"I'm a psychiatrist," I said. "I have a patient in town."

He stared into the rearview mirror, studying me 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 again, 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 52nd 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, 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 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 a 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 the 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

PCF# 507950C0 POB: Brooklyn