Hope to Die

I asked him again which drawer had held the gun, and had him show me how it was locked and unlocked. The desk was an oval kneehole desk, mahogany, with a tooled leather top. There was a center drawer with three drawers on either side, and the gun had been kept in the second of the three drawers on the right. He was right-handed, he explained, so that would be most convenient, if he were at his desk and needed the gun.

All of the drawers were fitted with locks, although the locking mechanisms on two of them had failed with age and rust. The small skeleton-type key was in the center drawer, with a piece of red yarn tied to it, I guess to make it easier to find.

"During the burglary," I asked, "were all the drawers unlocked? Or only the one with the gun?"

"It was the only one locked in the first place."

"Who knew about the gun?"

"Who knew about it?"

"That you owned it," I said, "and where you kept it."

"No one."

"Your wife? Your receptionist?"

"My wife knew, yes, knew that I owned it but not where it was kept. My wife is somewhat phobic about guns and was opposed to my obtaining one in the first place." He frowned. "I suppose that's one reason I didn't amend the insurance claim. As for Georgia, my receptionist, she wouldn't even have known the gun existed, let alone where it was kept."

Georgia was a middle-aged black woman with cool eyes and a warm smile, and I had the feeling she didn't miss much. I let that pass and asked about his patients. Had he ever had occasion to show the gun during a session?

"Absolutely not," he said. "I never so much as opened that drawer with a patient in the room. I never even unlocked- no, that's not true. Twice, with a patient who was going through a critical time, I prepared for the session by unlocking the drawer. Because of my own anxiety, you see. But in the event I never even opened the drawer, let alone showed the weapon."

"And that patient…"

His face clouded. "Took his own life, I'm sorry to say. Lived in a second-floor apartment, rode the elevator up to the roof and threw himself off it. He left a note, said he was afraid if he didn't do this he might kill someone. So perhaps my anxiety hadn't been entirely misplaced."

"And this happened recently?"

"His suicide? No, it was last winter, the week between Christmas and New Year's. Not an unusual time for it."

"Before the gun was taken, then."

"Oh, yes. Months before."

"The two burglars," I said. "Their names were Jason Bierman and Carl Ivanko."

"Yes."

"Was either a patient of yours?"

He didn't even hesitate. He might have refused to answer if he'd thought I was a cop, but he wouldn't hold out on a guy from the insurance company looking to head off a lawsuit. "No," he said. "The first I heard of either of them was when I read about them in the newspaper."

"Of your other patients," I said, "can you think of any who might have served time in prison?"

He shook his head. "My patients are middle-class professionals," he said. "Two-thirds or more of them suffer from depression. Several are young women with eating disorders. I have a blocked writer, the author of five novels. The fifth was his breakthrough book, a bestseller. It was published nine years ago and he hasn't been able to finish anything since. I have patients who are unhappy in their marriages, patients who feel their careers have dead-ended."

He came out from behind his desk, walked over to the window, looked out at the park. With his back to me he said, "When I was in medical school they talked admiringly of dermatology. The skin game, they used to call it. 'Nobody ever dies, nobody ever gets well.' " He turned to face me, one hand holding the other. "You could say that about what I do, dabbing ointment on psoriasis of the psyche. Of course it's not really true of a dermatologist. Some of his patients do recover, certainly, and some die of melanoma. And many of mine are better for having treatment. Their depression is lessened, their neuroses less debilitating. And, of course, now and then one flings himself off a roof."

He returned to his desk, picked up a letter opener, brass, with a handle of green malachite. "I had a patient who molested all four of his children, three girls and a boy," he said. "I had another who embezzled a quarter of a million dollars from his employer to finance an enthusiasm for sports gambling and cocaine. Neither of them went to jail. I suppose the work I do might benefit a criminal, an ex-inmate, but none has ever come to me." He started to add something, then drew himself up short and looked at his watch.

"It's ten minutes of two," he said. "I really can't spare you any more time. No one could have known the gun was there. No patient of mine ever saw it. If there's nothing else…"

"You've been very helpful," I said. "I'm sorry to have taken so much of your time. Unofficially, let me just say that I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"Then I won't," he said, and gave me a wintry smile. I can't say he looked too worried. We shook hands, and he showed me to the door.

NINETEEN

It was drizzling when I left Nadler's office, but not enough to make me sorry I'd left the umbrella home. We had a concert that evening and I wanted to fit in a meeting first, so I walked through the raindrops to Broadway and took the subway down to the Village. There's a storefront on Perry Street that's been leased to an AA group for twice as long as I've been sober. Back when I came in they used to hold two or three meetings a day there, and now they run pretty much continuously from early morning to late at night. I got there halfway through one meeting, went out for coffee when it ended, and came back for a little more than half of the next one. I heard a lot of the neurotic self-absorbed drivel that Seymour Nadler had to listen to all day, and I wasn't getting paid, either. But when I walked out of there I was sober.

T J called in, reporting that no one had questioned his performance as a deputy inspector for the Department of Buildings, City of New York, Borough of Brooklyn. He'd had no trouble finding the house on Meserole Street, but said he'd have felt more comfortable in that part of town if he'd stayed with the camo shorts. There were Dumpsters here and there and a lot of renovation going on, so the neighborhood was evidently in the process of improving, but it looked to him like it had a ways to go.

He'd met Peter Meredith, and three of his four housemates, and he'd report at length face to face, but for now he'd summarize it by saying Meredith might not have gained weight since Kristin saw him last, but it didn't look as though he'd lost any, either, and he wasn't about to fit into Jason Bierman's shirt and jeans. And two of the other people he'd met were women, and the other man was black, and, while we'd never actually spelled it out, he more or less assumed our mystery dude was of the Caucasian persuasion.

That left one member of the team he didn't get to see, I told Elaine, and another visit from the same buildings inspector might arouse suspicions. But he had the name of the missing man, and we could figure out some way to check him out.

"I know it's never a complete waste," she said, "but it sounds as though he had a long trip for nothing."

"That's what I said. He said it wasn't that long a trip, and he got to see a part of town he hadn't known before. Besides, it wasn't for nothing."

"Because you get to rule these people out."

"That's only half of it. He got paid. They believed he was a genuine buildings inspector, and evidently they'd had dealings with the breed before, or knew someone who had. So, when he kept hanging around, wanting to look at one thing after another to no particular purpose, Peter Meredith took him aside and slipped him a hundred-dollar bill."