Free Irresistible Impulse by Robert K. Tanenbaum Page A

the curtains closed.” She made a helpless gesture. “I’m starting to be quite frightened, John Lennon and all that. Should I be? Frightened?”
    “Concerned, I think,” said Marlene judiciously. “It would depend, of course, on several things. We have to determine if this guy is a genuine stranger or someone who has actual access, someone you know.”
    “Oh, no, it can’t be anyone I know,” said Wooten with blithe confidence. “I mean, I know them, don’t I? I don’t know anyone who would do something like this.”
    “Well, Edie,” said Marlene, in a tone usually reserved for explaining the ontology of the tooth fairy, “I didn’t actually mean your most intimate friends. Nevertheless, you have contacts who can get at you. The people who work in the building? The people who move you around and take care of you when you’re on tour? The musicians, the orchestra players, your accompanists? You say this guy knows music; it might be the place to look.”
    “What, you mean people like …” She gestured toward the door to the music room, frank disbelief on her face. “I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous.”
    “Well, I hope so,” said Marlene. “But you know, people do have secret lives, sometimes really nasty secret lives. You would be surprised at the number of quite distinguished citizens, many of them happily married, who every once in a while like to pay some lady to tie them up and urinate on their face. Or get a transvestite whore to give them a blow job. Or worse.”
    Wooten was looking at her with a peculiar expression, which Marlene thought represented a war between her good nature and primal disgust. (Get out of my life, you horrible woman!) Marlene kept her own expression bland and professional, continuing, “On the other hand, you’re what’s generally referred to as a low-risk individual.”
    “That’s nice to know,” said Wooten, her smile showing faintly again. “What would a high-risk individual be like?”
    “They would be like the ladies and gentlemen who render oral sex to guys around the bridge plazas downtown. Prostitutes in general. Barmaids. Cocktail waitresses. Drug users and pushers. Promiscuous people. Party people. We expect these folks to get hit on by wackos. My assumption going in is that you don’t indulge in that sort of behavior.”
    Marlene paused, raising an eyebrow, open to a confession, not that she expected one at this stage. Yet something had passed across Edie Wooten’s face as she recounted this list. A vagrant fear? Sadness? Marlene was about to ask a sharper question when the door to the music room opened. It was the Dutch violinist.
    “Felix and I are off, Edie,” he announced in a mild, faintly accented voice. Wooten rose and offered a formal European embrace, linked arms with him and carried him into the other room, where she presumably said farewell to the other member of the trio, whom Marlene had not yet seen. In a few minutes she was back. She seemed to be having difficulty switching between her world, the realm of delight, art, and comfort, and the dreadful city Marlene had begun to sketch for her. Marlene had seen this reaction before. In fact, she could predict what the woman was about to say next.
    “I suppose I’m having a hard time dealing with all this, Marlene. I mean, why me?”
    “Yes, everyone says that,” said Marlene. “Why cancer, why car crashes? It happened, it’s happening. To you. The only question is, do you want to do something about it?”
    Wooten sat on the sofa and rubbed her face. “What would you suggest?” she asked.
    “Well, the first thing is, as I mentioned, you have to keep anything he gives you and give it to me. I’ll need a list of people who have access to your personal space—building workers, stagehands, record people, musicians, friends and relatives.”
    “Will you have to bother my family?”
    “Not at all. I just need a sense of who’s around you, who can get to you. They’ll need to be