“Yes, it was two or three days,” he said, working his jaws again. “I received a call in my office. After hours. I was on my way out and I picked up the phone before the answering service could get to it. A man was on the other end, very agitated, very angry. A young man—or at least he sounded young. He said he'd sat through my speech at the conference and wanted to make an appointment. Wanted to go into long-term psychoanalysis with me. But the way he said it—hostile, almost sarcastic—brought my guard up, and I asked him what kinds of problems he was experiencing. He said there were many—too many to go into over the phone and that my speech had reminded him of them. I asked him how, but he wouldn't say. His voice was saturated with stress—real suffering. He demanded to know if I was going to help him. I said, of course, I'd stay late and see him right away.”

“You considered it a crisis?”

“At the least, a borderline crisis—there was real pain in his voice. An ego highly at risk. And,” he smiled, “I had no pressing engagements other than dinner with one of my wives—the third one, I think. You can see why I was such a poor matrimonial prospect. . . . Anyway, to my surprise, he said no, right now wasn't a good time for him, but he could come in the next evening. Standoffish, all of a sudden. As if I'd come on too strong for him. I was a bit taken aback, but you know patients—the resistance, the ambivalence.”

I nodded.

He said, “So we made an appointment for the following afternoon. But he never showed up. The phone number he'd given me was out of order and he wasn't listed in any local phone books. I thought it odd, but after all, odd is our business, isn't it? I thought about it for a while, then I forgot about it. Until today. His being at the conference . . . all that anger.” Shrug. “I don't know.”

“Was his name Silk?”

“This is the part I hesitate about, Alex. He never became my patient, formally, but in a sense he was. Because he asked for help and I counseled him over the phone—or at least I attempted to.”

“There was no formal treatment, Bert. I don't see any problem, legally.”

“That's not the point. Morally, it's an issue—moral issues transcend the law.” He slapped his own wrist and smiled. “Gawd, doesn't that sound self-righteous.”

“There is a moral issue,” I said. “But weigh it against the alternatives. Two definite murders. Three if you include Grant Stoumen. Maybe four, if someone pushed Mitchell Lerner off that cliff. Myra Paprock was raped, as well. Taken apart physically. She left two small children. I just met her husband. He still hasn't healed.”

“You're quite good at guilt yourself, young man.”