Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

Adair was surprised that there was no chain-link fence surrounding the Altoid Sanitarium. At first glance, the place resembled an exclusive country club that somehow had misplaced its tennis courts and golf course. There was a fence of sorts that ran around what he guessed to be fifteen acres of rolling grounds, but it was a benign split-rail fence, useful for decoration and property lines, but useless against humans, rabbits, coyotes or reasonably determined deer.

Whoever had designed the sanitarium had managed to save many of the oaks. The gravel drive that went between a pair of fieldstone pillars and on up to the sanitarium’s main entrance took sudden zigs and zags to avoid at least nine of the old trees whose trunks had been whitewashed.

The Land-Rover stopped in front of the recessed entrance door that was the size of a small drawbridge and fashioned out of thick redwood planks bound by hammered iron bands. Next to the door was a polished brass plate, no larger than an envelope, with small engraved black letters that read, “The Altoid Sanitarium.” Below that, in smaller and, if possible, even more diffident letters, was the mild request, “Please Ring Only Once.”

“How long d’you think you’ll be?” Merriman Dorr asked.

“An hour. Not more.”

Dorr looked at his watch, a workmanlike stainless-steel affair with a sweep second hand that Jack Adair somehow found reassuring. “It’s six fifty-five now,” Dorr said. “I’ll be back for you at eight sharp, okay?”

“Fine,” Adair said, climbed down from the Land-Rover, went up the two steps and rang the bell exactly as the brass plate suggested.

Danielle Adair Vines, the thirty-five-year-old mental patient who sat at the far end of the small conference table in the cozy room with the big picture window, looked not much different to Jack Adair from the daughter he had last seen more than fifteen months ago. Paler, he thought, and not nearly as animated or maybe frenetic. But no big change really, which is exactly what that resident psychiatrist just told you. Nicely stabilized, he said. We soon expect marked progress.

Adair nodded and smiled at his daughter as he took a seat at the other end of the table. “How’re you feeling, Dannie?”

She smiled back at him and said, “Who are you? Do I know you?”

“I’m Jack.”

“Jack?”

“Jack Adair.”

“I’m feeling very well, thank you, Jack.”

“That’s wonderful. Anything you need?”

“No. I don’t believe so. Why?”

“Kelly sends his love.”

“You mean Mr. Vines?”

“That’s right. Kelly Vines.”

“Mr. Vines is such a silly man. He comes to see me almost every month, I think. Sometimes he says he is Kelly Vines and sometimes he says he is someone else. Once he said he was a movie actor but I didn’t really believe him.” She smiled. “He’s such a silly man.”

“Do you get many other visitors?”

“The coyotes come sometimes. And the deer. The deer will come almost up to this window but the coyotes don’t come nearly so close as that.”

Adair nodded his appreciation of the visiting wildlife. “Did you ever get a visit or a call from Soldier Sloan?”

“Who?”

“Soldier P. Sloan.”

“Whatever does the ‘P’ stand for?”

“Pershing.”

“I remember him.”

“Then he did visit you.”

“He died.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Before I was born.”

“Who died?”

“John Joseph ‘Blackjack’ Pershing. Born eighteen sixty. Died nineteen forty-eight.”

Danielle Adair Vines rose slowly from her chair, clasped her hands loosely in front of her and, Adair thought, suddenly looked closer to thirteen than thirty-five. She cleared her throat, lifted her chin slightly and began to recite.

“‘I Have a Rendezvous with Death,’ by Alan Seeger, born eighteen eighty-eight; died nineteen sixteen.” She cleared her throat again. “‘I have a rendezvous with Death / At some disputed barricade / When Spring comes back with rustling shade / And apple-blossoms fill the air.’”

She smiled shyly at Adair. “I know another one about the war your friend General Pershing fought in. It’s called, ‘In Flanders Fields.’”

“I think I know that one,” Adair said. “It’s also very nice. Very moving.”

She sat back down in the chair and placed her still folded hands on the table. “Will Mr. Vines come to see me again?” she asked. “He’s such a silly man.”

“I’m sure he will.”

“And will you be coming back?”

“If you like.”

“I’ll have to think about it. You’re not silly like Mr. Vines, but I still have to think about it. And I am so very sorry about your friend.”

“Who?”

“The one who died. General Pershing.”

“Thank you, Dannie,” said Jack Adair as he rose. “That’s very kind of you.”

The resident psychiatrist was Dr. David Pease, a forty-three-year-old twice-divorced Jungian, who held a twenty-percent interest in the Altoid Sanitarium. He wore a green jogging suit and had a wedge-shaped head, some thinning curly gray hair and a pair of sooty eyes that blinked so rarely that Adair was almost willing to believe they had been painted on his face.

“Dr. Altoid still with you?” Adair asked.

David Pease shifted in the chair behind his desk, didn’t blink, twitched his mouth and said, “Like Marley, Dr. Altoid has been dead these seven years.”

“Died rich, I bet.”

“Comfortable.”

“How many more months do you think my daughter will have to spend here at six thousand dollars per month?”

“We can’t provide you with a timetable, Mr. Adair.”

“What about a guess-even a wild surmise will do.”

Dr. Pease shook his head, the unblinking eyes never leaving Adair’s face. “If I guessed, you’d take it as prediction. And if it were wrong, you’d understandably hold me to account.”

“She’s out of it, isn’t she?” Adair said. “She’s floating around out there in her own private galaxy.”

“She’s much better than she was.”

“She doesn’t recognize her own father.”

“She must have her reasons.”

“Or her husband.”

“She recognizes Mr. Vines now. But not as her husband. She thinks of him as a harmless eccentric who visits her once a month.”

“Can you cure her?”

“We can help her. We obviously have helped her.”

“What if the money runs out?”

That made Dr. Pease blink. “Is that likely?”

“Considering that her father’s just out of jail, her husband’s disbarred and her brother’s dead, it’s what you might call a real possibility.”

“What about her mother?”

“Her mother can’t come up with seventy-two thousand a year.”

“We’ll keep Danielle as long as we can, of course. And if it should ever prove to be no longer possible, we will, if you like, see that she’s accepted by a well-managed state facility.”

“I didn’t know there were any well-managed state facilities.”

“Some are better run than others-like everything else.”

“How long would the state keep her?”

“Until it’s determined she’s no longer a danger to herself or to others.”

“That could be a week or ten days, couldn’t it?”

“I wish you wouldn’t try to pin me down, Mr. Adair.”

Adair rose. “Either Vines or I will be here with the money on the fifteenth as usual.”

Dr. Pease also rose until he reached his full height, which was a stooped six-foot-four. “She’s worth every cent, Mr. Adair.”

Jack Adair studied the unblinking Pease for several seconds, nodded and said, “Well, I suppose none of us reared our daughters to be bag ladies, did we?”