Irresistible Impulse

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “Why did you become a physician, Dr. Robinson?” she asked spontaneously.

  “For the drugs, of course,” he threw back. “And the power. The only power that means anything is power over the human body, preferably one body at a time, and we doctors have that par excellence.”

  “So you didn’t take the Hippocratic oath?”

  Robinson giggled. “No. Sadly, I was ill that day.”

  Ginnie came back with a tray containing the media for making gin and tonics and placed it slowly, drugged-careful, on a small folding table. As she bent over, Robinson said something into her ear. She smiled, turned her burnt eyes briefly on Marlene, and walked off.

  “I just told her that I was thinking of us all going over to the big house tonight and tying you up and letting her use her manicure set on you. Snip, snip. Make us a little drinkie there, would you?”

  “No,” said Marlene equably. “And I think I’ll pass on mine too.”

  “Oh, I hurt your feelings! I’m always doing that, I don’t know why. And we should be friends, you know. We’re very much alike.”

  “You think so.”

  “I do. I’ve been looking into your career. Both of us make our own rules, both of us do just as we please, the only difference being that you’re a hypocrite, and feel obliged to justify your actions—how many people have you killed?—as being in service of some notional higher good, whereas I do what I like merely because it pleases me. The will is all.”

  “The Marquis de Sade,” said Marlene.

  “Exactly! If you let yourself go, I think you could be one of his more complete and proficient devotees.”

  “But he ended up in jail, didn’t he? As will you.”

  “Oh, really? And who is going to put me there? Your big jewboy?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact. One thing I’ve learned, Doctor, in my years of dealing with scumbags, is that they are all au fond, whatever their pretensions, mere assholes. They all make mistakes, they all get caught, if not for one thing, then for the next, and so will you. You’ll love Attica, by the way, especially once the word about your racial attitudes hits the cell blocks.”

  Robinson gave her his boy-pulling-wings-off-flies grin. “Why, I think you really believe that! What a quaint idea: crime does not pay. But nothing pays better. Haven’t you heard that every great fortune was founded on a crime? A case in point is young Rohbling. Do you really imagine that he’ll spend a single day in jail? Of course, to be fair, I’m not nearly as well fixed as the Rohblings, but I intend to change that quite soon.”

  “Really? How?”

  He laughed and said in a fake whisper, “No, that’s a secret. Ginnie knows. Why don’t you ask her? You’re such a favorite of hers.”

  Suddenly, Marlene was overcome by a boredom so oppressive that it seemed to darken the sun. She had met more than her share of bad guys, and they were universally bores. The violent criminal, almost by definition, is grotesquely self-involved, but Robinson seemed to her to occupy a class of his own. Talking to him was like watching a bad movie as a goof, fascinating in its awfulness for a while, until you realized that there were more rewarding things you could be doing.

  She stood up abruptly, stripped her towel off the lounger, and thrust it into her straw bag.

  “Going somewhere?” Robinson asked, standing as well.

  “Yes, away from you.”

  “But why? I thought we were having such a nice conversation.”

  “No, you didn’t. You were annoying me and annoying your girlfriend by talking to me, and loving it because you’re a sadistic little shithead.”

  Robinson’s smile grew tighter. He reached out and grabbed Marlene’s left wrist. He said, in what was meant to be a commanding voice, “Sit down, you stupid bitch!”

  Marlene sighed and instead of pulling away from him, as he had expected, went toward him, jamming his calves up against the lounger frame. Then she pulled the .45 out of the straw bag and jammed it hard into his belly.

  “How crude,” he said disdainfully, releasing her. She took the gun away from his belly and then, almost without willing it, and not pausing to justify it through the Principle of Double Effect, she flicked her wrist and snapped the muzzle of the weapon into his groin, and when he flinched, she dropped her shoulder and shoved him backward over the lounger. His head knocked against the fieldstone terrace with a satisfying coconut sound. She saw the look on his face. Pain, rage, but also triumph. As she walked away, she felt sick at heart.

  “Dr. Perlsteiner,” said Karp, facing his first and only rebuttal witness, “could you tell us something of your background and qualifications?” This was why he had declined the stipulation of expert qualifications; he loved this part.

  Perlsteiner said, “I received my medical education at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and then did postgraduate work at various hospitals in Berlin, and then I went to Vienna to be certified as a psychoanalyst.”

  “And who was your teacher in Vienna?”

  “Sigmund Freud.”

  As always, a stir went through the courtroom. Even the most benighted recognized the magic name. In the pissing contest among shrinks that made up an insanity defense trial, this was the unmatchable squirt.

  Karp took him through the rest of his resume: private practice in Berlin, escape from the Nazis, capture in France, the concentration camp, the new life in America, long service as a forensic psychiatrist at Bellevue. Then:

  “Have you examined the defendant, and the record of his behavior preceding and after the murder in question?”

  “I have.”

  “As a result of this examination, did you reach any conclusions as to whether Jonathan Rohbling, at the time of the murder of Jane Hughes, lacked substantial capacity to comport his behavior to the requirements of the law, by reason of mental disease or defect.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And what were they?”

  “I concluded that he did not lack that capacity. He knew what he was doing and that it was wrong.”

  This was the formal rebuttal, what the People had to show beyond a reasonable doubt. Karp paused for a moment to let it sink in.

  “Doctor, tell us, on what do you base this conclusion?” asked Karp, and off they went. Perlsteiner had a good courtroom voice, carrying but not harsh, and with a slight accent that recalled, for the older jurors, Albert Einstein and the actors hired to play distinguished scientists in the movies. Rohbling, he concluded, although by no means playing with a full deck, was not suffering from schizophrenia, paranoid or otherwise. How could he tell?

  “By his competence,” answered Perlsteiner. “I will explain. Schizophrenia exhibits in many forms. It is a labile disease, and in fact, we often now speak of ‘the schizophrenias/ plural, do you see? But it is a true disease of the mind, just like polio is a disease of the motor nerves. If you suffer from schizophrenia, you can’t use your mind properly, just like polio, for example, you can’t use your legs. So, when I hear of a person who dresses himself up, who prepares his clothes, his wig, his makeup, just so, who travels on the subway, to what is an alien culture, for him, and passes himself off successfully as a member of that culture, who befriends a respectable elderly woman, who makes his escape after committing a crime, who eludes the police for some time, who recalls a psychiatric appointment and attends it, and presents a facade of normality strong enough to deceive a psychiatrist, then I say to you, whatever this man is suffering from, it is not schizophrenia. Schizophrenics are, typically, nearly helpless people.”

  “And what in your opinion is Mr. Rohbling suffering from?”

  “Well, he is compulsive—obsessive-compulsive syndrome, to be technical. Infantile, narcissistic. He feels bad about himself, and why not? He’s a young man, he has no discipline, he doesn’t work, he doesn’t go to school. His father has contempt for him, ignores him.” Perlsteiner shrugged. “It makes him feel better, disguising himself. Now he is in control.”

  “And why, in your opinion, di
d he kill Jane Hughes?”

  “Oh, impossible to say. I would not even guess at the psychology.”

  Karp accepted this as a welcome departure from Dr. Bannock’s encyclopedic understanding of Rohbling’s motivation, and moved on to a point-by-point refutation of the defense’s psychiatric testimony, from which it emerged that Dr. Perlsteiner (and by extension, Dr. Freud) did not think much of modern American psychiatry. The business about the disease switching on just when it was convenient—nonsense! The disease was variable, true, but once florescent, it did not wane back to normality for short periods in the way proposed. Never. He deplored especially the tendency to medicalize every nasty character trait, and to attribute antisocial acts to dark compulsions, traceable, of course, to childhood trauma. Thank you, no further questions.

  Waley’s cross-examination was brief. One of the signs of a great cross-examiner is knowing when not to do it, as here. Perlsteiner was a strong witness and a sympathetic one. To try to grind him down would invite unwanted comparisons with the Gestapo. So Waley took only a few artistic cuts. Dr. P. was how old? Seventy-four. Not on the American Board of Psychiatry? Not a member of the New York Psychiatric Institute? No promotions in the past fifteen years? Few publications? Why was that, Doctor? Waley drew a brief sketch of a distinguished doctor who might have been great once but was clearly past it, out of step with modern psychiatry. Karp thought it was the right move for Waley; it was what he himself would have done. How much the jury would discount Perlsteiner’s testimony and how much they would rely on the presence, wit, and character of the dueling shamans, a contest in which Karp thought Perlsteiner was unbeatable, was at present unknown, but Karp thought, from his observation of the jurors, that the good guys had picked up a few points. Perlsteiner stepped off the stand. The evidentiary phase of People v. Rohbling was finished.

  Karp now required a police escort to carry him home. A blue-and-white preceded his usual unmarked car to the Crosby Street loft, and the two cops in it made a lane through the pickets and news crews to the door of the newly installed elevator. He summoned it with a key and rode up, carrying the usual take-out dinner, tonight a bucket o’chicken.

  In the loft, gloom prevailed. No one had been in or out for days. The twins were cranky. Zak had a rash, Zik some undefined ailment inclining him to clingy weeping. Posie was keeping them minimally cleaned and fed, but the rest of the loft was starting to resemble the East Village crash pad that was her natural habitat. A burnt pot sat on the stove, and the kitchen was full of its rank scent. Lucy was glum. Her efforts to maintain some vestige of normal home life—setting the table, making a crude salad—broke Karp’s heart.

  “Is this going to be over soon, Daddy?” she said in a small voice. She had eaten enough to maintain a starling, and pushed her plate away.

  “Yeah, real soon, baby,” he said. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “I miss Mommy.”

  “Me too.”

  She sighed. “I need a break. This is just like jail.”

  Marlene came back from the pool and showered and washed her hair, although the soap did not reach where she really felt dirty. She put on a thick terry-cloth robe she found hanging on a hook, wrapped a towel around her head, put zoris on her feet, grabbed her straw bag, and went downstairs.

  She sat in an Adirondack chair on the lawn in front of the house. She lit a cigarette, but crushed it after a few puffs. She felt full enough of toxins. The dog came trotting out from the back of the house, and came up to her and placed his massive head on her lap, looking up at her worshipfully. Marlene stroked the dog’s head and closed her eyes. She tried to remember St. Teresa’s famous chapter on resistance to evil, but the words of the saint were useless to her, too far away in time and situation. Marlene was not a contemplative nun. She wished devoutly for a lap on which she could place her own head and be stroked and told that everything was all right. She missed her family. She wept briefly, and then let her mind go empty. Bees buzzed, sparrows twittered in the rafters, a gull called, the wind came soughing through the grass and the pines off the shining Sound. In the house, the cello began to play, something elegant, classical, full of confidence in the ultimate order of the universe, Haydn perhaps, or Boccherini. Music, nature, her peculiar brand of religion: these performed their usual blessings. Marlene took the towel from her head and let the breeze dry her hair. She slept for little over an hour.

  Later, dressed, she ran up and down the rough beach with Sweety, until she was tired and hungry. Meals at the big house were taken, democratically and en famille, in the huge tiled kitchen with the Marneys. Tonight: tomato soup, crab salad, and cold asparagus, ice cream—WASPy, bland, but nourishing food. Neither Marlene nor Edie had much to say, and table talk was dominated by domestic trivia and commentary on food and weather. During the meal they heard the sound of a heavy engine starting up away in the direction of the boathouse.

  “That’ll be Ginnie and her friends with Bonito,” said Marney. “She told me to get it ready. Some kind of party. Said she’d be gone most of the night and not to lock the boathouse.”

  Marlene recalled that Bonito was the big yacht and became conscious of a mild relaxation around the table, which she shared, provisionally, if she assumed Robinson was off the island for the night. Conversation became lighter, Marlene trotted out some horror stories from her speckled past that seemed amusing now, and Edie described the foibles of a number of famous people. After dinner, Edie spent a good hour on the phone, speaking with her agent and people in various world capitals. Marlene phoned home and spoke to Posie and Lucy. Daddy was taking a nap, should we wake him up? No, honey, let him sleep. I’m coming out to see you, okay, Mom? Sure, honey, pretty soon.

  Marlene and Edie chatted after dinner, both politely avoiding the big subject. Marlene mentioned Lucy and how much the child wished to see a house on an island, and Edie extended an invitation, at some vague date in the future, when the current unpleasantness had (presumably) been resolved. At ten-thirty, Edie went off to bed. Marlene prowled around the immediate grounds with Sweety and found all quiet.

  She woke from her usual light sleep in the small hours to a creaking, scraping sound. Steps? She waited, but there were no further noises. She could hear the dog snuffling and pacing the hallway, as she knew he did several times in the night. He was clearly not concerned, and therefore there was no one in the house who should not be. She drifted back to sleep.

  Just after dawn she was jerked awake by a shrill cry. She raced into Edie Wooten’s bedroom, where she found her client, sitting in bed, her face white as the lined counterpane, staring at the foot of the bed, on which lay a single dark red rose. The note attached to it read, “Soon.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Karp listened to Lionel Waley’s closing statement for the defense in Rohbling rather as a great operatic tenor might listen to another one reaching for the high note and hitting it just right—that is, with a mixture of admiration and bile. The State of New York favors those who represent it by providing that the closing arguments for the defense precede those of the prosecution, and there is no rebuttal allowed. Karp would have the last word. Waley had therefore not only to make his own argument but to predict what language Karp would use and discount it in advance. Which he was doing, or trying to. Karp took notes, and adjusted in his impossibly crowded brain the phrases and sequence of presentation of his own closing so as to counter these preemptive strikes. Waley was saying, in effect, “The prosecution will say blah-blah, but you know that wah-wah is true.” Karp would have to do the opposite, but retrospectively. This is one reason why the closing arguments in major criminal trials, although written-out and outlined, are not memorized speeches but are given extempore. Another is that as he speaks, the lawyer is reading the jury, seeing what cuts sharply, what moves the listening faces, and what does not.

  Waley was expatiating on the law as it applied to the case and interpreting, in a way favorable to his client’s cause, the charge that the judge would give to
the jury when the closings were finished. He could do this because jury instructions in criminal trials are almost entirely boiler-plate exercises, pinched by actual statute and acres of precedents, besides which, Judge Peoples’ instructions were notable for balance and fairness.

  “The law assumes competence, it assumes rationality,” Waley was saying, “but it allows for tragic cases where rationality and competence do not exist. A criminal act requires a criminal actor, that is, someone who understood what the law required and made a conscious and knowing decision to break it. It is the burden of the prosecution to show beyond a reasonable doubt, ladies and gentlemen, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jonathan Rohbling, at the moment of committing the crime with which he is charged, did not lack substantial incapacity to comport his conduct to the requirements of law. In simple language, it is for you, the jury, to decide on the basis of the evidence you have heard whether there is a reasonable doubt that Jonathan Rohbling was in his right mind on the evening of April twentieth in Jane Hughes’s apartment. If you have such a doubt that because of his mental disease he did not know what he was doing, or that it was wrong, then you must find him not guilty by reason of insanity.”

  Karp made a note. Not that great, Lionel, he thought, all those negative constructions are confusing. But he knew that in the course of his speech Waley would repeat that essential argument many times, with many illustrations. He would try to demonstrate that the testimony of his shrinks constituted reasonable doubt. If a trio of top psychiatrists testify the guy’s crazy, well, then …

  The argument was standard and specious, and Waley was presenting it as well as Karp had ever heard it done. He wondered briefly if Waley really believed that Rohbling was insane under the law, and decided that he did. That was his art, his genius as a defense attorney: he could manipulate his beliefs to suit his case. He was stricken by the tragedy of J. Rohbling, madman, and if he could make the jury believe it along with him, he had won. Karp took notes, listened, waited. It would be some hours yet before his last licks.