Shrink Rap

by Robert B. Parker

  “No problem, Hal,” Gottlieb said.

  “I just broke up with my girlfriend last night,” Hal said, “and I was so bummed that I spent the night at Romeo’s Retreat. My head’s really fucked up.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Hal,” Gottlieb said and introduced Melanie Joan.

  Hal made full eye contact, and smiled brilliantly.

  “What an honor,” he said. “I really love your books.”

  “This is my friend Sunny Randall,” Melanie Joan said.

  Hal said, “Hey,” and glanced at me briefly and spotted Rosie.

  “The dog has got to go,” Hal said.

  “I’m sure they can put him in the bedroom,” Gottlieb said.

  “Maybe we could put Hal in the bedroom,” I said.

  Gottlieb smiled again. “Why don’t I just put him away for you, Cindy.”

  “Sunny,” I said. “Perhaps I could just hold her here in my lap and Mr. Race will be safe.”

  “The dog has to go,” Hal said.

  Gottlieb looked at Melanie Joan. Melanie Joan smiled back at him and said nothing.

  “Here,” Gottlieb said, “let me take him for you.”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You may not touch my dog,” I said.

  “Hey,” Race said, “who is this broad? It’s only a fucking dog.”

  “Like your last movie,” I said.

  “Perhaps Sunny can hold Rosie on her lap,” Melanie Joan said.

  “Fuck this,” Race said. “I’m walking.”

  His little face was very red. I took a deep breath. This wasn’t my deal. It wouldn’t kill Rosie to stay for a while in my bedroom. I could give her one of her chewy toys. I looked at Melanie Joan. Her face was serene. She stood and put out her hand.

  “Well, it was very nice to meet you, Mr. Race.”

  Hal started to put his hand out automatically, and stopped. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re walking,” Melanie Joan said. “I’m saying goodbye.”

  I could see the slow gears in Hal’s head begin to turn. He smiled warmly.

  “Hey, Melanie, lighten up,” he said. “I was just fooling around.”

  “You’re not walking?”

  “No, no. I been up all night and my head’s a little screwed. If Cindy holds that dog, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  Melanie Joan turned to me and smiled with continuing serenity.

  “That okay with you, Cindy?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Hal didn’t actually look at Rosie, but he smiled his warm sincere smile at me.

  “He is kind of a cute dog,” Hal said.

  Chapter 19

  We were shimmying across the hateful steel grid bridge over the Housatonic River, south of New Haven.

  “Why in God’s name do they make bridges like this?” Melanie Joan said.

  “Must have something to do with money,” I said.

  “Well, aren’t you cynical,” Melanie Joan said.

  “I am,” I said.

  My car reached solid highway again and settled in. Rosie settled back down on Melanie Joan’s lap. And we continued north.

  “You put a lot on the line just to keep Rosie from being shut in the bedroom,” I said.

  Melanie Joan smiled and kissed Rosie on the top of her head. Rosie accepted it as if it were expected and had no reaction beyond a small ear twitch.

  “It wasn’t a big risk,” Melanie Joan said. “He wasn’t going to walk.”

  “Because?”

  “Because he needed the money.”

  “Hal Race needs money?” I said.

  “Certainly. He has three alimonies and two child supports. He has a manager, an agent, a driver, a personal assistant, a bodyguard, his own makeup person, his own hair person, a house in Malibu, a ranch in Santa Barbara, four cars…”

  “Four,” I said.

  “Four,” Melanie Joan said. “Then there’s his retinue.”

  “Retinue?”

  “The people he hangs around with.”

  “They cost money?”

  “Of course. He always picks up the tab, dinner, plane fare, whatever.”

  “They don’t hang with him because they like him?” I said.

  “Would you?” Melanie Joan said.

  “No.”

  “See?”

  “So he needed the money too badly to walk out on your deal.”

  “Of course. It’s a good deal. We already have some foreign money in place. The studio’s committed to a big-budget picture and he gets a percentage of the adjusted gross.”

  “What the hell is adjusted gross?” I said.

  “No one knows,” Melanie Joan said. “Only the really heavy hitters, you know, Harrison Ford maybe, Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Julia Roberts, get a piece of the unadjusted gross. And even their percentage of the gross is probably doctored by the studio.”

  “Legally?” I said.

  “No.”

  “I’m shocked,” I said. “Shocked, I tell you.”

  “So poor Hal grows up thinking he matters,” Melanie Joan said. “Everybody he ever talks to says he’s great, really great. They say that they loved his last picture, absolutely loved it. They say he’s got authentic star power, that he’s the man, that the camera is kind to him, that every idea he has is great.”

  “And he believes it?”

  “On the set, every time the camera stops rolling he sits in a chair with his name on it and somebody comes around with a hand mirror hanging on a string around their neck and they make sure his hair is perfect and retouch his makeup and hold up the mirror and say, ‘You look fabulous.’”

  “Movie-star land,” I said.

  “Yes,” Melanie Joan said. “And as long as he stays in it and doesn’t venture out, he can believe all of it.”

  “And when he threatened to walk and you said go ahead, it was like somebody left the door open for a minute and he felt the chill of reality.”

  “A momentary breeze from human land,” Melanie Joan said.

  “So how is it,” I said, “that you can be so tough with Hal Race, and so, ah, hesitant, with your ex-husband?”

  “Hal Race is a harmless turd,” Melanie Joan said.

  “And Dr. Melvin?”

  “He’s not harmless,” Melanie Joan said.

  Chapter 20

  That afternoon I called Dr. Melvin’s service and was told that his office hours were 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. That night after office hours, I sat in my car up the street from John Melvin’s home and office, in the shadowy patch between two streetlights. I wanted to see how Dr. Melvin spent his evenings. Rosie was asleep on the front seat beside me, making small satisfied snorey noises. Her left foreleg was over her nose.

  My motor was idling and I was listening to a new CD Spike had given me in which Peter Marshall sang the great songs of my father’s boyhood. I liked the music of my father’s boyhood. Probably Oedipal.

  A gray Lexus sedan pulled up across the street in front of John Melvin’s house and a slim blond woman got out wearing an ankle-length black coat. She went up the windy little path and into Melvin’s house. It was too dark to be sure, but she could have been someone I’d seen before. I checked my list of license-plate numbers and found a match for the Lexus. The owner’s name was Augustus J. Walsh, and he lived in Winchester. The blond woman was in there for an hour and twenty minutes. She came back down the path walking fast, got in her car, and pulled away fast. At 8:15 a silver Volvo wagon pulled up and another woman got out. She wore jeans and a fur jacket. Her hair was dark and she had a young walk as she went up to Melvin’s house. I checked the Volvo. Another match. This time the car was registered to Kim Crawford in Concord. I listened to Peter Marshall some more… crazy moon… I thought about you… everything happens to me. Rosie shifted sides once, so that her right foreleg was over her nose. She made some sort of snorty sound that was, I believe bull terrier for snoring. Nobody else showed up at Dr. Melvin’s house. At twenty past ten, Kim came out
and walked to the Volvo. It was early November and the nearly half moon looked paler and colder and more uninvolved than I remembered it looking in the summer. At eleven, two white men, neither of them Melvin, both about his age, came out of the house and walked up the street a ways to a black Porsche Boxster parked away from the streetlight. The plate numbers didn’t match any that I had. They could still be patients, of course, but if they were patients, would they come together? Couples therapy? And what were they doing while the women were there, or what were the women doing while they were there, quartet therapy? The Boxster pulled slowly out of the shadows and proceeded up the block and turned left and disappeared.

  Nobody else showed up for a late-hour appointment with Dr. Melvin. Dr. Melvin did not come out or go anywhere. A woman about my mother’s age walked by with some sort of spaniel on a leash. Rosie sprang from slumber and gargled savagely at it and bounced around off the inside of the car. The woman looked offended and pulled the spaniel away from the car briskly. When the spaniel was out of range Rosie stood trembling alertly for another minute and then went back to sleep. Nothing else happened. I stayed grimly put for another hour and fifteen minutes, and, at twenty-five to twelve I quit and drove home to South Boston.

  Chapter 21

  I went to see Max Copeland.

  “I’m a detective,” I said. “I’m working on a case involving a psychiatrist and I thought it might be useful if I had someone like you to consult with on it. My friend Julie recommended you.”

  Copeland nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve spoken with Julie.”

  He had very clear features and a strong neck. His black hair was combed back smooth. He wore round eyeglasses with black frames.

  “What do you think?” I said. “Could we work together?”

  “Who is the psychiatrist?” Copeland said.

  “I prefer not to say.”

  “Because?”

  “Until I’ve made my case,” I said, “I feel that I should not, ah, bad-mouth him to his colleagues.”

  “Because?”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t want you prejudging him.”

  “And you don’t trust me to make that decision?”

  “Why are we even discussing this,” I said. “What difference does it make?”

  Copeland leaned back in his chair. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a pink satin tie. He put his hands together, fingertips touching, and tapped his upper lip.

  “At the heart of any therapeutic relationship is trust. If we are to get anywhere in here I have to trust you that you are speaking truthfully and you have to trust me that I can handle it.”

  “I’m not here for therapy,” I said.

  Copeland made one of those little nonjudgmental head gestures that shrinks seem to have patented, and didn’t say anything.

  “He, call him Dr. Ex, is stalking his former wife. I thought if I went to see him and pretended to need therapy, I might be able to get a handle on what he’s about.”

  “And?”

  “And find a way to chase him off.”

  “And you have no emotional stake in this,” Copeland said.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  Copeland was beginning to annoy me.

  “But you’d like to solve the case.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I like Mrs. Ex. It would please me to be able to help her.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I’m a detective,” I said. “It’s the kind of thing people hire me to do. I would feel good about a job well done.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Are you married?”

  “I’m divorced,” I said.

  “Children?”

  “No. What difference does it make?”

  “I don’t know,” Copeland said. “It’s why I’m asking.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make a difference.”

  “Does it annoy you that I ask?” Copeland said.

  “No. It just seems irrelevant.”

  “What would be relevant?”

  “Jesus, you are being a pain in the ass,” I said.

  Copeland smiled and made no comment.

  “Here’s the plan,” I said. “I’m going to go see Dr. Ex as a patient. I believe that he exploits his women patients, and I want to see if he’ll try to exploit me. So I thought I’d go and talk with him and then come to you and tell you what happened and see what you thought.”

  Copeland nodded.

  “Will you agree to that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m not seeing you for my health, so to pay you through health insurance would be fraudulent. If you could bill me direct you could be paid out of my expense account.”

  Copeland nodded.

  “You don’t talk very much,” I said.

  Copeland smiled again. “When Freud spoke of the talking cure,” Copeland said, “he was not referring to the therapist.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If you want to pretend it’s therapy, we’ll pretend it’s therapy, as long as I can get your input on Dr. Ex.”

  Copeland nodded.

  “Assuming he’s a man who exploits his female patients,” I said, “what kind of story should I tell him?”

  “It is simpler to talk about things that bother you, and follow where it leads,” Copeland said. “Then you don’t have to maintain a fiction.”

  “So what do I say when I first go in and sit down?”

  “Relax, pay attention to your feelings, see what comes.”

  “Don’t prepare?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t,” Copeland said. “Be genuine. There are things that bother you, let them lead you.”

  “And if things don’t bother me?”

  “Then you are not human,” Copeland said.

  Chapter 22

  I was at the gym with Spike.

  “You do everything I do,” he said, “and maybe someday you’ll look just like me.”

  He was hitting the big body bag, the sweat soaked through his gray sweatshirt.

  “You look like a polar bear,” I said.

  “So?”

  “So how will looking like a polar bear enhance my sex life?”

  “Hasn’t hurt mine,” Spike said.

  “And we’re both trying to access the same gender pool,” I said.

  “See?”

  “Let me try that,” I said.

  Spike stepped away from the bag and gave me access. I assessed the bag. When I was small my father had showed me how to hit it, despite my mother’s persistent disapproval. But it was a long time ago, and I was, after all, a girl.

  “Put the gloves on,” Spike said, “or you skin your knuckles up.”

  Spike’s gloves were too big. I turned my fists in a little and hit the bag with a left hand like Daddy had taught me. The bag shook only a little.

  “Where’s Billy Blanks when you need him,” Spike said.

  “What am I doing wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Spike said. “You’re a girl. Girls can’t hit the heavy bag.”

  “And that would be why?” I said.

  “You’re missing a crucial part of the anatomy,” Spike said.

  “You don’t hit it with that,” I said.

  “No, but it guides the punches.”

  I hit the bag again.

  “You need to hit it as much as you can with the weight of your cute, puny body behind it,” Spike said. “Like this.”

  He hit the bag bare-fisted. It jumped.

  “See, keep your hands in close. Turn your shoulder in, now, try to punch through the bag.”

  I did what he said.

  “Better,” he said. “But you need to try to punch through it. You’re landing the punches on the surface.”

  I did it again. The bag moved.

  “See?” Spike said.

  “I made it jump,” I said.

  “You made it sway,” Spike said.

  “I’m a girl,” I said. “Girls like to make it sway.”

  “Th
at’s ‘cause you can’t make it jump.”

  “I could make it jump if I wanted to.”

  Spike grinned at me. “Sunny,” he said, “you could make me jump if you wanted to.”

  “I know,” I said.

  The gym was busy. I’d been going there for ten years, since before my divorce, and I recognized a lot of the people. They were there every time I was, working hard. A lot of them, especially the women, had trainers. The trainers were very serious about it. And almost everybody looked exactly the same as they had ten years ago, except older. Maybe it was all only about health.

  When we got through, Spike and I sat in the lounge and had some juice.

  “I told you about Melanie Joan Hall’s husband.”

  “The stalker?”

  “Yes. He’s a shrink.”

  “Maybe he can help himself understand why he’s stalking her,” Spike said.

  “I’m going to go see him.”

  “About you and Richie?”

  “I think he’s exploiting women patients,” I said to Spike.

  “Doesn’t make him a bad shrink,” Spike said.

  “I’m going to go in and start therapy with him and see if I can catch him.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then I’ve got some leverage on him,” I said. “To get him off Melanie Joan’s case.”

  “Two birds with one stone,” Spike said. “You could squeeze in a little therapy while you were in there.”

  “Oh stop it,” I said. “I went to another psychiatrist, a doctor named Copeland that Julie sent me to, to get some help with my presenting symptoms.”

  A tall young man with big blue eyes walked by in a tank top undershirt. He was in great shape.

  “Yowzah!” Spike said, watching him pass.

  “Me too,” I said. “Copeland said to stick as close as I could to the truth and that way I wouldn’t have to make stuff up.”

  “You like him?” Spike said. “Copeland?”

  “Yes. I think so. Except he keeps treating me as if I were a candidate for therapy.”

  “Well, heaven for-fucking-fend,” Spike said.

  “You think I need therapy? I had some when Richie and I separated.”

  “And that straightened you right out,” Spike said.

  “Yes.”

  “Other than you can’t be with Richie or without him,” Spike said.