noticed right away was how damned smart he was. Even as a baby.'
'Did he talk early?'
'You bet.'
'At what age?'
'Christ, that's a long way back.'
'Try to remember.'
'Let's see - it had to be under a year. Six months maybe. I remember one time I was home on semester break and Father and Peter were trying to change his diaper, and this little thing pipes up and says, 'No diaper.' And I mean clearly, no baby talk. It was bizarre hearing words come out of something that small. Father made some joke about 'give the midget a cigar', but I could tell he was upset by it.'
'What about Peter?'
'It bothered him, too. What does any of this have to do with the situation at hand?'
'I need to know as much about him as possible. In what other ways was he precocious?'
'Everything.'
'Can you give me some examples?'
He frowned impatiently.
'It's like he was moving at seventy-eight rpm when everyone else was going thirty-three and a third. By the time he was a year old he could go into a restaurant and
order a sandwich. We had a maid who spoke Dutch. All of a sudden he was talking Dutch. Fluently, just by listening to her. He taught himself to read when he was about three. This was around the time I took him in. I walked in one evening and saw him with a book, asked him if he wanted me to read it to him. He looked up and said, 'No, Uncle Dwight. I can read it myself.' I thought he was faking, so I said to him, 'Let me hear you.' Sure enough, the kid could read. Better than some of my employees. By the age of five he could pick up the daily paper and read it front to back.'
'Tell me about his schooling.'
'I was tied up full-time with the company, so I sent him to nursery school. He drove the teachers crazy. Probably because he was so much smarter than they were. They expected him to do what the other kids were doing and his attitude was basically 'You're stupid, screw you.' After I got married, my wife worked hard at finding him the right school. She looked around for a long time - visited lots of places, interviewed teachers, the works - until she came up with the right one. It was the best kindergarten in Hancock Park, full of good kids from good solid families. He mouthed off so much they kicked him out after two months.'
'For talking back?'
'For bucking the system. He wanted to read adult books - I don't mean porno. Faulkner, Steinbeck. They thought it would bend the other kids out of shape and you can see their point. A school's a system. Systems are based on structure. But too much slack in a system, and things fall apart. He needed to give in, but he wouldn't.
'When they tried to lay down the law, he gave them lip, pulled tantrums, kicked the teachers in the shins. I think he called one of them a Nazi or something. Anyway, they finally had enough and booted him out. You can imagine how my wife felt, after putting in all that work.'
'Where'd he go to school after that?'
'Nowhere. We kept him home until he was seven, with tutors. In one year he taught himself Latin, about five
years' worth of math, and the entire high school English curriculum. But my wife pointed out that socially he was still a baby. So we kept trying different schools. Even one in the Valley for gifted kids. He never could adjust. He always thought he was smarter than anyone else and refused to follow rules. I don't care what your IQ is, that kind of attitude won't get you anywhere.'
'So he never really had much conventional classroom education?'
'Not really, no. We would have liked to see him with normal kids, but it didn't work out.'
He tilted his head back and drained his glass.
'It was a curse.'
'What was?'
'Being too damned smart for his own good.'
I turned a page of my notepad. 'How old was he when you married?'
'We've been married thirteen years, so he was five.'
'How did he react to the marriage?'
'He was happy. We let him be the ring bearer at the wedding. Heather had plenty of little boy cousins who wanted to do it, but she insisted on Jamey, said he needed the special attention.'
'And he and Heather got along well from the beginning?'
'Sure. Why not? She's a great gal, terrific with kids. She's given him a hell of a lot more than lots of natural mothers. This thing is tearing her apart.'
'Did caring for such a difficult child place stresses on your marriage?'
He picked up the whisky glass and rolled it between his palms.
'Have you ever been married?'
'No.'
'It's a great institution, you should try it. But it takes work to keep it going. I used to race yachts in college, and it seems to me marriage is like a big boat. Put the time into maintaining it, and it's something to see. Get lax, and it goes to hell in a handbasket.'
'Did Jamey cause any additional maintenance problems?'
'No,' he said. 'Heather could handle him.'
'What kinds of things did she have to handle?'
He drummed his fingers on the table.
'I have to tell you, Doctor, this line of questioning is really starting to bother me.'
'In what way?'
'Your whole approach. Like the way you just said 'In what way?'' Prefab. Scripted. I feel like I'm on the couch being analysed. I don't see what my marriage has to do with getting him into a hospital instead of a jail.'
'You're not a patient, but you are an important source of information. And information's what I need to lay the foundation for my report. Just as you do when you build a building.'
'Yeah, but we don't dig our foundations one inch deeper than the geologists say we have to.'
'Unfortunately my field's not as precise as geology.'
'That's what bothers me about it.'
I closed my book.
'Perhaps this isn't the right time to talk, Mr. Cadmus.'
'There isn't going to be a better one. I just want to stay on the topic'
He folded his arms across his chest and stared out at a point over my shoulder. Behind the glasses his eyes were flat, as unyielding as armour plate.
'There's something you need to bear in mind,' I said evenly. 'A trial is a spectacle. The psychological equivalent of a public flogging. Once the lawyers get going, no area of Jamey's life or yours will be off-limits. Your mother's illness, the relationship between your parents, your brother's marriage and suicide, your marriage - everything will be fair game for journalists, spectators, the jury. If it's juicy enough, some author may even write a book about it. Compared to that, this interview's a piece of cake. If you can't handle it, you're in real trouble.'
He reddened, clenched his jaw, and his mouth began to twitch. I watched his shoulders stiffen, then slump.
Suddenly he looked helpless, a kid playing dress up in the executive suite.
When he spoke again, his voice was choked with rage.
'We put ourselves on the line for the little bastard. Year after year after year. And then he goes and does something like this.'
I got up and walked to the bar. For his drink he'd used Glenlivet, which suited me just fine. After pouring a couple of fingers for myself, I fixed him another scotch and soda and brought it to him.
Too numb to speak, he nodded thanks and took the glass. We drank in silence for several minutes.
