In The Last Analysis Part 5

"With practice, my dear, you will make a great detective. I could hardly spill out all these secrets from a phone in the D.A.'s office. Kate, I'm beginning to get interested in your case. This probably proves that insanity is catching. I haven't got a dime." He hung up.

Daniel Messenger. For a few hectic moments Kate toyed with the idea of hopping a plane for Chicago. But, however brutal one might be with Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot had to be coped with tomorrow. And of course, one did not "hop" a plane. One took a long slow ride to an airport, and argued for hours with ticket agents who seemed to have been hired five minutes ago for what they supposed to be another job; and if one survived that, one got to Chicago only to join a "stack" over the airfield there, and then either died of boredom or crashed into a plane that thought it was in the stack over Newark. With an effort, Kate brought her wandering mind back to Frederick Sparks. Reed's call, however, apart from distracting her and thickening the plot, had reminded her of the uses of the telephone. She dialed the number of a professor of sixteenth-century literature with whom she had studied for the orals, lo, these many years ago.

"Lillian. This is Kate Fansler."

"Kate! How's everything in the university on the hill?"

"Hideous, as always in the spring." April is the cruelest month. That was how it had begun. For a few moments they chatted about personal things. "I'm calling," Kate continued, "to ask about a colleague of yours. Frederick Sparks."

"If you're thinking of hiring him, don't. In the first place he's got tenure and wouldn't dream of leaving, and in the second place he's a great admirer of closet drama, and thinks The Cenci is better than Macbeth."

"Nothing was further from my mind than hiring him. I'll tell you another time what this is all about. What's he like?"

"Rather tedious. Good scholar. Lives alone, having recently broken away from mother, at least to that extent. Has a French poodle named Gustave."

"Gustave?"

"After Flaubert. Although his favorite French author is Proust. Gustave's, that is."

"I take it he does not care for women. Sparks, that is."

"Most people take it. Me, I've given up labels. So many incorrect ones have been attached to me that I've abandoned them entirely. Besides, he's being a.n.a.lyzed."

This was a lead which Kate had no wish at the moment to follow. "Lillian, is there some way I could meet Sparks, socially perhaps, or at least casually? Soon, that is."

"You fascinate me. No one's been anxious to meet Sparks since the P. and B. committee considered him for tenure."

"What on earth is the P. and B. committee?"

"Oh, you innocents who do not work for city colleges. No one has the faintest idea what the initials stand for, but it's all-powerful. As a matter of fact, I am going to a party tonight for a colleague who just got a Fulbright to India, and Sparks will undoubtedly be there. I've got a date, but I will drag you along as a cousin of his we couldn't dump. The date's that is. Will that do?"

"That will do gloriously. But the fewer lies, the better, I always think. Let's just say I dropped in on you."

"Very well, you mysterious creature. Drop in on me about eight. Bring a bottle for the festivities, and you will be triply welcomed. See you then."

Which left Kate with nothing to do but get back to work and wonder what Jerry was up to. Richard Horan, of the advertising business, must by now be settled down on Emanuel's couch. Dr. Barrister's pretty nurse must be involved with the women patients. Jerry, for all his detective pose, was probably taking in a double feature. Kate put Daniel Messenger firmly from her mind, and turned to Daniel Deronda.

Nine.

JERRY was not at a double feature. It would have annoyed him to know that Kate thought he might be; but his annoyance would have been nothing to Kate's had she known what he was up to. He was, in fact, lying in wait for Emanuel.

It was not precisely that Jerry doubted Kate's a.s.surances of Emanuel's innocence. The two of them, Jerry knew, had been friends, and, Jerry suspected, something more-though Kate had been rather vague on this point-and this said a good deal for Emanuel's innocence, since women, Jerry believed, did not automatically have a high opinion of men they had loved but not married. Nonetheless, to Jerry's masculine, therefore objective, intelligence, Emanuel was still Number One as a suspect, and the fact that Kate was convinced of his innocence did not weigh as much with Jerry as he had pretended. Although he was prepared to follow Kate's instructions-she was, after all, paying him-he could carry them out with a greater sense of single purpose if he had met, and talked with, Emanuel. Jerry had, at almost twenty-two, great faith in his ability to size people up.

It was not possible, of course, simply to go in and present himself to Emanuel as Kate's a.s.sistant and nephew-to-be. In the first place, Kate had not told Emanuel about his, Jerry's, part in the investigations; and in the second place, it was important to catch Emanuel off his guard. For one thing, he wanted to know if Emanuel, with the eleven o'clock hour now free, would simply wander out, as Kate and Nicola had been sure he would.

Jerry therefore provided himself with a chamois from a Madison Avenue store-he righteously did not enter this on his expense account-and stood across the street from the entrance to Emanuel's office polis.h.i.+ng a car. This gave him a fine view of anyone who went out or in, and also a reason for loitering on an elegant street where people were not encouraged to loiter. It would be inconvenient if the owner of the car appeared, but Jerry was prepared to cope with this.

At five to eleven a young man emerged from the building. Richard Horan, in all probability. Jerry, ducking behind the car to wipe the fender, got a long look at him. Mr. Horan would have to be encountered later in the day. Rather to Jerry's surprise, Mr. Horan looked like Hollywood's idea of a "young Madison Avenue executive on his way up"; because Horan was in a.n.a.lysis, Jerry realized that he had expected him to look a bit more harried and uncertain, the Brooks Brothers suit perhaps askew. But here was a.s.surance personified. Jerry felt a surge of relief, the origin of which he did not question; in fact, he was, without knowing it, glad that he did not have to pity Mr. Horan.

Once the object of his scrutiny had disappeared, appropriately enough, in the direction of Madison Avenue, Jerry continued to polish the car, though less a.s.siduously, pausing to smoke a cigarette. He saw one woman enter, and one woman leave, presumably on their way to and from Dr. Barrister's office. To his surprise, neither of the women could be described as "aged." One of them, in fact, was considerably younger than Kate, whom Jerry thought of, though he would have died rather than admit it to her, as middle-aged. (Kate, of course, had had far too much experience with students of Jerry's age not to know precisely how he thought of her.) He forced himself to wipe the entire side of the car carefully, and to smoke a cigarette in an exaggeratedly leisurely fas.h.i.+on, before facing the fact of what was to be done next. He had just about decided that he had better go in and spin some sort of tale to Emanuel, when Emanuel himself, smoking a cigarette, came out of the doorway and turned toward the park.

Jerry could not, of course, be certain that this was Emanuel, but the man was the right age and was, moreover, wearing extremely shabby clothes, such as were unlikely to be worn by any tenant of so excellent a building except this eccentric man who donned old clothes for the purpose of running around the reservoir. Jerry folded his chamois neatly and left it on the fender as part payment to the owner of the car for the use that had been made of it, and followed the man into the park.

It was by no means clear to Jerry what he intended to do next. Trot around the reservoir after the man, trip him up perhaps, and then slip, amid apologies, into a conversation? Emanuel was certainly no fool; could Jerry get away with that? Perhaps, at the reservoir, something would present itself. One thing was clear: this man walked with urgency, with the physical energy of one who has sat too long, who needs, quite simply, to move. This explained why he would go to the trouble of changing his clothes for scarcely half an hour's run.

But he was destined not to have the run. He slowed down on one of the paths, so that Jerry came dangerously close to him. What had stopped him was a woman-who could tell what age?-over-made-up, appearing, appallingly, on the edge of lunacy. She was weeping, and the mascara ran in black streaks down her aging face, mingling with the rouge. Others saw her, some smirked, most simply turned away and skirted the path to avoid her. Jerry's instinct was to do the same.

But Emanuel stopped. "Can I help you?" he asked the woman. Jerry dropped, unnoticed, onto a bench behind Emanuel. The woman eyed her interlocutor with suspicion.

"I've lost him," she whimpered, "I just dozed off, and he's gone away. I don't sleep well at night."

"Your little boy?" Emanuel asked.

She nodded. "I tied his leash to the bench, but he must have pulled it loose. Cyril darling, come to Mama," she began to call. "Don't you hurt him," she said to Emanuel.

"How big was he?" Emanuel asked. "What color?" The scene, to Jerry, was grotesque. But Emanuel put his hand on the woman's arm. "What color was he?" he asked again. The gesture seemed to calm her.

"Brown," she said. "This big," and she made a movement, as of one who holds a small dog under one arm. She looked at the empty arm with love.

"He won't have gone far," Emanuel said. By this time they had collected a small and interested crowd. Emanuel began to search in the nearby bushes, and a few other men, with a shrug to show they thought this all nonsense, joined him. Jerry forced himself to keep his seat. It was one of the other men who, perhaps five minutes later, found the dog, not far off, rolling in some indescribable, to him delightful, mess. A pleasant change after that woman, Jerry thought.

The woman retrieved the dog, scolding him, calling him a naughty, naughty boy, and walking away from Emanuel as though he were a tramp who had accosted her. The man who had found the dog pointed to his forehead meaningfully. Emanuel nodded, and looked at his watch. No time now for even the quickest run. He has a patient at twelve, Jerry thought, and he has to change his clothes. Emanuel began walking slowly back toward the avenue. Jerry did not follow; he remained on the bench, thinking about Richard Horan. The need to speak to Emanuel had evaporated, somehow, in the morning air.

After sitting for half an hour longer in the park, Jerry found himself viewing the profession of detective with somewhat less insouciance than he had felt that morning. In fact, he thought himself rather a fool. It was all very well to tell Kate, in his most debonair manner, that he was going down to apply for a job at the advertising agency where Richard Horan worked, but as an idea, this was several light-years away from being brilliant. Well, he might not apply for a job, but obviously the thing to do was to go down to the agency's offices and look around. It might work out that the best plan would be to follow Mr. Horan home-Jerry did not linger too long over the question of where, if anywhere, this would lead-but he might just as well move now in the general direction of Horan.

Going downtown in the Madison Avenue bus, Jerry pulled out the picture of the young man and studied it. Could it possibly be a picture of Horan? Viewing his victim from behind the car fender, Jerry had had only a general impression; a detailed description of the man's face had not remained with him. Surely a detective who has had one look at a man should never again forget the face; Jerry, far from forgetting it, had really nothing to remember. Still, he felt, swallowing his humility, it was fairly certain that Horan had not looked like this. Well, one could but make sure.

It is one of the odd tricks of fate that, when we have admitted ourselves to be foolish, fully to blame for our own mistakes, she will hand us a piece of good fortune on a platter. The Greeks, of course, understood all about this, but Jerry had yet to learn it. Years later, Jerry was to look back on this as the time when he had learned that though one must do all one can, success is never entirely the result of one's own efforts. Yet now, emerging from the bus, he knew only his own inadequacy.

All advertising agencies were named, by Jerry, Bing, Bang, Bilge, and Oblivion. This particular Bing, Bang, etcetera, had its offices on the eighteenth floor. Jerry stepped from the elevator feeling rather as though he were going into orbit. Surely there would be a receptionist. But Jerry was never to know whether there was or not. A hand was placed on his shoulder; in that moment, Jerry was certain, his hair began to go gray.

"What are you doing here? Don't tell me Sarah's talked you into going into the advertising racket. Take my advice; stick to the law."

It was Horan. Jerry stared at him open-mouthed, as though he were an alligator who had appeared suddenly in a suburban bathtub.

"You are the Jerry who's engaged to Sarah Fansler, no? I met you at a party.... Anything wrong?" Jerry looked, in fact, as though he were going to faint.

"Small world," he managed to say. "To coin a phrase," he added, trying to save himself from the monstrous inept.i.tude of the first cliche.

"I think it is, literally. In my opinion, there are only fifty people in the world, and they keep moving about. Have you had lunch?"

Dear, wonderful, blessed Sarah, who really did know everybody. Jerry had realized, in a vague sort of way, that this might be useful-he was thinking years ahead to his practice of law-but now he began to view Sarah's connections in an even brighter light. He had often remarked to Sarah, jokingly, that he thought they read different editions of the Times each morning. She never glanced at the sports page; Africa, the Near East, Russia, the acts of Congress whirled about somewhere in the outer reaches of her consciousness; if, to save her life, she had to name the nine justices of the Supreme Court, she would mention Warren, and die. But for her the Times was filled with small news items of people changing jobs, marrying, divorcing, supporting causes, and none of these items was ever forgotten. She not only "knew everybody" through the vast connections of family, school, college, dates-her social world generally-she also knew all about them.

"My brother Tom used to date Sarah," Horan was saying, as, in a dream, they stepped back into the elevator. "What are you doing these days?"

At lunch, Jerry allowed Horan to buy him a Gibson. He was not used to drinking in the middle of the day, but this, after all, was in the nature of forcing brandy down the throat of an injured man. Even through an alcoholic haze, it was brilliantly clear that Horan did not resemble the man whose picture was now in the inside pocket of Jerry's jacket. Furthermore, could anyone from Sarah's world stab a girl on a couch? Not in a fit of pa.s.sion, but in a coolly calculated crime?

"You in a.n.a.lysis?" Jerry asked. He heard the words with horror. He had meant, by the most devious circ.u.mlocution, to lead up to the subject. He ought not to have had the Gibson. What a detective he was making. Jerry stuffed his mouth with some bread, hoping, not too scientifically, that it would soak up the alcohol.

It was Horan's turn to look shocked. "My G.o.d!" he said, "where did you hear that?"

"Oh, I didn't," Jerry said with a wave of his hand. "Just one of these things one says these days, you know, just to throw it on the stoop to see if the cat will sniff it." He smiled encouragingly.

Horan looked like a man who, stooping to pet a dog, discovers it to be a hyena. The arrival of the food provided a fortunate interlude. Jerry began to eat rather rapidly. "Sorry," he finally murmured.

Horan waved a forgiving hand. "I am in a.n.a.lysis, as a matter of fact. It's not exactly a secret. Actually, my a.n.a.lyst is the man who just had a girl murdered on his couch."

"Have you continued with him anyway?" Jerry ingenuously asked.

"Why not? Of course, he didn't do it; at least, I don't think he did. My family thinks I should quit, but what the h.e.l.l, you can't run out on every sinking s.h.i.+p. To coin a phrase," he added.

"Did you know the girl?" Having begun with direct questions, Jerry thought it best thus to continue.

"No, I didn't, more's the pity. I used to see her in the waiting room when I came out, but I didn't even know her name. d.a.m.n good-looking. I told her once that I just happened to have two tickets to a show that night, and would she like to go-as a matter of fact, I'd bought them that morning from a scalper-but she wasn't having any. Cold sort of fish. Odd, just the same, that someone should have murdered her."

It had, hideously, the ring of truth. But surely murderers were good liars.

"Is your a.n.a.lyst a good one?" Jerry asked.

"Highly recommended. He's perfectly willing to sit there for twenty minutes if I don't open my mouth. Apparently I'm resenting him, though. Dream I had." Jerry looked interested. "You're supposed to tell them your dreams, of course; never thought I dreamt much, but you do, if you make yourself remember them. Well, in this dream I was in Brooks Brothers buying a suit. The suit seemed to be d.a.m.ned expensive, but I got it anyway, and when I tried it on at home it didn't fit at all. I took it back to the store, and got into a violent argument with the salesman about how I'd been overcharged, and the G.o.ddam suit wasn't worth a nickel. I woke up in a fury, and rushed off to tell Dr. Bauer about it. Well, it seems it was quite a simple dream. I was resenting him, Dr. Bauer, and thought he was cheating me in charging so much for just listening to me talk, but it wasn't a thought I'd wanted to face, so I dreamt about it in that way. Clever, huh?"

It was undoubtedly magnificent as a lesson in a.n.a.lytic technique, but for Jerry's purposes it was worthless. Or could one resent an a.n.a.lyst enough to try to frame him for murder? An interesting thought. Jerry wondered if a.n.a.lysts ever thought of it as one of the risks of their profession. Not a bad motive, now that Jerry came to consider it. He wondered, fleetingly, how Kate was doing with Frederick Sparks.

"Don't misunderstand me," Jerry said, "but did you ever feel you'd like to kill Dr. Bauer?"

"Not kill him," Horan answered, apparently unoffended by the question, "though G.o.d knows what goes on in one's murky unconscious. One fantasizes about one's a.n.a.lyst of course, but mostly it's picturing oneself running into someone who knows him and finding out all the grisly secrets of his life, or having him drop the professional airs and beg one for help. One of the most maddening things about an a.n.a.lyst is that you tell him a joke, even a d.a.m.n funny joke, and there's nothing in back of you but silence. I wonder if, that night, he says to his wife-I a.s.sume he's married-*Heard a d.a.m.n funny joke today from one of my patients.' "

"Is he helping you with whatever problem you went to him for?"

"Well, not yet of course, but it's still early. We've uncovered a lot of interesting material. For one thing, even though I don't remember it, it turns out I knew all the time that my mother was pregnant with my brother. a.n.a.lysis has already helped me with my work."

"Did you have a block of some sort?"

"Not that way. One of our clients makes elegant furniture, and I thought up an ad of a room with just two pieces of furniture in it, the couch and the chair behind it, each of them perfect pieces of furniture, of course. Got quite a nice pat on the head for that."

Horan went on to talk about nona.n.a.lytic matters, and it was beyond Jerry's powers even to try to bring him back to the subject for which he had sought him out. He seemed, in any case, most unlikely as a murderer. Perhaps he had hired someone to do the job; but, the world of organized crime apart, was that really possible? And did Horan know anything about the way Emanuel's complicated domestic arrangements worked out? That uncertainty about whether or not Emanuel had a wife might have been a clever blind. Still, could anyone seem, like Horan, so exactly what he was, and not be?

Jerry parted from Horan, who had paid for the lunch, with a feeling of depression and a splitting headache. What could he do between now and the off-duty time of Dr. Barrister's pretty nurse? After a few moments' fruitless contemplation, Jerry went to a double feature.

Ten.

JERRY emerged, like a groundhog, from his place of hibernation into the sunlight. He had seen halves of two movies, and had only the haziest idea of what either was about, but he suspected that the two halves combined made a more interesting movie than either of them whole would have done. His mind, in any case, had been on other things. Why, for example, had he not asked Richard Horan about telephone calls to Emanuel's office? If Horan had arranged for those phone calls canceling the appointments, he might, in his confusion at Jerry's question, have indicated it. On the other hand, if Horan had paid someone to make the calls, Jerry's mentioning them would have put Horan, who seemed at any rate to have no suspicions about Jerry-apart from those about his sanity-on his guard. It seemed to Jerry that being a detective involved, more than any other profession, the constant traveling up dead-end roads. And no one, of course, ever bothered to put up signs on the roads saying Dead End.

Jerry, worried lest he miss Dr. Barrister's nurse, took a taxi from the movie theater to the office where, all unknowingly, she awaited (he hoped) his arrival. He had spent none of Kate's money and an uncomfortably large chunk of his own. He could not, in decency, charge Kate for the chamois, or the movie, or the taxi the movie had necessitated. Well, perhaps he could charge her for the chamois-after all, without that previous glimpse of Horan he would not have recognized him in the advertising office-which would have made, of course, no difference whatever. In the movie, however-and with this Jerry consoled himself-he had worked out a plan for approaching the nurse. That the plan would, had she known of it, have given Kate the screaming heebie-jeebies, could not, in this moment of desperation, deter Jerry for an instant.

The sign outside Dr. Barrister's office read: RING AND WALK IN. Jerry did so. The nurse was there, working at a typewriter, alone. "Yes?" she said to Jerry, obviously mystified at his presence, his s.e.x, and his errand. Seen this close, she was neither as young nor as pretty as Jerry had thought.

"It's about my wife," Jerry said. He sounded, to himself, extremely unconvincing, but hoped the nurse would put it down to uxorial nervousness. The nurse seemed undecided whether to laugh or call the police. "She, that is, we, that is-we wanted to have a baby. Is it all right if I sit down?" he added, doing so.

"The doctor isn't here," the nurse said, and then immediately regretted, it was clear from her expression, having admitted the fact to this lunatic. She barricaded herself behind an official att.i.tude. "If your wife cares to call and make an appointment, or if you wish to make one now ..." She took an appointment book from her desk and hovered over it, pen in hand. "Who recommended you to Dr. Barrister?" she horribly asked.

It was then that Jerry marshaled his by no means negligible reserve of charm. That he looked harried from his afternoon's experiences, he did not doubt. Omitting his usual restraining gesture, he allowed the forelock of his hair to drop forlornly over his forehead. He smiled at her with the smile that no female, since he was four, had been able to resist. The desolate slump of his body, the sorrow in his eyes, the smile, all indicated that here, all un-hoped for, was a woman who could understand him. He became, all of him, an appeal from the depths of masculine helplessness to the heights of female competence and comfort. The nurse, though she did not know it, dropped her weapons and retired, joyfully defeated, from the field. She was far from insensitive to masculine attentions, and competent only in dealing with troubled women, whom she cowed. For the first time that day, Jerry was in control of a situation.

"Alice, my wife, was very nervous about coming here. But, of course, she ought to see a doctor. So I had to promise"-his look included the nurse in some all-encompa.s.sing understanding of women-"that I would come first and see that the doctor was a sympathetic sort of person. Alice is shy. But I'm sure if I tell her how very nice you are, and that you will of course treat her gently, I'll be able to persuade her to come. I'm sure you must have lots of women with her problem here. That must be mainly what you do, isn't it?"

"Well, we do do that, of course. And then there are older women with various-um-problems.... " The nurse seemed to search her mind for the most presentable of these. "Problems of-well-change of life, and that sort of thing."

"Of course," Jerry said, with a great air of comprehension, though his ignorance of this subject could scarcely have been purer. "Is there something you can do for that?" This question was most unnatural for a young husband, a reluctant nonfather, to ask, but Jerry hoped it would go down. The nurse, her attention not on the subject of the conversation, but on its quality, swallowed the question easily. "Oh, there's a great deal you can do," she said, twiddling her pen prettily, "there are hormone injections, and pills, and, of course, the attentions of a competent physician." She smiled. "And then, women have other silly feminine complications."

Jerry tucked this information neatly away for future reference. "But you do," he earnestly asked, "treat women who want to have babies?"

"Oh, yes, of course. There are many treatments that help a great deal. And Dr. Barrister is very understanding."

"I'm glad to hear that," Jerry said. "Because Alice would require an understanding sort of person. Would you call Dr. Barrister *fatherly'?"

The nurse seemed disconcerted by the word. "Well, no, not exactly fatherly. But he's very competent, and calm and helpful. I'm sure your wife will like him. But you know," she mischievously added, "you'll have to go somewhere to be tested too. I mean, it isn't always the woman's fault, you know."

Jerry decided to allow this to embarra.s.s him. He looked down, ordered the forelock to fall, and coughed. "Perhaps Alice could come Friday?" he asked nervously.

"The doctor isn't here on Friday," the nurse said. "Some other day?" To Jerry, thinking of the porter's stolen uniform, this confirmation was satisfying, but less so than it might have been had it not reminded him that he had forgotten to ask Horan where he was last Friday. "Perhaps I'd better have Alice call," he said, rising to his feet. "You've been very nice. Is-er-I was wondering-is Dr. Barrister very-are his fees very high?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so," the nurse said. "You can't have been married very long," the nurse kindly added. "Perhaps you oughtn't to worry yet."

"You know how women are," Jerry said. "Thank you again."

"Not at all," the nurse said, as he closed the door. Jerry rushed to Fifth Avenue and grabbed another taxi, which he would definitely charge to Kate. Sarah expected him. He felt that the interview with the nurse had gone extremely well, but what, in the name of all gynecologic mysteries, had he found out?

As Jerry sped Sarah -ward in his taxi, Kate, having seen Daniel Deronda off on his Zionist dream, was also in a taxi, moving toward the building Jerry had just left. She had telephoned Emanuel and Nicola and discovered that the six o'clock patient had canceled, whether because he was retreating from the field or having the usual psychoa.n.a.lytic misgivings was not altogether clear. "You had better come over," Nicola had said on the phone, "and we will all sit on Emanuel's couch to make sure no one else leaves a body there." Nicola had also, after a good deal of broad hinting from Kate, extended an invitation to dinner.

Kate found them in the living room, where, they had decided, they could watch the entrance to the office and prevent the intrusion of any bodies. Kate put her package, obviously a bottle, down on the table. "Not for you," she said to Nicola. "It's for a party where I am going later to meet Frederick Sparks." She caught Emanuel's eye. "Did Janet Harrison, in her hours with you, ever mention Daniel Messenger?" Kate asked.

"The police have already asked me that," Emanuel said.