Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

“You were on a plane coming up here at that time,” D’Angelico says.

“We checked passenger lists,” Clancy says, almost apologetically.

“Dr. Chapman,” D’Angelico says, “your personal business is your personal business, and we’re not interested in it, believe me.”

David wishes he could.

“All we want to know is whether Miss Duggan ever said anything at all about this guy who was bothering her. Did she indicate he might be someone she knew, for example?”

David says nothing for a moment.

The detectives are waiting.

He takes a deep breath.

“No,” he says at last. “She had no idea who he was.”

“When did you first hear about him?”

“When I went down to New York on the fifteenth.”

“Were you staying with her?”

He hesitates again.

“Dr. Chapman?”

“Yes,” he says.

“In her apartment, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did he ever phone her while you were there?”

“Not at the apartment.”

“Then you wouldn’t have spoken to him?”

“No.”

“Wouldn’t have heard his voice.”

“No. He called her at the theater.”

“When?”

“The Wednesday before her murder.”

“The sixteenth,” Clancy says.

“Yes. Just before the matinee performance.”

“Did she actually speak to him?”

“Yes.”

“Did she say what he sounded like?”

“No.”

“Did he give her a name?”

“No.”

“Any name at all?”

“No.”

“What did he say?”

“Warned her not to go to the police. Which is why she asked me to get the letters to you.”

“Make any threats?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Didn’t say he was going to kill her or anything, did he?”

“No.”

“Harm her in any way?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Any idea why she was out of the show the rest of that week?”

“Yes. She was scared.”

“Then she didn’t really have a sprained ankle, huh?”

“No. The phone call scared her.”

“With good reason,” D’Angelico says.

The men fall silent. Overhead, a flock of gulls wheels against an achingly blue sky, shrieking.

“Anything else, Ralph?” Clancy asks.

“No. You?”

“I don’t think so. Dr. Chapman,” he says, “here’s my card, case you think of anything else.”

“I’m sorry you had to come all the way up here...”

“Well, you were very helpful,” D’Angelico says.

“Thanks a lot, we appreciate your time,” Clancy says, and extends his hand. David takes it. The gulls are shrieking again. In a grave voice, like an Irishman at a wake, Clancy says, “I’m sorry for your trouble.”

David realizes he’s talking about Kate.

His eyes suddenly mist with tears.

Summer is dying.

August inches inexorably toward September and the big Labor Day weekend that will signal its symbolic end. The days are still hot, but at night there is a hint of autumn briskness in the air, and in many of the houses along the beach, smoke curls up from chimney pots. He keeps reading the newspapers and watching television for news that they have caught her killer, hoping that in mysterious ways known only to policemen they have somehow managed to locate the telephone from which her unknown assailant made his call to the theater on that Wednesday before her death. But there is nothing.

The days drift idly by.

He feels that he is watching the end titles of a movie. Under the titles as they crawl past, he can see still photographs of scenes from the movie. The stills serve as a reminder, a summary of what has gone by. It is a device he has seen used by many directors.

The movie is titled PROJECTION, which he feels is infinitely more commercial than RATIONALIZATION, both of which are psychiatric terms appropriate to the film since the male lead is a psychiatrist and the female lead is a troubled young woman. In psychiatric terms, projection and rationalization mean essentially the same thing. Both are defense mechanisms designed to project upon another person something that is emotionally unacceptable to the self.

PROJECTION is a very good movie title because of its double meaning. The movie, after all, is being projected on the screen of David’s mind. Well, not the entire movie. Just the still photographs with the end titles running over them. Oddly, the titles do not list electricians or grips or best boys or other technical people, but instead seem to be snatches of dialogue with quotation marks around them, as if this is a silent movie, except that the dialogue appears over the photographs instead of on separate cards. The song “Gently, Sweetly,” played by the London Philharmonic with lush strings and mournful woodwinds, accompanies these silent-film photographs and snatches of dialogue. And perhaps, psychologically speaking, the title PROJECTION may have a triple meaning, who knows? In that the word can also be used to describe an estimate of future prospects based on current tendencies. Who knows?

The first photograph shows Kate as she appears out of a shimmering haze. Where a moment ago the screen was empty, there is now a young girl on a bicycle, fifteen or sixteen years old, he guesses, sweaty and slender, wearing green nylon running shorts and an orange cotton tank top, tendrils of long reddish-gold hair drifting across her freckled face. She is smiling. The dialogue appears over her smiling face...

...and is gone at once in a dazzle of sunlight.

But the shot clearly establishes that the girl in this movie, the woman actually, is the one who makes initial contact, an approach to which the man doesn’t even respond. Moreover, as the parade of succeeding shots unfolds, it becomes more and more evident that the girl, the woman, is the aggressor, the pursuer, the ardent seductress... well, just look at the photographic evidence!

David is kneeling beside her. Dappled sunlight turns her eyes to glinting emeralds. Strands of golden-red hair drift across her face like fine threads in a silken curtain. The side-slit in the very short green nylon running shorts exposes a hint of white cotton panties beneath. The superimposed line of dialogue reads...

...which is in itself suggestive, even when not coupled with the next line, which reads...

...indicating that what she needs is something that’s beginning to swell, hmm, Doktor? Moreover, these blatant invitations run like a leitmotif throughout.

They are standing on Ninety-sixth Street, just outside the park. They have just exchanged addresses. They shake hands awkwardly. As he walks off:

She comes down off the stage from the side ramp on the right of the theater, surprising him when she crawls through the wide space in front of row K, and then in her catlike way, sits up, seemingly detecting a human presence, seemingly startled, jerking her head around and looking directly into his face, her green eyes wide. The superimposed dialogue reads:

The camera lingers on her green eyes. Green flecked with yellow. Sitting in slanting sunlight at a table just inside the window of the restaurant she’s chosen for brunch on the West Side. Eyes glowing with sunlight:

The West Side restaurant dissolves to a Thai newcomer on the East Side, the strains of “Gently, Sweetly” rushing through beaded curtains, caressing, embracing them as they sit sipping their wine. The pale gold of the chardonnay echoes the outfit she is wearing this evening, a wheat-colored mesh linen vest with a sort of sarong skirt in crinkled silk with a sheer leaf print that matches the color of her nail polish.