A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

“Well, the neighbors think it’s coyotes, but I’m not so sure.”

“What else could it be?”

“Audie, enough!” The dog finally retreated from the window with a low growl. Pat walked over to where the naked self-portraits hung. Staring at her younger self, she said, “I know his real name.”

My mouth felt dry. “Who was he?”

“It cost me five thousand to find out.”

I expected her to go on, but when she didn’t, I wondered if she was expecting payment for passing along this information to me.

“I hired a PI to track down my grandfather’s paintings. He discovered that they’d been auctioned in Qatar for a little over a million dollars. He said the seller was anonymous, but he was able to determine that the seller was from Maine.”

“You said you know his name.”

“I know the name he started out with: Jimmy Gordon. The PI never found the paintings, but he got me an address for Jimmy’s mother.”

“What was she like?”

“I never contacted the woman. Why would I want her in my life?”

“Would you mind if I contacted her?”

“Ask her where my grandfather’s paintings are.”

I carried our empty mugs over to the slop sink in one corner of the studio. Audie watched me from her dog bed. I gave her wide berth. I asked if I could use the bathroom before I left.

“The studio doesn’t have one. I just go in the woods.”

I thanked her for the tea and for taking the time to meet with me.

Pat asked if I had a recent photo of Bennett. I took out the worn half of the photograph that I still carried with me and handed it to her. She glanced at it and handed it right back. “Still inscrutable. That haircut — Jesus.”

I had wanted to ask her one question — Did she feel he was capable of murder? — but I wouldn’t have trusted her answer.

Pat slid the door open barely enough for me to squeeze through and closed it the moment I was outside. There was only a quarter moon and no other lights were in sight. Only ten steps but I had already veered from the narrow path. I felt for a Kleenex in my tote bag and squatted. I relieved myself, terrified of poison ivy, ticks, snakes, wolf spiders, and coyotes. I’d hitched up my pants. I could hear Audie going ballistic inside the studio; I hoped it was inside.

I headed for what I hoped would be the way out. A branch scratched my cheek enough to draw a little blood, I twisted my ankle, I moved through a spiderweb face-first, all in darkness. I had to talk myself down from panic. I strained to hear the sound of traffic. All I heard was barking.

A cloud cover obscured the stars, not that I could have navigated by them. I found my cell phone and tried to get a signal, but there was no service. Why hadn’t I downloaded the flashlight app?

My coat was not adequate against the damp cold. Then it hit me: find the shore and I’ll know where to go. I tried to detect any scent other than the pine that surrounded me. Either it was an olfactory hallucination or I really did pick up the faintest whiff of the sea.

I moved cautiously in that direction, but after a couple of minutes I lost the scent and my short-lived confidence. I heard a sound like the one I had heard in the studio, a branch snapping underfoot. The last of my composure left me. I moved as quickly as I could away from the sound, which wasn’t quick enough. I heard it again and said out loud, “Really?” This was the staple of countless horror films: a woman alone flees an unknown predator in the dark woods. Who was the predator? Audie? Coyotes? Pat? Samantha? The person who pretended to be Susan Rorke? In that instant, as though reading it on the page, I recovered a quote by Helen Keller, “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” I mean, if walking through your life blind and deaf doesn’t teach you about fear, nothing will.

My heartbeat slowed, I took a deep breath and continued in the direction of what might be the sea. On the heels of Helen Keller, something that Cilla had told me came to mind: “Curiosity conquers fear even more than bravery does.” As I felt my way through the dark, I asked the question that had guided me so far. The question wasn’t whether or not Bennett was capable of murder. The question was, how had I been capable of loving him?

I smelled the sea. What’s more, I saw a lighter horizon and remembered that a body of water always reflects ambient light. In another moment I could hear lapping waves.

I knew exactly where I was.

I took the C train to Seventy-Second Street so I could walk the last fifteen blocks through the park to clear my head before a session with Cilla. Single-stem roses were scattered across the Imagine mosaic, the tribute to John Lennon in Strawberry Fields. The night before, I had looked up Jimmy Gordon online. There was nothing on the Jimmy Gordon I was looking for, but then again, he had disappeared in 1992 at the age of seventeen. I had only been able to find a Maine coon cat named Jim Gordon with his own web page, as well as the infamous rock drummer Jimmy Gordon, who had toured with John Lennon and the Beach Boys until he was imprisoned for stabbing his mother to death.

I stood in line to buy a bottle of water from a park vendor and saw him fish out a hot dog from a vat of hot water that he would probably not change until spring. I was hungry, too, but not that hungry. When he gave me the bottle of water, I handed over two singles.

“Three dollars,” he said sharply.

I walked past the teeming playground filled with toddlers minded by nannies and entered the Ramble, the only part of the park that I got lost in. Even though the wooded, hilly paths sometimes ended at a rock face or a stream, I never feared nature here. In Central Park you won’t be attacked by a pack of coyotes or a wolf spider; people are the threat. Think Robert Chambers, the preppy murderer, who killed a teenaged girl not too far from here, or the “wilding” gang who were accused of attacking and nearly killing the Central Park jogger. Their convictions were vacated when Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist and murderer serving a life sentence for other crimes, confessed.

Before leaving for Cilla’s, I’d phoned the coroner’s office to identify the body of “Bennett.” I also phoned the Boston detective to give him the real name of “Bennett.” He took the information dispassionately, and I felt like saying, The case may be over for you, but it’s not for me. I reiterated my fears about Samantha. I sensed that I had not been in the woods alone last night, and the only person who knew I was visiting Pat was Samantha. But I had no proof of anything.

Cilla’s office was in a brownstone on West Eighty-Seventh Street, a ground-floor office. She buzzed me in and I sat in the waiting room until she finished with the client before me. I picked up a copy of Tricycle , the Buddhist magazine, and read part of the article “The Art of Being Wrong.” I smiled at the copy of Rolling Stone , a holdover from her singing with Lou Reed.

Though I had seen her only a week before, so much had happened in the interim. I took a seat on the sofa and didn’t wait for Cilla to ask how I was.

I caught her up on Samantha and Pat. I asked, “Did Bennett target troubled, insecure women or did he create them?”

“Any woman can be fooled by a practiced sociopath. It’s what they do. Isn’t that what your thesis is trying to prove?”

“I’m not so sure about my thesis anymore.”

“Do you think that Bennett has changed who you fundamentally are?”

“How could I have had a blind spot that large? Where is the point where giving a person the benefit of the doubt invites dangerous behavior? Should I have known when he refused to show me where he lived? Or when he didn’t want to meet any of my friends?” I realized I was sitting on the edge of the couch. Pat’s vulnerability was wanting to succeed as an artist. What was mine? We must all be alike in some damaged way. What did we have in common? Does there have to be something in common?