The Lasko Tangent

Twenty-Seven

The Loring Sanitarium was in Brookline, near the country club. I picked up Boylston Street until it turned into Route 9 by way of Brookline Avenue, figuring to get there about 6:30. I felt queasy. I had crossed the line. This was my own trip, against orders, and maybe into trouble. Martinson might not be there. And I’d no fixed plan if he were.

I had the pervasive sense that I hadn’t listened hard enough. That in the past four days someone had handed me the key, if I could only think. But I’d heard too much too fast, and was too unsettled to stitch it together. I got to Brookline disgusted and unnerved.

The Loring Sanitarium wasn’t tough to spot. It was the kind of building that could only be a sanitarium or a high school-a stark, tan-brick rectangle with a charmless Eisenhower-years design, two stories, in a bare field set away from houses. I knew it wasn’t a high school because there weren’t any signs. That and the isolation gave it a guilty, furtive air: the kind of place people didn’t look at when they passed.

I pulled up in the front parking lot and got out. At closer range it looked off center, like a patient too distracted to keep himself up. The lawn was long and ratty and a couple of windows were askew, like an idiot’s glasses. Lasko’s money hadn’t gone for renovation.

An iron plate was screwed into the brick next to the front door. It read “The Loring Sanitarium” in capital letters and in small print under that was “Dr. Ralph Loring, Director.” The front doors were broad plate glass. I opened one. A uniformed guard sat at a metal desk in front of a second row of doors. He gave me a pleased, suspicious look, as if being suspicious beat boredom.

“Yes, sir,” he asked, but not the polite “yes, sir” of a maitre d’ or a saleslady.

“I’m here for Dr. Loring,” I said, trying to suggest that Loring should be pleased.

The guard wasn’t impressed. “Does he know you’re here?”

“Not unless you tell him.”

He didn’t like that. “Does he know you were coming?” he asked roughly.

“No.”

His face closed. “What’s your business?”

That forced me to do what I didn’t want: pose as a federal officer whose boss knew his whereabouts. I pulled out my ID card. “I’m with the ECC, headquarters office. I’ll take my business up with Dr. Loring.”

That bought me another stare. But his thick hand grudgingly reached for the phone. He dialed two digits and asked whoever answered for Dr. Loring, without moving his eyes from me. I stared past him through the second doors. There was a hallway with light green linoleum fading into chartreuse beneath darker green tile walls. There appeared to be offices on the right side.

“Yes, sir,” the guard was saying. “I have a Mr. Paget here. His identification says he’s with”-he looked again-“the United States Economic Crimes Commission.” Whatever that is, his eyes said, but his voice didn’t admit that. Security people were supposed to know these things. He listened for a moment, then hung up.

“Dr. Loring will see you,” he said in a disappointed voice. I hadn’t turned out to be any fun. I started for the doors. “Wait here,” he growled, pointing in front of his desk.

I complied. The guard leaned back, eyes moving uneasily between me and the outer door. Dr. Loring was taking his time. I jammed my hands into my pockets and shifted from foot to foot, feeling nervous and a little silly.

My feet were wearing out when a tall, grey-haired man appeared beyond the second doors, walking with a slight stoop. He wore a tweed suit and through the glass he looked like an English gentleman hunting for grouse. The apparition came toward the doors and opened them.

“Mr. Paget,” he said, ignoring the guard, “I’m Ralph Loring.” He had a thin nose and a lightly pocked face, partly covered by a neat beard. The brown eyes had a liquid, volatile quality as if about to change into some unstable element. Sensitive, but not quite right. Psychiatrist’s eyes, I thought.

I shook his hand and walked with him through the second doors. “I appreciate being received,” I said. “Your man out there had me at bay.”

It was intended as a light remark. But he gave me a sideways, troubled gaze. “I’m sure you understand our security problems.”

I thought maybe I did. Loring had resumed the downcast hunch. I looked at him. He was thinner than he’d first appeared, but not wiry, just bony. His skin was pale and seemed almost translucent.

Loring led me to an office on the right corridor. It was wood paneled and fairly plain: a couple of framed diplomas and two prints by the guy who paints the children with big eyes. I didn’t like the pictures much and looking at Loring I liked them less. His eyes were something like that.

I took a chair. Loring sat behind his desk, legs crossed and hands folded. He eyed me uneasily, as if I were a threat to some delicate balance in the environment.

“I’m told that you have identification,” he ventured.

I took out my plastic card and slid it across his desk. He took it with two fingers, eyes half-closed, the odd reluctant gesture of a man who has just drawn to an inside straight. Then he looked down at it for an overly long time, as if it could tell him something.

He looked up. “What do you want here, Mr. Paget?”

I gambled. “Peter Martinson.”

His eyes flickered for an instant. “I’m not sure I understand.”

I decided to go all the way. “Martinson’s a witness in an investigation. The case involves fraud, murder, and your leading patron, William Lasko. I know that Martinson is no crazier than you or I and that he didn’t volunteer for this rest cure. Which puts you in a crack.”

I could have been wrong. And he could have said that I was delusional, or just ordered me out. The last idea seemed to flash through his eyes, then leave, along with his chance to play innocent. “Mr. Martinson is a patient of mine.” The voice held a weak man’s stubbornness.

“I’d like to see him.”

“I’m sure you would,” he said with a spurt of righteous sarcasm, as if I were the neighborhood bully, torturing an animal. Loring, the protector. He’d probably played that role long enough to believe it.

I said nothing. He blurted into the silence. “In my opinion, seeing you would do Mr. Martinson no good.”

“Would do who no good?”

He flushed slightly. “I can’t entrust the mental health of one of my patients to you.”

I decided to give Loring a dose of reality. “You have at least kept him alive?”

“Of course,” he said with real indignation.

“Bully for you, Doctor. The last one in Martinson’s position ended up deader than your rotten paintings.”

He snapped upright. “You’re not a very pleasant young man.”

“This isn’t a very pleasant subject. And I’m tired of sparring.”

He picked up my ID card, as if something on it might help him. It gave me a chance to decipher the list on his desk, upside down.

“Christopher Kenyon Paget,” he was reading. “Wasn’t Christopher Kenyon a railroad owner in California in the last century?”

I was still decoding. “My great-grandfather, if that concerns you.”

Somehow that placed me within his frame of reference. “As I recall, he sent out armed guards to kill some strikers. Nine men died, I think. Is that what makes you tick, Mr. Paget? Overcompensation, perhaps.”

I was through. “You know,” I said evenly, “I get tired of jerks who want me to apologize for having a middle name instead of an initial and a great-grandfather I didn’t ask for. I’m especially tired of jerks who do it for a living. And I never heard that the old man fronted for other people’s murders. Which is what you’re doing.” I snatched the list off his desk. “Now, Doctor, I’d like to see Martinson.”

His hand jerked in a futile grab for the list. He suddenly broke down. “You must realize that I need money for our work,” he stammered. “This hospital would have to close.”

The list said that Martinson was in Room 19-W. I looked back at Loring. The hand was still outstretched, pleading now. “Never mind, Doctor,” I said, and started to leave.

He stepped after me. “Do you have a search warrant?”

I turned back. “No.”

“Then you’re trespassing.”

That was true. I felt as if somewhere between Lehman and here I’d stopped being a lawyer and become someone I didn’t know. I pushed all that aside. “If you’re so confident of your legal position, call the police. As an accessory to kidnapping you’ll have their fullest sympathy.”

His shoulders stooped at that. He stood in front of his desk, wet eyes seeing some inevitable disaster. I thought he looked like a man in a bomb shelter would look when he heard the first siren. I left and went hunting for Martinson.

The west wing was in the opposite corridor. It was the same green, but the dim lighting gave it a sort of restrained ghastliness. Ahead I saw doors and before that a broad beam of light coming from a nurses’ station. An older nurse peered out, puzzled. I nodded, smiled, and walked on. I heard voices behind me, a woman’s, then a man’s. Then footsteps scrambling in the other direction. It reminded me of the lump on my head. But I didn’t look back. 19-W was at the end of the corridor. It surprised me. No guard. Just a simple latch which locked the door from the outside. I turned the latch and opened the door.