You Bet Your Life: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Three) (14 page)

I said I did.

“I give you no promise,” said the raspy voice. “Nitti might say no. And I’m going to check you out with Al. If he didn’t give you the O.K., I’ll be looking for you. You’re Peters, right?”

“Right. And you’re Capone, right?”

“Where do we reach you?” he said, avoiding an answer.

I suggested that I call back, but he wasn’t having any.

“Page a Mr. Pevsner in the lobby of the Drake,” I said. “I’ll have someone answer it and get the message to me.”

“Right,” he said and hung up.

“That was very nice,” said Groucho. “Very tricky. Who’s going to pick up the message?”

“I will,” I said. “There’s no problem.”

I proved there was no problem by looking at my watch and leaning back in my chair with a false yawn. There was a very good chance that Al Capone wouldn’t remember who the hell I was, and the only other guy who could confirm the Miami meeting was Bistolfi, who had been permanently punctuated at the LaSalle. The chances were good to even that Capone or Nitti’s men would soon be in that lobby ready to break the arm of whoever picked up their message, and would keep breaking it into smaller pieces till they were led to me. I figured I’d save them the trouble and one of the Marxes a broken arm. The odds were bad if you were betting your life, but I had the feeling Chico, with his lousy gambling instinct, would have thought they were reasonable.

“Well,” sighed Groucho. “I’m going upstairs to sit in on a regional convention here—the American Psychiatrist’s Association.”

“You got the right,” said Chico, examining his cards and rubbing his chin pensively. “You played a horse doctor.”

Groucho stood up, put on his jacket, combed back his hair, and tightened his mouth into a serious and painted grimace. He looked like a bored doctor.

“It’s about time someone spoke up about Freud and his disciples,” he said, moving to the door. His brothers ignored him, and Groucho went on. “I’m sick of that nonsense. ‘Parents are responsible for all their children who turn out wrong. They hated their mother, father, or both. Show people had especially unhappy childhoods and made up for it by going into acting.’”

“I know,” said Chico, still not looking up, but knowing what was coming. “You loved our mother and father.”

“Our parents were wonderful people,” Groucho went on. Harpo nodded in agreement and played a card, which Chico snapped up with a
ha-ha.

“Our parents were terrific,” said Groucho. “We had great times. We didn’t go into show business to escape our home. We went into show business because my mother’s brother was Al Shean, who was pulling down $250 a week. We wanted a piece of that.”

“Analysis may have done some good for a handful of people,” Groucho said, “but if I know, it left a lot of people with a hell of a lot less money. Well, maybe Doctor Hackenbush can get in a few words of scorn on the twelfth floor. Take care of yourself, Peters.”

He exited and I went to the door.

“Toby,” said Chico, without looking up, “you don’t have to get yourself killed for me. Grouch just left the room because he was embarrassed to tell you that he and Harpo agreed to pay the $120,000 even if I don’t owe it.”

Harpo didn’t look up from his cards.

“You want them to pay?” I said.

“Hell no,” he said with a smile.

I left the room, closing the door behind me, and took the elevator down to wait for a message from the man with the raspy voice I assumed was Ralph Capone.

The lobby was crowded with men in dark suits and white name tags, pipes, and a few beards. I took a seat facing the door after buying a
Life
magazine for a dime. I flipped through it.

Some New Zealand soldiers in Libya were on the cover. There were stories about Nazis killing Poles and the British effort to keep smiling through the bombs. There were two pages of pictures of a yogi doing contortions, and a piece on a newsy named Angie S. Rossitto, a thirty-five inch high midget who was running for Mayor of Los Angeles. “As short as I am,”
Life
quoted him, “I won’t sell the people short.”

Somewhere around eleven in the morning, about thirty minutes after I had sunk into
Life
and the leather black chair, three familiar forms came through the front entrance. Costello’s arm was still in a sling. Chaney was wearing a scarf. Maybe he had caught my cold, since I was pretty well rid of it. The juke box man came right after them.
Life
magazine covered my face, and I was nose-to-nose with a picture of Ingrid Bergman, but they knew I was around or someone was who could lead them to me. The juke box stayed at the door while the other two moved forward with hands in pockets. It looked like Ralph Capone had turned me over to Nitti, but I didn’t have time to be bitter. I got up slowly as two men passed by, talking close together and seriously. One of the men was fat. I moved behind him as they headed for the elevator.

Through the crowd, the two familiar figures bubbled in and out of sight, searching faces. I ducked, pretending to listen to the conversation of the two talkers. One guy was saying something about subconscious wishes.

If the elevator had come five seconds earlier, I would have made it clean—but you can check off the turning points of your whole life and punch them into a total of a few minutes of chance and choices.

Chaney spotted me as the elevator doors were closing. I didn’t think he’d take a shot at me in a crowded lobby, but I wasn’t sure. I expected him to give out a yell or make a rush for me. Instead, his face twisted into a sour smile and he slowly moved forward.

The elevator filled and the doors closed before Chaney made it to a close-up. I thought fast: there were two or three of them coming for me. If they knew what they were doing, one would stay in the lobby, another would go up the stairs, and the third would wait for the elevator and ask the operator if he remembered which floor I had gotten off. I had to figure they’d do it right. Nitti’s boys weren’t smart, but they had probably done things like this before.

One of the guys in front of me was smoking a cigar. He had a short grey beard and looked like a picture I had seen once of Sigmund Freud. I rode with Freud and his bunch up to twelve and followed them into a maroon-carpeted lobby. A desk with a white tablecloth and a sign over it reading “Registration” stood ten feet from the elevator. A smiling women sat behind the desk, flanked by two unsmiling women. All three had flowers pinned over their right breasts. They looked like a plump, aging version of the Andrew Sisters getting ready to sing “You’re a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith” to a roomful of recruits.

The woman in the middle looked at me hopefully and stood up. Her dress was a purple thing with big white flower patterns all over it. She nodded at me and I walked over, wondering if I should go to the fire escape. If they had the fire escape covered, that would be the worst way for me to go because there wouldn’t be any witnesses out there. I considered calling the cops and hiding till they arrived, but that would be the end of protecting Chico. He’d have no choice but to accept his brother’s offer. He was stubborn enough not to take that choice.

I walked to the registration table. It was covered with ash trays, dirty coffee cups, and a handful of unclaimed name tags.

“Yes,” I said to the woman.

Her breath across the table was peppermint Life Savers.

“Registration, doctor,” she said. “You are a bit late.”

“Ah, yes,” I smiled at her, glancing back at the elevator door. I picked up a name tag and the trio sighed in unison, as if an enormous burden had been taken from their backs.

“I’ll just go tell Dr. Agabiti that you’ve arrived.” She hurried off in the crowd of coffee drinkers to find Dr. Agabiti, who would, on sight, expose me. I looked at my name tag. It read, “Dr. Charles Derry, Capetown, South Africa.”

The peppermint lady bustled through the crowd with bobbing breasts and a tall, white-haired man held firmly against one of them. She nodded at me, and the tall man squinted through round, hornrimmed glasses before he advanced on me with an extended right hand.

“Dr. Derry?” he asked, a bit surprised. I knew I didn’t fit anyone’s image of a doctor, but if I pulled it off, I might be able to get into one of the meeting rooms and hide till Nitti’s crew had given up the search.

“Yes,” I said, unsure of what a South African dialect should be. I started with a Germanic one and gave up quickly.

“I’m Tom Agabiti,” he said holding my hand firmly in strong, thin, and very boney fingers. “We’ve been looking forward to your coming and had decided you weren’t going to make it. The weather and everything. But you’re here.”

“I’m here,” I agreed, looking around the lobby at the wallpaper and dark fixtures with an approving air. I clasped my hands behind my back and waited for him to leave me alone. He didn’t, just stared at me with a silly grin.

“We’ve read your book with great interest,” he said. “And we’re all looking forward to hearing your thoughts. I don’t mind telling you we didn’t think we’d be able to get you away from your work for this conference. First time in the states, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, continuing to look at the walls.

“Well,” he sighed. “You made it, and right on time, too. Shall we go?”

“Of course,” I said, trying to imitate the soft confidence of a psychiatrist I had once met.

Agabiti moved through the people in the lobby. There were a few women in suits, but it was mostly a male gathering. The crowd began to thin as we moved down the hall. People were going into little meeting rooms.

We went into a room through dark oak double doors. About fifty men and a couple of women were seated on folding chairs facing a table with a pitcher of water and two glasses. Many of them turned when Agabiti and I entered, and I looked for a seat. But Agabiti wasn’t having any.

“No,” he whispered. “You are on now.”

He lead me to the little table, pointed to one of the two chairs, and put his hands together. It suddenly dawned on me, like the sun over Miami or the snow over Chicago, that I was to be the speaker, or rather the absent Dr. Derry was.

I decided to get the hell out of there, but my eye hit the door. Chaney put his head in and looked over the people seated. He didn’t expect me to be at the head table. I sat down quickly and put my head down in my hands as if I had a headache or was in the process of deep preparatory thought. Through my fingers, I saw Chaney go over the crowd and move back out of the room. He might come back. He might even ask the Andrew Sisters at the desk if they had seen someone with my description, a dark little guy about forty with a pushed-in nose. They’d sing out that I was Dr. Derry.

My best bet was to listen to what Agabiti was saying, but my mind kept exploring the thin blue stripes against the white of the wallpaper. Between the stripes, a recurrent pattern of designs that looked like old lanterns rose on top of each other. I was imprisoned by wallpaper and fifty faces looking at me and waiting.

“Dr. Derry,” said Agabiti, “has not only studied with both Doctors Freud and Jung, but has been praised by both for his attempts to reconcile basic differences. As you know, his book
Super-Ego and Ego vs. Self and Ego: A False Battle
is a pioneer work—a controversial work, but a work that promises to mend a schism, close a chasm.” He showed his hands with outstretched fingers coming together slowly and firmly. “I could continue, but there would be little point when we have Dr. Derry here to speak for himself. He will speak briefly and then respond to questions. Dr. Derry.”

They applauded and I smiled. The applause stopped and I poured myself a drink of water. There was something in the water. I showed Agabiti. He handed me the other glass. I inspected it to be sure it hadn’t been used. Someone coughed. I poured water slowly and drank. Someone shifted and a chair creaked. I looked at my watch, the door, and the wallpaper, and stood up.

“My notes were lost on the plane from London,” I said with a sad smile, indicating I would go on in spite of the burden, “so my comments will be brief. Super-Ego, Self and Ego,” I said, looking at the faces in front of me and trying to do Paul Muni. “I think it is a false battle because we have not yet clearly defined what we mean by those terms.”

There were a few nods of agreement, so I went on.

“I’ve studied with both Freud and Jung,” I said humbly, wondering who the hell Jung might be, “and I tell you frankly I’m not sure that either of them has defined the terms to the point where it is reasonable to say a real battle exists.”

More nods of approval, but even more nods of disagreement.

“I don’t mean there isn’t a real point of controversy,” I said quickly, looking directly at one of the people who hadn’t liked what I had said. “There’s a difference between controversy and battle. What I am calling for and what I call for in my book is a concentration of definitions. Until we define, we are doing ourselves, our patients and patients for a hundred years to come a disservice.”

Some wild applause.

“We are physicians first,” I said holding up a finger, “and psychiatrists second.”

They were talking among themselves, approving, nodding, arguing as I paused to take a long drink. Dr. Agabiti was grinning up at me with his arms crossed. I held up my hands.

“I’ve had a long, difficult trip,” I said. “Time zones and all that. And I just arrived. So, I’ll move right to the questions.”