“But she might be in danger.”
“I know that. But that doesn’t change anything about my responsibility to my patient.”
“But what if she is in danger? And what if one of her clients is responsible?”
“I’m terribly worried about that. But I still don’t understand how I can help you.”
“If I could read the book, then I might be able to figure it out. If I could read what those different men asked of her, what kinds of tricks they wanted, what they were into, then maybe I could figure out which one of them was crazy enough to do something to her.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
The conversation was making me afraid. Not for myself, but for Cleo. As worried as I had been, there was something much more frightening now that this man was sitting in front of me, chain-smoking, nervously tapping his cigarettes against my ashtray. Dropping dead ash into the bowl.
“But you have the information,” he insisted. “I know you do. I know she gave you the book. And I think you’re the only one who has a copy. I went to her apartment. I have the keys. I’ve always had the keys. And her laptop is gone. All her notes for the book were in there. There were no paper copies of the book. She worked on her pristine white laptop late at night while I lay beside her, the glow of the monitor shining on her face. She told me she was going to let me read it when it was done. She was proud of it in a way that she wasn’t proud of anything else she had ever done. It was going to set her free, she said.”
I nodded. There was nothing I could say to him. But he had more to say to me. And I was not at all prepared for it.
“You know, you are very beautiful.”
I heard his words on more than one level. I was a therapist listening to a distraught man, I was a psychologist helping the police, and I was a woman who could not really remember the last time anyone had told her that.
I knew I was attractive enough. You don’t grow up in the past few decades of the twentieth century and not know what you look like. You judge yourself against every other woman you meet. Confronted with a culture that puts more value on how your features are arranged on your face than on the quality of your thoughts or your accomplishments, you are aware of how you measure up. But I had been married to the same man for more than fourteen years. A man who was my closest friend and who was the father of my daughter. But not someone who looked at me the way a stranger does.
Under Gil’s scrutiny, I felt my cheeks grow warm, and rather than try to understand that, I focused instead on the psychology of this man, who was worried about the woman he loved, telling me that I was beautiful.
“You could help Cleo.”
The segue was nonsensical.
“I have already told you, Mr. Howard, that I’m not at liberty to talk to you or anyone else about anything Cleo and I talked about. Not as long as there is a possibility that she is alive.”
This last part made him cringe. And unleashed something desperate in him. He sat forward, his arms on his legs, pleading with me.
“You can meet her clients. I can introduce you to them. You can pretend to be someone she’s asked to fill in for her while she’s away.”
He’d come up with the same idea I had. I didn’t say anything, but I nodded. Gil continued.
“I know you have a copy of the book. Knowing Cleo, she had to give you a copy. You’ve read it. You can meet those men and you can test them. You can look at them and listen to them and judge them and try to figure out if any one of them could have been the man who has taken her away. Just the way you are doing with me.”
This last comment startled me.
“I’m a therapist, not a mind reader,” I said, surprising myself that I hadn’t just said no. Even though when I’d talked to Nina, I’d brought up the possibility of doing just this, it had only been an idea. Gil was making it all too possible.
“I’m not asking you to be a mind reader. Dr. Snow, Cleo told me that you knew things about her that she didn’t even know about herself. She said that you knew more about human nature and human sexuality than anyone she’d ever met. And Cleo knew people. She was damn good at knowing what men wanted. At knowing how to touch them, even the ones like me who were made of ice before they met her. It was this way she had of making you feel as if your happiness mattered to her. As if she got transfusions of happiness from doing these things. It wasn’t just the sex, it was the way she could listen. And it’s the same way you listen. As if all that matters is that I am here and I have something to say.”
Even though I knew that Gil was a suspect himself, his words were reaching me.
“I couldn’t do that.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“I mean that there is no way I could pretend to be…” I didn’t even know what to call it. I could no longer call Cleo a prostitute or a call girl. Or a sex worker. All those words came with attitudes and judgments attached. She was a woman who had feelings and thoughts and loved, even if she also played games acting out scenarios that brought pleasure to the men she worked with, who paid her too much money for what she did because it was not anything they could get anywhere else.
“You don’t have to pretend to be anything. Just meet them. Let them interview you. You interview them. Cleo always set up free first dates between the girls and the prospective clients. She didn’t want any man to pay two thousand for an evening with a woman who wasn’t what he wanted. All the guys know about the first-date policy. Of course, with the out-oftowners or the gift girls clients hired for their friends or associates, that wasn’t how it worked. But Cleo didn’t see those guys. Her clients, her regulars, the ones she saw herself, have been calling. They want to see someone else while she’s away-because that’s what I told them, that she was away. Her guys expect to have a date before they commit. They’re the heavy hitters. The ones who come in regularly. The ones who count on her. And the ones who have something to lose if they’re exposed. One of these men might be the one who has her.”
“You have to go back to the police, Gil. You have to give them these men’s names.” But even as I said it I knew how impossible that would be for him to do. Just as I couldn’t think of doing it. What if Cleo was really away on a trip? What if she wasn’t in danger?
If we gave out information that was not ours to give, we could destroy her.
“You know I can’t do that,” Gil said. “I’ve tried to figure out another way to do this. To set up Cleo’s clients with one of the other girls and try to get the information that way. But they aren’t smart enough. Or intuitive enough. They’re college girls. Out-of-work actresses. None of them have any psychological training. None of them could find out anything.”
I shook my head. Even though I’d told Nina I wanted to do this, confronted with the real possibility, I knew I could never go through with it.
“I know it sounds crazy. But I promise, you don’t have to have sex with any of them. Just meet them. Just take their psychological pulse.”
I stood up. “Mr. Howard, I’m sorry, but there are ethical considerations here, and what you suggest breaks about every one of them I can think of.”
He stood up, too. And we faced each other. Extending his hand, he held out a white card. I took it. It was his business card, with the name and address of the Diablo Cigar Bar embossed in blood-red letters.
“That’s my private number. Just think about it, please.”
He paused as if he wasn’t sure he should say anything else. I tried to read his face. But whether it was grief, worry or guilt, I couldn’t tell.
“She told me when she met you that she felt as if she’d been lost and had finally found the person who was going to help her find herself. She came off as so assured and strong. But she wasn’t. She was vulnerable. Just another woman who didn’t understand her own worth.”