Dark Maze

seriously?”
    “Aha! Well that is the question, isn’t it?”
    “What’s the answer?”
    “Practically speaking, we have this guy who apparently has no fixed address and who goes around calling himself Picasso and whose only offense against the peace of our tranquil city is once in a while hollering outside some gallery. So who wants to mess with paper work? Besides which, Picasso isn’t telling anybody his name or address or anything, and we’re not allowed to beat it out of him, right? So what have we really got but this, this unofficial man?
    “Funny thing, Hock. One night a couple years ago, the cops brought him in here as usual for hollering outside a downtown gallery. The owner of this gallery, he tells the cops how he likes having Picasso shrieking outside his place; he says it’s ‘performance art.’ Picasso is so disgusted with this character, he has never hollered outside that place again.”
    We had a laugh, and we puffed our cigars. “So all right, I see the practicality of keeping Picasso unofficial. But, do you have any other ideas?”
    “Oh, yes, I do. I have a theory: if you’re a real genuine New York wacko, then you’re smart enough to know how not to get yourself caught up in the system we have invented for keeping tabs on our New York wackos. The way it works in Picasso’s case is, he comes in here making himself too much and too little trouble to be papered, if you follow me; then he puts us all off-balance, which has its strange charms; and Picasso winds up taking away with him whatever he decides might be useful, by which I mean something that one of us charmed and obliging croakers might possibly say that he might possibly find soothing to a troubled head.”
    “He must love you, Doc.”
    Reiser clucked. He shut the manila folder on his desk and said, “Well we have our pleasant moments, sometimes. I know I like him. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. When a shrink says he ‘likes’ a patient, the truth is he just pities the poor dumb fruitcake. But I am saying that I honestly enjoy this guy’s company. Picasso’s a fruitcake, but he’s got a first-class brain.”
    By now, I was thinking that if and when I crack I want Ronald Reiser for my shrink. I was not crazy about the clucking, but I liked smoking his brand and I liked what I heard. Maybe I could have a special medic-alert card printed up for my wallet.
    “He didn’t mention you, Doc,” I said, thinking back to my chat with Picasso in the park. “But he mentioned shrinks and, as I recall, he does not hold your fraternity in his highest regard.”
    “As a fraternity, neither do I. So that’s why I get such a kick out of his trying to get a rise out of me with his observations on the trade. One time, he said to me, ‘You know, Reiser, your hero up there on the wall, Dr. Freud, he used to smoke cigars, too. And his pal, Carl Jung, would steal them from him. Ponder the meaning of that sometime.’ ”
    We had another good laugh.
    The doctor went on, “He used to say to me all the time, ‘Reiser, you high-classed lunatic, I got only one observation about psychotherapy: it has conned millions of simple people into believing they’re complex.’ I really miss the old wacko.”
    “That’s what I heard, that Picasso’s been missing from around here,” I said. “When was the last time he dropped by?”
    “Six, seven months ago, thereabouts. And now here we sit, you and me—the shrink in his life and the cop in his life. I just went and violated my patient’s privacy all to hell. But you, you’re not telling me dick, Dick. Tell me what in hell Picasso did, and how in hell you found out his real name?”
    “I don’t know for sure that he did anything...“
    I was going to be evasive, but I changed my mind. Instead, I gave Reiser the outline of what had happened from the first moment in the park, to see what he made of it. “So,” I said, finishing up, “he eventually tells me that he’s been shadowing me for a long time; he tells me he wants me to know the ‘extenuating circumstances’ of his failed life; then he winds Up this lovely chin with a few threats.”
    “Threats?”
    “He says, and I am pretty much quoting, ‘I am working up a plan—a plan to kill what’s been responsible for making me fall so far and spectacular as you have seen I have fell.’ ” I waited for some kind of reaction from Reiser, but there was none. “Doc, in my business you hear lots of threats. I wouldn’t be