Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (77 page)

“No thanks. I assume Edgar will know my name—”

“Are you kidding? He still talks about how you psyched him out in some golf tournament—”

“Junior tennis. He remembers? That was twenty-five years ago.”

“Yeah, well, it was probably the last time he lost anything to anybody. Except for him, everybody in New York is losing their shirt. Communism is collapsing and they’re taking us down with them. Even your cousin is in trouble. Of course, we should all have his troubles. Poor guy might actually have to live on ten million a year—”

“Enough, Brian. I’m sorry your life is so difficult.”

“Yeah, look who I’m complaining to. St. Francis himself.”

“Vaya con Dios,
Brian.”

“Bye, Rafe. Let me know if you want to talk to Molly. Jesus,” he said with a despairing sigh to someone in the background as he hung up, “he told me to go with God.” Perhaps everyone is having a breakdown, I thought.

I called Levin & Levin’s corporate headquarters in Manhattan. It took quite a few transfers to reach Edgar’s secretary. Her tone in reaction to my request to speak to him implied I was irrational. “He’s not available,” she said. “What’s this in reference to?” she asked with a remarkably undisguised note of contempt.

“It’s a personal call. I knew him as a teenager.”

“I see,” she said with amusement, as if identifying me as a harmless lunatic. “I’ll tell Mr. Levin you called.”

“Don’t you want my number?”

“Sure,” she said breezily and I knew she didn’t believe there would be a return call. She might not bother to relay my message.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She didn’t skip a beat at my non sequitur. “Ms. Dean.”

“All right, Ms. Dean. I have an urgent favor to ask of Edgar. It’s merely that he introduce me to someone. I think he’ll be angry if he finds out you were slow to let him know I phoned. My name is Dr. Rafael Neruda. I need to talk to him today. Will you be speaking to him within the hour?”

Her tone changed, but she wasn’t rattled. “I can’t give out any information about Mr. Levin’s schedule. Those are his instructions. If you leave a number where you can be reached, he’ll call you back.”

“I can’t.” I was at Susan’s, but I didn’t want to wait around. “I’ll call back in an hour. Please give him the message as soon as possible.” I hung up without the courtesy of a goodbye. Had my uncle behaved like these modern millionaires, erecting so many barriers to talking with them? Had they truly become the Marxist nightmare: unapproachable royalty?

An hour later, Ms. Dean’s tone changed. “Oh, yes, Dr. Neruda. Please hold on. He’s in his car. I’ll transfer you.”

There were two rapid beeps. “Rafe?” Edgar called to me from the distant end of a windy tunnel.

“Hello, Eddie. Are you really in a car?”

“Ridiculous, isn’t it? They haven’t perfected them—” his voice disappeared completely for a few words “—a time saver. How are you? Are you in New York? I’m busy today and tonight, but are you free tomorrow for a gala dinner? I’m hosting a benefit for the ballet.”

“I don’t think so, Eddie.”

“Edgar. People call me Edgar now.” I think he laughed, but he was drowned for a moment by a whoosh. “Hello?” he called, surfacing.

“Edgar, I’m calling to ask a favor. I need an introduction to Theodore Copley.”

“Stick Copley? What sort of introduction?”

“An employee of his, or an ex-employee, was a patient. He committed suicide four weeks ago.”

“Hold on, Rafe. Don’t go away.” The two rapid beeps were repeated. Ms. Dean’s distinct voice returned to the line. “Dr. Neruda? Mr. Levin asked if you could call back in five minutes. Although what would be best is if he could call you back.”

“I’m at a public phone.”

“I see. Could you possibly call Mr. Levin from a residence or an office? We’re having some trouble with the connection and that would work better. Sorry.” I was two blocks from Susan’s and I still had her key. I agreed.

At the loft, I called Ms. Dean again. This time, when she transferred me, there was no preliminary beep. Also, Edgar had come out of the wind. “Hello, Rafe. That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Where are you now?”

“In my office. I don’t know why the cells were so bad today. Maybe because you were calling from a public phone. How come, Rafe? What were you doing out on the street?”

I paused to think it through.

“Are you there, Rafe?” Edgar prompted me out of my reverie.

“Why didn’t you want to continue the conversation from your car? I’m ignorant about modern technology.”

Edgar chuckled.

“Okay, Rafe. I should’ve known you’d see through me. Car phones are really radio signals. Anyone with a scanner can listen in. And public phones are easy to pick up too, although I don’t suppose someone’s following you with a telescope mike. I know it sounds silly, but there are people so eager to make a killing on Wall Street they eavesdrop for info on a tender offer, the next quarterly report …” He made a noise. “Anything. Anything they could make a dollar on.”

“And your wanting to make this a private conversation had something to do with my mentioning Stick Copley’s name?”

Edgar chuckled again, although this was more of a grunt. “Yes, wise guy, of course. I’m in business with Stick. I’m what my Pop used to call a silent partner in Minotaur, and you said something about an employee committing suicide. You know Gore Vidal’s definition of a paranoid?”

“No,” I said.

“Someone who is in possession of all the facts.”

“Let me relieve your anxiety. My patient’s suicide doesn’t have any bearing on Minotaur’s business. At least that’s not why I want to talk with Copley. I’m curious about what my patient was like during the past year. We were out of touch.”

“Tell me something, Rafe. You wouldn’t, by any chance, happen to be writing a book?”

I hesitated.

Edgar continued in a relaxed tone that managed somehow to communicate ominousness. “You see, I’m ignorant about modern psychiatry. Haven’t been to a shrink in ten years. I don’t know if you fellows are in the habit of washing your dirty linen in public.”

“Are you being combative out of habit, Eddie, or do you really not want to help me?”

He grunted. “You know, I think I like being called Eddie. But I can’t indulge it. Eddie Levin sounds like a counterman at the Second Avenue Deli.”

“I’m sorry. Do you really not want to help me, Edgar?”

“I just don’t want to piss off my partner. You say this guy worked for Stick and he committed suicide? Doesn’t sound like a model employee. What was his story?”

“Edgar, everything I know about my patient is confidential. I’m not a gossip.”

“That’s
what I wanted to hear.” Edgar’s smooth tone shifted. He was ready to help, so he immediately sounded less friendly. “Okay. How do you want this done?”

In fact, there was a Minotaur board meeting scheduled to begin at eleven and run through lunch at a private room in the St. Regis Hotel. It was arranged I would meet Copley there after they adjourned. (All this was a fortuitous consequence of my knowing Edgar; as a major investor in Minotaur, he was of course on the board.) Following Ms. Dean’s instructions, I arrived at the St. Regis by two-thirty and identified myself at the desk. I was passed on to the concierge, who summoned a bellhop, and said he would take me to Mr. Copley. We went up to the sixteenth floor, passed a hallway with two rows of serving carts littered by empty trays, into a large ballroom naked except for a piano covered by a sheet, and then through a door the bellhop unlocked.

I passed into a medium-sized room that appeared to be a 19th century library. The bellhop held the door for me and left, shutting it behind him. Every inch of wall space was covered by built-in mahogany shelves filled with green or red leather-bound books. In a leather wing chair at the far end of the room sat Theodore Copley. Beside him, on a low wood coffee table with brass fittings, was a silver tray with a black Wedgwood coffee pot and two matching cups and saucers. He stood to greet me. His appearance, having seen his daughter, was a surprise. His hair was much lighter than hers, almost blond, moussed straight back off a small forehead. And he was big, nearly six feet and broad-shouldered. His cheeks had the haggard look of a dedicated exerciser. His skin was fair. Deep lines ran across his forehead, radiated from the corners of his eyes and trailed down his starved profile. Only his eyes were dark, like his daughter’s, sharing her solemnity and brilliance. His double-breasted suit had the natural fit of hand-tailoring and the dense look of fine cloth.

He was cordial, offering a strong hand that waited for mine to let go, and gestured to the coffee. I declined. “We had a big lunch,” Copley said. He puffed out his cheeks to indicate he was stuffed. He was all muscle and bone and I doubted he had really eaten a lot. When he inflated his cheeks they were so elastic he reminded me of Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet. I wondered if he had once been fat. He reached for the Wedgwood cup. “We had steak. I haven’t eaten red meat in years and I don’t think I will ever again. Leaves me feeling groggy.”

“Thank you for seeing me on short notice.”

“Well, I was pretty curious when Edgar said you were Gene’s psychiatrist. I didn’t know he was seeing anyone.”

I was convinced that was a lie. His eyes shifted away from me as he said it, although they hadn’t wavered until then, not when he sat or reached for the coffee. Also, he crossed his legs and put his hands together, both gestures of self-protection.

“I saw your daughter yesterday. Or I tried to.”

He raised his brow as if that were news, but he didn’t say it was, and his eyes stayed on me, a faint smile on his closed lips.

“I thought maybe Gene told her he had been in therapy and she told you.”

He shook his head. He glanced down, lifted the sharp crease in his charcoal gray pants and said, “She wouldn’t tell me something like that.” He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and refilled his cup. “They had a love affair,” he said and his eyes were on me, unexpectedly, since he was pouring. He didn’t miss the target and he knew, without looking, when he needed to stop. “Daughters don’t gossip about their love lives with their Daddies.” He put the pot down and leaned back with his filled cup. He shrugged. “At least mine doesn’t.” He sipped. “How can I help you, Doctor?”

“Well, obviously, I failed with Gene. I feel responsible—” I smiled and paused. I had caught him by surprise, evidently. His cup was in midair, stopped en route back to the saucer on the table. He studied me with absolute concentration. He appeared to be physically frozen, as if his brain was so busy thinking it couldn’t bother with anything else. “I
am
responsible, I should say. I treated Gene, off and on, over a fifteen-year span and he destroyed himself. Basically, I want to check over the crash site. Figure out what I did wrong. I know it’s unorthodox and an intrusion, an unfair intrusion on you and your daughter, but you were both important to Gene and knew him well. I hoped you might help me figure out where I went wrong.”

He remained stuck for another moment. Then he released a gust of air through his wide thin lips. Not his daughter’s complicated expression of noise; his was closer to a horse’s neigh and communicated a single clear message: scornful dismissal. “I’m sorry,” he shook his head, no longer frozen in position. The cup went back to the saucer. He sat straight in the chair, a hand skimming over his tie, flattening it against his white shirt. “I apologize. It’s none of my business.”

“What’s none of your business?”

“How you evaluate yourself. I have about a half an hour before my next meeting, but I’ll be glad to answer your questions about Gene. Edgar told me of your fine reputation. In fact, I think I recognize you. He said you’ve been on television a fair amount. I watch way too much television. Very bad habit.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your help. But please, go back a moment and tell me what you were thinking when you said it was none of your business how I evaluate myself.”

“Well, I don’t know very much about psychiatry. I took Psych 101 like everyone else, but I don’t see how you can be blamed for Gene’s suicide. I mean, in the end,
we”
using his index finger, he poked himself on the lapel of his suit, “each of us are respons ible for our own will to live. I don’t see how you can give that will to someone. In fact, if anything,
I’m
probably more responsible for Gene’s suicide than you.” Copley turned away, showing me his profile. His chin lifted and he studied one of the rows of leather-bound books. He brought a hand to his eyebrows, rubbed them thoughtfully, and dropped it to join his other hand. He locked the fingers together and—to my horror—cracked his knuckles. It was exactly the gesture Gene had adopted in the latter years of his therapy. An imitated mannerism, just as he had once imitated his mother, mimicking someone he perceived as powerful. And the hair, the moussed hair, I realized—that too Gene had copied. Copley, meanwhile, spoke to the leather-bound books. “I mean unintentionally, of course. I fired him because he …” he slid his fingers together again and I winced ahead of the sound. This time, when he flexed, none came. “… Well, he burned out. He flamed out and he got real arrogant too. Demanded promotions and raises even though he lost control of production.
I
pushed him over the edge when I fired him.” Copley calmly moved off the books, his gaze returning to me. He brought a hand to his moussed hair, to smooth what was already flattened. “I’m sorry Gene killed himself. But I don’t regret firing him. I would do it again. You can’t save a drowning man if he’s in so great a panic he’ll take you with him.”

I didn’t say anything, returning his stare. I considered carefully, and as literally as possible for a psychiatrist, the merit of his remarkably frank speech. Stick must have interpreted my silence as confusion (perhaps it was) or as offended sensibility. He shrugged. Another wan smile played on his lips. “I’m sorry to sound ruthless,” he continued. “I was a certified lifeguard as a teenager and I remember the instructor’s little rhyme about what to do if a big man, a grown man, is drowning. ‘Throw,’” he tossed an imaginary sphere onto the library’s Keshan rug, “‘Don’t go.’” He wagged a scolding finger. “I’m sure you could talk to everyone who knew Gene, find out everything there is to find out, and, in the end, the answer lies in whatever happens at the mysterious moment when life is created. Something was left out when they assembled Gene. There was a bug in the programming.”