A Fatal Debt

Her voice was low and melodic and her tone unworried, suggesting our meeting was perfectly ordinary.

I indicated my patients’ chair. “Let’s see if I can help you.”

“I’m sure you can,” she said, as if it would be a waste of effort to try to dissuade her. She crossed her long legs and placed her black leather bag on the floor. She was more finely groomed than women I knew-so polished that she looked as though she wore a mask. Her red lipstick matched the soles of her Christian Louboutin shoes, and her eyebrows were exactly shaped.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

She paused for a few seconds, and I saw her assessing me. Both of us knew the answer to the question, but she avoided it.

“You’re on a list, aren’t you? Top doctors in New York,” she said.

I knew that New York magazine list, and I knew I wasn’t on it. She smiled, displaying pearl white teeth against red lips. She gave the impression of being in complete control-she wouldn’t reveal anything that she didn’t care to.

She didn’t look even vaguely ill, certainly much less than Harry when I’d first met him. She was talking brightly and at a normal speed, her face was full of life, and she smiled easily, so there was no depression there. It was conceivable she was bipolar or had another condition, but there were few signs of it. She wasn’t manic, and she was lucid and rational. If anything, she seemed less stressed than I.

“Can I ask why you’re interested in therapy?” I said. “Is there something happening in your life at the moment?”

She gazed at me as she absorbed the question, but she showed no sign of wanting to answer it. Instead, she leaned back in the chair and expelled a slow breath of air through her nostrils, gathering her thoughts.

“May I ask you a question?” she replied. “Can I be sure that nothing I tell you will go outside this room?”

“Of course. It will be in confidence.”

“I’ve heard of cases where personal matters came out in court,” she said, gazing at me. “Things a patient had told his psychiatrist.”

I looked back at her, both of us knowing what she meant and both knowing that the other one knew. It was absurd. I should have stopped her there, told her that I couldn’t treat her. Anything she told me in this room, including her affair, would immediately become sealed. Even if Anna released me from my promise, which she showed no sign of doing, it would have to remain secret and I’d have nothing to tell Pagonis or Baer. I’d be bound as tightly as ever by professional obligation.

I felt as if I were becoming more enmeshed even as I tried to fight my way free, yet I couldn’t resist it. The lure was as powerful as when my father had turned pleadingly to me in the car when I was twelve years old and asked me to keep secret Jane’s illicit presence in our house. I’d been drawn into Harry’s world, and I had to know the truth. Anna had only spied upon it from afar, and she wouldn’t tell me more. Even if I could never find my way out of this maze, I wanted to proceed.

“It only happens when a patient who’s been accused of a crime waives privilege. It’s his choice, not the doctor’s,” I said.

She smiled. “You’ve got a duty of care. Like a banker.”

“I imagine so. I’m not an expert.”

“So you’ll take me as a patient?”

“Perhaps you should tell me about yourself first,” I said.

“Thirty-three, separated, investment banker. What else?” she said, as if she’d already exhausted the subject of her personality.

“You’re separated?”

She sighed, and her confidence seemed to falter. She looked away from me, speaking to the bookshelf on one wall.

“Wall Street’s a relentless place. You make partner in your early thirties and you need to work hard just to prove yourself, harder than the men. Seven or eight meetings a day, work every weekend. My husband couldn’t accept that. He wanted children.”

“You didn’t?”

“I did. I do. But I had no choice. That’s the job.”

She gave a brittle smile, and a few minutes later, our meeting was over. She didn’t bother to ask me how much therapy would cost, and it didn’t seem likely to bother her any more than it had Harry. We arranged for her to return at the same time the following week, and I opened the door for her. She walked toward the elevators as precisely as she’d come, bag at her side, head aloft, the legs of her expensive pants swishing together. I couldn’t remember a patient who’d come for treatment in such good health.

I was at home that evening, eating a sandwich and watching television aimlessly to distract myself, when Bob called up from the front desk to tell me that two detectives had come to see me.

“Fine, send them up,” I said as casually as I could manage, although they hadn’t given me any warning.

“Sure thing, Doctor.”

His voice had the doorman’s guarded neutrality. I couldn’t tell whether he believed that it was as routine as I’d tried to make it sound or he expected me to be led out in handcuffs in a few minutes. When I peered out of my apartment, I saw Hodge slouching down the corridor as if he hadn’t thought much of me the first time we’d met and had since had his view fully vindicated. Pagonis carried a document that she tapped lightly on one wall as she walked.

“We’re here to give you this,” she called with a tone of malicious pleasure. As she got to me and proffered it, I saw it was a document in a legal-looking manila envelope, fastened with red string to a buttonlike clip.

“Come in for a minute,” I said. The way they’d arrived without warning and looked so self-satisfied wasn’t reassuring, and I didn’t want them to depart before I knew what they’d brought with them.

Pagonis led the way, Hodge squeezing me against the wall with his stomach as he passed. She was wearing a pantsuit that was less flattering than Lauren’s. It was a pale shade of gray, and it creased around her knees and waist. Yaphank detectives had less of a clothes budget than bankers, I imagined. As Hodge examined my bookshelves, Pagonis walked to the end of the room by a window that looked south over another block to a high school and a rooftop jumble of water tanks and air-conditioning units.

“Nice place,” she said. “I like these drapes. My husband and I are looking for something like that, but we can’t agree, you know?”

“Why don’t you take a seat?” I said, gesturing at my sofa. I felt the need to corral them. They were behaving as if they already owned the place.

I sat down and opened the envelope. Inside were three sheets of paper, the first one headed “Subpoena Ad Testificandum for a Witness to Appear Before the Grand Jury of Suffolk County.” My heart sank as I saw that the People of the State of New York “commanded” me to be in Riverhead in two weeks’ time to testify. It was just what I’d gone to Anna to try to avoid. I didn’t really know what a grand jury was, although I’d heard of them, but the document looked genuine-Baer had signed it.

“Mr. Baer wasn’t happy with our last meeting with you. The one with that New York lawyer,” Pagonis said. “Now you have to testify.”

She extended her legs on my rug, bending her toes back to stretch her calf muscles. It had been a long journey just to deliver me a subpoena. Didn’t they have better things to do with their time, like catching criminals?

“My lawyer will get back to you,” I said.

Pagonis shook her head. “Your lawyer can’t come to a grand jury hearing. It’s just going to be Mr. Baer and you. We’ve got new evidence that suggests you haven’t been honest with us. You spent time at Shapiro’s house in East Hampton, it turns out, just after you’d discharged him from the hospital.”

How does she know? I thought. There’d been only three witnesses in East Hampton-Nora, Anna, and Harry. One of them must have told Pagonis about what happened that day, and she’d already started closing in on me. Things felt as if they were moving a lot faster than Joe had predicted.

Pagonis smirked. “I’ll bet he poured out his heart to you.”

“You shouldn’t have come all this way,” I said, standing to usher them out of the room and the building.

“It was worth the trip,” she replied.