The Office Visit

I was part of a night cleaning crew when this happened to me, fourteen years ago, two days before my birthday. Most would say that I should consider that day which ended in that evening, the luckiest day of my life, yet, something has nagged at me since then which makes me feel feeble and incomplete. More importantly, I have been prompted by an occurrence in my office during the last twenty four hours which makes it necessary that I now tell you about it. Perhaps by your listening to my story, and my emptying myself of it, I can find rest, rest that will allow me to sleep without pills. I am now thirty six years old and the last thing I want is to have to spend the rest of my life with the sort of mental discomfort which can drive an otherwise sane person completely nuts. Though I can well afford the best therapy available in the world of sophisticated sorcery, for reasons which you will shortly understand, I cannot possibly engage in those luxuries.

I'm sure it's extremely rare that a person like me discovers some great confidence - one of those things which stay hidden from the public until maybe fifty years later - like opening up classified materials. Nonetheless....

The day this happened was an icy cold December day in 1982. I was then a student at Wayne State University, holding down a part-time job as a janitor on a crew whose job it was to clean offices after hours. Our shift started at eight thirty or as soon thereafter as everyone on the crew got together - you know how those things go. Our route consisted of seven suites of offices. The company, The Mighty Mice, had two crews. We would alternate routes every day. They would take three one day and we would take four. The next day, they would take our four and we would do the three. The hours were convenient and the pay was OK.

I was starting my senior year, having lost a semester prior to the time my father died and another afterward. I had wished like hell that I could stick it out so that he would see me graduate, like my brother Tom. I guess it was not to be. It was one of those things without explanation. Yes, he had been a heavy smoker, but he had simply never gotten any symptoms of illness. No lung disease, no heart trouble, no stomach cancer, nothing. All of a sudden, he feels unwell, goes into the hospital for a checkup, has a heavy-duty stroke and dies. He was forty nine. I was sad for my mother and for Tom and my younger sister, but mostly for me. As I said, I stayed out that semester and took to drinking a bit, though it never got the best of me. You could forgive a nineteen-year-old, couldn't you? You could forgive Alan McChesney?

Let me tell you something before we move on. Those offices were no ordinary cubicles. These were some of the plushest and best-appointed commercial spaces in the whole City of Detroit. I learned my very first night out that most of our offices were inhabited by attorneys. There was one suite that served a Real Estate developer and another which was used by a well-known Psychiatrist. Everything else was legal space.

At first, they all seemed to me to be pretty much the same. Most had beautifully finished oak paneling, plush carpeting, impressive desks, banker's lamps, conference tables, wood file cabinets, and other upscale appointments which made me think they were all professionally decorated. By about the third week, however, I got to distinguish and identify each office for its distinctive features. I got to know who worked in what office and what they each did. I even became familiar with their families - most contained well-placed pictures of spouses, kids, fathers, mothers and girlfriends. I knew that at least two of those pictured had to be girlfriends because they looked only slightly older than the children. There were also plenty of photos of important politicians and government people on those walls. I learned to recognize a clear hierarchy among our employers - the more important and high profile the people in their photographs, the higher the status of the picture's owner. There was even one picture with President Reagan in it, autographed with a nicely-phrased dedication. And, of course, they all had well-stocked liquor cabinets, though, take my word, we never touched the stuff.

Being the college kid on the crew, I was assigned to clean the tables, desks, and chairs. No carpets, hallways, trash cans, or toilets for me. Not that I would have refused the heavier work, it was just never assigned to me. Perhaps they felt I could be trusted to better remember the exact placement of all the paperwork on the desks and tables after I dusted. That appeared to be important. And I did. I never heard that anyone complained about our work. We knew we were taking care of some of Detroit's elite business people and we therefore took our work, menial as it was, rather seriously - as they say, institutions are a mirror image of the publics they serve. There were times nonetheless, when we joked a bit, especially with a young and beautiful girl who was sometimes part of our crew.

She was probably no more than eighteen and had the most magical and ravishing good looks I had ever seen on any woman. Her name was Debbie Saenz, she was Puerto Rican, and she possessed wonderful, light olive skin, green eyes, and a stunning head of shining blonde hair. And on top of it all, she was also extremely intelligent. How I came to let her slip by my fingers is one of those things which you can attribute to the many stupidities a twenty-two-year-old is prone to. However, lest I spoil a good surprise, that's all you need to know for now

On the evening of my good fortune, I was half done with the psychiatrist's private office, the late Dr. Richard Leverton, when I accidentally caught my shirt cuff on the edge of a file drawer. The drawer was pulled open to reveal a single piece of paper with rather large writing on it. First thing I thought was that, for a Doctor, his handwriting was very legible. The note simply said: "Bryarton 215". The paper had been crumpled up then flattened out, as if Dr. Leverton had thrown it in the trash then changed his mind. Bryarton was, of course, the ritzy Bryarton Golf Club. I thought 215 referred to an appointment, but such was not the case. Because I was alone in the office, I indulged my curiosity by looking under the white sheet of paper. There was an open file lying on top of about two dozen pendaflex folders hanging neatly in the drawer.

The open folder contained the patient file of Mrs. Cassandra M. Hudson, Casey Hudson, the wife of District Court Judge Aaron W. Hudson. Of course, I proceeded to read it. You can forgive me for it, can you not? The notes bore that day's date, December 8, 1982. It appeared that Mrs. Hudson had confided to the good Doctor, her discovery that her husband had received a ten million dollar gratuity from some foreign dignitary in return for some very useful information which her husband was in a good position to provide. You see, Judge Hudson had often been consulted by the State Department to supply behind-the-scenes, on-the-spot advisory services for international trade and diplomatic missions - the kind of silent activity that never, ever makes the news. By his thus sitting pretty, he was privy to tons of confidential information. If you keep up with the news, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, Mrs. Hudson had been sufficiently disturbed by the bribe, as she called it, to seek counseling for it as soon as she could. Very conveniently, Judge Hudson was in Europe that very day and she felt it safe to talk to Dr. Leverton while he was gone. This was, however, one among many other things she discussed with her doctor - they were highly interesting and provocative, but are irrelevant to my story so you'll not know about them, not from me anyhow. As for the money, she proceeded to tell Dr. Leverton that it was in a locker at Bryarton. I guessed correctly that that was the 215. Whether the matter went beyond this little veneer of facts was not apparent, but I do know that what followed was pure, unblemished coincidence.

Not known to me until later, Dr. Leverton had contracted food poisoning that evening - the evening of my stumbling upon the file - and was in Memorial Hospital for observation, unable to get to the money. Mrs. Hudson was in a coma at Detroit General having been involved in a car accident on icy Michigan Avenue after leaving the Doctor's office - unable to get to the money, or tell anyone else about it. Judge Hudson was in Europe, so that left me and me only, though I didn't know it at the time. I therefore prayed and hoped that the money would be there for whenever I got my chance to get it.

As this stream of chance was flowing fully in my favor, you won't find it hard to believe that my best friend back then, Larry Frank, worked at the Bryarton clubhouse. I called him late that evening - as soon as we were done with our cleaning gig - and arranged to meet him at Bryarton at six the next morning. He was, of course, quite curious but I just told him I would explain everything later. I don't have to tell you, I couldn't sleep that night. I had no idea that all these other people had already gotten out of my way.

That next morning, I told Larry that I needed the keys to #215 - that I was running an errand for Judge Hudson - and he just gave them to me. He figured it had to be so, otherwise, how could I possibly know the Judge's locker number. I opened the locker to find a large canvas bag among a lot of other things. The wave of relief and pleasure I felt pulsing through my body told me this was it. I placed the bag inside the two dark, heavy-duty, trash bags which I had brought with me and gave Larry his keys. I told him to trust me and to keep his mouth shut no matter what and he would be able to retire by tomorrow, all of which he did. That afternoon, I gave him five hundred thousand and he simply vanished. Last I heard, he was in North Carolina doing I-don't-know-and-I-don't-care-what. Let me now jump way ahead.

Yesterday, at about two in the afternoon, I received a new patient, Deborah J. Sines, a well-known and very successful advertising executive in this community. Feeling a little stressed, as successful people often feel, she decided to look me up, one of only two Psychoanalysts in this suburb.

I don't mind telling you, we talked for more than two hours. She didn't recognize me from the cleaning crew days - and I didn't tell her - but I instantly knew who she was. You need to know that no patient of mine has ever been so engaging or so gorgeous that I've felt compelled to take matters to an unprofessional, personal level. Take my word on that. This time, however, I didn't hesitate doing it. After all, here was my second chance. It would not come again. She was as bright and beautiful as ever. You do remember don't you? Debbie Saenz?

At the start, she told me a few things of a rather superficial nature - small, inconvenient problems we all have to deal with. Then, things began to get interesting. It happened that she had a slightly older brother, one Robert Julienne Saenz who had been mysteriously murdered about fourteen years prior. She had never been able to discover who killed him or why - nor had all the cops in Detroit. The name rang a disturbing little bell for me, but I said nothing. I remembered the crime had been attributed to drug gang rivalries. She and her brother, as she told it, were in love and had been having an affair for two years. They had planned to run away together on Christmas day, being that their unusual and clandestine relationship had been discovered. Unfortunately, he had met his sad end on or about December 11, a few days before their planned elopement. He had been found tied and badly beaten in a small, abandoned warehouse off Bagley Street. Understandably, she had become distraught and suicidal and had been hospitalized immediately afterward. She was eighteen years old at the time and now desired to come to terms with all of this.

As I heard her tell me the story, I became so deeply saddened that tears welled up in my eyes and I was not able to speak while she talked. I was sitting behind her, looking away from her - she was reclining on the couch, facing toward the large window in my office and was not able to discover right then, what she had done to me. She had simply continued with her narrative, thinking perhaps that I was a good listener.

I soon realized that her brother was the same man I had read about in the papers a few days after I took the ten million. They had reported his name as Robert Julienne, so I had never made the connection. Maybe the good judge had suspected him of the theft since Robert worked maintenance at the Bryarton and had access to all the lockers. I supposed then, that it was he who had him killed. Regardless, I felt completely responsible. It was now my turn to confess.

I told Debbie who I was, where I remembered seeing her last, my connection to the crime, and most everything I had done since that time. We embraced and cried and sobbed together for some time, and I then suddenly proposed to her. Yes, I asked her to marry me. Slowly, to my astonishment, she quietly accepted. The feeling of elation and simple joy which overcame me then and there cannot be conveyed in mere words. Forgive me for not even trying. Now composed, Debbie told me she wanted to have breakfast with me the next morning and spend the rest of that day leisurely planning our wedding. I could not have been happier if I had been told that everyone and everything that I ever loved and treasured was now mine to enjoy and all the wrongs and mistakes that I had ever done had been erased and banished to a place from whence they would never return. We then embraced again - much more intimately - and we said goodbye, and she left.

Today, at noon, her body was found in a bedroom of her house, an empty bottle of sleeping tablets at her side - the ones I had prescribed.