Tracking Time

Twenty-one

Jason debated bypassing the hierarchy at the Institute and just calling Miss Vialo in the education office for Allegra's chart. In the end, he knew there would be nothing but trouble and accepted the fact that before calling Allegra, he had to go through Ted Tushy, the chairman of the Educational Committee, to explain the reason for such an unorthodox action. He left a message for Ted in his office, and Ted called him back less than an hour later. All day Jason had been screening his calls, which made his patients entirely paranoid and nuts. It was exhausting dealing with their edginess along with everything else.

When Ted called him back, Jason was with a patient, but finally they connected. "What's the crisis?" Ted asked.

"Maslow Atkins is missing. It's possible he's been treating a psychopath. I need to reach her."

"We can't have a violation of patient confidentiality." Ted was as dogmatic on the subject as Bernie had been. A colleague's life was at stake. They didn't get it.

"You're absolutely right," Jason told him solemnly. "That's why I want to protect the process, Ted. As the supervisor of this case, now that the analyst is missing, I'm the person clinically responsible for the patient. All I want to do is call her and arrange for a consultation to discuss the situation."

The last thing Jason wanted to do was tell Ted he was going to investigate the patient. Jason could feel Ted sweating all over the phone. He thought it would be overkill to point out that if the patient had killed the analyst, it would do even more harm to psychoanalysis and the Institute. Ted intuited the thought.

"God, we've been trying to get publicity for analysis for years," Ted muttered. "This is a hell of a way to get it."

"My thoughts exactly."

"The last thing we want to do is endanger our good name."

"Absolutely right. Or our candidates," Jason added.

"It's so hard to get good candidates these days," Ted said sadly. "Did you talk to Maslow's analyst?"

"Yes, I did. Even in this situation Bernie remained the jerk he always was. I had to squeeze information out of him with a vise, and even then I didn't get much at all."

"I see," Ted said, clearly pleased the psychoanalytic process was safe in Bernie's hands.

"Look, I've got to run now and meet with Maslow's parents. I'll check with the patient very carefully, and keep you apprized of the situation at every step," Jason said.

"Good, good. Keep me apprized. Keep me apprized."

Jason said that he would. That was at four in the afternoon.

At six, when Jason rang the bell of Jerome and Adina Atkins's Ninetieth Street and Park Avenue apartment, he was a very unhappy man. He'd gone through hell with Miss Vialo to get Allegra's personal information only to find out that no such person lived at the number the Institute had for her. Further investigation revealed that no residence existed at the address the patient had given. Nor was any Allegra Caldera listed in the phone book or registered at the university she said she attended. Allegra had invented herself.

This confirmed Jason's fear of a failure in the Institute's screening process. They thought they were careful. Prospective analysands had to write biographies. They were interviewed three times by a senior analyst. Each case was then considered by a whole committee. Allegra's case had been reviewed by no less than ten experienced people. The young analysts were supervised every step of the way. Now it was clear that a major slipup had occurred and a young woman had fooled them all. She could be anybody, capable of anything, and Maslow could have known, even unconsciously, that he was in danger.

When Jason arrived at the Atkinses' door, he had the feeling that he was on the fault line of an earthquake. As a psychiatrist, he'd always had a healthy respect for madness. He knew that as carefully as people cultivated facades of civility, their rage and potential for aggression were barely under the surface. But he, unlike Maslow, was experienced and knew how to handle it.

As he stood at the door, his head pounding and his throat dry, he prayed that Maslow had not been lured into disaster by a troubled person who should never have been assigned to his care. The door opened before he could bring himself to ring the bell.

"You're Dr. Frank? Come in. He's waiting for you in the living room." Mrs. Atkins had short, tightly permed brown hair that was gray at the roots, soft pale skin that drooped sadly under pale blue eyes, and several double chins. Her features were gathered together in a face that had never been lovely. She looked at least seventy.

"Maslow?" For a second Jason felt a rush of elation.

"No, no, his father."

"You're Mrs. Atkins?"

"Yes." She turned away without shaking his hand.

Jason followed her on a black-and-white checkerboard marble floor through a foyer with gilded chairs and tables lined up like soldiers along smoke-mirrored walls. At the living-room door, she waved her hand and left him.

"I'd like to talk with you both," Jason said before she managed her escape.

"No need." She turned back to him, lifting her shoulders helplessly.

"On the contrary, we can't do without our mothers." Jason smiled and waited at the door.

"What's that?" From his armchair Jerome Atkins, a small, dapper, bald-headed man wearing a red bow tie and lightweight herringbone business suit, flashed them a look of supreme irritation.

Adina dropped her head as if to duck a blow and took a seat in a fragile chair as close to the door as she could get. She was a woman ready to obey whoever she deemed the highest authority.

Jason crossed the white carpet quickly. Jerome Atkins stood, held out his hand, then sat down abruptly without shaking Jason's.

"This thing is all over the news. People have called me. What do you want from me?" He had the face of a desperate man.

"Maslow's disappearance is on the news?" Jason was astounded.

"They have a pack of dogs. They're searching the park." Jerome glanced at his wife. "She's suffered enough. She doesn't need to hear this."

Adina stood up to leave.

Jason shook his head. "Please stay, I want to talk to you both."

Jerome looked away from his wife. "What happened? The police won't tell me anything."

"I don't think they know yet. Has anyone from the police talked to you about it?"

"No, no, I've called them. They're calling me back. Let me tell you, this is a terrible blow." Beads of perspiration dotted the man's forehead. "I'm sure he's dead. If he were alive, I'd know it." He said this with no emotion.

Jason was surprised by how many people associated with Maslow were ready to accept that with no evidence to support it. "Well, I don't want to jump to that conclusion. That's the reason I'm here. I want to talk to you a little about your son's life to see if there's somewhere he might have gone, some reasonable explanation for his disappearance."

"No," Jerome said sharply. "Let's not go into it. We know what happened. You don't have to sugarcoat the truth for us."

What truth? Jason shook his head. "Nothing has been established-"

Jerome Atkins cut him off angrily. "They can't even find his body-this is a disgrace." He glanced at his wife. The couple sat so far from each other in the cavernous wood-paneled Park Avenue living room, he had to turn his whole body to get a view of her.

Jason sat between them. He, too, had to shift positions to see her. As he did, he took in the rose-colored drapes on huge windows, the multitude of small pink sofas and gold chairs. Mrs. Atkins had taken a brocade pillow onto her lap and was busy twisting one of its gold tassels in her hand. Her face was pale, shut down. Jason suspected that she was in shock, a hurricane on a distant horizon.

"Are you all right? I could arrange for you to have some medicine-" he asked.

"He's not the first one," she said, shaking her head.

"First what?"

Mrs. Atkins played with the fringe. "Maslow had a twin sister."

"I didn't know that," Jason murmured.

"That's not exactly relevant to anything, is it?" Jerome said nastily, turning back to Jason. "She died over twenty years ago. No point in talking about it." He raised a hand to his forehead, realized it was wet, and pulled out a handkerchief.

"She was a beautiful child, a perfect child-blond, blue eyes-smart. Very smart. And Chloe had a wonderful nature. She never complained, no matter what. Never a word. Her name was Chloe. Isn't that a pretty name?"

"Beautiful name." Jason could hardly breathe through the layers of pain in the room.

"She died when she was eleven. Leukemia."

"Adina, it was twenty years ago," Jerome said sharply, dabbing at his forehead.

"I'm sure you know, Doctor, that over eighty percent of children who have leukemia now survive," she lectured him.

"She's probably the reason Maslow became a doctor," Jason said softly.

"Too late for us," she said bitterly.

"Were the twins close?" Jason asked.

"Of course. Maslow adored Chloe. Everyone did. She was a magical person, her daddy's dream girl." Mrs. Atkins gave her husband a smug smile.

"He didn't come about Chloe, he came about the boy."

"Chloe was an angel. He's always been a heartache," his mother said.

Jerome Atkins covered his eyes.

"Really?" This was news to Jason.

"Yes, Chloe was an absolute angel. Always smiling, no matter how sick she was."

"I was asking about Maslow."

"What's there to say about him?" Atkins broke in angrily. "A young man with a bright future couldn't think about anything else but being a damned shrink. Doesn't that tell you all you need to know?"

Jason had heard a similar view expounded by his own father, who'd wanted him to be a heart surgeon. "Is that a bad thing in your book?" he asked, feeling the sting of rejection all over again.

"The boy probably provoked his attacker," Atkins speculated coldly.

Jason's distress escalated. "Why do you say that?"

"It wouldn't be the first time. He was interested in crazy people, wasn't he? He talked to the wrong people all the time. It can get you in trouble in this city."

"Chloe was no trouble at all. She was an angel," Adina said.

Jason repressed, the urge to muzzle her. "Did something happen to Maslow recently?"

"Oh, the kid hasn't lived with us for years. He used to get into bar fights, street fights regularly. He'd come home with a black eye or a bloody nose. What a waste!" Jerome Atkins waved his hand impatiently. "The city is to blame for this. These people shouldn't be out on the street."

"What about his friends? Maybe they can tell us more."

"What more do you need? He was a misguided young man. All he talked about was work. He didn't have friends."

"What about girlfriends?"

Atkins snorted. Clearly he didn't think much of his son in that department either. Jason turned to Mrs. Atkins. She looked like a person having an out-of-body experience, maybe on a visit to an angel in heaven.

Jason felt like shaking these two people. The mother couldn't talk about anything but her dead daughter. The father could only think of his disappointment in Maslow's decision to become a psychiatrist. In the absence of any evidence whatsoever, his father spoke of his son as if he were dead. But so had Maslow's analyst. Jason was also saddened by the fact that neither parent had called their son by his name. Speaking of him the way they had was a kind of soul murder. If this were a homicide, that alone would be a reason for the police to suspect them. But Jason wasn't a cop.

It seemed that he alone was praying that Maslow Atkins was alive and well and for some unknown reason playing hooky from his life. Jason left the apartment knowing no more about Maslow's present life than he had before his visit. But it was certainly no mystery why the young man had defied his parents to become a doctor of the mind.