Bad Love by Jonathan Kellerman Page A

quack?”
    “Why don’t you try the Santa Monica pier. It’s open late.”
    “Okay — that sounds good, thanks. Do they have good hot dogs by any chance?”
    “I know they have hot dogs, but I can’t vouch for them being gourmet.”
    He smiled. “Josh is a hot dog connoisseur, Alex.” He puffed his cheeks and smoothed his beard. “Too bad about Disneyland. I hate to disappoint him.”
    “Challenges of parenthood, huh?” I said.
    He smiled. “He’s a sweet kid. I brought him with me hoping to turn it into a semi-vacation for both of us. I try to do that with each of them when they’re old enough. It’s hard to reconcile working with other people’s kids when you can’t find time for your own — you have any?”
    I shook my head.
    “It’s an education, believe me. Worth more than ten years of school.”
    “Do you treat only children?” I said.
    “Half and half. Actually, I find myself doing less and less child work as time goes on.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “To be honest, kid work’s just too nonverbal for me. Three hours in a row of play therapy makes my eyes cross — narcissistic, I know, but I figure I’m not doing them much good if I’m fading away. My wife, on the other hand, doesn’t mind. She’s a real artist with it. Great mom, too.”
    We walked to the cafeteria, had coffee and donuts, and chatted for a while about other places he could take his son. As we headed back to the auditorium, I asked him about his connection to the de Bosches.
    “Andres was my teacher,” he said, “in England. I did a fellowship eleven years ago at Southwick Hospital — near Manchester. Child psychiatry and pediatric neurology. I’d toyed with the idea of working for the government and I wanted to see how the Brits ran their system.”
    “Neurology?” I said. “Didn’t know de Bosch was interested in the organic side of things.”
    “He wasn’t. Southwick was heavily biological — still is — but Andres was their token analyst. Kind of a . . .” He smiled. “I was about to say “throwback,’ but that wouldn’t be kind. It’s not as if he was some sort of relic. Quite vital, actually — a gadfly to the hard-wire boys, and don’t we all need gadflies.”
    We entered the conference room. Ten minutes until the next speech and the place was nearly empty.
    “Was it a good year?” I said after we were seated.
    “The fellowship? Sure. I got to do lots of long-term depth work with kids from poor and working-class families, and Andres was a wonderful teacher — great at communicating his knowledge.”
    I thought: it’s not genetic. I said, “He is a clear writer.”
    Rosenblatt nodded, crossed his legs, and looked around the deserted auditorium.
    “How’s child analysis accepted here?” he said.
    “It’s not used much,” I said. “We deal mostly with kids with serious physical illnesses, so the emphasis is on short-term treatment. Pain control, family counseling, compliance with treatment.”
    “Not much tolerance for delayed gratification?”
    “Not much.”
    “Do you find that satisfying — as an analyst?”
    “I’m not an analyst.”
    “Oh.” He blushed around his beard. “I guess I assumed you were — then how’d you get involved in the conference?”
    “Katarina de Bosch’s powers of persuasion.”
    He smiled. “She can be a real ball-breaker, can’t she? When I knew her back in England she was just a kid — fourteen or fifteen — but even then she had a forceful personality. She used to attend our graduate seminars. Spoke up as if she was a peer.”
    “Daddy’s girl.”
    “Very much so.”
    “Fourteen or fifteen,” I said. “So she’s only twenty-five or -six?”
    He thought for a moment. “That’s about right.”
    “She seems older.”
    “Yes, she does,” he said, as if coming up with an insight. “She has an old soul, as the Chinese say.”
    “Is she married?”
    He shook his head. “There was a time I thought she might be gay, but I don’t