Illusions

12

A fairly routine background check kept Tamara and me busy all of Wednesday morning and into early afternoon. The daughter of a well-off Hillsborough widow had met a man on a Mexican cruise and become engaged to him by the time the cruise ship docked again in L.A., and the widow was concerned that he might be a fortune hunter; she went to her lawyer and he called me. The check turned up some interesting information about the boyfriend’s past, including one arrest and conviction in Galveston, Texas, for bilking a woman of forty thousand dollars in a real estate investment scam. The lawyer was pleased to hear my report; the widow would be pleased to hear it. The daughter wouldn’t be, but she’d get over it and thank her mother someday. And I’d be pleased when I received the check to cover my fee. The only loser was the con artist, which was as it should be, and why the hell couldn’t all my investigations turn out to have such simple happy endings?

Shortly before two I had a call from the claims adjustor at one of the small insurance companies I work for now and then. Would I be able to come in this afternoon for a brief conference concerning a personal injury claim the company considered suspect? I would. We made an appointment for two-thirty, which gave me just enough time to drive downtown to the insurer’s offices on lower Market, garage the car, and allow myself to be shot upward fourteen floors in a box not much larger than the one Eberhardt had been planted in. Elevators have a claustrophobic effect on me. God forbid I should ever find myself trapped in one between floors for any length of time; the ordeal would probably reduce me to a bag of gibbering clay.

The personal injury claim was suspect, all right. A thirty-three-year-old man who slips and falls in the produce section of a supermarket and claims to have suffered such grievous injuries as recurrent back spasms, impaired use of his left leg, and a groin pull so severe he is unable to sit comfortably in any kind of chair, and whose attorney is whoring after a settlement of two hundred thousand dollars in lieu of a million-dollar lawsuit against the supermarket chain, is either the world’s most fragile human being or a fraud trying to happen big-time. I told the adjustor I’d see if I could get his employers off the hook, we settled on my usual fee, and I was out of there.

It was three-oh-five when I exited the building. Last night’s rain had turned into a misty overcast with just enough moisture to keep a sheen of wetness on the sidewalks. And as I made my slippery way to the garage, it occurred to me that Embarcadero Center was only a few short blocks away. Great Western Insurance had its offices in one of the Center’s high-rises, and among GWI’s rabbit warren of glass-walled cubicles was the large one in which Barney Rivera held sway. Well? I was going to have to see him sooner or later, whether he liked it or not. Might as well be sooner, and at my convenience instead of his.

I changed direction, hoofed it over there, put myself into another elevator and let it hurl me like an object in a pneumatic tube twenty-nine floors above the city streets. When I popped out, I was facing a young male receptionist, who treated me to a bored look and asked what, please, he could do for me. I said Barney Rivera and offered my name; he wanted to know if I had an appointment; I said no, and he told me to have a seat, he’d see if Mr. Rivera was available. Ritual scene. I wondered, as I waited, how many times I’d played it over the past thirty years, mouthing the same dialogue or any number of dull variations, with a legion of faceless receptionists, secretaries, and factotums of both genders. Thinking about it, I decided I understood exactly what T. S. Eliot had meant with his oft-quoted line about measuring out his life in coffee spoons.

Pretty soon the receptionist replaced the handset on his switchboard unit and said to me in his bored voice, “Mr. Rivera is sorry, he can’t see you today. He’s very busy.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, sir. Would you care to make an appointment?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. I stood up and headed not for the elevator but for the door that led into the rabbit warren.

The receptionist was caught off guard; visitors were not supposed to act in such aggressive fashion. He gawped at me and said, “Wait a minute, sir, you can’t—”

I said, “Yes, I can,” and opened the door and went on through. I’d been in the warren enough times over the years; I knew where Rivera’s cubicle was and how to get there through the maze. His double-size glass office had a door, which told you right away how important he was in GWI’s scheme of things. I yanked it open, walked inside, and banged it shut behind me.

“I guess you’re seeing me after all,” I said.

He was probably surprised, but he didn’t show it; he seldom showed much of what was going on inside his head, which made him a good poker player and a bad risk for personal intimacy. He peered up at me from behind his desk, his tubby little body so dwarfed by it that he looked like a doe-eyed, mop-headed kid playing executive. Women, for some insane reason, found him cute and cuddly and either wanted to mother him or screw his brains out; in all the years I’d known him, he had never lacked for female companionship. There had been a time, pre-Kerry, when I’d been a touch jealous of the man. Now his success with women and the careless way he treated his conquests were just two more reasons to dislike him.

He said, “What do you think—” and then broke off because the door opened and the receptionist poked his head inside. “I’m sorry Mr. Rivera he just barged in do you want me to call security?” all in a breathless rush. Barney said no, it was all right, he’d handle it, and the kid retreated and closed the door so softly I didn’t even hear it click.

Rivera reached out to the dish on his desk and popped a peppermint before he finished what he’d started to say to me. “What do you think this macho act is going to buy you?”

“Some cleared air. I don’t like being given the runaround.”

“And I don’t like former friends showing up unannounced.”

“Former friends. Right. Just like that, huh?”

“You treated Eberhardt like shit,” he said.

“Oh, sure. And he treated me like royalty?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Four years and not a word from him, and then he calls up out of the blue, no explanation, and I’m supposed to drop everything and rush to his aid?”

“You could’ve talked to him, at least.”

“I was two hundred and fifty miles away, for Christ’s sake, and jammed up in that Sentinels mess. I had no idea he was in trouble, any kind of trouble. Nobody told me. Not Bobbie Jean and sure as hell not you.”

“I didn’t know it was as bad as it was until two weeks ago,” Rivera said, “right before I phoned your office the first time. You didn’t bother to get back to me and you were still in town then. Your secretary said so.”

“Tamara’s my assistant, not my secretary. And you told her it was personal and nothing urgent.”

“The hell I did. Personal, yes, but I didn’t say it wasn’t urgent.”

“Did you say it was?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, maybe she misunderstood. Or maybe she took it for granted because you didn’t tell her otherwise.”

“Passing the buck?” he said snottily.

“No!”

“Either way, you didn’t return the call. My second one, either.”

“I was up in Creekside by then and you still didn’t tell Tamara what you were calling about.”

“It wasn’t her business. I told her personal. She told you personal, didn’t she?” When I didn’t answer, he reached for another peppermint. Outwardly he seemed his usual calm, unruffled self, but there was a kind of savagery in the way he was looking at me — a hint of the cruel streak that ran deep and dark in him. “You used to be somebody who returned personal calls right away.”

“I used to have friends named Eberhardt and Rivera, too. Friends who gave as well as took.” I moved forward and leaned on a corner of his desk with both hands, more to keep him from seeing that the hands weren’t quite steady than for any other reason. “I couldn’t have saved him, can’t you see that? You couldn’t stop him from killing himself, Bobbie Jean couldn’t, how was I supposed to after four years.”

“That’s not the point,” he said. “The point is, you didn’t even try.”

“This is crazy, this whole conversation. We’re like a couple of guys trying to shoot each other down through a bulletproof glass wall.”

“You’re the one who came busting in here.”

“Bang. Now it’s my turn again, right?” I leaned closer, my body bowed across his desk and my face only about a foot from his. He didn’t pull back; whatever else he was, he wasn’t a man who could be intimidated. “No more bullshit, Barney. What happened two weeks ago with you and Eberhardt?”

It was a few tense beats before he answered. His jaws moved, crunching on the peppermint; his breath smelled like a scratch-and-sniff add for Brach’s. He swallowed before he said, “I called him at his office to offer him a claims investigation. Eleven o’clock in the morning. He was so drunk I could barely understand him.”

“What day was that?”

“Same day as my first call to you.”

“Monday?”

“You know it was. Monday morning.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Come on, man. You must’ve known he was drinking heavily before that. You didn’t call me just because he was drunk at 11 A.M.”

“He mumbled something about being ready to throw in the towel. I thought he meant quit the detective racket, but when I asked him he said no, he might as well check out for good. I figured it was the booze talking — I tried to kid him out of it. He wouldn’t kid. He said he was afraid he’d go too far, and even if he didn’t, it was too late for him to come back.”

“Go too far? Meaning what?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t get a coherent answer out of him. He mumbled some more and then hung up. Concerned me enough to want to talk to you about it, get your input. My mistake.”

“Put the frigging needle away, Barney. Second time you called was Wednesday. Follow-up, or had you talked to him again?”

“Both. He called me Tuesday afternoon.”

“Drunk or sober?”

“Sober. Mostly, anyway. Wanted to apologize, he said. Hadn’t meant to lay all his crap on me but he was at the end of his rope. Didn’t see much point in trying to hang on anymore. I asked him flat out if he was seriously thinking about doing away with himself. Took him a while to answer. Then he said, ‘Don’t be surprised if you hear I ate my gun.’ ”

“Those exact words?”

“That’s right. And he hung up again before I could say anything else.”

“What’d you do about it besides call my office again?”

“What you didn’t do,” he said. “Kept trying to get in touch with him. He wasn’t at his office any of the times I phoned, or home when I called there or when I drove out Friday night after work. I left messages on his machine and with Bobbie Jean, but like you, he never got back to me.”

“You didn’t leave messages after Friday night. You see or talk to him over the weekend, or Monday or Tuesday?”

“No, I told you, he never got back to me.”

“The day before he died,” I said, “he deposited five hundred dollars in his checking account. You know anything about that?”

“How would I know anything about it? No.”

“He also wrote a check for the same amount to an unspecified payee. Wouldn’t have been you, would it?”

“Why would he be writing me a five-hundred-dollar check?”

“Payback of a loan, maybe. I’m asking you.”

“No. He didn’t send me any check.”

“So why no messages after Friday night? You quit on him, Barney?”

He didn’t like that, which probably meant it was true. He drew himself up and slammed his hand down on the desk blotter. “I was busy over the weekend, I had other commitments—”

“Me, too, only mine were up in Creekside.”

That bought me a glower. His lips formed an obscenity but he didn’t give voice to it.

I said, “Exactly why do you think Eb tried to get in touch with me?”

“Pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“Say it anyway.”

“He was having second thoughts. Wanted you to talk him out of killing himself.”

“Did he? I thought so, too, for a while, but now I’m not so sure. Why me and not you? You’re the one who was still his pal.”

“But I’m not a hand-holder or a bleeding heart. You are.”

“So he turned to me just like that, after four years? Not Bobbie Jean, not Joe, not a suicide hotline — me, the ex-partner he hated and wanted nothing to do with.”

“Maybe he didn’t hate you as much as you think. Maybe he was just ripped up by all the crap you laid on him before the split.”

“He say that to you?”

“He didn’t have to.”

“Rivera the Omniscient. Did he mention my name either of the last two times you talked to him? Drunk or sober?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t on his mind.”

Anything was possible with a man in the throes of a suicidal depression. Including a visit to a breed of doctor he’d always distrusted. I asked Rivera, “Did he mention a psychologist named Richard Disney?”

“...No. Why?”

“How about a Dr. Caslon? Night ER resident at S.F. General.”

“No. What do they have to do with Eberhardt?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” I said. “He made an appointment to see Disney last Tuesday. He didn’t keep it — canceled at the last minute. Dr. Caslon is the one who referred him.”

“An ER resident? What’s the connection?”

“You tell me. Eberhardt say anything about a recent visit to the hospital?”

“No.”

“Involvement in an accident of some kind?”

“No. Drunk and banged up his car, maybe.”

“There wasn’t any damage to his car.”

“Fell down, got in a fight, whatever.”

“Not according to Bobbie Jean.”

“All right, so he met this Caslon some other way. On one of his cases. Or in a damn bar.” Another peppermint disappeared between the chubby lips. “Why does it matter to you? What he did or didn’t do at the end?”

“It doesn’t matter to you?”

“No.”

“Except where I’m concerned.”

He sucked and chewed and said nothing.

“Well, maybe you don’t care what triggered his suicide,” I said, “but I do. Something had to push him over the edge. I want to know what it was.”

“Maybe it was you,” Rivera said.

“...What?”

“His last resort, last hope, and you didn’t care enough to call him back. You could’ve been the push.”

The skin on my neck and between my shoulder blades seemed to bunch and curl upward. The possibility had never even occurred to me. I said, “Bullshit,” but the denial lacked conviction in my own ears.

Me? For God’s sake, me?

I ate an early dinner, food out of cans that I didn’t really want, alone in my flat. Then I drove to San Francisco General, timing it so I arrived at the emergency room a little before seven o’clock. The time to catch Dr. Caslon, if I could catch him at all, was before he got swept up in ER’s nightly parade of drug overdoses, accident trauma cases, shootings, stabbings, bludgeonings, and other instances of human suffering and human viciousness.

I’d been in the big beige-walled, linoleum-floored waiting room more times than I cared to remember, the last one less than a year ago to deliver a beating victim for treatment. On that night, ER had been experiencing one of its rare lulls; tonight, the staff was busy enough, though it was too early for the heaviest carnage — that usually comes somewhere around the witching hour — and a weeknight besides. A weeping woman cradling an arm swathed in a bloody towel was perched on one bench; on another, an Asian man whose face was a bas-relief of bruises and contusions was being comforted by members of his family; and on a gurney, awaiting transport into one of the examining rooms, lay a black kid about fifteen, his head wrapped in makeshift bandages. Not much business at all, really, for another evening in the urban jungle.

The admissions nurse, closeted behind heavy glass, listened to me tell her why I was there with an air of impassive and remote civility, as if there were several more layers of invisible glass between her world and mine; she’d seen and heard it all, and as long as she was here in this place, she wasn’t letting any of it touch her up close and personal. She would have Dr. Caslon paged, she said, please sit down. I sat down. The page went out over the loudspeaker. I kept on sitting there while the weeping woman was ushered inside by a nurse and an attendant in crisp whites came out and wheeled the black kid away. Nobody paid any attention to the Asian man; he kept sitting there, too, in the bosom of his family, wearing a stunned expression under his mask of lumps.

At the end of ten minutes I went back to the admissions nurse to request another page. No sooner was the doctor’s name out of my mouth than a voice behind me said, “I’m Dr. Caslon. What can I do for you?”

He was an African-American about thirty-five, with one of those rugged faces into which deep lines had already been cut, as if with an etching tool. By the time he was sixty he would resemble one of the Mt. Rushmore heads come to life and sculpted in black granite. Sooner than that, if he kept on working night shift in ER.

I introduced myself and showed him the photostat of my license. Nothing changed in his expression, then or when I said, “I’m here about a man named Eberhardt, Doctor. A former police lieutenant who committed suicide ten days ago.”

“Yes?” he said, but not as if the name or the case meant anything to him.

“It’s possible he was a patient here within the last two or three weeks. And that you may have been the attending physician.”

“I don’t recall the name. What sort of medical emergency?”

“I’m not sure there was one. Probably alcohol-related, if so.”

“Half the cases we get are alcohol-related,” Caslon said. “How did you get my name?”

“You referred him to a psychologist named Richard Disney.”

“Did I? Well, Dr. Disney is an old friend of my father’s; I often refer patients to him... Eberhardt, you said? Two to three weeks ago?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Caslon did some cudgeling of his memory. No good; he shook his head.

“Maybe if I described him...”

Another headshake. “I see so many people,” he said, and the smile that flashed on and off before he spoke again was bitterly humorless. “I remember wounds more easily than I remember faces.”

“I understand, but this is important to me, Doctor. Could you check the admission records? I know that’s an imposition, but all I want to know is whether or not Eberhardt was admitted, and if he was, when and why.”

He glanced at his watch. “I don’t have much time...”

“Please, Doctor.”

“This man Eberhardt. A close friend of yours?”

“And my former partner. The suicide note he left is vague and there are so many unanswered questions...”

Caslon was young enough and compassionate enough to still be swayed by that kind of plea. He consulted his watch again and then said, “All right, but we’ll have to make it quick. How do you spell the name?”

I told him. He stepped around me to the window, asked the nurse to check the files.

And thirty seconds later she said, “We have no admission record for anyone named Eberhardt, Doctor.”

Caslon turned to me. “I’m sorry,” he said, spreading his hands palms up.

“But you did refer him to Dr. Disney; Disney’s receptionist was certain of it. How can that be, if he wasn’t a patient of yours?”

“He may have gotten my name somehow and used it without my knowledge. A referral doesn’t always come directly from one doctor to another, you know.”

“You mean Eberhardt could’ve called Disney’s office and used your name and they wouldn’t have checked with you?”

“That’s right. No reason for them to, unless the patient were to give them cause.” Caslon’s eyes shifted once more to his watch. “I’m sorry,” he said again, distractedly this time, and started to move away.

I went after him, pressed one of my business cards into his hand and asked him to please give Eberhardt’s name some more thought when he had free time. He looked at the card blankly, as if it were an unidentifiable object; tucked it into the pocket of his uniform jacket just as the entrance doors thumped open and a team of paramedics wheeled a stretcher inside. An old woman lay on the gurney, an oxygen mask fitted over her nose and mouth. In half a dozen strides Dr. Caslon was beside her, bending and talking to one of the paramedics; he’d forgotten all about me as soon as he saw his first patient of the night.

I’ll never hear from him, I thought.

This finishes it. Now I’ll never know.