Sleeping Beauty

chapter 29

I walked uphill to my car. The area was almost deserted, as if when the sun had dropped into the sea it had sucked the people along with it.

There was a single light in Dr. Brokaw’s building, on the second floor at the corner. I went up in the laboring elevator and tried the outer door of his office. It was locked.

A man’s voice on the other side of the door said, “Who is that?”

“Lew Archer. I talked to you on the phone, about Harold Sherry.”

“I see.”

He was still and silent for a moment. Then his keys clinked, and one of them turned harshly in the lock. The door opened inward, slowly, as if against pressure. Silhouetted by the light from the waiting room, Dr. Brokaw was a man of medium height with an enormous head.

I saw when he stepped back to let me enter that his macrocephalic head was mostly hair and beard. Between them, his eyes looked out like a forest animal’s, dark and sensitive and vaguely alarmed.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you earlier. I really didn’t expect you to wait. But now that you’re here, come in.”

I followed him across the waiting room into his private office. He shut the door and leaned on it, looking at me with something like repugnance. His beard was shot through with gray, but his eyes were young. They seemed to soften as they looked at me.

“You’re very tired, aren’t you?”

It sounded more like an expression of sympathy than a medical opinion. But it made me aware of my tiredness, which seemed to rise in waves up through my body to my head.

“I’ve covered a lot of territory in the last twenty-four hours. And been getting nowhere.”

“This is nowhere, isn’t it?” His teeth flashed in his beard. “Sit down, Mr. Archer. Rest your feet.”

I waited until he had closed the door and moved to the other side of the desk. His black medical bag was on the desk beside a photograph of a woman whose eyes resembled Brokaw’s. He reached out and turned the picture face down, as if he didn’t want our conversation to be witnessed. I said:

“The emergency patient you went to see just now – was it Harold Sherry?”

“I prefer not to discuss it.”

“That means it was Harold.”

“You’re jumping to an unwarranted conclusion.”

“Then tell me who it was.”

He leaned forward across his desk, and spoke with surprising force. “My patients are my own responsibility. You have no right to cross-question me about them.”

“If you think this is cross-questioning–”

He raised his voice. “Don’t threaten me, Mr. Archer. Attempts have been made to threaten me before now, and I can assure you they were counter-productive.”

“I wasn’t threatening you, or even trying to. I think you’re involved in a situation you don’t understand.”

His mood, or what he chose to show me of it, went through a quicksilver change. “That would be nothing new. It’s the story of my life.”

“I don’t pretend to understand it, either. I do know there’s been a major crime, possibly several. A young married woman named Laurel Russo disappeared last night. This afternoon, Harold Sherry collected a hundred thousand dollars’ ransom money. At the same time, he shot Laurel’s father, who shot back. Both men were wounded, and the woman is still missing.”

As I told him what had happened, his face changed as if it was being exposed to the events themselves. Brokaw seemed to be a very sensitive man, almost too sensitive to be a doctor. I wondered if he wore his beard as a mask.

“Did you see Harold this evening, Doctor? You can understand why the question is important.”

“I can understand why it’s important to you. You call yourself a private detective, but you’re still what my patients call fuzz. You’re the willing representative of a punitive society, and all you really want to do is arrest people and put them behind bars.”

“Is that all I really want to do?”

“I suspect it is.”

The quiet accusation stung. I tried to move like a neutral in the no man’s land between the lawless and the law. But when the shooting started I generally knew which side I belonged on. Polarized by Brokaw, as perhaps Brokaw was polarized by me, I felt very little different from the man in harness I had been twenty years before when I resigned from the Long Beach police force.

“What do you want to do with criminals, Doctor?”

“Treat them. But your word ‘criminals’ begs the question. I want to treat them before they become criminals. It’s one reason I came back here and opened this office.”

“Are you a Long Beach boy?”

“For my sins, I am.”

“Me, too.” I was glad to find some common ground with him. “It was a good place to grow up in.” My words sounded rather hollow in my ears.

“It isn’t so good any more. Half the diseases I treat are drug-related. A large percentage are venereal. Another large percentage are emotional.”

“Have you been treating Harold for emotional trouble?”

He gave me a quick darting look. “How did you guess that?”

“I know something about his background. I talked to his mother this afternoon.”

“I haven’t had that privilege. In fact I’ve had very little time with Harold himself. I’ve only seen him four or five times. Five times.”

“Including this evening?”

“You’re very persistent. But I’m standing on my right to remain silent.”

“I don’t know where you get that right.”

“Harold Sherry is my patient.”

“I can understand your concern for him,” I said. “What I don’t understand is your lack of concern for the young woman he kidnapped.”

“The young woman was not kidnapped. I saw her.”

“Tonight?”

He waved his left hand loosely. “Yes, tonight.”

“Where did you see her?”

“In a motel.”

“With Harold?”

He nodded his shaggy head. “She was obviously there of her own free will.”

“Describe her, Doctor.”

“She’s a nice-looking brunette, rather tall, about five foot six, age about thirty.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Not really. She stayed very much in the background.”

“Then how do you know she was there of her own free will?”

“By the way she acted – the relationship between them. It was a warm relationship. She wasn’t concerned about herself; she was very much concerned about Harold.”

“Is Harold badly wounded?”

His head sank like a buffalo’s between his shoulders. “You’re putting me in an untenable position, Mr. Archer. You won’t be satisfied until I tell you all about Harold and lead you to where he is. But that I refuse to do. My primary duty is to my patients.”

“If Harold is badly hurt, you’re doing him no favor.”

His eyes grew smaller and darker. “I’m a professional man. You have no right to talk to me in this way.”

“Then you do the talking, Doctor.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

We sat in stalemated silence. I looked at the framed diplomas on the wall behind him. He had been trained in good schools and hospitals, not so very many years ago. Judging by the dates on the diplomas, Brokaw wasn’t out of his thirties.

He pushed back his chair. “If you’ll excuse me, I haven’t had anything to eat all day.”

“Go ahead and eat,” I said without moving. “Don’t let the dead man spoil your dinner.”

“What dead man? There is no dead man. Harold’s wound is not serious.”

But Brokaw was upset. What I could see of his face had lost its color and turned sallow. I said:

“You have to report treatment of gunshot wounds to the police.”

“But not to you.”

“You think the police will give Harold a better break than I will? He could be shot on sight, and you know it.”

He shook his head. “That would be a tragedy, a real tragedy. I don’t believe he’s responsible for what happened.”

“Psychologically not responsible, or morally not responsible?”

“Either or both. I’d be willing to bet a good deal that Harold committed no serious crime.”

“You already are betting a good deal, Doctor. Whether or not the girl went with him willingly, there’s no question that he shot her father, and no question that he took the ransom money.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was there. I virtually saw it happen. You picked the wrong patient to bet your professional life on.”

“I don’t pick my patients; they pick me.”

His voice was defensive. He was losing his fine free self-assurance, and I was a little ashamed of what I was doing to him. But I had to get to Harold.

“You mentioned a dead man,” Brokaw said. “The girl’s father didn’t die, did he?”

“No, and he’s not expected to. But I pulled a body out of the sea this morning.” I told him about the man in the tweed suit.

Brokaw’s face went through another change. He looked badly shaken. “Are you telling me that the little man is dead?”

“You know him, Doctor?”

“Harold brought him here to my office yesterday. He wanted me to treat him.”

“What for?”

“The man was in pretty poor shape, both physically and mentally. He had burn scars on his body and face, and he looked as though he’d been through a major disaster at some time in his life. Emotionally, too, he showed indications of severe trauma. He was a dilapidated man, almost too frightened to talk. He seemed very dependent on Harold. He had the dependency and the lack of affect of a man who has spent much of his life in institutions.”

“What kind of institutions?”

Brokaw considered his answer. “Hospitals, possibly mental hospitals. I asked Harold if the man had been a patient, but Harold claimed not to know. He said that he had picked him up on the waterfront and brought him to me because he was in poor shape. But their relationship, when I think of it, wasn’t a casual thing. I got the idea that Harold had a use for the man, and he wanted me to give him something to hold him together. I did give him some tranquilizers. But when I suggested that he should be hospitalized, the two of them walked out on me.” He spread his hands on the desk in front of him and looked at them with distaste. “I’m afraid I didn’t handle it too well.”

“The little man died of drowning. You couldn’t have warded that off.”

“He belonged in a hospital. I should have insisted on getting him into one then and there.”

Brokaw shook his head from side to side, and a loose lock of hair fell in his eyes. He was close to crying. It seemed to me that he allowed himself to feel too much, and that it interfered with his power to act. He spoke haltingly:

“Harold lied to me. He told me that he’d put the man in a hospital.”

“When did Harold tell you that, Doctor?”

He gave me a startled look which melted into guilty sorrow. “When I saw him tonight. He claimed that he had taken him back to the government hospital.”

“Which government hospital?”

“He didn’t say. He was lying, in any case, if what you tell me is true.”

“I’m not lying. I saw the two of them together last night. They had dinner on the Pacific Point wharf, near where the man was drowned. Early this morning, I pulled his body out of the water. Don’t you think Harold should be questioned about this?”

A further change occurred in the face behind the beard, a painful grimacing followed by a hardening. “Yes. I do.”

“Where did you see him tonight?”

He answered reluctantly. He had made a heavy emotional investment in Harold – the kind a man sometimes makes just before the market breaks – and it couldn’t be easily withdrawn. “He’s staying in a motel with the young woman.”

“I know that. Where is the motel?”

“Redondo Beach.”

“And what’s the name of it, Doctor?”

“The Myrtle Motel.”

“Will you come there with me?”

“What good could that possibly do?”

“The last man who walked in on Harold got shot in the head. I don’t want it to happen to me. But Harold would never shoot you.”

“What could I say to him? Tell him that I’d betrayed him?” His voice broke.

“You’re fond of Harold, aren’t you?”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Yes. I thought he had promise, in spite of everything. I was hoping to straighten him out, open a better life to him. But I didn’t have the skill or the time.”

“You can do something for him now. Help me take him peacefully.”

He was silent for a while, struggling with his feelings, then resolved the conflict in anger. “I will not. I’m a doctor, not a detective.”

I got up to leave. He followed me to the door of the waiting room.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Archer, I simply can’t face Harold under these circumstances. If there’s anything else I can do …” His voice trailed off.

“There is something. Will you see if you can trace the other man to one of the veterans’ hospitals? I believe his name is Nelson.”

He thought about it. “Yes, I will. I’ll be glad to.”