by Fault lines
"How are things with Hank?" I asked. Hank Holden was a judge Carlotta had been seeing.
"Fine," she said.
I took a deep breath. There was no way I could fool Carlotta, so I might as well cut to the chase. "Why don't you go stay with him for a while?"
"Michael . . ."
"I'm not going to get into it, Carlotta. I'm just not. But I'm telling you, go stay with Hank."
"So he's here."
I shrugged.
"You're wearing your fanny pack."
I shrugged again. I got up and poured myself some milk shake just to be doing something.
"You haven't told Adam about this."
I sat back down.
Carlotta's face —which was ordinarily composed—looked like a kaleidoscope of emotions. Anger had passed through it and fear and some other things that went by too quick to identify.
"Michael, you are a goddamn fool."
"True," I said. Hard to argue with that.
"Why me?" she said.
"There's nothing specific about you," I said.
"Then I'll stay. It's you he's after."
"I wouldn't do that," I replied.
"Why not?"
"He knows some things he shouldn't know," I said carefully looking down at the table. "It may be he got into the office."
I heard Carlotta's sharp intake of breath but didn't look up. It really wasn't a comfortable thought. Carlotta quit arguing.
"Hank's out of town until tomorrow."
"I'll stay tonight."
"Is that going to help or hurt?"
"Good question, but I have a gun and you don't. You need to think about a gun course," I said firmly. This was on old argument; Carlotta hated guns.
"If I quit hanging around you," she replied, "I wouldn't need one."
Which was probably true.
"Adam doesn't know," Carlotta said flatly.
I didn't reply. It wasn't a question.
"You know I'll call him," she said.
"It'll just cause an argument," I replied. "I, uh . . . I promised him I'd tell him if Willy showed up."
I knew I didn't have a prayer.
"That was dumb," was all she said.
Carlotta stormed off to bed. She hadn't said a whole lot, but she was as pissed as I could remember her being. Who could blame her? I had brought a maniac into her life who might even have gotten into her house, no doubt while she was sleeping. Now she had to move out without knowing when she could come back, and on top of that she had to worry about me.
Plus, when she thought about it, she would figure out I had more or less lied to her at lunch when I reassured her that Willy would take off for the hinterland and not come after me. Then she'd get doubly pissed.
And worse, what could I say? I don't know why I hate for people to worry about me so much. I just do.
So, as close as I could figure it, I was now in trouble with just about everybody I knew. I hadn't returned Marv's phone call when he told me it was urgent. I'd lied to Carlotta and Adam; one of them knew it and the other was about to.
It could be I wasn't easy to be friends with. It could be I was pretty exasperating to be friends with.
On the other hand, it could be people didn't know how to be friends with me without trying to control me. And that was on top of my not knowing how to be friends with them without feeling controlled.
It could be all of it was true.
A fault line. Willy couldn't know it, but he had hit a fault line. He had just applied a little stress, and the earth was splitting right where the fault line was. So maybe I should get a little proactive and try to keep it from splitting all the way through. Maybe I should call Marv and try to keep at least one relationship intact.
But I knew I wouldn't pick up the phone. I just didn't want to call Marv —who knew why? I didn't even know if it was because of this fault line, or a different one altogether. How many fault lines are there in my crazy psyche? How many high school football players are there in the state of Texas?
11
I woke up in the middle of a bad dream. I was driving through New York City, and halfway across I realized I had lost something. Something had just slipped away and whatever it was, it changed everything. There was no longer any point to getting to wherever I was going, and, for some reason, it was clear there was no point to going back and looking for it. Something was gone that mattered enormously, and I woke up hungover with the loss.
I was so preoccupied with the dream, it took me a moment to realize something was different. Then it hit me: My head didn't hurt. For the first time since I hit the jump, my head wasn't the center of my universe. I slipped out of bed, testing my new pain-free state, and almost jumped with glee when nothing dreadful happened.
I didn't jump, however. Instead, I walked gingerly to the kitchen, moving only slightly more confidently as I went along. The memory of the headache was still with me, and I didn't want to start it up again. Carlotta had made coffee for me, so I guessed she wasn't terminally pissed. I poured the coffee and climbed back into bed.
Whew. What was that dream all about? I couldn't believe it was about my friendships and the pressure this thing with Willy was putting on them. Everything looked better without a headache, and I began to think that maybe I had overreacted.
Carlotta and I had hung out together through marriages and divorces. I tolerated her obsession with all things feminine. She had tolerated my bitching about it for two decades.
Women take their friendships seriously, and someday Carlotta and I were going to end up in an old-age commune sitting on a green porch with white rockers, talking about our old lovers. Women live with the fact that we will likely outlive any partners for a decade or more, so you can't make long, long-range plans with a partner.
No, it would be the friendships that lasted in the end. Carlotta and I would be rocking back and forth, trading outrageous stories —some of which would be true —smoking something and drinking brandy until we were giddy. Might as well develop a few bad habits when it was too late to matter. The problem was, if I didn't get Willy off my case and get busy, I was going to be weak in the story department.
So what was that dream all about? Jordan? How many months till the anniversary of her death? Five. Early for the anniversary reaction to start kicking in. I hoped the anniversary reaction wasn't kicking in. It was a pretty miserable business.
If not Jordan, Adam? I couldn't be getting that attached. I hoped I wasn't getting that attached. What was I losing? What was slipping away?
I gave up on it and got dressed. Carlotta was gone, and I was running late. I didn't have a meeting at psychiatry until ten, but I had something I had to do first. I went into my private practice office and unlocked the filing cabinet. There sure weren't any signs that Willy had gotten in. How the hell could he have gotten into a locked cabinet in a locked house with dead bolts? Who knew?
I pulled out all my files on clients and put them on the couch. Even though I was only there part-time, I'd been doing therapy for a while, and there were still a lot of files. I went off to the basement and came back with some book boxes and put all the files in boxes and took them out to the car. I wasn't sure this would work, but it needed to.
I drove over to my bank and walked in. There were several women sitting at desks in the lobby. I picked the one with the least set hairdo as the best bet. Set hairdos are always a bad sign. She was free, so I went over and sat down. "I'd like a safety deposit box," I said. "Actually, I'd like a bunch of them."
"Fine," she said pleasantly. "How many would you like?"
"Uh, quite a few," I said.
"Quite a few?"
"Well, how big are they?" I hadn't brought the file boxes in yet. I didn't want to freak her. "I mean, what is your largest size?"
"Well," she said, sitting back and looking at me with a puzzled expression. "They're all twenty-four inches deep. The largest size is, ten inches high by fifteen inches wide."
I made a quick c
alculation. This would take a lot of boxes. "Just a minute," I said. "Why don't I bring in the stuff."
It took me several trips to bring in the files, and by then I had her full attention. "The large-size boxes cost $100 a year," she said tentatively. "Usually people use these just for . . . are you sure . . . ?"
She'd been trained not to ask so she didn't, but I answered her anyway. "Securities," I said folding my hands on the desk and looking straight at her. "My great-aunt died."
She looked at me for a long moment. Either I was one of the richer folk she had ever met, or I was a lying drug-runner, storing my dope —I'd actually heard from dope dealers in my practice that they stored their dope in safety deposit boxes. I could almost see her thinking, "Could be either."
"Let me see how many we have available," she said and went off, glancing over her shoulder at my file boxes as she disappeared.
Why is nothing ever easy? I had to go to three branches to find enough safety deposit boxes, and by then I was considerably poorer and had missed another meeting in Psychiatry. Still I felt so relieved I almost felt light-headed. If this would shut down the flow of information to Willy, it was well and truly worth it. Besides, it was diagnostic. Any new info that Willy got after this point couldn't come from the files—well, any new information after I did one more thing—but first I had to go to Psychiatry.
I practically sneaked into the Psychiatry Department. I didn't want to run into anybody who was at the meeting I'd missed. How was I to explain where I'd been? "Well, actually, I think a sadist may have broken into my office and read my files, so I put them all in safety deposit boxes." Pa . . . ra . . . noia, they'd be chirping.
I could have put my private practice files in my Psychiatry office, but if Willy could break into my other office, surely he could break into Psychiatry. The department was housed in a building right across the street from the hospital, connected by tunnels, and the hospital was open twenty-four hours a day. In any event, my Psychiatry files were not going to be a problem. They were all housed in Records in the main hospital, and nobody could find them over there. Hell, I couldn't even get them half the time.
I thought I had successfully slipped in unnoticed —my secretary, Melissa, had not been at her desk when I went by— but I hadn't been in my office ten minutes when I heard a knock on the door. I turned around to see Tobv. the Chair of Psychiatry, standing in the doorway. Whoa, the meeting hadn't been that important.
"Got a minute?" he said.
"Sure," I said with an attempt —a poor attempt —at enthusiasm.
Toby walked in and sat down on the couch. We had never gotten along. Toby had told me once I wasn't a team player, and I had thought it was a compliment. That miscommunication was the first of many. Toby thought I was a loose cannon who went her own way and did whatever she did without considering how it impacted the department. He told me once that I didn't care at all about the financial goals of the department, and his voice couldn't have been more outraged if I had mugged a little old lady on the street. I knew he thought I cared even less about his opinion than I did the financial goals of the department. How could he believe such things?
But Toby didn't know everything. He told me once I saw him as just a bureaucrat. I didn't see him as just a bureaucrat. I saw him as a complete pompous asshole who ought to be shot first when the revolution came. It comforted me to know I had some social skills after all.
I braced myself for a diatribe, but Toby was unusually subdued. I couldn't stand waiting. "I missed the curriculum meeting because I had an emergency with a client," I said. It was the only excuse Psychiatry wouldn't challenge. This lying business just got easier as you went along, and I was beginning to really get into the swing of it.
"That's not important," Toby said. "We'll send you the minutes."
Excuse me? What did he say? I was stunned into silence. It was a reasonable response. What was wrong with Toby? Was he sick?
"I wondered . . . you see people in your private practice?" I only did consults, teaching, and stupid committee-sitting in my role at Jefferson.
"Sure," I said, wary now. Oh, Jesus, don't let it be any relative of his.
He sighed. "My neighbor called. Their daughter goes to Jefferson U. It seems there was an . . . incident. Lucy was at a fraternity party, and she'd been drinking—quite a bit. She had sex with this boy at the party —willingly, she says. But she woke up, and she was being raped by several young men — three, I think, including her date." Toby looked away. Both of us knew if it hadn't been his neighbor, he would have likely said it was her own fault for getting drunk. He was not the most sensitive person I knew when it came to victims; unless it was a client of his. Toby did better by his own clients than he did by just about anybody else.
He went on. "She kept passing out and was too sick to do much to stop them, but she did keep saying 'no.' She's quite distressed." Toby looked acutely uncomfortable. I realized it couldn't have been easy for him to come to me, and I wasn't sure why he had. There were lots of good therapists in the department who saw victims in therapy.
"You want me to see her?" I asked.
"No, no," he said. "She already has a therapist. It's just that . . . the young man . . . well, he doesn't deny those men had sex with her. He says she consented."
"Not terribly likely," I said, "unless Lucy acts out a whole lot."
"Not at all," he replied firmly. "I've known Lucy all her life. She's very levelheaded. The thing is —her parents are distraught. Lucy wants the university to do something, and the young man is claiming that Lucy egged them on and invited it. Her parents are afraid what it will do to her reputation —and, I suppose, theirs. And Lucy is adamant that something has to be done."
"The police?" I said.
"Nobody's called them/' he said. "Even Lucy doesn't want that kind of publicity."
I sighed. The police are much better at handling rape cases than universities are. But I knew, too, how few victims are willing to involve them.
"Toby, exactly what does Lucy want out of this? She isn't involving the police. Has she actually filed a formal complaint with the university?"
"She has," Toby said. "But, as you can imagine, the discipline committee has two conflicting tales in front of them. Lucy simply doesn't have any proof. I doubt they'll do much."
"What about the other guys?"
"Thus far, the young man won't name them, and Lucy doesn't know who they are."
"Even if the discipline committee agrees with her, what does she think they can do? The university isn't going to send anybody to jail. What does she think can happen?"
"She wants to know who they are, and she wants them gone —all of them —expelled. She says she doesn't want to walk around campus wondering if this guy or that one raped her. And"—he raised his eyebrows wryly —"she wants them to say they're sorry."
Pleeeease. People can be so naive about offenders. Did Lucy really think it would mean a damn thing if they could be coerced into apologizing? It is like asking a mugger to say "sorry."
"How can I help?" I had to admit my war with Toby seemed pretty minor compared to this. This whole thing could go very badly if it wasn't handled well, and Lucy, if she had already been traumatized, could get retraumatized pretty easily. Not to mention that if her family disagreed with what she wanted to do, there was the potential for a split that might never heal.
"The young man has agreed to go to a counselor for an evaluation, but I'm afraid—well —according to your last Grand Rounds, anyway —since most therapists are not trained in detecting deception, they often end up colluding with offenders—at least that was the implication." Implication, my foot. That was what I said, and I was merely stating the obvious.
Toby went on. "I'm referring to the research you presented on mental health practitioners and the fact that they are no better than the average citizen in detecting deception —which I gathered from your stats was not exceptional." Exceptional? The average person is no better than chance at dete
cting deception, and mental health is right in there with them.
"I thought . . . I just thought . . . you deal with offenders —I thought you might ..." He took a deep breath and finally got to the point. "Would you take a look at this and maybe interview this young man and see what you think? See if there's anything you can do to prevent this from blowing up and hurting Lucy?"
Good grief. First of all it was a shock that Toby had actually listened to my last Grand Rounds. That alone was unbelievable. And he had learned something? I was incredulous, and then I realized how much it must have cost him to admit it. This pompous asshole was genuinely fond of Lucy and her family, and he wanted help for them badly enough to come with his hat in his hand to the one person in the department he personally disliked the most.
My opinion of Toby rose a notch. I had always taken him to be a hard-core narcissist, but narcissists never put anybody's needs above their own. Maybe Toby wasn't a total, died-in-the-wool, card-carrying narcissist like I had thought. Maybe he was only 99 percent narcissist, but he had a functioning 1 percent he could pull out of a hat when he needed to. It was something, anyway.
"I will," I said. "But you have to understand this. I will interview him, and I will use some of the new stuff I was talking about that detects deception. But —and it's a big 'but' — you have to know, Toby, I'll call it the way I see it. If I conclude he's telling the truth, I'll back him. And, even if I don't think he's telling the truth, the best I may be able to do is recommend a polygraph. Offenders don't usually confess without one."
"I have no doubt," he said dryly, standing up, "that you will call it the way you see it. I have a lot of faith in Lucy, or I wouldn't be here."
I was still worried about Toby's expectations. 'T don't work wonders, Toby," I said. "Just so you know, if he's lying, I may be able to figure it out, but he's not likely to change his story. And in the end my knowing he's lying isn't going to help a whole lot."