Deadline (4 page)

I remembered now that a call had come in last night when I'd been on the deck with Sondra, but I'd forgotten to check. I pressed the
Playback
button.

A woman's voice, slightly clipped: ‘Jerry, this is Emily Ford. I'd like to see you ASAP. Call me.' End of message. Short and blunt, typical of Emily.

‘Who was that?'

I hadn't heard Sondra come into the office. ‘Emily Ford,' I said.

Sondra frowned. ‘Ah. And what did Her Highness want?'

‘To see me.'

‘I wonder why,' Sondra said. ‘Could she be sick, do you think?'

‘Am I hearing a hopeful little sound in that question?'

Sondra shook her head. ‘She drained you last time, Jerry. She drank your goddam blood. Let her find somebody else if she thinks she needs psychiatric counseling.'

‘She didn't say she needed anything,' I answered.

‘She's always got an angle, Jerry. She's always looking for something. Refer her to Jack Carr or Phil Katz or somebody if she wants help. I don't think you ought to go near her.'

‘I'll call her,' I said.

‘Your problem is you're too good-mannered,' Sondra said. ‘And too good-natured.'

She looked thoughtful and distant for a moment, as if she'd slumped inside some kind of mental trough. Then she obviously turned aside whatever she'd been thinking, and smiled brightly. She kissed me on the mouth.

‘Gotta go,' she said.

‘Drive carefully. And don't overdo things. Remember that.'

‘Am I destined to hear the concerned father-to-be's nagging voice for the next six and a half months?'

‘You can't escape it,' I said.

I heard her leave the house, then the sound of her car starting up in the garage directly below my office. She drove a gray Lexus. I heard it go down the street, then its sound was lost in the great vibrating drone of the city. I went into the kitchen, dumped what remained of my coffee, cold now, in the sink.

Propped against a crystal salt-cellar on the table was a note Sondra had written for Consuela, the stout middle-aged Nicaraguan woman who came three times a week to clean, and whose presence always caused me a mild sense of guilt. I adored Consuela, her good spirits and her helpfulness, the cheerful sound of her singing in the house, her colorful skirts and blouses and turbans; but I couldn't help remembering how all the cleaning-up in my parents' home in Buffalo had been done by my mother – with some infrequent help from my father, a big, slow-moving man whose main joy in life was his work for the railroad company. No Nicaraguan woman had ever picked up after me then, or washed the dishes, or done the laundry; my mother, an immigrant from Galway, would have hated the idea of another woman working inside the house, fussing around her territory.

An element of this blue-collar upbringing adhered to me still, despite the big income and the expensive home and the two cars and the psychiatric practice that included a couple of Hollywood players among its clientele.

I looked at the note Sondra had written.

C, please clean up kitchen and dining-room and polish the floors in Jerry's office. Sondra

Being on first-name terms with the hired help struck me as a very Californian conceit, an attempt to infuse a situation of inequality with an illusion of parity. We meet as equals. You're poor and maybe your green card status is suspect, but you need the work, no matter how menial, so we'll be friends anyway.

The situation was natural to Sondra, born and raised in this state, a former sun-worshipper and surfer and doper, a child of sand and tide; she didn't understand my twinges of guilt. Once, when I'd brought up the subject of Consuela and what I felt, Sondra had dismissed it with the argument that we weren't exploiting the woman – quite the opposite, buster, we were helping her by giving her a job that paid well. She'd recently been widowed: her husband, a mix of Pole and Mexican named Miguel Poliakoff, had died of heart failure the day after Thanksgiving last year. So Consuela
needed
this job. Badly.

I remembered Buffalo's sub-zero wintry mornings and my father hurriedly drinking his coffee as my mother filled his lunch-box with sandwiches, and how Dad had driven his rheumatic 1959 Olds to the railroad yards six days a week. I'd escaped that world. I'd traveled a long way from the icy wastelands.

But they were still with me and always would be, because for some reason – perhaps a sense of being grounded in a history that wasn't dominated by sand and sunshine and superficiality – I wanted it that way.

9.34 a.m.

I listened absent-mindedly to a call-in radio show while I drove to my office on Wilshire.
Yackety-yack.
It killed time and I imagined it kept me abreast of the issues that troubled the average citizen, although I was leaning towards the gloomy realization that most people merely liked whining on the phone; topics were irrelevant. We'd become a nation of people in love with our own voices. Extremists called talk-jocks to bellow their views.
Crack-smokers? Throw the switch on 'em if they use that crap. Dopers only weaken the gene-pool, so fry 'em.

There was madness and alienation at the heart of things, and the splinters were deepening by the day. Four-year-olds shot their little buddies with pistols they'd found in Daddy's bedside drawer and didn't understand that it was
real
blood on the rug, not just Hollywood fake. Grade-school kids were forced through metal-detectors before they were allowed to enter school because too many carried guns and knives. Teachers were blown away for giving bad grades.

We're bringing a child into this menagerie
, I thought.
This freakshow.
Was it foolhardy, an act of vanity? I didn't want to think so. I had a sudden urge to call Sondra, to hear her voice. To know that some things were constant. I punched the number of her cellphone into my unit; it rang unanswered. I looked at the car clock. She was probably in her office. I tried that number. Sondra's assistant, a skinny kid called Martina, fresh out of a trust-fund liberal arts college, answered.

‘Sondra Lomax's office.'

‘Martina, this is Jerry Lomax.'

‘Oh, hey, hi, Dr Lomax,' she said. She always sounded flustered and breathless.

‘Is Sondra in?'

‘Not yet. Can I get her to call you?'

‘It's not important,' I said. ‘I'll try later.'

‘OK.'

‘Bye.' I pushed the
Stop
button on my phone. I wondered where Sondra was – maybe walking from car to office at that very moment. Standing in an elevator. Stuck in traffic if there was serious gridlock or an accident.

I reached my office building, parked, got out of the car. I looked around, checking the place where just over twelve hours ago I'd been attacked. How different it seemed in bright daylight. The tall lamps were unlit and everything had a patina of the ordinary spread across it: you could never imagine being assaulted here. I remembered the blow I'd received, the glint of the knife, the guy's unexpected scent.

From the corner of my eye I was aware of somebody moving towards me, and I turned. She was dressed in a dark-gray pants suit. She looked businesslike, brisk, curt. Her black hair, lightened here and there by thin streaks of gray, was severe, uncompromising, but feminine. It hung against the sides of her lean face, in which the nose was prominent. In cartoon caricatures, the nose was exaggerated, dominating the entire face. Sometimes political cartoonists drew her as a raven, with a wickedly curved beak and black feathers. I found her attractive in her own austere way. I wondered briefly if Sondra's dislike of her was grounded in some simple but unfounded jealousy.

She moved with her characteristic long stride, always in a hurry, always a lot of ground to cover, no time to spare. She generated the impression of somebody you wouldn't want to argue with, because she'd always outsmart you. And if you were stubborn enough to go on disagreeing with her, she'd find a way of crushing you underfoot. Nobody stood in Emily's chosen path. Not for long. I liked her, I didn't like her, I wasn't sure. I couldn't get my feelings for her straight. I thought there was a softness at the heart of her, but she drew a fireproof curtain across it. And then sometimes I wasn't sure she had any tenderness inside her, unless it was pragmatic for her to pretend she did. She'd contributed hostility and co-operation in equal measure to our therapist–patient relationship.

‘Congratulations,' I said. ‘I was watching you on TV just last night.'

‘You've been keeping up with news, Jerry. How unlike you.' She had a clipped, declarative way of speaking, giving a kind of gravitas to the most simple statements. It was easy to imagine people being overawed by her, frightened even. ‘Your congratulations are a little premature, though.'

I looked at my watch. I was already late for my first appointment. ‘You want to see me, call me later. We'll set something up.'

‘I don't have time for laters, Jerry. I need five minutes now. I mean right now.'

‘You never stop trying to dominate, do you?'

‘It's in my nature. You ought to remember that, doc, of all people.'

‘Five minutes,' I said. I walked towards the entrance of the building. No matter how quickly I moved, she kept up with me without any apparent effort. She was only a few months younger than me, but far fitter. She was all muscle, no trace of excess fat. She played tennis in a bloodthirsty way: take no prisoners. As LA County DA, she'd terrorized a staff of around one thousand deputies and two hundred investigators and more than two thousand support personnel. Her work was everything. She made a habit of staying in her office until eleven, midnight sometimes. She had nobody to go home to. Nor did she seem to need anyone.

I pushed the glass door open and entered the reception area. The man behind the front desk was called Grogue, and he had a slight speech-impediment. He guarded his territory like a pit-bull. When he saw me, he cleared his throat and said, ‘Morning, Doctor Romax.'

The building housed a number of offices. Two other psychiatrists operated out of this place; also a periodontist, a dental hygienist, an acupuncturist, a GP, a dermatologist, and – fittingly – a health insurance company called Standfast Inc.

Emily said, ‘Health Central. I always had the feeling when I used to come here that you should post a notice. Big and bold.
This building has no germs.
'

I smiled, walked past the reception desk. If Grogue recognized Emily Ford he gave no indication. But he was used to the occasional celebrity.

‘I don't want to come up to your office,' she said. My suite was on the seventh floor. ‘I'm pushed for time.'

I stopped by the elevator. She clutched the sleeve of my jacket and drew me to one side. ‘They'll ask questions,' she said.

‘Of course they will.'

‘Before the nomination becomes official, they'll assemble a dossier.'
The nomination.
She uttered the word as if it were a delicacy in her mouth. She wanted to be AG. She wanted the approval of her peers and power like she'd never had before. But if she was nominated, her appointment would have to be ratified by the Senate – and now I knew why she'd called last night, why she wanted to see me.

‘You are not now and never have been a member of the Communist Party,' I said.

‘I don't have time for droll, Jerry. They'll dig, they'll find I was once a patient of yours.'

‘They probably know all that already. They're usually ahead of the game.'

‘Maybe. They've been going through my life with a fine-tooth comb. I've got a couple of suits coming down from DC this afternoon who want to “clarify” a few things. Whatever that means. The question is –'

‘I know what the question is, Emily. Here's my answer. Confidentiality. I can't tell them why you came to see me. You know that. They know that.'
I could never tell them
, I thought. And the thought was like a lead portcullis slamming shut in my head.

‘Some people are against me, Jerry.'

Understatement
, I thought. ‘You don't have the happy knack of making friends easily,' I said.

‘A bossy bitch like me is better at making enemies,' she said. ‘Some people don't want me to have this post. They all have a gripe.
She's too rigid. Inflexible. She's a fascist.
You know how I affect the bleeding-hearts. I also have the same effect on certain right-wing sorts who say I don't go far enough, and certain scary elements of the criminal community who say I do.'

‘I once heard you called Madame Guillotine,' I said.

‘Really? I thought I'd advocated firing-squads. My memory must be slipping.'

‘Politics is the art of not pleasing everybody but seeming to,' I said.

‘Ho ho, Jerry. The question is, when push comes to shove –'

‘I stand firm.'

‘Bold words, dearheart.'

‘Our sessions were confidential. I have a duty to protect a patient.'

‘Sometimes there are exceptions,' she said.

‘If you were a serial rapist or killer. If you were likely to do violence in the community. You don't fit. Sure, there are exceptions, but even those are muddy.'

She looked weary suddenly. She was forty-two years of age and projected a patina of youthfulness much of the time. She took care of herself. She ate sensibly. She didn't drink. She didn't take drugs. She slept well. She brushed her teeth and flossed. She was Ms Terrific, Tough on Crime. But for a second she seemed to let all this slip. Under the fluorescent strips of lighting, she looked grey and shopworn. She had a slight puffiness beneath her eyes.

‘Are you sleeping?' I asked.

‘Four, five hours a night. My metabolism freaks if I sleep six. All kinds of beeping sounds go off in my brain.'

‘You just seem … tense.'

‘It's a trying time, doc. It doesn't look terrific if the nominee for the position of Attorney-General of this great country has a goddam psychiatric history. Honest George McGovern dumped Tommy Eagleton from the Democratic ticket in '72 for the sin of seeing a shrink. Shrink means mental problems. Mental problems mean instability. Out there in the heartland they don't like that, Jerry. Farmers and shoe-store clerks want to sleep easy, knowing the laws of the land are safe in the hands of somebody who isn't a weirdo. California – that's bad enough. We've all heard California jokes, thank you. But a shrink history could be very damaging.'