Survival of the Fittest (13 page)

Two Victorian mahogany bookshelves were crowded with volumes but the glass doors to the cases spat back glare from a pair of windows, obscuring the titles. The windows were narrow and high, cut at the outer corners by ruby velvet pull-back drapes, offering rectangles of city view.

Great view. A newer building would have offered a full wall of transparency. When this one was built, the vista had probably been smokestacks and beanfields.

The yellow walls were silk. No credentials, no diplomas. Nothing that identified the purpose of the office.

Lehmann motioned me to take one of the black armchairs and sank behind the cherry desk. The top was green leather with gold-tooled edges and on it were a brown calfskin folding blotter, silver inkwell, letter knife, and pen cup, and a curious-looking silver contraption with a flamboyantly engraved crenellated top. Envelopes extended from compartments. Probably some kind of message rack.

Lehmann ran his finger along the edge.

“Interesting piece,” I said.

“Document holder,” he said. “Georgian. It sat in British Parliament two hundred years ago. Repository for history. There’s a hole at the bottom where it was screwed into the clark’s desk so no one could make off with it.”

He used both hands to lift it and show me.

I said, “Found its way across the ocean, anyway.”

“Family piece,” he said, as if that explained it. Spreading his hands flat on the blotter, he looked at a thin gold watch. “Officer Dahl. It would help me to understand what you already know about him.”

“I’ve been told he was bright and mercurial,” I said. “Not your typical cop.”

“Cops can’t be bright?”

“They can be and are. Helena—his sister—described him as someone who’d read Sartre and Camus. I may be stereotyping but that isn’t what you generally think of as typical LAPD material. Though if you work extensively with the police, you’d know better.”

His hands flew upward and the palms drifted toward each other and touched silently.

“Each year, my practice brings fewer surprises, Dr. Delaware. Don’t you find it harder to resist seeing patterns?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Did the department refer Nolan to you?”

Another pause. Nod.

“May I ask why?”

“The usual,” he said. “Adjustment problems. The work is extremely stressful.”

“What kinds of work problems was Nolan having?”

He licked his lips and white hair tumbled across his forehead. Pushing it away, he began playing with his pink tie, flicking the tip with a thumbnail, over and over.

Finally he said, “Nolan was having both personal problems and difficulties related to work. A troubled young man. I’m sorry, I really can’t be more specific.”

Why had I driven across town for this?

He looked around the big, ornate room.
“Mercurial.
Is the term Helena’s or yours?”

I smiled. “I’ve got a live patient, Dr. Lehmann. My own confidentiality issues.”

He smiled back. “Of course you do, I was simply trying to—let’s put it this way, Dr. Delaware: If you’re using
mercurial
as a euphemism for affective disorder, I’d understand that very well.
Very
well.”

Letting me know without saying so that Nolan had suffered from mood swings. Depression, only? Or manic-depression?

“I guess it’s too much to ask if we’re talking unipolar or bipolar.”

“Does it really matter? I’m sure she’s not seeking a
DSM—IV
diagnosis.”

“True,” I said. “Do any other euphemisms come to mind?”

He tucked the tie in and sat up straighter. “Dr. Delaware, I sympathize with your situation. With the sister’s. It’s only natural that she’d seek answers but you and I both know she’ll never get what she’s really after.”

“Which is?”

“What survivors always crave. Absolution. As I said, understandable, but if you’ve dealt with lots of similar cases, you know that leads them off the track. They haven’t sinned, the suicide has. In a manner of speaking. I’m sure Helena is a lovely woman who adored her brother and now she’s torturing herself with should-haves and could-haves. Pardon my audacity, but I’d say your time with her would be better spent guiding her toward feeling good about herself rather than fathoming the workings of a very troubled mind.”

“Was Nolan too troubled to do police work?”

“Obviously, but that never became clear. Never.” His voice had climbed and a flush had spread under his jaw, snaking downward and disappearing under his collar.

Had he missed a danger sign? Covering his own rear?

“It’s a tragedy all around. That’s really all I have to say.” He stood.

“Dr. Lehmann, I wasn’t implying—”

“But someone else might and I won’t have it. Any therapist worth his salt knows there’s absolutely nothing that can be done if an individual’s serious about destroying himself. Look at all the suicides that take place on psychiatric wards with full supervision.”

He leaned toward me, one hand tugging down at a cashmere lapel. “Tell your patient that her brother loved her but his problems got the best of him. Problems she’s better off not knowing. Believe me
—much
better off.”

Staring at me.

“Sexual problems?” I said.

He waved me off. “Tell her you spoke to me and I said he was depressed and that police work may have exacerbated the depression but didn’t cause it. Tell her his suicide couldn’t have been prevented and she had nothing to do with it. Help her plaster her emotional fissures. That’s our job. To patch, assuage.
Ma
ssage. Inform our patients they’re
okay.
We’re couriers of
okay
ness.”

Through the anger came something I thought I recognized. The sadness that can result from too many years absorbing the poison of others. Most therapists experience it sooner or later. Sometimes it passes, sometimes it settles in like a chronic infection.

“Guess we are,” I said. “Among other things. Sometimes it gets difficult.”

“What does?”

“Massaging.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “One chooses one’s job and one does it. That’s the key to being a professional. There’s no point complaining.”

When the going gets tough, the therapist gets tougher.
I wondered if he’d used the chin-up approach with Nolan. The department would approve of something like that.

He smiled. “After all these years, I find the work enriching.”

“How many years is that?”

“Sixteen. But it’s still fresh. Perhaps it’s because my first career was in the business world where the philosophy was quite different: It’s not enough for me to
succeed. You
must fail.”

“Brutal,” I said.

“Oh, quite. Policemen are easy, by comparison.”

He walked me to the door and as I passed the bulky bookshelves I was able to make out some of the titles. Organizational structure, group behavior, management strategies, psychometric testing.

Out in the waiting room, he said, “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to reveal more. The entire situation was .   .   . bleak. Let the sister maintain her own image of Nolan. Believe me, it’s far more compassionate.”

“This unspeakable pathology he displayed,” I said. “It’s directly related to the suicide?”

“Very likely so.”

“Was he feeling guilty about something?”

He buttoned his blazer.

“I’m not a priest, Dr. Delaware. And your client wants illusion, not facts. Trust me on that.”

As I got back on the elevator, I felt as if I’d been rushed through an overpriced, tasteless meal. Now it was starting to repeat.

Why had he wasted my time?

Had he intended to say more but changed his mind?

Knowing he was professionally vulnerable because he’d missed something crucial?

Fear of a lawsuit would make Helena—and me—a major threat. Not talking to me at all would be seen as unreasonable obstructionism.

But if he was covering, why even hint around at Nolan’s serious problems?

Wanting to find out what
I
knew?

The lift opened at 5 to let in three hefty men in gray suits and eyeglasses. Their jovial chatter ceased the moment they saw me and they turned their backs as the taller one slipped a key into the City Club slot. After they exited, the elevator took a while to kick in and I had a view of white-and-black checkerboard marble floor, polished wood walls, softly lit oil landscapes, riotously colored mixed flowers in obsidian urns.

A tuxedoed maitre d’ smiled and welcomed them forward. They entered the club talking again. Laughing. Behind them, silverware clattered and red-jacketed black waiters hurried by with covered dishes on trays. As the elevator filled with the smell of roast meat and rich sauce, the gilded door slid shut silently.

I drove west, taking the freeway this time, still thinking about Lehmann.

Strange bird. And an old-world quality to his demeanor. British pronunciations. He’d said the right things but was unlike any therapist I’d ever met.

As if reciting for my benefit.

Analyzing me?

Some psychologists and psychiatrists—the bad ones—make a game of it.

Believe me, she’s much better off not knowing.

Strange bird, strange location.

Consultant.

All those books on management and psychological testing, nothing on therapy.

Practicing beyond the boundaries of his competence?

Was that why he was edgy?

If so, how had he gotten LAPD’s business?

No big mystery, there. Politics as usual. Who you knew.

The custom-made cashmere, the studied carelessness and old-money furnishings.

A consultant with family connections? Downtown connections could mean big business: a stream of referrals from the police department and other government agencies.

A potential
flood
of referrals because though LAPD maintained a few psychologists on staff, most of their time was spent screening applicants and teaching hostage negotiation and they were chronically overworked.

Something else: Milo had told me, once, that cops considered the in-house shrinks tools of the brass, were cynical about assurances of confidentiality, often reluctant to seek them out for help.

Except when filing for stress disability. Something LAPD officers had engaged in for years at a notorious rate, now even worse in the postriot era.

Meaning
lots
of money could be made contracting to field complaints. The unspoken directive from the department would be
find them healthy.

Which would explain Lehmann’s self-description as a
courier of okayness.

And why he might have been reluctant to acknowledge warning signs in Nolan.

Had the young cop come to him with a history of mood swings and alienation, complaining of crushing job pressures, only to receive tough love?

One does one’s job. That’s the key to being professional.

Now Lehmann wanted to quash any budding inquiry.

Let the dead rest. His reputation, too.

When I got home, I looked him up in my American Psychological Association directory. No listing. None in any of the local guilds or health-care provider rosters, either, which was odd, if he was a contractor. But maybe LAPD referrals alone gave him enough business and he didn’t need to solicit other sources.

Or maybe he really
was
old money, choosing psychology as a second career for personal fulfillment, rather than income. Respite after years in the heartless world of
business.

The big office and leather desk and books—the trappings of
doctor
hood. Simply props to help him fill the hours before he rode down for a rubdown at the club?

I phoned the state medical board and confirmed that Roone Mackey Lehmann was indeed duly licensed to practice psychology in California and had been for five years. His degree was from a place called New Dominion University and he’d done his clinical training at the Pathfinder Foundation, neither of which I’d heard of.

No complaints had ever been filed against him, nothing irregular about his certification.

I thought about him some more, realized there was nothing I could—or should—do. Bottom line, he was right: If Nolan had been adamant about leaving this world, no one could have stopped him.

Serious problems.

My question about sexuality had evoked a meaningful silence, so maybe that had been it.

A bleak situation.

The sister better off not knowing.

Leading me to the main question: What would I tell Helena?

Chapter

15

I called her at the hospital but she wasn’t in. Not at home, either, and I left a message and phoned Milo at the station.

“New insights?” he said.

“Sorry, no. Actually, I’m calling about Nolan Dahl.”

“What about him?”

“If you’re busy—”

“Wish I was. Been on the phone all day and the closest case I’ve got to Irit is a retarded thirteen-year-old boy abducted a year ago in Newton Division. Body never found but his sneakers were, full of dried blood. Left in front of the Newton station. No lightbulb-over-the-head feeling but I’m driving over later to look at the actual file. What about Dahl?”

“I just met with his therapist, fellow named Roone Lehmann. Ever hear of him?”

“No. Why?”

“He got the referral through the department and I got the feeling he was on some LAPD list.”

“Could be. Is there some other reason you’re asking about him?”

I told him.

“So you think maybe he botched Dahl’s treatment and is covering his ass.”

“He implied that Nolan had serious problems that Helena doesn’t want to know about.”

“Meaning if he missed the boat it was a big one.”

“Exactly. And he’s an odd one, Milo. Works in a building with bankers and lawyers, labels himself a consultant but doesn’t spell out what he does. But he’s duly licensed, no checkered history, so maybe I’m being paranoid. I
would
like to know why Nolan went to see him. Would the department keep records?”