Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (85 page)

“He couldn’t have done it without Andy.”

“And who hired Andy?”

“I did.”

“On whose recommendation?”

“Anyone would have hired Andy. I told you, we didn’t expect him to accept our offer.”

“Why do you think he accepted? Because of you? Who interviewed him? Who showed him the labs? Who talked to him about what he’d be doing? Gene.”

Copley nodded. “I knew it,” he said to himself. He grinned at me and repeated, “I knew it.”

“Knew what?” I didn’t conceal my irritation. My obsequious manner had vanished.

“I knew he was after my job.”

“Not your job. I misspoke. He wanted a partnership. I told him he deserved it.”

“That’s why he had an affair with Halley.”

“No,” I said. “He loved her.”

“Of course he loved her. But he thought I would let him have a piece of the company if he was her husband.”

“No. That’s your vanity talking. Maybe part of his attraction to her was because she was your daughter. But that wasn’t opportunism. That was true respect for you. Gene loved you as much as he loved her.” I came close, pushing my face at his. In the body language of popular psychology: I invaded his personal space. “They all know. You deliberately destroyed Gene and they know it. That’s going to cost you.”

Copley stepped back. Not a movement of surrender. He stiffened. “You want revenge.”

“Revenge?” I laughed. “For what?”

“You’re crazy if you think—”

I cut him off. “Revenge for my mistake? I don’t blame you.”

“I’m not a stupid man, Doctor. You said that I destroyed Gene.”

“I can’t blame you for your essential nature. That’s a basic principle of psychiatry. No.
I
misjudged the situation. I thought you were merely a salesman living off Gene’s talent. I didn’t understand you are a leader. Gene was happy as your second lieutenant. He needed your guidance, just as Andy needed Gene’s supervision. It’s your character to be a leader, that’s your genius. Of course, when he mutinied, you crushed him. You had no choice.”

Stick turned away, squinting at the damp streets. He talked to them, thinking aloud, “And you expect me to believe that’s what you’ll report to Edgar?” He looked at me fast, as if to catch me at something. “That it was your fault?”

Edgar. I had forgotten Edgar was my leverage. That’s why Copley was anxious. For a moment, I had hoped it was guilt, but no, he reacted entirely out of self-preservation. “I came for my own purpose. I’m just what you think I am. A harmless academic. You said it yourself, I don’t want to win. Good night.” I turned and walked briskly.

Copley reached my side effortlessly, with the silent tread of a predator. Of course, he was also wearing sandals. “Let’s rewind the tape. I apologize. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You always think in terms of power and manipulation,” I said, continuing to walk. “Both are foreign to my character. I came only for knowledge.”

“I’d like your help.” Copley put his hand on my arm and stopped me. “You said yourself that the corporate family would be a good subject for a book. I could use your observations while you’re doing research. Obviously, I overreacted to Gene. I know Andy’s in over his head. I like to win—you’re right. But there are lots of ways to win.”

A wave of people came out of a building, exiting from a party. They were loud and cheerful. One of the men stumbled into Copley. He was a beefy college kid. Nevertheless, Copley easily pushed him off.

The kid lurched our way again, coming between us. “Sorry,” he shouted, exhaling beer.

“No problem,” Copley said. One of his friends led him off. “How about it?” Stick asked with a smile. The interruption had given him time to put on a cheerful face.

“I don’t understand.”

“I want you to work for me,” he said. “As a consultant. It’ll be good research for your book and hopefully you’ll improve morale and teach me to be a better boss.”

“Work … for … you?” I spoke slowly, as if I were learning a foreign language.

“As a consultant. Any schedule you like. No obligation other than you tell me what you think. Just as straight and tough as tonight.”

Of course I didn’t comply right away. I waited through the weekend, calling from Baltimore on Monday to say yes. A quicker agreement, I feared, might have implied I had expected Stick’s offer all along.

C
HAPTER
S
IX
Transference

T
HROUGHOUT THE SUMMER
I
ESTABLISHED MYSELF AS A MEMBER OF THE
Minotaur family. An odd figure to be sure, the maiden aunt, or perhaps the mildly retarded cousin, but certainly I acquired the invisibility of a familiar face, the benign appearance of the predictable. I visited the labs three days a week. Not that I was idle on the subject the rest of the time. I researched Copley and his company thoroughly.

Stick had reason to fear what I might say to Edgar, at least if he believed I could influence Edgar’s opinion of his management. The leveraged buyout that elevated Copley from a mere employee to majority owner was accomplished with loans guaranteed by Levin & Levin, in exchange for options that, in essence, left Edgar in a position to take control of Minotaur at his whim. Some of the above was public information, some not. Molly Gray, a partner in Brian Stoppard’s firm, on retainer to Edgar for such deals, confided to me that there was a private side agreement, a shadow clause she called it, whose provisions allowed Edgar to hold Sticks personal holdings in Minotaur hostage should profits falter. Molly explained that the secret agreement was legal, although its exercise, under certain conditions, might not be.

She didn’t reveal the private deal right away. A week after briefing me on the public information, she invited me to dinner at her apartment to meet her husband, Stefan Weinstein. He is an eminent psychiatrist, on the board of New York Psychoanalytic and a trustee of Freud’s archives. He had read some of my books and knew of my work with children. He was flattering about both. That must have influenced Molly to violate her client’s confidentiality, although I think her difficult personal history was the deciding factor. Molly and Stefan adopted a girl whose mother, a close friend, had been murdered by the child’s father. Molly appeared to be deeply affected when I told her Gene’s story and the fate of his son, Pete.

“There wasn’t a pattern of battering?” Stefan asked.

“No,” I said. “His abusive behavior took the form of sexual and emotional withdrawal. It turned outward because of other factors. For Gene, in general, anger was always severely repressed, until …”

Stefan finished for me, “Until it wasn’t.”

“Until, abruptly, it wasn’t,” I agreed. “I’m afraid I’ve come to the conclusion that I wasn’t sufficiently vigilant.”

Stefan raised a brow. “Well,” he mumbled. “You said he hadn’t been seeing you regularly—”

“You feel responsible,” Molly interrupted.

“Yes. I saw the potential for its evolution, but I didn’t allow for it. Even in his irrational rage, Gene was repressed. He hit the wrong person.”

“What?” Stefan chuckled. “What do you mean? He was myopic?” Throughout all this, Molly observed me closely, eyes glistening.

“Well, Cathy, his wife, was certainly an obstacle, but she wasn’t …” I trailed off. There was a limit to what I wanted to reveal. “It’s complicated.”

“The person he wanted to kill is at Minotaur,” Molly said. “That’s why you’re hanging out there.”

“No,” I lied. “I’m trying to understand my mistake. I’m afraid there are similar patterns in place for the people who work there now.”

Stefan frowned. “What are you saying? You think this is some sort of psychological industrial hazard? Make computers and kill your wife?”

“Something like that.” I smiled. “No, I mean I believe I can reconstruct my error with Gene through a better understanding of his life. The best I can do is observe the people he dealt with.”

“I see,” Stefan said, in a tone that implied he didn’t. Molly, however, understood. Or, she saw through me and approved anyway. Whatever the reason, she wanted to help. When Stefan left the room to take a phone call, she revealed the shadow clause.

For two weeks I commuted between Baltimore and New York, sleeping on Susan’s foldout couch. Stefan made things more comfortable for me after that, finding an apartment I could sublet on Central Park West between Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth Streets. The owner was a psychologist taking the traditional August shrink’s vacation; luckily, in her calendar, August began in June and ended with Labor Day. We made a barter arrangement. The fee was caring for her calico cat, named Sally Rogers, in honor of the character on
The Dick Van Dyke Show.

I made sure to be in New York for the two social events Edgar invited me to. I attended a Mets game in his private box, correctly assuming Stick would be there; and I was his guest at a UJA benefit dinner at the Waldorf. Copley, it turned out, hadn’t been invited. But he heard I was, and that suited my purposes even better. It convinced Copley I enjoyed a degree of intimacy with Edgar that was barred to him. In fact, when alone with me, Edgar’s attitude about my consulting job with Minotaur was sarcastic. “Do you always figure out a way to
get
paid for your research?” he teased. Whatever Copley might fear, Edgar obviously didn’t think I had insights into the business that he needed to hear.

A month into my job as a consultant, Stick invited me to a barbecue on July 4th. That provided my introduction to his wife of twenty-seven years, Mary Catharine, an Italian-American born and raised in Boston. Halley’s small stature, olive skin and dark hair came from her; otherwise they didn’t appear related. Mary Catharine’s light brown eyes were watery. Her neck was compressed into a shapeless torso, chin either weak or disappeared by the thickening of her face. Her people were working-class. She met Copley when he was at Harvard Business School. She waited tables at the pizzeria, around the corner from his bachelor apartment. I suspected (and later confirmed by the date of Halley’s birth, seven months following their wedding) that the marriage was precipitated by a pregnancy.

Mary Catharine was an alcoholic. When I deliberately arrived forty-five minutes early, I smelled it on her breath. She excused herself to change for the barbecue. She reappeared in a half hour, wearing a bright yellow pants suit. A minty odor had replaced the boozy one. Twice during the party, I noticed her fiddle with something in a pocket and slip what I eventually discovered was a Tic-Tac into her mouth. Her drinking was camouflaged in other ways. She offered to refresh a different guest’s drink every ten minutes or so, often when their glasses were merely half-empty. Each time, when she returned with her guest’s refill, she had made a new drink for herself. During the two hours before burgers and hot dogs were served, I counted eight gin and tonics. To the casual eye, it would have seemed no more than two or three; and her behavior, although increasingly gay and friendly, was another confirmation of alcoholism—she didn’t appear drunk.

Stick knew, of course. She annoyed him at one point, interrupting a pompous monologue he was delivering into the cleavage of the pretty wife of his vice-president in charge of domestic sales, Jack Truman. “Stick, honey,” she said, blocking off his view of the Great Divide. “You don’t have to convince Amy you’re a great man. I bet when Jack comes home he neglects her to sing your praises.”

“Thanks for the hint, dear,” he answered. “You know what I need? Another drink. Why don’t you get one for me?” he said, handing her his glass. “If you’ve left any gin for the rest of us,” he added with a pleasant smile.

“Baby, I’ve only been sucking the limes,” she answered, jiggling the yellow expanse of her behind luridly. “Practice makes perfect, right?” She laughed harshly in her husband’s face, although her puzzling remark seemed to wound only herself. I was not surprised that Stick hadn’t divorced this overweight, unhappy, and socially inferior woman for what magazines call a trophy wife. Nor was I surprised by his guests, my introduction to the second-rate men who worked on the business side of Minotaur. They were sycophants, frightened of Stick, intimidated by Halley, and annoyed by their dependence on the engineers working in the labs—a frustrated envy that was expressed as contempt.

While I stood with Jack Truman at the edge of Stick’s flagstone patio, chewing our corn on the cob, he asked me about the nature of my consulting job this way: “So you’re checking out Geek Heaven. I’d love to read your report. Always wanted to know if those guys have personal lives.”

“Geek Heaven?” I asked with a smile.

“Sorry. They’re brilliant. God bless ’em. What would we do without ’em?” Jack lowered his voice. “But they’re weird, right?”

“That’s why Stick’s got me down there,” I winked. “He wants to make sure they aren’t chopping up prostitutes and stuffing them into suitcases.”

Jack threw his head back and cackled. He finished with a sigh, commenting, “That’s funny.” He poked me with his elbow and turned away from the patio toward the pool. I shifted my position as well. He whispered, “Do you know about Gene Kenny? Used to be head of R&D? He seemed like the most normal nerd in Geek Heaven. But he cracked up. You know what he did?”

I recovered quickly from the surprise that neither Stick nor Halley, or any of the engineers, bothered to gossip with the marketers enough for him to know I was Gene’s doctor. That evidently he didn’t know Halley had an affair with Gene wasn’t a surprise; I had discovered only Andy Chen was clever enough to suspect. I shook my head no.

Now I had surprised Jack. “Really? I figured that’s why Stick brought in a head shrinker.” He inclined his head toward the lawn, a signal to move with him. We stepped off the flagstones onto the grass, as if somehow this placed our conversation in a more discreet zone. Not that Jack relied entirely on the lawn’s sound-dampening. He spoke through clenched teeth. “Kenny raped and killed his ex-wife. Then he smothered his baby boy and hung himself.” Jack shuddered. “About two months ago.” He studied me. “Nobody said anything to you?”