Jonathan Kellerman - Bad Love

He looked away, as if considering his choices. Held out his short fingers and waved them. Pointing at his mouth, he said, "I'm completely edentulous. Born without adult teeth. My right foot has three toes, the left one is clubbed. I'm unable to sire children and one of my kidneys atrophied when I was three. Most of my childhood was spent in bed due to severe skin rashes and a hole in the ventricular septum of my heart. So I guess I'm a little sensitive to discrimination. But I didn't speak up, just left the school."

I nodded. "Did de Bosch's intolerance come out in other ways?"

"No, that's the thing. On a day-to-day basis, he was extremely liberal. Publicly, he was liberal- took in minority patients, most of them charity cases, and seemed to treat them as well as the others. And in his writings, he was brilliantly tolerant. Have you ever read his essay on the Nazis?"

"No."

"Brilliant," he repeated. "He composed it while fighting in the French Resistance. Taking the bastards' own pseudo-theories of racial superiority and throwing it all back in their faces with good, sound science. That was one of the things that attracted me to him when I was a resident. The combination of social conscience and psychoanalysis. Too many analysts live in a twelve-foot-square world- the office as universe, rich people on the couch, summers in Vienna. I wanted more."

"Is that why you studied anthropology?"

"I wanted to learn about other cultures. And Andres supported me in that. Told me it would make me a better therapist. He was a great mentor, Alex. That's why it was so crushing to hear him sneer at those field hands- like seeing one's father in a disgusting light. I swallowed it in silence several times. Finally, I resigned and left town."

"For Beverly Hills?"

"I did a year of research in Chile, then caved in and returned to my own twelve-foot-square world."

"Did you tell him why you were leaving?"

"No, just that I was unhappy, but he understood." He shook his head. "He was an intimidating man. I was a coward."

"It had to take force of personality to dominate Katarina."

"Oh, yes, and he did dominate her… after I returned from Chile, he called me just once. We had a frosty conversation, and that was that."

"But Katarina wanted you at the conference anyway."

"She wanted me because I was part of his past- the glory years. By then he was a vegetable and she was resurrecting him. She brought me pictures of him in his wheelchair. "You abandoned him once, Bert. Don't do it again.' Guilt's a great motivator."

He looked away. Worked his jaws.

"I don't see any obvious tie-in," I said, "but Rodney Shipler, the man who was beaten to death, was black. At the time of his murder, he was a school janitor in L.A. Do you have any memory of him at all?"

"No, that name isn't familiar." He looked back at me. Edgy- guilty?

"What is it, Bert?"

"What's what?"

"Something's on your mind." I smiled. "Your face is full of stress."

He smiled back and sighed. "Something came into my mind. Your Mr. Silk. Probably irrelevant."

"Something about Lerner?"

"No, no, this is something that happened after the "bad love' conference- soon after, a couple of days, I believe." He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, as if coaxing forth memories.

"Yes, it was two or three days," he said, working his jaws again. "I received a call in my office. After hours. I was on my way out and I picked up the phone before the answering service could get to it. A man was on the other end, very agitated, very angry. A young man- or at least he sounded young. He said he'd sat through my speech at the conference and wanted to make an appointment. Wanted to go into long-term psychoanalysis with me. But the way he said it- hostile, almost sarcastic- brought my guard up, and I asked him what kinds of problems he was experiencing. He said there were many- too many to go into over the phone and that my speech had reminded him of them. I asked him how, but he wouldn't say. His voice was saturated with stress- real suffering. He demanded to know if I was going to help him. I said, of course, I'd stay late and see him right away."

"You considered it a crisis?"

"At the least, a borderline crisis- there was real pain in his voice. An ego highly at risk. And," he smiled, "I had no pressing engagements other than dinner with one of my wives- the third one, I think. You can see why I was such a poor matrimonial prospect… Anyway, to my surprise, he said no, right now wasn't a good time for him, but he could come in the next evening. Standoffish, all of a sudden. As if I'd come on too strong for him. I was a bit taken aback, but you know patients- the resistance, the ambivalence."

I nodded.

He said, "So we made an appointment for the following afternoon. But he never showed up. The phone number he'd given me was out of order and he wasn't listed in any local phone books. I thought it odd, but after all, odd is our business, isn't it? I thought about it for a while, then I forgot about it. Until today. His being at the conference… all that anger." Shrug. "I don't know."

"Was his name Silk?"

"This is the part I hesitate about, Alex. He never became my patient, formally, but in a sense he was. Because he asked for help and I counseled him over the phone- or at least I attempted to."

"There was no formal treatment, Bert. I don't see any problem, legally."

"That's not the point. Morally, it's an issue- moral issues transcend the law." He slapped his own wrist and smiled. "Gawd, doesn't that sound self-righteous."

"There is a moral issue," I said. "But weigh it against the alternatives. Two definite murders. Three if you include Grant Stoumen. Maybe four, if someone pushed Mitchell Lerner off that cliff. Myra Paprock was raped, as well. Taken apart physically. She left two small children. I just met her husband. He still hasn't healed."

"You're quite good at guilt yourself, young man."

"Whatever works, Bert. How's that for a moral stance?"

He smiled. "No doubt you're a practical therapist… No his name wasn't Silk. Another type of fabric. That's what made me think of it. Merino." He spelled it out.

"First name?"

"He didn't give one. Called himself "Mister.' Mr. Merino. It sounded pretentious in someone so young. Awful insecurity."

"Can you pinpoint his age?"

"Twenties- early twenties would be my guess. He had a young man's impetuousness. Poor impulse control to call like that and make demands. But he was stressed, and stress causes regression, so maybe he was older."

"When was the Corrective School established?"

"Nineteen sixty-two."

"So if he was in his twenties in seventy-nine, he could easily have been a patient. Or one of the field hands- Merino's an Hispanic name."

"Or someone with no connection to the school at all," he said. "What if he was just someone with deep-seated problems who sat in on the conference and reacted to it for one reason or another?"

"Could be," I said, calculating silently: Dorsey Hewitt would have been around eighteen in 1979. Lyle Gritz, a year older.

"All right," I said, "thanks for telling me, and I won't give out the information unless it's essential. Is there anything else you remember that might help?"

"No, I don't think so. Thank you. For warning me."

He looked around his small house with longing. I knew the feeling.

"Do you have a place to go?" I said.

Nod. "There are always places. New adventures."

He walked me to my car. The heat had turned up a bit and the air was thick with honeybees.

"Off to Santa Barbara now?" he said.

"Yes."

"Give Katarina my best when you see her. The easiest way is Highway 150. Pick it up just out of town and take it all the way. It's no more than a half-hour drive."