Past Tense

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “If it’s not about money, then what’s it about?”

  “It’s about admission and confession. Atonement and apology.” She met my eyes for the first time. “It’s about giving me my life back.”

  “And because of what Charley did you can’t get it back?”

  She blinked away a tear. “My guide says I can but it will take much longer. Except I don’t know if I can take it much longer.”

  She shuddered so violently I thought she was going to collapse. I softened my tone and leaned against the car myself. “No one’s abusing you now, are they, Jillian?”

  “I’m abused every night of my life.”

  “By whom?”

  “By my memories.” She hugged herself as though her innards were septic and aflame, as though her memory was an infestation.

  “Your guide is Danielle?” I asked when she seemed a little better.

  She blinked and blushed. For a moment, I wondered if the alliance with her therapist were partly sexual. “Do you know her?” she asked eagerly.

  “Not yet. But I’ll need to speak with her.”

  “About me? She won’t talk to you about me. She can’t. It’s the law.”

  “I don’t need to know about you, I just need to know about Charley.”

  “She doesn’t know anything about him.”

  “I thought you said she told you that he’d abused you.”

  “She said probably. He probably abused me.”

  “When did she say this?”

  “Right afterward.”

  “In court?”

  She nodded. “She was there to speak out, to publish my truth. That’s why they sent him. Don’t you see? If that other man hadn’t grabbed the policeman, I’m sure he would have murdered Danielle as well.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Why did the CMI pick Charley to do their work? Did he know you from someplace? Did they think he could get to you easier?”

  She shook her head. “They used him because he was an agent of the state. He could do what he did and get away with it. He was immune to the law, just like the others.”

  I wanted to tell her that Charley was the law, for me and for lots of people, but that didn’t fit with her fantasy. “Did Danielle tell you anything else about him?”

  “Just that they use the system to enforce the silence and hide behind it. They have people at all levels of power; the judges and the politicians are almost all abusers themselves. They will do anything to maintain their defenses.”

  I still didn’t see a link to Charley, no matter what Jillian and her guide might think. “Were you abused in a ritual manner, Jillian?”

  She lowered her eyes and nodded. “At the end. Before I got away, I was the plaything of my father and his friends.”

  “Do you know who the friends were?”

  “I know the faces but not the names. I see them in my nightmares. I hear them seduce me; I feel them rape me; I smell them as they debase me with their urine and their excrement.”

  “Where are they now? These friends.”

  She shuddered. “Everywhere.”

  “Did these men abuse anyone else that you know? Your sister? Your friends?”

  “I’m sure they did. They are never satisfied. They use children like parlor games, they play with us until they get bored, and then they pass us along to others until finally they dispose of us. I’m lucky I escaped before they slaughtered me.”

  “Did Charley Sleet know any of the other victims? Do you think he could have been trying to help them?”

  “He was helping the CMI.”

  “The Corrected Memory Institute.”

  “Right.”

  “Who runs the CMI?”

  “They are a worldwide organization because the abusers are in all nations and are in constant need of protection. Their directorate includes several famous heads of state. Here in the city, the chief terrorist is a man named Kirby Allison. His office is on Beale Street. He tried to get me to go there once, supposedly to help me. He was trying to dispose of me, I think.”

  “You mean kill you?”

  She nodded.

  “Did Charley say anything to you after he shot your father, Jillian?”

  “No.”

  “Did he look at you? Smile? Frown? Nod? Anything at all that might indicate why he did it?”

  She thrust herself away from the car. “I’ve told you why he did it. Now, really, I have to go.”

  “Can I tell your guide it’s okay for her to talk to me?”

  “She won’t believe you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re a man. Why should she believe you? You’re probably an abuser, too.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  I WAS NEAR UNION STREET ALREADY, AND SHE WOULD probably be coming back from lunch and might have some time to kill before her next appointment, so there was no reason not to try to see her. No reason at all, except my reluctance to confront someone I suspected was a liar, and a menace, and my enemy, the probable perpetrator of a charade that was wreaking havoc all around and had somehow ensnared Charley Sleet in its metafiction.

  Her offices were difficult to locate. It took three passes before I finally figured out that the number I was looking for was down a covered alleyway that led to an inner courtyard that served as a showroom for an espresso bar and an upscale plant store. The plant store featured the type of stuff that looks like it grows on the bottom of an ocean or the top of a mountain, stuff that’s weird and kind of creepy, stuff that makes you wonder.

  The ceiling was a tangle of vines and hanging plants that seemed to drip with a form of translucent blood. A gentle waterfall seeped out of one wall and bubbled across some mossy stones before disappearing beneath a bank of ferns, the spitting image of an idyllic glade in some crevice of the rain forest. Flowers of all shapes and sizes and shades were arranged around several wrought-iron tables and chairs that looked to be cool and inviting. I expected to see Puck at any moment, dancing to the accompaniment of lutes and panpipes. That Danielle Derwinski’s office opened onto such an exquisite environment suggested that after some time with her your inner world would become as soothing to you as the world outside her office.

  The door to the waiting room was Dutch, its top panel opened to the pleasures of the pocket garden, the bottom locked against intruders. The secretary’s desk was small and unobtrusive, as was the woman who sat behind it. Eyes closed, hands clasped and resting on the desk, she was listening intently to a headset that was clamped over her coiffure like some postmodern chapeau. When I buzzed the bell, she opened her eyes and looked at me, then pressed a button that let me in. As I neared the desk, she lurched for the keyboard and began to type furiously, as though the headset had just emitted the solution to Fermat’s Theorem or a great recipe for quiche. I had to cough and carry on before she paid attention to me.

  “Sorry,” she said in a rush as she lifted the headset off her ears. “Are you from building management?”

  “Never have been from management; never will be from management.”

  “Oh. I was hoping you were here about the mildew problem.”

  “Sorry. But I am a bit of an expert on the subject if it has anything to do with shower curtains.”

  She shook her head. “Carpets.”

  I shrugged. “Can’t help you.”

  She brushed some light brown hair away from her earnest face, punched some keystrokes into her computer as tenderly as if she were feeding it a snack, then rolled her chair back to the wall again and looked at me. “How may I help you?”

  “I’d like to see Ms. Derwinski.”

  “Professionally?”

  “Sort of.”

  She shook her head as though I’d done something indelicate. “Danielle is a feminist therapist. She doesn’t counsel males.”

  “I’m not here to be counseled, I’m here to be informed.”

  She lifted a brow. “Then you’re a reporter? Danielle only does media by appointment,
after written submission of the questions and a guarantee of the amount of airtime or column inches the interview will occupy. She doesn’t share space and she doesn’t do survey pieces.”

  I laughed. “I’m impressed that she’s carved out a philosophical position on the subject of personal publicity, but I’m not a reporter. I’m a detective.”

  That took her down a peg. “Has there been another threat? I thought Detective Jamette was handling the other one.”

  “I’m not police, I’m private. What kind of threat are we talking about?”

  She was still preoccupied with my occupation. “Private. Then we aren’t required to speak with you.”

  I met her look. “Only morally.”

  That took care of it as far as she was concerned. She plugged the earpieces back in place, punched the button on the deck, then typed the next piece of transcription. I reached over with both hands, tugged the headset free of its notches, and let the earpieces flop against her temples.

  “Let me tell you what I’m going to do if your boss doesn’t see me in the next five minutes,” I snarled in my second-best snarl. “I’m going to collect all the complaints that have ever been lodged against her—police, DA, medical examiners, Better Business Bureau, and civil damage suits—and I’m going to write them up in a pretty brochure and I’m going to sit in that garden and sip espresso and hand my brochure to everyone who even thinks about coming in here.”

  Her face got as red as a ruby. “You can’t do that. That’s libel. That’s harassment. That’s—”

  “Free speech,” I interrupted. “I’m here about the guy who shot Leonard Wints in court on Tuesday. Tell Danielle I need half an hour of her time.”

  “But she—”

  I raised my hand in a carefree wave. “See you in the garden.”

  “We’ll get a restraining order. Do you know what lawyers cost? Do you know how quickly you can spend ten thousand dollars on—”

  “My lawyer won’t cost a dime,” I interrupted.

  “Why not?”

  “Because my lawyer is me.” I dug out my bar card and showed it to her, though not long enough for her to read the word “Inactive.”

  She removed her headset and shoved back her chair and gave me an involuntary glimpse of thigh as she slipped her feet into some red high heels, then pivoted out of her chair. “I’ll be back in a second.” She vanished through a door at her flank.

  Negotiations on strategy and tactics took several minutes; I spent the interlude girding for battle. It was a given that Danielle and I were not going to get along. She would be one of those man bashers, one of those women who blame everything from migraines to menstruation on the male of the species, who find females without blemish and men without merit, who misuse statistics and overreact to imperfection, who further their own cause far more effectively than they do their clients’. I’d run across more than a few of her type in my life and it was always a depressing experience.

  Plus, even though there wasn’t any need to get into a debate on sexual abuse and recovered memory with her, get into it I was sure we would. Women like to fight. Not all of them, or maybe even most, but enough so there’s an argument any way you turn these days. However benign the subject, it accelerates to gender warfare if it sparks a smidgen of disagreement that touches even tangentially on the differences between men and women. Generalizations are lobbed like mortar rounds and gripes and grudges are sprayed with the firepower of Uzis. I had a lot of preconceptions about Danielle Derwinski, in other words; it took a while before I realized that most of them were wrong.

  Her look, for example. I expected Birkenstocks and faded Levi’s and a colorful ethnic overlay, with wire-rim eyeglasses and steel gray hair rolled into a forbidding bun, all in the service of an aggressive denial that physical appearance had the slightest role to play in human relations. What I saw instead was a handsome woman whose figure was definitely defined by tailored twill slacks and an orange silk blouse and hair that was stylishly molded to curl toward the front and angle across the brow. Her lips were orange also, her eyes were lined in black and blue, her nails were long and lacquered, and her neck and wrists were agleam with golden chains. My mood picked up, the way it always does around an attractive woman, until I remembered that she’d accused Charley Sleet of sexually abusing her client.

  In contrast to the pillows and batiks and incense I had envisioned, her office was sterile and impersonal. A sleek rosewood table served as her desk and faced a pair of thickly upholstered leather chairs that looked comfortable enough to linger in. The rug was a brown Berber weave, the walls a creamy yellow satin, the decorations subtle splashes of pastels sponged directly to the wall surface rather than brushed onto framed canvas. The mundane matériel—file cabinets, computer, video library, recording equipment—were partially hidden behind a freestanding screen.

  There was piano music in the air, Chopin maybe. The only item on the desk was a pad of yellow paper. There was nothing on the paper and there was nothing in Danielle Derwinski’s eyes when she reached across the desk and shook my hand—not warmth, not hostility, nothing. I wondered if she was ever thus, a blank page that became imprinted only with her patients’ troubles.

  “I don’t appreciate threats to my staff, Mr. Tanner,” she began before I could introduce myself.

  “I’m sorry. It seemed the only way I could get over the moat.”

  Her voice was stern and richly modulated. “There are good reasons for our security measures, I assure you. Anyone who counsels women in abusive relationships must eventually deal with … well, I’m sure you can imagine. Or maybe you can’t. In any event, it’s not me toward whom your apology should be directed.”

  I met her candor with some of my own. “I’ll take care of it on the way out, unless you want to call her in and have me do it now.”

  “Upon your leave-taking will suffice.” She glanced at a clock on the wall. “Which will occur in exactly six minutes. I have a client coming who is much more in need of my time than you are.”

  I smiled. “How do you know?”

  “For one thing, her nose is broken.”

  She gestured to a chair; we sat across from each other and took stock. My guess was we both sensed that something interesting could happen in the next six minutes, and then we both decided not to let it.

  “I’m here about the shooting,” I began.

  “What about it?”

  “For one thing, what makes you think Charley Sleet sexually abused Jillian Wints?”

  “I don’t think that or not think that. I just think it’s possible that Leonard Wints was not alone in this.”

  “No, it isn’t. Not if you’re talking about Charley Sleet.”

  She raised a brow. “I’m not inclined to take your word for it, I’m afraid.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you haven’t proved to me that you’re not an abuser yourself.”

  “Guilty until proven innocent, is that it?”

  Her eyes sparked hot and mean. “Oh, yes, Mr. Tanner. That is exactly it. Where the welfare of my clients is concerned, men are indeed evil until they establish otherwise.”

  “You find that an equitable approach to take, do you?”

  She brushed at her hairdo as though to dislodge some snowflakes. “I find it an essential approach. In the first years of my practice, whenever I gave men the benefit of the doubt I almost always regretted it. Almost as much as my battered clients did.”

  Our eyes did mortal combat for a moment, then retired to neutral corners. “Why did it happen?” I asked. “The shooting, I mean.”

  “I don’t know. If you want me to hazard a guess, I’d say it was because Leonard Wints inflicted psychic and physical damage on someone else to the degree that he inflicted it on his daughter.”

  “And Charley Sleet was an avenging angel.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know that specifically?”

  “No.” She shrugged. “On the other hand, I know a gr
eat deal about Mr. Wints. I know he was a sexual predator, I know he was a liar, I know he cared more about his image and his income than he did about his daughter’s mental health, and I know he was on the verge of facing a sizable judgment of money damages for the harm he had done to my client.”

  “You’re certain you would have prevailed in court?”

  “Quite certain.”

  “I heard it was going the other way.”

  She made a face. “We had yet to introduce our evidence. Whoever told you that had only heard one side of the issue.”

  Her confidence was beginning to get to me. I decided to take it down a notch. “You aren’t bothered by the case in Napa where the father won a malpractice suit against the therapist for implanting false memories?”

  She swore in disgust. “I know little about the particulars of that case and I care even less—judges aren’t immune to denial. What I do know about is Jillian Wints. She has suffered an immense wound to her selfhood and that wound began to be inflicted upon her when she was a young child. And it continues to this day.” She crossed her legs and shook her head. “Why are men like you so defensive in these matters, Mr. Tanner? Why do you wish to see the guilty go unpunished? Have you abused your own daughter, by any chance?”

  A vision streaked through my mind, an image of a child named Eleanor whom I regarded as my daughter, an image soon coupled with a blur of a hulking faceless force that was assaulting her obscenely.

  Sweat broke on my brow; I crossed my arms and took a breath. “That’s a cheap shot,” I said around my fury. “Apparently it’s typical of the way you conduct your business, given your ludicrous charges against Charley Sleet.”

  She was unfazed by my outrage; I suspected she had encountered it countless times in the faces of men like Leonard Wints. “Do you deny that such atrocities occur?” she asked levelly.

  “Of course not.”

  “Does it surprise you that the victim of sexual abuse finds it impossible to lead a normal life in later years?”

  “No.”