I knew, I said. Though I had not been to the top floor of the Bellevue psych ward in a lot of years, I could not imagine that much had changed. A sprawling open floor, full of heavily sedated patients lying on their backs in beds secured to the floor with electromagnetic locks, nylon restraining belts around their stomachs, wrists and ankles secured to bedposts with leather lashes. There were no windows anywhere. Several doctors in long white coats streamed from bed to bed, murmuring their sweet nothings: “We’re all here to help you … this is all for your own good …”
I spoke to the head nurse, who in turn showed me to a huge-jawed security guard posted outside a hallway door with a sign that read TO ROOF. I was told that Dr. Reiser could be found tending his garden. And so I took the stairs, walked out along the graveled rooftop and spotted a collection of wooden planting tubs, at the center of which was a short man in a polo shirt with a frizz of black hair blowing up over a round sunburned head.
“Dr. Ronald Reiser?”
He turned and said, suspiciously, “Who wants to know?”
I showed him my shield. “I need to talk to you about a patient of yours who calls himself Picasso. His real name is Furman, Charlie Furman.”
“So that’s his name, hey?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you like tomatoes, Officer?”
“Actually, it’s Detective Hockaday, Hock, if you want.”
“Sure, Detective. You like tomatoes?”
“Actually, yes. I’m a big chili maker.”
“Oh, that’s good. You’d be surprised how hard it is for me to give away good tomatoes like I grow up here on top of this nut house. Come back around the middle of August, you’ll see my beauties.”
“I’ll do that, maybe. About Furman … Picasso …”
“Oh, yeah. How’s the patient?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me.”
Reiser muttered something and went back to digging around with a trowel in the new soil of his planting tubs. “Four, five years I have been seeing this guy, which I am not supposed to be doing since he won’t come clean with a name or anything. I am wasting the taxpayers’ money four, five years—and everybody else around here the same before me. Nobody gets nothing out of this guy but his observations on this and that, this and that. Nothing that adds up to anything whole, though.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“He’s in police trouble?”
“Do you have an address?”
“I don’t know where the guy lives, no.”
“Did you know his wife, Celia?”
“Not by name. I figured he was married once. He used to talk about his rotten crooked wife who was a gambler. Hey! Did he give his wife the business?”
“I just want him for questioning.”
Reiser slapped his crimson forehead. “So this is very serious? Why else would a cop be standing out on a roof with a shrink?”
“It’s serious, yes.”
“Let’s go down to my office, what do you say?”
“You’re the doctor.”
“I am, I am.”
I followed Reiser down the staircase back out into the Zoo hallway where the guard with the jaw was still loyally on duty. Reiser greeted him with a friendly wave of his garden trowel and a “Hi ya’, how are ya?” in the manner of the late Governor Rockefeller. He said the same to a gaggle of nurses and fellow shrinks. And then we wound our way through one hall, down another, then another, all the while Reiser leading the way with friendly waves of his trowel and the “Hi ya” treatment to a small army of oversize security guards. Finally we reached a row of office doors with steel plates on them, one of which bore Reiser’s name and title: DR. RONALD REISER, SUPERVISING PSYCHIATRIST.
The office was not much. I have seen better accommodations at some precinct station houses, even up in the Bronx. There was a big brown desk at the center of the room, overflowing with newspapers and telephone message slips and food crumbs and dried-up styrofoam coffee cups. To the side sat a brown leather couch you could not sit on because of all the stacks of medical magazines; and in the corner a brown file cabinet, which Reiser started pawing through.
I sat down on a steel chair with cracked vinyl pads and scanned a wall of bookshelves. There were a lot of medical volumes mostly, but I spotted a couple of Robertson Davies novels and this told me that Reiser was probably all right. Two of the bookends on his shelves were human skulls that looked to be the real goods.
On the edge of his desk there were pens and pencils standing up in a ceramic mug with the message, “You toucha my cup, I breaka you face” on its side. On the wall behind the desk was a framed photograph of Sigmund Freud.
Reiser found what he was looking for in the brown cabinet and sat down with it at his desk. He opened a manila folder and riffled through years of notes inked on pale-blue lined paper. He made a few clucking sounds, then asked, “Would you be interested in knowing the very first words that our friend Picasso said to me?”
I said I was interested.
“This was at our first session, on the seventeenth of November, 1984. I wrote it down I was so impressed.” Reiser removed a piece of blue paper from his file. “He was sitting where you’re sitting now, and he looked up at the picture on the wall in back of me and he said, ‘I want to make one brief statement about psychoanalysis: Fuck Dr. Freud.”’
“Picasso is not your hesitant conversationalist.”
Reiser clucked again. “I respectfully disagree with that, Detective Hockaday. The way he operates, Picasso always starts by putting you way off-balance …”
In between that and the rest of what Reiser told me, I kept hearing Logue’s words from the other day as we stood over Celia Furman’s leaking body: “We have got here a case of somebody being out of circulation so long she was off-balance about her prospects for longevity. Now, ain’t that evident—and ain’t you seen it play that way before. Detective Hockaday?”
“… and then in this way, he forces you to listen to what he calls his ‘observations,’ which are quite important to him; and then when he’s finished with you, he puts you off-balance again and you can’t quite get this bird out of your mind.
“And the thing that really keeps you off-balance is that you never know anything about this guy. Well, not very much that adds up, let’s say. And he’s not about to tell you much, either. When he does give you something in the way of a fact, it may or may not be true; more than likely, he’ll toss you a riddle, then it’s up to you to reason it out.
“Speaking as Picasso’s psychiatrist, and as a man of science, I would say our poor Charlie is wacko.”
That was pretty straightforward for a doctor, I thought. “The other doctors here, before you took him on, did they think Charlie was wacko, too?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t think anybody ever diagnosed him in any serious way. Nobody kept notes like I do; nobody ever found time or had the motive to work out the riddles. Ah yes, the riddles …”
Reiser opened a desk drawer and removed a box of cigars, good ones. We both lit up.
“You see,” Reiser continued, “the way Picasso usually came in here was with a couple of cops who would find him howling in the street, usually outside some art gallery somewhere. They didn’t bother making it official since he never hurt anybody. They’d just run him in here, and the staff shrinks would go through the motions because they had enough hard cases to report on …”
I interrupted with, “Why didn’t anybody ever take the man seriously?”
“Aha! Well that is the question, isn’t it?”
“What’s the answer?”
“Practically speaking, we have this guy who apparently has no fixed address and who goes around calling himself Picasso and whose only offense against the peace of our tranquil city is once in a while hollering outside some gallery. So who wants to mess with paper work? Besides which, Picasso isn’t telling anybody his name or address or anything, and we’re not allowed to beat it out of him, right?
So what have we really got but this, this unofficial man?
“Funny thing, Hock. One night a couple years ago, the cops brought him in here as usual for hollering outside a downtown gallery. The owner of this gallery, he tells the cops how he likes having Picasso shrieking outside his place; he says it’s ‘performance art.’ Picasso is so disgusted with this character, he has never hollered outside that place again.”
We had a laugh, and we puffed our cigars. “So all right, I see the practicality of keeping Picasso unofficial. But, do you have any other ideas?”
“Oh, yes, I do. I have a theory: if you’re a real genuine New York wacko, then you’re smart enough to know how not to get yourself caught up in the system we have invented for keeping tabs on our New York wackos. The way it works in Picasso’s case is, he comes in here making himself too much and too little trouble to be papered, if you follow me; then he puts us all off-balance, which has its strange charms; and Picasso winds up taking away with him whatever he decides might be useful, by which I mean something that one of us charmed and obliging croakers might possibly say that he might possibly find soothing to a troubled head.”
“He must love you, Doc.”
Reiser clucked. He shut the manila folder on his desk and said, “Well we have our pleasant moments, sometimes. I know I like him. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. When a shrink says he ‘likes’ a patient, the truth is he just pities the poor dumb fruitcake. But I am saying that I honestly enjoy this guy’s company. Picasso’s a fruitcake, but he’s got a first-class brain.”
By now, I was thinking that if and when I crack I want Ronald Reiser for my shrink. I was not crazy about the clucking, but I liked smoking his brand and I liked what I heard. Maybe I could have a special medic-alert card printed up for my wallet.
“He didn’t mention you, Doc,” I said, thinking back to my chat with Picasso in the park. “But he mentioned shrinks and, as I recall, he does not hold your fraternity in his highest regard.”
“As a fraternity, neither do I. So that’s why I get such a kick out of his trying to get a rise out of me with his observations on the trade. One time, he said to me, ‘You know, Reiser, your hero up there on the wall, Dr. Freud, he used to smoke cigars, too. And his pal, Carl Jung, would steal them from him. Ponder the meaning of that sometime.’”
We had another good laugh.
The doctor went on, “He used to say to me all the time,
‘Reiser, you high-classed lunatic, I got only one observation about psychotherapy: it has conned millions of simple people into believing they’re complex.’ I really miss the old wacko.”
“That’s what I heard, that Picasso’s been missing from around here,” I said. “When was the last time he dropped by?”
“Six, seven months ago, thereabouts. And now here we sit, you and me—the shrink in his life and the cop in his life. I just went and violated my patient’s privacy all to hell. But you, you’re not telling me dick, Dick. Tell me what in hell Picasso did, and how in hell you found out his real name?”
“I don’t know for sure that he did anything …”
I was going to be evasive, but I changed my mind. Instead,
I gave Reiser the outline of what had happened from the first moment in the park, to see what he made of it. “So,” I said, finishing up, “he eventually tells me that he’s been shadowing me for a long time; he tells me he wants me to know the ‘extenuating circumstances’ of his failed life; then he winds up this lovely chin with a few threats.”
“Threats?”
“He says, and I am pretty much quoting, ‘I am working up a plan—a plan to kill what’s been responsible for making me fall so far and spectacular as you have seen I have fell.’”
I waited for some kind of reaction from Reiser, but there was none. “Doc, in my business you hear lots of threats. I wouldn’t be bothering you about this one unless there was something behind it, which maybe there is.”
Again, no reaction.
“In the park, Picasso is telling me … well, he and his imaginary friend are telling me …”
“Oh that,” Reiser said. “Yes, I’ve seen his alter-ego routine.”
I continued. “Picasso tells me he’s called Picasso because he’s a painter. When I ask him if he’s got anything serious in the way of work I could see, he tells me one of his paintings is hanging right in a bar in the neighborhood where I happen to do my drinking.”
“A painting?” And now Reiser’s eyebrows arched, so high that his face looked like the letter M.
“So,” I said, “I go to the bar and there it is—something I never much noticed, a picture of a lady in green sitting at the bar talking to the bartender. There is nothing special about the painting. Well, I am no art expert, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing this thing mounted up at the Met, you know?
“However, there is something special right below Picasso’s painting. It’s another lady in green. I mean, a lady in the flesh, wearing green and sitting at the bar talking to my friend Angelo, the owner. It’s a real-life pose out of the painting up on the wall.”
Reiser said, “Oh, God.” He said this quietly, almost as if he knew what might be coming.
“The lady ID’s as one Celia Furman. I chat with her for a while, long enough to know that she, too, has got some hard-luck story in her. But I leave before I get much of it. Then later that same day, I am called back to the bar by Angelo, on account of how Celia Furman has been murdered.”
Reiser said, “Oh, God,” again. And his face conveyed that same kind of unsurprised mood that I saw in Celia’s dead face.
I said, “I found an old snapshot in Celia’s pocketbook that was interesting—a picture of Celia and two guys. One looks like a young Picasso, right down to the whiskers and beret. The three of them are strolling along the boardwalk, a long time ago, out in Brooklyn—Coney Island.”
The eyebrows went up again, then back down. Then, without expression, “Oh, God—Astroland.”
I continued. “It seems Celia stopped in at the bar yesterday to visit her old pal, Angelo, who she has not seen in a very long time. From Angelo I get that Celia used to be a very big-shot gambler once married to a small-time painter who was such a nut job she had to put him away somewhere. Charlie was the husband’s name.”
“I see how you naturally connected Picasso to Charlie Furman,” Reiser said.
“Naturally.”
“So, Picasso killed his wife in the bar and somehow got away?”
“That I don’t know, Doc. Celia was shot with a small-caliber pistol at close range in a crowded bar, and nobody saw anything. Which for once is the truth. And Angelo says he definitely would have remembered seeing Charlie Furman in the place—which he did not.”
“So naturally, you want Picasso for questioning.”
“Naturally.”
Reiser’s sunburned face did not look so sunburned anymore. He said, “He wants to be questioned, Hock. He wants to be found, but he sure isn’t going to make it easy for you.”
“What do you know, Doc? Help me.”
Reiser put down his cigar like it was suddenly making him sick. Weakly, he said, “I mentioned how we had our pleasant moments, Picasso and me?”
“You did.”
“Well, we also had a major falling-out. That was the last day I saw the man, which as I said before was six or seven months back.”
“And…?”
“And that’s when I presented him with my grand theory, which did not got over so well.…
“You see, we always had this same exasperating talk about art whenever he’d come here. Which would be following one of his episodes.”
“By which you mean the hollering sessions?”
“Right. Always the same pattern. The cops would find him standing outside a gallery yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘Philistines!’ Over and over, to the point where he was scaring off customers. So, of course, I asked him why he was doing that.
“He said, ‘Because they’re a bunch
of numbnuts in there, why else d’you think they’re selling them lousy pictures by them no-talent painters?’ To which I would say, ‘You could do better?’ Then he would say, ‘I done plenty better!’”
I said, “I’m no medical expert, but that doesn’t sound like any sort of a path to progress.”
“Not directly, it isn’t. But at least it got us onto the subject of art sometimes, the only thing personal that Picasso would ever discuss. Otherwise, it was all about his ‘observations’ or his reliably dim view of life, or that damn alter-ego routine.
“But, Hock, you met him, you know what an intriguing bastard the guy is. You just want to solve the riddles of the guy, you know? Do you?”
I did not answer right away, thinking back to what Neglio had told me, by way of warning me about myself. Eventually, though, I managed, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Sure, you know how it is, Hock. I mean, I’ve talked with cops before. You’re the first one I’ve met with a measurable attention span.”
I shrugged.
Reiser went on. “Anyway, there were two main things I could never get out of Picasso like you did—his real name, and a look at one of his paintings. So finally, one bright day it dawns on me what this guy’s pathology is. However, I am not bright enough to keep the revelation to myself; I have to go blabbing my grand theory to Picasso.
“I told him on that last day of ours, ‘Picasso, my pixilated friend, what makes you the loon you are is that you’re the worst kind of artist there is, the kind that gets ignored.’
“To which Picasso says, ‘The way I see it, when a tree falls down in the forest and nobody’s around to hear it, you better believe it still makes a big noise! You’re calling that crazy, Doc, are you?’”
Reiser laughed. It was an unfunny series of snorts, really, and no doubt inherited from Picasso. “Guess what he does next?” Reiser asks.
I gave up.
“Picasso says, ‘Okay, I had just about enough of this bug house!’ Then he stands up from the chair where you’re sitting now, and he coldcocks me. Knocks me clear off my chair, the wacko! Then I was down on the floor, rolling around with a dislocated jaw. And Picasso is standing over me with his eyes rolling and his fists waving and he’s hollering, ‘Philistine!’
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