ER - A Murder Too Personal (9 page)

She answered my unasked question. “I’ll be
all right. Even though I do miss her.”

“Do you know where I can find Wheelock
now?”

“No.” She cast a quick glance at me, looked
away, and then turned back to me. “Do you think he had something to
do with it?”

“I won’t know until I talk to him.”

Dr. Donald Pasternack lived and worked out of
a white stone townhouse on Eighty-eighth, just off Fifth Avenue on
a block that fairly reeked of quiet old money. He buzzed me through
the wrought iron outer door and then through the inner door to the
vestibule. There was no receptionist. Was he cheap or was it just
her day off?

I checked the alarm system on the way in. It
was one of those rudimentary motion detectors that was at least
fifteen years old. It wouldn’t pose any problem.

The good doctor stood at the top of the
stairs looking down at me as I walked up. That was the last time he
was able to look down on me. It wasn’t until I got to the top of
the stairs that I could see he was at least a foot shorter than me.
He wasn’t a dwarf exactly, but he was really short for a full-grown
man, like one of those little people in the Wizard of Oz. Five-two
maybe. He had a powerfully-built upper torso and a head that looked
too big for the rest of his body. This, and his full-face bushy
black beard and sharp eyes, gave him the look of a lion. A
voracious pussy cat, at that.

When I faced him, he put out his hand and
gave me a strong grip. Overcompensating?

Then he spoke and his voice came out as a
full-throated growl. “Mr. Rogan, follow me.”

Definitely overcompensating.

The landing was sparsely furnished with some
expensive art objects. The house looked more like an architect’s
place than a psychiatrist’s. The floors were white marble and the
walls were stark white. The whole setting gave off a cold and
unwelcoming appearance. It was tough to see how any patient would
feel comfortable here.

He took me into his consulting room and shut
the two soundproofed doors behind us, even though no one was within
earshot. Matter of fact, there didn’t appear to be anyone else in
the house. The room was silent as a tomb. He sat down on a large
comfortable chair. There was no place for me to sit except the
couch. But it was one of those torture racks that designers
love—all chrome and leather that they think is pleasing to the eye
but is pure hell for a real human being to sit on.

I sat on it and cursed him under my
breath.

He was a dapper man. One of those guys who
takes too much care about his appearance. His hair was black and
bushy, just starting to show the first hints of gray like his
beard, and just as well-trimmed. He was wearing an expensive
cashmere sport coat, a Hermes tie, gray slacks and Gucci loafers.
On one wrist hung a chunky gold bracelet and on the other a Santos
watch.

He was sizing me up too, and he didn’t like
what he saw either.

“I’m here…” I started to say.

He cut me off. “I know why you’re here. I’ve
been expecting you. I suppose you think you can dance in here, get
whatever information you believe you’re entitled to and then dance
out again without taking any of the responsibility.” He leaned
forward in his chair and put his hands on his knees. “Well, it
doesn’t work that way. We all share the blame for Alicia’s death,
but you most of all.” His eyes blazed. “Yes, you most of all. You
were the one who killed her.”

I was beginning to get his drift, but I
wasn’t buying a nickel’s worth of his psychobabble. These shrinks
lived in a world of their own. They were all insane to begin with
and heartily distressed with anyone who wasn’t.

“Was something troubling her the last few
months?”

“Yes,” he said.

Now we were finally getting somewhere.
“What?”

“You. You were constantly on her mind. You
were an obsession with her. You were the one who was going to save
her, rescue her from the mess she’d made of her life. Sir Galahad
on a white charger. But I told her she was wrong. You weren’t going
to save her.”

This shaman was right about that. “Why was I
an obsession with her?”

“She never forgave you.”

I laughed. It wasn’t a pretty laugh. “Shit.
Forgave me? She was the one who fucked Wheelock and walked out on
me.”

He shook his head. “No, my friend.” It was
obvious from the way he said it that I wasn’t his friend. He
pointed a manicured finger with clear nail polish at me. “You
weren’t there for her when she needed you. Sure, you were there
physically, but you cut yourself off from her emotionally. You were
out to lunch, emotionally-speaking. You didn’t communicate with
her. You couldn’t give yourself to her spiritually. She said you
never told her you loved her.”

His finger jabbed at me like he wanted to
poke out my eye. “You kept your emotions bottled up inside you. You
never talked with her about the way you felt.”

“All this rhapsodizing doesn’t have anything
to do with Alicia’s death,” I said.

He grinned at me. One of those grins you give
when you want to knee someone in the balls. “You’re wrong. It has
everything to do with it. Because that’s when she started down the
road that led to this end.”

“What do you mean?”

He gave me his evil grin again. “You sent her
into Wheelock’s arms with your indifference. That led her into
further situations which she shouldn’t have been in—situations and
relationships that were destructive to her well-being.”

Now we were getting to the red meat. “What
situations?”

He got up and walked over to where I was
sitting. He came so close I could smell his cologne—a sweet powdery
scent that men with manicures wear.

“Even if I could tell you, I wouldn’t.” He
smiled with the command of his withheld knowledge. “Suffice it to
say that she began her descent into her own private torment when
you split up.”

He was standing next to me now and his head
was almost on a level with mine. Two could play this amusing power
game. I stood up and towered over this toy psychiatrist with his
Olympian view of the human species.

I took a long shot. There was nothing to
lose. “Dr. Pasternack, why were you engaged in sexual activity with
your patient against her wishes? You know that’s a strong breech of
professional ethics.”

He took an uncertain step back and stared up
at me.

“I…I never…”

“She told me all about you. She told me what
you did to her. How you had your way with her when she didn’t want
to. How you took advantage of her weakness with your so-called
therapy. I could take a little walk up to the state licensing board
and give them all the details of your indiscretions with your
patients. They could pull your ticket for a stunt like that. Then
you’d be reduced to selling bagels on Forty-eighth street in all
kinds of inclement weather.”

He waved his hands helplessly in front of him
as if he was brushing me away. “It’s not…what you think…the way you
think.”

“That’s not what she said. She gave me the
story…about what a lowlife son of a bitch you are.”

“The only thing I ever did to her…I swear, I
once got my finger in only a little way…for a very short time…and
only once. She must have exaggerated…she was given to
exaggeration.”

I shook my head. “That’s not what she told
me.”

“She lied…she lied.” He was near tears. “I
swear it. One finger…once. I loved her. I swear it. I loved her.
She shouldn’t have been killed. You killed her.” He started to
babble and blubber at the same time. Tears rolled down his hairy
cheeks. “I wanted to but she wouldn’t let me. I loved her but she
didn’t love me…she called me her love pygmy.”

The guy was out of control now. He couldn’t
hold back the sobs or the torrent of words.

“I loved her. God, how I loved her. Now she’s
dead. Gone forever…” His hands went over his face and his
fingertips pressed into his eyes in a futile attempt to stop the
tears.

He was carrying this transference nonsense a
trifle too far. There was no sense in hanging around here any
longer. He was no use to anybody like this.

I went down the cold marble staircase. Were
his tears from grief or guilt? How much more did he know that he
didn’t tell me? The only sound in the house was the rhythmic fall
of my steps, the echoes of his nemesis walking away, leaving him
with his solitary agony.

Downstairs, sitting on a flat leather bench
in the entranceway, was a pale nondescript woman dressed in black
and gray, a rust-colored Gucci scarf wrapped around her head. Her
eyes were cast down, refusing to meet mine-- a patient waiting for
the uncertain relief of her therapy session.

Upstairs, Pasternak’s sobbing was clearly
audible through the open door.

“I’d give him a couple of minutes to pull
himself together,” I told her. “He hasn’t had a very nice day.”

“Last I heard he was flogging some junk
public-housing munis for a bucket shop in New Jersey. He knew the
paper wouldn’t survive till maturity. And he was right.”

Dave Tanner grabbed the neck of the bottle
and held it upside down so the last drops of beer could wet his
throat.

“Guy could perish of thirst in this joint,”
he said. Tanner had a point. The bar was one of those overdecorated
yuppie watering holes where the staff does you a favor by waiting
on you. We hadn’t seen a waitress in ten minutes.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. “I
feel like stretching my legs.” I tossed a twenty on the table, got
up and straightened my tie.

Tanner nodded in agreement and grabbed his
jacket. As soon as we stood, the waitress was all over us. She
looked like an aspiring actress who would have had trouble
remembering her lines.

“What’s the matter, gentlemen,” she said with
an edge to her voice. “Didn’t you like our service?”

“Sure,” I said. “The same way the cow likes
it when the bull gives her service.”

We were out the door before she could frame
her reply.

The night was cool for June and there was a
good breeze as we headed north on Third. The sun was just setting
and the sky was the kind of red you sometimes see in a Turner
painting. Even Tanner looked at the sky and made a comment on the
light, and he wasn’t the kind of guy who notices those things. It
was the time of evening when couples start to stroll around and
take the measure of each other.

“Is Wheelock still working in that boiler
room?” I asked.

“Nah,” he shook his head. “Place folded soon
as the SEC started poking around. The owners closed it and opened a
new outfit across the street under a different name and they used
new straw men as the principals. The Feds never had a chance. Soon
as they smelled a rat, these guys would shut the shop down and open
a new one with the same salesmen. Always two steps ahead of the
law.”

We walked past a succession of boites, cafes
and gin mills where the new generation was learning the unalloyed
joys of the liquid fermentation process.

“What happened to Wheelock after that?”

Tanner shrugged. “Lost track of him. He
dropped out of sight.”

“Who would know where to find him?”

Tanner watched a couple of girls coming
toward us. “Wheelock was a strange bird. He didn’t have many
friends. Laura might know.” When the girls reached us, Tanner
turned to them and said, “Excuse me, ladies. I was wondering if you
subscribed to the Apollonian or Dionysian world view.”

The girls stopped and exchanged glances. I
mean, we looked presentable enough. No disfigurements that they
could see. Two decent-looking apparently successful fellows in
well-tailored dark business suits. They wanted to believe we were
sincere and well-intentioned but there was dissonance in our words.
They were at a loss as to how to reply.

Finally one of them, the plainer one, said,
“I really don’t understand your question.”

They were in their early twenties, obviously
out-of-towners, new to the Morris dance mating rituals of the
unforgiving city. You could see the quandary they were in. They
didn’t want to blow a chance at a hot night on the town but, on the
other hand, they had no idea what the hell Tanner was talking
about.

“What I mean to say is do you prefer Apollo
or Dionysus?” Tanner went on in his sardonic tone.

The girls exchanged another glance. The
prettier one allowed a gleam of insight to shine through her
heavy-lidded eyes.

“Hey,” she said. “Are these like discos or
nightclubs or something?”

Tanner nodded. “Yeah, but very old and very
Greek.”

The girls squealed in despair. There was some
kind of communication gap here.

“I’ve never been to a Greek disco before,”
the prettier one said.

I nudged Tanner. “Let’s keep moving,” I said.
There was no contest. It would have been too easy.

Tanner nudged me back. “We can nail them, old
buddy,” he said in a mock whisper.

I grabbed Tanner’s arm and said, “Come on,
champ.” To the girls I said, “Good night, ladies. Don’t you know
the dangers of chance sexual encounters?”

I hauled Tanner away against his protests and
left the girls with a look of wide-eyed wonder on their faces.
Defender of the innocent, protector of a maiden’s chastity. Was I a
man living in the wrong century?

“Laura told me Wheelock called Alicia a
couple of months ago,” I said.

Tanner raised his eyebrows. “And she doesn’t
know where he is?”

I shook my head.

“Fond of the sauce, he was. The guy could
always drink you and me together under the table.” He paused.
“Think he whacked Alicia?”

“I don’t know. The odds are good. She didn’t
want to go out with him. You know what a hard head he was.” I
pictured Wheelock’s face. Flat, cold, smooth with deep-set eyes.
“He was capable of it.”