around in circles with Freud’s head behind him, from the picture up on the wall. And I can’t tell which one of them is yelling at me, ‘You ignorant shrink! Open your eyeballs and see!’ ”
I said, “And that’s the last you saw of him?”
“Yeah. He knocked me down, then a couple of the security goons came in here and jacketed him. We doped him out for a couple of days. I didn’t make an issue of it. I
mean, what could I do anyway? We’d been carrying this guy off the record for decades, right? He wasn’t cooperating, and I we kept taking him back. What do you expect?
“Besides,” Reiser added, “the day we let him go, he dropped by my office and told me I was fired as his doctor. How do you like that?”
Reiser opened the manila folder again. He removed an item and handed it to me—a white business-size envelope, the cheap kind that comes from Lamston’s in hundred-count boxes. It had been mailed to Dr. Ronald Reiser, in care of Bellevue. But there was no return address. The postmark was Brooklyn. The cancelled stamp was a flag issue, pasted upside-down in the upper right corner of the envelope.
“That thing,” Reiser explained, “came about one week after he coldcocked me. Just get a load of what’s inside of it.”
I pulled out a Polaroid photograph, about four inches , square. The image was overexposed and muddy, as Polaroids sometimes are. I made out the picture of a large building, neither an apartment house nor a shop, but something else—full of colors, mostly reds and yellows. And a small building in the foreground, a sort of shed with a sign on it that read: tickets.
Around the edges of the photo were neatly printed letters, all in black ballpoint capitals: BEHOLD, MY MASTERPIECE—LOVE & KISSES, PICASSO.
“What is it?”
Reiser said, “In the trade, they call it a dark maze. You’ll find it out in Coney Island.”
SIX
There is always the singular moment when I know for certain that I am about to be wedded to a case, for better or for worse, until death do us part. Walking out of Dr. Ronald Reiser’s office in the Zoo wing of Bellevue was that grim moment.
Feeling the way I did, I figured it in the best interests of family harmony to make a straightforward, diplomatic call to Detective Logue at Central Homicide. Better he should hear it from me now, instead of from Inspector Neglio later.
“Listen, go right ahead and be my guest,” Logue said after I spent a couple of minutes telling him about the wedding. “Like I told you before—what am I going to do with overtime?”
That settled, I asked, “Any progress yet?”
“There’s Celia’s rap. Which is a good place to start if you got the time and interest, which I see you got. Hold on, I got notes here someplace.” Logue shuffled papers on his desk. “Okay, it turns out the G really did a number on the lady, back during one of those times that happen once in a while when everybody down in Washington’s got a hard-on for the mob, right?”
“And Celia Furman was in the wrong place at the time?“
“Right. She was what’s known as a “big whale” in the casinos, meaning she was good for a fifty-grand credit line anywhere’s in Vegas, and in the European and Caribbean joints, too. Also she was a lady who made a habit of being a real pal to the right kinds of useful men...”
“Of which some were connected?”
“Right again,” Logue said. “It’s how she got started making her pile. Useful guys backed her when she started taking over sawdust houses in Detroit and gradually worked her way up to running a string of class joints all the way around the lakeshore from Detroit to Cleveland. Good square houses, so they say; always dice the specialty.”
“But the government doesn’t care about any of that.“
“Naw, they’re after some of Celia’s boyfriends. Since Celia’s very probably a key to lots of things these characters f do not wish to confide to Uncle. Well, you heard this drill before,
I said, “And that’s the last you saw of him?”
“Yeah. He knocked me down, then a couple of the security goons came in here and jacketed him. We doped him out for a couple of days. I didn’t make an issue of it. I
mean, what could I do anyway? We’d been carrying this guy off the record for decades, right? He wasn’t cooperating, and I we kept taking him back. What do you expect?
“Besides,” Reiser added, “the day we let him go, he dropped by my office and told me I was fired as his doctor. How do you like that?”
Reiser opened the manila folder again. He removed an item and handed it to me—a white business-size envelope, the cheap kind that comes from Lamston’s in hundred-count boxes. It had been mailed to Dr. Ronald Reiser, in care of Bellevue. But there was no return address. The postmark was Brooklyn. The cancelled stamp was a flag issue, pasted upside-down in the upper right corner of the envelope.
“That thing,” Reiser explained, “came about one week after he coldcocked me. Just get a load of what’s inside of it.”
I pulled out a Polaroid photograph, about four inches , square. The image was overexposed and muddy, as Polaroids sometimes are. I made out the picture of a large building, neither an apartment house nor a shop, but something else—full of colors, mostly reds and yellows. And a small building in the foreground, a sort of shed with a sign on it that read: tickets.
Around the edges of the photo were neatly printed letters, all in black ballpoint capitals: BEHOLD, MY MASTERPIECE—LOVE & KISSES, PICASSO.
“What is it?”
Reiser said, “In the trade, they call it a dark maze. You’ll find it out in Coney Island.”
SIX
There is always the singular moment when I know for certain that I am about to be wedded to a case, for better or for worse, until death do us part. Walking out of Dr. Ronald Reiser’s office in the Zoo wing of Bellevue was that grim moment.
Feeling the way I did, I figured it in the best interests of family harmony to make a straightforward, diplomatic call to Detective Logue at Central Homicide. Better he should hear it from me now, instead of from Inspector Neglio later.
“Listen, go right ahead and be my guest,” Logue said after I spent a couple of minutes telling him about the wedding. “Like I told you before—what am I going to do with overtime?”
That settled, I asked, “Any progress yet?”
“There’s Celia’s rap. Which is a good place to start if you got the time and interest, which I see you got. Hold on, I got notes here someplace.” Logue shuffled papers on his desk. “Okay, it turns out the G really did a number on the lady, back during one of those times that happen once in a while when everybody down in Washington’s got a hard-on for the mob, right?”
“And Celia Furman was in the wrong place at the time?“
“Right. She was what’s known as a “big whale” in the casinos, meaning she was good for a fifty-grand credit line anywhere’s in Vegas, and in the European and Caribbean joints, too. Also she was a lady who made a habit of being a real pal to the right kinds of useful men...”
“Of which some were connected?”
“Right again,” Logue said. “It’s how she got started making her pile. Useful guys backed her when she started taking over sawdust houses in Detroit and gradually worked her way up to running a string of class joints all the way around the lakeshore from Detroit to Cleveland. Good square houses, so they say; always dice the specialty.”
“But the government doesn’t care about any of that.“
“Naw, they’re after some of Celia’s boyfriends. Since Celia’s very probably a key to lots of things these characters f do not wish to confide to Uncle. Well, you heard this drill before,
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