“The purpose being?”
“To get control of you,” she said.
I nodded.
“Is there any chance that his visit to you was legit?” I said. She shrugged.
“My business is pretty much like yours.” She glanced at the men in the room and smiled. “Minus the firepower. There are a lot of informed guesses made.”
“And your informed guess is that he’s not seeking therapy,”
I said.
“Correct.”
“So you may feel less constrained than you might otherwise feel to protect the privacy of the session.”
She smiled again.
“Correct,” she said. “To a point.”
“How will you know when you reach the point,” I said.
“I’ll know,” Susan said.
“So what he talk ’bout,” Hawk said.
“He was effusive,” Susan said, “when he came in. He’d heard so many wonderful things about me. He hadn’t expected anyone so attractive. He hoped he wouldn’t bore me.”
Through the front window I could see an inconsequential fl urry of snow drift past.
“I told him,” Susan said, “that people easily bored by others didn’t usually enter this profession, and perhaps he might tell me why he had come. He began by telling me about his father. There’s nothing unusual in that. Many people come and begin by telling me about their parents and assume I will see the problem and tell them what to do. It’s not very effective, but it’s common, and it’s often useful as kind of a warm-up, before the game starts.”
“Did you believe what he told you?”
“I don’t know if it was true or not,” she said. “He appeared to admire his father. And he feared he couldn’t live up to him.”
“Not an unheard-of problem,” I said.
“No, in fact,” Susan said, “it is so common that one is a little suspicious of it when it surfaces fully expressed, so to speak, ten minutes into your fi rst therapy session.”
“You think he made it up?”
“I have no idea. But he has certainly articulated it before.”
“You think he’s seen a shrink before?” I said.
“I would guess that he has,” Susan said. “He seems comfortable with it. He seemed to know how it worked. He’s not nervous. No uncomfortable jokes about the couch or all shrinks taking August off. He was very at ease, very articulate. And he had an agenda. He wasn’t uncertain. He knew where he wanted to go in the interview.”
“How did he present his seductive side?” I said.
Hawk looked at Chollo.
“You see how he ease in on that?” Hawk said.
“More subtle than the plumed serpent,” Chollo said.
“The plumed serpent live in Bel Air, too?” I said.
“Sí.”
“It was mostly attitude and body language,” Susan said.
“Most women recognize it. The appraising look. The eye contact. The implication of specially shared knowledge. Taking any opportunity to flatter my appearance. You often say you can tell if a woman is, ah, compliant.”
“I can.”
“Same thing,” Susan said.
“All men are compliant,” I said, “in your case. If they’re straight.”
“In fact,” Susan said, “that’s not always so. But it was so here.”
“Did he make a specifi c proposal.”
“No. But he made an appointment for next Tuesday and he acted as if he were in for the long haul.”
“The therapy or the seduction?” I said.
“Both,” she said. “One being the means to the other.”
“Levels within levels,” I said.
“Pretend therapy,” Susan said, “in order to pretend seduction, so that he can get control of you, so that he can prevent you from whatever exactly it is he wants to prevent you from doing.”
Chollo smiled.
“I am not sure, señorita, that the seduction part is pretend,” he said. “It would be deceitful, but I believe he would be very happy to carry it off while he was at it.”
“Why, Chollo,” Susan said. “How gallant.”
“I too am compliant,” Chollo said.
Susan smiled a wide smile.
“I knew that,” she said.
43.
Susan had dinner with three women friends at the
Bristol Lounge in the Four Seasons Hotel. Vinnie and Chollo had the evening off. Hawk and I sat at the bar and nursed one beer each, and watched out for Susan.
“What the two gunslingers doing?” Hawk said.
“Vinnie is showing Chollo the town,” I said.
“How you like to be seeing the town with Vinnie?” Hawk said.
“Not fun like with you and me,” I said.
Hawk looked at his half-drunk glass of beer getting warm and fl at in front of him.
“What could be more fun than you and me?” Hawk said.
“Swapping jokes with Don Trump?” I said.
“Well, yeah,” Hawk said. “That would be more fun.”
Susan stood and said something to her friends. I slid off the bar stool. She turned and strolled toward the ladies’ room. Several people, men and women, turned and looked at her. In her understated shrink uniform she was stunning. Out with friends, she was flamboyantly so. I caught up with her at the ladies’ room door.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” I said. “You go in and look around and come back and report to me. Is there a window? Is there another way in or out? Who else is in there? If you are not back out here in one minute from the time you go in, I’m coming in after you.”
“One minute?”
“Plenty of time to do what I ask.”
“Isn’t this a little overproduced?” she said.
“Better too much than too little,” I said.
She nodded.
“Okay,” she said, “here I go.”
As she went in, I looked at my watch. It took her twenty-eight seconds to reconnoiter and report.
“No one else is in here. There are two full toilet stalls. Floor to ceiling. Both doors are ajar. There is neither a window nor another way in or out.”
I nodded.
“Can you get everything done in there in five minutes?” I said. “Including standing in front of the mirror and poking at your hair?”
“If I must,” she said.
“After fi ve minutes,” I said, “I come in.”
“If there are too many more rules and ultimatums I may not be able to go,” she said.
I smiled and bowed her back into the ladies’ room. Two women came by a minute and sixteen seconds later. They looked at me in mild askance as I leaned against the wall beside the door. I shrugged and smiled. They went past me in silence and entered the ladies’ room. Two minutes later Susan came out.
“I didn’t even look in the mirror,” she said. “Just washed my hands and came right out.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
She smiled.
“I didn’t look very long,” she said.
She walked back to her table and sat down. I walked on to the bar.
“Fella wanted your seat,” Hawk said. “I told him it was taken.”
“He give you a hard time?” I said.
Hawk smiled. I nodded.
“Probably thought he was brave to ask,” I said.
“Was,” Hawk said.
We sat looking at the handsome room, full of handsome people, most of whom were handsomely dressed. No one appeared dangerous, which didn’t mean that nobody was. Especially us.
“Susan mentioned that Perry Alderson seemed to have some experience with psychotherapy,” I said.
“She did,” Hawk said.
“Red told me that he met Perry when he was down and out in Cleveland and Perry did some street counseling,” I said.
“He say who Perry worked for?” Hawk said.
“No.”
“FBI got any info on him in Cleveland?” Hawk said.
“No. “
“Don’t mean there is no info,” Hawk said.
“It don’t,” I said.
“Do mean somebody got to go get it,” Hawk said.
“It do,” I said.
We both watched Susan in animated conversation with three other women. They were all attractive women, but they all seemed pallid in Susan’s penumbra.