John Katzenbach - The Analyst

“The third day. Lazarus rose. Sounds like some kind of Bible stuff.”

“Maybe.”

“Okay. I got it.”

“Good,” Ricky said, returning the weapon to his pocket, after lowering the hammer down to rest with a clicking noise as distinctive as the chambering sound which lifted it. “I’m glad we had this little conversation. I feel much better about my stay here, now.” Ricky smiled at the clerk and pointed at the pornographic magazine. “Don’t let me keep you from advancing your education any longer,” he said, as he turned to leave.

There was, of course, no man with any package looking for Ricky. Someone different would arrive at the hotel soon, he thought. And, in all likelihood, the clerk would give all the relevant information to the person who came looking for him, especially when presented with the polar suggestions created by cash or bodily harm, which Ricky was certain Mr. R. or Merlin or Virgil, or whoever was sent, would employ in relatively short order. And then after the clerk had relayed the replies that Ricky had planted, Rumplestiltskin would have something to think about. A package that doesn’t exist. Containing some information that was equally nonexistent. Delivered to a person who never was. Ricky liked that. Give him something to worry about that was utter fiction.

He headed across town to check in at the next of his hotels.

In decor, this hotel was much the same as the first, which reassured him. An inattentive and desultory clerk seated behind a large, scarred, wooden desk. A room that was singularly simple, depressing, and threadbare. He had passed two women, short skirts, glossy makeup, spiked heels and black net stockings, unmistakable in their profession, hanging in the hallway, who had eyed him with financial eagerness as he cruised past. He had shaken his head in their direction when one of them had offered an inviting glance his way. He heard one of them remark, “Cop…” and then they left, which surprised him. He thought he was doing a good job of at least visually accommodating the world he’d descended into. But perhaps, Ricky thought to himself, it is harder to shed where one has been in his life than he thought. You wear who you are both inwardly and outwardly.

He plopped down on the bed, feeling the springs sag beneath him. The walls were thin, and he could hear the results of one of the women’s coworkers’ success filtering through the plasterboard, a series of moans and bangs, as the bed was used to advantage. Had he not been so directed, he would have been singularly depressed by the sounds and smells-a faint odor of urine seeping through the air passages. But the milieu was precisely what Ricky wanted. He needed Rumplestiltskin to think that Ricky had somehow become familiar with the netherworld, just as Mr. R. was.

There was a telephone beside the bed, and Ricky pulled it toward him.

The first call he made was to the broker who had handled his modest investment accounts when he was still alive. He reached the man’s secretary.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ricky said. “My name is Diogenes…” He spelled the Greek out for the woman slowly, said, “Write that down,” then continued, “and I represent Mister Frederick Lazarus, who is the executor of the estate of the late Doctor Frederick Starks. Please be advised that the substantial irregularities concerning his financial situation prior to his unfortunate death are now under our investigation.”

“I believe our security people looked into that situation…”

“Not to our satisfaction. I wanted you to know we would be sending someone around to inspect those records and eventually find those missing funds so that they may be distributed to their rightful owners. People are very upset with the way this was handled, I might add.”

“I see, but who…” The secretary was momentarily flustered, put off by the clipped, authoritarian tones that Ricky employed.

“Diogenes is the name. Please keep that in mind. I’ll be in touch in the next day or so. Please inform your employer to collect all relevant records of all transactions, especially the wire and electronic transfers, so that we won’t be wasting time at our appointment. I will not be accompanied by the SEC detectives on this initial examination, but that might become necessary in the future. It’s a matter of cooperation, you see.”

Ricky guessed that the initials so cavalierly used as a threat would have an immediate and significant impact. No broker likes hearing about SEC investigators.

“I think you’d better speak with-”

He interrupted the secretary. “Certainly. When I call back in the next day or so. I have an appointment, and another series of calls to make on this matter, so I will say goodbye. Thank you.”

And with that, he hung up, an evil sense of satisfaction creeping into his heart. He did not think that his onetime broker, a boring man intrigued only by money and making it or losing it, would recognize the name of the character who wandered the ancient world fruitlessly searching for an honest man. But Ricky did know someone who would instantly understand it.

His next call was to the head of the New York Psychoanalytic Society.

He had met the doctor only once or twice in the past at the sort of medical establishment gatherings that he’d tried so hard to avoid, and had thought him then to be a priggish and wildly conceited Freudian, given to speaking even to his colleagues in long silences, and vacant pauses. The man was a veteran New York psychoanalyst, and had treated many famous people with the techniques of couch and quiet, and somehow had added all those prominent treatments into an exaggerated sense of self-importance, as if having an Oscar-winning actor or Pulitzer Prize-winning author or multimillionaire financier on the couch actually made him into a better therapist or a better human being. Ricky, who had lived and practiced in so much isolation and loneliness right up to his suicide, did not think that there was the remotest chance that the man would recognize his voice, and so he did not even attempt to alter it.

He waited until it was nine minutes before the hour. He knew that the best likelihood of the doctor picking up his own telephone was right at the break between patients.

The phone was answered on the second ring. A flat, gruff, no-nonsense voice that dropped even a greeting from the reply: “This is Doctor Roth…”

“Doctor,” Ricky said slowly, “I’m delighted to have reached you. This is Mr. Diogenes. I represent Mr. Frederick Lazarus, who is the executor for the estate of the late Doctor Frederick Starks.”

“How may I help you?” Roth interrupted. Ricky paused, a bit of silence that would make the doctor uncomfortable, more or less the same technique the man was accustomed to using himself.

“We are interested in knowing precisely how the complaints against the late Doctor Starks were resolved,” Ricky said with an aggressiveness that surprised himself.

“The complaints?”

“Yes. The complaints. As you are completely aware, shortly before his death, there were some charges made against him concerning sexual impropriety with a female patient. We are interested in learning how that investigation of those allegations was resolved.”

“I don’t know that there was any official resolution,” Roth said briskly. “Certainly none on the part of the Psychoanalytic Society. When Doctor Starks killed himself, it rendered further inquiry pointless.”

“Really?” Ricky said. “Did it occur to you, or anyone else in the society you head up, that perhaps his suicide was prompted by the unfairness and the falseness of those allegations, instead of his suicide being some sort of verification by self-murder?”

Roth paused. “We, of course, considered that likelihood,” he answered.