Nightmare in Pink by John D. MacDonald

and seven minutes later they're snoring like a bison. I was married to one of those, God help me. He had about the same attitude toward sex as he had toward breakfast. He didn't particularly care what was served as long as he could have a healthy breakfast that didn't take too damned long. But my weepy drunken sister at last tells me that Charlie was hexed, probably by his cruel, romantic, cold son-of-a-bitch of a father, just as I was by mine, but in the opposite direction. Charlie is all tied up in psychopathic knots about sex. Impotent a lot of the time. Scared of being impotent. Able to manage it only when he's very tired or slightly drunk. And they are so good and so dear to each other in all other ways. And such a healthy outdoorsy pair.
    "A year ago he had a genuine breakdown. It was kept pretty quiet. He went into a private rest home. When he got out, he just didn't go back to Joanna. She saw him a few times. He seemed perfectly cheery, and a little too loud, and he made silly jokes. He said he was taking another apartment in town. He told her the usual check would be deposited in her account every month, and she should keep on having all the bills sent to the office. But she couldn't pin him down. She couldn't really communicate with him."
    "How long was he in the rest home?"
    "Two months and a half."
    "Did she go to see him there?"
    "She was told it would be better if she stayed away. They said it was an acute anxiety neurosis. I've been trying to dig into this damn fool situation, and I've been here two weeks, and I still haven't been able to see him. He doesn't go to any of his clubs anymore. He's in a five-bedroom apartment on East Seventy-first. His personal attorney, Baynard Mulligan lives there with him. And his private secretary, Miss Bonita Hersch. They have a day-time maid, a live-in cook and a chauffeur. He spends a couple of hours every working day at the office. I've left a dozen messages for him to call me. Nothing." She got up and went to the bar table and fixed herself another gin and ice.
    She brought it over and sat beside me, turned to face me. "Now I've made a damn fool of myself by telling a lot of very personal and private matters to an absolute stranger."
    "But you stopped short."
    "Did I?"
    "Terry, you told the facts and left out the assumptions."
    "Do I have to know how you fit into all this?"
    "Not really."
    She nodded. "Then you tell me what I'm assuming."
    "You've thought it all over. You're reasonably shrewd. And you've known practically from birth that you are a target for every sharpie who comes along. So you develop an instinct. You know that something is wrong. It all adds up to one thing. Some people have managed to move in on Charlie Armister. They have gotten to him. They own him. Did you ever see a lamprey?"
    "A what?"
    "It's an eel. It hides in the weeds in the bottom of a lake. Sometimes it has to hide a long time. When a fat lake trout comes by, the eel shoots up and fastens its round mouth with a circle of teeth into the white belly of the fish. The fish struggles awhile, then goes on about its business, with eel in tow. It swims and feeds and lives for a long time, but it keeps getting thinner and weaker. When it dies, the eel leaves it and goes back into the weeds."
    "Mulligan?"
    "And Hersch and the necessary corps of assistants. It has to be a big and very delicate conspiracy. This isn't a hit-and-run operation. This is a symbiotic relationship."
    "Do you think that is really happening?"
    "First, they are now and have been for almost a year, liquidating profitable operations and making no new capital investments. Secondly, a very earnest young man who worked there and who was doggedly trying to find out what was going on, got himself mugged and killed in an alley two months ago."
    She stared at me. "Are you insane?"
    "The greater the profit, the greater the risk."
    "But… but if they've got Charlie, we should go to the police at once!"
    "Sure. What do we say?"
    "We… we