Mitch Berger had the saddest eyes Des had ever seen on any creature that was not living at the Humane Society, its wet nose and furry paws pressed to the door of its cage.
“Mr. Berger, I’m Lt. Desiree Mitry of the Major Crimes Squad, Central District. I have some questions.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said hoarsely, crossing the room toward her. He was taller than Des by an inch or two. And a good deal wider. “I’m sorry if I’m…” He ran a hand through his uncombed hair, clearly distraught. “I guess I’m still a little shook. It was the smell more than anything. I-I wasn’t prepared for that, you know? I mean, I’ve seen that kind of thing in a lot of movies. So I was somewhat conditioned. But the stench… I guess I understand now why Smell-o-vision never really caught on in a big way. It’s still there in my nostrils. I just can’t seem to get rid of it.”
“Have you got any oranges around?”
“I think so. Why?”
“What you do, you cut off a piece of the peel and rub it in between your fingers. Then sniff ’em. There’s an essence in the oil. Fix you right up.”
“Thanks, I’m going to try that.” He immediately started for the kitchen. “Can I cut you one, too?”
“I’m okay, thanks.”
“I guess people like you get used to it.”
“People like me never get used to it. I don’t like to see anything get dead. Not even a cockroach.”
“I guess you’ve never lived in New York.”
She let out a polite laugh while her eyes got busy flicking around the room, taking in the contents. He was a musician. There was an electric guitar and colossal stack of amps. There was a computer. Books and papers. Most everything else in the place looked like it came from a junk shop. All except for the two framed pieces of art that hung from the walls. Over the fireplace there was a framed photograph of Georgia O’Keeffe when she was an old, old woman. Her intricately lined face was as worn as an ancient streambed. It was the face of someone who had known triumph and defeat, love and loss, joy and pain. It was the face of someone who was still hanging on. A survivor’s face.
“Great portrait, isn’t it?” Mitch Berger said, returning with his orange peel. “I look at her every day and say to myself, ‘If Georgia can make it, I can make it.’” Now he rubbed the peel between his fingers and sniffed at them, rather like a large, inquisitive rabbit. “It belonged to my wife,” he added.
“You’re divorced?”
“No, she died.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, making a mental note to check the date and circumstances of his wife’s death.
The other piece of art, which hung on the wall to the kitchen, was a computer-generated drawing comprised of horizontal lines that seemed to grow incrementally in width the farther they moved from the center. “And that one?” she asked him.
“That’s the Fibonacci Series,” he replied. “Last thing my wife designed. She was a landscape architect.” He tossed the orange peel into the fire and turned and gazed at Des with his wounded puppy eyes. “So are you a homicide detective?”
“Something like that.”
“You must encounter a lot of horrible things.”
“We are not a kindly animal, Mr. Berger. We can be especially cruel to the ones we love the most.” This particular nugget of hardedged wisdom she had learned in the bedroom, not the streets. She smiled at him now, looking around. “I am loving this house.”
“Isn’t it great? There’s a sleeping loft upstairs, if you want to take a look.”
The bed was unmade, but she paid little notice to that. What she noticed were the skylights. Even more light. She could not imagine what it would be like to live here. Sketching every morning by the dawn’s pure light. Jogging on the private beach. Compared to this, her house was like being locked inside a cave.
“Yum, I could get used to this way fast,” she commented as she descended the narrow staircase.
“So bring your sketchpad with you next time. Stay a while.”
She stiffened, narrowing her eyes at him. “You just said what?”
“You do sketch, don’t you?”
Des cocked her head at him, hands on her hips. A pose she did not like. It was strictly Aunt Esther on Sanford and Son. She crossed her arms instead and said, “Now how did you know that?”
“The charcoal under your middle fingernail. You dig your nail into the stick. My wife did that, too. Same nail.”
She glanced down at it. It was barely noticeable. This was one very observant white man. Scarily so.
“I’d like to see your work sometime,” he said with genuine interest.
“It’s just something I do for myself,” she responded guardedly.
“That’s generally the best stuff, don’t you think?”
She let his comment go by, at a loss for how he had suddenly made her feel so off balance and exposed. She did not like this feeling. She did not like it at all. She edged over nearer to the fire.
“Can I get you a sweater?” he asked, following her. “Nice warm sweater?”
“Naw, I’m fine.”
“You are not. You’re shivering. It can get really damp out here. Gets right into your bones. How about a cup of coffee?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Berger.” Now he was making her feel girlish and helpless. Something else she really did not like.
“Suit yourself. But if you catch cold, don’t blame me.”
“I never get colds,” she said sharply, seizing back control of the interview. “I understand you work for a newspaper.”
“That’s correct,” he said, flopping down in a worn armchair.
“You planning to write about the discovery of Niles Seymour’s body?”
He shook his head. “I’m not that kind of writer-I’m a film critic.”
“Is that right? I don’t believe I’ve ever met a film critic before.” She showed him her dimples, anxious to get him talking. “How does someone end up in that line of work?”
“I get asked that fairly regularly,” he replied. “I don’t know how. Or why. I only know that something very unusual happened to me the very first time I walked into a movie theater.”
“That was what, Mr. Berger?”
“I discovered that I come alive in the dark,” he said. “Not so much like a vampire but more like an exotic form of fungus. A darkened movie theater is my natural habitat. I spent my entire childhood there. Everything I know in life I found out in movie theaters. James Cagney showed me what nerve was, Cary Grant charm, Audrey Hepburn grace. Marlene Dietrich taught me how to bend the rules. Robert Mitchum taught me how to break them.” He paused now, glancing around at his little house of light. “This place here, this is not me. My being on this island is what screenwriters call Imposed Behavior.”
“Imposed Behavior?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”
He stared at her blankly. “You never heard of Imposed Behavior?”
“What I’m saying.”
“That’s when a character purposely makes himself do something that goes against his nature because, for some vital personal reason, he thinks he needs to. Like when Joel McCrea became a hobo in Sullivan’s Travels.”
“Never saw it.”
“You never saw it?” he exclaimed excitedly. “God, are you in for a treat! It’s one of the great screwball comedies of all time. And then it becomes unbelievably sad. And then it becomes unbelievably funny again. Preston Sturges directed it. That scene in the black church near the end, when they roll the cartoon, I sob uncontrollably every time.”
Des raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m standing here thinking I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
He smiled at her. “Already we have something in common-I’ve never met a woman who’s a lieutenant in the Major Crimes Squad before. I really like your locks. You probably hear that all the time.”
“All the time,” she said brusquely. He was trying to do it again-turn the conversation back on her. “Were you acquainted with Niles Seymour?”
