“Do you know Emanuel Goldsmith?” he asked Martin.
“I know of him,” Martin said. “If we’re talking about the same man.”
“We are. The poet. He murdered Mr. Albigoni’s daughter three nights ago.”
Martin nodded as if he had just been informed of a minor peculation in book publishing. Albigoni continued to stare at but not see him.
“He’s a fugitive, a very sick man, mentally,” Lascal continued. “Would you be willing to help him?”
“How?” Martin avoided taking a sip from his drink though he fingered the glass.
“Mr. Albigoni was—is—Mr. Goldsmith’s publisher and friend. He bears him no ill will.” Lascal’s voice did not skim so easily over this prepared statement.
Martin subdued the raising of an eyebrow. Lunch was becoming quite surreal.
“Now that Goldsmith is mentally very disturbed, perhaps insane, we’d like you to help him. We’d like to find the roots of his illness.”
Martin shook his head at the archaisms. “I told you, I’m no longer connected with IPR. I have been told—”
Albigoni’s stare suddenly came alive. He saw Martin. Lascal glanced at his boss then turned head and shoulders to Martin as if making a wall to protect Albigoni from outside forces. “We can arrange for your return, and for the facilities to be reopened.”
“I don’t want to work there again. I was kicked out for doing work I knew was entirely reasonable and valuable.”
“But you didn’t go about it in a reasonable fashion,” Albigoni said.
“I do not know what is reasonable when politics mixes with science. Do you?”
Albigoni shook his head slowly bemused again barely listening.
“Goldsmith needs to be probed,” Lascal said.
“He isn’t in custody I take it.”
“No.” Hesitance. “Not yet. We need to know what turned him into a murderer.”
“He needs legal therapy not a probe.”
“His problem goes beyond therapy,” Albigoni said jaw clamping on the downbite between words. “A therapist would fix him or change him but that isn’t what I want. I need to know.” Here a flash of angry fire. “He killed eight people. Friends. Of his. Including my daughter. And his own godson. They did him no harm. They were no threat to him. It was an act of deliberate and calculated evil.”
“It’s only been a couple of days—” Martin said.
“In theory, could you probe Goldsmith and tell us what caused him to murder his young friends?” Lascal asked.
A silver plated arbeiter and a human waiter delivered their food, the arbeiter carrying the tray on its flat back. The waiter asked if Martin wished to have another drink. He declined.
“I’m not being told everything,” Martin said with a sigh. “Gentlemen, I appreciate your hospitality, but—”
“We can’t explain it all until we’re sure you’re very interested, and will agree,” Lascal said.
“Tough situation,” Martin said.
“You’re our best chance,” Albigoni said. “We are not above pleading with you.”
“You would be richly rewarded,” Lascal said.
“I think you want me to help you break into the IPR, put Goldsmith in a probe triplex and find out what makes him tick. But the IPR has been closed down. That’s clearly impossible.”
“It is not.” Lascal picked at his farmshrimp salad.
Martin lifted his eyebrow dubiously. “First you would have to find Goldsmith, then persuade the state and federal government to reopen IPR.”
“We can and will reopen IPR,” Albigoni said. Lascal glanced between them uneasily. “Paul, I don’t care whether I live or die right now, and the possibility that Mr. Burke will go to the federals means little to me.”
“What does Carol Neuman have to—”
“Please listen to me,” Albigoni said. “After he murdered my daughter and the seven others, Emanuel Goldsmith came to my penthouse at Airport Tower Two in Manhattan Beach. He confessed to his crimes and then he sat on my living room sofa and asked for a drink. My wife is on an anthropological retreat in Borneo and doesn’t know. Nor will she know until…the probe is completed and I can explain why he did it to her. If you conduct the probe I guarantee that IPR will be reopened, that you will return as its director and that you will have sufficient grant money to keep you fully employed in research for the rest of your life, however long that might be.”
“If I don’t end up therapied and confined for violating federal psychological rights,” Martin said. “I can’t do my work, can’t do what I’ve spent my life trying to do. That’s punishment enough. I don’t need criminal disgrace as well. I think I’d better leave now.” He started to get up. Lascal held his arm.
“Mr. Albigoni was not exaggerating. He’s willing to put his entire personal fortune at your disposal.”
“Just to learn what makes Goldsmith tick?”
“Just that. We then turn him over to the LAPD unharmed for trial.”
“You don’t want me to therapy him—-just probe?” Martin’s hand shook. He could not believe such a Faust was being pulled on him.
“Just probe. If there are answers to be found, find them. If you fail to get answers, the honest attempt is sufficient. Mr. Albigoni will still fund you. The IPR will be legally reopened.”
“What is Carol going to do—how is she involved, besides being therapist to your daughter?”
Albigoni stared at the table in silence for a moment, then reached into his pocket and produced a card engraved with J N M. “When you’ve made your decision, use this card in your phone. Tell whomever answers a simple yes or no. We’ll contact you and arrange details if your answer is yes.”
Lascal slid out of the booth and Albigoni followed.
“Wait, please,” Martin said hand still trembling. He reached for the card. “What sort of guarantees do I have? How do I know you’d fund me?”
“I am not a thug,” Albigoni said softly.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Burke,” Lascal said. They left. Martin slapped the card on the tablecloth near a glass of water and watched a bead of light dance over the three letters.
Then he picked it up and pocketed it.
I loved her more than she could ever know. It filled me with something the usual I suppose cosmic implications blurring my vision. Hers was a mild infatuation; enough to inspire her to lubricity. The lubricity lasted for some thirty-seven days and then I was eased aside with the proper proportions of delicacy and firmness necessary to persuade a headstrong love-idiot. The irony was I had done just the same to another young woman a month before and so in time I saw the tit for tat truth the slippery all-too-obvious: had I gotten what my cock said I wanted I would have been miserable in picos. That was when I grew up if not wise. That was when I wrote down all this nonsense that made my reputation about the ecology of love. Thanks to Geraldine another fingerprint squeezed tight into the old clay.
8
“I do not understand why you care about Goldsmith.”
+ Adust loyalty.
Richard fumbled his tale to a conclusion and dourly inspected his audience. There were seven in the lounge, a coffee tea and wine ranch corner rear the Pacific Lit Arts Parlor.
“I still do not understand why you cared about that old fart,” Yermak persisted. He dunked his pasty white donut leaving islands of powder in his red wine. At twenty the youngest in the lounge Yermak looked on Richard with mild amusement. “He was capable of anything. Bad writers murder us every day. The death of stinking prose.”