Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

“Wandered,” Fritz said. “Let us say wandered.”

“And Karen knew?”

“She was quite a perceptive child.”

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I said. “If Randall likes variety, why did he remarry?”

“Oh, that’s quite clear. One look at the present Mrs. Randall and you’d know. She is a fixture in his life, a decoration, an ornament to his existence. Rather like an exotic potted plant—which is not far from the truth, considering how much she drinks.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.

He gave me an amused, askance look. “What about that nurse you have lunch with twice a week?”

“Sandra is a friend. She’s a nice girl.” As I said it, it occurred to me that he was astonishingly well informed.

“Nothing further?”

“Of course not,” I said, a little stiffly.

“You just happen to run into her at the cafeteria on Thursdays and Fridays?”

“Yes. Our schedules—”

“What do you think this girl feels about you?”

“She’s just a girl. She’s ten years younger than I am.”

“Aren’t you flattered?”

“What do you mean?” I said, knowing exactly what he meant.

“Don’t you derive satisfaction from talking with her?”

Sandra was a nurse on the eighth-floor medical service. She was very pretty, with very large eyes and a very small waist, and a way of walking....

“Nothing has happened,” I said.

“And nothing will. Yet you meet her twice a week.”

“She happens to be a welcome change from my work,” I said. “Twice a week. A rendezvous in the intimate, sexually charged atmosphere of the Lincoln Hospital cafeteria.”

“There’s no need to raise your voice.”

“I’m not raising my voice,” I said, lowering it.

“You see,” Fritz said, “men handle things differently. You feel no compulsion to do more than talk to this girl. It is enough that she be there, hanging on your every word, mildly in love with you—”

“Fritz—”

“Look,” Fritz said. “Let’s take a case from my experience. I had a patient who felt a desire to kill people. It was a very strong desire, difficult to control. It bothered the patient; he was in constant fear of actually killing someone. But this man finally got a job in the Midwest, working as an executioner. He electrocuted people as his livelihood. And he did it very well; he was the best electrocutioner in the history of the state. He holds several patents, little techniques he has developed to do the job faster, more painlessly. He is a student of death. He likes his work. He is dedicated. He sees his methods and his advances much as a doctor does: a relief of suffering, an improvement, a bettering.”

“So?”

“So I am saying that normal desires can take many forms, some legitimate, some not. Everyone must find a way to deal with them.”

“We’re a long way from Karen,” I said.

“Not really. Have you ever wondered why she was so close to her mother and so estranged from her father? Have you ever wondered why, when her mother died, she chose the particular mode of behayior she did? Sex, drugs, self-humiliation? Even to the point of befriending her father’s mistress?”

I sat back. Fritz was being rhetorical again.

“The girl,” he said, “had certain stresses and strains. She had certain reactions, some defensive, some offensive, to what she knew was going on with her parents. She reacted to what she knew. She had to. In a sense, she stabilized her world.”

“Some stability.”

“True,” Fritz said. “Unpleasant, nasty, perverse. But perhaps it was all she could manage.”

I said, “I’d like to talk with this Signe.”

“Impossible. Signe returned to Helsinki six months ago.”

“And Karen?”

“Karen,” Fritz said, “became a lost soul. She had no one to turn to, no friends, no aid. Or so she felt.”

“What about Bubbles and Angela Harding?”

Fritz looked at me steadily. “What about them?”

“They could have helped her.”

“Can the drowning save the drowning?”

We walked downstairs.

CRUSHER THOMPSON used to be a wrestler in the fifties. He was distinguished by a flat, spatulalike head, which he used to press down on his opponent’s chest once the man was down, and thus crush him. For a few years, it was good for some laughs—and enough money to buy a bar which had become a hangout for young professional men. It was a well-run bar; Thompson, despite the shape of his head, was no fool. He had some corny touches—you wiped your feet on a wrestling mat as you entered—and the inevitable pictures of himself on the walls, but the overall effect was pleasing.

There was only one person in the bar when I arrived, a heavyset, well-dressed Negro sitting at the far end, hunched over a martini. I sat down and ordered a Scotch. Thompson himself was bartending, his sleeves rolled up to expose massive, hairy forearms.

I said, “You know a fellow named George Wilson?”

“Sure,” Thompson said, with a crooked grin.

“Tell me when he comes in, will you?”

Thompson nodded to the man at the far end of the bar. “That’s him, right there.”

The Negro looked up and smiled at me. It was a half-amused, half-embarrassed look. I went over and shook his hand.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m John Berry.”

“It’s all right,” he said, “this is new for me, too.”

He was young, in his late twenties. There was a pale scar running down his neck from his right ear, disappearing below his shirt collar. But his eyes were steady and calm as he tugged at his red striped tie and said, “Shall we go to a booth?”

“All right.”

As we walked to a booth, Wilson turned over his shoulder and said, “Two more of the same, Crusher.”

The man behind the bar winked.

I said, “You’re with Bradford’s firm, is that it?”

“Yes. I was hired a little over a year ago.”

I nodded.

“It was the usual thing,” Wilson said. “They gave me a good office with a view out to the reception desk, so that people coming in and out could see me. That kind of thing.”

I knew what he was saying, but I still felt a twist of irritation. I had several friends who were young lawyers, and none of them had gotten an office of any kind for several years after joining a firm. By any objective standard, this young man was lucky, but it was no good telling him that, because we both knew why he was lucky—he was a kind of freak, a product which society had suddenly deemed valuable, an educated Negro. His horizons were now open and his future was good. But he was still a freak.

“What kind of work have you been doing?”

“Tax, mostly. A few estates. One or two civil proceedings. The firm doesn’t have many criminal cases, as you might expect. But when I joined them, I expressed an interest in trial work. I never expected they’d drop this one on me.”

“I see.”

“I just want you to understand.”

“I think I do. They’ve stuck you with a dead horse, is that it?”

“Maybe.” He smiled. “At least, that’s what they think.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think,” he said, “that a case is decided in the courtroom, not before.”

“You have an approach?”

“I’m working on one,” Wilson said. “It’s going to take a lot of work, because it will have to be good. Because that jury’s going to see an uppity Negro defending a Chinese abortionist, and they won’t like it.”

I sipped my drink. The second round was brought and set at one side of the table.

“On the other hand,” Wilson said, “this is a big break for me.”

“If you win.”

“That,” he said evenly, “is my intention.”