Cass was standing there. Unexpectedly for both of us, I put my arms around him and held on tight.
“That’s okay, brother,” he said as I released him, looking sheepish. “Jail’s a bitch, ’specially when you ain’t been there before.”
We went to the living room and sat. The way Cass was dressed was unusual for him. Instead of black on black he wore a dark blue business suit with a yellow shirt, a burgundy tie, and ruby cufflinks. He smelled of sweet cologne and carried a fancy red-brown leather briefcase. After asking me about “my head,” he got up and concocted a drink from gin, orange juice, seltzer, cranberry juice, and a powder that I didn’t recognize. He made this drink at the stand-up bar placed at the end of the bookcase.
“You got trouble, Ben,” Cass said after he was seated again.
“No kidding.”
The security chief reached into his briefcase and came out with an edition of Diablerie. It must have been the second issue, because the first, I knew, had a picture of Lena Hess, the new singing sensation from France, on its cover.
This copy sported a glamour-mug portrait of Michael Lord Hampton. He was a rapper before but now was making a name for himself as a serious actor. He was a handsome man — dark and deadly-looking.
Superimposed in red upon his blue jumpsuit was the headline, DIABLERIE EDITOr’s HUSBAND SUSPECT IN 20-YEAR-OLD COLORADO MURDER CASE.
The brief article was on page 36:
It was learned last week that Ben Arna Dibbuk, husband of Diablerie’s own Mona Valeria, is being investigated for the murder of Sean Messier 24 years ago in a Denver suburb. Dibbuk, a computer programmer for Our Bank, was implicated by Barbara Knowland, who was featured only last week in these pages. Knowland claims that she was present when Dibbuk murdered Messier and that he had come to two of her readings and to her hotel room trying to extort money from her by saying that he would implicate her in the crime.
Denver D.A. Winston Meeks is in New York investigating these allegations.
Another man, Grant Timmons, had been convicted of the crime and spent more than 20 years in prison. He died in state custody two years ago.
There was no byline but I was sure that Mona had written it. And she would have had to have done it before we went away to Montauk. Seeing her words damning me in a national publication almost defeated me. I was going down and my wife was helping secure the weights to my ankles.
“That’s a bitch,” Cass said when I looked up.
“In more ways than one.”
“How could she do that to you?”
“I don’t really understand,” I said. “It’s almost as if she hated me. But I haven’t done anything to warrant that much, um, passion from her.”
“What do you want to do, Ben?”
“If I go to my therapist, will they arrest me again?”
“Probably.”
“I have an appointment with him at six today. Do you think Joey has a phone that can’t be traced here?”
“We could come up with something,” Cass said. “But what can a therapist do? You got to spill some blood, man.”
“No. I don’t know what happened yet.”
“It doesn’t matter what happened,” Cass argued. “Some bitch wants to put you in prison, for a long time. And you know they’re gonna try to blame you for this guy that died in jail. You need to act.”
“Just get me a phone, Cass. I’ll tell you what I want to do by tomorrow.”
Cass left and a while later Magda brought me a beat-up old cell phone.
“Mr. Bondhauser says that this is what you wanted,” she said.
“Yes,” Shriver said, answering his office phone.
“I can’t make it in today, Doc,” I said. “I hoped we could do this on the phone.”
“Why can’t you come in?”
“The police want to arrest me.”
“For what?”
“I think it’s that Colorado wants to extradite me and the NYPD has offered to hold on to me for a while. There weren’t any charges.”
“It’s hard to do deep therapy over the phone, Mr. Dibbuk.”
“What if I lie down and close my eyes while we talk?” I asked.
“We can try.”
“I’m worried that maybe I killed somebody, Adrian,” I said. “This Barbara Knowland says I did.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I don’t know. I mean, at first I didn’t even think I knew her. I still don’t remember. But then she seemed to know me and I wondered why would she lie about all this?”
“That’s a good question. Why would someone lie about you?”
“Do you think I could kill somebody, Doctor?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “There’s a rage against your father in you. With that level of anger, anything is possible.”
“Why can’t I remember?”
“There could be many reasons,” Shriver said. “You may simply have blacked out because of the drinking. You said that there might have been a struggle, maybe you were struck in the head and experienced limited amnesia. And of course none of it may have ever happened. Barbara Knowland might have her own reasons for blaming you.”
“How can I get my memories back?” I asked.
“Are you sure you want to remember?”
“Yes. More than anything.”
“Okay,” Shriver said. “Every morning when you wake up, sit in a comfortable chair with your eyes closed and think about Barbara Knowland’s face. Can you get a picture of her when she was younger?”
“Yes. There’s one in her book.”
“Every morning concentrate on that face for a minute and then close your eyes. Try to summon her up in your memory.”
“We could leave the country,” Svetlana said at three in the morning.
We had not made love. My mind was elsewhere.
“Where could we go?”
“Europe. I speak many languages. Asia. I have always wanted to live in Brazil during Carnival.”
“What about international relations?” I asked.
She shrugged and brought two cigarettes to her mouth. She lit both and put one between my lips.
“Things are always changing,” she said. “I wanted to come to America so that life would be like Disney World. You know... everything safe and nice. But then I meet you and I am forced to love you. Love is not something you can say no to. You can quit a job or a club or even a country, but you cannot quit love.”
I looked at her thin legs, her dense and golden public hair. I tried then to summon up in my mind some resentment about Sergei. Hadn’t Lana betrayed me too? Yes. But I couldn’t be angry with her. I couldn’t afford the pain.
But neither could I call up the love that she was talking about.
“You can learn to love me,” Svetlana said.
“Can you read my mind too?” I asked.
“Only your face,” she said smiling. “You look so worried when you can’t love me back.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What do you want from me?” Svetlana asked.
“Nothing.”
“No. This cannot be. Love is jealous and what do you call it... small-minded. You must want something from me. My body, my money, my freedom.”
“But what if I wanted you to feel pain?” I asked, not knowing where the question came from.
“Then I suffer for you.”
“But that’s not good.”
“Love is not good,” she said with intense disgust on her face and in her voice. “It is not a little boy turning in his homework. Love is when you fuck me in the ass and my blood and my shit is on your cock and on my sheets and I clean you and my bedclothes and I am happy doing this. I am happy to have you back even when you have been with another woman. I am happy when you ask me to leave my husband and my children to go running where men are trying to kill us.”