Innocent Monster (22 page)

I told them that it didn’t make much sense to me to turn over reams of unvetted data, that I was afraid it might slow down their investigation and waste manpower by sending the cops off in a hundred different directions. I said I thought I was being responsible by paring down the list, by doing some of the initial legwork myself. And hadn’t I turned the list over to McKenna the second I saw I wasn’t up to the task?

Even now, repeating the words in my head, it sounded like the truth, but it wasn’t. It was a rationalization. The real answer to both questions, to all the whys, was the same and much more simple than the answers I gave the cops. The answer was that I was a prideful son of a bitch. I always knew better. I always had too much faith in my own decisions, in my gut, in my ability to read people. So when Tier-ney said he didn’t do it and it rang true to me, I accepted it like the gospel truth. Hence there was no need for me to double-check Jimmy and search the house for myself. I’d already declared John Tierney a non-suspect by reason of insanity. And the list... I didn’t turn it over because it was mine, because in my gut I felt that if Sashi could be found, I would find her, not the cops.

The irony in this was that I was already wearing the albatross necklace before I ever heard of Sashi Bluntstone. Her death wasn’t a new lesson to me, but an old one, one I thought I had learned, but hadn’t. I’d simply kept my pride locked safely away in my office with the rest of my life for the last seven years. The lesson was that people don’t change, that I didn’t change, that my promises were just lies in waiting. That my pride and faith in my gut persisted in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary. My two divorces and Katy’s murder weren’t enough to humble me. And for fuck’s sake, my ability to read people was as much a myth as the exploding poodle in the microwave. Me, read people? The two closest friends I ever had turned out to be corrupt murderers. What did I really know about people?

Funny that that should be my last thought before John Tierney’s psychiatrist opened the door to his office and asked, “Mr. Prager, would you like to step in?” What do any of us know about people?

Dr. Mehmet Ogologlu was a tall, olive-skinned man with a round face and thinning black hair. He had penetrating brown eyes, a very full mouth, and a beak-like nose. He was comfortably dressed in a burgundy sweater over a blue Oxford shirt and gray cords. His shoes were scruffy old Bass loafers. I guessed most people would feel pretty much at ease around him. He gestured at a brown leather chair that faced his desk and waited for me to sit before he sat himself. I didn’t know if that was a function of good manners or of his training. I wasn’t in a trusting frame of mind.

“Well, Mr. Prager, what motivated you to come see me today?” Although his accent was as Oxford as his shirt, there were still some traces of Turkey in his speech.

“Guilt,” I said.

“We all live with guilt,” he said dispassionately, lifting a notepad and pen off his desk.

“Not this kind of guilt.”

“What kind of guilt would that be?”

“I think I might be responsible for someone’s murder.”

That put a crack in his wall of dispassion. The psychiatrist leaned forward and stopped writing. “Whose murder?”

“Sashi Bluntstone’s.”

Now the wall came tumbling down. He stood up. “Are you a reporter? I will not discuss this with the press.”

“I’m not a reporter.”

“Please leave.”

“I swear, I’m not the press.”

“Who are you?”

“Just who I said I was. My name is Moe Prager.”

He studied me more carefully now. “I am still at a bit of a loss. If I accept you are who you say you are and I am to take you at your word, what is it that you believe I can do for you?”

“Can we sit?” I sat and he followed in kind.

“It’s customary for the patient to volunteer information and for the doctor to listen.”

“I was the private investigator who found John Tierney, Dr. Ogologlu.”

“I was under the impression it was the authorities who discovered John.”

“Through me. I developed the lead and tipped the police off to his activities. They followed up.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Prager, however, I fail to see in what capacity I can be of any service to you. In any case, I feel duty bound to warn you that I am loath to discuss my patients, living or deceased, with anyone.”

“I understand, but maybe if you hear me out...”

“Possibly. It might facilitate progress if I knew in what capacity you come here today: as a private investigator or as a potential patient?”

“Honestly?”

“That would be best, I think, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” I confessed. “I just knew I had to speak to you.”

“Why is that, do you suppose?”

“Two days before the police went to Tierney’s house, I paid him a visit. He just seemed so detached from the world the rest of us operate in and so lost in his own, that I was convinced he couldn’t have had anything to do with Sashi Bluntstone’s kidnapping. Without a second thought, I disqualified him as a suspect. I was so sure of myself that I didn’t bother searching his house. I even considered not telling the police about him at all. That’s how sure I was. Then, just as I was leaving, he came right out and said he didn’t do it. He was coherent long enough to tell me that.”

“Oh, I see. You
are
feeling guilty and responsible.”

“Wouldn’t you, in my shoes?”

“It need not be that academic a question, Mr. Prager. I feel quite responsible enough in my own.”

“Then maybe we can help each other.”

“Yes, maybe we can. But if we can, this is not the proper venue. Come.”

For as long as I could remember, this part of Atlantic Avenue, from Court Street down to the BQE, was the main drag of a thriving area for Near and Middle Eastern businesses of all kinds. With Bordeaux In Brooklyn only a five-minute walk away, I sometimes came to the area for lunch or dinner. The Constantinople Café, a short stroll from Dr. Ogologlu’s office across from Long Island College Hospital, was a tiny coffeehouse with four small tables, a few decorative water pipes, rugs hung on the walls along with travel posters of ruins and mosques. That’s where the atmosphere stopped and reality set in as a local news radio channel filled the air instead of strains of exotic music. The café was shouldered on one side by a large Syrian-owned food shop and on the other by a Pan-Arab bookstore.

“Have you ever had Turkish coffee, Mr. Prager?”

“No.”

That elicited a big smile from Ogologlu. He clapped his hands together and held up two fingers to the counterman. Then, as he pointed at some pastries in a glass case, he and the barista had a brief conversation in their native tongue. When he came back to the table, he was still wearing the smile.

“This city is a remarkable place,” he said. “I only wish we appreciated that fact.”

“How do you mean?”

“Here we are in a Turkish café surrounded by Arab businesses in a city with perhaps the largest Jewish population in the world. I live in Ditmas Park or, as some call it, Little Pakistan. Little Pakistan abuts Mid-wood, which is dominated by Hasidic Jews. History would say none of this should be possible. And let us not even discuss Queens, where there are over one hundred and thirty languages spoken each day.”

“I’ve lived here my whole life, Doc. The melting pot is a crock of shit.”

“I am not naïve, Mr. Prager, but I have lived in other places, places where the people are victims of their histories. Here, in this place, people rebuke the yokes of their histories. Not always, but on most days.”

“Nice speech. Maybe you should run for mayor.”

“I am afraid I would make a most dreadful politician. And I realize that the things I so admire about this place make it a target as much as anything else.”

The barista brought over two espresso-sized cups on saucers and a larger plate with a selection of crusty and syrupy pastries. Some were sprinkled with chopped pistachio nuts, others covered in a kind of shredded wheat. All seemed to feature gobs of honey. Ogologlu thanked him and watched him retreat back around the counter.

“I know it looks like espresso, but I would advise against drinking it so. The grinds are at the bottom of the cup. The pastries... for them, I will leave you to your own devices. Enjoy.”

I took a sip of the coffee, which the psychiatrist watched with delight. “Amazing,” I said, “strong and sweet. I’ve never had anything quite like it.”

For the next ten minutes we sat there making small talk, sipping our coffees, sampling the pastries.

“You were talking about people being prisoners of their histories, Doc. Was John Tierney a prisoner of his?”

The smile ran away from Ogologlu’s face. “As complex as we like to believe human history is, schizophrenia is a far more difficult a proposition. It defies the kind of analysis and deconstruction we feel comfortable with. Oh, we can describe it well enough, list its various manifestations, symptoms, drug therapies, and the rest, but...” He didn’t finish his thought. He didn’t need to.

“He suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, right?”

“Broadly speaking. And before you ask, most people with this diagnosis tend not to be violent. Sometimes, however, they turn on people, even those closest to them.”

“How long had you been treating him?”

“Since he was about nineteen. He was a sophomore at the Rhode Island School of Design, a fine arts major, I believe. Apparently, he had been displaying some symptoms since his mid-teens, but his mother and teachers dismissed his unusual behavior as the eccentricities of a talented and precocious child. When he was forced to withdraw from college, his mother was referred to me.”

“Did the cops tell you about the paintings of the saints on his walls, the Christ-heads, the altar?”

“They did. It was not a surprise to me. From the beginning, John, like many schizophrenics, had incorporated a strong religious element into his organizational scheme. Schizophrenia is an amazing disease, Mr. Prager, in that its manifestations can be very similar from patient to patient. The aluminum foil on the windows, the conviction that someone or some group is trying to read and influence thoughts, these are common things.”

“Did he ever talk about Sashi Bluntstone?”

Ogologlu swallowed hard. “He had, but more with a kind of religious reverence. He had mentioned a hundred people this way. What is it you are really asking me?”

“You’re a smart man,” I said. “There’s lots of questions, but the one I guess I want answered is, could anyone have seen this coming?”

“I don’t know if anyone could have seen it coming. I can only say that I did not.”

“So there was no indication that he could turn violent.”

“I did not say that. Maybe there were a thousand indications that he was capable of such heinous acts and I failed to see them. Maybe there were none. As I said, John’s disease defies easy answers. I
can
say that there were no overt and obvious signs that John was a danger to himself or others. On the other hand, I hadn’t seen him for several months before this happened. Therefore, I cannot say with any degree of certainty that his psychosis hadn’t deepened or evolved into something different and dangerous.”

“There’s a lot you cannot say.”

“There is one thing I can say, though. It seems to me that you are searching for some kind of absolution. Looking to me for that will only lead to disappointment. Absolution does not fall within my purview, I’m afraid. And frankly, in this kind of situation, I’m not certain there is anyone who can grant it to you. I can also say that I treated John and was myself shocked to hear the news about what he had done. Therefore, I would not be so fast to judge myself as harshly as you have judged yourself. You spent a few minutes with him and made an error. I spent years with him. If there is guilt and culpability here, there is plenty to go around. So you see, there is no hope of absolution for me either. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said as he stood. “I think I would like to go home and see my family.”

I stood and shook his hand. “Thanks, Doc. If I have any other questions, would you mind if I called?”

He shrugged, not looking thrilled at the prospect of rehashing the subject of John Tierney. Yet, he said, “If I can be of assistance, certainly feel free to contact me.”

When he left, I ordered another coffee and sat, listening mostly to the traffic noise on Atlantic and my even noisier thoughts. No matter what Dr. Ogologlu had said, I was choking on guilt. I’d been through this kind of thing before, in the wake of Katy’s murder and, all things considered, I’d take a lungful of cancer over guilt. You can cut cancer out, burn it out, starve it, poison it. And if none of that works, the worst thing it can do is kill you. Cancer has a spot, a place, a name, even a face, but guilt is more insidious. It doesn’t spread because it’s everywhere to begin with, and it has a voice. It sings to you, but it won’t kill you. No, that’s on you. Guilt is the cab that drives you to the airport, but you have to crash the plane yourself.

Then, above the traffic noise and the din of my guilt, a news story came over the café speakers that just made my day complete.

... for that we go to our Long Island bureau chief, Marsha Farmer...

“We’re here at the Junction Gallery in Sea Cliff where, only minutes ago, patron of the arts Sonia Barrows-Willingham announced that the hundred thousand dollar reward she offered for information leading to a break in the Sashi Bluntstone case, has been awarded to Moses Prager. Prager, a Brooklyn native, is a private investigator and retired NYPD officer. A friend of the Bluntstone family, he was brought into the case three weeks after the young artist was kidnapped from this scenic North Shore village. Within a week, Mr. Prager had gotten a line on a possible connection between Sashi Bluntstone and John Tierney. Following the lead developed by Prager, the NYPD and detectives from the Nassau County Police went to Tierney’s Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn home...”

I left ten dollars on the table and my second cup of coffee untouched.