Lawrence Block - Hope to Die

"A colleague."

"A psychiatrist, or therapist of some sort, and- "

"Breit!"

"You know him, then?"

"Adam Breit," he said. "He's not a close friend, we never worked together, never studied together. But yes, I know him. Not well, but I know him."

"How do you- "

"In the most casual way, yes, I know him. Adam Breit. A pleasant enough young man. What about him?"

"How did you happen to know him?"

"Didn't I just tell you that? Casually, very casually. I smile, he smiles. I say hello, he says hello. One day we get to talking, and I say, 'Breit, you're a good fellow. You must come over for drinks. Bring your wife.' 'I don't have a wife,' he says. 'So bring somebody else's wife,' I say, which is of course intended as a joke, and he laughs, showing he has a sense of humor."

"And he came over for drinks?"

"Yes, and by himself, needless to say. Very personable fellow, told some wonderful stories. I don't know what exactly his field is, but I suppose you would class it as reality-oriented therapy. He told about a patient of his, oh, it was a charming story, how she was allergic to dogs so he had her switch to stuffed animals instead, with perfectly satisfactory results." He chuckled. "I suppose a traditionalist like myself would want to know first why she was allergic, but Breit seems to have found an effective and humane solution."

"That's interesting," I said. "But I must have missed something. I don't think I understand how the two of you happened to meet."

"We bumped into each other."

"At a conference or- "

"In the lobby. The lobby of our building."

"You live in the same building?"

"Well, where did you think we lived? Breit moved in, oh, sometime around Christmas. You know Harold Fischer? The paleontologist?"

"I don't believe so."

"Brilliant man. He's on sabbatical, a full year in France, poking around in caves. Breit's subletting his apartment."

"He lives in the same building."

"Didn't I just say this?"

"Yes, of course. Was he at your apartment only the one time?"

"Maybe twice. No more than that. He was pleasant company, but we didn't have that much in common."

"Did he know about the gun?"

"The gun? What gun are we talking about?"

"The one taken in the burglary."

"This was before the burglary," he said, "so how could he know about it?"

"Did he know the gun existed, Dr. Nadler?"

"Oh," he said. "Oh, now I see what you mean," and laughed heartily. "Oh, have you got the wrong number, Detective."

"How do you mean?"

"He was afraid to touch it."

"You showed him the gun?"

"I tried to show him the gun. I took it out of the drawer, I held it out to him, you'd have thought I was trying to hand him a coral snake. It wasn't loaded, he knew it wasn't loaded, and still he wouldn't touch it."

"How did you happen to show him the gun?"

"I don't know. The subject came up. Is there anything else? Because we have guests, and I'd like to get back to them."

Harold Fischer's phone was listed, his Central Park West address the same as Nadler's. I tried the number and it rang four times before the machine picked up. An uninflected male voice repeated the last four digits of the telephone number and invited me to leave a message at the tone.

"If you were leaving the country for a year," I asked T J, "and if you were subletting your apartment, wouldn't you turn off the phone?"

"I don't, could be I come home to a nasty phone bill."

"Maybe Fischer told them to cut it off," I said, "and Breit told them to turn it back on again."

"Said he was Fischer, you mean."

"Maybe. I wonder if Fischer even knew he was subletting his apartment. Maybe he closed it up and Breit moved in."

"Best for Breit if he leave before Fischer come back from France."

"Best for Fischer, too." I tried the number again, got the machine again. "He's not home," I said.

"Then what we waitin' for?"

The doorman took a lot of convincing. I showed him a letter from Harold Fischer, advising anyone concerned that one Matthew Scudder was hereby authorized to enter his premises at 242 Central Park West. The letterhead bore two addresses, the permanent New York address on the left, and a temporary address on the Rue de la Paix in Paris on the right. T J had cobbled it up, letterhead and all, on his computer, and I'd signed Harold P. Fischer in a hand any paleontologist would be proud of.

In the past, when a fellow needed phony letterhead, he had to go to a printshop for it. Now anyone can make his own at home in five minutes. Desktop forgery, T J calls it.

After the doorman had a good look at the letter, I had three more things to show him. I led off with my Detectives' Endowment Association courtesy card, and followed with a photocopy of my New York State private investigator's license. It had long since expired, but I kept my thumb over the date. In case these items were insufficiently impressive, I finished up with a pair of fifty-dollar bills. "For your trouble," I murmured. "Mr. Fischer wanted to show his appreciation."

"I could get in trouble," the man said.

"In the first place, you're authorized," I told him, "and in the second place nobody's going to know."

"Suppose he comes in while you're up there?"

"He's in Paris," I said, "and I'm acting on his behalf in the first place, and- "

"Not Mr. Fischer. The new man, Dr. Breit."

"Just send him up," I said. "I'd love to meet him."

In the end he sorted through a drawer and came up with a set of keys to the Fischer apartment. "Anybody asks," he said, "you went and grabbed these out of the desk on your own. You didn't get them from me."

"We never met," I agreed.

We took the elevator to the fourteenth floor, found Fischer's apartment. There was a bell to ring and I rang it, and knocked on the door as well. No response. I tried the key in the lock, opened the door, and walked in, with T J right behind me. I called out, "Harold? Harold Fischer?" and walked through the large high-ceilinged room with its windows overlooking the park. There was a couch and a couple of chairs, and a desk with a computer on it. T J went straight to it, while I checked out the rest of the apartment. In the bedroom, the bed was made, the drapes drawn. In the bathroom, one towel was still damp.

T J called to me, and I went back to the living room and found him hunched over the computer, his eyes on the screen. "Something here you better look at," he said.

Ira Wentworth read the two-page printout a couple of times through, pausing now and then to shake his head. He looked up when he was done and said, "Tell me again where you got this."

"Off the Internet."

"You know what this is, don't you? This is a murder happened just hours ago. Did it even make the news yet?"

"First we heard of it," T J said, "was readin' this-here on the Web. Went to this site I been watchin', has a lot of shit about the Hollander murders. People speculatin', offerin' their own theories 'bout the case."

"Buffs," Wentworth said, the way a man might look around a kitchen and say cockroaches. He looked at the papers he was holding, shook his head again, and said, "This is the man who killed that girl. Amsterdam and Eighty-eighth, earlier today, did it just the way he says he did it. Different precinct, but everybody's talking about it, because you don't get just one of these. Maniac's out there, he's gonna do it again."

"This one's done it before."

"Yeah, that's clear, isn't it? But there's nothing here about the Hollanders, nothing about Parkman. Nothing saying who he is, either, far as that goes."

"He implies he's a mental-health professional."

"He's a mental-health case, is what he fucking is. You say his name's Breit?"