Shrink Rap

by Robert B. Parker

  Chapter 15

  Brian Kelly had a desk near the window in the detectives’ squad room, in the new Area D Station, where he could look down onto Harrison Avenue. He was sitting at the desk, with one foot on a pulled-out bottom drawer. He was wearing a charcoal gray polo shirt and jeans. His badge was pinned to his belt next to his gun.

  “Hello darlin’,” he said.

  I sat in the guest chair beside his desk.

  “Hello,” I said and handed him the list of license numbers I had accumulated from four days of sitting outside the office of John Melvin, M.D. I’d have gathered a full weeks’ worth but Melanie Joan had to make two daytime signing appearances on Thursday. At least Melvin hadn’t appeared. I assumed he was busy helping attractive women, which to the best of my ability to observe made up his entire client base.

  “Could I help you get listings for these numbers from the Registry?” Brian said.

  “How kind of you to offer.”

  “Like you weren’t going to ask,” Brian said.

  “I was going to ask nicely,” I said.

  “It’s always the same,” Brian said. “You ball somebody a few times and they’re after you for favors ever after.”

  “Why do you think somebody balled you?” I said.

  Brian grinned at me. “I remember why,” he said. “I remember a lot.”

  I might have blushed. If I did, Brian took no notice. He was a slim man, and very neat, with dark hair cut short. His jeans were pressed. His shoes were shined. The polo shirt might have been new. He was also quite strong, as I remembered, in the wiry way some slim guys have.

  “So can you do it?” I said. “For the good times?”

  “Sure. I’ll fax these over. We’ll go have lunch, and the names should be here when we get back… if we eat slowly.”

  “And if I can’t do lunch?” I said.

  Brian smiled again and handed me back the list without comment.

  “Lunch it is,” I said.

  We ate at a coffee shop full of cops a block from Area D Station. I had a grilled cheese sandwich.

  “You back with your husband?” Brian said.

  “Not really,” I said.

  I liked the whispery smell of Brian’s aftershave. He ate very neatly, with precise little movements. His eyes were big and brown and kind, although I was sure he could do the dead-eyed cop stare as well as anyone.

  “But you haven’t shaken loose,” Brian said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Seeing anybody else?”

  “No,” I said. “Not at the moment.”

  “Don’t want to?”

  “No, I’m happy to date. I just haven’t met anyone recently.”

  “See,” Brian said. “Should have grabbed me while you could.”

  I smiled at him.

  “Never say never.”

  Brian smiled back.

  “I’m getting married,” he said.

  Damn.

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” I said. “Tell me about her.”

  “She’s a first-grade teacher,” Brian said. “In Duxbury.”

  I didn’t care if she was Catherine the Great. But I smiled and nodded.

  “I got fixed up,” Brian said. “Not too long after you and I…”

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said. “She’s great.”

  “I’m happy for you,” I said.

  Brian nodded. “You were pretty great too, Sunny.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it,” Brian said. “You were sensational in bed.”

  I felt a little uncomfortable. It had been right after I had divorced Richie, crazy time, and I had some extreme moments as I relearned the dating game.

  “Yes,” I said. “We were good at that.”

  “You were, are, pretty sensational anyway, Sunny. In or out of bed.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want the rest of my sandwich. I felt as if my throat might close, as if I might cry.

  “You okay?” Brian said.

  I nodded. “I’m swell,” I said. “Perfectly swell.”

  Chapter 16

  “You always had Brian in the corner of your mind as a sort of backup person,” Julie said. “That’s why you feel so bad.”

  “So if it didn’t work out with Richie I always had Brian.”

  “Something like that,” Julie said.

  We were at Biba, on Boylston Street, at the downstairs bar, drinking piña coladas.

  “I hate to think that of myself,” I said.

  “Sometimes,” Julie said, “the things you hate to think are the ones you have to think about.”

  “That’s such a shrinky thing to say.”

  “I know,” Julie said. “But you knew I was a shrink when you agreed to be my friend.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I was your friend before you were a shrink.”

  “And have decided to forgive me for it.”

  “Well,” I said. “You’re only an M.S.W.”

  “Good point,” Julie said.

  We each sipped some piña colada.

  “It’s hard to be alone,” Julie said. “And it’s hard to think of yourself alone. I’m going through that too. Your sister went through it last year with that dreadful man.”

  “Her choices haven’t improved,” I said.

  “You didn’t want to fall into that trap,” Julie said.

  “What trap is that?” I said.

  “Without a man I’m insufficient,” Julie said.

  “Like you did with whatsisname,” I said.

  “Just like that,” Julie said.

  “Was that Robert?” I said.

  “Whatsisname is fine,” Julie said. “I couldn’t even leave Michael until I had Whatsis lined up.”

  “I like men,” I said.

  “I do too. But we both need to make sure we like ourselves with a man or without one.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Shrink city.”

  “It’s annoying, isn’t it?” Julie said.

  “You’re trying to help,” I said.

  “I’m saying maybe you need to get help. A few words of advice from me won’t make you change your needs.”

  “Maybe they will,” I said. “You know how competitive I am. Maybe I’ll prove you wrong.”

  Julie smiled. She forgave me my foolishness. “Maybe,” she said. “Have you found out anything about Melanie Joan’s husband?”

  “Dr. Melvin,” I said. “Maybe I should go to him about my need for men.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Julie said. “Have you learned anything?”

  “All his patients seem to be female,” I said. “I have names for three days’ worth of them.”

  “Do they help, at all?”

  “No. I don’t know any of them.”

  We finished our piña coladas and ordered more.

  “All women,” Julie said.

  “Un huh.”

  The bar was filling with after-work people keeping an eye out for companionship. They were young.

  “If this man is the way he seems to be,” Julie said, “and he has a therapeutic practice devoted exclusively to women…”

  “I don’t know that it’s exclusive,” I said.

  “Okay, how about preponderance?”

  “Preponderance seems accurate.”

  “Good,” Julie said. “So with all these women available to him, and vulnerable…”

  “He’d take advantage of that.”

  “He might. I mean it’s hideously inappropriate…”

  “So is cutting your wrists and smearing the blood on a window.”

  “Did you report him for that?” Julie said.

  “No. Melanie Joan didn’t want to.”

  “Because?”

  “Because she didn’t want to get into a long scandalous hearing process, she said.”

  “You believe her?” Julie said.

  “That could be a reason,” I said. “But he’s still got a lot of power over her.”
/>
  “He would know how to use it,” Julie said.

  “Because he’s a shrink?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well,” I said. “Maybe I’ll monitor him after hours and see what that turns up.”

  “And if it turns up something?” Julie said.

  I smiled at her. “Jule,” I said, “you know I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “None of us seem to,” Julie said. “Are you getting paid to investigate Dr. Melvin?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “So why?”

  “Why investigate?”

  “Un huh.”

  “Well, maybe if I could figure him out I could help Melanie Joan get rid of him.”

  “And thus put yourself out of work.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m not really suited to bodyguard anyway. I’m a detective.”

  “But you made an exception for her,” Julie said.

  “I guess.”

  “And now that you have, you feel bad for her,” Julie said.

  “I do.”

  “Don’t get confused,” Julie said.

  “About what?”

  “About where she ends and you begin,” Julie said.

  “I’ve been confused about that all my life,” I said.

  “Well,” Julie said. “At least you know it.”

  We were crowded now, down to the corner of the bar as more and more young people pushed in for a drink.

  “It might be even better,” I said, “if I could do something about it.”

  “That would be the next step,” Julie said.

  “Do you have a suggestion?”

  “Maxwell Copeland,” Julie said.

  “I think a woman shrink would be better.”

  Julie shook her head.

  “Male or female doesn’t matter,” she said. “Max Copeland is the best psychiatrist on the planet.”

  “On the planet?”

  Julie laughed. “That I know,” she said. She took her business card from her purse and wrote a phone number on the back. “Tell him I referred you,” she said.

  “Have you been his patient?” I said.

  “No. I know him too well for him to treat me.”

  “Funny, isn’t it,” I said. “For the most intimate help we seek out strangers.”

  “They are strangers to you,” Julie said. “But not to the illness.”

  “You see me as ill?” I said.

  “Don’t get worked up over words,” Julie said. “I believe that you need to resolve your relationship with Richie.”

  “Might that not be a relationship rooted in love?”

  “It might,” Julie said. “But the fact that you can’t be with him or without him suggests that there’s some pathology involved.”

  I sat back. I wanted to show her that she was absurd. But I couldn’t think of a way to do that, so maybe she wasn’t absurd.

  “Well,” I said. “It’s a little startling to see you in action.”

  “You mean as a therapist?”

  “Yes, I guess that’s what you’re being.”

  “I’m being your friend,” Julie said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I guess that’s what it is.”

  I took the card.

  Chapter 17

  I drove Melanie Joan to New York. She and I in the front seat, Rosie in the backseat and somewhat grumpy about it. By Rosie’s perception Melanie Joan was in her seat. On the way, somewhere around Greenwich, I asked her if she knew anything about her husband’s medical practice.

  “He’s not my husband anymore,” she said.

  “True,” I said. “What can you tell me about Dr. Melvin’s practice?”

  “I know he’s a Freudian.”

  “And you know that it’s predominantly female.”

  Melanie Joan smiled. “Women adore him,” she said. “I used to.”

  “Often in psychotherapy the therapist has considerable power over the patient,” I said.

  “Absolutely,” Melanie Joan said.

  “Do you think that Dr. Melvin might exploit that power?”

  “Absolutely,” Melanie Joan said.

  The rolling Connecticut countryside along the Merritt Parkway was bright. Indian summer was upon us. Melanie Joan’s publisher had offered to rent us a car, but I was happier driving my Subaru wagon, and I knew Rosie preferred it. There was something in the way she had repeated “absolutely.”

  “How did you meet Dr. Melvin?” I said.

  “I was his patient.”

  “You were in therapy with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the marriage grew out of the therapy?” I said.

  “It seemed so natural,” Melanie Joan said. “To marry my savior.”

  For maybe the twentieth time since we’d left Boston, Rosie wedged herself up onto the center console and gazed firmly at the front seat where Melanie Joan was sitting.

  “Is she dying to come up here?” Melanie Joan said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, can she sit in my lap?”

  “As easily as anything she’s ever done before,” I said.

  Melanie Joan patted the tops of her thighs.

  “Come on, Rosie,” she said.

  Rosie looked at me. I nodded. Rosie jumped from the console onto Melanie Joan’s lap.

  “Ow,” Melanie Joan said.

  “You offered,” I said.

  “I was not planning on an all-out assault,” Melanie Joan said.

  Rosie worried around on Melanie Joan’s lap for a while until she got in just the right position, then settled.

  “She thought you’d never ask,” I said. “Were you, ah, dating while you were his patient?”

  “John preferred to call us clients,” Melanie Joan said.

  I nodded. “Sure. Were you dating?”

  “Yes,” Melanie Joan said. “Not right away, of course. I was in therapy with him for maybe three months before he suggested we might get together for dinner.”

  “And?” I said.

  “And after the third time we had dinner, we went back to my place and had sex.”

  “Whose idea was that?” I said.

  I was trying to keep my voice neutral.

  “At the time I thought it was mine,” Melanie Joan said. “I was thrilled when he agreed.”

  She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking out the window while she slowly patted Rosie.

  “And now?”

  “Now I think he manipulated me into it.”

  “That would be my guess,” I said.

  Chapter 18

  We were in a two-bedroom suite at the Hotel Carlyle, in the living room having tea and talking with a film producer named Murray Gottlieb. We were also supposed to be talking with a film star named Hal Race, which was why we had come down to New York in the first place, but Hal hadn’t showed yet so Melanie Joan and Murray and I were making small talk and eating tea sandwiches while we waited. One of the doormen had volunteered to walk Rosie, and since Rosie would go walking with anyone who asked her, she was out for a while and we could eat our tea sandwiches without interference.

  “I talked to Hal’s assistant,” Gottlieb said. “Just before I came over. She says he knows of the meeting. That it’s on his calendar and his PalmPilot.”

  Melanie Joan smiled pleasantly and nodded.

  “Mr. Gottlieb and Mr. Race,” she said to me, “are interested in making a feature film…”

  “Not just one,” Gottlieb said. “We see Melanie Joan’s work as a franchise.”

  “Like Lethal Weapon,” I said. “Or Bruce Willis in a skyscraper.”

  “Exactly,” Gottlieb said. “We’re prepared to make a deal.”

  He seemed pleased at my intelligence.

  “And the point of this meeting,” Melanie Joan said, “is to see if I like them and want to work with them.”

  “How’s it going so far?” I said to Melanie Joan.

  “And Mr. Race hasn’t said anything stupid,” Melanie Joan said.


  “Yet,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Melanie Joan said, “yet.”

  Gottlieb looked as if we’d said something else nice. Someone knocked on the door.

  “Oh,” Gottlieb said, “that must be Hal, let me get it.”

  He opened the door and Rosie looked at him and barked. Gottlieb jumped a little. Behind Rosie, at the other end of the leash, was the doorman.

  “I’ve brought Rosie back,” he said.

  “Oh, boy,” Gottlieb said. “What a cute little dog.”

  The doorman unleashed Rosie and Gottlieb bent down to pat her. She swerved around Gottlieb and dashed to me with her mouth open and her tongue out.

  “Let me give you something,” I said to the doorman.

  Gottlieb took a twenty-dollar bill out and handed it to the doorman.

  “Thanks a lot,” he said.

  The doorman took it with that smooth way doormen have and backed out and closed the door. Gottlieb came back into the living room. Rosie was up on the couch beside me, her ears back, looking at Gottlieb.

  “Hi, Rosie,” Gottlieb said.

  Rosie didn’t answer.

  “What kind of dog is he?” Gottlieb said.

  “She’s a miniature English bull terrier,” I said.

  “Well, he’s really cute.”

  We drank some more tea. I gave Rosie a smoked salmon finger sandwich.

  “I love this franchise,” Gottlieb said. “Maybe get Julia or Gwyneth to costar with Hal.”

  “Do you have a writer in mind?” Melanie Joan said.

  “Well, if we can’t get you…”

  Melanie Joan shook her head.

  “… then we will absolutely insist on someone who will stay true to your books,” Gottlieb said.

  Melanie Joan smiled and nodded. Someone knocked at the door. Gottlieb jumped up to answer, and this time it was Hal Race. He was not as tall as I am, with longish black hair and a sort of seductive petulance around his mouth. On-screen he had always looked much taller. He had on baggy jeans and a V-neck black tee shirt and a Harris tweed jacket. A black watch-plaid woolen scarf was wound once around his neck with the long end hanging below his knees. His sunglasses sat up on top of his head nestled among the curls. He was impossibly gorgeous for a guy his size. I smiled without showing it at what Richie would think about him. And Spike, my God, Spike!

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Hal said.