“He’s been killing people, seemingly at random. He murdered a young man name of Brown in Manhattan and the parents want me to find out why.”
“This says that you’re from Newark,” Gorling said, tapping the card with the middle finger of his left hand.
“So are my clients,” I said. “But their son lived on the Upper West Side. He was trying to make it as an actor while working as a model. Was your man Willie Sanderson gay?”
“Why do you ask?”
“The son was making his living as an underwear model,” I said, sticking out my lower lip in a knowing way. “I thought maybe the murder could have been a sex thing.”
I find in my profession that it behooves one to appear ignorant, or, better yet, stupid, to the people you interrogate. It gives them a feeling of superiority, of having a mental leg up on you, so to speak.
“Have a seat, Mr. Trotter,” Gorling said. Then to the men in gray and white, “Wait for us outside.”
When the underlings had done his bidding, Gorling turned his throat to me.
“I have no idea what Mr. Sanderson’s sexual preferences are,” he said of his own volition.
I grimaced. “No? You see, these people hired me to find a reason for their son’s death. The cops don’t care because they got him on evidence. I thought maybe you guys up here would know something.”
Gorling had small hands. He raised them to indicate his helplessness.
“Willie was an employee, not a patient,” he lied.
“But the lady outside told me that he had been a patient before he got his job.”
“What lady?”
“The one with the pink parasol.”
I should have said “umbrella.” Better yet, I should have left the sheltering apparatus out completely. Using accurate language always puts people like Gorling on alert. I don’t even know if he realized it but his attitude toward me changed. His little face got rigid.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I had almost forgotten. That was so long ago, before my time.”
“What was his problem?”
“That’s a medical matter, Mr. Trotter. We are prohibited by law from giving out that kind of information.”
“You can’t even tell me if he was here because of the threat of violence?”
“I look at this institution less as a hospital and more like a university for the besotted and bemused,” he said with something like a smile. “The people here are learning their various lessons over and over, one step at a time. We coddle them and care for them, and never betray their trust.”
The alien hospital administrator blinked at me with smug satisfaction.
“So if I was to go to the Browns and tell them that their son was murdered by a man who had been put in here for manslaughter and then let out without the proper supervision, you wouldn’t open up your records like a dirty old man exposing himself to little kids on a crosstown bus?”
That pushed Gorling back into his chair.
“It’s not our responsibility to make a man take his medication,” he said.
“That, my friend, is for the lawyers to decide.”
This aggressive tactic was my second misstep. Gorling looked soft and corrupt but he had the reflexes and instincts of a club fighter. He wasn’t going to go down just because I showed him something. He was made from sterner stuff.
“Cedric!” he called out.
The two orderlies came immediately back into the room. They seemed ready to take physical action.
“I think it’s time that you leave these premises, Mr. Trotter,” Gorling said.
He stood up and, after a moment’s hesitation, I followed suit.
I didn’t like it but I had lost that particular bout. I had a few grains of knowledge, but without help I couldn’t make any sense of them.<?€ them.
GORLING AND HIS HENCHMEN walked me through the hall toward the front of the administration building. There were no patients and few employees there.
“You’ll find that threats don’t work on us out here, Mr. Trotter,” Gorling instructed as we went through the double doors out into the beautiful summer’s day. “This is a place where we help people. That given, we aren’t responsible for them after they leave our care.
“By the way, how did you get in here?”
“Told the guard that I was applyin’ for a job where I get to wear a gray T-shirt and cotton pants.”
“I’ll have to instruct him to keep a stack of application forms at the gate. Is your car in the lot next to the personnel building?”
“Sure is. Should I give one of your boys here my key so he can run and get it for me?”
I hated myself for underestimating Gorling. Sometimes being a New Yorker brought on a feeling of false superiority that made me slip up badly.
“That won’t be necessary,” Gorling said. “They will escort you to your car.”
I took a step down to the path, turned, and held out a hand like a good sport. Gorling didn’t want to touch me but that didn’t matter. When I looked up into his Adam’s apple I saw the dedication chiseled into the wall over the door: BRYANT HULL HALL.
E€„
36
On the way to the car my lighter-skinned brother put his hand on my shoulder. I stopped walking and he took a step to the side.
“Keep on movin’,” his partner commanded.
“Let’s get this straight, friends,” I said. “I’m leavin’ just like you want me to. But you don’t put your hands on me, understand? If you want me arrested, then call the cops. If you wanna throw down we can do it here and now. I might not beat the both of you but I swear that you’ll feel it for months.”
Maybe I sounded a little crazy, but this was damage control. I didn’t want them to get pushy with me, forcing a fight. Because I would have fought them, but what I really wanted was to make a beeline for the person who could help me decipher the clue.
SHE WAS A septuagenarian named Poppy Pollis who had once been the head of the whole library system but who now volunteered her time going through rare volumes and collections that were inherited from or donated by wealthy patrons.
I didn’t know Poppy’s name when I drove away from the sanatorium but a quick call to the information line of the local public library was all I needed. I identified myself, with the deft elocution of¦€… a university professor, as Jonah Rhinehart of Manhattan, explaining that I needed to speak with someone who had worked for many years in the system and who knew its history. The helpful librarian I spoke with said that there were three such individuals, though my best chance was with Ms. Pollis, who was working at the main branch on Washington Avenue.
Librarians are wonderful people, partly because they are, on the whole, unaware of how dangerous knowledge is. Karl Marx upended the political landscape of the twentieth century sitting at a library table. Still, modern librarians are more afraid of ignorance than they are of the potential devastation that knowledge can bring.
I went to the information desk on the first floor of the downtown branch and came upon a young black man wearing big round-lensed glasses and reading a small blue-gray book entitled
“Good book?” I asked.
“Very good,” the young man replied, nodding sagely. “Very good.”
“I’m looking for Poppy Pollis,” I said, now that the quality of the philosophical monograph had been decided.
“Third floor,” he said.
I thanked him and went to look for the stairs.
POPPY WAS SEATED at a huge table piled high with musty old books. She was thin, probably tall, sporting short silvery hair and wearing a blue sweater that was buttoned to the throat. The air-conditioning was up too high.
“Are you Ms. Pollis?” I asked.
“Yes I am, young man.”
“Hi,” I said, taking the seat across from her. “My name is Peter Lomax. I’m a graduate student from New York and I’m doing a project, a master’s thesis at Brooklyn College on philanthropy.”
“How very interesting.” She didn’t question the fact that I was rather long in the tooth to be a graduate student. In 2008 the baby boomers, both black and white,
