Irresistible Impulse

TWENTY

Marlene awakened to birdsong and the sweet voice of the cello. She lay in bed for a few minutes listening, cozy within the bedclothes (an actual featherbed, the first she had ever slept in) watching gray-blue light streak the patterned wallpaper. The room was of a comfortable smallness, as a bedroom should be, and full of old, slightly shabby, lovely things-real lace curtains, a wardrobe inlaid with flowers and cupids, the brass bedstead on which she lay. She mused, as often before, on the insoluble mystery of family life, on how this marvelous environment, so secure, so tasteful, could have produced an Edie and a Ginnie Wooten. The cello swelled to a peak, stopped in mid-phrase, and after a brief pause, began again from the beginning of the movement, the second of Schubert’s Rosamunde quartet.

With a sigh Marlene heaved out of bed, washed, dressed, armed herself, and went down to the kitchen, where Bridget Marney supplied her with egg, toast, excellent coffee, and conversation about geraniums and dogs. Ms. Wooten was not to be disturbed in the mornings: the iron law of Wooten Island, to which no conceivable danger might make an exception. Marlene fed Sweety his two pounds of kibble, walked him, and put him on guard. Mr. Marney, a male version of his wife (pleasant, sixties, weather-worn), arrived just as Marlene was finishing her second cup, and led her to the boathouse, in whose damp shade lay a half dozen craft: a couple of Boston Whalers with fifty-horse outboards, a slim wooden rowing boat, a dory with a center-mounted diesel, a racy wooden speedboat, and a forty-foot Chris-Craft in mahogany, circa 1925. They took the speedboat.

Twenty minutes later, Marlene was at the marina dock. She waited, smoked a cigarette, watched the faint breeze pimple the still water of Sag Harbor. A horn sounded. To Marlene’s surprise, it was not Harry come to pick her up but Wolfe.

“I’m surprised to see you,” she said as they drove off. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Good,” he said in a tone that did not encourage exploration. He seemed to regret their brief intimacy in the hospital. Clearly, he was one of those men who wish not to think that they can ever be anything but big, strong, and ready for action. As they approached the tennis club, Wolfe said, “Harry wants me to go with the tour. The client-”

Marlene felt a quick stir of irritation, which she stifled. Edie hadn’t mentioned Wolfe, and despite what Marlene had told her husband, she felt herself entirely capable of guarding Wooten by herself. She grunted assent and got out of the car.

A dull day on the courts passed. There were no copycat attacks. In the tournament, Trude Speyr came in second to a Yugoslav woman who had not been threatened with mutilation and death, which Marlene thought not surprising. Harry was busy arranging the rest of the tour, which Wolfe would join as chief bodyguard-next stop, Short Hills, New Jersey. Marlene made herself at home in Mort Griffin’s office and got Sym on the phone to check messages and then spoke to Tranh, who seemed to be holding everything together rather better than Marlene herself did when she was there. After listening to his report, Marlene said, “Sounds great, Vinh, you’re a national treasure. Harry will be back late today to take over. Anything else?”

“No, I do not believe so. I was somewhat surprised to see that the machine gun was missing from its place. I had thought that you did not approve of such weapons.”

“I don’t. When did you notice it was missing?”

“These past few days. Since you left for the tennis match.”

“Shit! Dane probably swiped it back. I’ll talk to him.”

Marlene next called the garage, where a man told her that it was not merely the alternator that had gone but the coil and a considerable, but yet to be tallied, number of spark plug wires, and did she really want to put that kind of money into the car. She did.

Then she called her loft, where she spoke to Posie, who wrenched at her heart with blandly told tales of the twins’ narrow escapes from poisoning, scorching, sharp instruments, and other immolation, and held them each up to the phone so that they could whine, babble, and fret into the instrument, and scarify further their mother’s heart. Lucy was, in comparison, an oasis of good sense. She discounted heavily the tales of disaster, said everything was fine, that meals were regular, the loft was reasonably neat, don’t worry, and can I still come out to the island when you’re finished guarding?

“I think it’ll be okay, Luce, but we have to check with Ms. Wooten.”

“Is there swimming?”

“I think there’s a pool.”

“Oh, great! I’ll bring my red Speedo.”

And more in that vein, until she signed off and Karp came on.

“Disaster upon disaster, I hear,” said Marlene.

“Exaggeration,” said Karp lightly. “We hardly know you’re gone.”

“I believe it. How’s the trial?”

“Trying,” said Karp.

“I see. You going to win?”

“Doubtful. I’m pushing not to lose. What’s happening with Dr. Dope out there?”

“Hasn’t made a move yet. I may have to stir him up a little.”

A pause. “That sounds like a good plan, Marlene,” said Karp in a tight voice. Spiky, spiky. They quickly ended the call, by mutual agreement.

Well, that was depressing enough, thought Marlene. My sons are being raised by a hippie slut victim, my marriage seems to be in the toilet, my daughter … well, my daughter seems to be moving into the role of Family Sane Person. Maybe I should ask her advice. These and other increasingly maudlin and self-pitying fancies occupied her as she twirled back and forth in Griffin’s expensive leather swivel chair, and toyed with her split ends, until her reverie was interrupted by the entrance of her partner.

“I was looking for you. They’re gone,” said Harry.

Marlene returned to good-little-soldier mode. “The star?”

“The star, the Germans, and Wolfe. I’m going back to the city. You got your car back?”

Marlene explained about the VW.

“You could rent one, no, here’s a better idea. You could use Wolfe’s. Ask the kid for the keys.”

Marlene did so. Wolfe’s car was immaculately kept, smooth-running, and it had that terrific stereo. Marlene chose Greatest Hits of the ‘70s for the drive back to Sag Harbor. “Best of My Love” by the Emotions; “I’m Not in Love” by 10cc; “Love Will Keep Us Together” by the Captain and Tenille. Who could forget them! Marlene was slightly hoarse, but with a mood much improved, by the time she pulled into the marina. There she found Mr. Marney loading groceries and propane tanks into the Wooten speedboat, a happy accident. While he worked, she ran to a tourist shop near the marina and bought a black nylon tank suit (size five), rubber zoris, a cheap straw hat, and a straw carry-all. It was starting to turn hot, and Marlene thought she would spend the day by the pool.

The body still drew looks, Marlene found. When she walked out onto the pool deck at Wooten’s Island, she was rewarded by a rustle of interested movement among the group of oiled degenerates gathered around the shallow end, the kind of stir you see among crocodiles when a gazelle comes down to drink. Marlene noted this, and noted also the presence of Ginnie Wooten and Vincent Robinson. The others were typical rich trash, all slim, smooth, tanned, and damned. She settled her things on a wooden lounger near the deep end, walked to the diving board, and dived in.

The air was hot, the water delightfully cool. Marlene did three easy lengths and then emerged, dripping, her suit a glistening second skin. It had, naturally, worked its way up between her buttocks, but she did not bother with the traditional coming-out-of-pool finger flick, but left them attractively in view as she walked back to her lounger. She spread a towel, lay down, put on her sunglasses, and waited. In five minutes, she heard the lounger next to hers creak and a voice say, “I came over to see if you needed help getting your ass back into your suit.”

“No, thank you,” said Marlene, recognizing the voice. “We meet again, Doctor.”

“A line from every horror movie,” said Robinson happily. “I should tell you that displays of forbidden flesh are frowned on at this pool. Little Edie insists on it; otherwise, we would dispense with suits altogether. Also, no fucking in the pool during daylight hours. Those are the rules.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I stand corrected.”

“Would you like to fuck me in the pool tonight?”

“No, Doctor, I’m working,” said Marlene.

“Oh, right. Little Edie’s stalker. How tragic for her! Well, then, for the nonce I’ll have to content myself with studying your remarkably generous pubic bush. Is that your Italian heritage, I wonder?”

“Sicilian. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

He laughed. “Meanwhile, what about a drink?”

“Is there a bar?”

“Indeed there is. Fully stocked, right there under the awning by the cabanas. What can I get you?”

“You can get me a tray on which there is a bucket of ice, a sealed bottle of tonic, a sealed bottle of Gilbey’s, a lime, a little knife, and a glass.”

Robinson laughed again. “Oho! She’s afraid of being drugged, is she? Drugged and dragged into the shrubbery for obscene delights. That’s your husband’s influence, I imagine.”

One of the disadvantages of having only one eye is that you can’t check things out from the corner of your blind side. Marlene shifted her position so that she could look Robinson in the face as she said, “Yes, he thinks you murdered your nurse with drugs.”

Robinson smiled delightedly, as if she had just told him she liked his eyes. “Yes, I know he does. He had that nigger cop following me around half the winter. I suppose I should be insulted. I mean, really, the least he could’ve done is send a white man. I saw him on television recently, your hubby, pounding some little jig. I almost warmed toward him. He really is quite a gigantic Jew, odd, because we always say, ‘little Jew,’ don’t we. Does he have an absolutely gigantic willy?”

“Gigantic enough,” said Marlene. “Did you kill your nurse?”

“Probably. She was certainly growing tedious enough to deserve it. One thing I can’t abide is a tedious woman. Like little Edie, for example. Oh, I’m forgetting our drinks …!” Robinson lifted his arm and snapped his fingers twice.

To Marlene’s surprise, Ginnie Wooten rose from among the group at the shallow end and trotted over to them, wobbling slightly on heeled sandals. She was wearing a red thong bikini on her skeletal body. Marlene noticed that she kept her eyes down while Robinson gave his order, and that there were two fine chains running from her crotch down each leg to ankle cuffs.

“A serviceable slave, actually,” said Robinson as she walked away to the bar. “Of course, she’s not a real slave, so one’s, let us say, palette of outrages is limited, but one mustn’t complain. I noticed you looking at her little chains. They go up to studs embedded in the labia. A constant reminder and also, of course, the slight, continual sexual irritation. Very effective in producing the proper attitude.”

Marlene watched his face, which she still found attractive, although now in a horrifying way, like the sick attraction of subway tracks or a loaded gun. She had never seen an expression like his on a human face before: the eyes avid, bright, intelligent, utterly without any recognizable human emotion. It was like looking at a mantis. His mouth was fixed in a meaningless smile. Marlene found it hard to imagine why, when he walked down a street, people didn’t spontaneously drop what they were doing and tear him to pieces.

“Why did you become a physician, Dr. Robinson?” she asked spontaneously.

“For the drugs, of course,” he threw back. “And the power. The only power that means anything is power over the human body, preferably one body at a time, and we doctors have that par excellence.”

“So you didn’t take the Hippocratic oath?”

Robinson giggled. “No. Sadly, I was ill that day.”

Ginnie came back with a tray containing the media for making gin and tonics and placed it slowly, drugged-careful, on a small folding table. As she bent over, Robinson said something into her ear. She smiled, turned her burnt eyes briefly on Marlene, and walked off.

“I just told her that I was thinking of us all going over to the big house tonight and tying you up and letting her use her manicure set on you. Snip, snip. Make us a little drinkie there, would you?”

“No,” said Marlene equably. “And I think I’ll pass on mine too.”

“Oh, I hurt your feelings! I’m always doing that, I don’t know why. And we should be friends, you know. We’re very much alike.”

“You think so.”

“I do. I’ve been looking into your career. Both of us make our own rules, both of us do just as we please, the only difference being that you’re a hypocrite, and feel obliged to justify your actions-how many people have you killed? — as being in service of some notional higher good, whereas I do what I like merely because it pleases me. The will is all.”

“The Marquis de Sade,” said Marlene.

“Exactly! If you let yourself go, I think you could be one of his more complete and proficient devotees.”

“But he ended up in jail, didn’t he? As will you.”

“Oh, really? And who is going to put me there? Your big jewboy?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. One thing I’ve learned, Doctor, in my years of dealing with scumbags, is that they are all au fond, whatever their pretensions, mere assholes. They all make mistakes, they all get caught, if not for one thing, then for the next, and so will you. You’ll love Attica, by the way, especially once the word about your racial attitudes hits the cell blocks.”

Robinson gave her his boy-pulling-wings-off-flies grin. “Why, I think you really believe that! What a quaint idea: crime does not pay. But nothing pays better. Haven’t you heard that every great fortune was founded on a crime? A case in point is young Rohbling. Do you really imagine that he’ll spend a single day in jail? Of course, to be fair, I’m not nearly as well fixed as the Rohblings, but I intend to change that quite soon.”

“Really? How?”

He laughed and said in a fake whisper, “No, that’s a secret. Ginnie knows. Why don’t you ask her? You’re such a favorite of hers.”

Suddenly, Marlene was overcome by a boredom so oppressive that it seemed to darken the sun. She had met more than her share of bad guys, and they were universally bores. The violent criminal, almost by definition, is grotesquely self-involved, but Robinson seemed to her to occupy a class of his own. Talking to him was like watching a bad movie as a goof, fascinating in its awfulness for a while, until you realized that there were more rewarding things you could be doing.

She stood up abruptly, stripped her towel off the lounger, and thrust it into her straw bag.

“Going somewhere?” Robinson asked, standing as well.

“Yes, away from you.”

“But why? I thought we were having such a nice conversation.”

“No, you didn’t. You were annoying me and annoying your girlfriend by talking to me, and loving it because you’re a sadistic little shithead.”

Robinson’s smile grew tighter. He reached out and grabbed Marlene’s left wrist. He said, in what was meant to be a commanding voice, “Sit down, you stupid bitch!”

Marlene sighed and instead of pulling away from him, as he had expected, went toward him, jamming his calves up against the lounger frame. Then she pulled the.45 out of the straw bag and jammed it hard into his belly.

“How crude,” he said disdainfully, releasing her. She took the gun away from his belly and then, almost without willing it, and not pausing to justify it through the Principle of Double Effect, she flicked her wrist and snapped the muzzle of the weapon into his groin, and when he flinched, she dropped her shoulder and shoved him backward over the lounger. His head knocked against the fieldstone terrace with a satisfying coconut sound. She saw the look on his face. Pain, rage, but also triumph. As she walked away, she felt sick at heart.

“Dr. Perlsteiner,” said Karp, facing his first and only rebuttal witness, “could you tell us something of your background and qualifications?” This was why he had declined the stipulation of expert qualifications; he loved this part.

Perlsteiner said, “I received my medical education at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and then did postgraduate work at various hospitals in Berlin, and then I went to Vienna to be certified as a psychoanalyst.”

“And who was your teacher in Vienna?”

“Sigmund Freud.”

As always, a stir went through the courtroom. Even the most benighted recognized the magic name. In the pissing contest among shrinks that made up an insanity defense trial, this was the unmatchable squirt.

Karp took him through the rest of his resume: private practice in Berlin, escape from the Nazis, capture in France, the concentration camp, the new life in America, long service as a forensic psychiatrist at Bellevue. Then:

“Have you examined the defendant, and the record of his behavior preceding and after the murder in question?”

“I have.”

“As a result of this examination, did you reach any conclusions as to whether Jonathan Rohbling, at the time of the murder of Jane Hughes, lacked substantial capacity to comport his behavior to the requirements of the law, by reason of mental disease or defect.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And what were they?”

“I concluded that he did not lack that capacity. He knew what he was doing and that it was wrong.”

This was the formal rebuttal, what the People had to show beyond a reasonable doubt. Karp paused for a moment to let it sink in.

“Doctor, tell us, on what do you base this conclusion?” asked Karp, and off they went. Perlsteiner had a good courtroom voice, carrying but not harsh, and with a slight accent that recalled, for the older jurors, Albert Einstein and the actors hired to play distinguished scientists in the movies. Rohbling, he concluded, although by no means playing with a full deck, was not suffering from schizophrenia, paranoid or otherwise. How could he tell?

“By his competence,” answered Perlsteiner. “I will explain. Schizophrenia exhibits in many forms. It is a labile disease, and in fact, we often now speak of ‘the schizophrenias/ plural, do you see? But it is a true disease of the mind, just like polio is a disease of the motor nerves. If you suffer from schizophrenia, you can’t use your mind properly, just like polio, for example, you can’t use your legs. So, when I hear of a person who dresses himself up, who prepares his clothes, his wig, his makeup, just so, who travels on the subway, to what is an alien culture, for him, and passes himself off successfully as a member of that culture, who befriends a respectable elderly woman, who makes his escape after committing a crime, who eludes the police for some time, who recalls a psychiatric appointment and attends it, and presents a facade of normality strong enough to deceive a psychiatrist, then I say to you, whatever this man is suffering from, it is not schizophrenia. Schizophrenics are, typically, nearly helpless people.”

“And what in your opinion is Mr. Rohbling suffering from?”

“Well, he is compulsive-obsessive-compulsive syndrome, to be technical. Infantile, narcissistic. He feels bad about himself, and why not? He’s a young man, he has no discipline, he doesn’t work, he doesn’t go to school. His father has contempt for him, ignores him.” Perlsteiner shrugged. “It makes him feel better, disguising himself. Now he is in control.”

“And why, in your opinion, did he kill Jane Hughes?”

“Oh, impossible to say. I would not even guess at the psychology.”

Karp accepted this as a welcome departure from Dr. Bannock’s encyclopedic understanding of Rohbling’s motivation, and moved on to a point-by-point refutation of the defense’s psychiatric testimony, from which it emerged that Dr. Perlsteiner (and by extension, Dr. Freud) did not think much of modern American psychiatry. The business about the disease switching on just when it was convenient-nonsense! The disease was variable, true, but once florescent, it did not wane back to normality for short periods in the way proposed. Never. He deplored especially the tendency to medicalize every nasty character trait, and to attribute antisocial acts to dark compulsions, traceable, of course, to childhood trauma. Thank you, no further questions.

Waley’s cross-examination was brief. One of the signs of a great cross-examiner is knowing when not to do it, as here. Perlsteiner was a strong witness and a sympathetic one. To try to grind him down would invite unwanted comparisons with the Gestapo. So Waley took only a few artistic cuts. Dr. P. was how old? Seventy-four. Not on the American Board of Psychiatry? Not a member of the New York Psychiatric Institute? No promotions in the past fifteen years? Few publications? Why was that, Doctor? Waley drew a brief sketch of a distinguished doctor who might have been great once but was clearly past it, out of step with modern psychiatry. Karp thought it was the right move for Waley; it was what he himself would have done. How much the jury would discount Perlsteiner’s testimony and how much they would rely on the presence, wit, and character of the dueling shamans, a contest in which Karp thought Perlsteiner was unbeatable, was at present unknown, but Karp thought, from his observation of the jurors, that the good guys had picked up a few points. Perlsteiner stepped off the stand. The evidentiary phase of People v. Rohbling was finished.

Karp now required a police escort to carry him home. A blue-and-white preceded his usual unmarked car to the Crosby Street loft, and the two cops in it made a lane through the pickets and news crews to the door of the newly installed elevator. He summoned it with a key and rode up, carrying the usual take-out dinner, tonight a bucket o’chicken.

In the loft, gloom prevailed. No one had been in or out for days. The twins were cranky. Zak had a rash, Zik some undefined ailment inclining him to clingy weeping. Posie was keeping them minimally cleaned and fed, but the rest of the loft was starting to resemble the East Village crash pad that was her natural habitat. A burnt pot sat on the stove, and the kitchen was full of its rank scent. Lucy was glum. Her efforts to maintain some vestige of normal home life-setting the table, making a crude salad-broke Karp’s heart.

“Is this going to be over soon, Daddy?” she said in a small voice. She had eaten enough to maintain a starling, and pushed her plate away.

“Yeah, real soon, baby,” he said. “I’m sorry about all this.”

“I miss Mommy.”

“Me too.”

She sighed. “I need a break. This is just like jail.”

Marlene came back from the pool and showered and washed her hair, although the soap did not reach where she really felt dirty. She put on a thick terry-cloth robe she found hanging on a hook, wrapped a towel around her head, put zoris on her feet, grabbed her straw bag, and went downstairs.

She sat in an Adirondack chair on the lawn in front of the house. She lit a cigarette, but crushed it after a few puffs. She felt full enough of toxins. The dog came trotting out from the back of the house, and came up to her and placed his massive head on her lap, looking up at her worshipfully. Marlene stroked the dog’s head and closed her eyes. She tried to remember St. Teresa’s famous chapter on resistance to evil, but the words of the saint were useless to her, too far away in time and situation. Marlene was not a contemplative nun. She wished devoutly for a lap on which she could place her own head and be stroked and told that everything was all right. She missed her family. She wept briefly, and then let her mind go empty. Bees buzzed, sparrows twittered in the rafters, a gull called, the wind came soughing through the grass and the pines off the shining Sound. In the house, the cello began to play, something elegant, classical, full of confidence in the ultimate order of the universe, Haydn perhaps, or Boccherini. Music, nature, her peculiar brand of religion: these performed their usual blessings. Marlene took the towel from her head and let the breeze dry her hair. She slept for little over an hour.

Later, dressed, she ran up and down the rough beach with Sweety, until she was tired and hungry. Meals at the big house were taken, democratically and en famille, in the huge tiled kitchen with the Marneys. Tonight: tomato soup, crab salad, and cold asparagus, ice cream-WASPy, bland, but nourishing food. Neither Marlene nor Edie had much to say, and table talk was dominated by domestic trivia and commentary on food and weather. During the meal they heard the sound of a heavy engine starting up away in the direction of the boathouse.

“That’ll be Ginnie and her friends with Bonito,” said Marney. “She told me to get it ready. Some kind of party. Said she’d be gone most of the night and not to lock the boathouse.”

Marlene recalled that Bonito was the big yacht and became conscious of a mild relaxation around the table, which she shared, provisionally, if she assumed Robinson was off the island for the night. Conversation became lighter, Marlene trotted out some horror stories from her speckled past that seemed amusing now, and Edie described the foibles of a number of famous people. After dinner, Edie spent a good hour on the phone, speaking with her agent and people in various world capitals. Marlene phoned home and spoke to Posie and Lucy. Daddy was taking a nap, should we wake him up? No, honey, let him sleep. I’m coming out to see you, okay, Mom? Sure, honey, pretty soon.

Marlene and Edie chatted after dinner, both politely avoiding the big subject. Marlene mentioned Lucy and how much the child wished to see a house on an island, and Edie extended an invitation, at some vague date in the future, when the current unpleasantness had (presumably) been resolved. At ten-thirty, Edie went off to bed. Marlene prowled around the immediate grounds with Sweety and found all quiet.

She woke from her usual light sleep in the small hours to a creaking, scraping sound. Steps? She waited, but there were no further noises. She could hear the dog snuffling and pacing the hallway, as she knew he did several times in the night. He was clearly not concerned, and therefore there was no one in the house who should not be. She drifted back to sleep.

Just after dawn she was jerked awake by a shrill cry. She raced into Edie Wooten’s bedroom, where she found her client, sitting in bed, her face white as the lined counterpane, staring at the foot of the bed, on which lay a single dark red rose. The note attached to it read, “Soon.”