“Why?” I said.
“As I told you, I was busy enough. And I was skeptical. These people—criminals. They’ve got entrenched personality disorders. Psychotherapy has never been very effective for that kind of thing.”
“Mary and Albin disagreed.”
“Especially Mary. She was passionate about it. State money was going to be freed up, it was more than just theory.”
“How’d she find that out?”
“One of Albin’s political connections—he’s involved in a lot of progressive causes—is the wife of a politician from up north. She’s a psychologist, too, and she got her husband to pass a bill that authorized psychotherapy on demand for paroled felons. Albin helped her with the wording. He told Mary, she told me.”
“But you declined,” I said. “Entrenched personality disorders.”
“Yes.”
“Also, the reimbursement rates couldn’t match your private fees.”
“I work for a living,” said Gull. “I don’t see why I should apologize for that.”
“What’s your hourly fee?”
“Is that relevant?”
“Yes.”
“I use a sliding scale. From one-twenty to two hundred per session.”
“Medi-Cal pays twenty and restricts the number of sessions.”
“Medi-Cal’s a joke,” said Gull. “Mary said the bill doubled the rates—some sort of political give-and-take. But forty’s still a joke. I opted out.”
“How’d Mary and Albin react to that?”
“Albin didn’t say much. He rarely does. Mary was upset with me, but that didn’t last.”
Milo said, “Your being intimate friends and all that.”
Gull sniffed.
I said, “You declined to participate but obtained a Medi-Cal provider number.”
“At Albin’s and Mary’s behest. They said the state preferred settings with multiple providers, it would look better if all of us were listed. Mary filled out the paperwork and I signed and that was it.”
He was sweating heavily now, searched again for his linen hankie. I pulled a tissue out of a box on Wimmer’s desk and handed it to him. He wiped his face hastily, and the tissue turned into a little gray sphere.
“You’re saying you never actually saw any patients on the program?”
“Basically,” he said.
“Basically?”
“I saw a few—very few. At the beginning, just to get the ball rolling.”
“How many is a few?”
He removed a pair of tiny-lensed reading glasses from his pocket and began playing with the sidepieces.
“Franco?”
“Three. That’s it. And no one with any of the names you mentioned.”
“How was it, treating ex-cons?”
“It wasn’t a good experience.”
“Why not?”
“Two of them were chronically late and when they did show up, they were high on something. It was obvious they were just passing the time.”
“Why would they do that?”
“How should I know?”
“Any indication they were getting paid to show up?”
Gull’s brows arched. “No one ever mentioned that. Whatever the reason, they weren’t motivated. No insight, no desire to acquire any.”
“What about the third patient?” I said.
“That one,” said Gull, frowning. “That one upset me. He wasn’t drunk or stoned, and he talked. Talked plenty. But not about himself. About his girlfriend. What she needed, how he figured to give it to her.”
“What did she need?” I said.
Gull folded and unfolded the glasses. “Orgasms. Apparently, she was anorgasmic, and he was determined to fix the problem.”
“Did he ask your help with that?”
“No,” said Gull, “that’s the point, he didn’t want anything from me, he thought he knew everything. Very aggressive, very . . . not a pleasant man. Even though he tried to be charming. Attempted to speak intelligently.”
“He couldn’t pull it off.”
“Not hardly. Faking it—the typical antisocial charm. If you’ve had any experience with sociopaths, you’d know what I mean.”
“Pretentious,” I said.
“Exactly, prototypical antisocial pretentiousness.” His body loosened. Pretending we were colleagues having a clinical chat. “Flowery use of language, overly solicitous. Playing at being civilized and thinking he was putting one over on me. But his fantasies.” He exhaled.
“Sadistic?”
“Dominance, bondage and, yes, I’d say a touch of sadism. He talked incessantly about tying this woman up and making love to her aggressively for as long as it took to force orgasms out of her body. He didn’t use the term ‘making love.’ ”
“Sexual tough guy,” I said.
“His fantasies involved multiple penetration, bondage, foreign objects. I tried to get him to address this woman’s needs, suggested that perhaps she needed some tenderness, some intimacy, but he laughed that off. His plan was to quote-unquote ‘stick her every which way until she screamed for mercy.’ ”