Silent Partner

“Did Sharon know about the first film?”

“That I can’t tell you. As I said, I only met her once.”

“Linda who?” said Larry.

“Linda Lanier. She was an actress- or at least wanted to be. One of the pretty young things who flooded Hollywood after the war- still do, I guess. I believe she got a contract at one of the studios, but she never actually worked.”

“Wrong kind of talent?” said Larry.

“Who knows? She didn’t stick around long enough for anyone to find out. That particular studio was owned by Leland Belding. She ended up being one of his party girls.”

“The basket-case billionaire,” I said. “The Magna Corporation.”

“You’re both too young to remember,” said Gordon, “but he was quite a guy in his day, Renaissance man- aerospace, armaments, shipping, mining. And the movies. He invented a camera that they still use today. And a no-shimmy girdle based on aircraft design.”

I said, “By party girl, you mean hooker?”

“No, no, more like hostesses. He used to throw lots of parties. Owning the studio gave him easy access to beautiful girls and he hired them as hostesses. The bluenoses tried to make a thing of it, but they never could prove a thing.”

“What about the doctor?”

“He was a real doctor. The film was real, too- the verite is almost overwhelming, isn’t it? This is the original print, the only remaining one.”

“Where’d you get it?”

He shook his head. “Trade secret, Doctor. Suffice it to say I’ve had it for a long time and it cost me plenty. I could make copies and recoup all my original investment plus, but that would open the floodgates for multiple reproduction and dilute the historical value of the original, and I refuse to bend my principles.”

“What was the name of the doctor?”

“I don’t know.”

A lie. Fanatic and voyeur that he was, he wouldn’t have rested before gleaning every last detail about his treasure.

I said, “The film was part of a blackmail ploy, wasn’t it? The doctor was the victim.”

“Ridiculous.”

“What else, then? He didn’t know he was being filmed.”

“Hollywood practical joke,” he said. “Old Errol Flynn bored peepholes in the walls of his bathrooms, used a hidden camera to film his lady friends on the commode.”

“Tacky,” muttered Larry.

Gordon’s face darkened. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Dr. Daschoff. It was all in the spirit of fun.”

Larry said nothing

“Never mind,” said Gordon, walking to the door of the vault and holding it open. “I’m sure you gentlemen have to get back to your patients.”

He ushered us through the black room and to the elevator.

“What happened to Linda Lanier?” I asked.

“Who knows?” he said. Then he began to prattle about the relationship between cultural norms and erotica, and continued the lecture until we left his house.

17

“Never saw him like that,” said Larry, when we were back on the sidewalk.

“His belief system’s under assault,” I said. “He likes to think of his hobby as something benign, like stamp collecting. But you don’t use stamps to blackmail.”

He shook his head. “It was weird enough watching Sharon, but the second one was something else- really evil. That poor guy humping away, all the while he’s making his cinematic debut.”

Another shake of the head. “Blackmail. Shit, this is getting curiouser and curiouser, D. To make things worse I got a call this morning from an old fraternity brother. A guy Brenda and I both knew in college, also ended up a shrink- behavior therapist, had a huge practice out in Phoenix. Screwed his secretary, she gave him the clap; he passed it on to his wife and she kicked him out, started bad-mouthing him all around town, destroyed the practice. Couple of days ago he walks into the house, blows her brains out and then his own. Doesn’t say much for our profession, does it? Know how to take tests, write a dissertation, and you graduate. Send in your check, renew your license. No one checks for psychopathology.”

“Maybe the psychoanalysts have the right idea,” I said. “Making their candidates go through long-term analysis before being allowed to qualify.”

“Come on, D. Think of all the analysts you’ve met who are total weirdos. And all of us had our training therapies. Someone can be therapized up the ying-yang and still be a rotten human being. Who knows, maybe we’re suspect from the beginning. I just read this article, study of psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ family histories. A whole bunch of us had severely depressed mothers.”

“I read it too.”

“Sure fits me,” he said. “How about you?”

I nodded.

“You see, that’s it. As kids we had to take care of our mommies so we learned to be hyper- adult. Then, when we grow up we look for other depressives to take care of- that in itself isn’t bad, if we’ve worked through all our personal shit. But if we don’t… Nah, there ain’t no simple answer, D. Let the buyer goddam beware.”

I walked him to the station wagon. “Larry, could Sharon’s film have had anything to do with Kruse’s research?”

“Doubt it.”

“What about the University forms Gordon saw?”

“Bogus,” he said. “And illogical- even back then, no university would put itself out on a limb like that. Kruse showed him some piece of bullshit; Gordon believed it because he wanted to. Besides, Kruse never bothered to use any forms for anything- he and the department had a mutual apathy going. They took the bread he brought in, gave him a basement lab no one was using, didn’t want to know what he was up to. Compared to all the deception experiments the social psychologists were doing, his stuff seemed benign.” He stopped, looked troubled. “What the hell was he after, filming her like that?”

“Who knows? The only thing I can think of is some sort of radical therapy. Working through the sins of the mothers.”

He thought about that. “Yeah. Maybe. That kind of weirdness would be right up his alley: total control of the patient’s life, marathon sessions, regression hypnosis- break down the defenses. If in the process she found out that her mom was a bimbo, he’d have her vulnerable.”

“What if she found out because Kruse told her?” I said. “He had access to the Fontaines’ film vault, could have been looking through it and discovered Linda Lanier’s loop. Her resemblance to Sharon was striking- he put it together. Then he researched Lanier, learned some nasty details- maybe even about blackmail. Sharon told me some bogus story about rich, sophisticated parents. Looks like she was hiding from reality. Kruse could have shown her the film when she was under hypnosis, used it to break her down completely, put her completely under his control. Then he suggested a way she could work through the trauma by making a film of her own- cathartic role-playing.”

“Fucking bastard,” he said. Then: “She was a smart girl, D. How could she fall for it?”

“Smart, but screwed up- those borderline characteristics we talked about. And you yourself told me how persuasive Kruse was- he had radical libbers believing whipping his wife was something noble. Those were