Linda Fairstein - Final Jeopardy

No wonder Isabella and Jed had so much to talk about.

It was really weird.

I wondered why I had never heard the term erotomania before, so I read on.

“Erotomania is the delusional belief that one is passionately loved by another.” But as recently as the third edition of the DSM, just a few years ago, there was no specific mention of the condition. It was only with the later publication of DSM-III-R the one I was reading that it was included as a specific category, as physicians began to document more and more cases of patients exhibiting this unusual conduct.

I was getting sleepy, so I decided to stop after the next few paragraphs, which described the history of the original diagnosis of the condition. It was originally documented in 1921 by a French psychiatrist named G.G. de Clerambault and, therefore, named for him: de Clerambault’s Syndrome, and referred to in the literature of the time as psycho se passionelle. As I lay in my bed each of these last few nights, suffering from a serious bout of post-breakup depression, ley I longed for a malady with a fancy French name like this, on and hoped some obscure footnote would drop a hint that would dignify my pathetic condition with a Gallic accent. as The early case descriptions were all quite interesting, jer as they typified the illness. The patients were usually women from modest backgrounds, while the male victims st were generally from a higher social and financial status ier executives, physicians, media figures. These otherwise sane women insisted they could provide evidence for their beliefs, in the form of signs from their love objects like ‘meaningful glances, messages passed through newspapers, or telepathic communications.“

I had to admit my amusement at de Clerambault’s first case analysis, comparing in my mind that victim King George V of England and the one I knew, Jed Segal.

The French psychiatrist wrote that one of his most dramatic cases involved a fifty-year-old compatriot who became completely convinced that King George was in love with her although, of course, they had never met. She believed that British tourists and sailors were emissaries of His Majesty, sent abroad to declare his love for her. The deluded woman made several trips to London, and on one of them, in 1918, she stood for hours outside Buckingham I Palace, waiting for a glimpse of her beloved. When at last she saw a curtain moving in a window, she interpreted this as a signal from the King. As she told all those who tried to bring her to her senses, “The King might hate me, but he can never forget me.”

It was a merrier note on which to close the book for the night and go to sleep.

I reached for the light switch and took note of the still unblinking red light on my answering machine. It seemed to me that David Mitchell said he had left a message shortly before I got home from Rao’s this evening, but then I remembered that Maureen had been in here using the phone to call her husband, and probably hit the rewind button by mistake. Tomorrow I would call my parents just to say hello, but for now I would give myself to dreams of some kind of psycho se passionelle. Everything even mental illness sounded better in French.

The rain had stopped by the time my alarm went off at seven o’clock, and I opened the curtains to reveal a glorious October morning. It was Thursday, and I tried to remember what the day’s line-up looked like in my red desk calendar as I showered and thought ahead to the weekend. I had planned to spend it with Jed, so I daydreamed instead about a whirlwind shopping hinge, (a haircut that would announce a new ‘me,“ and assembling a few of my girlfriends for a ladies’ night out at an elegant restaurant. 9 I didn’t feel like dealing with a yellow cab so I called a car service to deliver me to the office. I read my Times I most of the way downtown while Imus kept me diverted I on the radio, and I was pleased to note when I entered I the building through the revolving door that Battaglia’s car had not yet pulled into its reserved space directly in front of the office.

Laura was drinking her coffee down the hall with Rod’s secretary and the phones were quiet. I turned on my computer and brought up the screen for e-mail to send some messages before starting on my response to the motions I had to file in the Reynolds case.

“Mind if I come in?” I looked up to see my old friend, Mickey Diamond, the veteran court reporter for the Post, standing outside my door. He had worked the courthouse beat for almost thirty years and was the revered dean of the school of the tabloid crime story. Diamond was tall and lean, with silvery hair and an irresistible grin, even when he was at his most offensive. We never ended a press conference on a rape case without his asking what the victim looked like, and even when Battaglia refused to give an answer, Mike would invent a description of his own. If he assumed the victim had been African-American because the crime had happened in a housing project in Harlem, she would appear in print as a ‘raven-haired beauty,“ and if the rape had occurred in a townhouse on the Upper East Side, the woman was invariably a blonde.

“Enter,” I said, trying my best to be cheerful, knowing that this visit was uncharacteristically overdue, given my tangential involvement in the death of a movie star.

“Anything new?”

“All quiet, Mickey. Nothing to report.”

“No, I mean, off the record.” Right. There was no such animal as ‘off the record’ for Mickey Diamond.

“I’m not kidding. I’ve got nothing for you, really.”

“Did you see ”Page Six“ today?” he asked, referring to the Post’s gossip column.

“Nope.” I hated to admit it, but I usually bought the tabloid because so many of the office stories were covered in it. The last few years, the Metro section of the Times, which used to be too classy to report on all the city’s sex and violence, now read like the tabs on any given day.

“Johnny Garelli’s in town for the Lascar investigation.

Says he was at Rao’s with an unidentified blonde last night. Probably a starlet or hooker. Thought maybe you’d as know who she is, give me a scoop. Chapman and Peterson jer must keep you on top of things.“ he Could he tell I was blushing?

“I’m out of the loop on this st one, Mickey. Just a witness.” He smiled that impish grin that usually worked on me.

“C’mon, it’s really slow. Haven’t you got anything for me?”

Unfortunately, the subject matter of my cases was prime fodder for Diamond’s stories, and every available space in the tiny courthouse press office was literally papered with headline stories that he proudly called his “Wall of Shame.”

I had been a cover girl in more of those tales than I cared to count.

“Get out of here before Battaglia sees you with me and thinks I leaked something to you. Scoot.”

“Just give me a quote on the murder case, something I can use as an exclusive, please?”

“Are you out of your mind? I want to keep my job, I honestly do, Mickey.”

“Can I make up something, like how bad you feel about I Isabella? I promise it’ll be tasteful.” I I picked up my box of Kleenex and threw it across the room at him, laughing at that prospect. Frequently throughout the last three or four years, before I could even ask Battaglia for permission to talk to any of the reporters about a case or an issue a firm office rule Diamond would have some pearls of wisdom, in quotation marks, attributed to me. Even the District Attorney had stopped berating me and come to realize I was not guilty but that Mickey had simply fabricated the statement, trying to keep it consistent with what he thought my views would be on a given subject.

“Hey, you owe me. My editor wanted me to do a story about you and Jed Segal. Even had a headline: ”THE LEGAL MISS WHO MISSES KISSES,“ but I refused-‘ I was out of my chair and making my way toward the door in a flash. ’I’ll break your fucking neck if you even think about a story like that.”