“Why, son?” he said.
“Forgiveness,” said Eric. “Forgiveness is all.”
Richard had turned pale again. A bad-looking pale, green around the edges. He picked up a pottery fragment. Green and blue and chartreuse. Part of a horse’s face.
“Oh my God,” said a voice from behind us.
Stacy stood at the entrance to the living room. Hands at her side, eyes so bugged they seemed ready to take off in orbit.
Just moments ago, hearing talk about finding her own way, I’d allowed myself a small hit of self-congratulation. Now, any victory was a joke, demolished as surely as thousand-year-old pottery drawn from the grave.
“No,” said Stacy.
“Dear?” said Safer.
When she didn’t answer, he said, “No what?”
She didn’t seem to hear him, had turned to me.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want any more of this.”
“And you don’t have to take any more, dear,” said Safer. “You’re certain that jaw’s okay, Doctor?”
“I’ll survive.”
“Richard,” he said, “is your maid in the house?”
“No,” muttered Richard. “Night off.”
“Stacy, please get the doctor an ice pack.”
Stacy said, “Absolutely,” and left.
Safer faced Richard and Eric: “Now the two of you will clean up this terrible mess and I’ll figure out if you deserve my further involvement in your case, Richard.”
“Please,” said Richard.
“Just clean it up,” ordered Safer. “Do something useful. Do something together.”
He shepherded me out of the room, through the dining room and into the kitchen. One of those vast white lacquer and black granite setups—what realtors call catering kitchens. Another L.A. pretense: upscale isolates staking claim to sociability.
Stacy was wrapping ice cubes in a towel. “One second.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Safer, as she brought it over. I pressed the cloth to my face.
“I’m so sorry,” she told me. “So, so sorry.”
“No big deal,” I said. “It’s really nothing.”
The three of us stood there. Listening. No sound through the kitchen door.
Safer said, “Please go up to your room, Stacy. I need to confer with the doctor.”
She complied.
Safer said, “At least one of them seems normal.”
He pushed back his yarmulke, removed his suit jacket and folded it over a chair, sat down at the kitchen table.
“What just happened out there?” he said.
“I wouldn’t even guess.”
“Not that that’s going to change my strategy vis-a-vis Richard. I’ll get him past the immediate threat . . . but that boy. He’s seriously disturbed, isn’t he?”
“Very angry,” I said. You’d be angry, too, if you’d helped your mother die, couldn’t talk about it to anyone.
“Do you see him as a danger to himself and others? Because if he is, I’ll get a seventy-two-hour hold.”
“Possibly, but don’t ask me to go there. Get someone else for that.”
He massaged the tabletop. “I understand, conflict of interest.”
Yet another.
“Speaking of which,” he said, “let’s discuss Detective Sturgis. I know we’ve talked about this and please don’t be offended, but I believe in an ounce of prevention. What you saw tonight—nothing gets repeated.”
“Of course.”
“Good,” he said. “Taken care of. And again I apologize. Now as far as Stacy’s concerned, you do agree she needs to be out of here? At least for tonight.”
“Do you have a place for her to go?”
“My house. I live in Hancock Park, have plenty of room, and my wife won’t be put out. She’s used to entertaining.”
“Entertaining clients?”
“Clients, guests, she’s a very social person. Tomorrow night’s our Sabbath, Stacy can have a multicultural experience. Shall I call Mrs. Safer?”
“If you can get Stacy to agree.”
“I think I can,” he said. “Stacy impresses me as a very reasonable young woman. Quite possibly the one sane person in this … museum of psychopathology.”
He went upstairs and I sat in the kitchen nursing my jaw. Thinking about Eric’s rage.
Forgiveness is all. And Richard hadn’t forgiven, so now he was paying for it.
He and Eric, two kegs of explosives . . . not my concern. Not unless it affected Stacy, I had to focus on Stacy.
Safer was right, she needed to be out of here. A night or two at his house might work out, but after that…