In the Last Analysis (9 page)

Jerry, of course, was moderately unsuitable. Had he been magnificently unsuitable, say a garage mechanic, the engagement would probably at any cost have been stopped. But to have absolutely put the family foot down on Jerry would have been to have turned one’s back—the family was very given to bodily metaphors, usually mixed—on the American dream. Jerry’s father was dead; his mother managed a small gift shop in New Jersey, and had, by devotion and hard work, sent her son through college; she would also help to send Jerry through law school beginning next fall. Jerry had won scholarships, had worked summers and after school, had helped in the gift shop, and had an air of understanding the world and conjuring it into releasing its gifts. Jerry, just finished with his six months in the Army, was driving a truck for a frozen-foods distributor until the fall. Kate thought he might be willing to do something a bit more adventurous for an equal amount of money.

A call to Jerry at his mother’s home in Jersey found him just returned from work, and quite willing (rather to Kate’s surprise) to drive in that very evening and talk to her; it appeared that a friend’s car was available. Kate managed to suggest that he keep his destination, and the phone call, secret, without sounding, she hoped, as conspiratorial as she felt. It was odd, she realized, that she should be prepared
to trust in this way a young man she had met only a few times at those family celebrations of the engagement she had consented to attend. They had been attracted to each other by the amused air of detachment which, alone of those present, they had both radiated. What are
we
doing here? they seemed, smilingly, to ask each other. Kate was there because she admitted some, though not many, family obligations, and Jerry was there because Sarah was very pretty and very proper. Kate had always thought her rather dull, but Jerry was, perhaps, just smart enough in the ways of the world to prefer a dull, conventional, though pretty, wife.

When he arrived, Kate offered him a beer and plunged right into the matter at hand: “I’m going to offer you a job,” she said. “The same pay as you’re getting now. Can you take a leave, and go back when you want to?”

“Probably. But I get time and a half on this job for working extra hours.” He was relaxed, prepared to be enlightened and, Kate suspected, entertained.

“I’ll pay you only the regular amount. This job will be much more interesting, and require more of your talents. But if you succeed, I’ll give you a bonus at the end.”

“What’s the job?”

“Before I tell you that, I want a solemn promise of secrecy. No one is to be told about this—not your family, or your friends; not by the slightest hint are they to know what you’re involved in. Not even Sarah is to suspect.”

“Agreed. Like Hamlet’s friends, I won’t even indicate that I might tell if I would. I swear on the sword. Very good play, I thought,” he added, before Kate could control her look of surprise. “I promise not to murmur a word to Sarah.” It seemed to Kate that his willingness to keep things from Sarah did not bode well for their marriage, but
she was past having scruples about any good fortune that came her way.

“Very well, then. I want you to help me solve a murder. No, I have not taken leave of my senses, nor have I developed paranoia or megalomania. Have you read anything about this girl who was murdered on the psychoanalyst’s couch? You could scarcely have helped it, I suppose. They think the psychoanalyst did it; he’s a very good friend of mine, and I want to prove that he didn’t do it, nor did his wife, who is the suspect they’re holding in abeyance. But I’m convinced the only way to prove Emanuel didn’t do it is to find out who did. A young man like you can talk naturally to a lot of people, can ask questions I can’t ask. Also, by the end of spring term the work at college reaches monumental proportions. Get the picture?”

“What about the police?”

“The police are very conscientious, in their unimaginative way. Perhaps I’m prejudiced; probably I am. But they have such a nice suspect, they are so certain that no one else
could
have done it, that their searches in other directions are bound to be somewhat lacking in vigor, or so it seems to me. However, if we find a nice fat clue leading to someone else, I imagine they can be persuaded to follow it up.”

“Have
you
a favorite suspect?”

“Unfortunately, no. We’re not only lacking in suspects; we’re delightfully free of information of any kind.”

“Perhaps the girl was drugged. Then anyone could have put her on the couch and murdered her, having got rid of the analyst first.”

“You sound very promising. As a matter of fact, though, we do have some information about the murder, if not
about other suspects or the girl. She wasn’t drugged. If you want the job, I’ll tell you all about it. It won’t take long.”

It took, however, longer than Kate would have thought. She told Jerry the whole thing from the beginning, starting with her recommendation of the girl to Emanuel. He listened closely, and asked a number of intelligent questions. Kate realized that she was offering him adventure with the pay of security, and it might well warp his whole view of life. The younger generation, so all the journalists said—and it was generally true enough to be frightening—opted always for security, for the sure job, the sure pension, the sure way of life. They might have liked adventure, but they didn’t want to pay the price for it; better to read
Kon-Tiki
in an air-conditioned study in Westchester. Jerry was getting adventure, and a salary check determined by a union. It might not be the best training for a young man, but when you came right down to it, finding bodies on the couch was not the best training for a psychoanalyst either.

In any case, there was nothing for Jerry to do until Monday. He promised to come for orders then, late afternoon, by which time he hoped to have disentangled himself from frozen food, and thought up a plausible story, should one be required. Jerry’s departure was speeded by a telephone. The call was from Reed. No, he had no other news, but he did have a copy of the picture. Two copies? Yes, she could have two copies. He would bring them up tonight, if that was all right. How about a movie to get their minds off things? Danny Kaye? Heartlessly, Kate agreed.

After the movie, Reed and Kate went out for a meal. Kate took from her purse the picture of the young man. She had looked at the face so steadily that it seemed almost
as though the picture might be induced to speak. “The question is,” Kate said, “is this the young man of the love affair?” She told Reed about her conversation with Emanuel. “How old would you say this young man is?” Kate asked.

“Perhaps thirty, perhaps twenty-five. He looks very young; at the same time he looks like someone who looks young for his age, if you follow me.”

“I follow you. He keeps reminding me of someone.”

“Probably of himself; you keep staring at the picture.”

“No doubt you are right.” Kate put the young man firmly away.

“A conscientious young detective trotted all over the dormitory with that picture,” Reed said. “He is a very attractive young man, and the girls and women were delighted to chat with him about anything. They would gladly have said they saw this young man of the picture every day of their lives, to make the detective happy, but the truth was no one had ever laid eyes on him. One older woman thought she recognized him, but it turned out she was thinking of Cary Grant in his younger days. If that young man, or his picture, has ever been around that dormitory, he managed to avoid being seen by anyone, including, incidentally, the service people, who were also questioned. Kate, you realize he is probably a perfectly ordinary young man who jilted her, or, to be less cynical, got himself killed in a war or an accident, leaving her forever bereft.”

“He’s not as good-looking as Cary Grant. He doesn’t look movie-actorish at all.”

“Kate, you’re beginning to worry me. Are you … does this man, this Emanuel Bauer mean so much to you?”

“Reed, if I can’t make you understand this, how are the
police ever to understand Emanuel? He’s the last married man in the world likely to become involved with a woman, let alone a patient. But even if all that were possible, which I don’t for a minute grant, don’t you see that his office, his couch—these are the setting of his profession? Can’t you see that no genuine psychoanalyst with Emanuel’s training would be overcome by maniacal passion in his office hours? Even admitting (which I do not) that he might commit any crime as a man, he could not commit one as a psychiatrist.”

“Have psychiatrists so much more integrity than other people?”

“No, of course not. Many psychiatrists I know of are the scum of the earth. They discuss their patients at parties. They grow rich, and brag about the fees they charge; they are paid $150 for their signature on a piece of paper releasing a patient from some institution. The signature means that the patient will be under their care, but they sign and are paid, and hear no more of it. Even one signature a day is a nice yearly income. There are psychiatrists who entertain doctors, so that the doctors will refer patients to them. All charged up to the expense account, of course. But Emanuel, and others like him, love their work; and if you want my recipe for integrity, find the man who loves his work and loves the cause he serves by doing it. How’s that for pomposity?”

“What is the cause? Helping people?”

“Oddly enough, no. I don’t think so—not for Emanuel at any rate. He is interested in discovering something about the workings of the human mind. If you were to ask him, he would probably say that analysis is most important for research, that therapy is more or less a by-product. What would the D.A.’s office make of that?”

“Kate, forgive me, but you were lovers; that came out in the testimony of the wife, though she did not in any sense offer it. I think the detectives were looking around generally for motives.”

“Then Nicola should have murdered me, or I should have murdered Nicola. Except that we all understand it was a long, long time ago, and never were any embers colder.”

“Where did you and Emanuel meet, back in the days when the embers weren’t so cold?”

“I had an apartment back in those days, too. Are you trying to make me out a scarlet woman? Reed, why do I keep forgetting you’re a policeman?”

“Because I’m not a policeman. At the moment, I’m the lawyer for the prosecution. Did Emanuel have an office in those days?”

“He shared a little office with another analyst.”

“Did you ever meet him there?”

“Yes, I guess so, once or twice.”

“Were you ever—together—on the couch?”

“Reed, I’ve underestimated you. You’ll make an excellent, quite diabolic prosecutor, able not only to elicit half-guessed-at facts, but able also to distort them and avoid the truth. On the witness stand, of course, I wouldn’t be able to explain. The truth, nonetheless, is that Emanuel had just begun in those days. He was doing therapy, so he didn’t use the couch, which happened to be part of the furniture—for future use, perhaps. And I was never there in office hours.”

“Kate, my dear, I’m trying to show you what you’re up against, plunging into this thing without any idea of what you’re getting into. I know, fools rush in where angels fear to tread; but I’ve never discovered what, if anything, the
fools accomplished. No, I’m not calling you a fool. I’m trying to say that you’ve set out, gallantly, God knows, to save Emanuel, and you may end up only muddying the waters and ruining yourself. And if there is no longer anything between you, as they say in the worst sort of magazines, why are you doing it? From a disinterested love of truth?”

“I’m not ready to admit that that’s the worst motive in the world. I’m too old to be newly shocked by the fact that everyone can be bought, that corruption is the only way of existence; every graduation speech, and I have heard many, moans on about corruption. The only thing I know is that here and there one finds someone interested in truth, in goodness, if you insist, for its own sake. How many policemen are there in New York who have never received a dollar outside their salary? All right, perhaps I’m rambling. Look at it in the cold-blooded way you prefer. Emanuel had four years of college, four years of medical school, one year’s general internship, two years residence in psychiatry, three years’ training at the institute, and many, many valuable years of experience. Is all this to go down the drain because some clever murderer killed a girl in his office?”

“I was always under the impression that you had relatively little faith in psychiatry.”

“As a therapeutic tool it is, I think, very clumsy, to say the best that can be said about it. I have many other objections to it. But what has that to do with seeing an able psychiatrist condemned for something he didn’t do? There are many things I don’t admire about Emanuel, but I feel about him as Emerson felt about Carlyle: ‘If genius were cheap,’ Emerson said, ‘we might do without Carlyle, but in the existing population he cannot be spared.’ ”

“May I ask where you intend to begin?”

“It would be less embarrassing if you didn’t. Have you found out anything about the other patients?”

“The ten o’clock patient is named Richard Horan. Twenty-eight, unmarried, works for an advertising firm. Was planning to switch his hour as soon as possible, since it was convenient neither for him nor Emanuel, though I gather, entre nous, that advertising firms are used to having their personnel in analysis. We live in a fascinating time; there’s no getting away from that. The twelve o’clock patient teaches English, I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear, at one of the city colleges. I can’t remember which one, but a long subway ride is involved. Also unmarried, and not likely to marry, if the impression of the detective is worth anything; it may not be. Your Emanuel, as usual, is mum, though here I rather respect his point of view. Obviously he can’t talk about the patients who haven’t been murdered. This patient’s name is Frederick Sparks, as you know, but I’ll send you a copy of the notes; you will then be in a position to blackmail
me
. Do I make my trust and confidence clear?”