Survival Of The Fittest

14

The next morning, at ten, Dr. Roone Lehmann called.

“I've been going through Nolan's file. How's the sister doing?”

“Hanging in,” I said. “It's rough.”

“Yes. Well… he was a complex young man.”

“Complex and bright.”

“Oh?”

“Helena told me he tested gifted.”

“I see… interesting. Is she gifted, as well?”

“She's an intelligent woman.”

“No doubt- well, if you'd like to come by the office, say around noonish, I can give you twenty minutes. But I can't promise it will be earth-shattering.”

“Thanks for your time.”

“It's part of the job, isn't it?”

Minutes later, Milo phoned. “Coroner says no sexual assault on Latvinia. Hooks says Montez the janitor is alibied for the time of her murder.”

“Good alibi?”

“Not perfect but sometimes it's only criminals who come up with perfect alibis. Working at the liquor store from seven til eleven-thirty. The owner verifies, says Montez has an impeccable work record. Then home to the wife and kids- two older daughters, both of whom were up. All three of them swear he went to bed shortly after midnight, the wife is certain he never left the house. She got up at 3:00 A.M. to go to the bathroom, saw him there. His snoring woke her up again at five.”

“The wife,” I said.

“Yeah, but Montez is solid as they come: married thirty-five years, Vietnam service record, no criminal activity, not even traffic tickets. The school principal says he gets along great with everyone, always willing to go the extra mile, really does care about the school and the students. Told Hooks cutting the body down was exactly the kind of thing Montez would do. A couple of years ago a kid choked on something and Montez did the Heimlich maneuver and saved him.”

“A genuine hero.”

“Wait, there's more: Hooks located an old Army buddy of Montez's, a neighbor on the same block. Apparently Montez fended off a horde of Cong, rescued six other soldiers. Lots of medals. Now one thing I remember clearly is Cong stringing up bodies- we cut them down all the time. So that could be another reason. In terms of Latvinia, Hooks and McLaren talked to the grandmother and she said the girl was incorrigible, going out at all hours, wouldn't listen to reason. No steady boyfriends, no gang she hung out with. Just not too bright, easygoing and gullible and sometimes she'd just start acting weird- dancing and singing, pulling up her blouse. Neighbors said Latvinia's rep was a girl you could talk into anything.”

“Any drugs in her system?”

“Tox results aren't back yet and the coroner said there were no needle marks on the body. But her nasal passages were significantly eroded and there was some scarring on her heart, so coke for sure. I'm still looking for deaf-girl murders in other divisions and I've also been checking on that DVLL note. Nothing so far. It probably was a random scrap.”

“Nothing in Irit's evidence bag?”

“No personal effects in Irit's evidence bag. Everything was returned to the parents and the evidence-room log lists no pocket contents of any kind.”

“Is returning clothes on an unsolved standard procedure?”

“No, but with no semen or body fluids or any other evidence, and Carmeli being a big shot, I can understand why it happened.” Pause. “Yeah, it's a screwup. But at this point I'd settle for a bad guy's lawyer jumping up and down on it.”

“Going to ask the Carmelis to look at the clothes?”

“Think it's worth it?”

“Probably not, but why risk another omission?”

“Yeah. I'll bring it up when I speak to the mother. Left a message with Carmeli respectfully requesting blah blah blah, but haven't heard back. For all I know the clothes have already been buried. Do Jews bury the clothing?”

“Don't know.”

“Whatever. Okay, I'll call you if anything interesting comes up. Thanks for listening, send me a bill.”

I set out for downtown, avoiding the freeway and taking Sunset. Wanting to feel the city from Bel Air to Skid Row. Entering Hospital Row made me think of my days at Western Pediatrics Hospital, my induction into a world of suffering and occasional redemption. Heroics, too. I thought of Guillermo Montez, saving all those lives in Asia, winning all those medals, now a janitor working a second job.

At Echo Park, L.A. became Latin America. Then the downtown skyline came into view behind a cloverleaf of highway, blue steel and white cement and the pure gold of reflective glass towers incising a curdled-milk sky.

Lehmann's Seventh Street office was in a lovely six-story limestone building, one of the older ones, in a circumscribed part of the district where pinstripe and Filofax predominated and the homeless and diseased were invisible.

I parked at a nearby pay-lot and walked over. The entire ground floor of the building was taken up by an insurance company with its own entrance. To the right was a separate foyer for the rest of the structure, generous and chilly, charcoal granite with gold deco trim, two gold-cage elevators, a tobacco-and-aftershave smell, a carved walnut reception desk with no one behind it.

The directory said floors 2 and 3 were occupied by a private bank called American Trust and the fourth by something called the City Club, accessed by private elevator key only. The rest of the tenants were investment firms, lawyers, accountants, and, on the top story, Roone Lehmann, Ph.D., listed as a “consultant.”

Unusual setting for therapy and Lehmann wasn't advertising that he was a psychologist.

For the sake of treatment-shy police officers and other reluctant patients?

One of the cages arrived and I rode up six flights. The corridor ceilings were high, white, ringed with garland molding; the hallways, oak-paneled and carpeted in maroon wool printed with tiny white stars. The office doors were oak, too, and identified by small silver plaques that had been buffed recently. Soft, characterless music flowed from invisible speakers. Hunting prints hung on the walls and fresh flowers in glass vases sat on oiled Pembroke tables every twenty feet. Far cry from the plain-wrap ambience of the Israeli consulate.

Lehmann's office was in a corner, neighbored by multiple-partner law firms. His name and degree on silver, again no occupation.

I tried the door. Locked. An illuminated button off to the right glowed ember-orange against the wood.

I pressed it and was buzzed immediately into a very small brown-walled anteroom furnished with two blue wingback chairs and a stiffly upholstered deep green Queen Anne sofa. A glass-topped chinoiserie coffee table bore The Wall Street Journal, the Times, and USA Today. Artless walls. Reluctant light from two overhead recessed spots. Another button on the inner door over a PLEASE RING IN sign.

Before I reached it, the door opened.

“Dr. Delaware? Dr. Lehmann.” The dry-mellow voice, more muted than it had been over the phone, almost sad.

I shook a soft hand and we studied each other. He was in his fifties, tall and round-shouldered and soft-looking, with shaggy white hair and thick, flattened features. Bushy eyebrows bore down on fatigued lids. Brown eyes worked their way through a squint.

He wore a double-breasted navy blazer with gold buttons, gray flannel slacks, white shirt, loosely knotted pink tie, white pocket square carelessly stuffed, black wing tips.

Rumpled-looking, though the clothes were perfectly pressed. And expensive. Cashmere blazer. Working buttonholes on the cuffs said hand-tailored. Single-needle stitching on the shirt collar. The tie was silk mesh.

He motioned me in. The rest of the suite consisted of a small walnut-paneled bathroom and a huge butter-yellow office with a high, molded ceiling and distressed herringbone oak flooring that had lifted in places. A frayed blue Persian rug that looked very old spread diagonally over the wood. Two more blue wingbacks and a filigreed silver table formed a conversational area at the rear of the room. Between them and the desk was an empty expanse of rug, then a pair of black tweed armchairs closer to a massive cherrywood desk.

Two Victorian mahogany bookshelves were crowded with volumes but the glass doors to the cases spat back glare from a pair of windows, obscuring the titles. The windows were narrow and high, cut at the outer corners by ruby velvet pull-back drapes, offering rectangles of city view.

Great view. A newer building would have offered a full wall of transparency. When this one was built, the vista had probably been smokestacks and beanfields.

The yellow walls were silk. No credentials, no diplomas. Nothing that identified the purpose of the office.

Lehmann motioned me to take one of the black armchairs and sank behind the cherry desk. The top was green leather with gold-tooled edges and on it were a brown calfskin folding blotter, silver inkwell, letter knife, and pen cup, and a curious-looking silver contraption with a flamboyantly engraved crenellated top. Envelopes extended from compartments. Probably some kind of message rack.

Lehmann ran his finger along the edge.

“Interesting piece,” I said.

“Document holder,” he said. “Georgian. It sat in British Parliament two hundred years ago. Repository for history. There's a hole at the bottom where it was screwed into the clark's desk so no one could make off with it.”

He used both hands to lift it and show me.

I said, “Found its way across the ocean, anyway.”

“Family piece,” he said, as if that explained it. Spreading his hands flat on the blotter, he looked at a thin gold watch. “Officer Dahl. It would help me to understand what you already know about him.”

“I've been told he was bright and mercurial,” I said. “Not your typical cop.”

“Cops can't be bright?”

“They can be and are. Helena- his sister- described him as someone who'd read Sartre and Camus. I may be stereotyping but that isn't what you generally think of as typical LAPD material. Though if you work extensively with the police, you'd know better.”

His hands flew upward and the palms drifted toward each other and touched silently.

“Each year, my practice brings fewer surprises, Dr. Delaware. Don't you find it harder to resist seeing patterns?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Did the department refer Nolan to you?”

Another pause. Nod.

“May I ask why?”

“The usual,” he said. “Adjustment problems. The work is extremely stressful.”

“What kinds of work problems was Nolan having?”

He licked his lips and white hair tumbled across his forehead. Pushing it away, he began playing with his pink tie, flicking the tip with a thumbnail, over and over.

Finally he said, “Nolan was having both personal problems and difficulties related to work. A troubled young man. I'm sorry, I really can't be more specific.”

Why had I driven across town for this?

He looked around the big, ornate room. “Mercurial. Is the term Helena's or yours?”

I smiled. “I've got a live patient, Dr. Lehmann. My own confidentiality issues.”

He smiled back. “Of course you do, I was simply trying to- let's put it this way, Dr. Delaware: If you're using mercurial as a euphemism for affective disorder, I'd understand that very well. Very well.”

Letting me know without saying so that Nolan had suffered from mood swings. Depression, only? Or manic-depression?

“I guess it's too much to ask if we're talking unipolar or bipolar.”

“Does it really matter? I'm sure she's not seeking a DSM- IV diagnosis.”

“True,” I said. “Do any other euphemisms come to mind?”

He tucked the tie in and sat up straighter. “Dr. Delaware, I sympathize with your situation. With the sister's. It's only natural that she'd seek answers but you and I both know she'll never get what she's really after.”

“Which is?”

“What survivors always crave. Absolution. As I said, understandable, but if you've dealt with lots of similar cases, you know that leads them off the track. They haven't sinned, the suicide has. In a manner of speaking. I'm sure Helena is a lovely woman who adored her brother and now she's torturing herself with should-haves and could-haves. Pardon my audacity, but I'd say your time with her would be better spent guiding her toward feeling good about herself rather than fathoming the workings of a very troubled mind.”

“Was Nolan too troubled to do police work?”

“Obviously, but that never became clear. Never.” His voice had climbed and a flush had spread under his jaw, snaking downward and disappearing under his collar.

Had he missed a danger sign? Covering his own rear?

“It's a tragedy all around. That's really all I have to say.” He stood.

“Dr. Lehmann, I wasn't implying-”

“But someone else might and I won't have it. Any therapist worth his salt knows there's absolutely nothing that can be done if an individual's serious about destroying himself. Look at all the suicides that take place on psychiatric wards with full supervision.”

He leaned toward me, one hand tugging down at a cashmere lapel. “Tell your patient that her brother loved her but his problems got the best of him. Problems she's better off not knowing. Believe me- much better off.”

Staring at me.

“Sexual problems?” I said.

He waved me off. “Tell her you spoke to me and I said he was depressed and that police work may have exacerbated the depression but didn't cause it. Tell her his suicide couldn't have been prevented and she had nothing to do with it. Help her plaster her emotional fissures. That's our job. To patch, assuage. Massage. Inform our patients they're okay. We're couriers of okayness.”

Through the anger came something I thought I recognized. The sadness that can result from too many years absorbing the poison of others. Most therapists experience it sooner or later. Sometimes it passes, sometimes it settles in like a chronic infection.

“Guess we are,” I said. “Among other things. Sometimes it gets difficult.”

“What does?”

“Massaging.”

“Oh, I don't know,” he said. “One chooses one's job and one does it. That's the key to being a professional. There's no point complaining.”

When the going gets tough, the therapist gets tougher. I wondered if he'd used the chin-up approach with Nolan. The department would approve of something like that.

He smiled. “After all these years, I find the work enriching.”

“How many years is that?”

“Sixteen. But it's still fresh. Perhaps it's because my first career was in the business world where the philosophy was quite different: It's not enough for me to succeed. You must fail.”

“Brutal,” I said.

“Oh, quite. Policemen are easy, by comparison.”

He walked me to the door and as I passed the bulky bookshelves I was able to make out some of the titles. Organizational structure, group behavior, management strategies, psychometric testing.

Out in the waiting room, he said, “I'm sorry I haven't been able to reveal more. The entire situation was… bleak. Let the sister maintain her own image of Nolan. Believe me, it's far more compassionate.”

“This unspeakable pathology he displayed,” I said. “It's directly related to the suicide?”

“Very likely so.”

“Was he feeling guilty about something?”

He buttoned his blazer.

“I'm not a priest, Dr. Delaware. And your client wants illusion, not facts. Trust me on that.”

As I got back on the elevator, I felt as if I'd been rushed through an overpriced, tasteless meal. Now it was starting to repeat.

Why had he wasted my time?

Had he intended to say more but changed his mind?

Knowing he was professionally vulnerable because he'd missed something crucial?

Fear of a lawsuit would make Helena- and me- a major threat. Not talking to me at all would be seen as unreasonable obstructionism.

But if he was covering, why even hint around at Nolan's serious problems?

Wanting to find out what I knew?

The lift opened at 5 to let in three hefty men in gray suits and eyeglasses. Their jovial chatter ceased the moment they saw me and they turned their backs as the taller one slipped a key into the City Club slot. After they exited, the elevator took a while to kick in and I had a view of white-and-black checkerboard marble floor, polished wood walls, softly lit oil landscapes, riotously colored mixed flowers in obsidian urns.

A tuxedoed maitre d' smiled and welcomed them forward. They entered the club talking again. Laughing. Behind them, silverware clattered and red-jacketed black waiters hurried by with covered dishes on trays. As the elevator filled with the smell of roast meat and rich sauce, the gilded door slid shut silently.

I drove west, taking the freeway this time, still thinking about Lehmann.

Strange bird. And an old-world quality to his demeanor. British pronunciations. He'd said the right things but was unlike any therapist I'd ever met.

As if reciting for my benefit.

Analyzing me?

Some psychologists and psychiatrists- the bad ones- make a game of it.

Believe me, she's much better off not knowing.

Strange bird, strange location.

Consultant.

All those books on management and psychological testing, nothing on therapy.

Practicing beyond the boundaries of his competence?

Was that why he was edgy?

If so, how had he gotten LAPD's business?

No big mystery, there. Politics as usual. Who you knew.

The custom-made cashmere, the studied carelessness and old-money furnishings.

A consultant with family connections? Downtown connections could mean big business: a stream of referrals from the police department and other government agencies.

A potential flood of referrals because though LAPD maintained a few psychologists on staff, most of their time was spent screening applicants and teaching hostage negotiation and they were chronically overworked.

Something else: Milo had told me, once, that cops considered the in-house shrinks tools of the brass, were cynical about assurances of confidentiality, often reluctant to seek them out for help.

Except when filing for stress disability. Something LAPD officers had engaged in for years at a notorious rate, now even worse in the postriot era.

Meaning lots of money could be made contracting to field complaints. The unspoken directive from the department would be find them healthy.

Which would explain Lehmann's self-description as a courier of okayness.

And why he might have been reluctant to acknowledge warning signs in Nolan.

Had the young cop come to him with a history of mood swings and alienation, complaining of crushing job pressures, only to receive tough love?

One does one's job. That's the key to being professional.

Now Lehmann wanted to quash any budding inquiry.

Let the dead rest. His reputation, too.

When I got home, I looked him up in my American Psychological Association directory. No listing. None in any of the local guilds or health-care provider rosters, either, which was odd, if he was a contractor. But maybe LAPD referrals alone gave him enough business and he didn't need to solicit other sources.

Or maybe he really was old money, choosing psychology as a second career for personal fulfillment, rather than income. Respite after years in the heartless world of business.

The big office and leather desk and books- the trappings of doctorhood. Simply props to help him fill the hours before he rode down for a rubdown at the club?

I phoned the state medical board and confirmed that Roone Mackey Lehmann was indeed duly licensed to practice psychology in California and had been for five years. His degree was from a place called New Dominion University and he'd done his clinical training at the Pathfinder Foundation, neither of which I'd heard of.

No complaints had ever been filed against him, nothing irregular about his certification.

I thought about him some more, realized there was nothing I could- or should- do. Bottom line, he was right: If Nolan had been adamant about leaving this world, no one could have stopped him.

Serious problems.

My question about sexuality had evoked a meaningful silence, so maybe that had been it.

A bleak situation.

The sister better off not knowing.

Leading me to the main question: What would I tell Helena?