Robert Bloch's Psycho Read Online Free Page B

Felix Reed was sitting otherwise alone in the room. Reed thought it might be Verdi, but he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t heard anything he recognized since he entered.
    Judy Pearson, Dr. Goldberg’s personal secretary, had told Reed to make himself comfortable, and that Dr. Goldberg would be there soon. He had apparently gone to the staff dining room, as he occasionally did, to eat and mingle with the evening shift. Judy, a girl in her early twenties without any personality that Reed could detect, offered him coffee, which he accepted.
    As he sipped it and listened to (maybe) Verdi, he checked the clock on Goldberg’s desk against his own watch. It was five minutes past eight on each instrument, and Goldberg had asked Reed to be there at eight. The tardiness was typical of Goldberg, and Reed expected it. Still, it would never do to be late himself. Goldberg demanded punctiliousness from all his underlings.
    So Reed sat and listened to opera and looked around the office. Goldberg had several symbols of his faith displayed. A brass, seven-branched menorah sat on one of the many bookcases that covered the walls, and a framed Star of David made of intricately inlaid polished stones hung between the windows behind the desk.
    Reed stood and browsed the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, as he usually did when he had to wait for Goldberg. Nothing had changed. It was still the same combination of essential texts in the field mixed with classical literature and philosophy, much of it in German.
    Reed then surveyed the framed diplomas that are part of the decor of every medical man’s office. In Goldberg’s case they were few, only a couple advanced degrees from American psychiatric schools in the late 1940s. There was nothing from Goldberg’s early years in Vienna before the war. The Nazis hadn’t allowed doctors to take their diplomas into the death camps.
    The door to the office opened and Goldberg entered, holding a cup of coffee. Even at the end of the day, his shirtfront and suit still seemed crisp and freshly pressed, his full beard neatly trimmed and bristling. “Felix!” His voice was loud and heavy with the accent of Mitteleuropa. “Sit! Please. Do you need more coffee?”
    â€œNo thanks, Dr. Goldberg, I’m fine.”
    Goldberg sat behind his wide desk as Reed perched on the edge of the chair opposite. “Perhaps a cookie?” The older man opened a desk drawer and brought up a package of Oreos. “I love them, eh?”
    â€œNot for me, thank you, but you go ahead.”
    â€œI will. A tiny dessert.” As Reed watched, Goldberg took an Oreo, separated the two halves, dunked the dry one in his coffee, popped it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed, and then ate the other half with the sweet filling without dunking it first.
    â€œNow,” he said, touching a white handkerchief to his lips, “I trust you have closely observed my method of eating an Oreo cookie, and that you have come to some conclusion about my psyche as a result.”
    Reed stared at Goldberg for a moment, then saw the corners of the man’s mouth twitch upward and realized he was joking. Reed laughed. “I do the same thing, only I lick the icing off before I eat the second cookie. If I could somehow keep the icing separate, I’d eat it last.”
    â€œAh! So we are both practitioners of delayed gratification, but in slightly different ways. I compromise by eating both final cookie and icing simultaneously, while you are willing to have the relative bitterness of the second cookie replace the pure and undiluted sweetness of the icing alone.” Goldberg raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps we should collaborate on a paper, ja ?” Reed chuckled politely, and Goldberg went on. “Well, now. I really asked you here to chat about your patients. One in particular. Bates.”
    Reed nodded, fearing what might be coming. “Norman Bates.”
    â€œ Ja. Have you had any