Hope to Die

I looked over and saw Wentworth in conversation with the Mister Softee man. After a few moments the truck pulled away from the curb, crossed the intersection, and kept going for another block. Wentworth returned empty-handed, but with a look of triumph on his square-jawed face.

"Told him to take it down the road," he said. "What's the point of having a gold shield if you can't kick Mister Softee's ass off your block?"

"Who I wanted to be," T J said. "When I grew up."

"Who, Mister Softee? Or a guy with a gold shield?"

"Mister Softee. You like the Pied Piper, ring that little bell an' all the boys an' girls come ru

"You'd like that, would you?"

"Thought so, when I was young. Everywhere you go, they be happy to see you."

"Not their parents," Wentworth said. "Not anybody who's trying to concentrate. Imagine sitting in the truck all day, listening to that music for hours on end." He shook his head. "Guy didn't want to move. 'But this is my spot,' he kept whining. Like nobody'll be able to find him a block away. 'This is my spot,' I said. He got the point."

"It's a small victory," I said, "but at least it goes in the win column."

"Damn right," he said. "Look at me, I put the fear of God into Mister Softee. You figure that's his wife's pet name for his thing? Jesus, let's hope not."

On the sidewalk in front of us, a girl in her early teens whizzed by on Rollerblades. "They're not supposed to skate on the sidewalk," he said, "but I'll let her go this time. I already filled my quota with Mister Softee. You want to get back to your boy Nadler?"

"Sure."

"He bought the gun last year, kept it locked away in his desk drawer. March, he and his wife are out, he comes home and there's been a burglary. He makes a report, files a claim with his insurance company. Right so far?"

I nodded.

"Then two, three days later he opens the drawer and the gun's gone. Did he say what made him look?"

"Not that I remember."

"It's not a stretch. He's at his desk, he's thinking about the burglary, thinks, Jesus, suppose I was here, what would I do, would I go for my gun? So he looks for the gun and it's missing. And he reported it, right?"

"Right."

"But didn't add it to his insurance claim."

"He didn't want the aggravation of amending the claim," I said. "And he wasn't sure it would be covered, as he'd never included it on the schedule. It didn't seem unreasonable."

"No, and it still doesn't. Plus there's the embarrassment factor. 'I bought a gun to protect myself and my family and the burglars took it away with them.' The law requires him to inform the police, but nobody says he has to put in a claim. That's up to him."

"Right."

"So we fast-forward a few months," he said, "and it's the end of July, begi

"Bierman and Ivanko."

"And the gun's left at the scene, as it more or less has to be if it's going to look like suicide, and a ballistics check reveals the gun is the very same twenty-two-caliber pistol stolen from the good Dr. Nadler. Was it a twenty-two? Did I get that part right?"

"Yes."

"Okay," he said, "run it by me. The gun was never stolen in the first place, right?"

"Right."

"How about the burglary? He fake the whole thing?"

"Probably not," I said. "But it's not impossible. He rides down to the lobby with his wife, then remembers he left the tickets on the dresser."

"So he goes upstairs, turns some drawers upside down, scoops up some jewelry, and what? He doesn't take it along to the theater."

"He's got it in two pillowcases he stripped off the bed," I said. "He ducks into his office, stows them both in a closet, and goes back downstairs to the lobby."

"And off to do the town. Comes home, reports the burglary. It's possible, but you don't think he did it that way."

"My guess," I said, "is the burglary happened just the way he said it did in his initial report. They went through the residence, took whatever he said they took, and carted it off in pillowcases. And two days later he realizes he's been trying to figure out how to get hold of a gun that can't be traced back to him, and here's the perfect way. He reports his own gun as stolen, and, when it is traced back to him, they say oh yeah, right, it was taken in a burglary, it was reported stolen months ago."

He nodded slowly, thinking it through. "What I like about it," he said, "is it's cute, and we already know our guy's got a weakness for being cute." To T J he said, "You ever decide to become a crook, don't be cute, okay? Three guesses what you wind up stepping on."

"On my Mister Softee," T J said.

"You think that's why he bought the gun in the first place? You think he pla

I'd wondered about that point myself. "It's possible," I said. "Say he decided he wanted a gun. He's an Upper West Side shrink, he's not going to have access to the people with unregistered guns to sell. He could cross a couple of state lines and pick up something at a gun show, but would he even think of that?"

"So he's got a use for the gun pla

"If so," I said, "then he faked the burglary, because he couldn't just sit around and wait for someone to turn up right on schedule and knock off his apartment. Unless he didn't have the details worked out yet, especially the part about the suicide. If there's no weapon recovered, he doesn't have to worry about it being traced back to him."

"And then the burglary happens, and it's a gift from on high."

"What I think," I said, "is that he knew who he was going to kill and why he was going to kill them. But he didn't know how, and the burglar who knocked over his place supplied that part for him."

"Turned his registered gun into a possible murder weapon, and gave him the idea of faking a burglary to cover the killing."

"And even showed him what a burglary looked like. Using the pillowcases, for example. I thought it was a coincidence when the same MO turned up in both jobs, Nadler and Hollander. Then I thought, well, Ivanko knocked off Nadler's place, and he kept the gun, and he had it with him when he knocked off the Hollander house."

"A burglar hits him," Wentworth said, "and he borrows the guy's MO when he stages a burglary of his own. Then he uses his own gun because he's managed to turn it into an untraceable weapon. Jesus, he really is cute, isn't he?"

THIRTY

"Peter," he says, beaming, stepping back from the doorway. "Come in, come in. You're right on time."

"Compulsive," Peter Meredith says, gri

It's a reference to a joke he told the five of them several months ago in a group session. Analysts, he said, divide their patients into two categories, based on the time they arrive for their appointments. The ones who are chronically early are anxious, he explained, while the chronically late are hostile.

And then he'd waited, knowing someone would ask the question, and it had been Ruth A

He grins back at Peter, steps forward and gives him a hug. The man's girth is considerable. He hasn't lost a pound, he will never lose a pound, but his progress in every other respect is enormously gratifying.

Teach a man to lose weight, he thinks, and he will love you until he gains it back. Teach a man to love himself, however much he weighs, and he will love you forever.

And isn't that the whole point?

"Well now," he says. "Couch or chair? What do you think?"

"No, no," says Peter, always obliging, do