John Katzenbach - The Analyst

He could hear the young woman nodding in agreement. This was the most typical of telephone calls, he thought. She called in a state of boyfriend- and school-related despair, but really wasn’t anywhere close to that state, when examined a little more closely.

“I think that’s a fair statement,” she said. “The bastard.”

“So, maybe you’re better off without him. It’s not like there aren’t other fish in that sea,” Ricky said.

“I thought I loved him,” the young woman said.

“And so it hurts a bit, doesn’t it? But the hurt isn’t because you actually have had your heart broken. It’s more because you feel that you engaged in a lie. And now you’ve had your sense of trust staggered.”

“You make sense,” she said. Ricky could sense the tears drying up on the other end of the line. After a minute, she added, “You must get a lot of calls like this one. It all seemed so important and so awful a minute or two ago. I was crying and sobbing and now…”

“There’s still the grades. What will happen when you get home?”

“They’ll be pissed. My dad will say, ‘I’m not spending my hard-earned dollars on a bunch of C’s…’ ”

The young lady did a passable harrumph and deepened her voice, capturing her father pretty effectively. Ricky laughed, and she joined him.

“He’ll get over it,” he said. “Just be honest. Tell him about your stresses, and about the boyfriend, and that you’ll try to do better. He’ll come around.”

“You’re right.”

“So,” Ricky said, “here’s the prescription for this evening. Get a good night’s sleep. Put the books away. Get up in the morning and go buy yourself one of those really sweet frothy coffees, one with all the calories in it. Take the coffee outside to one of the quads, sit on a bench, sip the drink slowly and admire the weather. And, if you happen to see the boy in question, well, ignore him. And if he wants to talk, walk away. Find a new bench. Think a little bit about what the summer holds. There’s always some hope that things will get better. You just have to find it.”

“All right,” she said. “Thanks for talking with me.”

“If you’re still feeling stressed, like to the point where you don’t think you can handle things, then you should make an appointment with a counselor at health services. They’ll help you through problems.”

“You know a lot about depression,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” Ricky replied, “I do. Usually it is transitory. Sometimes it isn’t. The first is an ordinary condition of life. The second is a true and terrible disease. You sound like you’ve just got the first.”

“I feel better,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get a sweet roll with that cup of coffee. Calories be damned.”

“That’s the attitude,” Ricky said. He was about to hang up, but stopped. “Hey,” he said, “help me out with something…”

The young woman sounded a bit surprised, but replied, “Huh? What? You need help?”

“This is the crisis hot line,” Ricky said, allowing humor to seep into his voice. “What makes you think that the folks on this end don’t have their own crises?”

The young woman paused, as if digesting the obviousness of this statement. “Okay,” she said, “how can I help?”

“When you were little,” Ricky said, “what games did you play?”

“Games? Like board games, you know, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland…”

“No. Outdoor, playground-type games.”

“Like Ring Around the Rosie or Freeze Tag?”

“Yes. But what if you wanted to play a game with other kids, a game where one person has to hunt the other, while at the same time being hunted, what would that be?”

“Not exactly hide-and-seek, right? Sounds a little bit nastier.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

The young woman hesitated, then started thinking more or less out loud, “Well, there was Red Rover, Red Rover, but that had more of a physical challenge. There were scavenger hunts, but that was a pursuit of objects. Tag and Mother May I and Simon Says…”

“No. I’m looking for something a little more challenging…”

“The best I can think of is Foxes and Hounds,” she said abruptly. “That was the hardest to win.”

“How did you play it?” Ricky asked.

“In the summer, out in the countryside. There were two teams, Foxes and Hounds, obviously. The foxes took off, fifteen-minute head start. They carried paper bags filled with ripped-up newspaper. Every ten yards, they had to put a handful down. The hounds followed the trail. The key thing was to leave false trails, double back, put the hounds into the swamp, whatever. The foxes won if they made it back to the starting point after a designated time, like two or three hours later. The hounds won if they caught up with the foxes. If they spotted the foxes across a field, they could act like dogs, and take off after them. And the foxes had to hide. So, sometimes the foxes made certain that they knew where the hounds were, you know, spying on them…”

“That’s the game I’m looking for,” Ricky said quietly. “Which side usually won?”

“That was the beauty of it,” the young woman said. “It depended on the ingenuity of the foxes and the determination of the hounds. So either side could win at any given time.”

“Thank you,” Ricky said. His mind was churning with ideas.

“Good luck,” the young woman said, as she hung up the phone.

Ricky thought that was precisely what he was going to need: some good luck.

He began making arrangements the following morning. He paid his rent for the following month, but told his landladies that he was likely to be out of town on some family business. He had put a plant in his room, and he made certain they agreed to water it regularly. It was, he thought, the simplest way of playing on the psychology of the women; no man who wants his plant watered was likely to run out on them. He spoke to his supervisor at the janitorial staff at the university, and received permission to take some accumulated overtime and sick days. His boss was equally understanding, and aided by the end of the semester slowdown, willing to cut him loose without jeopardizing his job.

At the local bank where Frederick Lazarus had his account, Ricky made a wire transfer to an account he opened electronically at a Manhattan bank.

He also made a series of hotel reservations around the city, for successive days. These were at less than desirable hotels, the sorts of places that didn’t show up on anyone’s tourist guide to New York City. He guaranteed each reservation with Frederick Lazarus’s credit cards, except for the last hotel he selected. The final two of the hotels he’d selected were located on West 22nd Street, more or less directly across from each other. At one, he simply reserved a two-night stay for Frederick Lazarus. The other had the advantage of offering efficiency apartments by the week. He reserved a two-week block. But for this second hotel, he used Richard Lively’s Visa card.

He closed Frederick Lazarus’s Mailboxes Etc. mail drop, leaving a forwarding address of the second-to-last hotel.

The final thing he did was pack his weapon and extra ammunition and several changes of clothing into a bag, and return to Rent-A-Wreck. As before, he rented a modest, dated car. But on this occasion, he was careful to leave more of a trail.

“That has unlimited mileage, right?” he asked the clerk. “Because I need to drive to New York City, and I don’t want to get stuck with some ten cent per mile charge…”

The clerk was a college-aged kid, obviously starting up a summer job, and already, with only a few days in the office, bored out of his head. “Right. Unlimited mileage. As far as we’re concerned, you can drive to California and back.”