I hadn’t anticipated the question. I was going to say, “If I had a girl like you…” but I thought better of it. I didn’t want to tease her.
I’d been alone so long I didn’t know if I could handle another marriage. I was coming around to the point of view that women were creatures from another universe, someplace with a methane-based ecosystem. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t think I’m right for marriage. Too much of a lone wolf, I guess.”
There was disappointment in her gaze. “That’s a shame. A real catch like you.”
“Yeah. Catch of the day. Fresh from the bay to your table in one day-skinned, de-boned, and split wide open.”
CHAPTER XXIII
Rachel said Dr. Pasternak left New York every weekend, so I waited until late Friday night to make an unsolicited visit to review his files. It was a bitch climbing in the window with my bad arm. But at least there was a toehold to ease my way up to the ledge. And all the while I kept thinking this used to be a lot easier in Parris Island when I was a green youth, full of energy and innocent enthusiasm. Then I had the same flashback I always got of clawing my way up an incline in the Au Shau valley while we took enfilading fire, scrambling for a crevasse to squeeze into, shaking like a madman with palsy, dirt in my face, cursing Charlie, smelling acrid napalm from the treeline, half-deaf from incoming, wishing, just wishing we were home, warm and safe. Every time I climbed, that same godforsaken scene came back to me.
Once I got onto the ledge it was easy. I cut the glass, opened the latch and slid the window open. Inside the house I skirted the ancient motion detectors without any trouble. There was nothing of interest on the first floor. The house was so cold and spare and devoid of any sign of humanity that it looked like it had never been inhabited. The file cabinets weren’t in the consulting room on the second floor where Pasternak had started bawling like a little old lady, but after a quick search I located them in his private office. It was furnished in the same way as the rest of the house-sparse and uncomfortable. The desk was just a glass top with saw-horse chrome legs, and the chair was a couple of leather thongs on a metal frame. The decor was what you could call early masochist.
There were three metal file cabinets. The kind where the drawers swing out. I tried a few master keys before I found one that worked. Obviously he didn’t think anyone was interested in breaking into his files. They were locked for privacy-not security.
Alicia’s file wasn’t there. It wasn’t where it should have been alphabetically. I tried every possible combination for her name. There was plenty of time so I went through every patient’s file, but it was missing all right. In my search I came across Rachel’s file. Was I human? Sure, I was human. Were human beings curious? Does a fish swim? Does a bird fly?
Later, I said.
There was no other place in the office where Pasternak could have put Alicia’s file. There were no drawers in the desk.
I scanned the bookcases, but there were no files tucked away between the books. Everything was neat and clean and in its proper place. The books were even arranged by subject. The guy was evidently fastidious about cleanliness and order.
The file wasn’t in this room.
Pasternak could have removed it or the police could have subpoenaed it. I’d make a search of the house later but, for now, Rachel’s file kept calling me like a big slice of chocolate cake with a side of vanilla ice cream.
There were many pages of handwritten notes in a tiny tortured scrawl, densely packed, difficult to read. She must have been seeing him for some time. I didn’t understand most of the terms and the notes were in some kind of shorthand that probably only he could decipher. But I got the gist of the analysis.
What I read added a new twist to my perception of that delightful little creature. Laura had been speaking literally, not figuratively, when she referred to Rachel as a whore. She had been a dues-paying member of that noble profession for a few years. It wasn’t clear if she was actually practicing her calling when she started going for psychotherapy.
Anyway, that’s when Daddy’s trust fund kicked in. The notes showed that Rachel was thirty when she was able to have access to the money. She didn’t have to be a working girl anymore and she settled into retirement without a pension or a gold watch. But the profession had left scars on her psyche, and I guess on her body too.
Her condition, as she delicately put it, was obviously the result of her work. And Dr. Pasternak was trying to exorcise the twin demons of lust and greed. To open up those tightly grasping labia.
Jesus, what a story. Poetic, wasn’t it? She could do it when she didn’t enjoy it, had to do it to survive in a style she wanted to become accustomed to. She didn’t want to work in a normal job or couldn’t earn enough for that style, so she earned it the easy way-on her mattress. Now, when she wanted to enjoy the good old in-out, she couldn’t. Fate had decreed, now that she had all the money she wanted, no one could get into her.
It was a tough one to accept. I thought of those eyes.
I closed the file. I’d have to sort it out with her.
CHAPTER XXIV
The martini was dry and cold going down. I tossed it back and asked the barkeep for another one. Laura was still delicately sipping her first.
I hadn’t worn my tuxedo in a while and it was feeling a little snug. Either I’d have to let it out or pull myself in. I sucked up my gut. Did a daily diet of fermented barley, malt and hops over a couple of decades cause you to generate excess avoirdupois?
I took Laura by the arm and guided her through the French doors outside to the floodlit swimming pool.
“Where’s Mrs. Chisolm?” I asked her.
She shrugged and spread her hands. The night was cool and she shivered as she rubbed her bare arms to warm herself. She was wearing a little black cocktail dress that made her look like a refugee from one of those Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn movies.
“Have you been here before?”
“Yes,” she said. “That was when I met Chisolm for the first time. Alicia invited me to a cocktail party just like this one. I thought he was a dreamboat.”
I fought it, but there was still that hard edge of jealousy. I wanted her to be virginal, even though the horse had already bolted from the barn.
“Tell me about Mrs. Chisolm. What’s she like?”
“A perfect bitch,” she said with a perfect giggle. “All the men love her and all the women can’t stand her. She’s a gorgeous society lady whose family made oodles of money during the First World War selling some sort of inferior supplies to the army. At least, that’s what Chisolm told me in a weak moment.”
Two couples ambled out onto the patio. The men were talking to each other and the two women were following behind chattering, oblivious to their surroundings. The men’s heads were close together and it looked like they were involved in some kind of business negotiations. The band was playing a Cole Porter song inside the house and the sound drifted out to where we were standing.
We stepped back inside the house. I recalled the upstairs bedroom with the lavender sheets and the balance bar and wondered how many more workouts they’d been given. Justine had been standing near the entrance when Laura and I came in, and we exchanged a glance that was as old as civilization itself, maybe even older.
“Show me Chisolm’s wife,” I whispered into Laura’s ear. I didn’t have to whisper. The band was playing Begin the Beguine loud enough to drown out any casual conversation.
There were maybe a hundred people in the house, the men in tuxedos, the women in long dresses. Sleek, smooth, successful. The place was drowning in new money, freshly minted in the Nineties. These were the people who hadn’t given it back.
