I shut the door behind him.
Rachel was sleeping when I called her. She was also on something because I couldn’t get her to form coherent sentences. She kept muttering something like, “My shrink is dead. He left me behind. He left me all alone…”
“Listen,” I said finally. “I’m coming over. Tell the doorman to let me up and leave your front door open. You got that?”
I had to repeat it three times before she gave me an acknowledgment.
I was at her building inside of fifteen minutes. The doorman nodded when I told him my name and sent me up the elevator with a small wave of his hand.
Her front door was half open. I shoved it the rest of the way and walked in. The place looked like Hue after the Tet offensive. Clothing was all over the floor and the place looked like an unholy mess. I walked back down the long hallway to what I assumed was her bedroom. The door was closed.
I opened it slowly and saw Rachel’s form on the bed in the dim light from the hallway. Her nightgown was way up around her chest. She wasn’t wearing anything else. One arm was flung up on the pillow and the other hung over the side. The shaft of light behind me slanted across her face.
She didn’t move. The only way I could tell she was alive was the slow rise and fall of her belly.
Then she opened one eye and smiled. “Hello, long-lost stranger,” she whispered.
“What happened to Pasternak?”
She shook her head in slow motion from side to side. As she did it, her face disappeared into darkness and then came back into the light. It was like watching an old time silhouette lantern show.
“I don’t know,” she moaned. Then she said it again.
“You said he was dead.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?”
“How did he die?”
“He’s dead, you know, and he left me stranded without a shrink.”
I could think of worse things. Like running out of cold beer on a hot summer day. I stepped over to the bed and shook her shoulders. “What the hell did you take?” There was no smell of alcohol on her breath.
She didn’t answer. I slapped her a couple of times.
She blinked and tried to sit up but she didn’t make it. Then she mumbled something I couldn’t understand. I sat on the edge of the bed and propped her up against the headboard. Her nightgown fell to her waist.
“What did you take?”
She opened her eyes and gave me a glassy stare. “Some pills…I think…”
“What kind?”
She tried to think, then gave up and shook her head. “Just some pills…” She giggled. “Am I a bad girl?”
“No, you’re wonderful. You’re a great girl.”
She put her hand up and touched my cheek. “You’re a dear. You’re tough and you’re sweet.”
“How did Pasternak die?”
She gave me that glassy look again. Her thoughts were struggling to come back from that place where they’d gone. I ran my hand through her straggly hair.
“Talk to me, baby. Tell me what happened to him.”
With a visible effort, she managed to break through. “He killed himself. He’s dead. And now like I don’t have a shrink.”
I tried to comfort her. I held her in my arms as she rocked back and forth. “Don’t worry. It’s all right. You’ll find another shrink.”
Then, without warning, she burst out laughing. “Yes, but what about tonight?” She laughed so hard, tears started down her cheeks. She was laughing and crying at the same time and she kept on like that for a couple of minutes. Then she calmed down. She took some deep breaths.
“My little doc is gone,” she said in the sing-song voice of a little girl. “My little doc is gone.” I cradled her as her breathing became deeper and deeper. My eyes had become accustomed to the dark and I could make out the prescription vial on the night stand and the glass of water next to it.
Then she started to surface. She looked up at me and whispered, “I want to swallow you and I want to swallow your juice.” She reached down and started to caress my crotch.
“You’re in no condition to swallow anything,” I said.
She stopped moving her hand but left it where it was.
“How did he die?” I said.
She was back now. She would be all right. “How does a shrink die? He overdosed on pills. A lot of pills. He left a note, you know, saying it was because he loved her.”
“Who?”
Her smile was nasty. “You’re the detective. Let’s play a guessing game.”
“Alicia?”
“Give the man in the balcony a silver dollar, my daddy used to say.”
That threw me for a loop. “Why the hell…”
She interrupted me. “You’re a big boy. You’ve heard of transference.”
“Yeah, but transference works the other way.”
Her grin became even nastier. “Usually it does. But in this case…” She left the sentence unfinished.
I rubbed the stubble on my jaw and tried to put the pieces together. A heartsick shrink checked out with an OD. And I had a broad in my arms with a bad case of psychoanalytic withdrawal. All this wasn’t making my job any easier.
All of a sudden I felt really tired. Too tired to make it back to my place. The way you feel when you know your reserve tank is empty and the nearest gas station is over the county line.
I pulled off my tuxedo jacket with some difficulty, favoring my bad arm. Then I loosened my tie and kicked off my shoes.
“Shove over, buttercup,” I said. “I’m going to sleep.”
“Well, thank you very much, Mr. Politeness,” was the last thing I heard before my head hit the rack.
CHAPTER XXVI
The next morning at ten, I ducked into Stalling’s office and slammed the door shut behind me. He was surprised to see me. I was surprised by the fact that I was lucky enough to stop by while his secretary was down the hall at the coffee wagon discussing the latest Serbo-Croatian foreign policy initiative.
As he looked up from the research report he was reading, I could see that flash of fear in his eyes. So he remembered our last cordial encounter and the cold feel of a hard polymer gun against his cheek.
He reached for the phone on a little table next to him.
“Don’t do it,” I said.
He pulled his hand back.
“Why did you fire Alicia?” I walked behind where he was sitting on a sofa next to a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the harbor and the Statue of Liberty.
Stallings had one of those modern offices that had dispensed with the desk, that archaic symbol of work. He was slouched down on an overstuffed leather couch with a pile of reports on the floor next to his highly-polished shoes. He’d shrugged off his Brooks Brothers suspenders with the little ducks and was sipping herb tea from a china cup. He was wearing the kind of shirt with a white collar and blue body, French cuffs and little gold button cuff links. His slicked-back hair was so shiny the ceiling light reflected off it.
Just as I stepped next to him, he made a sudden jerky movement and dropped his teacup onto the rug. It didn’t break, but the tea slowly spread out in a darkening stain on what was probably a very expensive oriental.
He stood and turned around to look at me. The expression on his face was a strange mixture of fright and annoyance.
