Analyst

by John Katzenbach

  Ricky wanted to respond, but did not.

  Merlin continued to stare directly at Ricky, not wavering even slightly.

  “Do you have any enemies, doctor? How about jealous colleagues? Do you think any of your patients over the years have been less than pleased with their treatment? Have you ever kicked a dog? Maybe failed to brake when a squirrel ran out in front of your car up there at your vacation house on Cape Cod?”

  Merlin smiled again, but now the smile had turned nasty.

  “I already know about that place,” he said. “A nice farmhouse in a lovely field on the edge of a forest with a garden and with just a little bit of ocean view. Twelve acres. Purchased from a middle-aged woman whose husband had just died back in 1984. Sort of took advantage of the bereaved in that transaction, huh, doc? Do you have any idea how the value of that property has increased? I’m sure you do. Let me suggest to you, Doctor Starks, one thing and one thing only. Whether or not there’s the slightest bit of truth involved in my client’s allegation, I’m going to own that property before this is finished. And I’m going to own your apartment, and your bank account at Chase, and the retirement account at Dean Witter that you haven’t yet dipped into, and the modest stock portfolio you keep with the same brokerage firm. But I’ll start with the summer place. Twelve acres. I think I can subdivide and make a killing. What do you think, doc?”

  Ricky listened to the lawyer, reeling internally.

  “How do you know—” he started lamely.

  “I make it my business to know,” Merlin cut him off rapidly. “If you didn’t have something I wanted, I wouldn’t be bothering. But you do, and trust me on this, doc, because your lawyer will tell you the same, the fight isn’t worth it.”

  “My integrity is certainly worth it,” Ricky replied.

  Merlin shrugged again. “You’re not seeing clearly here, doctor. I’m trying to tell you how to leave your integrity more or less intact. You rather foolishly believe that this has something to do with being right or wrong. Telling the truth rather than lying. I find this intriguing, coming from a veteran psychoanalyst such as yourself. Is the truth, in some wondrously authentic and clear-cut fashion, something that you hear often? Or are truths hidden, concealed, and covered up with all sorts of curious psychological baggage, elusive and slippery once identified? And never exactly black or white, either. More like shades of gray, brown, and even red. Isn’t that what your profession preaches?”

  Ricky felt foolish. The lawyer’s words were battering him like so many punches in a mismatched prizefight. He took a deep breath, thinking he was stupid to have come to the office, and the smart course was to get out rapidly. He was about to rise, when Merlin added:

  “Hell can take many forms, Doctor Starks. Think of me as merely one of them.”

  “Come again?” Ricky said. But what he recalled was what Virgil had said in their first meeting, when she told him that she was to be his guide to Hell, and that was where her name came from.

  The lawyer smiled. “In Arthurian times,” he said not unpleasantly, with the confidence of a man who has sized up the opposition and found it distinctly lacking, “Hell was very real in the minds of all sorts of folks, even the educated and sophisticated. They truly believed in demons, devils, possession by evil spirits, what have you. They could smell fire and brimstone awaiting the less than pious, thought that burning pits and eternal tortures were not unreasonable outcomes for poorly led lives. Today, things are more complicated, doctor, aren’t they? We don’t really think we’re going to suffer burning tongs and eternal damnation in some fiery pit. So, what do we have instead? Lawyers. And trust me on this, doc, I can quite easily turn your life into something resembling a medieval picture etched by one of those nightmare artists. What you want is to take the easy way out, doc. The easy way. Better check that insurance policy again.”

  The door to the conference room swung open right then, and two of the moving men hesitated before entering. “We’d like to get this stuff now,” one man said. “It’s pretty much all that’s left.”

  Merlin rose. “No problem. I believe Doctor Starks was just getting ready to leave.”

  Ricky, too, stood. He nodded. “Yes. I am.” He looked down at the lawyer’s card. “This is where my attorney should contact you?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right,” he said. “And you’ll be available . . .”

  “At your convenience, doctor. I think you’d be wise to get this settled promptly. You’d hate to waste your precious vacation worrying about me, wouldn’t you?”

  Ricky did not reply, although he noted that he had not mentioned his vacation plans to the lawyer. He simply nodded, then turned and exited the office, not looking back for a second.

  Ricky slid into a cab and told the driver to take him to the Plaza Hotel. This was barely a dozen blocks away. For what Ricky had in mind, it seemed the best selection. The cab lurched forward, racing through midtown in that unique manner that city cabs have, accelerating quickly, surging, braking, shifting, slaloming through traffic, making no better and no worse time than a steady, contained, direct path would have. Ricky looked at the cabdriver’s identification shield, which, as expected, was another unfathomable foreign name. He sat back, thinking how hard it is sometimes to get a cab in Manhattan, and wasn’t it intriguing that one was so readily available as he emerged, shaken, from the attorney’s office. Just as if it had been waiting for him.

  The cabdriver pulled sharply to the curb outside the hotel’s entrance. Ricky jammed some money through the Plexiglas partition, and exited the cab. He ignored the doorman, and jumped up the stairs and through the revolving hotel doors. The lobby was milling with guests, and he rapidly threaded his way through several parties and tour groups, dodging piles of luggage and scurrying bellhops. He launched himself to The Palm Court. On the far side of the restaurant, he paused, stared at a menu for a moment, then ducked down, hunching over slightly and headed for the corridor, moving at as quick a pace as he could muster without drawing undue attention, more like a man late for a train. He went directly to the Central Park South exit of the hotel, stepping through the doors, back onto the street.

  There was a doorman flagging cabs for guests as they emerged. Ricky stepped past one family gathered at the curb. “Do you mind,” he said to a middle-aged father dressed in a Hawaiian print shirt who was riding herd on three rowdy children all between the ages of six and ten. A mousy wife stood to the side, mother-henning the entire brood. “I have a bit of an emergency. I don’t mean to be rude, but . . .” The father looked at Ricky crazily, as if no family trip all the way from Idaho to New York would be complete without someone stealing a cab from them, and then wordlessly gestured to the door. Ricky jumped in, slamming it behind him as he heard the wife say, “Ralph, what are you doing? That was ours . . .”

  This cabdriver, Ricky thought, at least, wasn’t someone hired by Rumplestiltskin. He gave the driver the address of Merlin’s office.

  As he suspected, the moving van was no longer parked out front. The security guard in his blue blazer had disappeared as well.

  Ricky leaned forward and knocked on the cabdriver’s partition. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “Take me to this address, please.” He read the new address off the attorney’s card. “But when you get close, stop about a block away, okay? I don’t want to pull up in front.”

  The cabdriver silently shrugged and nodded.

  It took a quarter hour to battle through traffic. The address on Merlin’s card was near Wall Street. It reeked of prestige.

  The driver did as he’d been asked, pulling to the side a block shy of the address. “Up there,” the man said. “You want me to drive?”

  “No,” Ricky replied. “This is fine.” He paid and tossed himself from the tight confines of the rear seat.

  As he’d half guessed, there was no sign of the moving truck outside the large office building. He looked up and down the street, but saw no sign of the attorney, nor the compa
ny, nor the office furniture. He double-checked the address on the card, making certain that he had it correct, then looked into the building and saw there was a security desk just inside the front door. A single uniformed guard, reading a paperback novel, had taken up a position behind a bank of video monitors and an electronic board that showed the elevator operations. Ricky stepped into the building and first approached an office directory printed on the wall. He quickly checked and found no listing for anyone named Merlin. Ricky walked over to the guard, who looked up as he came forward.

  “Help you?” he said.

  “Yes,” Ricky replied. “I seem to be confused. I have this lawyer’s card, with this address, but I can’t seem to find his listing. He should be moving in today.”

  The guard checked the card, frowned, and shook his head. “That’s the right address,” he said, “but we’ve got nobody by that name.”

  “Maybe an empty office? Like I said, moving in today?”

  “No one told security nothing. And there aren’t any vacancies. Haven’t been for years.”

  “Well, that’s strange,” Ricky said. “Must be a printer’s mistake.”

  The guard handed back the card. “Could be,” he said.

  Ricky pocketed the card, thinking that he’d just won his first skirmish with the man stalking him. But to what advantage, he wasn’t sure.

  Ricky was still feeling slightly smug as he arrived at his own building. He was unsure who he’d met in the attorney’s office, wondering whether the man who called himself Merlin wasn’t really Rumplestiltskin himself. This was a distinct possibility, Ricky thought, because he was certain that the man at the core of the situation would want to see Ricky himself, face-to-face. He wasn’t precisely certain why he believed this, but it seemed to make some sense. It was difficult to imagine someone gaining pleasure from tormenting him, without that person wanting to get a firsthand opportunity to see his handiwork.

  But this observation did not even begin to color in the portrait he knew he would have to create in order to guess that man’s name.

  “What do you know about psychopaths?” he asked himself, as he walked up the steps to the brownstone building that housed his home office and four other apartments. Not much, he answered quietly to himself. What he knew about were the troubles and neuroses of the mildly to significantly crippled. He knew about the lies well-to-do people told themselves to justify their behavior. He didn’t think he knew much about someone who would create an entire world of lies in order to bring about his death. Ricky understood that this was uncharted territory for him.

  In an instant, the satisfaction Ricky had felt outmaneuvering Rumplestiltskin once, fled. He reminded himself coldly: Remember what’s at stake.

  He saw that the mail had been delivered, and he opened his box. One long, thin envelope bore an official seal in the upper left-hand corner from the Transit Authority of the City of New York. He opened this first.

  There was a small piece of paper clipped to a larger photocopied sheet. He read the small letter first.

  Dear Dr. Starks:

  Our investigation uncovered the enclosed among

  Mr. Zimmerman’s personal effects. Because it mentions

  you, and seems to comment on your treatment, I send it along.

  Our file on this death, incidentally, is now closed.

  Sincerely,

  Detective J. Riggins

  Ricky flipped the cover letter back and read the photocopy. It was brief, typed, and filled him with a distant dread.

  To whom it may concern:

  I talk and talk, but never get better. No one helps me. No one

  listens to the real me. I have made arrangements for my mother. These

  can be found along with will, insurance papers, and other documents in

  my desk at work. Apologies to all involved, except Dr. Starks. Goodbye

  to the rest.

  Roger Zimmerman

  Even the signature had been typed. Ricky stared at the suicide note, feeling his emotions simply drain through him.

  Chapter Nine

  Zimmerman’s note, Ricky thought, could not be real.

  Internally, he remained adamant: Zimmerman was no more likely to take his own life than Ricky was. He showed no signs of suicidal ideation, no inclinations to self-destruction, no propensity for self-violence. Zimmerman was neurotic and stubborn and only beginning to understand analytic insight; he was a man who still had to be pushed into doing anything, just as Ricky believed he had to have been pushed in front of that subway train. But Ricky was just starting to have trouble discerning what was real and what wasn’t. Even with the detective’s letter in front of him, after his visit to the subway station and the police office, he still was having difficulty accepting the reality of Zimmerman’s death. It remained fixed somewhere in the surreal. He looked down at the suicide letter and realized he was the only person named. He took note, also, that it hadn’t been signed by hand. Instead, the person who wrote the note had typed Zimmerman’s name. Or, Zimmerman had typed his name if he had indeed written the note.

  Ricky’s head spun.

  Any elation he felt at outmaneuvering the attorney that morning dissipated, replaced with a queasiness bordering on nausea that seemed to start in his stomach, but which he guessed was really psychosomatic. He rode the elevator to his home with the sensation of weight dragging at his heels, resting on his shoulders. The first threads of self-pity crept into his heart, the Why me? question dogging his slow steps. By the time he reached his office, he felt exhausted.

  He threw himself down behind his desk and seized the letter from the Psychoanalytic Society. He mentally crossed off the lawyer’s name, though he wasn’t silly enough to think that he had heard the last from Merlin, whoever he was. The name of the Boston-based therapist that his alleged victim was seeing was included in the letter, and Ricky understood that was undoubtedly meant to be his next call. For a moment, he wanted to ignore the name, not do what he was clearly supposed to do, but then, equally, he realized that failing to vigorously protest his innocence would be considered the act of a guilty man, so, even if it was anticipated and equally useless, he had to make that call.

  Still feeling sick to his stomach, Ricky reached out and dialed the therapist’s number. It rang once, then, as he’d half expected, he got an answering machine: “This is Doctor Martin Soloman. I cannot take your call at this moment. Please leave your name and number and a brief message, and I will get back to you promptly.” At least, Ricky thought, he hasn’t left for vacation yet.

  “Doctor Soloman,” Ricky said briskly, an actor trying to fill his voice with an element of outrage and indignation, “this is Doctor Frederick Starks in Manhattan. I have been accused by a patient of yours of serious misconduct. I would like to inform you that these allegations are totally false. They are fantasy, without any basis in substance or reality. Thank you.”

  Then he hung up. The solidity of his message restored some of his spirits. He looked at his watch. Five minutes, he thought. Ten at the most, before he calls back.

  About this he was correct. At the seven-minute mark, the telephone rang.

  He answered with a solid, deep, “Doctor Starks speaking.”

  The man at the other end of the line seemed to inhale sharply before saying, “Doctor, this is Martin Soloman. I received your brief message and thought it wise if I got right back to you.”

  Ricky waited for a moment or two, filling the line with silence, before continuing, “Who is your patient, who has accused me of this reprehensible behavior?”

  He was greeted with an equal space of quiet, before Soloman said, “I don’t know that I’m at liberty yet to divulge her name. She has told me that when investigators from the proper medical ethics authorities contact this office, she will make herself available. Merely voicing the complaint to the New York Psychoanalytic Society was an important first step in her recovery. She needs to proceed cautiously. But this seems incredible to me, doctor. Sure
ly you know who your patients were such a short time ago? And claims such as hers, with the detail she has provided me over the past six months, certainly lend credence to what she’s said.”

  “Detail?” Ricky asked. “What sort of detail?”

  The doctor hesitated. “Well, I don’t know how much—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t believe for a second that this person exists,” Ricky interrupted sharply.

  “I can assure you she is completely real. And her pain is substantial,” the therapist said, mimicking what Merlin the lawyer had pronounced earlier that day. “Frankly, doctor, I find your denials less than persuasive.”

  “Then what details?”

  Soloman hesitated before saying, “She has described you, physically and intimately. She has described your office. She can imitate your voice, which, I might say now, seems an uncannily accurate imitation . . .”

  “Impossible,” Ricky blurted.

  Doctor Soloman paused again, then asked, “Tell me, doctor, on the wall in your office next to the portrait of Freud, is there a small blue and yellow woodcut of a Cape Cod sunset?”

  Ricky almost choked. Of the few pieces of art remaining in the monastic world of his office and apartment, that was one. It had been a present to him from his wife on their fifteenth wedding anniversary, and it was one of the few items that survived his purge of her presence after she succumbed to cancer.

  Soloman continued, “It’s there isn’t it? My patient said that she would focus on that particular piece of art, trying to will herself into the picture, while you were abusing her sexually. Like an out-of-body experience. I’ve known other victims of sex crimes to do the same, to imagine themselves someplace other than reality. It’s not an uncommon defense mechanism.”