I felt-I felt like I couldn't get away.'
Gold nodded. 'I don't know what it's like. I've never had to go into a prison.'
'Keep it that way.'
'Yes, please God… What sort of a man is he?'
'Small.'
'You know what I mean.'
'But you don't. Listen, Gold, don't ask me to appraise anybody in prison. They play a role the whole time they're there, all of them, every single one. They don't dare to let their guard down or let the mask slip for a second. One wrong word, one sideways glance, and someone will see it, because believe me, everyone is watching. Everywhere.
There's nothing but eyes, all around you. You know how vultures work?
They don't come down to see a healthy animal walking along-they don't waste their energy. If you're crossing a desert, it doesn't matter if you're actually dying-if you can act like a healthy human, they won't come near you. But if you limp or stumble or wilt, they'll see it from miles away. The important thing in prison is to be what they expect you to be. You'll find your role in the first week, and you'd better play it to the hilt or you're a goner. So don't expect to get a true picture of any con. He's playing a part.'
Gold was silent for a moment. Not for the first time he wondered about his wisdom in electing to work with men with whom he had little affinity, who labored under dangers with which he was unfamiliar. Every one of them knew more about peril and fear and overcoming anxiety than he would ever know, no matter how long he listened to them. And Becker, of course, for all the time they had spent together, knew demons and devils and shades of hell that Gold was grateful he had never even dreamed of. And yet, even though they seemed to have nothing in common, Gold felt an affection for Becker that transcended the doctor/patient relationship. He thought Becker liked him, too.
'Did it come back to you at the interview, John?'
'Did what come back?'
'The… feeling you get sometimes. What we've worked on.'
'Is that what we've been working on, Gold? That oldtime feeling?'
'It did, didn't it? You wanted to hurt him, didn't you?
Isn't that what upset you? Isn't that what the shower was about-he brought back that feeling? Or rather, the prison did, the circumstances, the claustrophobia…'
'Wrong on two counts, but otherwise, dead-on.'
'Which two?'
'One, the interview, the claustrophobia, whatever it was-it didn't bring the feeling back, because the feeling was never really gone, is never really gone. You should attend more twelve-step programs, Gold. You'd realize that old habits don't go away, they just get under control.'
'And?'
'Wrong on count two. I didn't have the feeling that I wanted to hurt him … I had the feeling that I wanted to kill him… But you knew that, didn't you?'
'Yes, I knew,' said Gold.
Becker twisted a corner of his mouth ironically. 'So nice to be understood,' he said.
Karen wrapped herself in silence for half the flight to New York, burying her face in files and typing memos on her laptop computer.
Becker was grateful for the interlude of peace. He knew that in time he would have to account for his stop in the motel with Pegeen. Karen was not suspicious, nor had he ever given her cause to be, but trust beyond a certain point veered toward indifference, and he knew that Karen was not indifferent to him. She had based her career on a mastery of details, and she would want to know all the particulars of his motel visit when she got around to asking.
Becker pretended to sleep and then slept. Karen woke him as they approached New York.
'You'll be pleased to know that Hatcher has taken you off the case.'
'Oh?'
'That's what you wanted, isn't it? That's why you behaved that way with Swann.'
'What way?'
'Hitting him.'
'I didn't hit him.'
'He says you did. He requested medical treatment after you left.'
'The little shit.'
'No doubt. But he is also considering a lawsuit. I don't think he'll go,through with it-Hatcher will mollify him one way or another.'
'Why is he so involved, Karen? What does Hatcher want with this case?
It can't do him any particular good, can it? He's operating on too lofty a scale to benefit from the capture of one man.'
'If you're a black hole of ambition like Hatcher, ultimately you suck in everything to your benefit, but in this case it wasn't very hard. One of those two girls who was found in the coal mine-her uncle was Quincy Beggs.'
'Never heard of him.'
'No one else had when his niece disappeared-what, ten years ago? As a result, he ran on a fiercely aggressive law-and-order platform and got elected as a congressman from West Virginia.'
'I've still never heard of him.'
'But Hatcher has. Now four-term Congressman Beggs is on the Oversight Committee, the congressional committee that deals with our budget and, not indirectly, some of our top-level promotions. You have heard of that onehaven't you?'
'So Hatcher has a chance to deliver to Beggs the man who killed his niece. No wonder he's so involved.'
'Just thought you'd be pleased to know you're off the hook,' Karen said.
'And you're still on it.'
Karen shrugged.
'I really am sorry,' he said.
'I'll manage.'
'I'm sorry you have to.'
Karen returned her attention to the computer. Becker put his hand on her arm. 'It really was just a shower…
'I believe that. I do.'
'Good… Nothing went on at all. She's just an agent.'
Karen smiled patiently. 'The sorry thing is, you probably believe that, too… Men..
'What does that mean?'
'Something 'went on' with her whether you noticed it or not. I saw the way she looked at you. And she knows I saw it.'
'There wasn't anything special in the way she looked at me or the way I looked at her or the way Hatcher looked at you or any combination thereof,' Becker said.
Karen shook her head patronizingly. 'John, you're a very sweet man in your special way, but you don't understand women at all.'
'I was there, Karen. Nothing happened, nothing was said, nothing was intimated. I did nothing to lead her on, she did nothing to lead me on.
I bent over backwards to treat her like another agent. I wouldn't have made a man sit in the car-'
'You really don't get it, do you?':'There's nothing to get.' 'You didn't take a shower because you have a fetish for cleanliness. You took a shower because you felt deeply soiled by your encounter with Swann, isn't that right?':'Yes.' 'And you let her see that about you. You showed her how vulnerable you are underneath the super agent exterior. Don't you realize how attractive that is, John? If you share your vulnerabilities with a woman, that is intimacy. To her, you had a very intimate moment together. Not because she was in the next room when you took a shower, but because you allowed her to know you needed it in the first place.'
'It doesn't really work that way, does it?' Becker asked.
