She pouts. 'I'll have to consider whether I like that.'
I kiss her to let her know I never thought of her as a machine. Then, changing the subject, I remind her of what she said about Barbara being too stylish a woman to enjoy spending time at the seedy Flamingo.
'I thought it was too tacky for more than a couple of nights,' she says, 'There must have been something else made her want to keep going there.'
'Something dangerous, you said. Well, try this. The woman drove a Jag, a fairly flashy car. She and Jessup arrived separately. She parked her Jag in the motel lot. Not exactly secretive behavior.'
Pam, alert, props her head up on her elbow. 'Not at all,' she says. 'And that's interesting.'
'Now try this: She met Tom Jessup the same day she engaged my father as her analyst. In the paper he was writing about her case-'
'He wrote about her?'
'Just a draft. In it-'
'David, you didn't tell me!'
'I'm telling you now. In his paper, Dad calls Jessup “my double’ and “my love-proxy.’ He found it significant they both had the same first name. He had some suspicions she might be fantasizing the affair, so he followed her out to the motel.'
'Your father stalked her!'
'He was very attracted to her. This old shrink, Dr. Mendoza, Dad's mentor – I met with him this afternoon – he thinks they may have had sex. He's not sure, but one thing that's certain in Barbara masturbated in Dad's office right on his analytic couch. He mentions it in his paper. In fact, that's where the paper breaks off.'
'Jerked off in front of him! I think that's the kinkiest thing I've ever heard!'
'Suppose they did have sex – but not in his office? Suppose she lured him out to the Flamingo, the same room where she and Jessup shacked up? How's that for ‘dangerous’?'
'Oh, that's dangerous, David! Creepy, too. So you're saying there was a second love triangle – between Barbara, Jessup, and your dad?'
'Maybe.'
She winces. 'That means your father could have… you know. Do you think it's possible?'
I tell her about my sketching session with Kate Evans and the drawing that came out of it, also how closely I resemble Dad and the phenomena of eyewitness transference and screen memories.
'There're pros and cons,' I tell her. 'The biggest con being I knew the man. He was totally nonviolent. He never raised his hand to me, rarely raised his voice. Not the type to commit a premeditated murder. Still, I'd have to put him on my list.'
'Who else is on it?'
'Cody, of course. He stays suspect Number One. Andrew Fulraine's up there, too. Both had motives and both could've paid a hitman to do the job. There's also Jurgen, who could've acted as Cody's henchman or done it on his own. He refuses to talk about it even to this day, which I find odd. Then there's Max Rakoubian, the ‘bust-in’ guy. He'd been known to bust into love nests with his camera, so why not, if he were obsessed enough, bust into this love nest with a gun? Then there's the woman Tom Jessup befriended, the one Hilda Tucker told me about who lived next door in his rooming house. Suppose she was a stalker? She found out he'd been lying to her, not only that he wasn't gay but was having a secret affair with a haughty socialite. If she was nutty enough, she might have killed them, dressed up in a man's raincoat and fedora. So she's a possible though not a likely. Even, I hate to say it, less of a likely than Dad.'
'How will you narrow the list?'
'Talk to more people, reinterview a few. There're still lots of loose ends. If Dad had something to do with the Flamingo, I have to know. If he didn't, I need to know that, too.'
She nods. 'This is why you're doing all this. this is why you've come home. Now I understand.'
Pam, up at dawn, asks if I'd like to accompany her to the penthouse gym. Feeling lazy, I decline. After she leaves, I go back down to my room, shower, then finish the drawing I was working on when Deval interrupted me at the bar. It's a moody sketch full of long late-afternoon shadows, with Dad nearly lost in the dark interior of his car and, in the background, the half-closed blinds of room 201 reflecting back brilliant light.
As I work on Dad's features, seeking an appropriate expression, I darken his face more and more. What was he feeling that day? Anger? Bafflement? Frustrated lust? Or did a look of cunning enter his eyes and turn the corner of his upper lip?
Unable to decide, I finally render him in silhouette, then finish up with some detail work on his car, a dark blue Volvo, so appropriate for a shrink, so sensible and well-engineered yet so unrevealing of its owner, an analyst's classic ‘empty vessel’ beckoning his analysands to fill as their transference fantasies would permit.
The Foster trial won't begin for another hour, giving me time to draw the scene in Dad's office, the one described at the end of his truncated paper: Barbara on the couch, one hand thrust beneath her skirt, mouth twisted as she spills out her fantasies, while Dad sits listening with weary patience behind.
Except, of course, that I only have his word as to how he listened to her.
I try another version, this time depicting Barbara with her skirt raised to her waist, labia visible as she manipulates herself with her hand. In this sketch, her expression's lascivious, the Great Seductress at work. And Dad: I draw him as a poor schmuck seducee tormented by her ravings.
These images, each contradicting the other, fill me with despair. Better, I think, to concentrate on setting the scene, rendering Dad's office as best I can recall it – his oriental carpet, reproduction English desk, china vase lamp, dark-stained shelves groaning beneath psychiatric texts, quartet of diplomas clustered in a neat rectangle on the wall. I even work in the collection of primitive masks he displayed opposite his recliner, to which his analysands, in search of self-knowledge, could conveniently free-associate.
The room phone rings. It's Pam asking if I'd like to walk over to the courthouse.
'I'm in the elevator. I'll pick you up,' she says.
A few moments later, she knocks on my door. I open it, prepared to slip out, but then she asks if she can come inside.
'Just for a minute,' she says. 'I haven't been in here since the day I bribed the maid.'
She goes straight to the wall where I've posted my Flamingo drawings.
'David, these are wild!'
I show her the sketches I made this morning. Her first reaction is amazement that I've mounted my head on Dad's body.
I show her the photo of him taped to my bureau mirror beside my Kate Evans eyewitness sketch.
'Yeah, you're definitely spitting images of one another.' She turns to me. 'These drawings, David – they're so bleak and full of shadows. That's how you see all this, isn't it?'
'Well, it's a pretty dark story, don't you think?'
Outside the hotel, it's blistering hot. The short walk to the courthouse raises a gloss of sweat upon our brows.
'The honchos who flew in yesterday want to pull me out.' Although Pam speaks with studied carelessness, I pick up on her stress.
'Why? You're doing a great job. According to Harriet, you're blowing us away.'
'Your drawings are stronger than Wash's.'
'Big deal! That evens things out.'
'It's not that they don't like my reporting, David. They like it too much. They think I'm wasted here. They want to try me in an anchor position. I've got mixed feelings about that.'
'You'd make a great anchor,' I tell her. 'Probably triple your income, too.'
'Double's more like it. But that'll mean moving back to New York. And I love reporting. I'm not ready yet to give it up.' She stops on the corner. 'I told them I'd have to think it over. They didn't look happy. They're not used
