Keith Ablow - Compulsion

"Good."

"You'll help?" she asked.

"I told you I would stay with you through this," I said. "I meant it."

I made it to Bomboa about twenty minutes before my scheduled meeting with Julia Bishop. The place was unusually busy for lunchtime, but I'm a regular there, and K. C. Hidalgo, one of the owners, offered me my usual table right by the window. I told him I'd rather he find me a quiet table toward the back, and that I'd wait for my guest at the bar.

He looked at me with concern. "The bar? That's a new perch for you."

I'd eaten enough dinners alone at Bomboa for K.C. to hear my whole life story in two-minute installments. He was a slim El Salvadorian man in his early forties, with chiseled features and a smile that would have kept his restaurant full if the food was average. But the food was some of the best in Boston, and K.C. was getting rich. He ran his fingers through his thick black hair. "I thought the bar was off limits. 'Physician, heal thyself,' and all that."

"I'm drinking my usual brew," I said. "Coffee."

"Then my place is your place." He walked me to the bar and caught the attention of the bartender. "Coffee for the doctor," he said.

"You're taking good care of me," I said.

"Somebody ought to do it twenty-four, seven, dude," he said. "Somebody much prettier than me." He slapped me on the back. " 'Cause, let's face it, you don't have a great track record taking care of yourself." He smiled that smile, then headed back to his post near the door.

The bar was about twenty-five feet long, with every variety of alcohol stocked against a mirrored back. I could see my reflection, framed by bottles of gin and scotch and vodka. I didn't like the picture. But that didn't stop me from quietly asking for a Sambuca on the side when the bartender brought me my coffee.

He never came back, disappearing into the kitchen a few minutes, then tidying up the sink a few minutes more. I wondered whether I had whispered my order so softly that he had missed it. I was reluctant to approach him more openly for the booze, so I sat tight.

I was finishing off the last of my coffee when I caught Julia Bishop's reflection in the mirror. My heart started racing like a schoolboy's. She was wearing a whisper-thin, off-the-shoulder black cashmere sweater and hip-hugging tight black pants that flared slightly at the bottoms. Black sandals with three-inch heels made her look taller than I remembered her, like she had stepped out of the pages of Vogue. I glanced around the room and watched heads turning, including K.C.'s.

She walked up to me. "I'm glad you were able to see me," she said.

"Not a problem," I said, already adrift in that azure haze I had experienced the first time I met her. Julia's presence was so absorbing, in fact, that I felt removed in some measure from myself and heard my own words as I spoke them, almost as an echo.

"I don't think I've slept ten hours since Brooke… And now, with Billy missing." She pressed her lips together to keep from breaking down.

The perfume Julia was wearing was more intoxicating than Sambuca. "We'll talk through everything," I said. "They're holding a table for us toward the back. It's quieter."

We moved to the table. Julia ordered a bottle of sparkling water. She said she had no appetite, which was understandable. But taken together with her sleeplessness, it made me worry she might be slipping into another depression. I ordered a few appetizers, to satisfy the waiter.

"I couldn't tell you much when you visited the house," she started, "but there's a lot you need to know about Billy. I think some of it will be critical when he goes to trial. Someone needs to make the judge aware of what he's been through."

"Anything you can tell me would be appreciated," I said.

"I'm sure my husband filled you in on Billy's background in Russia."

Listening to her use the words my husband bothered me. "He did. He told Captain Anderson and me about Billy witnessing the murder of his biological parents, then suffering abuse at the orphanage."

She seemed pained by what she was about to disclose. "What I doubt Darwin would have shared with you is how much trauma Billy has suffered since his arrival in this country."

"He didn't share any of that," I said.

She swallowed hard. " Darwin isn't the man you might think. He's very intelligent. He can be remarkably charming. But he's also very controlling. And he can be cruel."

I decided not to offer up the fact that Billy had shown me the welts on his back. I wanted to hear from Julia firsthand whether she believed Darwin Bishop was physically abusive. "Cruel, in what way?" I said.

"His demands on the boys are extreme," she said. "He expects them to be perfect-in school, athletics, at home. He interprets any emotion other than pride and self-confidence as a sign of weakness." She shook her head. "My son, Garret, is competing in a tennis tournament today, completely against his will," she said. "He pleaded with his father to let him drop out. He's beside himself about the baby, of course. And he's worried about Billy having left the hospital. Win wouldn't hear of him not playing."

"Garret wouldn't defy him?"

"Never," she said. "That's a difference between Garret and Billy. Garret wouldn't risk Darwin 's temper."

"Tell me about his temper."

She dropped her gaze. "I called you because I sensed you were an extraordinary person, Frank. But this still isn't easy to talk about."

"Nothing shocks me anymore," I said.

She looked deep into my eyes-into me. "Why is that?"

"I've seen people at their worst, doing terrible things." Telling her about my pain felt like giving it to her, relieving myself of it.

She kept looking into my eyes as she nodded, her posture and expression inviting me to say more, to empty myself into her.

"I left forensics years ago," I said. "I wasn't doing well." That was as much as I wanted to yield, and Julia seemed to know it.

She took a deep breath. "I've always believed people appear in our lives when we need them to," she said.

"I believe that, too," I said. Our eyes met, and I realized why models command the fees they do. Her luminous eyes promised to see the best in me and to help me see it. They made me want to be strong for her.

"The truth is," she said, "the boys and I have lived in fear of Darwin for years. He becomes physically abusive, unpredictably. It used to happen when he drank. I thought the alcohol was to blame. But it only got worse after he managed to stop drinking."

"He hits you?" I asked. I could feel my jaw tighten, my pulse rate start to climb. I knew some of my reaction had to be rooted in having watched my father beat my mother, but I didn't know how much of it. And I didn't know how to control it.

Julia looked embarrassed. "Let's say I've worn my share of dark lenses," she said. "I've hidden a lot over the years."

"And he's physically abusive to the boys?"

Her expression turned solemn. "That's as much my fault as anyone's," she said. "I should have left with them a long time ago."

"So you're saying he does abuse them," I said.

She nodded once. "Billy's gotten the worst of it," she said.

I noticed I was leaning into the table. I settled myself back in my seat. "Why?" I asked.

"Two reasons, I think. First of all, Billy's had a much harder time achieving. Win takes that as a direct challenge to his authority. He doesn't seem to understand that Billy's background may mean he always has to struggle. He literally believes that Billy willfully failed again and again in school-and in sports-to spite him."

That certainly didn't sound like the man who had made so much of Billy being ill, rather than evil-and so worthy of help. But I was learning that Darwin Bishop had at least two faces. "What's the other reason Billy is your husband's preferred target?" I asked. Your husband. I didn't like the words any better when I spoke them.