Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

“That’s what the habit is about,” I said. “It obscures the face.”

“Wait,” Carroll said a third time. The nun pulled something from the shoulder bag and turned away from the camera. Deliberately, it seemed. Carroll pressed the pause button just as the nun turned back. The wimple was tilted up, and the nun was looking directly at the camera. The nun was wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses and a ridiculously large, droopy and obviously fake mustache.

The nun was giving the camera the finger.

IT WASN’T UNTIL SEVEN YEARS AFTER MY FATHER HAD ABRUPTLY stepped down as police commissioner-and disappeared soon after-that the courts weighed in to officially pronounce him dead. It would have been nice to believe that what had really happened was that he simply dropped out of sight by his own choosing and moved on to a quiet incognito life somewhere in the Caribbean, grizzly gray beard, open-collared shirt, leathery tan, maybe the occasional dalliance with the occasional turista. I doubt his wife would appreciate that version of events as much as I do, but that’s a beef I’ve always had about Phyllis Scott: no imagination. Coupled with a haughty self-regard that leaves precious little room for the consideration of others. Funny thing, since she’s a psychiatrist, and not an inexpensive one. You’d think that a healthy degree of compassion and empathy would be one of the job requirements. Imagination, too. But I guess not. Her practice has never been more booming. It seems there are plenty of wealthy, uncentered New Yorkers willing to spill their hearts and guts out to a cold machine like Phyllis Scott to the tune of two hundred dollars an hour. I don’t get it. I’d think an hour in a room with a frisky puppy would do as much for a person’s mental health and would cost a lot less money. But what do I know?

Phyllis runs her practice out of the first floor of the town house she shared with my father on Sixty-sixth Street, right off Park Avenue. Beside the scores of bitter, befuddled, destructive, frightened and generally unhappy people who have spent time within the building’s walls (I’m speaking clinically here), the town house has also been terra cognita to Paul and Elizabeth Scott, my father and Phyllis’s two children. My half siblings. Elizabeth I like. She never begrudged me and my mother our status as the marginal second family. The open secret. Her kindness to my mother, especially, has always won rave reviews from me. Paul is another story, and not one I’d pick up and read if I had a choice.

Paul Scott was coming down the steps of his mother’s town house as I approached. I had hoofed it over from Gracie Mansion after viewing the Gristedes tape and going over so-called Nightmare’s latest message. When Paul spotted me, he darkened like a rain cloud. He stopped on the bottom step. I’m sure the height advantage made him feel superior. I noticed a slight discoloration next to his right eye. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m thinking about buying the place and wanted to come by and kick the tires.”

“Very funny.”

Paul looked a lot like his mother, a fact I’ll admit gave him not unpleasant features. Unfortunately, he tended to do unpleasant things with them. He was doing one of those things now. This particular one made him look like he was sniffing a foul odor.

“I’m here to see your mother.” I said. “Is the doctor in?”

“Why do you want to see her?”

“I’m selling raffle tickets. Want one?”

He made his sniffing face again. “She’s busy.”

“I’m sure she is. She’s expecting me. I’ll bet she’s been primping and prepping for this day for nearly a week. I know I have.”

“You’re a real stooge, Malone, you know that?”

It was a point of honor with Paul Scott that he had never in his life uttered my first name. At least not to my face. The closest he ever got was a phase in the beginning of his voice-cracking years when he tried to get some mileage out of referring to me as “Shitz.” I gave him ten free passes before rewarding him with a bloody nose. Immediately thereafter, his mother the top-shelf shrink declared that I had “anger issues.”

“Mommie dearest summoned me a few days ago,” I said when he showed no sign of vacating the steps. “We have an appointment.”

“Professionally?” He sounded horrified.

“Not today, but who knows? Maybe I can fit in a little couch time before I go. I’m sure my unresolved conflicts would sink the Titanic .”

“I’ve got to go,” Paul said curtly. And he went. No hugs, no kisses. I can’t say whether his stiffness as he moved down the sidewalk was because he knew I was watching him or if he was having troubles with the stick up his tail. I headed up the steps and pushed the buzzer. A few seconds later, the door clicked and I pushed it open.

The black and white tiles of Phyllis’s enclosed entryway were set at a diagonal, which I would think the more loosely tethered of her patients might find disorienting, even a little bit threatening. On the left was the glass and metal door that her patients used to access her waiting area and office. A second buzzer was required to gain entrance. The door to the town house itself was a heavy oak slab that required a little muscle to push open. There was a second click, and I leaned into the door with my good shoulder.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the foyer, Phyllis’s voice came from the rear of the town house. “I’ll be right with you! Have a seat!”

I stepped into the living room and did what I could to make myself comfortable amid leather and metal furniture not too terrifically designed for that purpose. I sat facing a large piece of modern art on the wall that I might have titled Ode to a Bowling Pin in the Snow . It was new since I’d last visited. Also new was a pair of large chrome gooseneck standing lamps set on either side of the tall bay windows, their chrome hoods inclined toward each other over a black lacquered Asian table like a pair of alien heads in consultation. The room was spotless. I checked to see if I’d tracked in any dirt.

After another minute, Phyllis came in from the dining room. I rose. Even in her early sixties, she moved with a liquid grace. She was wearing bone-colored slacks and a ribbed maroon sweater. She was painfully slender, essentially hipless. The hair pulled back from her angular face was frosted the color of fresh straw. Her expression, as always, was a little bemused, a little aloof. A gold bracelet jangled on her arm as she reached for my hand. “You’re prompt.”

“You said noon. That one’s easy. Both hands straight up.”

Her hand felt like gelatin. I didn’t dare give it a real squeeze. I sat back down as Phyllis lowered herself into a leather sling chair across from me. She made an L of her arms, settling her chin into her hand. I imagined an echo from hundreds of sessions across the hall: So, tell me about your childhood .

“You just missed Paul.”

“I saw him,” I said. “I ran into him out front. He embraced me like the bastard half brother I am.”

She allowed the bemusement to flower. “You threaten him.”

“Because I pack heat?”

“You know perfectly well why. Because you’re rough and Paul is smooth. You are your father and he is not.”

I do enjoy chewing the fat with shrinks. They cut right to the heart of the matter. I asked, “Does he know that he had all the advantages of life and I had approximately half of them?”

“He does. Which is what makes his unhappiness all the more profound. His leg up hasn’t exempted him from pain.”

“Ha ha,” I said. “Fooled him.”

“What happened to your arm, Fritz?”

A copy of the Times was on the glass coffee table to my left. The pair of pictures above the fold told the story. I didn’t.