Bad Love

20

Monday morning at nine, I set out for Ojai, taking the 405 to the 101 and making it to the strawberry fields of Camarillo in less than an hour. Migrant workers stooped in the stubby, green rows. The crop became blue cabbage and the air turned bitter. Kissy-face billboards boosted housing developments and home equity loans.

Just past the Ventura County Fairgrounds, I turned onto 33 north, speeding by an oil refinery that resembled a giant junkyard. Another few miles of trailer parks and mower rental sheds and things got pretty: two lanes draped by eucalyptus, black mountains off to the northwest, the peaks flesh colored where the sun hit.

The town of Ojai was a quarter of an hour farther, announced by a bike and equestrian trail, orange groves, and signs directing the motorist to the Ojai Palm Spa, the Humanos Theosophic Institute, Marmalade Hot Springs. To the south were the clean, green slopes of a country club. The cars were good-looking and so were the people.

Ojai proper was quiet and slow moving, with one traffic light. The main drag was Ojai Avenue, lined with the kind of low-rise, neo-Spanish architecture that usually means tight zoning laws. Unrestricted parking, plenty of spaces. Tans and smiles, natural fibers and good posture.

On the left side of the avenue, a colonnaded, tile-roofed building was filled with storefronts. Native American art and antiques, body wraps and herbal facials, a Little Olde Tea Shoppe. Across the street was an old theater, freshly adobed. Playing tonight: Leningrad Cowboys.

I had my Ventura County Thomas Guide on the passenger seat, but I didn't need it. Signal was a couple of intersections up, and 800 north meant a left turn.

Big trees and small houses, residential lots alternating with olive groves. A drainage ditch paved with fieldstones ran alongside the left side of the street, spanned every few yards by one-stride foot bridges. Wilbert Harrison's address was near the top, one of the last houses before open fields took over.

It was a shingle-roofed wooden cottage painted an odd purplish-red and nearly hidden behind unruly snarls of agave cactus. The purple was vivid and it shone through the agave's sawtooth leaves like a wound. Atop a steep dirt driveway, a Chevy station wagon was parked up against a single garage. Four stone steps led up to the front porch. The screen door was shut, but the wooden one behind it was wide open.

I knocked on the frame while looking into a small, dark living room, plank floored and crowded with old furniture, shawls, throw pillows, an upright piano. A bay window was lined with dusty bottles.

Chamber music came from another room.

I knocked louder.

"One minute." The music turned off and a man appeared from a doorway to the right.

Short. Chubby as in his old picture and white haired. He had on a polyester jumpsuit the same purplish-red as the house. Some of the furniture was upholstered that color, too.

He opened the screen door and gave me a curious but friendly look. His eyes were gray, but they picked up magenta accents from his surroundings. There was a softness to his face, but no weakness.

"Dr. Harrison?"

"Yes, I'm Bert Harrison." His voice was a clear baritone. The jumpsuit was zipped in the front and had large, floppy lapels. Short-sleeved, it exposed white, freckled arms. His face was freckled, too, and I noticed reddish-blond tints in his white hair. He wore a pinkie ring set with a violet cabochon, and a bolo tie with leather thongs held together by a big, shapeless purple rock. Sandals on his feet, no socks.

"My name is Alex Delaware. I'm a clinical psychologist from Los Angeles and I wondered if I could talk to you about Andres de Bosch and "bad love.' "

The eyes didn't change shape or hue, but they became more focused.

He said, "I know you. We've met somewhere."

"Nineteen seventy-nine," I said. "There was a conference at Western Pediatric Medical Center on de Bosch's work. You presented a paper and I was a co-chair, but we never actually met."

"Yes," he said, smiling. "You were there as the hospital's representative, but your heart wasn't in it."

"You remember that?"

"Distinctly. The entire conference had that flavor- ambivalence all around. You were very young- you wore a beard then, didn't you?"

"Yes," I said, amazed.

"The beginnings of old age," he said, still smiling. "Distant memories become clearer, but I can't remember where I put my keys."

"I'm still impressed, doctor."

"I remember the beard vividly, perhaps because I have trouble growing one. And your voice. Full of stress. Just as it is right now. Well, come in, let's take care of it. Coffee or tea?"

• • •

There was a small kitchen beyond the living room and a door that led to a single bedroom. The little I could see of the sleeping chamber was purple and book-lined.

The kitchen table was birch, not more than four feet long. The counters were old white tile trimmed with purple-red bullnoses.

He fixed instant coffee for both of us and we sat. The scale of the table put us close together, elbows nearly touching.

"In answer to your unasked question," he said, whitening his coffee with lots of cream, then adding three spoonfuls of sugar, "it's the only color I can see. A rare genetic condition. Everything else in my world is gray, so I do what I can to brighten it."

"Makes sense," I said.

"Now that that's out of the way, tell me what's on your mind concerning Andres and "bad love'- that was the title of the conference, wasn't it."

"Yes. You don't seem surprised that I just popped in."

"Oh, I am. But I like surprises- anything that breaks up routine has the ability to freshen our lives."

"This may not be a pleasant surprise, Dr. Harrison. You may be in danger."

His expression didn't change. "How so?"

I told him about the "bad love" tape, my revenge theory, the possible links to Dorsey Hewitt and Lyle Gritz.

"And you think one of these men may have been a former patient of Andres's?"

"It's possible. Hewitt was thirty-three when he died, and Gritz is a year older, so either of them could have been his patient as a child. Hewitt killed one psychotherapist, perhaps under Gritz's influence, and Gritz is still out there, possibly still trying to even scores."

"What would he be trying to avenge?"

"Some kind of mistreatment- by de Bosch himself or a disciple. Something had happened at the school."

No response.

I said, "Real or imagined. Hewitt was a paranoid schizophrenic. I don't know Gritz's diagnosis, but he may be delusional, as well. The two of them could have influenced each other's pathology."

"Symbiotic psychosis?"

"Or at least shared delusions- playing on each other's paranoia."

He blinked hard. "Tapes, calls… no, I haven't experienced anything like that. And the name of this person who giggled over the phone was Silk?"

I nodded.

"Hmm. And what role do you think the conference played?"

"It may have triggered something- I really don't know, but it's my only link to de Bosch. I felt an obligation to tell you because one of the other speakers- Dr. Stoumen- was killed last year, and I haven't been able to loca-"

"Grant?" he said, leaning forward close enough for me to smell the mint on his breath. "I heard he died in an auto accident."

"A hit-and-run accident. While attending a conference. He stepped off the curb and was knocked down by a car. It was never solved, Dr. Harrison. The police put it down to Dr. Stoumen's old age- poor vision, faulty hearing."

"A conference," he said. "Poor Grant- he was a nice man."

"Did he ever work at the school?"

"He did occasional consultations. Coming up summers for a week or two, combining vacation with business. Hit-and-run…" He shook his head.

"And as I was saying, I can't locate any of the other speakers or co-chairs."

"You've located me."

"You're the only one, Dr. Harrison."

"Bert, please. Just out of curiosity, how did you find me?"

"From the Directory of Medical Specialists."

"Oh. I suppose I forgot to cancel it." He looked troubled.

"I didn't want to impose on your privacy, but-"

"No, no, that's fine. You're here for my own good… and, to tell the truth, I welcome visitors. After thirty years in practice, it's nice to talk to people rather than just listen."

"Do you know where any of the others are? Katarina de Bosch, Mitchell Lerner, Harvey Rosenblatt."

"Katarina is just up the coast, in Santa Barbara."

"She's still there?"

"I haven't heard that she's moved."

"Do you have her address?"

"And her phone number. Here, let me call it for you."

He reached over, pulled a crimson rotary phone from the counter, and put it on the table. As he dialed I wrote down the number on the phone. Then he held the receiver to his ear for a while, before putting it down.

"No answer," he said.

"When's the last time you saw her?"

He thought. "I suppose about a year or so. By coincidence. I was in a bookstore in Santa Barbara and ran into her, browsing."

"Psychology?"

He smiled. "No, fiction, actually. She was in the science-fiction section. Would you like her address?"

"Please."

He wrote it down and gave it to me. Shoreline Drive.

"The ocean side," he said, "just up from the marina."

I remembered the slide Katarina had shown. Blue skies behind a wheelchair. The ocean.

"Did she live there with her father?" I said.

"Since the two of them came to California."

"She was very attached to him, wasn't she?"

"She worshiped him." He continued to look preoccupied.

"Did she ever marry?"

He shook his head.

"When did the school close?" I said.

"Not long after Andres died- eighty-one, I believe."

"Katarina didn't want to keep it going?"

He put his hands around his coffee cup. He had hammer thumbs and his other digits were short. "You'd have to ask her about that."

"Does she do any kind of psychological work now?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Early retirement?"

He shrugged and drank. Put his cup down and touched the stone of his bolo tie. Something bothering him.

I said, "I only met her twice, but I don't see her as someone with hobbies, Bert."

He smiled. "You encountered the force of her personality."

"She was the reason I was at the conference against my will. She pulled strings with the chief of staff."

"That was Katarina," he said. "Life as target practice: set your sights, aim, and shoot. She pressured me to speak, too."

"You were reluctant?"

"Yes, but let's get back to Grant for a moment. Hit-and-run isn't really the same as premeditated murder."

"Maybe I'm wrong, but I still can't find anyone who was up on that dais."

He grabbed the cup with both hands. "I can tell you about Mitch- Mitchell Lerner. He's dead. Also the result of an accident. Hiking. Down in Mexico- Acapulco. He fell from a high cliff."

"When?"

"Two years ago."

One year before Stoumen, one year after Rodney Shipler. Fill in the gaps…

"… the time," he was saying, "I had no reason to assume it was anything but an accident. Especially in view of it being a fall."

"Why's that?"

He worked his jaws and his hands went flat on the table. His mouth twisted a couple of times. Anxiety and something else- dentures.

"Mitchell had occasional balance problems," he said.

"Alcohol?"

He stared at me.

"I know about his suspension," I said.

"I'm sorry, I can't talk any more about him."

"Meaning he was your patient- your bio mentioned your specialties. Impaired therapists."

Silence that served as affirmation. Then he said, "He was trying to ease his way back into work. The trip to Mexico was part of that. He was attending a conference there."

He put his finger in his mouth and fooled with his bridgework.

"Well," he said, smiling, "I don't go to conferences anymore, so maybe I'm safe."

"Does the name Myra Paprock mean anything to you?"

He shook his head. "Who is she?"

"A woman who was murdered five years ago. The words "bad love' were scrawled at the murder scene in her lipstick. And the police have found one other killing where the phrase was written. A man named Rodney Shipler, beaten to death three years ago."

"No," he said, "I don't know him, either. Are they therapists?"

"No."

"Then what would they have to do with the conference?"

"Nothing that I know of, but maybe they had something to do with de Bosch. Myra Paprock was working as a real estate agent at the time, but before that she was a teacher in Goleta. Maybe she moonlighted at the Corrective School. This was before she married, so her surname would have been something other than Paprock."

"Myra," he said, rubbing his lip. "There was a Myra who taught there when I was consulting. A young woman, just out of college… blond, pretty… a little…" He closed his eyes. "Myra… Myra… what was her name- Myra Evans, I think. Yes, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. Myra Evans. And now you're saying she was murdered…"

"What else were you going to say about her, Bert?"

"Excuse me?"

"You just said she was blond, pretty, and something else."

"Nothing, really," he said. "I just remembered her as being a little hard. Nothing pathologic- the dogmatism of youth."

"Was she rough on the kids?"

"Abusive? I never saw it. It wasn't that kind of place- Andres's force of personality was enough to maintain a certain level of… order."

"What was Myra's method for maintaining order?"

"Lots of rules. One of those everything-by-the-rules types. No shades of gray."

"Was Dr. Stoumen like that too?"

"Grant was… orthodox. He liked his rules. But he was an extremely gentle person, somewhat shy."

"And Lerner?"

"Anything but rigid. Lack of discipline was his problem."

"Harvey Rosenblatt?"

"Don't know him at all. Never met him before the conference."

"So you never saw Myra Evans come down too hard on a child?"

"No… I barely remember her- these are just impressions, they may be faulty."

"I doubt it."

He moved his jaws from side to side. "All these murders. You actually think…" Shaking his head.

I said, "How important was the concept of "bad love' to de Bosch's philosophy?"

"I'd say it was fairly central," he said. "Andres was very concerned with justice- he saw achieving consistency in our world as a prime motive. Saw many symptoms as attempts to accomplish that."

"The search for order."

Nod. "And good love."

"When did you become disillusioned about him?"

He looked pained.

I held my gaze and said, "You said Katarina pressured you to speak at the symposium. Why would a faithful student have to be pressured?"

He got up, turned his back on me, and rested his palms on the counter. A little man in ridiculous clothing, trying to bring color to his world.

"I really wasn't that close to him," he said. "After I began my anthropology studies, I wasn't around much." Taking a couple of steps, he wiped the counter with one stubby hand.

"Your own search for consistency?"

He stiffened but didn't turn.

"Racism," he said. "I heard Andres making remarks."

"About who?"

"Blacks, Mexicans."

"Were there black and Mexican children at the school?"

"Yes, but he didn't malign them. It was the workers- hired laborers. There was acreage behind the school. Andres hired people down on lower State Street to come clear the weeds every month or so."

"What did you hear him say about them?"

"The usual garbage- that they were lazy, stupid. Genetically inferior. He called the blacks one half-step up from apes, said the Mexicans weren't much better."

"He said this to your face?"

Hesitation. "No. To Katarina. I overheard it."

I said, "She didn't disagree with him, did she?"

He turned around. "She never disagreed with him."

"How did you happen to overhear their conversation?"

"I wasn't eavesdropping," he said. "That would almost have been better. I walked in on the middle of the conversation and Andres didn't bother to interrupt himself. That really troubled me- the fact that he thought I would laugh along with it. And it wasn't just once- I heard him say those things several times. Almost taunting me. I didn't respond. He was my teacher and I became a worm."

He returned to his chair, slumping a bit.

I said, "Did Katarina respond at all to his remarks?"

"She laughed… I was disgusted. Lord knows I'm no paragon of virtue, I've done my share of pretending to listen to patients when my mind was elsewhere. Pretending to care. Been married five times, never longer than twenty-six months. When I finally achieved enough insight to realize I should stop making women's lives miserable, I opted for the solitary life. Drew plenty of blood along the way, so I don't put myself up on any moral pedestal. But I have always prided myself on tolerance- I'm sure part of it is personal. I was born with multiple anomalies. Other things besides the lack of color vision."

He looked away, as if considering his choices. Held out his short fingers and waved them. Pointing at his mouth, he said, "I'm completely edentulous. Born without adult teeth. My right foot has three toes, the left one is clubbed. I'm unable to sire children and one of my kidneys atrophied when I was three. Most of my childhood was spent in bed due to severe skin rashes and a hole in the ventricular septum of my heart. So I guess I'm a little sensitive to discrimination. But I didn't speak up, just left the school."

I nodded. "Did de Bosch's intolerance come out in other ways?"

"No, that's the thing. On a day-to-day basis, he was extremely liberal. Publicly, he was liberal- took in minority patients, most of them charity cases, and seemed to treat them as well as the others. And in his writings, he was brilliantly tolerant. Have you ever read his essay on the Nazis?"

"No."

"Brilliant," he repeated. "He composed it while fighting in the French Resistance. Taking the bastards' own pseudo-theories of racial superiority and throwing it all back in their faces with good, sound science. That was one of the things that attracted me to him when I was a resident. The combination of social conscience and psychoanalysis. Too many analysts live in a twelve-foot-square world- the office as universe, rich people on the couch, summers in Vienna. I wanted more."

"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."

"There was no formal treatment, Bert. I don't see any problem, legally."

"That's not the point. Morally, it's an issue- moral issues transcend the law." He slapped his own wrist and smiled. "Gawd, doesn't that sound self-righteous."

"There is a moral issue," I said. "But weigh it against the alternatives. Two definite murders. Three if you include Grant Stoumen. Maybe four, if someone pushed Mitchell Lerner off that cliff. Myra Paprock was raped, as well. Taken apart physically. She left two small children. I just met her husband. He still hasn't healed."

"You're quite good at guilt yourself, young man."

"Whatever works, Bert. How's that for a moral stance?"

He smiled. "No doubt you're a practical therapist… No his name wasn't Silk. Another type of fabric. That's what made me think of it. Merino." He spelled it out.

"First name?"

"He didn't give one. Called himself "Mister.' Mr. Merino. It sounded pretentious in someone so young. Awful insecurity."

"Can you pinpoint his age?"

"Twenties- early twenties would be my guess. He had a young man's impetuousness. Poor impulse control to call like that and make demands. But he was stressed, and stress causes regression, so maybe he was older."

"When was the Corrective School established?"

"Nineteen sixty-two."

"So if he was in his twenties in seventy-nine, he could easily have been a patient. Or one of the field hands- Merino's an Hispanic name."

"Or someone with no connection to the school at all," he said. "What if he was just someone with deep-seated problems who sat in on the conference and reacted to it for one reason or another?"

"Could be," I said, calculating silently: Dorsey Hewitt would have been around eighteen in 1979. Lyle Gritz, a year older.

"All right," I said, "thanks for telling me, and I won't give out the information unless it's essential. Is there anything else you remember that might help?"

"No, I don't think so. Thank you. For warning me."

He looked around his small house with longing. I knew the feeling.

"Do you have a place to go?" I said.

Nod. "There are always places. New adventures."

He walked me to my car. The heat had turned up a bit and the air was thick with honeybees.

"Off to Santa Barbara now?" he said.

"Yes."

"Give Katarina my best when you see her. The easiest way is Highway 150. Pick it up just out of town and take it all the way. It's no more than a half-hour drive."

"Thanks."

We shook hands.

"One more thing, Bert?"

"Yes?"

"Mitchell Lerner's problems. Could they have resulted in any way from his work at the school- or did they cause problems there?"

"I don't know," he said. "He never spoke about the school. He was a very closed person- highly defensive."

"So you did ask him about it?"

"I asked him about every element of his past. He refused to talk about anything but his drinking. And even then, just in terms of getting rid of a bad habit. In his own work, he despised behaviorism, but when it came to his therapy, he wanted to be reconditioned. Overnight. Something short term and discreet- hypnosis, whatever."

"You're an analyst. Why did he come to you?"

"Safety of the familiar." He smiled. "And I've been known to be pragmatic from time to time."

"If he was so resistant, why'd he bother to go into therapy in the first place?"

"As a condition of his probation. The social work ethics committee demanded it, because it had affected his work- missed appointments, failure to submit insurance forms so his patients could recover. I'm afraid he acted the same way as a patient. Not showing up, very unreliable."

"How long did you see him?"

"Obviously, not long enough."