Privileged Conversation

by Ed McBain

  Oddly, his heart is beating very rapidly.

  He sits quite motionless behind his desk.

  He picks up the receiver again, dials another number.

  “Hello?” Stanley says.

  His voice sounds groggy but wary.

  “Stanley, would you happen to know where Jacqueline Hicks goes on vacation?”

  “Who is this?”

  “David Chapman.”

  “What?”

  “I need Jacqueline’s …”

  “Do you know what time it is, Davey?”

  “Yes, it’s ten o’clock.”

  “Yes, exactly. We’re still asleep, Davey.”

  “This is urgent,” David says.

  Urgent? he thinks.

  Stanley sighs in exasperation. In the background, David hears a very young voice asking, “Who is it, Stan?”

  “A colleague,” Stanley answers gruffly. “Just a second,” he says into the phone. David hears muted voices in the background, and then what sounds like drawers opening and slamming shut. He visualizes young Cindy on the black leather couch, watching her analyst stamping around his office naked. He wonders how Stanley is explaining to his wife the peculiar habit he has developed of sleeping at the office these days. He guesses Stanley has never heard of call forwarding. Or perhaps young Cindy Harris doesn’t have her own apartment. Perhaps she still lives with her parents.

  “This is two years old,” Stanley says into the phone.

  Like your little playmate, David thinks.

  “Jackie used to go to East Hampton. I don’t know if she still does.”

  “Could I have the number, please?”

  Stanley reads it off to him. David writes it down on the phone pad and then draws a picture of the sun shining over it.

  “Thank you, Stanley,” he says. “I really apprec—”

  “I’ll see you at the lecture tonight,” Stanley says, hitting the word so hard that anyone listening would immediately know there is no lecture. “And, Davey … don’t call me at the crack of dawn anymore, hmm?” he says, and hangs up.

  David looks at the East Hampton number with the sun shining benevolently above it.

  What am I doing? he wonders.

  He dials the number.

  A man’s voice on the answering machine says, “No one is here to take your call just now. Please leave your name and number when you hear the tone. Thank you.”

  David wonders if everyone in the world has Call Forwarding.

  He does not leave a message.

  The office seems inordinately silent. For a moment, he wishes for the voices of Arthur K, Susan M, Alex J, resonating against the tin ceiling of the room. He wishes for all the great motion pictures of the past.

  He shakes the letters out of Clancy’s manila evidence envelope.

  They sit on his desk in slanting sunlight, the thick cream-colored envelopes, the lurid purple ink. He must deliver these letters. He has promised to deliver these letters. But Clancy is away and won’t be back till Monday.

  He takes a piece of stationery from the top drawer of his desk. His name and office address are across the top of it. He rolls the sheet of paper into his typewriter and begins typing:

  Dear Detective Clancy:

  You will remember me from the lineup you arranged for Miss Kathryn Duggan back in July. She’s the young lady whose bike was stolen in Central Park. She was sufficiently troubled and frightened by the enclosed letters to contact me quite unexpectedly and ask that I deliver them to you. She is afraid of going to the police herself because she knows she is being watched. She is further fearful that somehow her telephone conversations will be overheard.

  Do you think you could possibly visit her in person at the home address on the last two letters? She tells me she is home most mornings and would be most appreciative of your time. I feel certain you will recognize the seriousness of the situation and contact her as soon as you can.

  Sincerely,

  Dr. David Chapman

  He rereads the letter, and signs it in the space above his typed name, and reads it again, and reads it yet another time and another time after that. He thinks he has covered everything. More important, he thinks he has covered himself.

  In the stillness of his office, he nods, convinced that he is doing the right thing, pleased that he is doing it in a way that will help Kate and not cause any problems for himself. He opens the lower right-hand drawer of his desk and takes from it the NYNEX Yellow Pages for Manhattan. He finds the number he is looking for—777–6500—dials it, and asks for the location of the branch office closest to Ninety-sixth and Madison. He is told there’s one at 208 East Eighty-sixth Street, between Second and Third. He looks at his watch. It is almost eleven o’clock. He makes a Xerox copy of his letter and then calls Kate’s apartment and asks her if she can meet him for lunch in an hour.

  “Did you take the letters to Clancy?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “No? Why not? You prom—”

  “He’s on vacation.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Monday. He’ll have them by then, don’t worry.”

  “You won’t be here Monday.”

  “I know. But he’ll have them.”

  “But you won’t be here.”

  “I know that, honey.”

  Honey, he thinks.

  “Then how can …?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you,” he says. “You’ll be pleased.”

  “Okay,” she says, sounding suddenly relieved. “Where shall I meet you?”

  Before he leaves the office, he tries Jacqueline Hicks’s number again, and once again gets her goddamn answering machine.

  Over lunch, he shows Kate the Xerox copy of his letter, and tells her he sent the package by Federal Express from their office on Eighty-sixth. Although he could have opted for delivery tomorrow morning, he knew Clancy wouldn’t be back by then, so he’d settled on Monday morning delivery instead.

  This doesn’t seem to please her.

  She asks why he didn’t just go to the police station and give the letters to some other detective.

  “I thought Clancy would pay closer attention to them.”

  A lie.

  Now he is even lying to her.

  “Him knowing you, I mean.”

  Embroidering the lie.

  “You mean you didn’t want to get involved, isn’t that what you mean?”

  “Well, no …”

  “Well, yes,” she says. “But that’s okay. I know you’re married, listen. I just hope the letters don’t get lost.”

  “FedEx is very good.”

  “I hope so.”

  “What I thought I’d do, I’d follow up with a phone call from the Vineyard …”

  “Could you do that?”

  “Yes. Of course. Make sure Clancy got the package, make sure he plans to come see you.”

  “Oh, David, thank you,” she says, and reaches across the table to take his hand between both hers. Her fingernails are painted to match her short, pale blue, pleated skirt and cotton top. She is wearing strappy low-heeled blue sandals. There is blue shadow over her sparkling green eyes. She seems happier now. She does not yet know he plans to end it this afternoon.

  They walk in the park after lunch.

  “This is where we met,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “The last day of June,” she says.

  It is insufferably hot and clammy today. Waves of mist rise from the foliage on either side of them, drifting over the path so that it seems they are in a movie about Heaven, where clouds are billowing up underfoot as they walk.

  “I spoke to Gloria this morning,” she tells him, and glances sidelong at him. “She wants to join us tonight.”

  “I’d rather she didn’t,” he says.

  “Oh come on, I know you’d like her there.”

  “No, really.”

  “Gloria? Come on.”

  “Really,” he says.

  �
�Well … that’s very nice of you,” she says, sounding pleasantly surprised.

  He is wondering how he can tell her it’s over.

  “Of course, that’s what Jacqueline would love,” she says.

  He turns to look at her, puzzled.

  “No more Glorias,” she says.

  The mist shifts ceaselessly around them. They seem to be alone in the park. Alone in the world. Alone in the universe.

  “No more Davids, in fact,” she says.

  He wonders for a moment if she is about to tell him she wants to end it. But that would be too ironic. Letting him off the hook that way.

  “But, of course, I love you,” she says.

  He says nothing.

  “So how can there be no more Davids?”

  He’s not sure what she means. He remains silent.

  “Jackie says I’ve mastered the art of restaging the Incident, you see …”

  “The what?”

  “The terrible trauma of my youth …”

  Joking about it. But he’s too smart for that, he’s an analyst.

  “… so that each time it’s performed, so to speak, I’m the one in control. Like a director shooting through a lens smeared with Vaseline, do you know?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  “Softening the outlines. The way the fog here in the park is softening everything. Blurring the edges of reality. So that everything is beautiful at the ballet again, nothing is threatening, all is serene.”

  Her voice itself sounds utterly serene, too, in sharp contrast to its hysterical stridency last night. He knows instinctively and at once that she is about to tell him something of vital importance, but he does not want to hear it, not now when he is on the edge of telling her something of vital importance to himself. Or rather, something of vital importance to David Chapman, Lover Boy, erstwhile Lover Boy, former Lover Boy who is about to lower the ax while Dr. David Chapman should be listening to what this troubled young woman is attempting to say. He remembers quite suddenly and with a pang of guilt, the oath he took once upon a time, when the world was young and covered with mist.

  “Would you like to sit?” he asks.

  The bench is green and flaking, it rises from the mist like a floating couch. In the mist, side by side, they sit silently on the bench. She is quiet for what seems a very long time, but he is accustomed to long silences and he waits. She keeps staring into the mist as if peering into a past too distant to fathom. He has been through this scene before. He waits. Patiently, silently, he waits.

  “What I do, you see …”

  She takes a deep breath.

  He waits.

  “I find a man old enough to be my father, some middle-aged man, you see, and I allow him, nay, invite him to do anything and everything he wishes to do to me. I guess you know that. I guess you know that’s what I do. I keep looking for the Davids of the world, over and over again.”

  He says nothing.

  “And then I … I bring in a Gloria, cast her in the leading role, a woman rather than a child, and transform her into a willing accomplice rather than a victim. Is what Jacqueline says I do. Over and over again. Because I’m just a cunt, you see.”

  “I can’t believe Jacqueline said that,” he says.

  “No, not the cunt part. The cunt part came from a higher authority.”

  “Tell me,” he says.

  His soothing, analytical voice. Dr. David Chapman speaking. Who is still ready to end his romance with this beautiful young woman who sits on a green bench wearing pale blue that fades into a paler gray mist, but who listens, anyway. Her eyes, he sees, are brimming with tears.

  “Oh dear,” she says, and falls silent.

  He is afraid he will lose her in the shifting mist. But no, she begins speaking again in a voice as soft as the fog itself, a rolling haze enveloping her as she sinks yet another time into an embracing cloud of memory. Now there is mist of quite another sort, a hot wet mist that fills a remembered steamy bathroom long ago …

  “I’m wrapped in a big white towel in a room full of steam,” she says.

  … toweling herself dry before a mirror clouded with steam, wiping a portion of the mirror clear with one edge of the towel, seeing her own shining, thirteen-year-old reflection in the glass.

  “Everything in the mirror, everything in the room is soft and hazy, and there’s music playing somewhere far below, somewhere out of sight, drifting, floating. It’s the beginning of August, and there’s a full moon, and the night is soft and hot and misty …”

  Eleven-year-old Bess is in the tub across the room, Kate can see her reflection in the big irregular circle she’s cleared on the mirror. Her sister is smiling. Luxuriating in a sea of suds, only her face and her toes showing, upswept red hair spilling in ringlets onto her brow, she moves her head idly in time to the sweet strains of music floating upstairs from the living room below.

  ——Gently …

  ——Sweetly …

  It is a Sunday night. The Playhouse is dark tonight, which is why Kate is home at ten o’clock, preparing for bed. Fee the Fair has gone to a movie with a woman the girls call the USS Hawaii because she weighs two thousand pounds and always wears muu muus. Kate’s father is downstairs listening to his old records.

  ——Ever so …

  ——Discreetly …

  The faucet over the sink needs a new washer. It drips intermittently against the white porcelain as counterpoint to the lovely lyrics flooding the house.

  ——Open …

  ——Secret …

  ——Doors.

  Lean and bony Kate stands in front of the misted bathroom mirror, drying herself in the large white puffy towel. Bess, precociously budding at the age of eleven, sits up in the tub and begins soaping herself.

  ——Gently …

  ——Sweetly …

  ——Ever so …

  The bathroom door opens.

  ——Completely …

  Kate’s father appears suddenly in the door frame, an odd little smile on his face. He is wearing a green robe over white pajamas, the robe belted at the waist, no slippers.

  “Good evening, ladies,” he says.

  Bess says, “Oops!” and immediately slides under the suds, only her head showing from the neck up. Kate hugs the towel to her and says, “Daa-aad, we’re in here.”

  “So I see, so I see,” her father says.

  Kate suddenly smells alcohol on his breath.

  ——Tell me …

  ——I’ll be

  ——Yours.

  “Come on, Dad,” she says playfully, wondering what the hell’s the matter with him, can’t he see they’re in here? But of course he can see they’re in here, he knew they were in here when he opened the door and walked in. The funny little smile is still on his face.

  “Just wanted to check,” he says. “Make sure you weren’t drowning or anything. Hello, Bessie,” he says, waggling his fingers at her. “How’s my little darlin’?”

  “Fine, Dad.”

  She, too, looks puzzled. She has sunk even lower under the suds. The water just covers her chin. Her green eyes are wide above the white foam.

  “Dad, we have to get dressed now,” Kate suggests gently.

  “I used to change your diapers,” he says. “Powdered your little behinds, too.”

  “Why don’t you go down and listen to your music?” Kate suggests gently.

  “No, I’ll be going to sleep now,” he says.

  “Goodnight, Dad,” Bess immediately chirps from the tub.

  “Goodnight, Dad,” Kate says at once.

  “Where’s my goodnight kiss?” he asks. “No goodnight kiss?” And takes a step toward her. She is still clutching the towel tightly to her, her knuckles just under her chin, the towel cascading to just below her knees.

  ——Here with a kiss …

  ——In the mist, on the shore …

  He leans into her and cups her chin in his hand and kisses her full on the mouth.

&nbs
p; ——Sip from my lips …

  ——And whisper …

  ——I adore you.

  And kisses her again.

  Kate is terrified. But she is excited, too. She can feel her father’s hardness under his robe and pajamas, feel him stiff and probing through the thick towel shaking in her hands. “So tender,” he says, and reaches behind her and pulls her to him, and she feels his huge hand spread wide on one naked buttock and suddenly he yanks the towel away with his free hand and she is standing naked and trembling before him.

  ——Gently …

  ——Sweetly …

  “Dad, no,” she says, “please.”

  “Shhh, Katie, darlin’,” he says.

  ——More and more …

  ——Completely …

  “Please, no, Dad,” she says, because now she can see him huge and purple and throbbing in the opening of the robe, “Shhh, Katie, shhh,” and she tries to hold him away but he is pressing her naked against the sink, lunging at her below, until at last she turns sidewards to deflect his thrust with her hip, and slips out of his grasp.

  ——Take me …

  ——Make me …

  ——Yours.

  Huddling against the wall with the narrow window high above it, moonlight yellow in the blackness outside, she cowers in fear against the towels on the rack below the window and all she can think to whisper into the suffocating steam-filled room is, “Do it to her.”

  Downstairs, the music in the living room soars to a crescendo and ends abruptly.

  The house is still except for the dripping of the water faucet in the bathroom sink.

  “As you wish, Katie,” he says, absolving himself of all guilt, the dutiful father merely following his favorite daughter’s instructions. He actually makes a courtly drunken bow to her, and then turns away and walks rather jauntily to where Bess lies wide-eyed in the tub. The suds are dissipating. Patches of her tanned body show through the tattering white.

  “Any sharks in here?” he asks playfully. “Anything going to bite me in here?” and thrusts both hands into the water, reaching under the suds for her, soaking his robe to the elbows. She tries to slip away from him, darting like a fish as he searches for purchase under the foam, saying, “Daddy, please,” and “Daddy, stop,” water splashing everywhere until finally he gets a firm handhold between her legs and yanks her out of the suds slippery and wet and squirming and struggling and kicking and bursting into tears and sobbing, “Help me, Kate, don’t let him!” but Kate does nothing.