I nodded my agreement, hoping Charlie would bring me up to date, or at least introduce me. But the old billy goat was having too good a time to notice.
'This is the classic distinction between our disciplines,' Charlie said, sipping a glass of Saint-Veran white burgundy, while I sat, parched, irked, and apparently invisible. 'The medical examiner searches for the clues of who did the crime and how. The forensic psychiatrist yearns for the why.'
'And the lawyer says the devil or his mother or irresistible impulse made the rascal do it,' I offered.
Charlie noticed me then. 'Oh, my manners! Dr. Maxson, this is Jacob Lassiter, a dear friend of mine. When I was the county ME, Jake was a young public defender, and how he made my life miserable. Now he's a successful civil lawyer, eh, Jake?'
'Some days. How do you do, Dr. Maxson?'
She nodded and seemed to appraise me with green eyes spiked with flint. The eyes lingered, decided I was an interesting specimen but hardly worth an afternoon tea, and returned to Charlie. I gave Doc my pleading, hang- dog look, which he recognized as acute deprivation of female companionship.
'Jake was quite creative when he was a PD,' Charlie said. His eyes twinkled behind thick glasses held together with a bent fishhook where they had lost a screw. 'He'd be defending a Murder One and ask me on cross in very serious tones, 'Isn't the fact that the decedent fell from a tenth-floor balcony consistent with suicide?''
I laughed and said, 'And Charlie would look at the jury, scratch his beard, and say, 'Only if we omit the fact that a second before falling, the decedent was shot in the back by a gun covered with your client's fingerprints.''
The English lady nearly smiled, and it didn't seem to hurt.
'Pamela's on a book tour,' Charlie told me, 'and my old friend Warwick at Broadmoor asked her to look me up.'
'Warwick at Broadmoor?' I asked, with a blank face.
'Dr. Warwick heads the forensic unit at Broadmoor. Hospital for the criminally insane,' Charlie added, as if any dolt should know. 'In London. Dr. Maxson was instrumental in apprehending and then treating the Firebug Murderer.'
I was silent, not willing to admit my ignorance quite so often.
The lady psychiatrist rescued me. 'Just a lad, really. The fellow would find lovers parked in their cars, snogging away-'
'Snogging, were they?' I asked, eyebrows raised in mock disapproval.
'Yes, what you would call…oh, Dr. Riggs, help me.'
Charlie coughed and said, 'Necking and what have you.'
I nodded, knowingly.
'In any event,' Dr. Maxson continued, 'this poor wretch would seek out lovers, pour petrol over them, and set them alight.'
'Indeed?' I said, in an unintended imitation of her accent.
'Quite,' she replied, giving me a look that said she did not suffer fools, particularly of the American wise-guy variety.
I signaled the waiter for a beer by elegantly pointing a finger down my throat. Then I turned to the lady psychiatrist with practiced sincerity. 'Tell me about your work, Dr. Maxson. How do you treat these firebugs and murderers?'
'I study the psychopath,' she said. 'I want to know why he acts the way he does.'
'Or she does,' I added, believing in equality of the sexes in all departments.
'The subject is so complex,' Pamela Maxson said, ignoring me. 'We study the childhood antecedents to murder-'
'Environment,' Charlie Riggs said.
'But we also know that there are neurological, genetic, and bio-physiological components, too.'
'The extra Y chromosome in men.' Charlie nodded.
'Yes, we know the XYY abnormality is four times more prevalent among murderers.'
'So are killers made or born?' I asked.
'That's what I've been trying to determine ever since I became fascinated with the Cotswolds Killer.'
I showed her my vague look. It comes naturally.
'You know the section called the Cotswolds?' she asked.
'The Catskills, I know…'
'In Oxfordshire, wonderful hilly sheep country. I grew up there near Chipping Camden. I was still a student when someone began killing farm girls. One near Bourton-on-the-Water, one just outside Upper Slaughter.'
'Upper Slaughter,' Charlie muttered.
'Each of the girls had been strangled. Like so many of them nowadays, each had been sexually active at age fifteen or so, highly active, and their several boyfriends were initially suspected.'
'Any of the boyfriends know both the girls?' Charlie asked, still trying to earn his detective's shield.
'No. And no strangers were implicated, either. The crimes were never solved, and…well, it just got me started.'
I thought about pretty Miss Maxson scouring the sylvan English countryside for clues of murder. The thought didn't last. The waiter brought my beer, and I ordered yellowtail snapper broiled, some fried sweet plantains, and black beans with rice. The pathologist and the psychiatrist were still carrying on, regaling each other with tales of death and derangement.
'Dr. Riggs, I still can't believe you've retired. I've so enjoyed your articles.'
Charlie beamed. 'Oh, I continue my research. Vita non est vivere sed valere vita est. 'Life is more than merely staying alive.''
She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. 'For you, no taedium vitae. '
They both laughed, and I managed a weak smile. Maybe when I'm pushing sixty-five, women will fall all over me, too. They kept trading war stories and Latin phrases, and I kept popping the porcelain stoppers on sixteen- ounce Grolsches. I was on my third bottle, letting a soft buzz take the edge off, when I decided to break into the party. Having just been whacked by a jury, scolded by a client, and ignored by a beautiful woman from another continent, I figured there was very little to lose.
'Ah-chem,' I said.
No one seemed to notice my brilliant opening line. Pamela Maxson was still focused on the old coroner who, until twenty minutes before, was my mentor and best friend.
'I was fascinated by your article on the forensic aspects of strangulation,' Dr. Maxson gushed.
'It had me all choked up,' I said, then took a hit on the Grolsch.
Dr. Pamela Maxson's emerald eyes shot me a pitying look, then returned their full concentration to the bearded wizard. 'Your method for determining the time of death by assessing the degree of postmortem lividity in a hanging victim was quite helpful to homicide detectives.'
'Yep,' I offered, 'the cops were at the end of their rope.'
Charlie Riggs furrowed his brow, and the air seeped further out of my ego. That peculiar macho known to all men ached to haul out the trophies and merit badges, maybe tell her about the days before I wore a blue suit and wingtip shoes. Hey, lady, I once came off the bench to sack Terry Bradshaw on an all-out blitz in a playoff game. Now playing at outside linebacker, from Penn State, number fifty-eight, Jake Lassiter! Maybe Charlie would ask me how the knees were doing, and I could ease right into-
'Mr. Lassiter…Mr. Lassiter.'
The waiter was tapping me on the shoulder. Now what? In fancy places they sometimes toss me out. But tonight I was wearing socks and long pants, and neither was required at Tugboat Willie's.
'A policeman on the phone, Mr. Lassiter. Says it's urgent.'
I followed the waiter to an open alcove near the kitchen. The air was pungent with fish and garlic. From behind the swinging metal door, I heard the singsong of Creole mixed with the clatter of dishes. A black cat with yellow eyes was pawing through a garbage can, debating between grouper and dolphin for an entree.
'Detective Alejandro Rodriguez here,' said the unfamiliar voice on the phone. 'Hold for State Attorney Fox.'
Ah, the accouterments of power. Using a policeman-a detective no less-for a secretary. Probably calling to
