Edward Gorman - The Autumn Dead

She poked me on the arm girlishly and said, "Speak for yourself, Jack."

Then she walked me up and we exchanged a chaste kiss and I liked the hell out of her all over again the way I had back there in grade school.

The receptionist wore a gray suit with wide lapels and a frilly white blouse. Her nails appeared to be her pride, they were as red as manicuring and lacquering could make them. Perhaps they were compensation for the fact that she was one of those women who are almost attractive but not quite, a bit too fleshy, a bit too inexplicably sour, a bit too self-conscious that all the time you're watching her you're saying to yourself that she is not quite attractive. She gave the impression that clothes probably interested her more than people. She touched at long hair that had been carefully tipped with a color not unlike silver.

"David Haskins," I said, going up to her desk.

Smythe and Brothers occupied its own floor in a new and grotesquely designed downtown office building. It was all leather and wood and forest-green flocked wallpaper. It exuded the aura of a men's club where the average member is over age seventy-five.

"You have an appointment?"

She knew by looking at my blue windbreaker and open white button-down shirt and faded jeans that it was unlikely I had an appointment.

"I'm afraid I don't."

"May I ask what this is about?"

"Personal matter."

She assessed me once more. She was not impressed. "May I have your name, please?"

"Jack Dwyer."

She stood up. She was taller than I'd thought and her extra pounds were surprisingly attractive. But she wasn't any nicer. She pointed like a grumpy eighth-grade teacher to a leather couch the size of a life raft and said, "Would you take a seat, please?"

So I took a seat and proceeded to look through a stack of magazines, each reverential in different ways about the subject of money.

He came out fifteen minutes later and he didn't look so good. He didn't come all the way over to me. He sort of let her lead the way and he sort of stood behind her and peeked out around the padded shoulders of her jacket.

"Hello," he said, leaning out.

He was maybe five seven and twenty pounds overweight and wearing one of those double-breasted suits only Adolphe Menjou could get away with. He was losing his auburn hair so fast you could almost hear the follicles falling off. He was also slick with sweat and gulping. He gulped, and I mean big comic gulps, as if he could not get enough air, every few seconds.

"Hello," I said.

"How may I help you?"

"Do you remember me?"

"Uh, sure."

"Jack Dwyer."

"Of course." He looked at the receptionist the way a very young boy looks at his mother. For help.

"I saw you at the reunion dance the other night, Dave."

"Right."

She said, "He's very busy."

He said, "She's right, Jack, I am." He gulped. "Very busy."

So I decided to jackpot. I wasn't going to get past his receptionist here if I didn't roll some dice. "I was wondering if you'd tell me why Ted Forester and Larry Price were pushing you into the car the other night."

"What?"

"You seemed to be having a fight with them. I wondered why."

This time his glance at the receptionist was desperate. This time he looked as if he were going to faint. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Aw, Dave." I decided maybe a little folksiness would help.

"Please, Jack, I'm-"

"He's very busy," the receptionist said. She took him by the shoulders and turned him back in the direction of his office. The corridor was lined with stern black-and-white photographs of dour men who'd devoted their lives to money. They'd probably grown up reading Scrooge McDuck comic books and taking them literally.

Then she gave him a shove, as if pushing a boat out to sea on choppy waters.

"Nice to see you, Dave," I called after him.

She snapped her not unappealing body around and said, "Exactly what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"What I was supposed to be doing was talking to Dave Haskins. But you wouldn't let me."

"Get out of here."

"You must get paid a lot of money."

"You heard me."

"You like working around all this money?"

"Get out."

I got out.

I didn't go far. I went down in the parking lot and found a drive-up phone where I could keep watch on the parking-ramp exit where I hoped Dave Haskins would be appearing soon.

I decided to call Dr. Glendon Evans. But first I prepared myself. I'd done Cuckoo's Nest in dinner theater, so I tried to get back in that character-I had played one of the garden-variety loonies-and I did a good enough job that by the time I actually dialed his number, I sounded as if I were standing on a bridge and about to jump off. The nurse put me right through to Dr. Evans.

"Yes?" he said, concern tightening his deep voice.

"It's Dwyer."

"What?" He went from concern to anger. "I just stepped out of session because my nurse told me-"

"Forget what your nurse told you. You and I need to talk."

"I'm sorry for what happened to Karen."

"Not good enough."

"Exactly what does that mean, Mr. Dwyer?"

"It means that she died of an overdose of Librium."

"And so?"

"And so I'll bet you have a lot of Librium on hand."

"You're implying that I killed Karen?"

"It's a possibility."

"I loved Karen."

"That doesn't mean you wouldn't kill her."

"People don't ordinarily kill people they love, Mr. Dwyer."

"Of course they do. Spend a week in a squad car. You see it all the time."

"I didn't kill her."

"Did you ever treat Karen as a patient?"

"No.

"Be very careful here, Doctor."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Yes. Because if I think you're lying to me, I'm going to call the police and tell them I think I've put it all together. At the very least, the publicity won't do your practice a lot of good."

He sighed. "I'm not sure what you mean by 'treat.' "

"Psychoanalyzed her."

"That's an occupational hazard, Mr. Dwyer."

"Don't be coy, Doctor. You know what I mean."

A pause. "We were both lovers and friends, Mr. Dwyer. It was only natural that she tell me things about herself and her past."

"Did you ever give her any kind of medication that might loosen her inhibitions?"

"I don't know if I want to answer that question."

"I assume, then, that that means yes."

"I was trying to help her. As her friend."

What a powerful grip psychiatrists can have on people. Particularly people they might love. In the name of helping them, they can enslave them through deceit and manipulation and drugs forever.

"You knew you couldn't keep her otherwise, didn't you?"

"That's very damned insulting. Both professionally and personally."

"I'm going to be at your condo at six. I expect you to be there and I expect you to talk. I'm going to ask you some questions, and if I'm not happy with the answers, I'm going straight to the police."

I didn't say good-bye. I just hung up.

Two minutes later Dave Haskins came flying out of the parking ramp in a new blue Oldsmobile. Three minutes after that, I found a nice snug place a quarter mile behind him on the expressway and decided to settle in and find out where he was taking us.

From bluffs of oak and birch you look down into a deep valley where the river runs wide and green and deep in the springtime. Every few years you see sandbag crews work around the clock to minimize the flood damage. During flood years the river itself becomes a political issue and has defeated at least two candidates in recent memory.

The marina was busy today. People were hammering, painting, scraping, washing boats of all sizes. Music from fifty radios clashed, and shouts loud as boyhood boasts floated on the soft air and then fell away like birds vanishing. Sunlight and water and sails caught the breeze. More than enough to make most reasonable people happy.