
it's called in German. I'm not sure what that would be in English. Maybe something like 'The Deadly Swap.'"

"Switch,"
Janek said.

She nodded. "Well, anyway, I knew you must be the same Janek who solved that strange case in New York. The one with the switched heads. But I can tell by the way you're looking at me that that's the last thing you want to talk about."

He nodded, pleased she was so intuitive.

"Perhaps you came here to escape it," she added.

My God!
he asked himself.
Does this woman have any imperfections?

"So, in a sense," she continued, "we have both come here to escape our pasts. Can the brilliant fire that is Venice burn away our ghosts?" She smiled. "I know it doesn't work that way, and I believe you know it, too. Travel is probably the worst form of escape. People carry their baggage wherever they go. But still it's a wonderful romantic illusion, the idea of going to a place where the colors are bright, the light brilliant, the art incandescent. But now I am ashamed. I'm talking too much. I think I've spent too many hours as prisoner of my patients, listening, always listening, and now I am feeling free and letting loose. Poor you"—she gently touched his hand—"to be
my
prisoner now, to have to hear me babble on. . . ."

He looked into her gray-green eyes, eyes so full of yearning. Slanting beams crossed the barroom, found her irises, entered them, and broke into a spectrum.

"I love listening to you," he said. Then he turned away.

"Why do you turn from me?" she asked softly.

"Forgive me," he said. "I'm blinded."

"Then we must move to another table." She began to rise.

"No, no," he said, touching her hand. "It's all right. It's not the light. It's something else."

"What?" she asked, intense now, curious.

"You," he said.

"Me?"

He nodded. "I'm blinded by the beauty of your eyes."

T
o hold her, kiss and touch her—that was like a dream. His true dream of Venice perhaps, though he hadn't known it when, for so many years, he had dreamed of coming to this city. The way she made love was subtle, but he did not feel clumsy with her as he sometimes did with women whom he thought of as elegant or fine. She made it seem very natural that they should lie together in her room—her wonderful room, No. 13, where, according to the plaque outside the door, the great French novelist George Sand had lived for a brief time in the winter of 1833 with her lover, poet Alfred de Musset.

"They parted disastrously," Monika whispered to him as they lay together afterward, lightly tangled. "Musset fell ill; then Sand ran off with his doctor." She caressed him fondly. "Musset never got over it. It was the defining trauma of his life."

They made love again, more tempestuously the second time, and then Janek could not quite believe what he was feeling. Something in him was being released. The heaviness was lifting; a wonderful new buoyancy was taking its place. Her steamy skin burned against his body. Their sweat ran together and formed a seal.

"I haven't done this since . . ." She turned to him, eyes glowing. "You're the first man I've been with since my husband died." Her fine eyes queried him. "It's been awhile for you, too, hasn't it?"

He nodded. "It feels good to make love again."

"Oh, yes. . . ." She showered kisses on his chest. "Frank, Frank. . . ." She made his name seem marvelous by pronouncing it in German. "It's very good. Very healthy. I think it must have been for this that I came to Venice." She licked his neck in long, even strokes. "But is this really happening?" She tenderly stroked his sex. "Yes, it is. And I
love
it. I'm so happy you followed me."

She looked up at him, her smile so bright, her eyes so brilliant—but this time he did not flinch, this time he drank in her light.

H
e took her to dinner at Antico Martini on the Campo San Fantin across from the Fenice Theater. There was only one other couple on the terrace, but they agreed they liked being in a nearly empty restaurant.

"Tonight Venice belongs just to us," she said.

He told her about himself, his marriage and divorce, his ambivalent affection for New York, how the Switch Case had changed his life, and how much he loved investigative work.

"
You love it because you're good at it, isn't that right?" He nodded. "Tell me about it, Frank. What sort of detective are you?"

"Basically there're two kinds," he explained.
"
Scientists and
artists. The scientists are puzzle solvers. They pore over evidence, figure out what's absent, then go after the missing piece. I'm probably more the artist type. I try to feel the case, identify with the perp, and then generate the insight that will bring it all together. For me the best cases are the psychological ones where to solve them you have to go inside a mind and touch the madness."

"You're really a psychologist," she said.

"In a way—but I have no training in it. I operate on instinct. And often what I do isn't very civilized, Monika. Underneath I'm still a street cop. And New York is one very tough town."

She nodded. "Will you forgive me if I ask you a personal question?"

"I think we've been pretty personal with each other so far."

She smiled. "You're famous. You've been the subject of a book and a movie. I ask you this because I realize it must be your choice: Why are you only a lieutenant?"

Her question amused him, but he gave her a serious answer. "I won't take a field command," he explained, "which is what an officer above lieutenant is obliged to do. If I stay a lieutenant—well, I keep thinking I'll be able to work cases until I retire."

"Tell me why you like them so much?"

"First, the problem, then the fun of the chase, the joy when I
get the flash, figure
out who did it and, most important, why. You see, once I know that, I can usually persuade the person to confess, not just because I've got the goods on him but because my understanding of him usually makes him want to explain himself even more. Then through his confession I relive the experience of the crime. And once I've shared that, it's over."

"So you like confessions?"

He nodded. "Much better than building a case for trial. For me when a crime is committed, a wound is opened . . . and I want to be the one who closes it. An honest confession is the best kind of closure I know."

She gazed at him. "Perhaps then you are something between a psychologist and a priest."

He shook his head.
"
I can't absolve anybody. I haven't the right. But I always try to grant criminals their humanity. To help them? Partly. But I think it's really for myself. There's so much evil in this world, Monika. Perhaps a billion varieties of evil. The kind of work I do, and believe me it's very humble sometimes, puts me in touch with evil every day. And strange as this may seem, I think it's helped me gain a little wisdom. Though sometimes, I have to admit, I don't feel all that wise. Like this afternoon, for instance—following you around. That was very childish."