The Analyst

by John Katzenbach

  The elevator stopped, and the doors swung open with a swooshing sound.

  Ricky stepped up, behind the people getting on. Merlin was in the direct center.

  The attorney lifted his eyes, and Ricky stared right into them.

  There was a flash of recognition, and Ricky saw a momentary panic slide onto the attorney’s face.

  “Hello, Merlin,” Ricky said quietly. “And now I know who you are.”

  In the same instant, he lifted the child’s toy from his pocket and brought it to bear on the attorney’s chest. It was a water pistol, in the shape of a World War II German Luger. He squeezed the trigger and a stream of black ink shot out, striking Merlin in the chest.

  Before anyone could react, the doors slid shut.

  Ricky jumped back to the stairwell. He didn’t run down, because he knew he couldn’t outrace the elevator. Instead, he climbed up to the fifth floor, walked out and found the men’s room. There he disposed of the water pistol in a wastebasket after wiping it clean of any fingerprints, just as he might have done with a real weapon, and washed his hands. He waited a few moments, then exited, walking through the corridors to the opposite end of the courthouse. As he had learned the day before, there were more elevators, more stairs, and another exit. Attaching himself surreptitiously to another group of attorneys exiting from other hearings, Ricky maneuvered down. As he expected, there was no sign of Merlin in the portion of the lobby he entered. Merlin wasn’t in the position where he would want to do any explaining whatsoever about the real nature of the stains on his shirt and suit.

  And, Ricky thought, he will come soon enough to understand that the ink Ricky had used was indelible. He hoped that he had ruined far more than a shirt, suit, and tie that morning.

  The restaurant Ricky had chosen for luncheon with the ambitious actress had been a favorite of his late wife’s though he doubted that Virgil had made that connection. He had selected it because it had one important feature: a large plate glass window that separated the sidewalk from the diners. Ricky remembered that the lighting in the restaurant made it difficult to see out, but not nearly as hard to see in. And the placement of the tables was such that one was more often being seen, than seeing. This was how he wanted it.

  He waited until a group of tourists, perhaps a dozen German-speaking men and women wearing loud shirts and necklaces of cameras, sailed past the front of the restaurant. He simply tagged along with them, much as he’d done in the courthouse earlier. It is difficult, he thought, to pick one familiar face out of a group of strangers when not expecting it. As the gaggle of tourists cruised past, he quickly turned and saw Virgil sitting, as he’d expected, in a corner of the restaurant, waiting eagerly. And alone.

  He stepped past the window and took a single deep breath.

  The call will come any second now, Ricky thought. Merlin had delayed, just as he’d suspected he would. He’d have cleaned himself up, made his apologies to the other attorneys, all of whom had been shocked. What excuse had he come up with? Disgruntled opponent, bested in a lawsuit. The others could identify with that. He’d persuaded them all that calling the police was inappropriate, that he would contact the crazy man with the ink pistol’s attorney—maybe seek a restraining order. But he would handle it all himself. The other men would have nodded in agreement and offered to testify at any moment, or even provide statements to the police, if requested. But this had taken some time, as had getting himself cleaned up, because he knew, no matter what, he still had to be back in court that afternoon. When Merlin finally made his first call, it would be to the older brother. This would have been a substantial conversation, not merely recounting what had happened, but trying to assess the implications. They would analyze their position and begin to consider their alternatives. Finally, still unsure precisely what they wanted to do, they would hang up. Then, next in line for a second phone call, would be Virgil, but Ricky had beaten that call.

  He smiled, turned around sharply and headed straight through the restaurant’s front door, moving swiftly. There was a hostess at the front, who looked up at him and began to ask the inevitable question, but he waved her off, saying, “My date is already here . . .” and striding quickly across the restaurant.

  Virgil was turned away, then shifted when she sensed movement.

  “Hello,” Ricky said. “Remember me?”

  Surprise struck her face.

  “Because,” Ricky said, sliding into his seat, “I remember you.”

  Virgil said nothing, although she had rocked back in surprise. She had placed a portfolio of pictures and résumé on the table in anticipation of the meeting with the producer. Now, slowly, deliberately, she took it and slipped it to the floor. “I guess I won’t be needing that,” she said. He heard two things in her reply: tentativeness and a need to regain some composure. They teach that in acting class, Ricky thought, and right now she’s reaching into that particular storage box, searching for it.

  Before Ricky responded, a buzzing sound went off in her pocketbook. A cell phone. Ricky shook his head. “That would be your middle brother the lawyer calling to warn you that I appeared in his life this morning already. And there will be another call, soon enough, from the older brother who kills for a living. Because, he, too, will want to protect you. Don’t answer it.”

  Her hand stopped.

  “Or what?”

  “Well, you should be asking yourself the question ‘How desperate is Ricky?’ and then the obvious follow-up: ‘What might he do?’ ”

  Virgil ignored the phone, which stopped buzzing.

  “What might Ricky do?” she asked.

  He smiled at her. “Ricky died once. And now he might have nothing left to live for. Which would make dying a second time far less painful and perhaps even welcome, don’t you think?”

  He looked hard at Virgil, scouring her with his gaze.

  “I might just do anything.”

  Virgil shifted uncomfortably. Every tone Ricky used was harsh. Uncompromising. He reminded himself that the strength in his performance that day was to be a different man from the one so easily manipulated and terrified into suicide a year earlier. This, he realized, wasn’t far from the truth.

  “And so, unpredictability. Instability. A little manic streak, as well. Dangerous combination, no? A potentially volatile concoction.”

  She nodded. “Yes. True.” She was regaining some of her elusive composure as she spoke, which is what he’d expected would happen. Virgil, he knew, was a very centered young woman. “But you’re not going to shoot me here in this restaurant in front of all these other people. I don’t think so.”

  Ricky shrugged. “Al Pacino does. In The Godfather. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. Anyone eager to act for a living has seen it. He comes out of the men’s room with the revolver in his pocket and he shoots the other mobster and the corrupt police captain right in the forehead, then tosses the revolver aside and walks out. Remember?”

  “Yes,” she said uneasily. “I remember.”

  “But I like this restaurant. Once when I used to be Ricky, I came here with someone I loved, but whose presence I never really appreciated. And why would I want to ruin the fine luncheon these other folks have planned? But mostly, I don’t need to shoot you here, Virgil. I can shoot you any number of places. Because now I know who you are. I know your name. Your agency. Your address. But more important, I know who you want to become. I know your ambition. And from that, I can extrapolate your desires. Your needs. Do you think that now that I know who and what and where about you, that I cannot deduce whatever I need to know in the future? You could change your address. You could even change your name. But you cannot change who you are, nor who you want to become. And that’s the rub, isn’t it? You’re as trapped as Ricky was. And so is brother Merlin, a detail that he learned this morning quite messily. You played the game with me, once, knowing every step I would take and why. And now, I will play a new game with you.”

  “What is that?”

  “I
t’s a game called How Do I Stay Alive? It’s a game about revenge. I think you already know some of the rules.”

  Virgil had paled. She reached for a glass of ice water, took a long sip, staring at Ricky.

  “He’ll find you, Ricky,” she whispered. “He’ll find you and kill you and protect me—because he always has.”

  Ricky leaned forward, like a priest sharing a dark secret in a confessional. “Like any older brother? Well, he can try. But, you see, now he knows next to nothing of who I have become. The three of you have been chasing around after Mr. Lazarus, and thinking that you had him cornered, what—once? Twice? Three times maybe? Did you think you missed him by seconds in the home of the one man who crossed both our paths the other night? But guess what? Poof! He’s about to disappear. Any second now, because he’s just about used up every little bit of usefulness in this life. But before he goes, perhaps he will tell whoever else it is I have lined up to become everything I will need to know about you and Merlin and now Mr. R. as well. And all that put together, well, Virgil, I think that makes me a very dangerous adversary.”

  He paused, then added: “Whoever I am today. Whoever I might be tomorrow.”

  Ricky leaned back, slightly, watching the words he spoke register on Virgil’s face. “What did you tell me, once, Virgil? About your chosen name? ‘Everyone needs a guide upon the road to Hell.’ ”

  She took another long sip of water, nodding. “That’s what I said,” she replied softly.

  Ricky smiled nastily. “I think you chose your words well,” he answered.

  Then he rose sharply, pushing the chair back quickly.

  “Goodbye, Virgil,” he said, leaning toward the young woman. “I think you will never want to see my face again, because then it might be the last thing you will ever see.”

  Without waiting for her response, Ricky turned and walked briskly out of the restaurant. He did not need to see her hand shake, or her jaw quiver, though he knew these reactions were likely. Fear is an odd thing, he thought. It displays itself in so many external ways, but none is nearly as powerful as the blade it slices through the heart and stomach, or the current it puts into the imagination. He thought that for one reason or another much of his life had been spent being afraid of many things, a never-ending sequence of fears and doubts. But now he was delivering fear, and he wasn’t sure he didn’t like that sensation. Ricky let the noontime crowds absorb him, as he melted away from Virgil, leaving her behind, just as he had her one brother, trying to assess just what sort of danger they were truly in. Ricky cut swiftly through the throngs of people, dodging the bodies like a skater on a crowded rink, but his mind’s eye was elsewhere. He was trying to picture the man who’d once stalked him to perfect death. How, Ricky wondered, will the psychopath react, when the only two people left on this earth he truly holds dear have been threatened to their core.

  Ricky pushed forward rapidly on the sidewalk, and thought: He will want to move fast. He will want to resolve the matter immediately. He will not want to prepare or plan, as once he did. Now he will let cold rage utterly overcome all his instincts and all his training.

  But most important: Now he will make a mistake.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Usually, once or twice each summer back in the years and vacations that seemed so distant to him, when his life was fit into normal, recognizable patterns, Ricky would make a reservation with one of the old and particularly accomplished fishing guides who worked the Cape waters hunting for big stripers and schools of bluefish. It was not that Ricky thought of himself as an expert fisherman, nor was he an outdoors type of any special note. But what he’d enjoyed was heading out in a small, open boat in the early morning, when mist still hung over the gray-black ocean, feeling a damp chill that defied the first streaks of bright morning light leaping across the horizon, and watching the guide pilot the skiff through channels, past shoals, to fishing grounds. And what he’d appreciated was the sensation that amid the acres of constantly changing waves, the guide would know which seascape held fish, even as they concealed themselves in the somber colors of the deep water. To slide a bait through so much cold space, taking so many variables of tide and current, temperature and light into the equation, and then to find the target, was an act that Ricky the psychoanalyst had admired, and constantly found fascinating.

  Collecting his thoughts in his cheap New York room, he thought he had embarked on much the same process. The bait was in the water. Now he had to sharpen the hook. He did not think he would get more than a single opportunity with Rumplestiltskin.

  It had occurred to him that after confronting the younger brother and sister, he could flee, but he knew instantly that would be useless. Then he would spend the entirety of his remaining life being startled by every unusual noise in the dark, nervous at any sound behind his back, afraid of every stranger who happened into his line of sight. An impossible life, spent running away from something and someone impossible to discern, always with him, ghosting every step Ricky ever took.

  Ricky knew, as much as he’d ever known anything with certainty, that he had to best Rumplestiltskin in this final phase. It was the only way he’d really regain a grip on any semblance of life as he hoped to live it.

  He thought he knew how to accomplish this. The first elements of his scheme had already been put in place. He could easily imagine the conversation between brothers and sister that was happening even as he sat in the cheap rented room. It wouldn’t be a telephone conversation. They would have to meet, because they would have to see one another to reassure themselves that they were safe. Voices would be raised. There would be a few tears and considerable anger, perhaps even some insult and blame tossed about the room. Everything had gone smoothly for the three of them, wreaking murderous revenge on all the obvious targets of their past. Only one had come up a cropper, and that one was now the source of significant anxiety. He could hear the phrase “You got us into this!” shouted across the room at the shadowy figure who had meant so much to them over so many years. Ricky thought, with some satisfaction, that there would be panic in that accusation, because he had managed to drive a small wedge into the bonds that linked the trio together. No matter how persuasive the need for revenge had been, no matter how cunning the plot was against Ricky and all the others, there was one element that Rumplestiltskin had not foreseen: Even with their compulsion to go along with him, the younger brother and younger sister still had aspirations of lives in the mainstream. Normal, in their own ways: A life onstage and a life in court, playing by certain rules, with recognizable strictures. Rumplestiltskin, alone of the three, was willing to live outside certain boundaries. But the two others were not, and that was how they became vulnerable.

  It was that distinction that Ricky had found. And it was, he knew, their greatest weakness.

  There would be harsh words between them, Ricky knew. As cruel as the game had been, and as murderous, the actual pushing, shooting, and killing had been left to only one of them. Ruining a reputation or savaging investment accounts were some nasty works. But none that actually saw blood. There had been a separation of evils, with the most suspect left in a single pair of hands.

  Those jobs had fallen to Mr. R. Just as he had borne the brunt of beatings and cruelty as they grew up, so the actual violence had belonged to him. The others had merely helped him, reaping the psychological satisfaction that revenge provides. The difference between being an enabler and being the performer, Ricky thought. Only now, they understand, their complicity has come back to bite them.

  They thought they were home free, Ricky thought. But they are not.

  He smiled inwardly. There is nothing, Ricky decided, quite as devastating as realizing that now perhaps it is you who is being hunted, when you are so accustomed to being the hunter. And that, he hoped, was the trap he had set, because even the psychopath would leap for the opportunity to regain the position of superiority that was so natural for the predator. He would be pushed in that direction by the thre
at to Virgil and Merlin. What few threads of normalcy that Mr. R. retained were those that connected him to his brother and sister. If, deep in his psychopathological world, he had any remaining links to humanity, they came from his relationship with his siblings. He would be desperate to protect those. It is simple, really, Ricky insisted to himself. Make the hunter think he is hunting, closing in on his prey, when in reality, he is being drawn into an ambush.

  An ambush, Ricky thought with some irony, that is defined by love.

  Ricky found some scratch paper, and worked for a few moments on a rhyme. When he had it the way he wanted, he called the Village Voice classified section. Once again, as before, he found himself speaking with a clerk in Personals. He made some small talk, as he had on numerous occasions before. But this time he was careful to ask the clerk several key questions and deliver some critical information:

  “Look, if I’m out of town, can I still call in and get the responses?”

  “Sure,” said the clerk. “Just dial the access code. You can call from anywhere.”

  “Great,” Ricky replied. “You see I have some business up on the Cape this weekend, so I have to head up there for a few days, and I still want to get the responses.”

  “It won’t be a problem,” the clerk said.

  “I hope the weather is good. The forecast is for rain. You ever go up to Cape Cod?”

  “Been to Provincetown,” the clerk said. “It’s pretty wild up there after the Fourth of July weekend.”

  “No kidding,” Ricky said. “My place is in Wellfleet. Or, at least it used to be. Had to sell it. A fire sale. Going up just to settle a few leftover matters, then back to the city and back to the grind.”

  “I hear you,” the clerk said. “I wish I had a place on the Cape.”

  “The Cape is special,” Ricky spoke carefully, lingering over each word. “You only really go in the summer, maybe a little in the fall or spring, but each season gets inside you in its own way. It becomes home. More than home, really. A place for starting and ending. When I die, that’s where I want them to bury me.”