A big shining coffee urn and cups are back there and I pour coffee for us. I remember wondering how I’d pay for it. Then a man with a clipboard and a big, full face, who seems to be in charge, points in the direction of the Pantry and the girl acknowledges his instructions.
I follow her like a puppy into the Pantry, still sleepy, very sleepy. Bright lights, shiny surfaces. I’m flirting with her and she sits on the steel table with her back to the wall. Her thighs, her legs, are right there in front of me. I am just looking at her, trying to take her beauty in. Trying to figure out how to hit on her. That’s all I can think about, how I’m fascinated by her looks. She’s sitting, I’m standing. Busty, looks like Natalie Wood. Never says much. It’s so very erotic. I’m consumed by her.
Then she pinches me. It’s startling — like a wake-up call. Like when you’re stuck with a pin. It snaps me out of my doldrums and yet I’m still sleepy. She points back over my head and says, ‘Look, look, look!’ I turn around or did she spin me around? There are people coming through the doors. I am puzzled about what she is directing me to. Doesn’t seem relevant, just people streaming in. She keeps motioning toward the back, more and more animated.
No, I wasn’t thinking about Senator Kennedy! Didn’t even know he was in the hotel. Then I am dreaming I am at a target range. I didn’t know I had a gun but I saw targets, circles, circles. I think I fired off one or two shots. They say I called Bobby Kennedy a son of a bitch, but I don’t remember doing that.
The next thing I remember is people on top of me, choking me, and getting my ass kicked... You were there, sir.
You must remember that part.
“Even after only a handful of sessions,” Dr. Eduard Simson-Kallas told me, “it became clear to me that Sirhan Sirhan is no paranoid schizophrenic. No psychotic. Not at all.”
I was seated across an uncluttered desk — a single notebook, a pen, a phone — from San Quentin’s senior psychologist in his small wood-and-plaster office with the only other furniture a chaise longue with a chair at its head, patient/shrink style. With luck I wouldn’t be asked to lie down. The wall behind him bore framed diplomas from Stanford, NYU, University of Louisville, UCAL Berkeley and Heidelberg University. Mixed in were a portrait of his wife and kids and a fancy ribboned certificate that said he’d been a Lieutenant Commander in the Estonian Army.
About fifty, Simson-Kallas was slender, a man of average height but with nothing else average about him — not the blond hair that left most of his head bald with a curly shock in back, not the penetrating close-set dark eyes under fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows nor the prominent nose, full lips and rounded chin. His houndstooth jacket and white turtleneck announced him as his own man.
So did his opinions about Sirhan Sirhan.
In what I assumed was an Estonian accent — vowels over-pronounced — he spoke above tented fingers.
“Paranoid schizophrenics,” he said, “are almost impossible to hypnotize. They’re too suspicious, they don’t trust anybody, not even friends or relatives. They can’t concentrate, they can’t follow instructions. They make poorest subjects for hypnosis.”
The accent had him dropping articles here and there, too. Not always but enough to add to the foreign feel.
I said, “Sirhan is supposedly in the most easily hypnotized group.”
The caterpillars rose. “Oh yes. Sirhan is one of the most hypnotizable individuals I’ve ever met. He is grade five on hypnotism scale — less than ten percent of Americans rate grade five. When defense psychiatrist, Dr. Diamond, gave him a post-hypnotic suggestion, Sirhan jumped around like a monkey and climbed cell bars.”
I grinned. “I don’t know, doctor. I’ve seen that kind of thing in nightclub acts, where the subject is just going along with the gag.”
“That is possible,” he granted. “Sirhan could have been clowning or trying to fool them. He had little respect for Dr. Diamond, who like several others on the defense team was a Jew. As an Estonian émigré, it didn’t take me long to gain Sirhan’s trust — my people are neutral on the Middle East. He was extremely eager to talk to me. I tested him and found his IQ was 127, not the 89 presented at the trial. That low score came from his not trusting the Jewish doctors testing him.”
I said, “Yours can’t be a popular opinion in law enforcement circles.”
He shrugged. Folded his hands. Rested them on the blotter. “I have not advertised it, but I’m working on a lengthy affidavit outlining my findings. The chief psychiatrist here agrees with me — he too does not see Sirhan as psychotic or paranoid schizophrenic. Nothing in Sirhan’s test responses indicate that.”
I frowned. “That diagnosis was at the heart of the trial.”
His dark eyes flared. “Conduct of mental health professionals in this case is appalling! Errors, distortions, even probable manipulations of facts. That trial was, and will go down as, the psychiatric blunder of century.”
“It could be argued,” I said, “that Sirhan’s attorney, Cooper, was just pursuing the best legal strategy. To present Sirhan to the jury as mentally ill and protect him from the death penalty under California law.”
He waved that off. “The assumption that the jury could not accept a defense of hypnotic programming is absurd in this case. The grounds were substantial. Not taking that approach is unjustifiable on a tactical basis.”
I wasn’t sure he was right about that, but didn’t press it, asking, “What about the general belief that you can’t commit an act under hypnosis that you wouldn’t do otherwise?”
“There are numerous famous cases that put the lie to that belief. If a hypnotized subject is convinced, for example, that he is acting in self-defense, of course he will kill.”
I opened a hand. “Sirhan seems to think he was dreaming of being at a target range.”
Simson-Kallas nodded. “And he frequented such ranges — had done so that very day. This is consistent with programming. So is his show of superhuman strength that night, his serene expression as he emptied his gun on the crowd, his composed, relaxed behavior at the police station after his arrest — all of this is consistent with a hypno-programmed state.”
“What about this girl in the polka-dot dress? A kind of handler, you think?”
He nodded three times. “Yes, and a trigger. You can be programmed that if you meet a certain person, or see something specific, you go into a trance. Those drinks were almost surely drugged. An individual under the influence of barbiturates, particularly with increased dosage, would go through three stages: a slight sedative effect... a more pronounced cloudiness, even amnesia... then slurred speech, disrupted thought patterns, poor coordination, with a lack of awareness of painful stimuli. All of these conform to Sirhan’s behavior that night.”
“There’s talk of self-hypnosis.”
“Yes, and he has practiced that.” He lifted a forefinger. “But this young man is not devious enough to have killed Robert Kennedy on his own, under any circumstances. He was prepared by someone. He was hypnotized by someone. He was there to draw the attention of the others in that Pantry. His role was to provide an obvious simple explanation to the crime that would prevent others from asking questions.”