Privileged Conversation

by Ed McBain

  In bed later, the little black hook-latch fastened on the white, planked, wooden bedroom door, she spreads her legs for him, the sleek smooth legs he loves to touch, the feel of them under his searching hands, the children asleep down the hall, stroking her legs, his hands gliding up to the secret flesh high on her inner thighs, the soft hollows hidden on either side of her pubic mound. As she did the very first time they’d made love in a rented room on Cape Cod, she gasps sharply when his fingers part her nether lips, and raises her hips to accept his gently questing fingers, touching, finding her, moist and ready.

  If Annie knew—and perhaps she does—what transpires each Friday night in this bedroom with its salt-dampened sheets and its windows open to the ocean winds, she would most certainly call it a tradition. For here in Helen’s fiercely welcoming embrace, David finds again the young girl he once knew, and the desirable woman she’s become, and is replenished by both. Overwhelmed by her beauty, stunned by her passion, moved almost to tears by her generosity, he whispers as he does each time, “I love you, Helen.”

  And she whispers against his lips, “Oh, and I love you, David, so very very much.”

  He has already forgotten the golden-haired redhead whose bike was stolen in Central Park.

  But, of course, at parties all during that long weekend of the Fourth, Helen keeps urging him to tell the story of what happened in Central Park. And with each retelling of the story, even though David reports the facts essentially the same way each time, the story assumes mythic proportions in his own mind, the movie playing there differing from the actual script as much as if a director had arrogantly tampered with a writer’s original creation to make it indifferently his own. At a cocktail party in Edgartown that Saturday, as David retells the basic story as it happened, he visualizes something quite other in his imagination, and is surprised to hear himself relating a tale that is, by comparison, fundamentally mundane.

  In his fantasy, the bicycle thief (good title for a movie, he thinks, thank you, Mr. De Sica), in The Bicycle Thief, then—David’s movie and not De Sica’s—the robber is no longer a scrawny sixteen-year-old black kid struggling almost unsuccessfully to wrench a bike from a slip of a girl who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds, but is instead a brawny tattooed (Mom in a heart) black ex-con wearing a tiny gold earring in his left ear, sweaty T-shirt bulging with impossible muscles courtesy of Weight Lifting 101 at Ossining, New York. The girl, too, whereas not the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old he’d first thought she was yesterday in the park, becomes in the Never Never Land of his unconscious a girl of nineteen, technically a teenager but precariously poised on the cusp of womanhood, certainly a more appropriate victim for the brute assaulting her in this neorealistic black-and-white remake of Beauty and the Beast, a far far better prey, unquestionably more innocent, and therefore more defenseless than a woman of twenty-five would have been (if, in fact, that was her age).

  As David tells the story to an interested circle of listeners on the deck of a house larger than the one they are renting in Menemsha, yet another glorious sunset provoking ooohs and ahhhs of appreciation, he does not exaggerate in the slightest his behavior yesterday in the park. He carefully explains that he did not run to the rescue until he’d examined the possible risk of such intervention …

  “Well, of course,” his host says, raising an understanding eyebrow. “You were in Central Park.”

  “Exactly,” David replies.

  … and even then, all he did was yell “Hey!” which had no effect at all on the struggle, and then “Hey!” again when the boy was already pedaling off. This being Edgartown, he does not mention that the boy yelled “Fuck you!” in exuberant farewell. This being Edgartown, someone immediately begins talking about the absurdity of the Black Rage defense, and someone else suggests that if they catch this little monster he should be chained to a bicycle and forced to ride up and down the streets of New York with a sign on his back reading BICYCLE THIEF.

  “Good title for a movie,” someone says with a sly wink, as if David hasn’t already thought of it.

  “Thank you, Mr. De Sica,” someone else says.

  That, too, David thinks.

  But …

  In retelling the tale that evening, and again at a Bring-the-Kiddies outdoor barbecue in Chilmark that Sunday, where—it being Chilmark—a heated discussion ensues regarding therapy programs for underprivileged minorities, and yet again at a West Chop picnic on Monday (“Of course, bring the kids!”) and yet again for the last time …

  Or at least what he hopes will be the last time, if only Helen would quit urging him to tell about The Mugging in Central Park, her title for the episode, which in truth is beginning to bore him even in the extravagantly distorted version inside his head. Yet retell it he does, for what actually does turn out to be the last time, at yet another cocktail party on the deck of a house overlooking Vineyard Haven Harbor and affording a splendid view of the fireworks display that starts as darkness falls and the world grows hushed in expectation.

  But …

  In all of these retellings, the fantastic story unfolding in his mind has him not only rushing to the adolescent girl’s side, not only struggling with the brawny animal trying to steal her bike and rape her in the bargain—her costume torn, one breast showing where he’s ripped the orange tank top from her shoulder, the adolescent nipple erect in terror—not only struggling with this weight-lifting specimen twice his size, but actually exchanging blows with him, the girl standing by breathlessly, her hand to her mouth, the green eyes wide in fear and concern, the freckled face flushed, until at last her attacker hits David a good one upside the head, in his mind, anyway, and knocks him to the ground, in his mind, and kicks him while he’s down, in his mind, and races off shouting the words David had not thought wise to repeat in Edgartown, nor even here in Vineyard Haven, for that matter.

  Over the harbor, fireworks burst into the sky, trailing glowing shivering sparks toward the dark waters below.

  Arthur K’s sister is once again wearing her pink angora sweater, dark blue pleated skirt, string of pearls, bobby sox and saddle shoes. This is now the fifth of July, a hot and sultry Wednesday morning. It has been five days since Arthur K’s Friday afternoon session; apparently the long Fourth of July weekend has blown all memories of the open blue robe from his mind. He revisits the scene in the kitchen again and again, tiptoeing around it like one of the ballerina hippopotami in Fantasia, but they are already thirty minutes into the hour and the blue robe has remained adamantly closed over Veronica’s luminous pearls.

  Arthur K is now telling David that he really had a lousy time at the synagogue dance that night long ago, and that, in fact, he hadn’t made out with Shirley in the backseat of his father’s Pontiac, or anywhere else, for that matter.

  “I guess that was some sort of fantasy I made up,” he says. “I guess that was what I wished would happen, but it didn’t.”

  David says nothing.

  “Does that make you angry?” Arthur K asks.

  “No, no.”

  “My lying to you?”

  “Do you feel you were lying to me?”

  “No. I told you it was just a fantasy, didn’t I? How is that lying? I was only sixteen at the time. It was just a fantasy.”

  In his notebook, David writes , and then waits, his pen poised over the lined yellow page.

  “Nothing wrong with fantasies,” Arthur K says. “I’m sure you have fantasies, don’t you?”

  They are perpendicular to each other, Arthur K on his back on the couch, looking up at the ceiling, David sitting in the chair behind his desk.

  “By the way, how do you determine what’s important and what’s not?” Arthur K asks. “How do you know what to write down?”

  David does not reply.

  “I guess Shirley’s important, hm?” Arthur K says. “You always make a little note when I mention her, I can hear your little pen going, zip, zip, zip. Is that because she had the same name as my m
other? Has, for all I know. She may still be alive. She’d be an old woman by now, of course … well, sixty-five, sixty-six, for a woman that’s old. She was very beautiful back then, it was easy to fantasize about her, you can’t blame me for fantasizing about her. I realize that what I told you … about the car and about her and me on the backseat … isn’t something I fantasized back then when I was sixteen, of course, but something I made up now … well, not now, not this very minute, but whenever it was I first mentioned it to you. What I’m saying is I know I was telling you something I made up, I know I was lying to you, if that’s what you choose to call it, telling you a lie about making out with Shirley when actually all I did was drive her home and say goodnight to her. Didn’t even kiss her, in fact. Just said goodnight. I don’t think we even shook hands. Just G’night, Shirley, G’night, Arthur, and I went home. I think I had a hard-on, I’m not sure. She was so fucking beautiful, it was impossible to go anywhere near her without getting a hard-on. I’m sure I must’ve had a hard-on.”

  This is the first David is hearing of Arthur K’s hardon. In previous tellings of that steamy adolescent night long ago, gawky Arthur K and sultry, dark-haired, dark-eyed Shirley were necking in the backseat of the Pontiac and suddenly Shirley’s blouse was unbuttoned and her skirt was up above her waist. Until now David had naturally assumed there’d been an erection, else how could Arthur K have “made out”? He’d also assumed that Arthur K had gone home sated and sans erection, there to discover his sister Veronica sitting at the kitchen table weeping and spooning chocolate pudding into her mouth.

  But now, all at once, a hard-on.

  Ta-ra.

  “I think she had that same effect on everyone,” Arthur K says. “Shirley. Well, she was so fucking beautiful, you know. Blond hair and blue eyes, Jesus, she looked like a shiksa, I swear to God, you’d never know …”

  You’d never know, David thinks with shocking clarity, that in every version he’s heard of Arthur K’s story so far, Shirley has had long black hair and brown eyes, and—in at least one telling—crisp black pubic hair. But now she is a blonde, and David forges an immediate connection which he scribbles into his notebook as Arthur K doesn’t hear him writing this time around because he is too busy staring up at the ceiling in David’s office, where apparently he is visualizing his blond, blue-eyed Shirley-Veronica shiksa …

  “… half sitting, half lying back against the pillows, crying her eyes out. Her room was on the way to mine,” he says, “this was a railroad flat, you had to walk through one room to get to the next one, there was like a corridor running straight through the apartment from one end of it to the other, with the rooms strung out along the way. Her light was on, she used to have this little lamp with a shade on it, on the table beside her bed. The door was open. I could see her lying back against the pillows, sitting there sobbing, her legs stretched out, she was barefoot. Wearing this little skimpy blue robe she always wore, a pink nightgown under it, I could see her pink nightgown, there was lace on the bottom of it, the hem. I said, ‘Sis?’ Whispered it, actually, because my parents were sleeping right down the hall, there was Veronica’s room first, and then mine, and then the big bedroom where my parents slept. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her. ‘Sis? What’s wrong?’ And I went inside and sat beside her on the bed.”

  Arthur K falls silent.

  David waits, scarcely daring to breathe.

  “A lot of guys felt the same way I did about her,” Arthur K says at last. “Shirley. She was the class cock-tease, in fact.”

  And the moment is gone.

  And soon the hour is over.

  On Wednesday morning, just as his second session that day is ending, the telephone rings. His patient, an obsessive-compulsive named Susan M, asks as she does after each session, changing only the day each time, “So I’ll see you on Friday, right?” and when he says, “Yes, of course,” she says, “Same time, right?” and he says, “Yes, same time,” and the telephone rings. He is picking up the receiver as Susan M, waggling her fingers in farewell, closes the door behind her.

  “Dr. Chapman,” he says.

  “Hi, it’s Kate.”

  “Kate?” he says.

  “Duggan. Rhymes with huggin’.”

  “Duggan?”

  “Or, come to think of it, muggin’ might be more appropriate.”

  “I’m sorry, I …”

  “Kate. From the park. The victim, remember?”

  “Oh. Oh, yes. How are you, Miss Duggan?”

  “Kate. I’m fine. They caught him,” she says. “At least, they think it’s him. Guess where they got him?”

  “Where?”

  “In the park. Trying to steal somebody else’s bike.”

  “Did they find yours?”

  “No, he’d already sold it. He’s a junkie, we were right.”

  We, he thinks.

  “What happens now?”

  “I have to go to the precinct later, identify him. That’s why I’m calling. Do you think you could come with me?” she asks at once, and somewhat breathlessly, as if knowing in advance he will say no. “I told the police there was a witness, and they said it would help if they could get a positive ID from someone other than the victim. That’s me. The victim.”

  “Well …”

  “I know you must be busy …”

  “Well, as a matter of fact I’ve been away, and …”

  “… but this won’t be till six tonight. The lineup. I work, too, they know that. The cops. I told them that’s the earliest I could get there. They’ve already got him on the attempted robbery, the one in the park yesterday, but they really want to nail him if it turns out he’s the one who stole my bike, too. So if you could come to the precinct, it really would help. If you want to, that is. As a public service, that is.”

  “Well, actually, I won’t be free till almost six. So …”

  “That’s okay, you could meet me at the precinct, it’s not far from your office. And I don’t think it’ll matter if you’re a few minutes late.”

  “Well, you see, Miss Duggan …”

  “Kate,” she says.

  “Kate,” he says. “I’m not sure I …”

  “Please?”

  He does not know why the image of her sitting on the ground, ankles crossed, flashes suddenly into his mind, the side-slit in the very short green nylon running shorts, the hint of white cotton panties beneath.

  “Say yes,” she says.

  The stage is behind a thick plate-glass window which the detective running the lineup assures them is a one-way mirror, or a two-way mirror as it is sometimes called in some precincts, he says, go figure. What it is, they can see into the next room where there’s the stage with height markers on the wall behind it, and a microphone hanging over it because the detective plans to ask all the people they parade to repeat the words the suspect said in the park last Friday—“First to you, Miss Duggan, and then to you, Dr. Chapman”—but nobody in the next room could see them where they were sitting here in the dark. None of the people in the other room would be able to hear any of the conversation in here, either, the conversation in here would be private and confidential.

  The detective goes on to explain that all of the people they’ll be looking at will be black men of about the same age as the suspect. This was so no smart-ass lawyer could come in later and say the identification process had been rigged, like say they put six Vietnamese fishermen and the one black kid on the stage there, some choice that would be, huh? The detective wants them to take their time, look everybody over carefully, nobody can see them or hear them out here in the dark, there’s no danger of anybody coming after them and trying to do them harm later on. Just take your time, he tells them, see if you recognize anybody on the stage there, see if anybody’s voice sounds familiar, okay?

  Sitting in the dark here in the small room equipped with several folding chairs facing the glass, David has the feeling he’s already read this scene, or viewed this scene, and by extension has been an i
ntegral part of this scene a hundred times over—except for the fact that Kate Duggan is sitting beside him here in the dark.

  She is wearing for this earnestly official occasion a flimsy pale green garment he is sure he’s seen at the dentist’s office in the pages of Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, a costume he usually associates with very young women, gossamer enough to show long slender legs through the long skirt, a darker green shirt rescuing modesty beneath the dress’s sheer bodice but failing to disguise the fact that Kate isn’t wearing a bra, something all of the precinct detectives seemed to notice the moment she walked in—ten minutes late, by the way.

  Her feet are in sandals strapped part of the way up the leg. Her legs are crossed. She is jiggling one foot. Her toenails are polished a green to match the dress; he wonders if she paints them a new color each time she puts on a different outfit. Her perfume conjures visions of tall pale skinny girls rushing across fields of heather and crushing themselves against the chests of extraordinarily tanned and muscular young men. He is sure he has smelled Kate’s perfume on television. He thinks suddenly of Arthur K’s blond, blue-eyed fifteen-year-old sister lying back against the pillows on her bed, skimpy blue robe parted over her short pink nightgown, bare legs showing, and all at once he feels intensely and uncomfortably aware of Kate sitting beside him in the dark as if they are here alone together to watch a pornographic movie.