Lori, p.16
Lori, page 16
"And-?"
"When the writ hit the fan, Barry left town. Went to Oregon but didn't practice there. I'm talking late sixties now, and there's a big empty stretch right up until about ten years ago. That's when they nailed him for possession, couple of ounces of coke. He wasn't a user so they tried him under a dealing charge but it didn't stick."
"You tell a dull story. I hope there's a punch line."
"Turns out Barry was dealing, just like they figured; had been for years. It all surfaced in '83, after the murder." Slesovitch timed his pause, then went on. "He got into a money hassle with Digby Kogan, a nickel-and-dime street pusher, in the back room of some bar uptown."
"That's your punch line?"
"Choke line." Slesovitch nodded. "Barry slammed the guy's head against the wall and strangled him." Metz frowned. "Hell you say."
"They had witnesses. Defense copped out on an insanity plea and Barry drew fifteen for second-degree in August of '84."
"You got all this on record?"
"And the phone. They put me on to a Dr. Seldane who testified for the defense at the trial. He diagnosed Barry as a chronic paranoid-very hostile, with delusions of persecution."
"I thought you said the insanity plea didn't hold up."
"Prosecution had their own shrink. He tagged Barry's problem as APD. That's antisocial personality disorder."
"I know," Metz said. "We used to call them psychos."
"Bottom line is the jury bought the APD label, and Dr. Seldane popped his cork. Way he figured, the verdict damaged his professional reputation."
"Sounds as if he could be a little paranoid himself."
"Maybe so." Slesovitch shrugged. "But he was right about Barry. After they sent him up, Seldane got in touch with the resident shrink at the prison and compared notes. Once every six months he gave him a call, and from what he heard, Barry really started freaking out. Seldane comes across as a stubborn old coot, and he was after enough evidence for a new trial, or at least an appeal. He even went in to see Barry himself, right after the first of this year. They had quite a session, according to what he told me. Says Barry made threats against the D.A., the people he'd been involved with in dealing, personal friends from way back, just about everybody he ever knew."
"Including Ben Rupert?"
"Especially Ben Rupert. He claimed Rupert was responsible for mining his life to begin with, and he'd get him if it was the last thing he ever did."
"So?"
"You still want a punch line?" Slesovitch spoke slowly. "Ross Barry escaped from Oregon State Penitentiary ten days ago."
TWENTY-SIX
Listen, and listen closely. Listen to the walrus, for the time has come to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings.
No, that's wrong. He said it once, but it doesn't make sense now. Listen again. The time has come-
The time has come, the walrus said. The time has come-to act.
He's right. The walrus is always right. You're not like Alice, you didn't want to go down the rabbit-hole, and this hell isn't Wonderland, Wonderland is through the looking-glass, forsake hell for heaven. And it will be heaven if you act, if you go through. Heaven is yours, don't let her stop you. Leave her to hell, damn her to hell which hath no fury like a woman scorned. She scorned you, and now it's your turn to scorn her. Turnabout is fair play, all's fair in love and whore. That's what she is, a whore, but you are the child of the fair unclouded brow, for Alice fair in Wonderland if you act. The play's the thing and the final act is only the beginning. All the world's a stage and each man in his time plays many parts. Your time has come, your part is waiting, the walrus knows the cues, the world is your oyster. Oyster shell and you shall too and time must have a stop. Put a stop to it, break the glass, break the barrier. Time must stop and you must go, go for it, go with God. Leave the rabbit-hole, the lair of the hare, Hare Krishna. There's a great big wonderful world out there, a world of shoes to wear and ships to sail and damn the sealing-wax that holds you here, damn the torpedoes, don't fire until you see the whites of her thighs, then full scream ahead. Thank you, walrus, for showing me the way. The way out of the hole, the hell-hole.
Hell is voices you hear but cannot answer, faces you cannot see because hell is murky. Hell is not feeling, not holding, not having.
Heaven can wait but you've waited long enough, too long, and now the time has come. To have and to hold. There are cabbages and kings, Red Queens and White Queens, but you too shall be crowned in glory hallelujah hosanna to the highest and the truth shall set you free. Free from the pit, the pit and the pendulum which marks the endless passage of time. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace but you can set the pace, speed the day of deliverance from all evil, for mine is the kingdom and the power and the Lori forever and ever.
If you act.
Now.
TWENTY-SEVEN
"I'm sorry. Dr. Leverett is not in." On the phone the Jamaican accent was more noticeable. "When do you expect him?"
"This afternoon. May I take a message?" Lori hesitated. "Just tell him Miss Holmes called. I'll try reaching him later, thank you."
Thanks and no thanks. She broke the connection quickly, wishing she hadn't given her name, hadn't called. Dinner last night was a pleasant memory, and he seemed to enjoy it too. Telling him about her nightmare would only put them back into a doctor-patient relationship.
But she had to tell him. He was her doctor, she was his patient, and the nightmare couldn't be ignored. That voice may have talked about Alice in Wonderland again, but what it said had nothing to do with Lewis Carroll. And if, as Leverett suggested, she was talking to herself, only one message came through clearly. You need help. Which is where Dr. Leverett came in, only he hadn't come in, and right now she must help herself, do something to get rid of the dream from which she'd awakened drenched in cold sweat.
Shower. Dress. Fix breakfast, force it down. Put on fresh makeup in the bathroom, and while you're at it, wash out those three pairs of panty hose and hang them over the shower stall to dry. Keep busy, keep your mind occupied with other things. How about acknowledging some of those condolence cards? No, not a good idea; what she didn't need at present was a reminder of the past. What she could do and should do was take some of her stuff to the laundry.
Lori stripped the bed, gathered nighties and blouses, bundled them in the discarded sheets, and took off for the laundromat.
When she finished it was time for a trudge through the aisles of the market to pick up a few items for the fridge. And let's see-tissues, paper towels, napkins. What about some furniture polish while she thought of it?
Polish. Vacuum. Dust around. Clean furniture and clean sheets. If only she could cleanse the memories. As long as she kept going everything was fine, but now that the housework was finished and the east-facing windows were shadowing, fine feelings faded with the sun. Lori checked her watch. Was it really ten minutes past four? Time to call Dr. Leverett. She seated herself and dialed his number.
"Doctor's office."
The voice was unaccented, unfamiliar. Answering-service operators all sounded alike.
"Could I speak to Dr. Leverett, please?"
"I'm sorry. He's not taking calls right now. If you will leave your name and number-"
Lori replaced the receiver. A rude thing to do, but her only outlet for the resentment she always felt when the telephone ceased to be a means of communication and became a barrier instead. Answering services were always sorry, and so were answering machines. Sorry, we can't come to the phone right now, but when you hear the tone-
Calling a big company was worse. It could mean working your way through a half dozen or more busy signals before reaching a recording that didn't even bother to be sorry, just ordered you to please hold because all of our operators are busy right now. Then a tinkly-winkly music track or dead silence. No wonder you ended up talking to yourself.
Which is what she was doing right now. Complaining about little things in order to shut out the big thing.
The big thing was fear. Talking to herself about it wouldn't help; that's why she needed Dr. Leverett. Anthony Leverett, M.D. Did his friends call him "Tony"? Did he have friends, people he could turn to at a time like this? Four-twenty right now, he must have left the office early, unless he was still there with a patient. But where he was didn't matter, what mattered was that she had to talk to him.
Lori stared into the shadows gathering at the far end of the room, then dispersed them with lamplight. Her hand was still on the switch when the phone rang.
She wanted to say "Thank God!" but that's not the way to talk to your psychiatrist, so all that came out was, "Hello."
"Hello yourself and see how you like it."
"Russ!"
"Glad you still recognize the voice. That's a good sign."
"Where are you?"
"Gelson's, in the Valley. Better start heating the broiler. I just picked up a couple of filets."
"But Russ-"
"See you in half an hour."
By the time Lori changed, freshened her makeup, fluffed out her hair, and turned on the stove she realized that she was more than a little turned on herself. Was it Russ, or merely the excitement of anticipation?
When Russ rang the bell and she met him at the door, she thought she knew the answer to her question. It was good to see him, hear the rumble of his voice, feel its reverberations as he held her close. But it wasn't until they reached the kitchen and he put his packages down on the counter that she felt full reassurance. There was no mistaking his reaction, and it was she who finally broke their embrace.
"Hungry?" she asked.
He nodded. "Can't you tell?"
"I'm talking about food, silly." But she was not displeased. As she investigated the contents of the packages he'd brought she glanced up at him, surprised by her discoveries.
"Champagne!"
"Why not?"
"But two bottles-"
"It's a homecoming celebration." Now the familiar grin. "At least I hope it's a celebration."
Lori didn't own a champagne bucket but there was room enough on the top shelf of the fridge if she laid the bottles side by side. She was far from a culinary expert-Dad used to say she knew more about linguistics than linguini-but filets were no problem. Nor was the salad, which Russ tossed, combining the basics he'd brought with minute samplings from the contents of her spice cabinet. Spice shelf, really; she hadn't gotten around to buying and installing a cabinet since moving in. That wouldn't be a problem either now that Russ was back.
In fact, after Russ opened the first bottle of champagne, using the corkscrew attachment of his Swiss army knife, there didn't seem to be any more problems at all.
The filets came out just right, his rare and hers medium. He never ate baked potatoes, anyway, and she was watching her weight. The salad was spectacular; if Russ had sneaked in a touch of garlic it didn't really matter because they both indulged.
Once they'd finished the first bottle of champagne- good God, had they emptied it already?-things got a little confused. Perhaps coffee would help; there was so much to talk about and catch up on, so much she really wanted to hear from Russ concerning his trip, but somehow sentences had a way of starting only to be interrupted by new questions.
The second bottle was better than the first. Perhaps it had more time to chill, but whatever the reason, Lori concluded that the contents of her wineglass continued to improve. Somewhere along the line she reached several other conclusions: she wasn't making coffee after all, Russ could fill her in on his Mexican mission some other time, and as far as her own experiences were concerned this was not the right moment to update him. Dating him was another matter.
So the final, inevitable conclusion was bed. How did she get here? Had Russ really carried her from the kitchen without banging her head against the doorways? But her head didn't hurt-she felt great. Great all over. And Russ was all over. Had they actually finished that second bottle? Had either of them stepped on her skirt when it fell to the floor? It didn't matter. This is what mattered, and continued to matter and continued until its own inevitable conclusion.
It was at that moment her eyes opened wide in the dim lamplight to stare up at the face poised above her-the face of Dr. Anthony Leverett.
TWENTY-EIGHT
If the night had been good the morning after was better. She'd enjoyed a deeper and more dreamless sleep than at any time in recent memory. And right now there wasn't the hint of a hangover.
Even better, there were no dirty dishes. It was the sound of Russ's rattling around in the kitchen that awakened her; by the time she donned her robe and trudged down the hall he was already restoring the hand-dried dishes to their rightful places in the cupboard above the sink.
He didn't hear her arrive and for a moment Lori paused in the doorway, watching. This, too, was part of the morning after-one which some of her school friends dreaded far more than a hangover. It was, they agreed, easier to get rid of a headache and/or upset stomach than to deal with the continuing presence of a bleary-eyed unshaven male who took over your bathroom. To say nothing of the fact that if he borrowed your razor, he'd ruin the blade.
Lori smiled, savoring the scent of fresh coffee. Maybe she'd lucked out. Russ's presence wasn't all that hard to take; even without a shave he seemed qualified as a present partner rather than a past mistake. And if he continued in his ways she was willing to accept him as the harbinger of a bright future. At least I've got him housebroken, she told herself. And smiled again as she stepped across the threshold to make her presence known.
He lost no time in making his presence both known and felt, and for a moment it was a toss-up as to whether or not they might head back to the bedroom. It was she who made the call.
Actually, it was Dr. Leverett who made the call. But that came later, after she'd taken over the breakfast preparations and the two of them had finished their juice, eggs, toast, and coffee. During their meal Lori found no need to alter her previous verdict. In fact, Russ's presence reassured her. She had missed him, in spite of her recent rationalizations to the contrary, and she did need him, here and now.
By the time they'd finished their juice it was obvious that what occurred in Acapulco needed little by way of amplification. Problems with cameramen, problems with local authorities, problems with food, water, and finding accommodations all seemed insignificant in comparison to the twenty-four-hour-a-day difficulties in locating a public phone and getting a call put through.
"Never mind that," Russ said. "As long as you understand why I couldn't keep in touch. Besides, I thought I'd make it back here on the red-eye night before last. After I got bumped all I could do was hang in there on standby."
"I know." Lori monitored the toaster. "It's just that I started to worry-"
"I never stopped," Russ said. "So you'd better fill me in."
Lori did her best. Russ listened intently, making the appropriate responses whenever she paused.
"You really had a hell of a time of it, didn't you?" Russ shook his head. "Now it's going to be my turn, with that guilt trip you just laid on me."
"There's nothing to feel guilty about," Lori said. "You had a job to look after."
"You're the one who needs looking after. And from now on-"
It was then that the phone rang in the living room. And it was then, lifting the receiver, that she heard Dr. Leverett's voice. Dr. Leverett. Anthony Leverett, M.D. Tony. The names flashed through her mind and faded, but the constant which remained was the image. His face, bending toward her from above, detailed and distinct amid the blur of light and sensation.
It had been so vivid, so startling. Why had she forgotten it after she fell asleep, forgotten it until this moment, hearing Leverett's voice? Good question-maybe she'd better talk to her psychiatrist.
But she was talking to him right now, or more precisely, listening to him talk.
"Trust I'm not calling too early," he said. "I meant to phone last night but there was an emergency-one of my patients had a seizure and they wanted me over at Cedars-Sinai. By the time I got out of there it was close to midnight. I hope it wasn't something-"
"No." Lori interrupted quickly, eager to allay the concern she noted in his voice. At least it sounded like concern to her. By now she felt she should know him well enough to recognize his reactions.
And she did know him now.
Intimately. Hastily, she put the thought aside. But she couldn't banish the memory. This time it would not be forgotten. Never again.
But she couldn't tell him that, and this was not the time or place to discuss her dream. She'd already done her bad deed for the day, laying a guilt trip on Russ, and she had no intention of repeating the procedure with Dr. Leverett.
The procedure with Dr. Leverett-once again she tried to put last night out of her mind and failed. It was he who came to her rescue.
"That's why I'm calling you now." His voice firmed as anxiety gave way to assurance. "I did make a discovery yesterday before things got too involved. Your Nigel Chase is not someone you invented. He really exists-or did exist twenty years ago. I found a listing for him in the '68 medical registry, along with an address."
"Was it-?"
"The Fairmount Clinic?" His pause was only for a split second, but to Lori it seemed an eternity. "Yes. You were right-there was a Dr. Chase there. But I couldn't locate any record of him after that year. He's not listed in private practice or as an affiliate."
"Do you think he's still alive?"
"I don't know. I took the precaution of checking the later registries and I didn't find his name in a necrology."
"At least it's good to know that I wasn't just imagining things." Lori hesitated. "Or is it? I mean, how could the name of somebody I never even heard of before get into my dreams?"
