Other people

Thirty-six Thomassy

You sometimes forget that policemen are government workers, meaning no significant economic motivation, lots of useless paperwork, a life of time spent waiting for something to happen or someone to move a process along a little. To survive, a policeman like a doctor has to immunize himself against the waves of rage and rancor splashed at him by perpetrators and victims alike. A chief of police, who as a young man probably had a surfeit of vitality, is eventually as discouraged as a beat slogger. I pity them. You can't talk to a cop man to man. You're either a supplicant or a superior.

Which leads me to the duty sergeant at the precinct that was holding Koch.

"That psychiatrist needs a psychiatrist," he said.

"What's the problem?"

"He acts like we done something wrong to bring him here."

"Sergeant," I said, "this isn't one of my usual clients or your usual clients. He's a senior professional person and being in this place is like his suddenly finding himself on Mars. I want to talk to him in a private room."

So Koch and I were led to a cubicle on the second floor, where he tried to say six thousand things at once. Trying to calm him down reminded me of the time my car's engine wouldn't shut off when I took the key out and kept shuddering for minutes till it finally collapsed into silence. For the moment I was the psychiatrist and he was the patient. When he was finally quiet, I asked him what he was thinking.

"In Vienna," he said, "my passport was stamped with a red J." His voice fluttered. "Please, Mr. Thomassy, I have never been in a place like this. Get me out of here. I beseech you."

I didn't want to be beseeched by anybody. I told him the routine.

"Listen carefully, Dr. Koch. You had to be booked because an action of yours injured another person. The circumstances are what the judge will listen to, not a policeman. I will get you down to night court and ask for bail. But I need to know the facts. Just the facts, if you can."

"I realize you are being very helpful to me," he said. "I am just a stranger to you."

"You're less of a stranger than most of my clients when I first meet up with them. Please tell me what happened in your apartment."

So he recapped the thing. I asked him to wait in the room while I went out to talk to the detective.

"That's the first psychiatrist we've had in here," said the detective.

"Congratulations," I said. "Let's get him down to night court right now while he's calm."

"Look, mister, we've got seven guys in the lockup got here before he did. I can't spare anybody to go with you now."

"How long?"

"Morning."

"Can I use your phone?"

"Local?"

"Local."

"Sure."

You couldn't dial out. You got the policeman at the switchboard.

"Please get me the officer on duty in the commissioner's office. The number is—"

He knew the number and was already dialing. The detective stopped penciling the form in front of him. He was listening.

When I was connected, I said, "This is George Thomassy. I don't want to bother the commissioner this time of night. I'm up at the twenty-fourth precinct. I've got to get some red tape untangled before a distinguished citizen loses his cool and talks to the newspapers. Yes, I'll wait."

When he got back on he said, "What's the problem?"

"No problem. An intruder was caught in this citizen's apartment, threatened him with a gun, and got injured in the process. All we need to do is get the doctor—"

"A legit doctor?"

"A psychiatrist. Just want to get him down to a judge so we can get him home before he starts talking to the papers."

I looked at the detective. "He wants to talk to you," I said.

The detective took the phone. I could have guessed the conversation. The detective hung up, and without saying a word to me went into another room and came back out with a young cop. "This is Patrolman Mincioni. He'll ride you and the doctor down."

"No cuffs," I said.

"No cuffs."

It would have been easier with one of the Westchester judges. Judge Sprague was a new face for me.

"Your Honor," I said after he read the report the cop put in front of him, "there are several possibilities. If the doctor had had nothing to use in his defense, the intruder would have walked off with a file that is essential to a rape case being tried in Westchester. The people might have lost that case if the file was not available, or was available only to the defendant's counsel. Your Honor, I believe the intruder may have been employed by defense counsel through channels. If Dr. Koch had been brave enough to use the only defense weapon at hand, an ordinary practice dart, and missed, or merely nicked the intruder, the intruder, who was used to carrying a gun, wouldn't have missed Dr. Koch when he shot him and we'd have a corpse instead of a doctor, and a killer on the loose. Because this doctor — and this is not true of all doctors as you know. Your Honor — was not a passive citizen in the face of crime, and luckily disabled the intruder with the one and only dart thrown, the people can proceed with their case in Westchester. Dr. Koch probably deserves a medal instead of the fingerprinting, mugging, and humiliation of the station house, but right now I want to get him home and to bed after his harrowing experience as a good citizen. I don't have to tell you that Dr. Koch's roots in the community suggest that he be released on his own recognizance."

Well, here is this judge in front of a night court full of inner-city ethnics and he's got to let a white middle-class physician off. His face rigid, severe, mock contemplative. Then he said, "Two hundred fifty dollars bail."

I asked Dr. Koch if he had his checkbook with him. He didn't.

"Will it please the court to have the defendant paroled in the custody of counsel?"

"That will be acceptable," said Judge Sprague.

And in no more than ten minutes we were outside. The doctor shook hands with Patrolman Mincioni. Mincioni was respectful, as to a priest.

I drove Koch home. When we got there, he didn't move to get out of the car.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

For a moment he said nothing. Then, "I was thinking of what I will find up there. I don't like hotels, or I might stay in a hotel tonight. Oh well," he said, opening the car door, "we are here." He turned to me. "I don't know — truly — how I would have managed without your help. Please come up for a cup of coffee before you drive home."

I was beat. It was after 3:00 A.M. I wasn't up to conversation. Maybe the old man was scared. Half a cup of coffee was probably a good idea anyway. I double-parked.

"That's all right," said Koch. "Everybody double-parks here."

He showed me the disarray in his study. It was a mess, particularly near the door, where the man had slumped. He pointed to where the bullet had gone into the wall.

"Perhaps my Saturday cleaning woman can come tomorrow," he said. "If I can find her. I will have to see patients in the living room. This has to be cleaned before I can see patients in here."

He started to push one of the file drawers back in and I said, "Don't." I startled him. I guess I said it too sharply. "I think I'd better send a forensic photographer up here in the morning. The police didn't take pictures, did they?"

"No."

"It'll cost, but it's worth it in case I don't get this dismissed."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing to worry about. Leave it to me."

In his kitchen I watched him empty a small paper bag of beans into a hand grinder. He passed the shallow dish of powdered beans in front of my nose. I had to agree the aroma was pleasing. He then dripped hot water through them and offered me exactly what I had asked for, half a cup.

"I won't join you, if you don't mind," he said. "It'll be hard enough to sleep as it is. I wonder how that poor man is doing. The one I hurt."

"I can check for you tomorrow if you'd like to know."

"Oh don't bother yourself."

"No bother. Just a phone call. This coffee tastes as good as the aroma of the beans promised. What is it?"

"Ethiopian Harrar. Zabar's has it sometimes. How old did you tell me you were?"

"I'm forty-four. Why do you ask?"

"Do you think Francine Widmer is in love with you?"

"I wouldn't say that."

"Well, I am saying it. You see—" Koch hesitated just a second — "I also have an inordinate response to her."

I sipped at the coffee.

"That makes two of us," he continued, "with the combined ages—" he laughed — "of one hundred and four, in love with a twenty-seven-year-old. In China they used to venerate age because it represented the wisdom of experience. In Europe, maturity still is respected a bit. In this country, age is despised. America may become a terrible country as the population gets older and older."

I stood up. "Time to go."

"Thank you for coming up. May I give you my check for the bail while you are here?"

"Just mail it to me."

He extended his hand in a warm, sure grip.

"I am not a serious rival," he said. "Except here." And he pointed to his leonine head. "Good night."

I found Francine asleep on top of my bed, her knees drawn up, her two hands under her cheek, a naked child. I rejected the child in me when I was still a child, Koch would say. He'd say that because my father refused to venture out into America, I'd have to do it for both of us. I am my father's keeper. I am my own keeper. I don't need anybody. Not that body on my bed. I have kept myself free of family tyranny by staying single, not fathering any tadpole of my own, observing the bodies of innumerable women the way I am watching her now, from a distance, objects in a Sears catalogue, tools to play with for a week or a season. They went home, sooner or later, to the rest of their lives.

Looking at her lying there contently asleep, I thought how recently I've come to understand about the bodies of women. When you're young, you're exposed to enough locker rooms to know in a few years' time that no two men undressed look alike, and that most parts of most men are pretty damn funny if you don't look at them with loving eyes. But we stereotype the women according to what Francine's father would call the paradigm of an age. Not the rotundness of the Renoirs or of the Latin American women, but the sleek, flat-tummied, long-legged look-alikes who can be photographed almost wholly nude, with or without body make-up, and seem to women as enticing to men, and yet I've never dated a woman who filled the prescription flawlessly. There are always the too-thin eyebrows, the few long hairs growing from the areola, the butt that naked is a bit too big, the thighs that wrinkle a bit from fat that will not come off with exercise. The thing about Francine is that I note those minor imperfections as I did with the others and have feelings about them because they are part of the whole of her. Love isn't blind, and it isn't tolerant. It is encompassing. It doesn't make virtues out of warts, it makes them part of an overwhelming affection for the corpus that envelops the vital organs of someone whom you unreasonably love. When love strikes, reason becomes inoperative. When it becomes operative again, it is probably a sign that that particular love is on the wane, or settling for the kind of lifelong affection and attachment in which warts are condoned.

And it's not just the physical appearances that work that way. I've never known a woman for long who did not, on some occasion, have a breath temporarily worth avoiding. Or one who did not, in the middle of some night, let some flatulence escape. Where is the woman whose stomach does not percolate like a chemistry beaker if you put your ear to it. It could happen with a one-night stand, or during an affair. You can count on these demonstrations that the woman is alive. But when you love the person, the effect of all these demonstrations is different. They are less to be observed and noted than your own breath, which, when foul, you tolerate less. Love is what, acceptance?

Love puts you in a dangerous magnetic field. You can be anywhere, she can be anywhere, the field of force operates. If you can't close the field with your arms, the pain can be exquisite. The operator of person-to-person radar, a force stronger than conscience. It isn't commitment, a conscious act, but a gravitational pull that works your heart, your adrenaline, your breathing, and your balls. Thomassy, don't ruminate, I tell myself, it's not your style. You're used to cases that conclude. Love — even if experience and statistics show how very often it slackens and disappears — is at the time seemingly unending. It's a new experience for you. Don't knock it. Enjoy it.

Francine stirred, opened her eyes, stretched, saw herself naked, and pulled the sheet and blanket up to her chin.

"You could have covered me," she said.

"Not a chance," I answered.