Stuart Kaminsky - Denial

We sat silently for a few seconds. He looked at his hands. I looked at him.

“Do what you can,” he finally said without looking up. “If you need more money for, I don’t know, people who might help…”

“Your ex-wife’s paying me,” I said.

“If you find out anything,” he said now, looking up, “you let me know.”

“I will.”

“Have you ever felt that you could kill someone?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“My job is to save lives,” he said. “For the dozens, maybe hundreds I’ve saved, I think I deserve to take one, the life of the person who murdered my son. Well?”

“I don’t think it’s in you, Doctor,” I said.

“You don’t know me,” he said with a touch of anger.

“I could be wrong,” I said.

There was nothing more to say except to ask for the number of the cell phone Kyle had been carrying. He pulled a flap-top silver cell phone from a pocket, pushed a couple of buttons and gave me the number. I wrote it in my notebook.

A knock at the door.

McClory said, “Come in.”

A woman in nurse’s whites, probably mid-forties, strong features and eyes that looked at McClory with sympathy.

“Mr. Saxborne is here,” she said.

“Thank you,” said McClory.

She closed the door slowly, eyes on the doctor.

“Raymond Wallace Saxborne is going to die soon,” he said, getting up. “Raymond Wallace Saxborne is almost eighty. Fonesca, between you and me and whatever God is not out there, I am going to have a hard time giving my bedside best to Mr. Saxborne. Kyle was fourteen.”

He walked around the desk, past me and out of the office without a word or a glance in my direction.

I should have been delivering summonses to two people. I should have been going to see Yolanda Root, Andrew Goines and the four people who had been released from Seaside Assisted Living. I should have gone back to Nancy Root for more information. I should have done a lot of things, but I didn’t.

Back in my office, I sat behind my desk and looked over at the painting on my wall, the dark jungle foliage with the nighttime sky and just the touch of red, and the hint of a bird.

I picked up the phone and hit the buttons that connected me to the office of Ann Horowitz. Ann never let a call go by even if she was in the middle of a confession of matricide from a raving client. How do I know this? From the calls she had taken over the past three years when I sat in front of her, one of which came while I was trying to remember what might have been a telling dream about… I don’t know what it was about. When she ended the call, the dream was gone.

“Dr. Horowitz,” she answered.

“Are you alone?” I asked.

“Lewis?”

“Yes.”

“I’m alone for the next ten minutes,” she said.

“I can’t do it,” I said.

“Do what?”

“Face any more of them.”

“Them?”

“The grieving, frightened, angry, depressed,” I said. “I’ve got a list in front of me.”

“People you are supposed to help?”

“Why am I supposed to help? I can’t help myself.”

“You are helping yourself. You’re talking to me. Who told you that you had to help those people on your list?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It happens. They find me. I’m a magnet for despair.”

“What do you think you want to do?” she asked. “Notice I said think, because what you want to do may not be what you think you want to do.”

I took off my cap and rubbed the top of my head.

“I think I want to buy a cheap car, throw in all my things I want to keep, which probably wouldn’t even fill the trunk of a Honda, and drive away.”

“Never come back?” she asked.

“Never.”

“Where would you go?”

“Away. You’re going to say I can’t run away from what I am.”

“No,” she said. I could tell she was eating something. “You can run. You can hide. Sometimes it works very well. I’ve even recommended it, but the problem is that wherever you go, you will always be with you. You are your own God, your own judge, your own executioner.”

“Freud,” I said.

“No, the German actor Klaus Kinski,” she said.

“What are you eating?” I asked.

“Ham and cheese on thin white,” she said.

“You’re Jewish.”

“I appreciate your calling this to my attention,” she said.

“You don’t eat ham.”

“I eat ham. I like ham. If God wants to punish me for eating ham, I have little use for her.”

“Tradition,” I said.

“We were talking about your unwillingness to deal with the problems you’ve taken on,” she said. “I’ll deal with my God.”

“You pray to your God?” I asked.

“I talk to my God and call it prayer. If my God talks to me, I call it schizophrenia.”

“Klaus Kinski?”

“Thomas Szasz. Let’s deal with your God.”

“I have none,” I said.

“Nonsense,” she said, chewing. “God is in your head. You created God. Deny other people’s God. Deal with your own. You have no intention of running away. If you did, you wouldn’t have called me. You would just go. You want me to talk you out of it.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “I know. I’ve been doing this for fifty years. What is on that list of yours? You’ve got five minutes.”

I told her, even mentioned Jerry Lee the gator and ended with my visit to Richard McClory.

“I’m tired,” I said.

“Not sleepy?” she asked.

“Tired.”

“I’ll ask my required question now,” she said.

“No, I’m not thinking about suicide. If death wants me, I’m easy to find. I’m not running…”

“Got you,” she said. “You’re not running away from death. You are living a paradox. You want to run from your grief, but you don’t want to leave it behind. You want to just let the days go by, but you can’t do it.”

“You tricked me,” I said.

“I’m good at it. I’m not telling you anything I haven’t told you before. You listen, but you hear very little. You are a tough case, Lewis, but an interesting one. I’ve got to go. I hear my next victim coming through the outside door. Go to work, Lewis. Don’t go to sleep. Don’t go to Key West or Columbia, Missouri. Come see me next week, usual time and day.”

She hung up.

I felt better, not good but better. If I hurried, I could get to Yolanda’s grandfather’s hardware store in Bradenton. On the phone, she hadn’t sounded as if she was going to let anyone see her grief, if she had any. That was fine with me.

I drove up 41 past the Asolo, past the Sarasota/Bradenton airport, past malls, one-story chiropractic offices, dentists, Sam Ash’s music store, all the fast food franchises known to the world. I listened to Neal Boortz on WLSS. He was talking about airplanes. I’m not sure what he said.

Root’s Hardware was in a small strip mall on the north side of DeSoto. It wasn’t big. It wasn’t small either. Finding Yolanda was no problem. She stood behind the counter tallying up items for a chunky man with a freshly shaved head and a bushy mustache.

Yolanda wore a yellow tight-fitting tank top, a black skirt, a silver ring in her navel, makeup that would be right at a Halloween party and a sour look that said, What do you want?

When the man with the shaved head had gone through the door, little bell tinkling, I moved to the counter and said, “Lew Fonesca.”

She looked at me, folded her arms under her breasts and sized me up. I don’t think she was impressed. Her mouth was open. She had a silver tongue ring.

“I’m busy,” she said.

I saw no customers.

“I’ll be quick,” I said.