The Conspiracy Club

The day the surgeons came, he’d been trying to write and was rescued by their laughter. He opened his door to find five dapper men and a matching woman, wielding tape measures and hmming. A month later, Psychiatry was ordered to relocate to a smaller suite. No suite existed to accommodate the entire department. A crisis of space was solved when an eighty-year emeritus analyst died, and Jeremy volunteered to go elsewhere. This was shortly After Jocelyn, and isolation had been welcome.

Jeremy never came to regret the decision. He could come and go as he pleased, and Psychiatry was faithful about forwarding his daily mail. The chemistry lab stink that permeated the building was all right.

“Nice,” said Arthur. “Very nice.”

“What is?”

“The solitude.” The old man blushed. “Which I have violated.”

“What’s up, Arthur?”

“I was thinking about that drink. The one we discussed at Renfrew’s shop.”

“Yes,” said Jeremy. “Of course.”

Arthur reached under a coat flap and drew out a bulbous, white-gold pocket watch. “It’s approaching six. Would now be a good time?”

To refuse the old man now would be downright rude. And simply postpone the inevitable.

On the bright side: Jeremy could use a drink.

He said, “Sure, Arthur. Name the place.”

The place was the bar of the Excelsior, a downtown hotel. Jeremy had passed the building many times- a massive, gray heap of gargoyled granite with too many rooms to ever fill- but had never been inside. He parked in the humid subterranean lot, rode the elevator to street level, and crossed a cavernous Beaux Arts lobby. The space was well past its prime, as was most of downtown. Disconsolate men working on commission sat in frayed, plush chairs and smoked and waited for something to happen. A few women with overdeveloped calves walked the room; maybe hookers, maybe just women traveling alone.

The bar was a windowless, burnished mahogany fistula that relied upon weak bulbs and tall mirrors for life. Jeremy and Arthur had taken separate cars because each pla

The waiter who approached them was portly and militaristic and older than Arthur, and Jeremy sensed that he knew the pathologist. He had nothing upon which to base the assumption- the man had uttered nothing of a familiar nature, hadn’t offered even a telling glance- but Jeremy couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a favorite haunt of Arthur’s.

Yet when Arthur put in his order, there was no “The usual, Hans.” On the contrary, the pathologist enunciated clearly, careful to specify: a Boodles martini, straight up, two pearl onions.

The waiter turned to Jeremy. “Sir?”

“Single malt, ice on the side.”

“Any particular brand, sir?”

“Macallan.”

“Very good, sir.”

As he left, Arthur said, “Very good.”

The drinks came with stu

“So,” said Jeremy.

Arthur slid a pearl onion from a toothpick to his lips, left the mucoid sphere there for several moments. Chewed. Swallowed. “I was wondering if you could clarify something for me, Jeremy.”

“What’s that, Arthur?”

“Your views- psychology’s views on violence. Specifically, the genesis of very, very bad behavior.”

“Psychology’s not monolithic,” said Jeremy.

“Yes, yes, of course. But surely there must be a body of data- I’ll retrench. What’s your take on the issue?”

Jeremy sipped scotch, let the subtle fire linger on his tongue. “You’re asking me this because…”

“The question intrigues me,” said Arthur. “For years I’ve dealt with the aftermath of death on a daily basis. Have spent most of my adult life with what remains when the soul flies. The challenge, for me, is no longer to reduce the bodies I dissect to their biochemical components. Nor to ascertain cause of death. If one excavates long enough, one produces. No, the challenge is to comprehend the larger issues.”

The old man finished his martini and motioned for another. Motioned at an empty bar; no sign of the portly waiter. But the man materialized moments later with another frosted shaker.

He glanced at the nearly empty tumbler of scotch. “Sir?”

Jeremy shook his head, and the waiter vanished.

“Humanity,” said Arthur, sipping. “The challenge is to maintain my humanity- have I ever mentioned that I served a spell in the Coroner’s Office?”

As if the two of them chatted regularly.

“No,” said Jeremy.

“Oh, yes. Sometime after my discharge from the military.”

“Where did you serve?”

“The Panama Canal,” said Arthur. “Medical officer at the locks. I witnessed some gruesome accidents, learned quite a bit about postmortem identification. After that… I did some other things, but eventually, the Coroner’s seemed a fitting place.” He took several thoughtful swallows, and the second martini was reduced by half.

“But you switched to academia,” said Jeremy.

“Oh, yes… it seemed the right thing to do.” The old man smiled. “Now about my question: What’s your take on it?”

“Very bad behavior.”

“The very worst.”

Jeremy’s stomach lurched. “On a purely academic level?”

“Oh, no,” said Arthur. “Academia is the refuge of those seeking to escape the big questions.”

“If it’s hard data you’re after-”

“I’m after whatever you choose to offer. Because you speak your mind.” Arthur finished his drink. “Of course, if I’m being offensive or intrusive-”

“Violence,” said Jeremy. He’d spent hours- endless hours, all those sleepless nights- thinking about it. “From what I’ve gathered, very, very bad behavior is a combination of genes and environment. Like most everything else of consequence in human behavior.”

“A cocktail of nature and nurture.”

Jeremy nodded.

“What are your thoughts about the concept of the bad seed?” said Arthur.

“The stuff of fiction,” said Jeremy. “Which isn’t to say that serious violence doesn’t manifest young. Show me a cruel, bullying, callous six-year-old, and I’ll show you someone worth watching. But even given nasty tendencies it takes a bad environment- a rotten family to bring it out.”

“Callous… you’ve treated children like that?”

“A few.”

“Six-year-old potential felons?”

Jeremy considered his answer. “Six-year-olds who gave me pause. Psychologists are notoriously bad at predicting violence. Or anything else.”

“But you have seen youngsters who alarm you.”

“Yes.”

“What do you tell their parents?”

“The parents are almost always part of the problem. I’ve seen fathers who took great joy when their sons brutalized other children. Preaching restraint in the presence of strangers- saying the right things, but their smiles give them away. Eventually. It takes time to understand a family. For all intents and purposes, families still exist in caves. You have to be inside to read the writing on the wall.”

Arthur waved for a third drink. No sign of intoxication in the old man’s speech or demeanor. Just a slight increase in his high, pink color.

At least, Jeremy mused, a slip of his scalpel wouldn’t kill anyone.

This time, when the waiter said, “For you, sir?” he ordered a second Macallan.

Finger food came, unbeckoned, with the drinks. Boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce, fried zucchini, spicy little sausages skewered by black plastic toothpicks, thick potato chips that appeared homemade. Arthur hadn’t ordered the hors d’oeuvres, but he was unsurprised.

The two men nibbled and drank, and Jeremy felt warmth- a lacquer of relaxation- flow from his toes to his scalp. When Arthur said, “Their smiles give them away,” Jeremy was momentarily confused. Then he reminded himself: those obnoxious, pathogenic dads he’d been talking about.