Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

The kid lurched our way again, coming between us. “Sorry,” he shouted, exhaling beer.

“No problem,” Copley said. One of his friends led him off. “How about it?” Stick asked with a smile. The interruption had given him time to put on a cheerful face.

“I don’t understand.”

“I want you to work for me,” he said. “As a consultant. It’ll be good research for your book and hopefully you’ll improve morale and teach me to be a better boss.”

“Work … for … you?” I spoke slowly, as if I were learning a foreign language.

“As a consultant. Any schedule you like. No obligation other than you tell me what you think. Just as straight and tough as tonight.”

Of course I didn’t comply right away. I waited through the weekend, calling from Baltimore on Monday to say yes. A quicker agreement, I feared, might have implied I had expected Stick’s offer all along.

THROUGHOUT THE SUMMER I ESTABLISHED MYSELF AS A MEMBER OF THE Minotaur family. An odd figure to be sure, the maiden aunt, or perhaps the mildly retarded cousin, but certainly I acquired the invisibility of a familiar face, the benign appearance of the predictable. I visited the labs three days a week. Not that I was idle on the subject the rest of the time. I researched Copley and his company thoroughly.

Stick had reason to fear what I might say to Edgar, at least if he believed I could influence Edgar’s opinion of his management. The leveraged buyout that elevated Copley from a mere employee to majority owner was accomplished with loans guaranteed by Levin & Levin, in exchange for options that, in essence, left Edgar in a position to take control of Minotaur at his whim. Some of the above was public information, some not. Molly Gray, a partner in Brian Stoppard’s firm, on retainer to Edgar for such deals, confided to me that there was a private side agreement, a shadow clause she called it, whose provisions allowed Edgar to hold Sticks personal holdings in Minotaur hostage should profits falter. Molly explained that the secret agreement was legal, although its exercise, under certain conditions, might not be.

She didn’t reveal the private deal right away. A week after briefing me on the public information, she invited me to dinner at her apartment to meet her husband, Stefan Weinstein. He is an eminent psychiatrist, on the board of New York Psychoanalytic and a trustee of Freud’s archives. He had read some of my books and knew of my work with children. He was flattering about both. That must have influenced Molly to violate her client’s confidentiality, although I think her difficult personal history was the deciding factor. Molly and Stefan adopted a girl whose mother, a close friend, had been murdered by the child’s father. Molly appeared to be deeply affected when I told her Gene’s story and the fate of his son, Pete.

“There wasn’t a pattern of battering?” Stefan asked.

“No,” I said. “His abusive behavior took the form of sexual and emotional withdrawal. It turned outward because of other factors. For Gene, in general, anger was always severely repressed, until …”

Stefan finished for me, “Until it wasn’t.”

“Until, abruptly, it wasn’t,” I agreed. “I’m afraid I’ve come to the conclusion that I wasn’t sufficiently vigilant.”

Stefan raised a brow. “Well,” he mumbled. “You said he hadn’t been seeing you regularly—”

“You feel responsible,” Molly interrupted.

“Yes. I saw the potential for its evolution, but I didn’t allow for it. Even in his irrational rage, Gene was repressed. He hit the wrong person.”

“What?” Stefan chuckled. “What do you mean? He was myopic?” Throughout all this, Molly observed me closely, eyes glistening.

“Well, Cathy, his wife, was certainly an obstacle, but she wasn’t …” I trailed off. There was a limit to what I wanted to reveal. “It’s complicated.”

“The person he wanted to kill is at Minotaur,” Molly said. “That’s why you’re hanging out there.”

“No,” I lied. “I’m trying to understand my mistake. I’m afraid there are similar patterns in place for the people who work there now.”

Stefan frowned. “What are you saying? You think this is some sort of psychological industrial hazard? Make computers and kill your wife?”

“Something like that.” I smiled. “No, I mean I believe I can reconstruct my error with Gene through a better understanding of his life. The best I can do is observe the people he dealt with.”

“I see,” Stefan said, in a tone that implied he didn’t. Molly, however, understood. Or, she saw through me and approved anyway. Whatever the reason, she wanted to help. When Stefan left the room to take a phone call, she revealed the shadow clause.

For two weeks I commuted between Baltimore and New York, sleeping on Susan’s foldout couch. Stefan made things more comfortable for me after that, finding an apartment I could sublet on Central Park West between Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth Streets. The owner was a psychologist taking the traditional August shrink’s vacation; luckily, in her calendar, August began in June and ended with Labor Day. We made a barter arrangement. The fee was caring for her calico cat, named Sally Rogers, in honor of the character on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

I made sure to be in New York for the two social events Edgar invited me to. I attended a Mets game in his private box, correctly assuming Stick would be there; and I was his guest at a UJA benefit dinner at the Waldorf. Copley, it turned out, hadn’t been invited. But he heard I was, and that suited my purposes even better. It convinced Copley I enjoyed a degree of intimacy with Edgar that was barred to him. In fact, when alone with me, Edgar’s attitude about my consulting job with Minotaur was sarcastic. “Do you always figure out a way to get paid for your research?” he teased. Whatever Copley might fear, Edgar obviously didn’t think I had insights into the business that he needed to hear.

A month into my job as a consultant, Stick invited me to a barbecue on July 4th. That provided my introduction to his wife of twenty-seven years, Mary Catharine, an Italian-American born and raised in Boston. Halley’s small stature, olive skin and dark hair came from her; otherwise they didn’t appear related. Mary Catharine’s light brown eyes were watery. Her neck was compressed into a shapeless torso, chin either weak or disappeared by the thickening of her face. Her people were working-class. She met Copley when he was at Harvard Business School. She waited tables at the pizzeria, around the corner from his bachelor apartment. I suspected (and later confirmed by the date of Halley’s birth, seven months following their wedding) that the marriage was precipitated by a pregnancy.

Mary Catharine was an alcoholic. When I deliberately arrived forty-five minutes early, I smelled it on her breath. She excused herself to change for the barbecue. She reappeared in a half hour, wearing a bright yellow pants suit. A minty odor had replaced the boozy one. Twice during the party, I noticed her fiddle with something in a pocket and slip what I eventually discovered was a Tic-Tac into her mouth. Her drinking was camouflaged in other ways. She offered to refresh a different guest’s drink every ten minutes or so, often when their glasses were merely half-empty. Each time, when she returned with her guest’s refill, she had made a new drink for herself. During the two hours before burgers and hot dogs were served, I counted eight gin and tonics. To the casual eye, it would have seemed no more than two or three; and her behavior, although increasingly gay and friendly, was another confirmation of alcoholism — she didn’t appear drunk.