"It's a small victory," I said, "but at least it goes in the win column."
"Damn right," he said. "Look at me, I put the fear of God into Mister Softee. You figure that's his wife's pet name for his thing? Jesus, let's hope not."
On the sidewalk in front of us, a girl in her early teens whizzed by on Rollerblades. "They're not supposed to skate on the sidewalk," he said, "but I'll let her go this time. I already filled my quota with Mister Softee. You want to get back to your boy Nadler?"
"Sure."
"He bought the gun last year, kept it locked away in his desk drawer. March, he and his wife are out, he comes home and there's been a burglary. He makes a report, files a claim with his insurance company. Right so far?"
I nodded.
"Then two, three days later he opens the drawer and the gun's gone. Did he say what made him look?"
"Not that I remember."
"It's not a stretch. He's at his desk, he's thinking about the burglary, thinks, Jesus, suppose I was here, what would I do, would I go for my gun? So he looks for the gun and it's missing. And he reported it, right?"
"Right."
"But didn't add it to his insurance claim."
"He didn't want the aggravation of amending the claim," I said. "And he wasn't sure it would be covered, as he'd never included it on the schedule. It didn't seem unreasonable."
"No, and it still doesn't. Plus there's the embarrassment factor. 'I bought a gun to protect myself and my family and the burglars took it away with them.' The law requires him to inform the police, but nobody says he has to put in a claim. That's up to him."
"Right."
"So we fast-forward a few months," he said, "and it's the end of July, beginning of August, and the Hollanders are killed, and the two in Brooklyn."
"Bierman and Ivanko."
"And the gun's left at the scene, as it more or less has to be if it's going to look like suicide, and a ballistics check reveals the gun is the very same twenty-two-caliber pistol stolen from the good Dr. Nadler. Was it a twenty-two? Did I get that part right?"
"Yes."
"Okay," he said, "run it by me. The gun was never stolen in the first place, right?"
"Right."
"How about the burglary? He fake the whole thing?"
"Probably not," I said. "But it's not impossible. He rides down to the lobby with his wife, then remembers he left the tickets on the dresser."
"So he goes upstairs, turns some drawers upside down, scoops up some jewelry, and what? He doesn't take it along to the theater."
"He's got it in two pillowcases he stripped off the bed," I said. "He ducks into his office, stows them both in a closet, and goes back downstairs to the lobby."
"And off to do the town. Comes home, reports the burglary. It's possible, but you don't think he did it that way."
"My guess," I said, "is the burglary happened just the way he said it did in his initial report. They went through the residence, took whatever he said they took, and carted it off in pillowcases. And two days later he realizes he's been trying to figure out how to get hold of a gun that can't be traced back to him, and here's the perfect way. He reports his own gun as stolen, and, when it is traced back to him, they say oh yeah, right, it was taken in a burglary, it was reported stolen months ago."
He nodded slowly, thinking it through. "What I like about it," he said, "is it's cute, and we already know our guy's got a weakness for being cute." To T J he said, "You ever decide to become a crook, don't be cute, okay? Three guesses what you wind up stepping on."
"On my Mister Softee," T J said.
"You think that's why he bought the gun in the first place? You think he planned it that far ahead?"
I'd wondered about that point myself. "It's possible," I said. "Say he decided he wanted a gun. He's an Upper West Side shrink, he's not going to have access to the people with unregistered guns to sell. He could cross a couple of state lines and pick up something at a gun show, but would he even think of that?"
"So he's got a use for the gun planned all along."
"If so," I said, "then he faked the burglary, because he couldn't just sit around and wait for someone to turn up right on schedule and knock off his apartment. Unless he didn't have the details worked out yet, especially the part about the suicide. If there's no weapon recovered, he doesn't have to worry about it being traced back to him."
"And then the burglary happens, and it's a gift from on high."
"What I think," I said, "is that he knew who he was going to kill and why he was going to kill them. But he didn't know how, and the burglar who knocked over his place supplied that part for him."
"Turned his registered gun into a possible murder weapon, and gave him the idea of faking a burglary to cover the killing."
"And even showed him what a burglary looked like. Using the pillowcases, for example. I thought it was a coincidence when the same MO turned up in both jobs, Nadler and Hollander. Then I thought, well, Ivanko knocked off Nadler's place, and he kept the gun, and he had it with him when he knocked off the Hollander house."
"A burglar hits him," Wentworth said, "and he borrows the guy's MO when he stages a burglary of his own. Then he uses his own gun because he's managed to turn it into an untraceable weapon. Jesus, he really is cute, isn't he?"
THIRTY
"Peter," he says, beaming, stepping back from the doorway. "Come in, come in. You're right on time."
"Compulsive," Peter Meredith says, grinning.
It's a reference to a joke he told the five of them several months ago in a group session. Analysts, he said, divide their patients into two categories, based on the time they arrive for their appointments. The ones who are chronically early are anxious, he explained, while the chronically late are hostile.
And then he'd waited, knowing someone would ask the question, and it had been Ruth Ann, predictably enough, who'd obliged him. What about the ones who are on time? she'd wondered. They're compulsive, he'd assured her.
He grins back at Peter, steps forward and gives him a hug. The man's girth is considerable. He hasn't lost a pound, he will never lose a pound, but his progress in every other respect is enormously gratifying.
Teach a man to lose weight, he thinks, and he will love you until he gains it back. Teach a man to love himself, however much he weighs, and he will love you forever.
And isn't that the whole point?
"Well now," he says. "Couch or chair? What do you think?"
"No, no," says Peter, always obliging, donning a Viennese accent, his thumb and forefinger caressing an imaginary beard. "Nein, Herr Doktor. Not vot do I zink. Vot do you zink?"
They laugh together, and he says, "The couch, I think. Yes, the couch today, Peter."
Peter sits on the couch, slips off his shoes, then stretches out and puts his feet up. He looks at Peter and wonders fleetingly if the couch will hold the weight, then realizes the illogic of his concern. The couch is designed so that three people may sit on it at once, three people whose total weight might be twice that of Peter Meredith. And that couch has held Peter's weight regularly for many months. He has not grown appreciably heavier, or the couch less sturdy. And yet he, the couch's owner, reacts with the same unwarranted anxiety every time Peter uses it.
Fascinating, the human mind. And one's own is no less an object of interest than anyone else's.
"Well, Peter. You're comfortable?"
"Very comfortable, Doc."
"It's relaxing, isn't it, to lie down, to close your eyes. Cares and concerns rise up and float away."
His voice is soothing, comforting. He is not hypnotizing Peter, although he has done so in the past, but still there is something hypnotic in his tone, his cadence. It won't put the man under but it will help him to relax, to open up.
"So," he said. "How is the house coming?"
"Ah, the house," Peter says.
Ah, indeed. They are working night and day on the Meserole Street house, and Peter can talk about it for hours on end. It's not really necessary to listen. One of the nasty little secrets of the profession is that one does not always listen to one's patients. Sometimes, even with the best will in the world, one drifts off on wings of tangential thought, or even falls asleep. Nor can he imagine any greater exercise in futility than fighting sleep. Better to give in gracefully and gratefully, soothed into sleep by the neurotic drone.