“I know a little about it,” I replied. I did not tell him what had happened to me in jail; I told him instead about what I had seen in court.
The rain had started to fall, a steady downpour of gray depression, streaking the window and twisting the view of the things seen through it into strange, monstrous shapes.
“I did commitment cases for a while. The standard was whether they were a danger to others or a danger to themselves. We would gather around a table, sometimes in a conference room, sometimes around the counsel table in the courtroom. Whoever was making the claim that there should be a commitment would give their reasons. And then, because the statute required two doctors, and because you could never find two physicians willing to spend an hour of their time for the small amount that was paid, there would usually be a young general practitioner and a psychologist.”
Friedman had retreated somewhere behind his eyes. He was listening to me the way someone listens to a radio or a television set in the background while they read the newspaper or carry on a conversation with someone else.
“What I learned right away,” I went on, gazing right at him,
“is that the doctors never asked the right questions.”
You could almost hear the slick, sliding sound of a single thin transparent film dropping away from the lenses of his eyes.
“So I decided I’d do it. My client said he heard three voices in his head all the time. That was all the doctors needed to hear.
The judge asked me if I had any questions. ‘These voices you hear. Do you know who they are?’ He looked at me, his face all lit up. ‘Yes,’ he said eagerly, grateful that someone had finally asked. ‘Linda Ronstadt, Roy Orbison, and Conway Twitty.’ “
I was back under Friedman’s clinical gaze. “That’s very amus-ing. But what difference did it make whose voices he heard? He was hearing voices, after all.”
“That’s what one of the doctors said. And then I pointed out to the doctor that while I couldn’t say I ever heard the other two, I heard Linda Ronstadt singing in my head fairly often and that I would frankly be surprised if he hadn’t heard the same thing. And to tell you the truth, depending on the song, there were times when I could not get her voice out of my head at all.
Even right now, sitting right here, if I concentrate, I can hear her. I mean, once it starts, you just can’t get ‘I’ve been cheated, been mistreated’ to stop, can you? Now, tell me, Dr. Friedman, am I going to get to see Elliott Winston or do I have to have myself committed and become a patient first?”
For a moment I thought he was going to take it under advisement. “No,” he said, blinking rapidly, a nervous smile rushing across his face. “Elliott wants to see you. That’s what concerns me.” He immediately qualified it. “Not concerns me, interests me.
You see, Mr. Antonelli, you’re the first visitor he’s ever had.”
He waited for my reaction. I had the feeling he was trying to find out whether I knew something about what had happened to Elliott before he was committed, something that would tell him more about his patient than he already knew.
With a civil smile I expressed a polite doubt. “He has children, parents, relatives, and a great many friends. Surely, some of them must have come to see him?”
Stroking his chin, he gave me a measured look. “I should have said you’re the first person he has allowed to come. Others have tried, though no one now for a long time. You’re the only one he wanted to see. He’s quite eager, actually. Why do you think that is?”
I turned the question back on Friedman. “What reason did he give?”
“He said you were a partner in the law firm where he worked, that you had given him the job, that for a long time he had thought he wanted to be just like you.” He paused. “I’m sure he meant what he said, but I’m also quite sure that that isn’t the real reason he wants to see you,” he added candidly. “There’s something else. Perhaps it’s the same reason you want to see him.”
He put it to me directly. “You’ve never come before, Mr. Antonelli. Why now?”
There was not a trace of reproval in his voice, no suggestion that I had done something wrong by waiting this long. It was simply a question put to me by someone who I understood was trying to help.
“I always wanted to,” I explained. “I always thought I should.
About a month after he first came here, I started to drive down.
I hadn’t called ahead. I just decided to come. Halfway here I changed my mind. I told myself I needed to make an appointment before I came, but that was just an excuse.”
He moved his head, just a slight turn to the right, enough to create the impression that while his left eye kept me under sur-veillance, his other eye was drawing back, as if there was something else it needed to see.
“I’ve always felt a certain responsibility for what happened.”
“For what happened?” His voice was calm, reassuring, full of reasonable encouragement.
“Yes. I saw it all happen, each step. But I didn’t understand what it meant, not until the end, when it was too late. I should have known. I should have done something before it ever got to that point, though I’m not sure, even now, what I could have done.”
Friedman did not say anything. He did not ask me to explain.
He sat there, watching, waiting for me to go on.
“Have you ever read Sallust?” When he did not answer, I explained: “One of the Roman historians.”
“Oh,” he replied, laughing softly, the willing admission of his ignorance. “But you must have. I’ve always envied people who read serious things. Perhaps someday. When there is more time.”
He smiled and waited.
“I had not read him either, not until about a year ago. And it reminded me, or rather it explained, because it described what I’m almost certain someone did to Elliott Winston. Sallust talks about what he calls the conversion of the zealous and the innocent to a criminal conspiracy. First, they have you tell an innocent lie, a white lie, something that can’t possibly hurt anyone and may even help someone. Then, they bring you around to more substantial lies. You had lied before, and after all, this is only a difference of degree.”
Friedman, the passive observer, was listening intently, caught up in the insidious logic of evil.
“Once they get you to tell lies like these, lies that have consequences, lies that if discovered can get you into trouble, serious trouble, then it is not so difficult to lead you into acts of violence. Not against anybody, you understand, but against somebody who has done something terribly wrong, an enemy, someone who is part of a conspiracy, a conspiracy directed at all the things you believe in. But then, after it’s been done, you discover that it was done to the wrong person, someone falsely accused. You’ve made a terrible mistake, and it has to be covered up. You have to protect your reputation, but you can’t do it alone. They tell you, these friends of yours who taught you how to lie, who convinced you to commit a violent act, that everyone makes mistakes.
They tell you, these friends of yours, that they’ll do everything that has to be done to make sure no one ever finds out what you did. After all, friends have to protect one another. Then, finally, when they do something you never would have dreamed of doing, something that was not the result of some tragic mistake, they come to you and remind you, these friends of yours, how they protected you when you needed them.”
Friedman stared at me. “Someone did that to him?”
“I think so. There was no violence. That came later, after he broke down. But before that, yes, I think so. I think he was taken, step by step, from one thing to the next, until he finally realized he had become someone he did not want to be and he did not know what to do about it.”