Crazy for Cornelia (30 page)

“Thanks,” Kevin mumbled to Gus, whipping out of his office for the staff room. He opened the envelope and pulled out a card.
It was a “Season’s Greetings” card, designed only for giving cash tips to low-level service employees. The cut-out pouch contained
a check, drawn on a Lord & Company bank account at AmeriCorp.

The check was made out to “K. Doyle,” with a blue and red check protector imprint, in the amount of “$5,000.00 EXACTLY.” A
little notation in the lower left corner said, “For Services.” The typed signature on the card read, “Per Chester Lord IV.”
It gave the office number for Lord & Company.

He studied the typed data. Not even a handwritten note. Kevin put the envelope in his jacket pocket.

He sat alone in a corner booth at the Waldorf-Estonia Luncheonette, trying to stomach a club sandwich, when Philip Grace arrived.
The photographer shook the snow off his old camel-hair coat, not half as nice as the gray leather one. Grace untied his white
silk scarf and tossed his aviator-style sunglasses on the table between them.

“Hey, Philip.”

“Our reluctant hero,” Philip greeted Kevin. He rubbed his hand over his shaved head, wiping off the wet snow. “Threw yourself
in harm’s way out of valor, a rare jewel in our time. ‘Course that was two days ago, and the
Globe
ain’t exactly a historical publication. You got something new for me?”

“Maybe. First, I was hoping you could tell me where she is.”

“Well,” Philip Grace fooled with the sugar packets on the counter, stacking them in a pile. “Let’s say I slip you tomorrow’s
story today, and tell you Ms. Cornelia Lord’s presently residin’ in a luxury
rubber room in Westchester County. I’d need a little quid pro quo from you before I go into more details.”

“Like what?”

“Help me get a shot of her in the funny farm.”

“Say you were in a hospital, drugged up,” Kevin asked him. “You’d want people taking your picture while you’re drooling on
your bathrobe? I can’t do that.”

Philip smiled and settled back in his booth. “You know, I miss these
ethical
discussions. You never get into talkin’ philosophy after college.”

“I never got to college. You?”

“Ivy man for one semester, Columbia. Till they kept dunnin’ me to pay the tuition.” Philip chuckled, flicking his pile of
sugar packets over with a snap of his finger. “Problem is with what you’re askin’, that’d be a whole mountain of quid for
you without even an itty-bitty thimbleful of quo for me.”

“Are we off the record now?” Kevin asked him.

Philip laughed and wheezed until he almost choked. “Off the record? What you think, this is
60 Minutes
? I’m wearin’ a camera inside my eyeball?”

“Well, are we?” Kevin said, not smiling. “Off the record?”

“Okay, Mr. Doyle. You go ahead and give me something on background, like we say, me and Diane Sawyer.”

“I need to see Cornelia,” Kevin said. “I don’t care how.”

Philip frowned and stared at Kevin. “That’s pretty tall money and power you’re up against. Chester Lord and her fiancé, Mr.
Tucker Fisk.”

“Fiancé?” The blood roared in Kevin’s ears.

“What I hear about Mr. Fisk,” Philip blabbed on, “he may not always go strictly by the rules, he sees somebody wants to take
his little ball away.”

“Tucker’s not even her boyfriend,” Kevin tried.

“You need to keep in touch with current events. Tucker Fisk put the word out they got engaged. Would she be playin’ with your
head, Kevin Doyle?”

“No. I’m just surprised.”

Like if the earth stopped spinning around the sun and they all got
flung into infinite space—that kind of surprised. That was exactly the reason he needed to talk to her one on one, without
people like Tucker Fisk and Chester Lord and his lawyers and butlers to confuse things.

“I’m not saying it’s easy,” Kevin said. “But you act like a pretty slick guy. I’m just wondering if you can handle a problem
that takes a little more strategy than hiding behind a garbage Dumpster.”

Kevin took the $5,000 check out of his pocket and handed it to Philip.

“I don’t know much about checkbook journalism,” Kevin said.

“But this is yours if you give me the name of the hospital they put her in.

Philip took the check and studied it. “She’s in the Sanctuary. Up in Armonk, New York.”

Kevin stood up again. “I have to call you tomorrow after I check some stuff out, ask your advice.”

“Hey,” Philip said sharply. “Checkbook journalism means we pay you. You best get that straight, you gonna be foolin’ around
with the media.”

He dangled the check out in the air with two fingers and Kevin took it.

“Thanks, Philip,” Kevin said.

“Seems to be the pattern of our relationship, man, like a slot machine.” Philip put his hands up in the air, shaking his head
at his own foolishness. “I keep givin’, you keep takin’, pay me off just enough to keep me interested. Don’t know why I do
it.”

Kevin considered that. “I guess you need a lot of hope, the business you’re in.”

He picked up the plain brown shopping bag from under the table and placed it on Grace’s seat, watching him for a second while
he walked away. Grace pulled out the gray leather bundle and unfolded his new coat, frowning.

Kevin felt the Debwatcher’s eyes on the back of his neck as he walked out of the luncheonette.

“Uncle Eddie? Kevin. I’m feeling kind of bad since the accident. Like I need to see a doctor. How good is my health plan?
I mean, can I use any doctor I want?”

“You can go to Dr. Kevorkian if you want to.”

“Unlimited hospitalization?” Kevin asked.

“Yeah, any hospital.”

“Dental?” Kevin breathed in and held it. “Psychiatric?”

“Yeah. Jesus, Kevin, what’s wrong with you?”

It took only one more brief meeting with Philip Grace the next day, same booth, same luncheonette, same waitress with the
attitude. But this time she said she read about him in the paper and asked him to autograph her order pad. Then Kevin sucked
up his strength to call Helen.

Helen and Harold lived in Stuyvesant Town, a project in the East 20s developed by an insurance company for middle-income people.
In a city where new high-rise buildings were built as high as the city would let them and used windows as big as possible
so they looked like giant ice cube trays stood on end, the low-rise mottled brick buildings of Stuyvesant Town looked like
a village of brownies.

He heard Harold’s reedy voice over the intercom and got buzzed in. Harold wasn’t a bad guy, Kevin thought, once you got beyond
the frizzy hair that stood up from his head and ears.

“You look terrible,” Helen greeted him at the door.

Harold sat him down on the Naugahyde living room couch. Kevin politely looked through a Kodak packet they handed him full
of photographs taken on their last vacation, a photo safari in Africa. One picture showed them standing with their tour guide,
a tall Masai. Harold said the guide was a fan of
Seinfeld
reruns who had to give his fiancée’s father five goats as a dowry. Kevin studied a picture of a monkey stealing Helen’s sunglasses
from their jeep. Then a picture of a hippopotamus drifting in brown water. When he ran out of photographs in the yellow packet,
he put them back and slowly folded it over.

“There’s no easy way to ask you for this,” Kevin said. “So I’m just going to do it.”

They looked both clueless and curious.

“I think I can help this girl I know. She’s got some issues…”

“That crazy debutante?” His sister bounced on her seat in horror, like he’d thrown a bucket of paint on her couch.

“Harold,” Kevin pressed on, “how do you diagnose people when they come into Bellevue?”

“We take the diagnostic process very seriously,” Harold said. “We give each patient a comprehensive battery of tests. We always
try to interview family members to give us background and context. Several different staff members talk to the patient—”

“What do you want from us?” Helen interrupted him.

“I have time off and insurance,” Kevin said. “Lots of it. I can get any kind of medical care I want. Cornelia’s father sent
her to the Sanctuary in Westchester.”

Helen’s face turned a blotchy red, and she spaced her words out. “I hope you’re not going to ask my husband to help defraud
a psychiatric hospital.”

Kevin nodded. “And an insurance company, if you want to be negative about it. I can’t explain this in a way that’s going to
make total sense to you. If I can be with this girl, one on one, I can help her. But I need to do this, Helen. I’ve never
asked you for a favor like this in my life.”

“That’s the most self-serving excuse I’ve ever heard,” Helen told him. “Your mother would be ashamed of you.”

“Why?” He leaned over toward them, resting his elbows on his knees, ready for a siege.

“It’s totally dishonest,” Helen snapped. “And it’s despicable to ask my husband to coach you. He could lose his license.”

“I don’t expect Harold to open his mouth. All I need is a look at the diagnostic tests. Just an idea of what the questions
are.”

“Kevin,” Harold spoke up. “Psychiatric diagnosis isn’t like a civil service exam. The Sanctuary? My God. You’re talking about
fooling some of the best psychologists in the world. You can’t cheat the diagnostics. They give you a whole battery, five
or six tests, and they crosscheck to weed out malingerers. They’ll know you’re faking. Even if you got referred by some psychiatrist,
even if you got
admitted
, you’ll be under observation every day. Psychiatrists weren’t born yesterday.”

“What about Bellevue, Harold? You admitted some guy who claimed he was Robin Hood. So Robin Hood robbed the hospital pharmacy.
You think he gave his Class A narcotics to the poor?”

“That was a fluke,” Harold mumbled.

“Come on, Harold, who’s going to get hurt?”

“The girl,” Helen said.

“How?” Kevin asked her.

Helen looked blank and turned to her husband.

Harold obliged her, warming to his task. “You want to manipulate your way into a relationship with her when she’s most vulnerable.
I’ve always liked you, Kevin. Maybe you’re no hard-charging guy, but you always tried to do the right thing. If the girl wants
you when she’s better, she’ll look for you. But I couldn’t let you do what you’re saying, even if I wanted to help. It’s selfish
and irresponsible.”

He turned to his sister. “Is that what I am, Helen? Selfish and irresponsible?”

She said nothing.

“Okay. I respect what you’re telling me. I just want to say something. Hey, sit down,” he barked when Harold started to get
up. “This is for you, too.”

Harold fell back into the cushion of the Naugahyde sofa, hissing like a tire losing air.

“Helen, when you were at CCNY having an affair with Harold, you weren’t even eighteen yet and he was married.”

“That was different,” Helen said.

“It’s always different when it’s you. Mom and Dad were raising hell. Marne was going to report Harold to the college, screwing
around with an underage student. But I said, maybe it’s not ethical, maybe it’s not legal, maybe it’s crazy. But it’s Helen,
and she loves the guy, right or wrong. Let’s wait, see what happens.” Kevin took a long pause. “All I need is a shot at it,
Helen.”

Uh-oh. He’d gotten a little carried away. He hoped he didn’t hurt her feelings. But somewhere along the way Helen seemed to
have lost her ability to feel either pain or pleasure.

She set her jawline tight as a vault. “You’d better go.”

Kevin stood up and walked out of the apartment. He didn’t slam the door behind him, but clicked it shut very politely to make
more of a statement.

He heard Harold through the doorway. “You know, he guilts pretty good, for a guy who isn’t even Jewish.”

* * *

He took the subway to the Columbia University library.

Philip Grace, who had actually attended Columbia for one semester, had kept his campus ID card and given it to Kevin to customize.
Using a matte knife, he had inserted his own photograph taken in a booth. Then he changed the dates carefully with a stippling
pen. Finally, he put his creation in a plastic laminating machine and became Kevin Doyle, Columbia student.

The security guard at the Columbia University library entrance barely glanced at the doctored ID when he walked past.

He started in the room where they kept the psychology stacks. Carting six volumes to a table, Kevin suddenly felt desperately
tired. Not just physically, but from a kind of hopelessness. He looked around the table at the Columbia students with piles
of books open in front of them, taking notes on pads and laptops. They would go on to be doctors, captains of industry, lawyers.

It reminded him of all the money and power that would be against him in his struggle. Not just Tucker Fisk, and Chester Lord,
but the entire Establishment, whatever that was, down to his own pathetic municipal lifer brother-in-law Harold.

On Kevin’s side, he had Uncle Eddie’s health plan and a half-baked reporter with a bunch of temporary restraining orders.

“How can I lose?” he snarled out loud.

A few people at the library table took unnecessary zeal in shushing him. Kevin opened a fat book called
The Diagnostic Manual of Psychiatry
familiarly known as the
DMP
, and a companion book,
DMP for Dummies
.

He knew these books from his work at Bellevue. They gave mental health workers a way of classifying the weird things candidates
for admission did, like confusing their spouses for empty milk cartons and trying to squeeze them into trash compactors. The
categories were coded in the
DMP
, and an admitting psychologist would check off boxes.

Kevin plunged through the diagnostic codes for different conditions. He studied 1003.1 with care, “Delusional Disorders, Grandiose.”
It came with a list of symptoms like a menu.

Kevin sampled other books, paying close attention to
Treating the Delusional Adult
, by Dr. John Blackwell. Philip Grace had given him
Blackwell’s name, a Park Avenue psychiatrist with society credentials. If Kevin could fool Blackwell, the doctor would refer
him to the Sanctuary and think he was practicing medicine. The problem, as Harold pointed out, was the lie scales on the psychiatric
tests.