"No parking here, hombre," he snarled.
"I'm here to see Pabloel doctor?"
"Who you?"
"Burke," I said.
The monster held out his hand, palm up. I pulled the keys from the ignition and handed them over. He growled something and left.
He was back in a couple of minutes, his lips twisted in what he probably thought was a smile-his teeth were broken stumps. He jerked a thumb in a hitchhiker's gesture. I climbed out of the Lincoln. A young guy in a bright-red shirt worn outside his pants came up. The monster handed him the keys and the young guy climbed inside. They'd leave the Lincoln someplace-I could pick it up when I left. UGL's version of valet parking.
The monster gently shoved me ahead of him, guiding me through the maze of cubicles inside the clinic. A Spanish woman in a white nurse's uniform sat at the reception desk, the hard lines in her face the price of survival, not marring her beauty. The monster nodded to her as he prodded me forward, paying no attention to the activity around him. Phones rang, people yelled at each other, doors slammed. The people in the waiting room looked subdued, but not dead the way they do in the city hospitals.
Pablo's office was all the way in the rear. He was typing something on an ancient IBM when we came in. His eyes sparkled behind the round glasses he wore as he jumped to his feet to greet me. Pablo's got to be damn near as old as I am, but he looks like a young man. With his clear brown skin and neatly cropped hair he could get by any Puerto Rican mother in the world. He has four children that I know about and he's financed more abortions than Planned Parenthood.
"Hermano!" he shouted, grabbing my right hand in both of his, then embracing me in a hug.
The monster smiled again. "Gracias, chico," Pablo said, and the monster threw a salute and went back outside.
"I got to talk to you, Pablito," I told my brother.
"Not business?"
"Just in my head," I said.
Pablo pointed to a couch in a corner of his office, sitting back down behind his desk.
"Tell me," he said.
79
RED NEON from the bar next door to the clinic banked its ugly light against the window behind Pablo's desk. It was a mark of pride for the clinic that no bars were on the windows.
"It started with a picture," I began.
Pablo looked a question at me.
"Kiddie porn," I answered.
Not all psychiatrists practice with poker faces-violence danced a storm in Pablo's eyes.
"Yeah," I said. "Like that. A little boy, six years old. They used him only the one time, but he knows they took the picture and it works on his mind."
"You took him to that place downtownSAFE?"
"Sure. And he's going to get better-they know what they're doing. But it'll never really be square in the kid's mind-like they have a piece of his soul, you know?"
Pablo nodded patiently.
"Anyway, I'm looking for this picture, right? And I come across this freak. A collector. I figure I'll ask him what makes him tick-get a line on who might have the picture I'm looking for."
"He spoke freely with you?"
"Oh, yeah. He's protected-they had a guard in the room with me- I don't even know his name.
"Too bad," said Pablo.
"His time is coming," I said. "From the people who are protecting him now. But that's not the thing-he tells me he's going to keep doing what he does. Forever. It's what he wants to do. He says he loves the kids."
"And you don't understand?"
"Do you?"
"Yesbut what I understand is the rationalization, not the drive.
The medical profession knows a good deal about the workings of the human body, but the study of the mind is essentially political."
I raised my eyebrows-Pablo thinks "No Parking" signs are political.
"It is true, hermano. We no longer treat physical diseases with leeches, but we still treat mental disorders as though they exist in a vacuum. This is not logical, but it is comforting to the citizens. If we say that mental illness is biochemical, then people believe that the correct medication is the answer to all questions."
"Like methadone?"
"Sure. You understand. Of course, heroin addiction is a product of many, many thingsbut heroin was first really introduced into this country by the United States government. After World War I, too many of our soldiers returned addicted to morphine. Heroin was the wonder drug that would make them all well again.
"It sure raised hell with the fighting gangs," I said.
"You remember the heroin monster, sweeping through our communities, turning young people into zombies? This was because the street gangs had begun to reach a kind of political awareness.
"Some political awareness," I said. "I came up in the fifties-all we ever wanted to do was keep other clubs off our turf, drink a little wine, play with the girls. Nobody even mentioned politics."
"Not then," Pablo said, "but soon after. The fighting gangs were in every part of the city. Independent units, yes? If they had ever combined"
"Not a chance," I told him. "I don't think I ever knew a word for a black guy except 'nigger' until I was out of reform school."
"Racism is like heroin, Burke-it divides people from their true needs-it pacifies them with promises of foolishness."
I held up a hand like a traffic cop. "Hold it, brother. You're going too fast for me. What's this got to do with a baby-raper?"
"It's the same thing. Politics controls the reality which is presented to the public. Look, Freud taught that sex between children and adults was simply a fantasy-something in the minds of the children-something they imagined as a way of dealing with their own sexual feelings toward their parents. Now we know these feelings actually exist-the Oedipus complex, for example. But just because all children have such thoughts does not mean that reports of actual incest were a fantasy. It took us a long time to learn this truth. Politically, it was better that incest be thought of as a fantasy. This meant we gave treatment to the victim, but this 'treatment' was bogus-it made the children believe a lie and doubt the reality of their own senses.
"That would make them…"
"Crazy. Yes, that is what it did do. And those children who acted crazy were displayed as proof of the fact that they were crazy to begin with. Comprende?"
"But why? Who wants to protect people who fuck their own kids?"
Pablo sighed, disgusted as always with my political ignorance. "Look at it this way. Suppose a slave were to escape from the South and make it to New York. Suppose we put him into psychotherapy-suppose we convinced him that the whole experience of slavery was nothing more than a bad dream-do you not see the political value? We would not have to confront the slave-keepers-we could continue to practice trade and commerce with them, maintain our own self-interest economically. Yes?"
"But slaves…" I said, groping for the clincher to prove Pablo wrong, "they'd still have the scars…"
"You think an incest victim would not have scars?" he said.
I lit a cigarette, thinking of Flood and the scars she made on herself to replace the brand of a rapist-how she poured gasoline on herself over the tattoo the gang put on her, lit a match, and held on to her one friend in the world until the fire made them free. "What good would it do to trick a kid like that?" I asked.