Clarence read aloud. ''Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk.' Not much to it unless old Lusky is a pedophile.'
Clarence flipped to the next page. The Fireman sailed a paper airplane across the room, where it did a nosedive into a steel-screened window.
Stephanie said, 'If he's cute, Mr. Lusk can catch me if he wants.'
Again, Clarence read aloud. ''Weakness to be wroth with weakness, woman's pleasure, woman's pain…' A little dated, wouldn't you say, doctor?'
Pam Maxson turned to me and shrugged. I looked at Clarence. 'Keep reading,' I told him, wondering if Tennyson had ever been heard in these surroundings.
He continued silently, then said, 'I can't relate to this, if that's your question.' He screwed his face into a look of disapproval and read aloud again. ''Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions matched with mine, are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.''
'What a pansy,' the Fireman said.
Clarence said, 'I never loved a woman and would surely not mourn over her loss.'
The Fireman nodded in agreement.
'The poem was left at a murder scene, I said. 'Does it mean anything to any of you?'
'A bit showy for my tastes,' Clarence said. 'Maybe something Ken would do. He likes the grand gesture. You dumped a body in front of Plymouth Church, didn't you, Ken?'
Ken wasn't talking, and the Fireman was licking the seams of another imaginary bomber.
'Strangled them,' Clarence said. 'Actually placed his hands on their filthy bodies. How unsanitary. Now, take cyanide…'
'Oh, yes, do!' shouted Stephanie.
Clarence ignored her. 'The respiratory enzymes are poisoned, the body is paralyzed, and death occurs in seconds. And afterward, the body turns such a bright red. So delicious, like a big, plump cherry.'
'What about it, Ken?' I asked. 'Would you leave a note for your local constable?'
He glared at me. I didn't think he would say a word. Finally he turned back toward the window and softly said, 'Actions speak louder than words.'
From the corner of my eye, I saw Stephanie squirming in her chair. Pam Maxson acknowledged her with a wave of the hand.
'I hate to admit it, but the poem is right,' Stephanie said, cocking her head to one side coquettishly. 'I mean, it sounds strange for me to say it, since I'm a woman and all, but with the men I've known, the ones who've lusted after me, you have no idea, their passion. It's exhausting. And there are times when I have it, you know, the male sexuality. As you taught me, Dr. Maxson, all of us are bisexual to some degree, and I guess, me more than most. When I get it, that flow of hot male blood, it's different. So powerful and overwhelming, so intense, so lush. Lord knows, I love a man. I love to do nice things for him. But when I need a woman, it's difficult to describe, but it comes over me in waves, my passion inflamed a thousand-fold.'
'What happens then?' I asked.
'I fuck her, of course. Good and proper.'
I nodded and waited, and then it came.
'And hate her for it.' Stephanie's voice was a whisper. 'For making me the male beast. So who can blame me for killing her? I mean, really? Who can blame me?'
Pam Maxson apologized to me before leaving to join Charlie's lecture. The group had twenty minutes left, so I stuck around. We could play poker or swap tales of homicide. There didn't seem to be any poker players in the bunch.
Clarence was the most willing to talk; Stephanie stared at me and occasionally engaged in heavy breathing; the Fireman kept folding and unfolding his paper airplanes; and Ken couldn't care less.
Clarence leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, and whispered conspiratorially, 'Dr. Maxson is teaching you all the mumbo jumbo, eh?'
Stephanie smiled. 'Sweet bitch. Are you in her pants yet?'
'He's not her type,' the Fireman said. 'Only he doesn't know it yet.'
I just looked at them.
'We're a cottage industry, you know,' Clarence said. 'We need each other, the psychiatrist and the crazed killer. Without us, how would they get their government grants or appear on the tube?'
'You like playing the role?' I asked.
He shrugged. 'It's expected. Your FBI behavioral-science lads came up with the childhood profile, bed wetters who slice up animals and start fires-'
'Burn, baby, burn,' the Fireman interrupted.
'— and we can read as well as the next chap.'
'So it's all a game,' I ventured, again remembering Pam's talk about intentional schizophrenics.
'And a self-fulfilling prophecy.' He smiled and leaned even closer. 'We tell the psychiatrists our hallucinations. Voices ordering us to kill.'
I nodded. 'Right. In New York, a young man hears a dog telling him women are evil. So he used a. 44-caliber pistol to kill a few.'
'Yes, and the tabloids call him the Son of Sam and he goes to a mental hospital instead of prison. Better food, a higher class of tenants.'
'You think it was phony?'
'What difference does it make?' Clarence said. 'Evil or crazy, the victims are just as dead.' He fixed me with a cunning smile.
'You never heard voices, Clarence?'
He sat back and beamed. 'Only my own.'
The group was growing restless. In a few moments the attendants would take them back to their high- security ward. Ken the Doll allowed as how he needed to use the facilities and stood up and walked toward the lavatory. He came behind me and fingered my sport coat, draped on the back of my chair. It sent a chill up my spine. 'Nice,' he said, walking away.
Stephanie giggled and yelled after him. 'Stay away from the new boy, Kenneth. He's mine!'
A moment later, the door buzzed and two white-uniformed attendants came in. Stephanie, Clarence, and the Fireman stood up without being told.
'All of you back to Ward D and no lollygagging,' one attendant demanded in what I took for an Irish accent. He was tall and heavy, big-boned, but no fat. Brawny wrists stuck out of the white uniform shirt. He had roughly cut dark hair and a pale complexion with blue eyes. He might have been handsome if he smiled. He didn't smile.
'I'm a visitor,' I said pleasantly. 'Lassiter. Guest of Dr. Maxson.'
His eyes never moved from mine. The other one, a thick-necked youth with a shock of unruly red hair, circled to my left. These guys had some training. If I went for one of them, the other would nail me.
'Identification?' the tall one asked, the tone formal without being nasty.
I reached for my sport coat. Pam Maxson had pinned the badge on the lapel.
Damn! Now where was it?
'It must have fallen off,' I said, sounding guilty even to myself.
Now the redhead was directly behind me.
'Sure it did,' the tall one said. 'There are supposed to be four lunatics in this group, and unless my Gaelic eyes deceive me, there's four of you here. So how about falling in with your friends?'
I smiled and tried to look sane but felt myself a grinning madman. 'The fourth…uh…lunatic went to the head. I'm sure if you-'
'My patience is wearing thin, laddie.'
'Careful,' Stephanie warned. 'Francis likes to hit more than he likes to fuck.'
'Ken went to the head,' I said. 'He must have taken my visitor's badge. Maybe he's escaped. Perhaps you should sound an alarm. I'm Lassiter.'
He looked at me skeptically.
'I'm a lawyer,' I went on, 'a barrister.'
'Hear that, Clive, he's a bloomin' pettifogger,' Francis told his buddy.
