case, she’s exquisite looking, and her smile is telling me all things are possible. “So there’s nothing wrong with you then. No specific complaints?”
“Actually, doc, there is something wrong,” I say. “I’m here to ask you for your help. You have another patient.”
“I do?”
“Well, let me back up: you had one, until about a week or so ago. Fellow named Ezra Diamant. Fifty-three years old. Loud. Heavyset. Smoker. That ring a bell?”
“Diamant? The rabbi?” Now she’s on high alert. The smile is gone, and suddenly, I see there’s hardly any time left on the clock to make my case.
“His family, and the members of his congregation feel like his death wasn’t accidental. They’re hurting. You must know what that’s like for them. And they’ve asked me to look into it.” I hand her my business card, just to show that I’m for real, but she barely gives it a glance before dropping it into her pocket.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Parisman. Even if I knew anything that could help you, this a matter of confidentiality.”
“Sure, sure, you’ve already talked to the police, though.”
“I can’t even discuss that.”
“That’s okay. Jason and Remo dropped by to see you, I’ve heard. Lieutenant Malloy, he’s the guy they work for, he told me as much.”
“Then maybe you should discuss this with Lieutenant Malloy.” She opens the door to the consulting room. “I think it’s time for you to leave now.”
I’m still hunkered down on her padded table. Through the open doorway, Magnolia’s pink sweater comes into view.
“I’m interested in his medications,” I say. “They said he had a heart attack, so if, for example, you changed his prescriptions or the dosages recently—well, that could tell us a lot.”
“Get out, Mr. Parisman. Now.”
“Because his people deserve to know, doctor. His wife and daughters, the whole synagogue, they’re all in the dark. They’re in shock. They’re grieving. At the moment, this is being treated as a terrible tragedy, which I’m sure you’ll agree it is, but your whole career could be on the line if it turns out—”
Her tone grows a little more shrill. “I’m through talking with you, Mr. Parisman. And if you don’t leave right away, I’m calling the police.”
“Okay, okay.” I hold up my hands. “I can take a hint.” I shuffle past her into the pastel waiting room, where Magnolia, who has heard virtually every word, is tapping her fingernails on the desk, glaring at me. Two other ladies who must have just arrived, are sitting there, side by side, fashion magazines propped on their laps. They both look up, openmouthed. If it were Charles Manson instead of me, they’d be just as horrified. Malloy was right. I shoulda listened. This was a fiasco. And by the time I’m in my car and the key is in the ignition, I realize I’ve made an even worse mistake: I forgot to validate the goddamn parking stub.
Later that night, after I pay Carmen for her time and we have dinner and watch the six o’clock news, I’m rinsing the dishes and talking things out with Loretta. Her latest doctor, a guy named Ali, says she may be in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s, or whatever-the-hell they’re calling it. Not that I care about medical terms. They’re just words, right? And anyway, depending on who you’re talking to, the diagnosis seems to change every few months. Could be a form of dementia. Could be something to do with nerves. For me, of course, things have also shifted over the last couple years. It’s no longer equal between us. I still pay the bills. I do the grocery shopping. I cook a lot more now than I ever did, and I drag out the vacuum cleaner once a week, though once in a while I forget. Every night I thank the God I don’t believe in for Carmen. All I know is what I have to do to keep things on an even keel, which, let me tell you, is plenty.
I met Loretta just after I got out of the Marines. That was in 1973. I was letting my hair grow down to around my shoulders, partly as a statement about how I’d been used and abused by the military, and also because everyone in my neighborhood was doing the same thing. That was when I had lotsa hair, mind you. I was going back to school in Berkeley and Loretta was in my psychology class. Brown eyes, a tiny bounce in her step. I think she fell in love with me because I seemed so serious compared with the other men on campus. They were nice enough kids, I thought, but all they really wanted was to stay alive and smoke as much dope as humanly possible. Basically, they wanted to steer clear of Vietnam. That was their major, and I couldn’t blame them for that. I was glad to be done with it, too.
Loretta liked that I was different, that I’d been to war, seen it with my own eyes. She was against the war, of course, but she wanted to hear about it, how we trained, what we did once we got over there. I told her some stuff, but I kept most of the grisly bits to myself. Even then, I felt a need to protect her, I suppose. She was so innocent. Also, I didn’t much want to see that movie all over again. Once I mentioned my buddy Sam, a black guy from Biloxi. I loved Sam. We went through Basic together. We ate together. We slept together. Even chased after the same Vietnamese girl in a bar in Saigon one time. Sam was my guiding star. I’d do anything for Sam. But then one day we were on patrol and he was walking point, and he got a little too far out in front of us. A runty, undernourished kid—all of them looked like that—rose up out of the brush and shot him in the back. He never saw it coming. We carried him all the way back to the helicopter, but it was too late. He just closed his eyes and bled out. I sobbed for three whole days. I wished it had been me instead of him. And that’s when I began to see how pointless it was. That’s when I stopped believing.
“Why did the rabbi die?” Loretta asks me now. She’s already asked me once.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Somebody hates him?”
“Maybe, sweetheart. Probably so. Every human being I’ve ever met hates somebody sometimes, right?”
“I don’t hate.”
“No, that’s true, you don’t. But you’re an angel, so you don’t count.”
She grins. “You married an angel.”
I nod, start dropping forks and knives and spoons back in the drawer one at a time. Clink, clink, clink. “Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was just a simple accident. He could have had a heart attack. That’s what the cops think.”
She points a finger at the side of her head, like it’s a loaded gun. “Cops don’t think,” she says. For some reason, this notion makes her very happy. She starts to giggle.
I give her a disappointed look. “I don’t know where on earth that came from,” I say.
Later, when the lights of Hollywood are twinkling in the distance and the apartment is finally still, I slip off my shoes and snuggle up next to her on the couch. “Shove over, Loretta. For an angel, you take up a helluva lot of room, you know.”
She starts to giggle again, then takes my arm and wraps it gently around her shoulder. “You love me,” she says, as much to herself as to me.
“You better believe it.”
“I
