The Syndrome

by John Case

  For a moment, she was tempted to pull away from him. But no: he was all she had, the only game in town. “He’ll be watching the lobby,” she said.

  “Then we’ll take the stairs. There’s a service entrance on the ground floor,” Duran told her. He started off.

  “But what if he’s watching the stairs?”

  He stopped. “Then we should take the elevator.”

  “But—”

  “Got a coin?” he asked, sarcasm vying with urgency.

  She shook her head.

  “Then which is it? You decide.”

  She thought about it. Finally, she said, “The lobby. There’s a security guard, right? And it’s a public place.” She reached out and gave the call button a decisive push, although when her fingers touched the metal, she got a sensation like a shock. Three floors down, Duran’s floor, she realized, the elevator stopped—and so, for a moment, did her heart. She felt as if all her nerve endings had migrated to the surface of her skin—the tension unbearable as she waited for the doors to open.

  But when they drew back, there was only a pimply kid from Domino’s, holding a red, white, and blue plastic pizza warmer. Stepping into the elevator, he glanced at Duran, and leaned against the wall. “Three pizzas, and they give me half a buck.” He shook his head. “The bullshit I go through…”

  Chapter 19

  “Where to?”

  The taxi had just deposited an elderly gentleman on the front steps of Duran’s apartment building, when the two of them piled into the backseat as if it were the last chopper out of Saigon. “Police station,” Adrienne gasped.

  The cabbie eyed them in the rearview mirror. “Which one?” he asked.

  “Any one,” Adrienne told him.

  “There’s one on Park,” the driver suggested.

  “Park would be good!” Duran said.

  “You got it,” the driver replied, and picking up his clipboard, began to print the destination as if it were a recipe for high explosives. Then he glanced at his watch, and noted the time, and—

  “Just go!” Adrienne whined. Like Duran, she expected the Bear to shamble through the doorway any second.

  “Gotta do the paperwork,” the driver insisted. “Otherwise, you forget.” Putting his pen and clipboard aside, he unhitched the microphone from his CB radio, and mumbled into it. “41 at 2300 Connecticut, going to 1600 Park.” A blitz of static acknowledged the message as the driver put the cab in gear. Soon, they were heading north on Connecticut Avenue.

  “I have to turn around,” the driver said. “It may take a minute.” Neither of them cared. For the first time in an hour, they were able to take a deep breath. Adrienne turned in her seat to gaze out the back window.

  “What are you looking for?” Duran asked.

  “I want to see if we’re being followed,” she muttered, for some reason not wanting the driver to hear. The words sounded crazy in what was, after all, ‘broad daylight.’ Even so, when a police car hove into view, Adrienne rolled down her window, intending to hail it. But the opportunity was lost as the cruiser turned into the drive thru line at the Burger King, just north of the ComSat Building.

  It was then that the driver made the first of three right turns that put them back on Connecticut, heading in the opposite direction. By then, the squad car was nowhere to be seen. But it didn’t matter. They felt safe in the cab as it crawled past the stylish apartment buildings that lined Connecticut south of the Van Ness center. Soon, they were back where they’d started, then turning left onto Porter.

  Hunkering deeper into her seat, Adrienne was stunned by the circumstances in which she found herself. On the one hand, the real world—joggers and shoppers, women pushing strollers, children walking dogs. Bumper stickers and school decals. On the other hand…

  Two men dead on the floor in Duran’s apartment—and her in a cab with Duran himself. Her psycho savior.

  She shook her head, and groaned. Duran turned to her with a puzzled and sympathetic expression. Talk about “good-looking,” he was thinking. Talk about “unhappy.”

  “I keep seeing Eddie,” she told him. “And that other man. Maybe we should just… go to a pay phone. Call 911.”

  Hearing the numbers, the driver’s eyes lifted in the rearview mirror. Reflexively, Duran leaned forward and closed the Plexiglas panel between the front and backseats. Then he turned to Adrienne, who’d begun to shiver. “You okay?” Duran asked.

  She nodded as he took her hand in his own, surprised to find how cold it was.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  She nodded for the second time, then jerked her hand away. “What was that all about with the file?” she asked.

  Duran looked puzzled. “Which file?”

  “My sister’s file. You only had two! What were you trying to pull?”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to ‘pull’ anything.”

  “Then why was it empty?”

  Duran made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. I don’t know why it was like that.”

  “It’s crazy! How many clients do you have, anyway?”

  Duran looked away. He didn’t like to talk about this. This was just the kind of thing that made him hyperventilate.

  “How many?” she demanded.

  “Two,” he replied.

  “Two? How can you have just two clients?”

  Duran looked away, and shook his head. She glared at him for a long moment. When he didn’t reply, but just sat there, breathing heavily, as if he were waiting for an oxygen mask to drop—she waded in. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “The fact that you don’t add up! Not at all. Not at all at all! I mean, you aren’t even who you think you are, for God’s sake!” Duran began to reply, but she wasn’t listening. “Two clients?! That’s not a practice, that’s a—I don’t know. A sideline. A hobby.”

  Duran frowned. And then he smiled, as if he’d just remembered something important. “Two clients are normal,” he said. “Two clients are fine.”

  Her jaw dropped, as much from the sudden cheerfulness in his voice as from what he said. Letting her head fall back on the seat, she closed her eyes and muttered, “He’s out of his mind.”

  The police detective was a white guy in his early thirties. He looked about twenty pounds overweight, and sported a single gold earring and Polynesian tattoos on his forearms. Dressed in vintage Chucks, gray sweatpants and a T-shirt with a pit bull’s head under a banner that read Be the Dog, he had twinkling blue eyes and a salt-and-pepper ponytail that needed washing.

  His name was Freeman Petrescu, and he sat with Adrienne and Duran in a fluorescently lighted “intake room” that reeked of Lysol. In front of him was a notebook computer with a Yosemite Sam decal and a monitor with a crack along its side.

  “And you’ve never seen these men before?” Petrescu asked, typing softly.

  Adrienne shook her head. “No. Never.”

  The cop looked at Duran, who seemed doubtful. “What about you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Surprised by the answer, Adrienne turned to him. The cop stopped typing.

  “What do you mean?” Petrescu asked.

  “Well, maybe I’m imagining it, but… the big guy was… a little familiar.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like… I’ve seen him around. I think I may have seen him around.”

  “Okay, that’s good. Where?”

  “I dunno,” Duran told him. “I’m not sure.”

  “O-kayyyy,” Petrescu replied, and resumed typing. “May… have seen… subject… around! That about right?”

  Duran nodded.

  “They call you ‘Doc’?” the detective asked.

  “Sometimes,” Duran replied.

  “Which makes you, what? A psychiatrist?”

  Duran shook his head. “No, I’m a clinical psychologist.”

  “Except he’s not,” Adrienne insisted, crossing her legs an
d then her arms. “He isn’t registered, he didn’t graduate from anywhere—”

  Duran made an exasperated sound as Petrescu looked from one witness to the other, and sighed. They’d been over this twice before.

  “Ask him how many clients he has.”

  “What difference would that make?” the detective wondered.

  “Ask him!”

  Petrescu looked at Duran, and shrugged. “Okay, how many clients do you have?”

  “Two.”

  The detective digested the answer as if it were a peculiar food that he was determined to like. Finally, he turned to Adrienne and said, “So he’s got two. Must be tough to make your nut, huh Doc’?” When Adrienne gave the policeman an astonished (and withering) look, Petrescu blew her off. “I know what you’re thinking, but look at it from my point of view: we’ve already got your complaint about Dr. Duran—”

  “He isn’t ‘Dr. Duran.’”

  “—and that’s why you’re suing him! I understand that. But this isn’t a civil complaint. You’re here because you saw someone murdered. The rest—that’s a whole other ballpark. So if we could just change the subject back to the subject… ?”

  Adrienne ground her teeth together, and raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t you think the one has something to do with the other?”

  Petrescu ignored the question. “You said the big guy shot his partner—”

  “So he could get at Mr. Bonilla,” Duran said, finishing the sentence.

  “So what you’re saying is, he missed.”

  “No, he didn’t miss—” Adrienne began.

  “Mr. Bonilla was using the shorter man as a shield,” Duran explained. “He wanted the big man to… you know—drop his gun.”

  “And the big guy shot him?”

  “He was clearing a path,” Duran explained, “to Mr. Bonilla.”

  “Is that right?” Petrescu asked.

  “Yes,” Adrienne told him. “Now, are you going to take us over there, or what?”

  The detective shook his head. “No point. Homicide’s been there for an hour. Better we wait for them. See what they can tell us.”

  The detective continued to question them about what they’d seen and, in particular, the way the big man had tried to kill Adrienne, but not Duran. “And you said he put a gun to your head?”

  Duran nodded.

  “But then he changed his mind, and hit you with it.”

  “That’s right,” Duran told him, and gestured to the bruise on his forehead.

  “So he didn’t want to kill you,” Petrescu decided. “But you—” he said, turning to Adrienne.

  “Me, he wanted to kill,” she said. “And Eddie.”

  “That’s what you said, but… why? What was on his mind?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  “He didn’t say anything?”

  Adrienne shook her head, then changed her mind. “Well…”

  “What?” the cop asked.

  “He said, ‘It won’t hurt.’”

  “‘It wont hurt,’“ the cop repeated, typing. “What won’t hurt?”

  “Shooting me in the face!” Adrienne replied. “I think he was trying to be reassuring.”

  Petrescu flinched. “Fuckin’ A,” he muttered, and resumed typing.

  A swarthy man with glistening black hair stuck his head in the doorway.

  With a glance at Adrienne and Duran, he asked Petrescu if he could see him for a second. “Now we’re in business,” Petrescu said, and got to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

  Adrienne and Duran sat without talking, her right foot bouncing nervously. Finally, Petrescu came back in and carefully shut the door behind him. Returning to his seat, he switched off the computer with a sigh, turned, and rubbed his hands.

  Adrienne was shocked. “You didn’t save your file,” she told him.

  Duran shook his head. “I can’t believe it,” he said.

  Petrescu waved the issue away. “That was Detective Villareal,” he told them. “He’s just back from your apartment.”

  Adrienne looked at him expectantly. “Was Eddie—”

  “He’s filling out his report now. The U.S. Attorney will want to use it as the basis for the complaint against you. What I’d suggest is that—”

  “What?!” Adrienne exclaimed.

  “I said—”

  “What complaint?” Duran demanded.

  Petrescu held up his hand. “For all I know, there may be some mitigating factors. The two of you may need psychiatric help,” he suggested, looking from the dumbfounded Adrienne to the astonished Duran, and back again. “But it’s a criminal offense to file a false report. A misdemeanor, but still—there’s time and a fine.”

  “What are you talking about?” Duran demanded.

  “I’m talking about the fact that nothing happened—your apartment’s clean.”

  “You went to the wrong place,” Duran said with a groan.

  Petrescu shook his head. “The security guard let him in. Your mail—Jeffrey Duran’s mail—was in a pile on a table in the hallway of the apartment. That sound like the wrong place?”

  Duran was too surprised to answer.

  “They moved the bodies,” Adrienne said.

  Petrescu cocked his head, considering the possibility. “Now, why would they do that?” he wondered. “And who are ‘they,’ anyway? There’s only the big guy—the other one’s supposed to be dead, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Adrienne told him. “I mean… how am I supposed to know? You’re the detective!”

  “Right. I am the detective. And so is Villareal. And what he says is, there’s no blood on the floor. No damage, either. So maybe the big guy cleaned it up. And maybe the shooter was Deadeye Dick, so there weren’t any bullet holes, except in the bodies. So there’s no blood, there’s no bodies, there’s no mess. And nobody heard anything either—nobody saw anything. Just you two. Which, being a detective, makes me wonder: how does the one guy take two bodies out of a busy apartment building without being noticed—never mind why. Does he carry ‘em down the stairwell, or does he take the elevator? Does he wrap ‘em in a rug, drop ‘em out the window, or what?” He looked at Duran. “I’d be interested in your theory” he said.

  Adrienne and Duran sat where they were in stunned silence. Finally, Petrescu pushed back his chair. “I have a lot of work to do,” he told them, and got to his feet. With a weary gesture toward the door, he invited them to leave. “It’ll be a few days before you hear from us—we’re pretty backed up. But trust me. You will hear from us.”

  “This is ridiculous!” Adrienne complained.

  “Get some help,” Petrescu replied. “And a lawyer. You’re definitely gonna need a lawyer.”

  Her apartment was about two blocks from the police station, and they covered the distance in a fog of disbelief. “What are you going to do?” Adrienne asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t go back to your apartment.”

  “I’m not so sure you should go back to yours,” Duran replied.

  A hapless shrug. “I live there.”

  They crossed Mount Pleasant Avenue together, heading for the alley behind Lamont Street. It was 6:30, and just about dark. “Y’know,” Duran said, “after a while, Bonilla’s going to turn up missing. And when he does, the police are going to look… bad.”

  Adrienne nodded. “I know,” she said. “I just hope we’re around to see it.”

  A smile flickered in the gloom on Duran’s face. We… ? Then they were in the alley, crunching their way toward the garage across cobblestones and broken glass. “You don’t have a front door?”

  She shook her head. “It’s an English basement. I have to go through the garage.” They walked a little farther until she turned to him, and said, “This is it.” They were standing in front of a garage door, the kind that rolled up into the ceiling. Adrienne pressed a remote and the door rattled up. They walked through the garage, crossed a small yard, and arrived a
t a short flight of steps that led down to her apartment.

  “Ta daa!”

  Wait a minute, Adrienne thought, what I am doing? Inviting him in? Well, after all, he had saved her life—and where else did he have to go? Certainly not to his own place.

  He sensed her indecision, and understood it. “I’ll get a hotel,” he told her. “There’s a lot to think about.”

  She looked relieved. “Well… stay in touch. Once they realize Eddie’s missing…”

  “I’ll let you know where I am,” he promised, and turned to leave.

  Adrienne inserted the key in the lock, and pushed at the door. When it didn’t budge, she gave it a second shove, tsking with annoyance.

  Hearing her, Duran turned. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s just the door,” she explained, and tried the lock again. This time, the latch turned, and the door swung wide. Adrienne frowned at her key, thinking about it. “It must have been unlocked…”

  They went in together, and found what looked like a landfill where an apartment was supposed to have been. The contents of every drawer were scattered across the floor. The mattress was overturned, and clothes lay in heaps amid lightbulbs and books, boxes of cereal and shoes.

  Adrienne took it in as if she were at the scene of an accident, staring in horror and amazement at the disaster in front of her. She took a few, tentative steps deeper into the apartment, wading through the detritus of her daily life. Slowly, her amazement began to dwindle, replaced by a rising tide of anger. She stood beside the bookcase and started picking things up, stupidly, setting the books back onto the shelves. She lifted up a copy of The God of Small Things and in doing so revealed her sister’s urn, lying on its side, its top off, its contents partially tumbled out. Sinking to her knees, she began to scoop the spilled ashes back into their container.

  “What are you doing?” Duran asked.

  She looked up at him, furious with tears. “It’s Nikki…”

  Duran looked away, then took a deep breath. “I think we ought to get out of here,” he said. Adrienne nodded, then got to her feet without a word, looking at something in the palm of her hand.

  “What’s that?” he asked.