Private Eyes

11

The stairway bottomed at a short hallway just outside a pantry as big as my living room. We walked through it and into the kitchen, a banquet-sized galley painted custard-yellow and floored with white hexagonal ceramic tiles. There were two walls of coolers and freezers, oiled butcher-block counters, and lots of copper pots hanging from cast-iron ceiling racks.

No cooking smells. A bowl of fruit sat on one of the counters. The industrial eight-burner stove was bare.

Gina Ramp led me out, past a second, smaller kitchen, a silver room, and a paneled dining hall that could accommodate a convention. Looking from side to side, calling out Melissa’s name.

Getting silence in return.

We backtracked, made a couple of turns, and ended in the room with the painted ceiling beams. Two men in tennis whites came through the French doors, holding rackets and wearing towels around their necks. Both were big and well built.

The younger man was in his twenties, with thick shaggy yellow hair worn past his shoulders. A long thin face was dominated by narrow dark eyes and a cleft chin deep enough to hide a diamond. His tan had taken more than one summer to build.

The second man- in his early fifties, I guessed- was thickset but not flabby, a lifelong athlete who’d stayed in condition. Heavy-jawed and blue-eyed. Executive-cut black hair with gray temples, clipped gray mustache precisely as wide as his mouth. Seamed, ruddy complexion. Marlboro Man goes Country Club.

He cocked an eyebrow and said, “Gina? What’s up?” His voice was mellow and resonant, the kind that seems friendly even if it isn’t.

“Have you seen Melissa, Don?”

“Sure, just a minute ago.” Directing his gaze at me. “Something the mat-?”

“Do you know where she is, Don?”

“She left with Noel-”

“With Noel?”

“He was doing the cars, she came running out like a bat out of Hades, said something to him, and the two of them drove off. In the Corvette. Something wrong, Geen?”

“Oh, boy.” Gina sagged.

The mustachioed man put his arm around her shoulder. Cast another searching look at me. “What’s going on?”

Gina forced a smile and fluffed her hair. “It’s nothing, Don. Just a- this is Dr. Delaware. The psychologist I told you about. He and I were trying to talk to Melissa about college and she got upset. I’m sure it’ll blow over.”

He held her arm, pursed his lips in a way that made his mustache peak in the middle, and arched his eyebrows again. Strong and silent. Another one to the camera born…

Gina said, “Doctor, this is my husband, Donald Ramp. Don, Dr. Alex Delaware.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Ramp extended a big hard hand and we shook briefly. The younger man had retreated to a corner of the room.

Ramp said, “They can’t have gotten too far, Geen. If you’d like, I can go after them, see if I can haul ’em back.”

Gina said, “No, it’s okay, Don.” She touched his cheek. “The price of living with a teenager, darling. Anyway, I’m sure she’ll be back fairly soon- maybe they just went to get gas.”

The younger man was examining a jade bowl with a fascination too intense to be genuine. Lifting it, putting it down, lifting it again.

Gina turned to him. “How are you today, Todd?”

The bowl descended and stayed put. “Great, Mrs. Ramp. And you?”

“Muddling along, Todd. How did Don do today?”

The blond man gave her a toothpaste-ad smile and said, “He’s got the moves. All he needs is to work.”

Ramp groaned and stretched. “These old bones rebel against work.” Turning to me: “Doctor, this is Todd Nyquist. My trainer, tennis coach, and all-around Grand Inquisitor.”

Nyquist grinned and touched one finger to his temple. “Doctor.”

Ramp said, “Not only do I suffer, I pay for it.”

Obligatory smiles all around.

Ramp looked at his wife. “You sure there’s nothing I can do, honey?”

“No, Don. We’ll just wait. They’re bound to be back soon. Noel’s not finished yet, is he?”

Ramp looked out the doors, toward the cobbled courtyard. “Doesn’t look like it. The Isotta and the Delahaye are both due for a wax and all he’s been doing so far is washing.”

“Okay,” said Gina. “So they probably did go for gas. They’ll be back, and then Dr. Delaware and I will take up where we left off. You go shower off, mister. Don’t worry about a thing.”

Tight voice. All of them tight. Squeezing out chitchat like meat through a grinder.

Tight silence.

I felt as if I’d wandered into the middle of a collaboration between Noel Coward and Edward Albee.

Gina said, “Drink, anyone?”

Ramp touched his midriff. “Not for me. I’m going for that shower. Good to meet you, Doctor. Thanks for everything.”

I said, “No problem,” not sure what he was thanking me for.

He used one end of the towel to wipe his face, winked at no one in particular, and began walking off. Then he stopped, looked over his shoulder at Nyquist. “Hang in, Todd. See you Wednesday. If you promise to spare the thumbscrews.”

“You bet, Mr. R.,” said Nyquist, grinning again. To Gina: “I could handle a Pepsi, Mrs. R. Or anything else you got that’s cold and sweet.”

Ramp continued to look at him, hesitated as if contemplating return, then walked off.

Nyquist flexed his knees, stretched his neck, ran his fingers through his mane, and checked the netting on his racket.

Gina said, “I’ll get Madeleine to fix you something.”

Nyquist said, “Sure bet,” but his grin died.

Leaving him standing there, she escorted me to the front of the house.

We sat in overstuffed chairs in one of the caverns, surrounded by works of genius and fancy. Any space not filled with art was paneled with mirror. All that reflection turned true perspective into a carny joke. Nearly engulfed by cushions, I felt diminished. Gulliver in Brobdingnag.

She shook her head and said, “What a disaster! How could I have handled it better?”

I said, “You did fine. It’s going to take time for her to readjust.”

“She doesn’t have that much time. Harvard needs to be notified.”

“Like I said, Mrs. Ramp, it may not be realistic to expect her to be ready by some arbitrary deadline.”

She didn’t respond to that.

I said, “Suppose she spends a year here- watching you get better. Getting comfortable with the changes. She can always transfer to Harvard during her sophomore year.”

“I guess,” she said. “But I really want her to go- not for me.” Touching her bad side. “For her. She needs to get away. From this place. It’s so- It’s a world to itself. All her needs met, everything done for her. That can be crippling.”

“Sounds like you’re afraid that if she doesn’t leave now she never will.”

She sighed.

“Despite all this,” she said, taking in the room, “all the beauty, it can be malignant. A house with no doors. Believe me, I know.”

That startled me. I thought I’d concealed it, but she said, “What is it?”

“The phrase you just used- a house with no doors. When I treated her, Melissa used to draw houses without doors and windows.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, my.” Touching the pocket that held the inhaler.

“Did you ever use the phrase in front of her?”

“I don’t think I did- that would be terrible if I did, wouldn’t it? Putting that image into her head.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. Hear ye, hear ye, the great yea-sayer cometh. “It gave her a concrete image to deal with. When she got better she started drawing houses with doors. I doubt this place will ever be for her what it was for you.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“I can’t be sure of anything,” I said gently. “I just don’t think we need to assume that your prison is hers.”

Despite the gentleness, it wounded her. “Yes, of course you’re right. She’s her own person- I shouldn’t see her as my clone.” Pause. “So you think it’ll be okay for her to live here?”

“In the interim.”

“How long of an interim?”

“Long enough for her to get comfortable about leaving. From what I saw nine years ago, she’s pretty good at pacing herself.”

She said nothing, gazed at a ten-foot grandfather clock veneered with tortoise shell.

I said, “Maybe they decided to go for a drive.”

“Noel hasn’t finished his work,” she said. As if that settled it.

She got up, walked around the room slowly, staring at the floor. I began taking a closer look at the paintings. Flemish and Dutch and Renaissance Italian. Works I felt I should have been able to identify. But the pigments were brighter and fresher than any I’d seen in museum Old Masters; some of them bordered on lurid. I remembered what Jacob Dutchy had said about Arthur Dickinson’s passion for restoration. Realized how much of a dead man’s aura remained in the house.

House as monument.

Mausoleum sweet mausoleum.

From across the room, she said, “I feel terrible. I meant to thank you. Right off, as soon as we were introduced. For all you did years ago, as well as what you’re doing now. But we got into things and I forgot. Please forgive me. And accept my disgracefully belated thanks.”

I said, “Accepted.”

She looked at the clock again. “I do hope they get back soon.”

They didn’t.

A half hour passed- thirty very long minutes filled with small-talk and a crash course in Flemish art delivered with robotic enthusiasm by my hostess. Throughout it all I kept hearing Dutchy’s voice. Wondered what the voice of the man who’d taught him sounded like.

When she ran out of things to say, she stood and said, “Maybe they did go out for a drive. There’s no sense in your waiting around. I’m so sorry for wasting your time.”

Pushing myself up from the quicksand cushions, I followed her on a furniture-strewn obstacle course that ended at the front doors.

She opened one of them and said, “When she does come home, should I get right into it with her?”

“No, I wouldn’t push it. Let her behavior be your guide. When she’s ready to talk, you’ll know it. If you want me to be there next time you have a discussion, and that suits Melissa, I can be. But she may be angry at me. Feel I betrayed her.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to spoil things between you.”

“That can be fixed,” I said. “What’s important is what goes on between you.”

She nodded. Patted her pocket. Came closer and touched my face, the way she’d touched her husband’s. Gave me a close-up look at her scars- a white brocade- and kissed my cheek.

Back on the freeway. Back on planet Earth.

Sitting in the jam at the downtown interchange, I listened to the Gipsy Kings and tried not to think about whether I’d screwed up. Thought about it anyway and decided I’d done the best I could.

When I got home I phoned Milo. He picked up and growled, “Yeah?”

“Gee, what a friendly greeting.”

“Keeps away scambags trying to peddle bullshit and geeks taking surveys. What’s up?”

“Ready to get to work on the ex-con thing?”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it, figure fifty an hour plus expenses is reasonable. That going to sit okay with the clients?”

“I didn’t have a chance to get into the financial details yet. But I wouldn’t worry- there’s no shortage of funds. And the client says she has full access to plenty.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“She’s only eighteen and-”

“You want me to work for the kid herself, Alex? Jesus, how many cookie jars we talking about?”

“This is no ditsy teenager, Milo. She’s had to grow up fast- too fast. And she has her own money, assured me payment would be no problem. I just need to make sure she realizes exactly what it entails. Thought I’d get to it today, but something else came up.”

“The kid herself,” he said. “Do I look like Mister Rogers or something?”

“Well,” I said, “I know you like me just the way I am.”

He said, “Jesus,” again. Then: “Tell me more about this. Who, exactly, got damaged and what kind of damage.”

I started describing the acid attack on Gina Ramp.

He said, “Whoa. Sounds like the McCloskey case.”

“You know it?”

“I know of it. It was a few years before my time, but it was a teaching case at the academy. Interrogation procedures.”

“Any particular reason?”

“The weirdness of it. And the guy who taught the course- Eli Savage- was one of the original interrogators.”

“Weird in what way?”

“In terms of motive. Cops are like anyone else- they like to classify, reduce things to basics. Money, jealousy, revenge, passion, or some sort of sexual kink sums up ninety-nine percent of your violent-crime motives. This one just didn’t fit any of those. The way I remember learning it, McCloskey and the victim had once had a thing going, but it ended friendly, half a year before he had her burned. No pining away on his part, no poison pen or love letters or anonymous phone calls or any of the harassment you typically see in an unrequited passion situation. And she wasn’t going out with any other guys, so jealousy seemed out of the question. Money wasn’t a strong bet because he had no insurance out on her, no one discovered any way he’d made a dime off the attack, and he actually paid out plenty to the yog who did the dirty work. In terms of revenge, there was some speculation that he blamed her for his business going bad- he had a modeling agency, I think.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be. You don’t forget a case like that- I remember they showed us photos of her face. Before and after and during- she had tons of surgery. It was a real mess. I kept wondering what kind of person could do that to someone else. Now, of course, I know better, but those were the days of sweet innocence. Anyway, in terms of the money motive, it turns out losing the agency had nothing to do with her either. McCloskey was on the skids due to his drinking and some very heavy doping, and he himself went out of his way to make that clear during his interrogation. Kept telling the detectives he’d fucked up his life, begged to be put out of his misery. Wanting everyone to know that his putting the contract out on her had nothing to do with business.”

“What did it have to do with?”

“That’s the big question mark. He refused to say, no matter how hard they pressed him. Turned deaf and mute any time the issue of motive came up. Leaving only the psychopath angle, but no one uncovered any history of violence- he was a punk and an asshole, liked to hang around gangsters, do the Vegas bit. But that was more of a pose- everyone who knew him said he was a weenie.”

“Weenies can snap.”

“Or get elected to office. So, sure, maybe he was faking it. Maybe he was a goddam sadist and hid it so well, no one ever figured it out. That was Savage’s hunch- something psychological, maybe kinky. The case stuck in his craw. He prided himself on being a top-notch questioner. He ended the lecture with this speech about how McCloskey’s motive didn’t really matter; what counted was the asshole was behind bars for a long time, and that was our job: put ’em away, let the shrinks figure ’em out.”

I said, “A long time’s up.”

“How long did he stay in?”

“Thirteen years on a twenty-three-year sentence- time off for good behavior. Then they gave him parole for six.”

“Usually parole’s limited to three- probably made some kind of a deal.” He grimaced. “Par for the course. Burn someone’s face, rape a baby, whatever, attend remedial reading class and don’t get caught shanking anyone and you walk in half the time.” He paused, said, “Thirteen, huh? That would be some time ago. And you’re saying he just got back to town?”

I nodded. “He spent most of his parole in New Mexico and Arizona. Working on an Indian reservation.”

“The old do-gooder scam.”

“Six years is a long time to scam.”

“But who knows if he behaved himself for six years- who knows how many dead Indians paid for it. Even if he did, six isn’t that long if the alternative is shoveling shit in some landfill or doing more time. Did he also pull a Chuckie Colson and find Jesus?”

“I don’t know.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“Just that he’s off parole, free and clear, and that his last parole officer’s named Bayliss and he’s ready to retire or already has.”

“Sounds like your eighteen-year-old’s a pretty good sleuth herself.”

“She learned all of this from one of the servants- a guy named Dutchy, kind of a super-butler. He kept tabs on McCloskey from the time he was convicted. Very protective of the whole family. But he’s dead now.”

“Ah,” he said. “Leaving the helpless rich to protect themselves. Has McCloskey tried to get in touch with the family?”

“No. As far as I know, the victim and her husband aren’t even aware he’s back in town. Melissa- the girl- knows and it’s hanging over her head.”

“For good reason,” he said.

“So you do think McCloskey’s dangerous.”

“Who knows? On the one hand you’ve got the fact that he’s been out of jail for six years and hasn’t made any moves. On the other, you’ve got the fact that he left the Indians and came back here. Maybe there’s a good reason that has nothing to do with nastiness. Maybe not. Bottom line is it would be a smart idea to find out. Or at least try.”

“Ergo…”

“Yeah, ergo. Time to sharpen up the old private eye. Okay, if she wants me to, I’ll do it.”

“Thanks, Milo.”

“Yeah, yeah. The thing is, Alex, even if he does have a solid reason for being back, I’d still be concerned.”

“Why’s that?”

“What I told you before- the motive thing. The fact that no one knows why the hell he did it. No one ever got a fix on him. Maybe thirteen years opened him up and he blabbed to a cellmate. Or talked to some jail shrink. But if he didn’t, that means he’s a secretive fucker. Mucho patient. And that pushes my buttons. Fact is, if I was less of a macho, invincible guy, that would goddam well scare me.”