The Rules of Dreaming (3 page)

Chapter
3

Dubin’s investigation had begun by chance, as such things almost always did.  One steamy afternoon in August, cruising the shady back roads in his BMW convertible, he discovered an area where a steep barrier of hills had unaccountably turned the tide of suburban sprawl.  Here they still had woods and fields, brooks and ponds, family farms and secluded estates—it was amazing to think that such a place could still exist
a little more than two hours from New York—and before long he found himself in a quaint little town he’d never heard of.  It was called Egdon and it had no gas stations, no bars, no fast food—in fact, none of the emblems of modern life other than a famous psychiatric institute—but it did have a small public library housed in a tiny brick building on one end of the main street.  In that library he came under close inspection by the town librarian.  Her name, as he later learned, was Miss Francine Whipple and she was 68 years old. Miss Whipple ran the library singlehandedly, with assistance two afternoons a week from a high school student whose alphabetical skills remained open to question. She wore sensible shoes with laces and flat heels, a cardigan sweater even on the warmest days, and a pair of no-nonsense trifocals through which she could simultaneously read the mail, keep an eye on the door, and shoot piercing glances all the way across the room in her lifelong struggle against whisperers, misfilers and book defacers.  

“What brings you to the library this afternoon?” Miss Whipple inquired as
Dubin stood leafing through the local newspaper.

“Research,” he answered without thinking.

“Are you a writer?”

“Yes.  I’m a kind of journalist.”

“Now let me guess.”  She peered at Dubin over the tops of her trifocals, as if in the suspicion that none of their refractions would reveal the truth about him.   “Do you write about politics?”

“Not really,” he smiled.  “I’m primarily interested in unsolved crimes.”

“True Crime,” she nodded.  “My favorite category.”   She pointed to a crowded shelf along the wall.  “It’s an excellent collection.” 

Her tone of voice told him that she was referring to the True Crime section, and that he ignored it at his peril.  “Oh, I’m sure it is,” he assured her.  “It’s just that—well, those stories have already been told.  I’m always on the lookout for something new.”

She smiled knowingly.  “Some unsolved crime that everyone seems to have forgotten?”

“Exactly.”  There was something in her manner that told him he’d better start paying attention.  “Do you know of any?”

“I’ve lived in this town all my life,” she said.  “I know a few things.” 

“Give me an example.”

“Well”—she looked around to make sure no one else was listening—“I don’t know if it’s an unsolved crime or not.  At the time they said it was a suicide.  But you know, it was Maria Morgan, the opera singer.  Seven years ago, she was found dead in her studio out on the Warwick road.  She was about to make her Metropolitan Opera debut and one day as she was practicing, she just suddenly couldn’t take the pressure anymore—that’s what they said, anyway—and she hanged herself.  With her two children in the house.”

“When did you say this was?  Seven years ago?
”

“That’s right.”  She rifled through a stack of papers on her desk and pulled out a manila folder that held a sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings.  “Maybe you’d like to read these.  They tell the whole story.”

Dubin sat down at an isolated table and read the clippings over and over again.  He liked what he read.  Maria Morgan’s death had everything he looked for in a new project.  A glamorous woman with everything to live for, a violent, unexplained death, an aroma of official ineptitude or corruption—and rich people running for cover in a dozen different directions.  But wasn’t the story too old and cold to be of any value?  Dubin had already decided to get out of the business, even if sometimes it gave him the illusion of bringing justice to a corrupt world.  In his kind of detective work he wasn’t hindered by Miranda warnings, rules of evidence or statutes of limitation; he oppressed only the rich, never the weak and downtrodden.  His was the underside of the law, the shadow side that remained invisible in a world where everything had its price.  But the official side—the world of real detectives who carried badges and could put you away for the rest of your life—seemed to be closing in.  One more case was all he had time for and all he really needed before he could retire.  “What are you doing with these old newspaper clippings right in the middle of your desk?” he asked the librarian.

“Let’s j
ust say I have my reasons.”

“
Such as?”

“We librarians have our ethics, just as you journalists do.  You protect your sour
ces and we protect our borrowers.”

“Fair enough.”  Dubin liked Miss Whipple, and her stubbornness made him like her more.  “
It said in the obituary that Maria Morgan was survived by her husband and two children.  Are they still around?”

“The husband is Avery Morgan.  I’m sure you’ve heard of him”—Dubin had not—“and the children, well, I guess you could say they’re still in the area.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well”—she lowered her voice—“they’ve been in the Palmer Institute ever since their mother died.
  They’re in their early twenties now.”

Dubin had heard of the Palmer Institute.  “Is that around here?”

“Right down the road.”

“Can you tell me how to get there?”

Following her directions, Dubin wove his way through a maze of shady back roads to a secluded spot behind the Palmer Institute where he could park without being seen.  He followed a path through the woods to the Institute’s rear fence, which offered a surprisingly intimate view of the terrace behind the ivy-entangled building.  Even more surprisingly, there was another spectator—a small, wiry man of about fifty—who had already concealed himself behind the fence and stood peering at the terrace.  The man had a delicate, almost aristocratic appearance: he wore a light blazer and a yellow shirt open at the neck, and a pair of shiny black shoes that looked completely out of place in the woods.  His nose was long and beaklike, and he had a pointed chin and a high forehead enclosed by unruly tufts of gray hair, but his most remarkable features were his wide, deep-set eyes, which seemed ready to absorb the whole world into their dark uncertainties.  There was something otherworldly about him that made Dubin wonder which side of the fence he belonged on.

I
t was almost dusk and the Institute’s grim façade was enveloped in mist, a silhouette looming ominously against the faded sky.  Hanging Chinese lanterns glowed on the terrace, where a group of heavily sedated patients sat watching a strange performance.  Two young people, about the age of Maria Morgan’s schizophrenic children, sat between a striking redhead and an elderly nurse, while on the lawn a young blond woman in a blue ballet dress leaped from side to side, waving her arms in a pantomime of emotions that Dubin hoped he would never experience.  The man standing beside Dubin at the fence mirrored the dancer’s performance in a series of facial tics and small, precise hand gestures, as if he were directing her movements with invisible wires.

“What’s going on?” Dubin asked him.

“Performance therapy,” he muttered, as if the answer should have been obvious.

“Do you know Hunter Morgan?”

For the first time the man turned toward Dubin, drawing him into his cavernous eyes.  “Why do you ask?”  He spoke with the trace of an accent.

“I’ve heard he’s a patient here.”

The man hesitated.  “That’s Hunter Morgan on the terrace.  His twin sister Antonia is sitting beside him.” 

“Who’s the dancer?” Dubin asked.  He expected to hear that she was one of the more seriously disturbed inmates.

“That’s...  Dr. Palmer’s niece.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all.  She works here.”

As he drove home that night, Dubin asked himself whether he really wanted to stick his nose under this tent.  He smelled mon
ey, but there were a number of less pleasant smells mixed in. Death, of course, and insanity, and a rich family’s nasty secrets.  He had nothing invested; he could walk away and never think about this town again.  But he was haunted by the image of the schizophrenic twins on the terrace, staring into the darkness as the mist wrapped itself around them under the chill shadow of the Institute’s gabled roof.  They had their secrets and he had his.  Was their captivity something he should even attempt to unravel?

Now he stood in the morning shadows outside Avery Morgan’s house trading barbs with his wife.  She had just accused Dubin of being a blackmailer and he was taking his time denying it.  In the shade beside the stone barn he watched the morning breeze jostle a lock of tawny hair across her forehead.   

“I’m in the information business,” he said.  “I just gather what’s out there and let my client decide how it should be used.  Or not used.” 

“And if you don’t have a client?”

“Then I keep looking until I find one.”

“What information do you have?”

“Not very much so far.”

“And my husband?”

“He said to keep my eyes open but he didn’t really sign up as a client.  That means I have to keep looking.”

Susan Mor
gan was attractive in an unattractive way, with her cold eyes and her hard cheeks and her low, masculine voice.  “Come with me,” she said.

He followed her into the stone barn, past a row of horse stalls and through a narrow doorway into a small apartment that was evidently used as an office.

“How much will you need?”   She took a checkbook out of a drawer and sat down on the couch to write him a check.  The desk was cluttered with books and papers.

“Five thousand ought to do it for now.  Plus expenses.”

“Oh,”  she said.  “Do blackmailers have expenses?”

“I have a client now.  That makes me a detective.”

She smiled as she stood up.  “All right, start detecting.  But I want to know everything you do, before anybody else does—especially my husband.   And when I say enough is enough, you go away.  Is that a deal?” 

“It’s a deal.”

She followed him out of the apartment and opened another door that led up a dusty flight of stairs.  “Don’t charge me extra for this.”

They climbed the stairs to an open room with a skylight that covered the barn’s entire upper level.  The air smelled like mice and the sparse furnishings were draped with sheets.  “
Maria Morgan’s studio. Just the way she left it.”

“Mind if I look around?”

“Not now.  Maybe on your next visit.” 

In another moment they were back in the driveway.  The golden retriever, in a friendly gesture, jumped up on Dubin and spattered him with mud from head to foot.  Susan pulled the dog off, laughing at Dubin’s distress.  She laughed more as he squinted into his car
’s side mirror and tried to shake the mud out of his wavy dark hair. 

He retreated into his car.  “Thanks for the check,” he said.  “I’ll give you a call in a couple days.”

Susan had stopped laughing but there was still a mischievous gleam in her eyes.  “You know, Dubin,” she said, “you really ought to give up blackmail and become a detective.”

“Why?”

“You look exactly like Edgar Allan Poe.”

*   *    *

By the time I finished my psychiatric residency, I imagined that I knew everything I needed to know about human beings and their mental pathologies.  For that reason I must have been particularly vulnerable to the most insidious of those pathologies, the madness of love.  In the space of a few months I became obsessed with three women—an artist, an ingénue, and a nymphomaniac—each of whom brought me a step closer to ruin.  The name of the first one (not her real name, of course) was Olympia.

Olympia was Miles Palmer’s niece
, the daughter of Peter Bartolli, and she was a beautiful, exotic creature—at least that was how she appeared to me through the lens of my infatuation: tall and statuesque, long limbed and graceful, with almond eyes and a platinum complexion that made her look like a visitor from another world.  Her mother was a Russian ballet dancer, the onetime wife of Peter Bartolli who had raised her singlehandedly after the mother waltzed off with another man.  At that time Bartolli was Associate Director of the Institute, and Olympia spent her childhood in this strange environment surrounded by wealthy psychotics and the doctors who humored them.  As a result she took on the coloration of both groups: she was kind and generous but incredibly self-centered, driven by emotion but at the same time devious and manipulative, intellectually accomplished but given to crackpot notions.  Some who knew her thought she should have stayed on as a patient.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Olympia.   She had come to the Institute to
conduct one of her “Performance Therapy” sessions.  Dr. Palmer was away at a professional meeting—it was the night before Hunter Morgan’s first piano performance—and my nemesis Dr. Jeffrey Gottlieb was in charge.  Personally, I never approved of these events; it seemed to me that they nudged the patients in the wrong direction, away from reality instead of towards it.  But Dr. Palmer had maintained a close relationship with Olympia even after her father’s ouster—she’d grown up there, he said, and she’d always be welcome—and his generous attitude meant that periodically she would show up for one of these extravaganzas.  Sometimes she danced, sometimes she put on a little play, and sometimes (without Dr. Palmer’s knowledge or approval, I’m sure) she lectured the uncomprehending patients about New Age spirituality, homeopathic medicine, and various other fads that were close to her heart.  She even had a room where she could sleep overnight when she visited the Institute.