Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

I went down the block to Culhane’s house. It was a little better furnished than the other house, his lot a little worse maintained. There was a small stack of mail at the front door. I looked through it. Most of the mail was addressed to Leon R. Culhane, but two envelopes were addressed to Howard Gross at 1319 and a supermarket circular was addressed to Sheila Hanover at 1315. So I had been speaking to Mr. Gross — or Mr. Hanover, if there was a Mr. Hanover.

There was more I could have done if I hadn’t been so jumpy, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Mr. Shotgun, whatever his name was, was peeking out at me from between his Venetian blinds.

I took one last look at the doorstep where Culhane had found the finger and then I headed back to the bus stop.

My first stop in the city was at 41st Street and Fifth Avenue: the Mid-Manhattan Library. I used one of their computers for a few more database searches, and I found something under “Hanover” that caught my eye. It was a newspaper article from a few weeks back. I printed it out and took it with me.

But the main reason I was there was not for the computer. I went through the stacks until I came to the D’s. Of five books listed in the card catalogue, only one was on the shelf. I took it.

I also went back to the 17th Precinct. Scott dug through his files while I read the PBA announcements tacked above the Quik-Cool Ice Cream Bar Machine. Eventually he turned up the print match he’d run for me.

I promised Scott dinner at the restaurant of his choice. In return, he told me whose finger I had stashed in my office icebox.

It wasn’t Lila’s.

The book was fascinating. I tore through it the way some people read potboiler mysteries and others the sports pages.

Its title was Strategies for Mental Retrogression. The title was followed on the book’s cover by a subtitle of three or four lines, the gist of which was that psychology had taken a wrong turn some time around the middle of the century, and that we would all be better off if we stopped coddling the mentally ill and went back to reliable methods of treatment such as straitjackets, wet-ties, electric shocks, and lobotomies. It was a book calculated to shock and titillate its audience of white-coated academicians, whom I pictured reading it under the covers with a flashlight.

I didn’t understand half the words, which I’m sure was the point of his using them. The half I did understand kept adding up to such hogwash that I wanted to throw the book down the incinerator chute and start fresh with a good Robert Ludlum or Lawrence Block. But I didn’t. I made it all the way from the first chapter, about making the insane aware that they are insane, to the last, which said that if all methods of treatment were unsuccessful, one should incarcerate the mad person until, inevitably, new methods are developed.

The text was peppered with cheery anecdotes, most about well-intentioned but naive psychiatrists who started out by asking their patients for input into their therapy and ended up roasted on a spit, strangled with their stethoscopes, or chopped up into little bits. On the other side were case studies that showed how electroshock helped Clara S. lead a normal life and how being restrained for a solid year turned Allan G. into a productive citizen.

I took the book along with me on the train up to Riverdale.

When Jerome came to the door, I asked him to autograph it. He almost smiled, then saw that it was a library book and frowned. He stared into my eyes, as though trying to pry open my odd, aberrant psyche. “Is this a joke?”

“No joke. I read the book. It’s very impressive.”

“You read the book?” He said this in a tone that suggested that what he really wanted to say was, You can read?

“I did. Cover to cover. Didn’t get all the fine points, I admit, but the generalities sank in very nicely, thank you. Do you think I could come in?”

He stepped back from the door. “Suit yourself.”

I suited myself and shut the door behind me. Jerome retreated to the couch. He did not offer me a drink this time. Maybe something in my eyes told him not to.

“Has Lila come back?” he said.

“I think I’ve found her.”

“Really?” Jerome drummed his fingers on the back of the couch. “Delightful. I’m very glad to hear it. Please ask her to telephone sometime and tell me all about where she has been.”

I shook my head. “Why bother? I told you you’re a terrible liar.”

“What am I lying about?”

“What are you lying about? Mister, if you told me your name, I’d want to see a birth certificate to confirm it.”

Jerome extended a finger toward the door. “On second thought, no, you can’t come in. Get out of my house.”

“What, and skip my lecture?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Case study: Jerome D.,” I said. “Here we have a respected doctor from a more than respectable family. He didn’t marry into money the way one sister did, but he went to a prestigious medical school and he has plenty to keep himself fed and clothed.”

“Get out of my house.”