'Have you talked to Cary?'
'He's in intensive care. People in intensive care are allowed telephone calls only under the most extreme circumstances.'
'I am down to a hundred and seventy,' Billy said. 'That's a net loss of eighty-three pounds, and I call that pretty extreme.'
Silence from the other end. Except for that sound that might be Heidi crying.
'Will you talk to him? Will you try?'
'If his doctors allow him to take a call, and if he'll talk to me, yes. But, Billy this hallucination of yours-'
IT IS NO FUCKING HALLUCINATION!' Don't shout, God, don't do that.
Billy closed his eyes.
'All right, all right,' Houston soothed. 'This idea. Is that a better word? All I wanted to say is that this idea is not going to help you get better. In fact, it may be the root cause of this psycho-anorexia, if that's really what you're suffering from, as Dr Yount believes. You -'
'Hopley,' Billy said. Sweat had broken out on his face. He mopped his brow with his handkerchief. He had a flicker-flash of Hopley, that face that really wasn't a face anymore but a relief map of hell. Crazy inflammations, trickling wetness, and the sound, the unspeakable sound when he raked his nails down his cheek.
There was a long silence from Houston's end.
'Talk to Duncan Hopley. He'll confirm -'
'I can't, Billy. Duncan Hopley committed suicide two days ago. He did it while you were in the Glassman Clinic. Shot himself with his service pistol.'
Halleck closed his eyes tightly and swayed on his feet. He felt as he had when he tried to smoke. He pinched his cheek savagely to keep from fainting dead away.
'Then you know,' he said with his eyes still closed. 'You know, or someone knows - someone saw him.'
'Grand Lawlor saw him,' Houston said. 'I called him just a few minutes ago.'
Grand Lawlor. For a moment Billy's confused, frightened mind didn't understand - he believed that Houston had uttered a garbled version of the phrase grand jury. Then it clicked home. Grand Lawlor was the county coroner. And now that he thought of it, yes, Grand Lawlor had testified before a grand jury or two in his time.
This thought brought on an irrational giggling fit. Billy pressed his palm over the phone's mouth piece and hoped Houston wouldn't hear the giggles; if he did, Houston would think he was crazy for sure.
And you'd really like to believe I'm crazy, wouldn't you, Mike? Because if I was crazy and I decided to start babbling about the little bottle and the little ivory spoon, why, no one would believe me anyway, would they? Goodness, no.
And that did it; the giggles passed.
'You asked him -'
'For a few details concerning the death? After the horror story your wife told me, you're damned right I asked him.' Houston's voice grew momentarily prim. 'You just ought to be damned glad that when he asked me why I wanted to know, I hung tough.'
'What did he say?'
'That Hopley's complexion was a mess, but nothing like the horror show you described to Heidi. Grand's description leads me to believe that it was a nasty outbreak of the adult acne I'd treated Duncan for off and on ever since I first examined him back in 1974. The outbreaks depressed him quite badly, and that came as no surprise to me - I'd have to say that adult acne, when it's severe, is one of the most psychologically bruising nonlethal ailments I know of.'
'You think he got depressed over the way he looked and killed himself.'
'In essence, yes.'
'Let me get this straight,' Billy said. 'You believe this was a more or less ordinary outbreak of the adult acne he'd had for years ... but at the same time you believe he killed himself because of what he was seeing in the mirror. That's a weird diagnosis, Mike.'
'I never said it was the skin outbreak alone,' Houston said. He sounded annoyed. 'The worst thing about problems is the way they seem to come in pairs and trios and whole gangs, never one by one. Psychiatrists have the most suicides per ten thousand members of the profession, Billy, but cops aren't far behind. Probably there was a combination of factors - this latest outbreak could have just been the straw that broke the camel's back.'
'You should have seen him,' Billy said grimly. 'That wasn't a straw, that was the f**king World Trade Center.'
'He didn't leave a note, so I guess we'll never know, will we?'
'Christ,' Billy said, and ran a hand through his hair. 'Jesus Christ.'
'And the reasons for Duncan Hopley's suicide are almost beside the point, aren't they?'
'Not to me,' Billy said. 'Not at all.'
'It seems to me that the real point is that your mind played you a nasty trick, Billy. It guilt-tripped you. You had this ... this bee in your bonnet about Gypsy curses ... and when you went over to Duncan Hopley's that -night, you simply saw something that wasn't there.' Now Houston's voice took on a cozy, you-can-tell-me tone. 'Did you happen to drop into Andy's Pub for a couple before you went over to Duncan's house? Just to, you know, get yourself up for the encounter a little?'