“Is that why you studied anthropology?”
“I wanted to learn about other cultures. And Andres supported me in that. Told me it would make me a better therapist. He was a great mentor, Alex. That’s why it was so crushing to hear him sneer at those field hands–like seeing one’s father in a disgusting light. I swallowed it in silence several times.
Finally, I resigned and left town.”
“For Beverly Hills?”
“I did a year of research in Chile, then caved in and returned to my own twelve-foot-square world.”
“Did you tell him why you were leaving?”
“No, just that I was unhappy, but he understood.” He shook his head.
“He was an intimidating man. I was a coward.”
“It had to take force of personality to dominate Katarina.”
“Oh, yes, and he did dominate her. .. after I returned from Chile, he called me just once. We had a frosty conversation, and that was that.”
“But Katarina wanted you at the conference anyway.”
“She wanted me because I was part of his past–the glory years. By then he was a vegetable and she was resurrecting him. She brought me pictures of him in his wheelchair. You abandoned him once, Bert.
Don’t do it again.” Guilt’s a great motivator.”
He looked away. Worked his jaws.
“I don’t see any obvious tie-in,” I said, “but Rodney Shipler, the man who was beaten to death, was black. At the time of his murder, he was a school janitor in L.A. Do you have any memory of him at all?”
“No, that name isn’t familiar.” He looked back at me. Edgy-guilty?
“What is it, Bert?”
“What’s what?”
“Something’s on your mind.” I smiled. “Your face is full of stress.”
He smiled back and sighed. “Something came into my mind. Your Mr. Silk.
Probably irrelevant.”
“Something about Lerner?”
“No, no, this is something that happened after the bad love’ conference–soon after, a couple of days, I believe.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, as if coaxing forth memories.
“Yes, it was two or three days,” he said, working his jaws again. “I received a call in my office. After hours. I was on my way out and I picked up the phone before the answering service could get to it. A man was on the other end, very agitated, very angry. A young man–or at least he sounded young. He said he’d sat through my speech at the conference and wanted to make an appointment. Wanted to go into long-term psychoanalysis with me. But the way he said it–hostile, almost sarcastic–brought my guard up, and I asked him what kinds of problems he was experiencing. He said there were many–too many to go into over the phone and that my speech had reminded him of them. I asked him how, but he wouldn’t say. His voice was saturated with stress –real suffering. He demanded to know if I was going to help him. I said, of course, I’d stay late and see him right away.”
“You considered it a crisis?”
“At the least, a borderline crisis–there was real pain in his voice.
An ego highly at risk. And,” he smiled, “I had no pressing engagements other than dinner with one of my wives–the third one, I think. You can see why I was such a poor matrimonial prospect…. Anyway, to my surprise, he said no, right now wasn’t a good time for him, but he could come in the next evening.
Standoffish, all of a sudden. As if I’d come on too strong for him. I was a bit taken aback, but you know patients–the resistance, the ambivalence.”
I nodded.
He said, “So we made an appointment for the following afternoon. But he never showed up. The phone number he’d given me was out of order and he wasn’t listed in any local phone books. I thought it odd, but after all, odd is our business, isn’t it? I thought about it for a while, then I forgot about it.
Until today. His being at the conference. .. all that anger.”
Shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Was his name Silk?”
“This is the part I hesitate about, Alex. He never became my patient, formally, but in a sense he was. Because he asked for help and I counseled him over the phone–or at least I attempted to.”