"Mr. Bishop hadn’t told me about the belt," I said. "Just the other behaviors."
"Mossberg shrugged. "Maybe it slipped his mind. He may not have thought it was as important to let you know, given that you wouldn’t normally be doing a physical examination."
"That’s probably right," I said. It was equally possible that it had ‘slipped’ Darwin’s mind because he didn’t think I would find out about it.
"How did he come to show you his back to begin with?" Mossberg asked.
"Very much by accident," I fibbed. "He took off his shirt to intimidate me. He’s a strong kid and he looks it. For a minute there I thought he might attack me."
"I’ll keep that at the front of my mind," she said. "I bruise easily." She winked. "Is there any other way I can be helpful to you?"
"Will you be assembling Billy’s other medical records?" I asked. "I understand he’s been treated by other psychiatrists."
"We’ve sent out the relevant requests," she said. "I’ll be sure to call you with anything we get our hands on."
"That would be a big help," I said.
* * *
I grabbed a quick lunch at a greasy spoon and hailed a taxi. I was anxious to get my hands on information about Darwin Bishop’s 1981 conviction for assault. I’d had luck getting case records before at the Office of Court Administration, way downtown on Beaver Street, just below Wall Street, a couple blocks from Battery Park.
"Let’s take Second Avenue, head downtown," I told the cab driver. I opened the window a few inches to let out the odor of stale smoke that was making me hold my breath.
"Why Second?" he said, without turning around. "The FDR. Faster." He had a European accent I couldn’t quite place. Maybe Russian.
I glanced at his photo I’d, mounted to the dash, next to a white plastic Jesus. His name was Alex Puzick. He looked about sixty years old. His eyes were weary. His face was half-shaven. He wore a white shirt that had yellowed at the collar and along the shoulder creases. "I want to make a quick stop at the River House," I said. "It won’t take me more than a minute."
He answered by throwing the car in drive and barreling across 67
th
Street, then down Second Avenue.
As I half-watched the endless parade of copy shops, boutiques, groceries, and electronics stores, my mind kept wandering to Tess Bishop, Brooke’s surviving twin. Because I wasn’t more than fifty-fifty on Billy’s guilt. And that left even odds that a killer was still on the loose on the Bishop estate.
I wondered if I could move the Department of Social Services office on Nantucket to take custody of the child until the murder investigation was further along. But the likelihood of DSS intervening, given the District Attorney’s exclusive focus on Billy, was slim.
The key might be a direct appeal to Julia Bishop to place her daughter in a safer environment. I knew that it wouldn’t be without risk; if she shared my suspicions with her husband, he would almost certainly shut the door completely on me — and North Anderson.
I was still weighing the idea of talking openly with Julia when the cab driver glanced over his shoulder. "Live here?"
"No," I said. "I live outside Boston."
"What brings you?"
"I’m a psychiatrist," I said. I have a patient in town."
He stared into the rearview mirror, studying me for several seconds. Then his gaze settled back on the road. "They bring you in from Boston," he said, "you must be good."
"I’ve been at it a while," I said.
He nodded to himself. A few more seconds passed. "You treat schizophrenics? You’ve had schizophrenic patients?"
"Many times."
He nodded to himself, but said nothing.
"Why do you ask," I said.
"I have a daughter," he said. "Twenty-six years old."
"She has the illness?"
"Since seventeen," he said. He took a hard left onto 52
nd
Street. "My only child."
I stayed silent. I was feeling the reluctance I always feel before embracing another life story — as if mine might finally slip its binding and get lost amidst the thousands of disconnected chapters floating free inside me. I looked out the window again.
"Her name is Dorothy," Puzick said. "She’s in Poland, with her mother. Warsaw."
Now the life story had a name and a hometown and a mother and a father. And those slim facts were enough to dissolve my reluctance to hear more. If I were a rock, I would be pumice — rough on the outside, permeable to the core. "How do they come to be there, and you here?" I asked.
"I left them," he said simply. "Bitch!" He swerved to avoid an old woman stepping off the curb. "I left them," he said again.
"Why?"
"I fell in love with an American. I didn’t want to be married anymore."
He shrugged. "I left, and Dorothy was nine years old." He suddenly pulled the car over to the curb. "River House."
I opened the door to the cab, but sat there. "Nine years old," I said.
His brow furrowed. "Go. See what you have to see. I wait here for you."
I pulled myself out of the cab. I walked to the sidewalk, lined with black, chauffeured limousines, and looked through the open gates of the River House, their immense wrought frames anchored in limestone pillars marked ‘Private’ and capped by carved eagles, heads turned away, staring at one another. Past the eagles, a cobblestone driveway separated a magnificent courtyard with flowering gardens from the entrance to the building, flanked by two doormen standing under a massive, hunter green awning.
The scene spoke of timelessness, security, elite tranquility.
I looked up at the building itself, which ran an entire city block. It was about fifteen stories high, the first three stories of limestone and the rest of brick, covered with ivy in places. The corner penthouse Darwin Bishop and his family called home was a duplex that boasted a series of two-story pillars and a terrace that had to be a thousand square feet or more, its innermost wall lined with enormous slate slabs.
I walked down to the East River and took in a view framed by the Queensboro Bridge to the left and the Williamsburg Bridge to the right. Between them stood epic symbols of American industry — giant smokestacks, the Citibank Building, a landmark neon Pepsi-Cola sign. My eyes skated past them and lingered on the mesmerizing ruin of a castle on Roosevelt Island.
Standing there, I got what I had come for: a hint of the majesty Darwin Bishop must have felt the moment he purchased his home, laying claim to real estate at the epicenter of the civilized world, a safe haven not one mile from the Waldorf-Astoria, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Radio City Music Hall, and Central Park. Nobody would ever peg him for a guy from Brooklyn, with a criminal record. I walked back to the cab.
"So?" Puzick said. "You saw so fast everything you needed to?"
"Pretty much," I said.
"Garbo lived right there," he said, pointing to the building across the street from the River House.
"Garbo," I said. "Really."
"That’s what they say." He started back toward First Avenue, heading toward FDR Drive for the rest of the trip downtown. He glanced at me twice in the rearview mirror, without saying anything.
"You visited her in Poland?" I prompted him. "Your daughter?"
"Every year, as God is my witness," he said. "But it wasn’t enough." His voice trailed off.
I knew exactly what Alex Puzick was looking for. Forgiveness. I stared at the little plastic Jesus glued to his dashboard. "Leaving your wife didn’t make your daughter sick," I said.
He didn’t turn around, didn’t even look at me in the mirror. "How can you know?" he said, in a voice as solemn as prayer.
"Because you worry over it," I said. "You worry about her."
He sighed. "Probably I should have stayed with them," he said, as much to himself as to me.
Maybe he should have. And maybe staying would have made things worse. All I could say for sure was that a man I had known barely fifteen minutes was in so much pain that it was flowing freely from him to me. "You left because you were in love," I told him. "That means you acted on your heart. You were true to yourself. I don't know what made Dorothy lose control of her emotions, but I can tell you it wasn’t that."
"You sound so sure."
"I’ve done this work a long time," I said, leaning toward him. "I am sure."
He relaxed visibly. "I’ll see her in another month," he said. "Five weeks."
I sat back in my seat. "Good."
Neither of us spoke another word until we had pulled over in front of 25 Beaver. I got out of the cab and stepped up to Puzick’s window.
"On the house," he said.
The meter read $11.30. I held out a twenty. "You don’t need to do that," I said.
"I don’t need to. You didn’t need to," he said. "We’re even."
* * *
I took an elevator to the eighth-floor Criminal History Search office. There were two clerks and about a dozen people in line, so I waited my turn, which meant waiting about an hour. When I got to the desk, a young Asian woman, with a very serious expression on her face and very large silver hoop earrings, reminded me that I would need to pay sixteen dollars to do a computerized criminal background check on Darwin Bishop. The search would yield docket number and disposition of any case against him since the mid-1970s. I was happy to hand over the money, but unhappy when she told me to come back the next morning for the results.
"I’m working with the police on a case," I said. "I could really use the information today."
"You’re a police officer," she said skeptically.
"A psychiatrist," I said. "I’m working with the police on a case involving the Bishop family."
"A psychiatrist. That’s a first." She almost smiled. "You don’t look like a psychiatrist."
"I’ve been told that," I conceded. "More than a few times." I pulled out my wallet and showed her my medical license.
"It says here, ‘Massachusetts,’" she said, pointing at the card.
"That’s where my office is, but I take cases in other states," I said.
"
This one case
," the voice at the back of my mind chided me. "
This case, then no more
."
I silently agreed. Forensic psychiatry had nearly cost me my sanity. I didn’t want to gamble it away.
The clerk looked at me, as if to check whether I was on the level, then shook her head. "If you’re a liar, you’re a good one." She turned around and disappeared into an office. Ten minutes later, she came back to the counter with a computer printout. She folded it and placed it in an envelope. She held it out to me, but pulled it back before I could take it from her. "We can’t do this all the time," she said. "Doesn’t matter who you are."
"I appreciate this one time," I said.
She handed over the envelope.
I took the report to a bench just outside the office, sat down, and started to read:
Adult Record Information as of 06/24/2002 Page 1 of 1
Name: Bishop, Darwin G. DOB: 05/11/1948 POB: Brooklyn
PCF# 507950C0
Sex: M SS#: 013-42-1057 Mother: Norma Erickson
Father: Thomas
Home Address: 829 Park Avenue Ethnicity: White
NY, NY 10021
Alias Name(s): None
Date: 05/22/95 Manhattan Docket #6656 CR952387
Criminal
Offense: Operating to Endanger Lives and Safety
Disposition: Dismissed
Date: 05/22/95 Manhattan Docket #6656 CR952388
Criminal
Offense: Operating Under the Influence of Alcohol
Disposition: Dismissed
Date: 09/06/81 Manhattan Docket #7513 CR811116
Criminal
Offense: Domestic Assault
Disposition: Convicted (Probation)
Date: 07/23/80 Manhattan Docket #4912 CR800034
Criminal
Offense: Violation of Restraining Order, Abuse Prevention Act
Disposition: Convicted (Probation)
Nothing about the rap sheet gave me any comfort. Bishop’s 1981 conviction for assault obviously had been for smacking his first wife, Lauren, around. And that episode had apparently followed another worrisome event during 1980 — something threatening enough that the court had issued a restraining order against Bishop, an order he then violated. So much for the ‘I couldn’t have a better friend’ line that Bishop had fed the
New York
magazine writer who asked about his and Lauren’s divorce.
For all his Manhattan and Nantucket cachet, Bishop was starting to look like a garden variety alcoholic and domestic abuser — something I knew more than a little bit about, firsthand. I’d grown up with one. It didn’t seem like much of a reach to think Bishop could be beating Billy, or that he could have killed little Brooke.
I called North Anderson’s mobile phone from the lobby. He answered right away.
"I just picked up a copy of Darwin Bishop’s criminal record in New York," I told him.
"What criminal record?" he asked.
"I found a newspaper article that referenced an old assault charge against him during the early eighties, so I pulled his whole sheet."
"And?"
"Not good. He was convicted of a domestic assault on his wife Lauren during 1981. He also violated a restraining order the prior year. That’s on top of charges of driving to endanger and driving under the influence during the mid-nineties that he managed to get dismissed, with the help of F. Lee Bailey."