Valentine (8 page)

He laughed again, his hearty basso profundo unsettling the papers on the desk. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I have that
New Yorker
map of the United States permanently fixed in my brain. You know, New York on the east coast and L.A. on the west coast, and everything between them comes under the general heading of ‘Kansas.’ Well, if it really is one of those two places, I guess I can find him. I just don’t understand exactly what you think your stepfather has to do with all this.”

She thought a moment before replying, finally deciding that complete honesty would be the best course of action. “I guess you could say that I was the reason for their divorce. My father died when I was seven. Lung cancer. Five years later my mother met Brian Marshall. He was a big, handsome Irishman, very friendly—at first. A friend of hers introduced
them at a party. He was divorced from his first wife, and there was a child somewhere, a boy. He paid child support, or whatever. Anyway, six months later she married him. She was very happy, I remember. But then we began to see the problems.”

“What problems?” the detective asked.

She sighed. “Well, he drank. A
lot
. Turns out, that’s what ended the first marriage—I didn’t find that out until later, when I made it my business to find the first Mrs. Marshall and speak with her. He—he got violent with her, and she was afraid for their son. She told me something else: once, shortly after he married my mother, she actually called Mom and told her all about it. Mom hung up on her. Well, she lived to regret it, I suppose. You see, when I was seventeen years old, Brian Marshall tried to—he tried to rape me.”

“I see,” the detective replied, watching her closely.

After a moment, she continued. “I can’t say that it came as a great surprise. I became aware very early that he—he looked at me strangely. I can’t explain it exactly, but even at fourteen, I knew that wasn’t the way grown men were supposed to look at children. I made sure I was never alone with him. Until—well, one day this thing happened.” She bit her lip, recalling the struggle on the kitchen floor of the Central Park West apartment: the torn blouse and the cast-iron skillet and the blood streaming down his face.
Finally, she blinked it away and said, “Brian Marshall is the only person I know who’s ever gotten—violent—with me. I want you to find out where he is, and what he’s doing, and whether or not he could have done this.” She waved her hand at the two envelopes that lay atop the pile on his desk.

Barney Fleck picked them up and studied them again. “Yes, I see. When was the last time you saw him?”

“Shortly after the—the incident. Mother threw him out, and she divorced him as soon as she could. I was going to press charges, but she convinced me not to. I’ve always regretted that: it is my greatest regret. Well, I went away to college, and he left New York. I seem to remember Cleveland being mentioned.”

“Can’t you ask your mother where he is?”

She bit her lip again before replying. “No, that would not be convenient.”

He raised his large gray eyebrows. “That’s a strange choice of words.”

She sighed, remembering her promise to be frank with this man. “My mother has Alzheimer’s disease. She’s in a rest home on Long Island. She doesn’t remember where he went. She probably doesn’t even remember who he is.” With a swift gesture, she brushed tears away. “I’m sorry.

He stood up and came around the desk, his eyes twinkling. “S’okay. In my line of work, I see a lot of
it. You just go on home and worry about writing books. Give me a couple of days, and I’ll see what I can find out for you.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at him and rose to leave. His voice stopped her.

“Ms. Talbot—”

“Yes?”

“You didn’t make a mistake in coming here.”

She stared. “Excuse me?”

“That’s what you were thinking, when you first saw me. I guess I don’t look much like what you were expecting. And Verna outside doesn’t look much like Della Street.”

It was the first of several times that he would surprise her with his perception. She smiled as she buttoned her coat. “Betty Hanes assures me that you’re the best person around for—for this particular problem.”

He shrugged. “I guess it’s by way of being a specialty of mine. I was a cop for twenty years. Now I do it privately. I’m good at it.”

She regarded him a moment, curious. “So why did you leave the police force?”

He laughed again. “
You
try being a New York cop for twenty years! Besides, my wife had a say in the matter.”

Jill nodded and turned toward the door. His voice halted her again. “And, Ms. Talbot—”

“Yes?”

“Be careful. Whether or not it’s this Brian Marshall—whoever it is—he’s not a very savory customer, if you know what I mean. He’ll probably pull some other shit, begging your pardon. Just watch out, okay?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ll do that.”

He watched her come out of the building on West Twenty-fifth Street and turn east. At the comer of Seventh Avenue she hailed a cab. He let her go: he already knew her next destination, thanks to her telephone. She’d be there about an hour, he calculated, and then she was going home to get ready for dinner with Nate. Besides, there was something else he wanted to do.

He flagged down a cab at the same corner and gave the driver an address on Spring Street in SoHo.

She got out of the taxi and stood on the sidewalk in front of the pretty, three-story townhouse on East Tenth Street. Here you are, she told herself, right on time. Now just go inside.

It had been four years since she’d been to this house, to the lovely, cream-and-cocoa little office in the basement. After the publication of
Darkness
, and after her mother had gone to Port Jefferson, she’d moved to the Village and thrown herself into writing
novels and cultivating a new group of friends. Tara Summers; Mary Daley; Gwen and Mike Feldman, the husband-wife mystery writing team who were also Mary’s clients. By the time she’d met Nate ten months ago, she’d all but forgotten about the three years of weekly visits here. Her anxieties about ever being published, her guilt about her mother’s growing illness and what she would inevitably have to do about it, her memories of her stepfather: these had gradually receded, been placed in some remote storeroom at the back of her mind.

Now she was here again. She looked up and down the busy, affluent Village street, watching couples walking hand-in-hand. There were people walking dogs, and attractive children with book bags and lunch-boxes hurrying home from school. Daily life, she mused. Normality. And here I am again, after all this time, with two greeting cards in my purse and a dreadful sense of doom.

With a long sigh, she pushed open the little wrought-iron gate and descended the five steps to the familiar oak door.

“And over here, on this wall, I want to put the big piece. So you go around the room and end here.”

Henry Jason followed him through the gallery, nodding. “Yes,
Life
. That should be the final image—at
least, I suppose it should. I haven’t seen it yet, Nate.”

The artist grinned. “You will, and soon. I finished it at about three o’clock this morning.”

The small, dapper gallery proprietor in the impeccable blue Brooks Brothers suit grinned. “Marvelous! Congratulations, Nate. Let’s see: two weeks. This”—he waved an arm, indicating the garish paintings of male nudes that currently weighed down the white walls of the little gallery on Spring Street—”will be out of here a week from Thursday, thank God!
I
happen to think she’s a very talented painter, but we can’t
give
the damn things away. Anyway, you can install yours on Friday, um, the thirteenth. I hope you’re not superstitious! I’ll send the truck to your studio. Now, if you’ll just finish your text, I can come over and set prices, and we can make up the catalog.”

“Oh, yeah . . .”

“We don’t have much time, Nate. The invitations go out tomorrow. If we want the
Times
and the
New Yorker
and
ArtNews
, we have to get on this. I need your catalog copy.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll get on it right away.”

“Terrific! Now, why don’t I take you down the street and ply you with liquor.”

It was a familiar running gag, and he knew Henry was kidding, but he nonetheless suppressed a shudder. “Well, um—”

“Hi, guys.”

The two men turned around to see Doug Baron coming through the door.

Dr. Dorothy Philbin let Jill in to the small reception area at the front of the basement and led her back to the main office.

“Sorry to be so informal,” the doctor said over her shoulder as she led the way. “My receptionist got married the other day, and she’s on a two-week honeymoon in Hawaii. The girl who was supposed to stand in for her just came down with the flu, so I’m here alone until further notice. I’m going crazy—but I guess an analyst shouldn’t use that expression.”

They laughed together as she waved Jill onto a couch and sat behind her desk. Jill brought Dr. Philbin up to date on her life: her new apartment, her novels, Nate, her friend Tara. Then she produced the cards from her purse and briefly described the events of the last few days. When she was finished, the doctor leaned forward.

“So, how are you feeling now, Jill?” she asked.

Jill stared at the handsome, sixtyish woman in the beautiful Chanel suit. The afternoon light slanting through the Venetian blinds on the back windows gleamed on her silver hair and on the rope of pearls around her neck. The last time Jill had been here, the doctor’s hair had been darker.

“How I’m feeling,” Jill murmured. “I’m not really sure. I thought I knew; I thought it would be easy to talk about. But I don’t seem to know how to describe it.”

The doctor smiled. “That must seem strange to a writer.”

“Yes, it does. And it’s not just this.” She indicated the cards on the table between them. “It’s—it’s a lot of things.”

“First, tell me about this. What do you make of it?”

Jill glanced at the cards and leaned back on the couch. “Well, Nate said the other night that nine times out of ten we know the people responsible. . . .”

“Yes,” Dr. Philbin encouraged. “That’s correct.”

“I think it might be Brian Marshall.”

“Your stepfather? Why would he want to do this?”

Jill shook her head absently. “I don’t know. I think he blamed me for the divorce, and he—he has a history of violence against women. I just don’t know anyone else like that.”

The doctor consulted her new notes. “So you’ve hired this detective.”

“Yes. We went to the police, but. . .” Jill shrugged.

“I know,” the doctor said. “I’ve had some experience with this. A client of mine was being hounded by her ex-husband. It’s the price of freedom in America, Jill. The laws are such that the police are really unable to intervene unless a specific crime has
been committed.” She smiled ruefully. “Of course, your average lawbook and your average stalking victim will have two different definitions of the word
specific
.” She looked down at the valentine cards. “
This
is a crime. You feel violated. You’re afraid for your safety. You’re angry, or you should be. You don’t know whom to trust. The police, and this detective, and even your friends—even Nate—may have a tendency to patronize you. Don’t let them. You are not hysterical, and you are
not
imagining things: the threat against you is very real. I’ve seen too many people in your situation who are actually embarrassed. They feel they’ve somehow brought the unwanted attention upon themselves. Well, as my charming fifteen-year-old grandson would say, that’s bullshit. You haven’t done anything wrong. This ‘Valentine’ person is the only one responsible. Don’t ever forget that.”

There was a brief silence in the doctor’s office. Then, Jill smiled weakly over at the other woman.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome. Now, you said you were disturbed by several things. What else is happening?”

Jill listed them in her mind, then began with the easiest. “Well, I’m working on a new novel—about a stalker, of all things. I should have done some research: the man who’s terrorizing the actress in my story is a complete stranger.”

Dr. Philbin raised her eyebrows. “That happens, too, especially with celebrities. You’re a celebrity, Jill. It may not be your stepfather. Have you thought about that?”

“Yes,” Jill said, “I have. But that’s not the point. It’s about the book itself. It’s just that—well, under the circumstances, I don’t know if I want to continue with it.”

The doctor shrugged. “Then don’t. Write something else.”

Jill stared at her, then burst into laughter. “You make it sound so easy!”

“It
is
easy. I’ve gotten to know you rather well, Jill. You’re perfectly capable of making decisions—once you decide to decide.”

The two women laughed together.

“‘Decide to decide,’ ” Jill said. “I like that. I guess it
is
an easy decision, when I consider the other things. . . .”

“What other things?”

Jill took a long, deep breath. “Well, Nate. He—he wants to get married.”

“Oh? When did this happen?”

“A few weeks ago. Right in the middle of the new hardcover and the new paperback and all these public appearances and talk shows, he, like,
proposed
.”