American Devil (23 page)

He still wanted to stay married to her, no question. Life was easy and comfortable. Like his job. His motto was: don’t succeed, as success brought responsibilities and even more work. Be a nobody and enjoy it. He lived with his wife but just had his fun elsewhere. And anyhow, women liked him. They smiled at him in the street, they giggled when he joked, they had a whole battery of alluring and suggestive looks to make it clear to him how they felt. God knows why. He was an egotistical womanizing pig and he knew it. An old-fashioned tits-and-ass guy. But it was the simplicity they liked. No messing about, no new man tagging along for the emotions and philosophical discussion. He liked them, showed them he wanted them and that was all it took - everyone wants to be wanted, right?

He also had classic good looks and knew how to make a woman howl with pleasure, so they could live with the old-fashioned attitude. When it came to a flat choice between a man who could empathize or a good time, he knew what women chose every time.

His latest affair was a 26-year-old semi-depressive office manager with nice looks, an underused libido, a quiet urban desperation and a need for self-esteem. She was a real annoying date but good in bed. What he called a dilemma-lay. You like the afters but will you sit through the main course?

It was all fine and dandy in the life of Marty Fox. All fine and dandy except for one small fact. And that was that his dear wife had caught him in bed with the office manager.

The thing was, psychologically speaking, his wife had known about his affairs for years, but they existed in some strange shadowland that she could pretend didn’t exist. The previous day she had been confronted by the sight of her loving husband slap-bang in between some strange woman’s thighs. It was a confrontation with reality that she couldn’t ignore.

This was a whole other fucking ball game. No way could she switch off the image in her head or what it released inside her. Pure, red-blooded fury. She’d punched Marty. It was the first time in her life she’d hit anything. His lip split with a dramatic flood of blood. Then she went one better and grabbed the depressed office manager by her hair and threw her out of the house. She pushed her naked into the street and threw her clothes out after her. It wasn’t going to help the poor girl’s depression or self-esteem a whole lot. Then his wife returned indoors. As Marty nursed his lip in the bathroom, she locked herself in the den and took Marty’s rare vinyl jazz records and smashed his entire collection one by one. Marty was outside scratching and pleading at the door as his cherished Art Tatum albums met the 22-ounce hammer.

The day had started nice and ended like a car wreck. All in all, it wasn’t a satisfying day. And now his wife had given him the ultimatum he’d dreaded. One more strike and you’re out.

He lit another cigarette. Was this as far as he had come in his life? From an overeager sexual teen to an overeager sexual mid-lifer? Maybe Freud was right. Sex was about it, really. All else was footnotes. He was a prize jerk. His wife was the one thing in his life not open to his child-like whims. Without her, he’d fucking die - he knew it.

A buzzer screeched on his desk. He leaned back and pressed the intercom.

‘Go ahead, Keren.’

Outside his office, his receptionist smiled up at the tall gentleman in the lobby. He smiled back, nervous and twitchy. She could tell he wasn’t used to coming to see a therapist.

‘Your ten o’clock, Dr Fox.’

‘Well, send him in,’ said Marty with a mock Southern accent. He hadn’t ever bagged his secretary and now it didn’t look as though he would. His world was turning from a land of endless opportunity to a sad landscape of things he couldn’t have. There was silence on the other end of the intercom.

Marty stood up. God, he hated clients. He wanted to drown them all. He often sat there listening to their long rambling self-indulgent diatribes imagining terrible fates for them. He pulled Nick’s file out of his in-tray and opened it.

‘Oh, yeah, Mr Nick
Smith
, the fantasist! Lucky me.’

As a rule, Marty preferred female clients; at least he could distract himself from their tedious problems by imagining some sordid sexual adventure. Not so with Nick with his little domestic issues and his fake surname. The tall gentleman entered. He was wearing a smart black suit. They’d had two previous sessions and were yet to feel comfortable with each other.

‘How you been, Nick?’

Nick looked up. ‘I’ve not been feeling so good, Doctor.’ He sat down heavily in the leather chair. He fidgeted with his hands as he stared out of the window in silence. It wasn’t easy for him to be there at all, really. He felt a sense of betrayal as well as fear, but he wanted to get down to business. He wanted to know what was happening to him. His visions and dreams were so vivid they terrified him. ‘Will you sit down, Doctor? I don’t know where I am. I’m feeling down and confused. I need your help.’

‘I like to float, Nick. I need to keep my mind active.’

‘Please
sit down
.’

Marty hadn’t heard this tone before. It was different. Military almost. He looked at his client. ‘Okay, Nick, you’re feeling fragile. That’s no problem. I’ll sit down for you. So, last week we touched on a problem you felt you have with women. Your wife and you have been having some domestic issues. You want to pick it up at that point?’

‘I have a problem respecting women. I know that.’

‘I do too, Nick.’

‘Not like me,’ said Nick.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ smiled Marty.

‘I’m very sure, but that’s not what I want to talk about.’

The two men looked at each other. Marty decided to let the guy twist himself up in his little world of self-importance if that’s what he wanted. The only psychological cure Marty ever really believed in was not taking yourself so goddamn seriously - but his jokes were never appreciated. Clients wanted to know that even the colour of their shit was psychologically relevant and pertinent to their current position in the world. ‘Go on, Nick, I’m listening,’ he said, smooth as silk.

‘I woke up in my car. I’d passed out again like I said happened before. I get this drumming in my head like I’m dying and then I just feel my brain squeezing tighter and tighter. The pain is too much, I guess. It’s killing me.’

‘You had this checked out with a doctor?’

‘You’re my doctor.’

‘I mean a medical doctor.’

‘No. Got no insurance or nothing like that.’

‘You have intense pain and then you black out?’

‘Yeah. Pain and white lights all across my eyes.’

‘How often do you pass out?’

‘Been happening for years but it’s worse now, I think. I can’t remember too well any more. I just don’t seem to remember much for long. I really can’t. I just feel drained. Look at me.’

Marty looked. Nick’s skin was pale and his eyes were sunken. He looked like he’d had a few rough weeks. ‘What started it? Do you remember that?’

‘Listen, Doctor, I haven’t even told Dee this, but I lost my job. They locked me out of the office, left my things in a box on the sidewalk. A woman was staring from the window. She was wearing pink. I dropped the box on the way to the car. She was laughing.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘About a month ago.’

‘Found nothing else?’

‘Not a thing. I’ve just been wandering around, driving my car, waiting. Then I got into arguments with Dee.’

‘What kind?’

‘I love Dee. I love my kids, but I wasn’t nice to her. I’m so sorry. I was so sorry. I told her about a hundred times, but she still looks at me strange.’

‘What happened with Dee?’

‘I hurt her, Doctor. I think I really hurt her.’

‘Why?’

‘I get the feeling she doesn’t love me.’

‘You feel pretty bad about it?’

‘Yeah, then I have to go out and drive and wait. I wait until she’s asleep, but sometimes I bring her presents. She likes the presents I bring her. She likes pretty things.’

‘You have bad dreams again?’

‘I dreamed of Bethany again.’

‘Your sister?’

‘She wasn’t my real sister, Doctor. I was fostered. She was nice to me but I never was part of that family. Bethany was so beautiful, though, she’d make me ache just to look at her. In the dream I was still just a boy.’

‘What happened?’ said Marty.

‘I watched her crossing the meadow again, her little frock blowing in the breeze. I remember that dress so clearly. Strawberry pattern all over it. She was such a perfect thing.’

Marty nodded. His own daughter was fifteen and a money-hungry, promiscuous little rock monster who left condoms on her bedroom floor to show Mom and Dad how mature she was. Still, if purity and innocence was Nick’s ideal then yeah, if the archetype works for you, run with it. ‘What happened this time?’

‘I was being beaten as I watched her. Held upside down and beaten.’

‘Who beat you?’

‘A man. Her father, I think.’

‘What for?’

‘Looking at his girl.’

‘He didn’t like you looking or you looked with your hands?’

Nick stared, fierce and unnerving.

‘What did I say?’ Marty asked.

‘I didn’t ever touch her, I told him I didn’t. I never did.’

Marty squinted. ‘Sure you didn’t. I’m just searching around. I need to find out why you’re fixated on Bethany.’

Nick rose to his feet. ‘Leave her alone. No one touched her. You gotta try to help me.’

‘I don’t get your problem, Nick. You want to stop the dreams or stop hurting your wife?’

‘I want my life back, Doctor Fox.’

Marty paused and looked up. ‘How so?’

‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m falling apart. I think about killing her.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Yeah, Dee. I think about it a lot.’

‘You want to kill her?’

‘Sometimes I can’t think of anything else. Sometimes I see Dee’s body all bloody and cut all over the floor.’

‘In your dreams, right?’

‘Not dreams like that, no. I daydream about it.’ Nick paused and stared towards the window. ‘But I get excited when I’m imagining it. I’m sick, Doctor. I’m so sick it scares me. I ain’t going to go home any more, in case I hurt them. I love them. I love my two kids. I love Dee, but I told her to hide all the knives in the house, put them away so I couldn’t get to them. If I find one, I don’t know if I can stop myself.’

‘She must be frightened.’

‘She made me come to see you, Doctor. She’s using her savings to pay for these sessions. She says if I don’t get better, she’ll have to go away.’

There was a pause as Nick let the thoughts fill his mind and float away. ‘I’ve got a little place in my head where I put these bad things, you know. All the blood and all the noise go there.’

‘Where do you put them?’

‘In a little glass cage inside my head. Where I can’t hear them scream and I can’t feel their hatred.’

‘You’re going to have to open that glass cage there, Nick, if you want to get better, you know. Get in touch with those feelings.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Doctor, you can’t open the glass cage. You gotta keep it locked up all the time.’

A cloud passed over the bright sun and the room darkened. ‘Why do you think you’re dreaming about Bethany?’ asked Marty.

‘Maybe I was in love with her. She was just about as beautiful as you could imagine. Like a cherub with a beautiful face and golden hair.’

‘Did something happen with your sister, Nick?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did anything happen with you and your sister?’

Nick stared coldly at Marty. ‘No, nothing happened to my sister. What do you mean?’

Marty Fox poured Nick a glass of water and passed it to him. Nick was staring up at him. ‘What’s wrong with me? Am I losing my mind?’

Marty put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. This poor American nobody was like a lot of people he saw. Their home lives were degenerating because they hadn’t become the people they imagined they would and they started to fall apart, lose their jobs and turn on their families. They were desperate to get some attention, but Nick was worse than most. He seemed close to the edge.

‘I can try to help you, Nick. It’s good you came. If you keep coming, I can help. Do you think you can do that?’

‘I think so,’ said Nick, looking up with hopeful grey eyes.

‘I know,’ said Marty. ‘Keep talking, Nick. The talk is good. It helps the brain to process the traumatic details. Let it flow.’

 

F
irst thing in the morning, Captain Lafayette got the message out that he wanted to get together the task force and everyone else in the team. He pulled in the detectives from North Manhattan Homicide, all the precinct homicide detectives, the back office staff, everyone involved in the case.

Bringing everyone together unexpectedly brought a locker-room camaraderie to the room. In the large academy lecture hall, the air was thick with jokes, insults and testosterone. They’d managed to keep Williamson’s death from the news crews, but that meant that most of the team were still in the dark.

Lafayette walked in. He wasn’t looking either solemn or jovial. The deputy commissioner and Ged Rainer walked in by his side. A chorus of whistles went up. This was the main man coming down to see his troops.

Lafayette mounted the platform. He introduced Lenny Elwood and invited him to speak.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Elwood said, ‘a while back, Blue Team took down Eric Romario, one of the most repulsive killers we’ve seen in this great city. They took him down with perseverance, good old-fashioned police work and great leadership. ’ He paused. ‘Great, great leadership. I’d hoped to come here to encourage you to redouble your efforts to catch the American Devil, but I’m here as the carrier of bad news.’