If I Should Die Before I Die (24 page)

I watched her pull herself together. It didn't take long. She took deep breaths. Then she dabbed at her eyes with a white cloth napkin and looked at me again, her face small, saying:

“Something I just thought of made me cry. I'm sorry. It is so embarrassing. I shouldn't tell you—I shouldn't be telling you any of this—but my instinct is that I can trust you.”

She glanced down at the napkin she'd been using, then up at me again, tilting her face toward the light.

“Is it okay?” she asked. “My mascara?”

It looked pretty fine to me, and I told her so.

Another deep breath.

“I will tell you what made me cry, Philip. You know, I'm frightened of AIDS, is that so terrible? It is the plague. People are dying every day all around us. I know some myself, talented young homosexuals. It is a terrible thing. So I am afraid of it, but not for me. For Vincent. And I told him this. We had a terrible row. He was going out, I know those awful places he goes to, those discos and places like that. I've been there too. They're really very banal, you know? Normally who would care if he went there? But there are people who take drugs and who knows who they sleep with? He accused me of being jealous. I said I was not jealous, that it was only because of AIDS. And do you know what he said?”

Another deep breath. She pinched her lips together, and I thought she was about to cry again. She didn't though.

“He said: ‘Not to worry, Grandma'—this is what he calls me sometimes when he hates me'… He said: ‘Not to worry, Grandma. When I get AIDS you'll be the first person I give it to.'”

She paused, her face small and tense, as though looking for my reaction.

“This was not a joke, Philip,” she said. “He meant it.”

My first, and only, reaction was to wonder why she didn't throw Vincent Angus Halloran out the door.

Yet clearly she hadn't. “I am very worried about him,” she said, her dark eyes fixed on mine. “You must believe me, Philip, this has nothing to do with the company or the money or Charles Camelot or anything. I ask you for me. It is between us. I want you to persuade Dr. Saroff that she should see him. If she agrees, then I will work on Vincent. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “I don't know how persuasive I can be, but I'll at least talk to her.”

“Good,” Margie said. Then she smiled again, the teasing smile. “But I think you can be very persuasive, no?”

We'd reached the awkward moment. The meal was done, the coffee, and so was the business she'd invited me for. The brandy, I guess, could have gone on forever.

She was aware of it too, though: the awkward moment.

“Normally I would ask you to stay, Philip,” she said, still smiling. “I think it would be good for me now to be with a man my own age. I think I would be good for you, too. But not tonight. I think he will be back tonight. I don't mean that I am his prisoner. I, too, am free to do what I want, with whom I want. But right now, he's …”

Whatever she was thinking, she seemed to catch herself. The small, tense look again. But then she shook it off and shrugged in that philosophical way Europeans have and said:

“Never mind. I have said already more than I should have. What can I tell you, Philip? I'm trying to help him. I know this is stupid. But perhaps there will be another time for you and me?”

She led me to the front door for the second time that day, again in her stockinged feet. The hallway was dark, silent, cavernous. She watched me put my coat on. Then went on tiptoe once more. Only this time she put her arms fully around my neck and kissed me firmly on the mouth.

I kissed her back.

She pulled away. In her stockinged feet she didn't even come up to my shoulder.

“Another time,” she said softly. “But you'll call me, yes? About Dr. Saroff?”

“Yes, I will.”

“And quickly?”

“As soon as I can.”

I remember sitting in the Fiero at the foot of Margie Magister's tower. I'd stuck the key in the ignition but didn't turn it.

It was like I was waiting for something. Or: all dressed up—again—and no place to go.

In time the rain lightened into one of those cloaky wet mists you can hardly see, the kind that coats the windshield with little droplets and soaks the pavements and the long lines of cars parked by the curbs in the night. All dark, all empty except for the Fiero.

I smoked.

I remember thinking about Vince Halloran and Carter McCloy. Then I drifted back to Margie, Margie in stockinged feet on tiptoe, and how she'd gone all the way in the Magister chain from the grandfather to the grandson without so much as stopping off, and how she seemed capable, had been capable, of doing both. Which was weird. And such was her own power of persuasion that, whatever I'd said, I'd left her absolutely convinced that I'd convince the Counselor's Wife to take Halloran on as a patient. Why? Because it had seemed at once so logical and so crucial to Margie.

But why (in the Fiero) was it so logical? Because Vince Halloran was a friend of McCloy's, who'd been her patient and who'd killed himself after killing a bunch of women? Assuming he had in fact killed them all? Or just because Margie Magister, who was Halloran's lover and was so worried about him, had asked me to?

Maybe it was that I've always had trouble with women in tears.

In time I drifted off these subjects to a touchier one.

Meaning yours truly.

I can't say I lose a lot of sleep over the Great Burning Questions of Human Existence. Like most working stiffs, I'm too busy earning a living and just getting along, and the who-am-I-what-am-I-doing-here stuff a lot of people my age wasted a lot of their youth over just kind of passed me by.

Still.

Still on the safe side of forty but not by a lot. Still a non-lawyer, working for hire, because I never passed the bar. Still unmarried, still unloved, still and still.

Put it that Margie Magister had touched a nerve.

And yes, Laura Hugger, wherever you were that night, I thought of you, too.

Anyway I sat, sat in the dark Fiero on Fifth Avenue, in the cold misty middle of the night, with the key in the ignition. I smoked, probably I fidgeted, while the traffic lights went from red to green to red in the wet. Waiting for something to happen. No place better to go.

Then I saw Vince Halloran.

At first I didn't recognize him.

Someone was coming north along the building line, not hurrying, just walking. No coat, no hat, the collar of a jacket turned up, fists jammed in the jacket pockets. Face indistinct. Wet hair plastered to the head, head down.

Big, broad, a tight-end build more or less.

Jesus Christ, he wore the same white scarf, McCloy's, the ends trailing behind him.

Vincent Angus Halloran and then, out of nowhere, the dislike I felt for him hit me like a physical reaction. I saw that half-smile of his in my mind.

I remember my fists balling up. As quickly, though, he ducked inside the entrance to Margie's building and disappeared.

I snapped the ignition key. With a lurch, the Fiero headed onto Fifth Avenue.

I drove home.

For the record, the Counselor's Wife said no.

I ran into her the next morning, on my way to work. I'd gotten up at the crack of dawn and gone jogging, the long route, pushing myself along the sodden cinders and pavements of the park. The rain had stopped, and a strong cold wind was blowing out of the west, drying the city and shoving the bad weather into the Atlantic. I made myself run all the way home, then took a long hot shower, shaved, dressed and ate while I listened to the news. No news is good news. For good measure, I decided to walk to work.

Male makeover time, you could say.

I'd almost made it to the Fifth Avenue side when I heard somebody calling my name from behind. I turned and saw her. Muffin, the spaniel bitch, was pulling her this way and that, chasing after fallen leaves which the wind was pin-wheeling along the ground. The Counselor's Wife had on a long off-white raincoat, duster-style, with a fur collar turned up and brown leather boots muddied from the ground. The cocker bitch had on none of the above, and her short legs were mud-covered all the way up to her body.

“Hi, Phil!” the Counselor's Wife said, panting as she drew abreast of me. “What a fabulous day! A fabulous day for spaniels too, right, Muffie?”

The dog, however, paid no attention.

I'd seen little of the Counselor's Wife since McCloy's suicide and had talked to her less. Probably this was more intentional than accidental, because I knew she'd been spending more time than usual at home. Somehow I was aware that what had happened to McCloy had hit her hard. Also that what had happened, or hadn't, between her and me must have embarrassed her some, because it did me.

That morning, though, you couldn't see a trace of trouble in her. Her cheeks were rosy from the wind, and her blonde hair blowing and sparkling, and a glint of gaiety, even excitement, lit up her eyes. Whether she's actually beautiful or not I'll leave to the Margie Magisters, but she has a kind of style, when she's on her game, that makes you stop and take notice.

“There's something I need to talk to you about,” I said as we walked stride for stride toward the avenue.

“Well, why not right now?” she answered.

“Well,” I said, glancing at my watch, “why not?”

We were both, I realized, behind our normal schedules, she more than I, but we sat on a damp bench just this side of a park wall, and she hooked the end of Muffin's leash through a wood slat, leaving the cocker spaniel bitch to root in the wet grass and dash at stray leaves that blew through the territory.

I told her about Halloran. She remembered the name from her sessions with Carter. She'd had the impression that, in addition to their having been close, Halloran had been a stabilizing influence. Didn't he at least have a regular job? He used to, I told her. Had I met him? Yes, I had. And …?

“I don't like him,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“I don't really know,” I answered. Maybe a few sessions on her couch would have gotten a better answer out of me, but I wasn't in the market, Margie Magister was—on Halloran's behalf. So I asked her, for Margie, if she'd take Halloran on as a patient.

A little to my surprise, she said no.

“I don't think so,” she said. She reached down and brushed some debris from near the hem of her coat. “If anything, Phil, I've been phasing down lately. I mean, I'm still seeing my old patients, but I haven't taken on anybody new. I've moved my office, did you know that?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Well, I don't need so much space if I'm phasing down. It's too expensive. I've moved into a time-sharing situation.”

I'd never known the Counselor's Wife to worry about expenses of any kind.

“What about the TV show?” I said.

“Oh, I wouldn't give that up,” she said with a laugh. “At least not for the time being. Or as long as they still want me.”

She brushed again at her coat. “Look, Phil,” she said, shaking her hair, “I once said I owed you an explanation for what was going on in those crazy days. I still do. But part of it is that what happened with Carter caused me a lot of pain. I've even … here's a small confession for you … I've even gone back on the couch myself because of it.”

“You?” I said.

“Oh, it's not that unusual. The self-analysis of an analyst is ongoing, it never really ends. But the profession doesn't allow you responsibility, you know? You're supposed to be totally neutral in the therapeutic situation while the patient works through it himself. Or herself. If he or she does something terrible in the outside world—commits a crime, commits suicide—well, noogies, you're not responsible. Only, as it happens, I've a lot of trouble with that.”

“You mean you feel responsible for McCloy?”

“Yes, I do. I think I could have stopped him somehow. Should have. I think I was too frightened to.”

“But how?” I said. “You tried.”

“Not really,” she countered. “This is no criticism of you, Phil, and that other guy … what was his name?”

“Bobby Derr?”

“Bobby Derr. But if I really believed what I said I believed, then I should have gone to the police. As it is, I went halfway—to you—which was worse than doing nothing at all. Do you know why it was worse?”

She looked at me like she wanted me to guess. But I couldn't guess.

“I think the reason Carter stopped coming to see me,” she went on, “is that somehow he knew I wasn't on his side anymore.”

“But that hadn't kept him from killing any of the earlier ones,” I objected.

“If he
did
kill them.”

“What does that mean?” I said. “He confessed to them.”

“I know he did,” she said. “But I'll tell you something, Phil. I've gone back over the tapes, the notes I kept of the sessions, and do you know what? I'm not convinced he killed all those women. I don't think he could have hidden it that well, that long.”

“But he
confessed
to it!” I repeated. “And he certainly did the last one.”

“Exactly. Only he didn't kill her, did he? Why didn't he?”

“We'll never know for sure,” I said. “Maybe something scared him off. Maybe she fought back where the others didn't. But I don't get it, Nora. You were the first one to suspect McCloy, and you thought you had a strong basis for it. Then he goes off and kills another one, or tries to, and gets caught, or at least identified. Then he commits suicide, and he leaves a confession behind him. Now you're saying you were wrong in the first place? Even somehow that you might have driven him to it?”

“I know it sounds weird,” she said, smiling ruefully. “My shrink's pointed out the same things.”

She stood up then.

“Anyway,” she said, “there's more to it than that, other things going on in my life, but I have to say no. I just don't think I'm up to taking on anybody new and complicated right now. Call it job burn-out if you like, and please tell Margie Magister I'm sorry. What's she like, by the way? But if she wants me to, I'll try to give her a referral.”