ER - A Murder Too Personal (6 page)

“What was her position when she was
shot?”

“She was sitting.”

“That make sense to you?” I asked.

“You got something better?”

“Let me see the photos.”

He held up his hand. “You sure you wanna see
them? It’s pretty rough.”

“Sure,” I said. I’d seen death before. Both
friend and enemy. You never get used to it, but after a while it
doesn’t seem so awesome.

Black scrutinized the photos one by one
before he handed them over to me, as if he were censoring them. His
face was twisted like he’d just smelled something bad.

I realized I was holding my breath as I
looked at the pictures. I exhaled slowly. They were rough all
right.

Alicia lay spread-eagled on her stomach, the
left side of her head blown away, her legs awkwardly askew. You
could see the hands on her watch, even the thin second hand. The
watch showed twelve thirty-seven, the time the crime photographer
took the shot.

It’s different when you see someone you know.
Someone you remember eating, talking, sleeping. There was this
finality.

The photos were exceptionally sharp. Brightly
lit. I could see the jagged edge of her skull and the pattern of
blood on the rug.

“There’s one more thing,” Black said.

“What?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“What are you going to save it for? Christmas
Eve?”

“Her tongue was cut out and stuck into her
vagina.”

“Jesus,” I said. I recognized it. I’d seen it
before. It was a crude inversion of what Charlie did to our boys in
Viet Nam.

That was about all I could take. I felt like
someone had been beating my chest with a baseball bat for half an
hour.

“You seen enough?” Black asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen enough.”

The hallway stunk of fish and cabbage. The
floor was covered with cracked linoleum that curled up at the
edges. The linoleum had long ago lost whatever color it once had.
The wallpaper was a puke green from the turn of the century. From
behind closed doors came the dreary sounds of domestic life,
muffled curses, children crying, women screaming, TV blaring.

Typical New York Saturday night.

The apartment building was on Eleventh, not
far from the New School. It was a five-story walk-up located in a
neighborhood “in transition” as the bureaucrats delicately put it.
That meant it was rapidly sinking into a cesspool.

4H was at the end of the corridor. The sound
of loud rock and the smell of pot came from behind the door. I
jabbed the bell.

Nothing happened. I rang the bell three,
four, five times. It looked like nobody was going to open the door.
Finally, I tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. I pushed the door
open slowly.

A man in a plaid bathrobe stood there and
looked out through me. He had a black bushy full-face beard, dark
hair pulled back in a pony tail and a round gold earring in his
left ear.

“Dr. Garbarini?” I shouted over the
racket.

He opened his eyes as if he was surprised to
see me.

“My name is Rogan. I called you this
afternoon.”

He stared at me vacantly.

“I’m Alicia’s husband…ex-husband.”

He blinked for the first time. “Oh, yes. I’m
sorry. Of course you are. Come in, come in. I’m so sorry. Forgive
me.”

He stepped to the side to let me in. The
whole apartment was dark. He led me into the living room. The place
was lit by three thick candles that gave off a whiff of bayberry or
some other kind of sickly sweet scent. On top of that there was
incense burning on a low table in the middle of the room.

My eyes needed some time to adjust to the
dark. I had trouble hearing Garbarini over the music. It sounded
like Procol Harum or Iron Butterfly or one of those acid groups
from the sixties, the kind of endless rock we used to play in the
hooches while we drank ourselves into oblivion.

Garbarini waved me to some pillows on the
floor. I was still wearing a suit and wasn’t too pleased with
myself for not changing. Not too cool looking like an executive
when you’re trying to gain the confidence of a band of
unreconstructed hippies. Or just maybe they were too stoned to even
notice.

“Care for a toot?” the professor asked as he
offered me a joint.

“Thanks,” I said and waved it off.

He lit the joint carefully and inhaled
deeply.

I watched Garbarini in the candlelight. He
had regular features, wide-set eyes and a relaxed manner, to say
the least. His eyes were hypnotic—the way they hardly blinked.

There were five other people in the room in
various stages of impairment. A man and a woman were lying on
pillows next to me on the floor. Another couple of indeterminate
sex were fondling on a sofa. They were oblivious to my presence. A
girl sat on a chest up against the wall. She was in the lotus
position with her eyes closed. She had an untroubled expression on
her face. I couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or not.

I sat there for a long time. I knew you
weren’t supposed to disturb the natural rhythm of the universe, or
something like that, but I was getting edgy. That’s what happens
when you put a type A in a nest of tranquillity.

I tried to be one with the spirit.

Finally, after what seemed to be the length
of a Grand Opera with two intermissions, the professor spoke. “Our
door is always open.”

“What?” I shouted.

“We welcome everyone. Anybody who wants to
join us can enter.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I certainly am,” I
said and leaned over toward him. “Was Alicia a member of your
group?”

“What?” he said.

“Alicia,” I repeated. “A member of your
group?”

He shifted closer to me on the floor and
spoke into my ear in a tone slightly higher than a whisper. “Our
family,” he corrected me. “I liked to think of Alicia as a convert.
She was one of my proudest achievements. Here I was able to take an
exemplary member of the secular society and mold her into a seeker
of eternal verities.”

The stereo was making such a racket I could
only hear every second word he was saying. “Can you do me a favor?”
I said. “Can you turn down the music?” I was trying as hard as I
could to be polite.

He nodded eagerly. “It would make me very
happy to be able to honor your request.”

The professor rose slowly and shuffled over
to the stereo. It took him about three times as long as it should
have to do this. Everything took longer than it should have. It
looked like he was moving in slow motion. He lowered the volume
with a careful movement. Then he stepped into the kitchen, took
something from the refrigerator and came back to me.

I could make out two bottles in his hand. “I
never imbibe alcoholic beverages,” he said.

There are a couple of people on the face of
the earth who follow this practice, I know. But I was hoping I
wouldn’t encounter them right here and now.

“I hope you understand,” he said.

I was trying real hard to.

“This is all I have at the moment. One of my
disciples brought it today. It is completely organic.”

At least I could hear him now. I took a
bottle. The label said root beer. The professor produced an
opener.

I took a long drink of the swill. It was
cold, but that was all I could say for it. The stuff tasted like
bark and twigs—and it wasn’t even fermented.

“Professor Garbarini,” I said, trying to get
the conversation back on track. “What would you say was Alicia’s
greatest area of interest?”

“Yes,” he repeated, “her interest…her
interest…her interest.” It sounded like a mantra. “I was glad to
have Alicia with us. Everyone liked her. I always try to have as
many people here as possible. This is not an ashram, of course, but
many visitors stay here from time to time. The door is never
locked.”

I nodded. “Tell me more,” I said.

The professor stared into the candle flame
and took a deep puff on the joint. “I am a teacher of metaphysics,
as you know, and I always like to have many souls surrounding me.
My students enjoy coming here. Sometimes there are only two or
three, sometimes ten or twelve. We listen to music, we smoke
hashish, we make love to each other, we talk about serious themes.
Ideas which have been discussed since the dawn of civilization. I’m
sure Socrates and his students lay about in this way in the baths,
debating these selfsame subjects. But they drank wine instead. This
is a very close group. We love each other. We express our love in
physical ways. Members come and go but the core remains. I am the
Master, yes, that is true. But many interesting concepts come from
the students.”

He stopped rambling and stared at the flame.
I didn’t know how to get information out of him. It was like trying
to grab the fog.

Just as abruptly as he stopped, he started up
again. “Even when I’m not here, when I’m teaching or walking,
people are always here. You might say it’s like an open house.”

Yes, I might say that.

“Did you have sex with Alicia?” I asked.

He looked at me like I just stepped off the
shuttle from Mars.

“Alicia and I expressed our physical love for
each other, yes,” he said. “But that is not unusual. I express my
physical love for all my disciples and they express it for me. I
believe you must empty your prostate every day. That is healthy. It
does not matter who the receptacle is. The male essence or the
female essence or those who express both essences in their
nature.”

“What kind of lover was Alicia?” I asked.

“That was her problem. You know, each person
has give and take within. Alicia would give but she would not take.
A woman must always take, but Alicia would not take.”

I was beginning to see a vague outline of
what he was getting at.

“Was Alicia a good disciple?”

“She was one of my best, except that she
would not take. She threw herself into metaphysics as if it were an
obsession. She was obviously seeking a yang for her yin.”

“You mean a man?” I asked.

He shook his head slowly, almost sadly, and
wagged his finger the way you would at a kid who wet his pants.
“Don’t be so literal. A yang is not necessarily a man. It is a
complement to what is lacking in her being.”

“And tell me what was lacking in her being.”
I was starting to feel like an untutored jackass.

“This we are not privileged to know. One can
never know the inner soul of another person. One only sees the
superficial exterior which may often be misleading.”

He paused and put his hands over his eyes.
“Kundelini…searching for Kundelini.”

“What?”

“Kundelini,” he repeated.

What in the pluperfect hell was he talking
about?

Just about this time, with the incense and
the bayberry and the music and the pot smoke and that goddam root
beer, I was starting to develop a major headache. A really serious
headache. I had an intense craving for a very tall, very cold glass
of beer—any beer from any brewery in Northern Europe or the United
States.

“Tell me,” I tried again. “Would you have any
idea why someone would want to kill Alicia?”

The professor knitted up his brows so that
twin furrows ran up his forehead. He concentrated his gaze on the
flame. “Alicia was not contented. She had not reached spiritual
peace.”

I thought of the people I knew. Neurotic New
Yorkers and people trying to become neurotic New Yorkers. “Many
people haven’t reached spiritual peace,” I said. “What does that
have to do with her death?”

“This unfortunately I cannot tell you.” He
looked at me intently. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be
sincere or if he was just having me on.

I tried again. “Do you know who supplied her
with cocaine?”

“No.” He shook his head. “We do not use
cocaine. The only narcotic we use is hashish, in keeping with our
beliefs.”

This guy was the master of blue smoke and
mirrors. In a whole lifetime of years, I’d seen few his equal.

“Tell me, who was Alicia’s best friend?”

For the first time, he seemed to come awake.
He smiled to himself and rubbed his beard. “Her best friend and
closest confidant was this person.” He motioned to the girl on the
chest.

“Rachel,” he yelled so loud I almost
jumped.

The girl uncoiled herself from her meditation
and came over to us. The professor craned his neck to look up at
her and gestured vigorously for her to sit down. She lowered
herself gracefully into the lotus position and stared into our
faces. There was the faintest hint of a smile on her lips.

“Rachel,” the professor said, “this man is
looking into the circumstances surrounding the death of Alicia. I
am sure he would appreciate any information you can give him. I,
for my part, have given him as much as I could and I am sure it has
been helpful.”

I tried to give her a reassuring look. I
hoped she had something more concrete than the professor’s sack of
wind. She had finely-etched features and what looked like flawless
skin in the dim light. She was slight and couldn’t have been more
than five-two. An elfin creature. Her hair was dark and straight
and cut short. Her eyes were large and her pupils were
well-dilated. She was wearing a loose-fitting black top and bicycle
pants. She looked to be in her early twenties.

When she spoke, her voice was soft and
well-modulated. I had to strain to hear her.

“Please,” she said. “I’d like to do whatever
I can, Mr. ____?”

“Rogan,” I said. “But call me Ed.”

Her eyes widened. They were deep and knowing.
“You’re her ex-husband.”

“That’s right. How did you know?”

“Like I know everything about you.” Her smile
became a little broader.

That was just a little unsettling. “Can we go
somewhere to talk?” I asked.