I think he was proud of it."
"But why, Chas?"
"You're the psychiatrist, not me, Dr. Noble. You tell me why."
"I don't know enough about Herman. All I can do is generalize. But you're his sibling, you grew up with him. You must have a clue."
"It's a crazy notion," he said, "but what it might be is that Herm was an absolute klutz when it came to sports and games. His eye-hand coordination is lousy. My God, the guy can't even catch a ball. I was the jock of the family, and all my energy went into physical activity, especially running. I ran around a track, my brother ran after girls.
Does that make any sense at all?"
"Mmm," I said. "Do you think Herman was jealous of you? jealous of your prowess as an athlete?"
Chas frowned. "That never occurred to me," he said, "but it's possible.
I won some medals and cups. An article about me was in the sports pages of our local newspaper. Sure, it would be normal for Herm to be jealous, wouldn't it? Or envious?"
"Or both," I said. "And unconsciously decided to excel at another activity-seducing women. He wouldn't win any medals or cups, but he'd have the satisfaction of succeeding and earning a reputation as Hotrocks."
"It makes a nutty kind of sense," Chas said.
"It's a very neat explanation of why he does what he does," I said, "but I don't think it's the whole story. Ready for a refill?"
"Always," he said.
We spoke no more about the behavior of Herman Todd. I had some additional thoughts on the subject, but I was afraid they might offend Chas and felt it best to talk of other things.
But when I returned home later that night, I sat at, my desk and scribbled notes on what might evolve into a case history.
What Chas had told me about his brother was not conclusive, of course, but it did suggest several approaches to Herman's problems.
I thought it justifiable to reckon that the subject had been jealous of his brother's athletic success and had determined to prove his own prowess in a quite different arena. He could have selected chess, for example, or music or any of the other arts to test his talent and skill.
But Herman chose seduction. I thought more than sibling rivalry was involved.
If not wholly sibling rivalry, then what? I saw Herman's behavior as possibly an attempt to establish his bona fides as a "real" man. Inept at sports and games, he had to assert his masculinity by aggressive conduct toward women. He became an obsessive lothario, and each conquest added to his self-esteem.
All this could be bullshit, of course. The subject wasn't in therapy yet, I had hardly spoken to him. But I had learned to trust my instincts, and in this case I was convinced I was on the right track, Herman was continually seeking to conquer because his mistrust of his own masculinity needed constant assuaging.
This preliminary analysis troubled me because it was one short step from determined seduction to a more overt and brutal form of physical aggression toward women, culminating in rape. I wondered if Herman had ever struck his wife or any other woman.
Complicating Herman's dysfunction might well be his brother's war record. Chas had volunteered, fought bravely, and had been grievously wounded. Herman might express scorn for his brother's decision to go to war, but I was certain his admiration and envy of Chas existed, no matter how deeply they were bidden. Chas had proved himself a man.
Herman constantly doubted his own maleness, and those doubts were driving him to a form of aggression that was threatening his marriage and might ultimately destroy his life.
All this was speculation on my part. But I had learned that no one who works in the field of human behavior really knows. We can only make educated guesses-and hope we are right. So when Herman Todd phoned early the next week, I told him I thought I might be able to help him and suggested he come to my office to begin a series of therapeutic sessions.
He thanked me for my interest but said he had been giving his situation a great deal of thought and had decided he could solve his personal problems by himself, without professional assistance.
I wished him good luck and assured him I stood ready to help if he found he needed it. I confess it was a disappointment, and I hung up with a premonition of a tragedy waiting to happen.
BOBBY GURK nobody messes with Big Bobby Gurk-nobody! I Ndidn't get where I am today by being Mr. Nice Guy. You mess with me, and I mess with you. Only I mess first! You snooze, you lose.
Laura Gunther is getting nowhere with Willie Brevoort, and I tell her I don't like it.
"What are you going to do," she says, "feed me to the alligators?"
"Don't talk like that," I says. "It ain't nice."
" Nice-schmice, " she says. "I'm balling the guy, but he just won't spill. What am I supposed to do-beat his kidneys with a rubber hose?
You'll have to give me more time, Bobby."
"Okay," I says, staring at her. "You keep trying."
But I still don't like it. Listen, I know the odds. I learnt them all my life. And I know if your best friend can screw you, he will screw you.
Well, Gunther isn't my best friend, and neither is Brevoort.
But I suspicion the two of them might have got too close and are figuring on giving Big Bobby Gurk the shaft. it's possible. Look, there's a bundle involved here, and money can make people act like rat finks.
Right then, while I'm wondering if I'm being screwed, blewed, and tattooed, I get a phone call from Willie Brevoort.
"Bobby," he says, "I got bad news for you."
"Yeah?" I says. "What's that?"
"The old guy who owned Mcwhortle Laboratory dropped dead-you can look it up-and now the whole business is closed down.
Settling the estate, you know. So they're not doing any work, which means the ZAP pill is on hold. I don't know when they'll start working on it again, if ever, but right now the deal is cold. Sorry about that."
"That's okay, Willie," I says. "It didn't cost me a dime, so no harm done."
I hang up and think, In a pig's ass! So I looked up the number in the phone book and call. A chirpy bird answers, "Mcwhortle Laboratory."
"Hey," I says, you still in business?"
"Of course we're still in business," she says.
"I thought with your boss croaking and all, maybe you closed down."
"Mrs. Gertrude Mcwhortle is now our chief executive officer," she says.
"The laboratory is functioning normally, and all contracts will be fulfilled."
"Thanks, babe," I says.
Oh Willie, Willie, Willie, I think. And you're the guy who kissed my ass for starting you on a new career. I owe you one, you said. Rat fink!
So I call Tomasino down in Miami and ask if I can borrow Teddy O. for a special job. I will pay Teddy a, sweet per them and also pay Tomasino a grand for the borrow. He says sure, he'll send Teddy up as soon as he gets back from Tampa where he's gone to persuade a deadbeat he should do the honorable thing and pay Tomasino what he owes him so the deadbeat's wife won't get an acid facial.
This Teddy is an enforcer and one of the best in the business. Look at him and you'd think he sells shoes for a living. But how many guys who sell shoes carry a sharpened ice pick in a leather sheath strapped to their shin? He is a little bitty guy and talks polite. And he is true-blue, absolutely dependable. He just likes to hurt people, that's all-but what the hey, no one's perfect-right?
He shows up, and I tell him all about Willie Brevoort and the ZAP stuff that's supposed to put lead in a guy's pencil. I also tell him what I want, the name of the chemist at Mcwhortle Laboratory who is leaking information to Brevoort.
"I get it, Mr. Gurk," Teddy O. says. "You want I should lean on this guy."
"No, no," I says. (Usually Teddy leans a little too hard.) "I figured first you could tail Willie awhile and see where he goes and who he meets. If we can't do it that way, then we'll do it your way."
"Okay," he says. "Is there a good barber in town? I need a trim and a manicure."
It takes may
be a week, no more, when Teddy shows up with a notebook full of stuff he's written down. He's got the names of all the guys Willie Brevoort had a meet with during the week and where they work.
Don't ask me how Teddy does it. I told you he was good, didn't I? But anyway, none of the men Willie met work at Mcwhortle Laboratory, so we got zip there.
"But here's something cute, Mr. Gurk," Teddy says. "This Willie putz likes to do drag. He belongs to a private club where the guys all wear women's clothes."
"No shit? " I says, "You know, I always thought he might be a flit.
He dresses too good."
"I'm not sure he's a flit," Teddy says." He's got two broads on the string."
"Two?" I says. "I know one of them. Laura Gunther. I paid her to pump Willie, but so far she's come up with zilch. Who's the other twist?"
Teddy puts on wire-rimmed cheaters and looks in his notebook.
"Her name's Jessica Fiddler. A real pretty blonde. Looks like a high-class hooker. That's all I got on her."
"Teddy," I says, "we're getting nowhere fast. Well, let's give it some more time. Keep on Brevoort's ass, there's still a chance he might meet with the Mcwhortle chemist. And while you're at it, see what you can dig up on the blond hooker."
He comes back to me two days later.
"This Jessica Fiddler…" he says. "Just for kicks I called Hymie Rourke in Miami Beach. He's been in the skin game all his life and knows every pro in South Florida. He made this Fiddler dame right away.
She used to dance in a nudie club in Miami and then quit to free-lance at the convention hotels.
Rourke says he hasn't seen her around for at least a couple of years."
"That's inarresting," I says. "I wonder if she's hustling up here." , "If she is," Teddy says, "she's making out like gangbusters because she owns her own home."
"That don't sound kosher," I says. "You can't buy a house from turning tricks in this burg."
"I went out there," Teddy says. "Good neighborhood. I talked to an old lady who lives across the street and likes to watch her neighbors more than she likes to watch television. I told her I was a private dick working for a married woman who thought her husband was cheating with Jessica Fiddler and wanted to get evidence for a divorce.
"Well, the old bitch wouldn't talk until I slipped her fifty bucks for an outfit she belongs to. It's called SOS, for Save Our Salmon. Then she tells me Fiddler has two guys who visit her maybe two or three times a week. They both drive big cars, one silver, one white. I figure the silver is Willie Brevoort. He owns a silver Infiniti. I don't know who drives the white."
"So what do we do now, Teddy?"
"I want to get inside Fiddler's house to look around. I'll use a con that's worked for me before. I got a fake ID with my picture on it.
It says I'm from the property tax appraiser's office, and I tell her I want to come inside for a little while just to count the rooms."
"Slick," I says.
"It's always worked," Teddy says. "But if she wants to check me out, I'm going to give her your phone number. Will you be here at noon tomorrow?"
"Sure," I says. "What do I do?", "Just tell her it's the property tax appraiser's office, and yes, John R. Thompson is a legit appraiser.
That's the name on my fake ID."
"Got it," I says.
The next day my phone rings about five minutes after twelve.
I pick it up and says, "Property tax appraiser's office."
A woman asks, "Have you got a John R. Thompson working for you?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am," I says. "One of our best appraisers.
He's been with us seventeen years now."
"Thank you very much," she says, and hangs up. Teddy O. comes strolling into my office about an hour later.
"It went like silk," he reports. "That's a nice place she's got there.
Two bedrooms and a swimming pool. And the furniture didn't come from the Salvation Army."
"Find out anything?"
"Yeah. She's got like a jillion jars and bottles in her bedroom and bathroom. They look like perfumes and lotions and makeup stuff – Most of them have plain white labels on them that just say Mcwhortle Laboratory with a code number."
"Son of a bitch!"
"So I says to the Fiddler broad, You must like perfume." And she says, Free samples. From my boyfriend." I look at him. "How do you figure it, Teddy?"
"I'm guessing the boyfriend is the guy in the white car.
He's the chemist at Mcwhortle Laboratory you been looking for.
Willie Brevoort isn't getting his information from the chemist, he's getting it from Jessica Fiddler."
I think about that awhile. "Yeah," I says, "that makes sense. She pumps the chemist and sells Willie everything the guy tells her." , "That's how I see it."
"So all we gotta do is find out who's driving the white car.
Once we do that, we can offer him a piece of change for the ZAP pill.
And if that don't work, you can lean on him."
"What if I can't find out who's driving the white car?
"Then you can lean on Jessica Fiddler."
"I'd like that," Teddy says. he development of Cuddle was taking more time Tand effort than I had anticipated.
As a professional perfumer, I have always believed that scents have the ability to alter moods. But now I was working on a fragrance that would, if successful, alter behavior. And I found that prospect somewhat disturbing.
I was familiar with pheromones, of course, those chemical substances secreted by animals that have the power to alter behavior of other animals of the same species. It seemed to me that in developing Cuddle I was attempting to create a human pheromone, and I wasn't certain of what the final effect might be.
During our drive to the laboratory one morning in August, I asked Gregory Barrow if he had ever worked with psychoactive drugs that affected behavior and personality. I think the question startled him.
"I've had limited experience," he said. "Why do you ask?" , "I was wondering if you had any strong feelings about them, for or against."
"I think they can be a benefit," he said carefully, when properly used."
"But you see nothing ethically wrong in psychochemicals per se?"
"No," he said. "If drugs can be used to alleviate physical pain and treat human disease, I see no reason why they shouldn't be used to ease mental pain and psychic disorders. If a drug was developed to cure or control schizophrenia, for instance, how could one possibly object to it."
"I suppose you're right," I said doubtfully. "But drugs that alter behavior and personality make me a little uneasy. It's like playing God, isn't it?"
"So is prescribing aspirin," he said.
"I'm not doing a very good job of explaining what I mean," I said.
"What about things like marijuana, LSD, heroin, and cocaine. They affect mood, behavior, personality. Would you defend them?"
"Of course not. They can be psychologically or physiologically addictive and do a great deal of harm. But psychochemicals that benefit the subject, that enable him or her to function as a normal human being, are certainly defensible."
I looked at him. "What is a normal human being?" I asked.
"Please define."
He gave me a half-smile, but he didn't answer.
It was not a smartass question on my part because, to be perfectly frank, I was beginning to doubt my own normality. I had been acting very strangely.
Usually when I make up my mind to do something, I do it. I had chided Greg for being indecisive, and now I found myself behaving just as irresolutely. I told Herman I intended to consult an attorney about a divorce. At the time I said it, I meant it. But I was postponing that final act, finding all kinds of reasons to put it off.
I tried to analyze myself, to understand why I was dithering.
The answer, which came as more of a shock to me than perhaps it does to you, was that I loved the man.
He was everything I've said he was, a boot, a drunk, a
philanderer.
But love, I sadly concluded, is not a rational emotion. Even recognizing Herman's faults and excesses could not kill what I felt for him. I was at once astonished and ashamed of myself, and even wondered if my intense caring for him was not an aftereffect of my inhalation of aerosolized oxytocin.
I went back to my laboratory with renewed determination to succeed.
What had been a vague idea now became a definite plan that might, just might, provide a solution to my personal problems.
If I could develop a hormone-based fragrance that increased tender affection, it seemed possible that I could alter Herman's behavior in a way that would benefit our family. At that point in my research I couldn't even guess if the effects of such a psychoactive perfume would be temporary or lasting. That was a question that could only be answered after the scent was created.
But I was so excited by the prospect that I simply rejected all those qualms that had made me ask Greg Barrow about the ethicality of behavior-altering drugs. it seemed to me that Cuddle, if perfected, could, have no ill effects on the user or on persons who smelled the fragrance.
I had now developed a few ounces of a perfume that contained a minuscule amount of the aerosolized oxytocin. I then used an alcohol solution as a diluter and put the mixture into a spray bottle that resembled an atomizer. I applied the scent to the inside of my left wrist and sniffed cautiously.
All I could recognize were the floral essences that served as a carrier for the hormone. There was no aroma of mauve, and I was aware of no changes in my mood or behavior. So I strengthened the formulation in stages, gradually increasing the proportion of the oxytocin and decreasing the volume of the alcohol diluter.
It was while these time-consuming experiments were proceeding that I had another conversation with Greg Barrow about psychochemicals. We were heading home one evening (I was doing the driving that week) when he suddenly said, "You may be right."
I was startled. "About what, Greg?"
"About psychoactive drugs. You said that anything designed to alter behavior and personality made you uneasy. You said it was like playing God."
"Well, I've changed my mind about that," I told him. "If psychochemicals can be a benefit and don't have any bad side effects, I see no reason why they shouldn't be developed and prescribed."
Private Pleasures Page 14