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.My new television show,” she says in the same firm voice, a voice that easily penetrates the wooden door and flows right into the sunporch.She talks much louder on the phone than she does in her sessions.It’s a good thing.It wouldn’t be good if some other patient were sitting on the sunporch and could hear every word Dr.Self says to Marino during their brief but expensive fifty minutes together.She doesn’t talk this loudly when they are together behind that shut door.Of course, there is never anyone waiting on the sunporch when he has a session.He is always the last one, all the more reason she ought to cut him some slack and throw in a few extra minutes.It isn’t like she would keep anyone waiting, because there isn’t anyone.There never is after his appointment.One of these days, he will say something so moving and important, she will give him a few extra minutes.It might be the first time she has ever done it in her life, and she will do it with him.She will want to do it.Maybe it will be him who doesn’t have the extra time on that occasion.I’ve got to go, he imagines himself saying.Please finish.I really want to hear what happened.Can’t do it.Got to be somewhere.He will get up from his chair.Next time.I promise I’ll tell you the rest of it when… let’s see… Next week, whenever.Just remind me, okay?Marino realizes Dr.Self has gotten off the phone, and he moves across the sunporch as silently as a shadow and lets himself out the glass door.He shuts it without a sound and follows the walkway around the pool, through the garden with its fruit trees that have the red stripes around them, and along the side of the small, white, stucco house where Dr.Self lives but shouldn’t live, simply has no business living.Anybody could walk right up to her front door.Anybody could walk right up to her office in back by the palm-shaded pool.It isn’t safe.Millions of people listen to her every week and she lives like this.It isn’t safe.He should go back and knock on her door and tell her.His tricked-out Screamin’ Eagle Deuce is parked on the street, and he walks around it once to make sure nobody has done anything to it while he was in his appointment.He thinks about his flat tire.He thinks about getting his hands on whoever did it.A light film of dust coats the flames over blue paint and the chrome, and he is more than a little irritated.He detailed the motorcycle early this morning, polished every inch of trim and then had a flat tire and now there is dust.Dr.Self should have covered parking.She should have a damn garage.Her fancy white Mercedes convertible is in the driveway and no other car will fit, so her patients park on the street.It isn’t safe.He unlocks the bike’s front fork and ignition and swings his leg over the warrior seat, thinking how much he loves not living like the poor city cop he was most of his life.The Academy supplies him with an H2 Hummer, black with a turbo-diesel V8, 250-horsepower engine, four-speed overdrive transmission, a load-bearing exterior rack, winch and off-road adventure package.He bought the Deuce and tricked it out to his heart’s content, and he can afford a psychiatrist.Imagine that.He shifts the bike into neutral and presses the starter button as he stares at the attractive white house where Dr.Self lives but shouldn’t live.He holds in the clutch and gives the bike some gas, the ThunderHead pipes making plenty of noise as lightning flashes in the distance and a dark army of retreating clouds wastes its artillery over the sea.34Basil smiles again.“I can’t find anything about a murder,” Benton is saying to him, “but two and a half years ago, a woman and her daughter disappeared from a business called The Christmas Shop.”“Didn’t I tell you that?” Basil says, smiling.“You didn’t say anything about people disappearing or a daughter.”“They won’t give me my mail.”“I’m checking on it, Basil.”“You said you’d check on it a week ago.I want my mail.I want it today.They quit giving it to me right after I had the disagreement.”“When you got angry at Geoff and called him Uncle Remus.”“And for that I don’t get my mail.I think he spits in my food.I want all of it, all the old mail that’s been sitting around for a month.Then you can move me to a different cell.”“That I can’t do, Basil.It’s for your own good.”“I guess you don’t want to know,” Basil says.“How about I promise you’ll have all your mail by the end of the day.”“I better get it or that’s the end of our friendly conversation about The Christmas Shop.I’m getting rather bored with your little science project.”“The only Christmas shop I could find was in Las Olas on the beach,” Benton says.“July fourteenth, Florrie Quincy and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Helen, disappeared.Does that mean anything to you, Basil?”“I’m not good with names.”“Describe for me what you remember about The Christmas Shop, Basil.”“Trees with lights, little trains and ornaments everywhere,” he says, no longer smiling.“I already told you all that.I want to know what you found inside my brain
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