She shook her head. “Boy. I don’t know if I really want to get into this.”

“Confidential,” I promised.

“Legally? As in, you’re my therapist?”

“If that makes you comfortable.”

“Spoken like a true shrink. Yes, it makes me comfortable. We’re talking hot potato here-ethical problems.” Her eyes hardened. “There was no way for me to prevent it, but try telling that to a malpractice jury. When a shyster gets hold of something like that, he goes back in the chart, hits on every doc who’s ever passed the patient in the hall.”

“The last thing on my mind is fomenting a lawsuit,” I said.

“Last thing on my mind, too.” She slapped her hand on the table hard enough to make the salt shaker jump. “Darn it! She shafted me. Just thinking about her makes me mad. I’m sorry she’s dead, but I just can’t feel any grief. She used me.”

She sipped her tea.

“I only met her last year. She walked in, introduced herself, and invited me out to lunch. I knew what she was doing- hustling referrals. Nothing wrong with that. I’ve only been in practice a little over a year, have done my share of brown-nosing. And my first impression of her was very positive. She was bright, articulate, seemed to have it all together. Her résumé looked terrific- lots of varied clinical experience. Plus, she was right here, in the building- it’s always good business to cross-refer. Almost all my patients are women, most of them would be more comfortable with a female therapist, so I figured why not, give it a try. The only reservation I had was that she was so good-looking, I wondered if it mightn’t threaten some women. But I told myself that was sexist thinking, began sending her referrals- not that many, thank God. It’s a small practice.”

“Was her office on the third floor? With Dr. Kruse?”

“That’s the one. Only, he was never there, just her, by herself. She took me up there once- tiny place, just a postage-stamp waiting room and one consulting office. She was Kruse’s psychological assistant or something like that, had a license number.”

“An assistant’s certificate.”

“Whatever. Everything was kosher.”

Psychological assistant. A temporary position, aimed at providing experience for new Ph.D.’s under supervision of a licensed psychologist. Sharon had earned her doctorate six years ago, had been long eligible for full licensure. I wondered why she hadn’t gotten it. What she’d done for six years.

“Kruse wrote her this terrific letter of recommendation,” she said. “He was a faculty member at the University, so I figured that counted for something. I really expected it to work out. I was blown away when it didn’t.”

“Do you still have that résumé?”

“No.”

“Remember anything else from it?”

“Just what I told you. Why?”

“Trying to backtrack. How did she shaft you?”

She gave me a sharp look. “You mean you haven’t figured it out?”

“My guess would be sexual misconduct- sleeping with her patients. But most of your patients are women. Was she gay?”

She laughed. “Gay? Yeah, I could see how you might think that. Frankly, I don’t know what she was. I was raised in Chicago. Nothing about this city surprises me anymore. But no, she didn’t sleep with women- as far as I know. We’re talking men. Husbands of patients. Boyfriends. Men won’t go into therapy without prodding. The women have to do everything- getting the referral, making the appointment. My patients asked me for referrals, and I sent half a dozen to Sharon. She thanked me by sleeping with them.”

“How’d you find out?”

She looked disgusted. “I was doing my books, checking out bad debts and failure-to-shows and I noticed that most of the women whose husbands I’d sent her hadn’t paid or kept their follow-ups. It stood out like a sore thumb, because other than those, my collections were excellent, my return rate close to perfect. I started calling around, to find out what had happened. Most of the women wouldn’t speak to me- some even hung up on me. But two of them did talk. The first let me have it with both barrels. Seems her husband had seen Sharon for a few sessions- something to do with job stress. She taught him to relax; that was it. A few weeks later she called him and offered a follow-up session. Free of charge. When he showed up she tried to seduce him, really came on strong- she took her clothes off, for God’s sake, right there in the office. He walked out on her, went home and told his wife. She was livid, screaming that I should be ashamed of myself for associating with a conniving, amoral bitch like that. The second one was worse. She just cried and cried.”

She rubbed her temples, took an aspirin out of her purse, and swallowed it with tea.

“Unbelievable, isn’t it? Free follow-up visits. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop- as in see-you-in-court. I’ve lost plenty of sleep over it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Not as sorry as I am. Now you tell me Rasmussen’s all freaked out. Great.”

“He was one of them?”

“Oh, yeah, a real prince. His girlfriend is the one who just cried. One of my walk-in patients, not too sophisticated, vague psychosomatic complaints- she needed attention. I got to know her a little and she started opening up about him- how he drank too much, took dope, pushed her around. I spent lots of time counseling her, trying to show her what a loser he was, get her to leave him. Of course she didn’t. One of those passive types with an abusive father who keeps hooking up with papa surrogates. Then she told me the bum had injured himself on the job, was having back pain, and was thinking of suing. It was his lawyer who suggested he see a shrink- did I know one? I figured here was a chance to get him some help for his head and sent him to Sharon, told her all about his other problems. Boy, did she help him. How’d you meet him?”

“He was up at her house this morning.”

“Up at her house? She gave a jerk like that her home address? What an idiot.”

“She had an office there.”

“Oh, yeah- the paper mentioned that. Makes sense, actually, because she moved out of this building right after I confronted her about the hanky-panky. Got a diagnosis on Rasmussen?”

“Some kind of personality disorder. Possible violent tendencies.”

“In other words, a troublemaker. Terrific. He’s the weakest link, a woman-hater with low impulse control. And he’s already got a shyster. Wonderful.”

“He won’t sue for sexual harassment,” I said. “Few men would. Too embarrassing.”

“Frontal assault upon the old machismo? I sure hope you’re right. So far, no one’s made any moves. But that doesn’t mean they’re not going to. And even if I’m spared legal grief, she’s already cost me plenty in terms of my reputation- one patient bad-mouthing to ten others. And none of the dropouts paid me for work I’d already done- we’re talking solid four figures in lab fees alone. I’m not established enough to kiss off that kind of loss without pain- there’s a doctor glut here on the West Side. Where do you practice?”

“Here on the West Side, but I work with kids.”

“Oh.” She drummed her nails along the rim of the teacup. “I probably sound pretty mercenary to you, huh? Here you are, talking altruism, debriefing patients, all that good Hippocratic stuff. And all I’m worried about is covering my butt. But I make no excuses for it, ’cause if I don’t cover my butt, no one else will do it for me. When I came out from Northwestern to do my internship at Harbor General, I met the greatest guy in the world, married him three weeks later. A screenwriter, doing research at the hospital for a miniseries. Pow, love at first sight. All of a sudden I had a house in Playa Del Rey, till death do us part. He said he was turned on by my being a doctor, pledged he’d never leave me. Two years later he left me. Cleaned out our bank account and went to Santa Fe with some bimbo. It’s taken me two years to climb out of it.”