Free Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) by Elizabeth Zelvin Page B

God had left on pass. She scanned the sheet for street drugs or any other substance that would not have been prescribed. Nothing, at least through two days before New Year’s. Medical history, including alcohol and drug treatment. No one who abused alcohol and drugs for long enough got off lightly, and God was no exception. He had been treated for hepatitis B, an alcohol-related liver disease, and had had a bout of pancreatitis, which she knew was not only life threatening but extremely painful. He had broken a few bones, been wounded twice in Vietnam—scars noted—and passed through various detoxes a handful of times. Two inpatient twenty-eight-day rehabs, both expensive ones. He had completed neither. Treated for venereal disease in the early Seventies, probably another legacy of Vietnam.
    Next came the psychosocial, many of its staggeringly intrusive questions prescribed by state regulations. This one ran eleven pages, two more than the one used at Barbara’s outpatient clinic. Are you sexually active? What is your sexual orientation? Have you ever experienced any kind of sexual dysfunction? If so, describe. Have you ever experienced any kind of sexual abuse or trauma? If so, when? Describe. What treatment, if any, did you receive? Have you ever been the perpetrator of sexual abuse?
    Since stumbling embarrassed through her first psychosocial interview here, Barbara had learned some tricks for getting the answers. One was to put the questions in plain English. Have you ever had trouble getting it up? Are you into men or women? If you just read the questions off the page, you were dead in the water. You had to sound matter of fact, compassionate, supportive, and incapable of becoming judgmental no matter what you heard. Barbara reflected, not for the first time, that most counselors had more than their fair share of empathy as well as insatiable curiosity. They certainly didn’t do it for the pay.
    For many homeless alcoholics, the road to the Bowery led through crime, with or without discovery and punishment. Even the toughest clients were in a vulnerable state at the point of detox admission. Barbara had heard them reveal an astonishing amount of information. But many wanted as little as possible on the record. God had been either one of these or pure as the driven snow. No item on the psychosocial could be left blank. It was one of the regulations. But if the client wouldn’t answer, there was a formula: Denied. All the sex and violence questions: Denied, denied, denied. She would have to ask Bruce if God had mentioned any significant history in those areas, other than the war.
    God had not seen a psychiatrist. The service was too expensive to squander on clients who showed no signs of mood or thought disorders. Eleven pages of questions usually offered some clues as to whether the client was irrational or suicidally depressed. Darryl had done the mental status exam, which tested the client’s cognitive functioning. Not every counselor believed that the mental status questions were a reliable guide to whether a person could still think rationally. Barbara smiled, remembering how Bark used to rant about the stupidity of the mental status. “When I lived in a box”—Bark always said “in a box,” never “on the streets” or “on the Bowery”—“I didn’t give a damn who the President was. That’s no way to decide whether a man’s got all his marbles.”
    Barbara flipped through to the family history. What made God different from the other drunks on the Bowery boiled down to money. A lot of money, from what Bruce had gathered. Family money made an excellent motive for murder. To trace God’s activities on his last day, they needed as much concrete information as they could get about his family. Barbara scrabbled on Sister Angel’s desk for a lined yellow pad and a pen, annoyed at herself for not thinking sooner about taking notes. She started scribbling as she read.
    Father: Godfrey Brandon Kettleworth