“Can’t be cured, huh?”
“Oh, I said discouraged, not cured,” said Marlene. “I’m a firm believer that if you want to change your life, you can. Most people don’t. Obsessives rarely do, sadists never do. In my experience anyway. You know, how many shrinks does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb-”
“Has to want to change,” supplied Wolfe.
They smiled at each other.
“You have a nice smile, Wolfe,” said Marlene. “You ought to crank it up more.”
He blushed, much to her surprise, and then she checked her watch and stood up. “I got to go out to Edie’s. You’re sure you want to come to work tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Really.”
“Can I send you anything tonight? Your motivational tape?”
She grinned. He reddened again. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“Okay. Thanks again for saving my life. Now you’re responsible for me forever, lucky you.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, which she found remarkably warm and dry, like a hot roll.
Marlene arranged for her VW to be towed to a garage to have its alternator replaced, and had a quick meal with Harry at a local clam bar. Then he drove her to the Sag Harbor marina and its informal ferry.
She found Edie Wooten and the dog in the grand, nicely shabby, dark-beamed living room of the rose-colored house. Sweety rose from his puddle of drool and came to greet her.
“How did you get along?” Marlene asked Edie.
“Oh, great, super,” said Edie. She was sitting in a bluish chintz Windsor chair by the fireplace, which was filled with a bouquet of dried flowers. On the round coffee table before her were spread piles of music manuscript. “He followed me around all day like a lamb. I tried to feed him little treats from lunch, but he wouldn’t take them.”
“He doesn’t take food from anyone but me, except from his dish at home. It’s part of being a guard dog.”
Edie smiled and patted the dog’s flank. “He doesn’t seem much like a guard dog. He seems like a big lovable lunkhead.”
“And you can’t tell that you’re a world-famous cellist except when you’re playing the cello. You can only tell he’s a guard dog when he’s guarding.”
Marlene sat down in the wing chair opposite and eased off her new sneakers, which pinched. Oddly, she felt entirely at home here; she decided it was the absolute unpretentiousness of the unassailably rich.
Marlene asked, “Anybody come by today?”
“No. They keep pretty much to themselves in Ginnie’s house. I saw Ginnie at the pool today with Vince, though. We didn’t talk.” She seemed sad for a moment as she said this. “The pool is neutral territory. Technically, it belongs to me, but I let them use it as long as they behave themselves when I’m there.”
“How did they seem?”
“Oh, you know-hungover, druggy. Look, I hate to be rude, but I have some arranging to do and some more practice …”
Marlene stood up. Yes, and you don’t want me to pump you about your sister and her boyfriend. “That’s okay, Edie. Can I call my daughter from here?”
Of course it was all right. There was a phone in her room.
Lucy answered, for which Marlene was grateful. She did not particularly want to speak to Karp at this juncture. Lucy had reached the age when speakng on the phone was a treat and not a burden. New York Telephone was considering a new substation for her and her gang of preadolescent girlfriends. She was full of chatter about the end-of-school party (for which her suspension had been mercifully rescinded), about which boys were particularly annoying and how they had been put in their place, the doings of the various little Chins, Woos, Mas, and Lees with whom she consorted, this mixed in with flashes from the front-there was a perpetual mob of newsies at the door, who had lately been joined by black pickets carrying signs about Daddy, and no, Daddy wasn’t a racist, then on to her plans for the summer (she wished to attend Chinese day camp) and finally, “When are you coming home?”
“Soon, kid. When this business is over out here.”
“Daddy said you’re living on an island.”
Marlene agreed that this was the case, and described the many glories of Wooten I.
“Can I come out there? With Daddy?”
“Well, Daddy’s pretty busy now and so am I. I still have a couple of more days of guarding Ms. Speyr. The tournament isn’t over yet.”
“But after,” Lucy pressed, “after, can I come out?”
“Sure, Luce. I’ll have to ask Ms. Wooten, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“Would you really ask her?”
“Really, really,” said Marlene.
Rohbling now entered the endgame, each side with a single major piece left to play. For Waley this was Dr. Bannock, the psychiatrist who knew the defendant best. For Karp it was Dr. Perlsteiner. The two men could not have been more different in their mien or appearance. Erwin T. Bannock was six feet tall and athletic, in his early fifties, with a full head of dark hair nicely graying at the sides. He was dressed in a beautifully cut tweed suit, a three-piece, with a paisley tie and shiny brown cap-toe shoes, an outfit just casual enough to distinguish him from the lawyers, and suggesting (as he meant it to) a British gentleman who had through some quirk found himself at Johns Hopkins and decided it would be a lark to become a psychiatrist. He had a soft, reassuring voice, and the habit of pausing for three beats before answering a question, as if summoning the information afresh from some vast store kept behind that broad, tanned forehead.
Waley proposed to stipulate Dr. Bannock’s sterling record in the interest of saving time. Karp refused, got a glare from the judge, ignored it. The jury had to hear about the doctor’s education, his awards, his membership on the appropriate boards.
Bannock was an essential witness for the defense, not only because he knew the defendant best, but because he had been treating Rohbling throughout the period of the murders. He had met with him three days before Mrs. Hughes had been killed, and two days afterward.
Waley took his position before the jury and began slowly to wring from Dr. Bannock his expertise. Karp scribbled notes in the private shorthand he had developed in law school. With the part of his mind not thus engaged, he became conscious once more of his revulsion toward this sort of expert witness. Theoretically, and perhaps at some time actually, an expert witness was supposed to be a servant of the court, explaining complex matters to the jury. This largely remained the case with experts like city engineers and ballistics technicians. But psychiatrists were invariably mere pimps, their substantive knowledge hollow and entirely for sale.
Waley was taking his witness through the psychiatric treatment provided. Bannock said that Jonathan Rohbling was out of his mind, a paranoid schizophrenic family, in fact, with multiple-personality disorder the cherry on top. A schizophrenic family, as the Rohblings: the tyrannical father, the neurasthenic mother, the powerful figure of Clarice Brown, loaded with love-hate ambiguity, combined to produce the psychotic break. Jonathan thought he was a black man named Jared Brown, the true son of Clarice, hence the makeup, hence the trips to Harlem to blend in with his people. Significance of the blue cloth suitcase? Ah, yes: Dr. Bannock had determined that Clarice Brown packed her things in just such a suitcase when the Rohblings had dismissed her.
Bannock also recounted his take on the actual murder. Jonathan wanders Harlem, lost and lonely, driven to find a warm maternal replacement for Clarice. He shows up at a church supper, befriends Jane Hughes. She invites him for coffee; she is lonely too, is attracted in a maternal way to the handsome, religious youth. Once in the apartment, he switches to his “true” self, the son of the beloved, hated, Clarice. He starts treating Mrs. Hughes as his mother, fantasizing, speaking to people who are not there. Mrs. Hughes becomes frightened, asks him to leave. He brandishes the suitcase, opens it, engages in a dialog with the mammy-mistress doll. Mrs. Hughes is terrified, shouts for help. He pushes her to the couch. He is in a panic. Clarice is going to abandon him again! He holds her down with the suitcase; without the suitcase she cannot leave. Symbolically, of course. In actuality, the cloth suitcase smothers her. Now, in his mind, she won’t leave him. So lost in unreality is he that he has no idea that he has killed her. He continues with his pleasant conversation, picks up the famous ashtray, imagines that she gives it to him as a present. He puts it in his suitcase and leaves.