so they got pissed and cultivated a nice little bumper crop of tumors. I went through one course of chemo, asked the oncologist if there was a purpose to any of it and he was such a pussy, hemmed and hawed, that I got my answer. So I said, screw that noise, time to exit gracefully.”
She gasped. “Feels like I just ran the marathon. Not that I ever did that. Did anything healthy.” Laughter. “You’re a good shrink, I feel better already.” Inhalation.
“What can I do for you, Gretchen?”
“Meaning why if I’m going to be snotty am I bugging you? It’s not about me. It’s my kid. One of the first things I did when I got out of rehab was find a nice anonymous sperm donor. Don’t ask why, I don’t know why, it just seemed like the thing to do. Kind of easy, I didn’t even need to lie about how big his cock was. Anyway, the result was Chad. So now I’ve got a six-year-old male BFF and I’m going to fuck up his life by bailing and I don’t know”—gasp—“what to do about it. So I figured, why not you? So what do you do with a six-year-old? Play therapy? Cognitive behavioral therapy? For sure not existential therapy, I mean Chad’s big angst is not enough TV.”
Ragged laughter. “Been reading psych books, too.”
“I’d be happy to help. Before I see Chad, you and I need to talk.”
“Why?”
“For me to take a history.”
“I can give you that right now.”
“It needs to be in person.”
“Why?”
“It’s the way I work, Gretchen.”
“Into control, huh?”
“If it doesn’t work for you, I’ll be happy to—”
“It works, it works fine,” she said. “When do we do this history?”
“Are you healthy enough to come to my office?”
“Mobility’s a day-to-day thing. But don’t worry, if I cancel, I’ll still pay you, I know you guys are big on that.”
“If you’re not too far, I could come to you.”
“Like a house call?” she said. “You’re punking me.”
“Where do you live?”
“B.H. adjacent, got a nice little condo on Willaman off Burton.”
“Close enough. What’s a good time?”
“Anytime. It’s not like I’m flying to Paris.”
I checked my book. “How about tomorrow at eleven?”
“House call,” she said. “You’re really going to do that.”
“Unless you have a problem with it.”
“My only problem is I’m going to be shutting my eyes forever, and who knows if Hell really exists,” she said. “Hey, does this mean you’re going to charge me for drive time, the way lawyers do? Nice way to pump up the hourly.”
“The hourly will be the same.”
Silence.
“Sorry,” she said. “That was assholishly ungrateful. I’ve never had much of a filter and cancer’s no mood enhancer.”
“Tomorrow at eleven,” I said.
“Besides no filter, I’m also a control freak who wants everything buttoned up to the max. What is the hourly?”
I told her.
“Not bad,” she said. “Back in the day, I had girls giving blow jobs for more than that.”
I said, “Free enterprise is a many-splendored thing.”
She laughed. “Maybe you’re not as stiff as I thought. Maybe this could work.”
t seven thirty p.m., Milo, Robin, and I arrived at the Shenandoah Street apartment of artist-turned-cop Alexander Shimoff.
Shimoff’s flat was on the ground floor. He stood outside his door wearing gray sweats and drinking from a half-gallon bottle of ginger ale. Thirtyish, with a prematurely gray Caesar cut, he was built like a tennis player, had facial bones just a bit too large for the pale skin that cased them.
Milo made the introductions.
Shimoff smiled and shook with a slightly limp hand. No real accent to his speech but a slight stretching of syllables suggested birth in another country.
Standing in the living room were a young, rosy-cheeked platinum-blond wife and two little girls around four and six. The kids were curious but compliant as their mother hustled them to their room, talking in Russian. Shimoff’s easel, drawing table, and weathered oak flat file took up half of the meager space. Most of the rest was given over to games and toys. A big-screen Mac sat atop the file, along with brushes in pots and an array of pencils and pens. A nearly completed painting—dead-on replica of Picasso’s
Milo whistled appreciatively. “You could get into serious trouble for that.”
Shimoff’s grin was lopsided. “Only if I put it on eBay for ten bucks.” He turned to Robin. “I looked up your website. Beautiful instruments. Someone who can do that, my guess is they can draw pretty good.”
“Not good enough,” she said.
“Show me what you’ve produced.”
Robin handed him the sketches of Princess and Black Suit.
Shimoff studied them for several moments. “If the proportions are okay, this gives me plenty to work with. Describe them like you would to a stranger. Start with the guy because he’s the easy one; once we’re in the groove, we’ll work our way to her.”
Milo said, “Why’s he easier?”
“Because women are complex.” Shimoff climbed onto his stool, faced a blank piece of white Bristol board, flexed his neck as if preparing for a wrestling match. To Robin: “Even though we’re just doing the face, tell me how tall he is.”
Robin said, “Six one or two. Heavily built, but not fat.”
“Football, not sumo,” said Shimoff.
“Not a tackle. Maybe a halfback. Thirty to thirty-five years old, he could be of Nordic or Germanic extraction —”
“Could be or probably?”
She thought. “There could be some Celtic in there—Scottish or Irish. Or maybe Dutch. But if I had to bet, I’d say Nordic. Definitely nothing Mediterranean and that includes northern Italian.”
“You drew the hair light. We talking blond?”
“It was at night. What I saw was pale.”
Shimoff touched his own steely coif. “Plenty of good-looking silver dudes. But you’d bet on blond, right?”
“Right.”
“Eye color?”
“Couldn’t tell.”
“He’s blond, we’ll go with anonymous pale.” Scanning her sketch. “The eyes, you got them as kind of piggy.”
“They were piggy,” said Robin. “But wide-set, maybe even wider than I drew them. Squinty, which could’ve been him trying to look tough, or they really are squinty. One thing I remember now that I didn’t include is he had a heavy brow—a shelf right here. Low hairline, too. His hair didn’t stay down like yours, it stuck up.”
