I was the one who stopped it.
“What’s the matter?”
There’s nothing you can say in a situation like that that doesn’t sound like a cliché or totally idiotic, or both. I opted for both.
“I’m sorry. Don’t take it personally.”
She threw herself upright, busied herself with buttoning, fastening, smoothing her hair.
“How else should I take it?”
“You’re very desirable.”
“Very.”
“I’m attracted to you, dammit. I’d love to make love to you.”
“What is it, then?”
“A commitment.”
“You’re not married, are you? You don’t act married.”
“There are other commitments besides marriage.”
“I see.” She gathered up her purse and put her hand on the door handle. “The person you’re committed to, it would matter to her?”
“Yes. More important, it would matter to me.”
She burst out laughing, verging on hysteria.
“I’m sorry,” she said, catching her breath. “It’s so damned ironic. You think I do this often? This is the first time I’ve been interested in a guy in a long time. The nun cuts loose and comes face to face with a saint.”
She giggled. It sounded feverish, fragile, made me uneasy. I was weary of being on the receiving end of someone’s—anyone’s—frustration but I supposed she was entitled to her moment of cathartic stardom.
“I’m no saint, believe me.”
She touched my cheek with her fingers. It was like being raked with hot coals.
“No, you’re just a nice guy, Delaware.”
“I don’t feel like that, either.”
“I’m going to kiss you again,” she said, “but it’s going to stay chaste this time. The way it should have been in the first place.”
And she did.
18
THERE WERE two surprises waiting for me when I got home.
The first was Robin, in my ratty yellow bathrobe, stretched out on the leather sofa, drinking hot tea. A fire burned in the hearth and the stereo played the Eagles’ “Desperado.”
She was wearing a magazine photograph of Lassie around her neck like a miniature sandwich sign.
“Hello, darling,” she said.
I threw my jacket over a chair.
“Hi. What’s with the dog?”
“Just my way of letting you know that I’ve been a bitch and I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” I removed the sign.
I sat beside her and took her hands in mine.
“I was rotten to you this morning, Alex, letting you leave like that. The moment the door closed I started missing you. You know how it is when you let your mind wander around—what if something happens to him, what if I never see him again—you go crazy. I couldn’t work, couldn’t be around machines in that state. The day was blown. I called you but I couldn’t get through. So here I am.”
“Virtue has its rewards,” I muttered under my breath.
“What’s that, sweetie?”
“Nothing.” Any recounting of my minor-league indiscretion would suffer in the retelling, emerging as either a boorish bathroom scribble—‘Yeah, I copped a fast feel from another broad, honey’—or, worse, a confession.
I lay down beside her. We held each other, said nice things, talked baby talk, stroked each other. I was pumped up from the waist down, some of it a residue of the curbside session with Raquel, most of it belonging to the moment.
“There are two giant porterhouses in the refrigerator and a Caesar salad and burgundy and sourdough.” She whispered, tickling my nose with her pinkie.
“You’re a very oral person,” I laughed.
“Is that neurotic, Doctor?”
“No. It’s wonderful.”
“How about this? And this?”
The robe fell open. She kneeled above me, letting it slide down her shoulders. Backlit by the glow of the fire, she looked like a piece of glorious, golden statuary.
“Come on sweetie,” she coaxed, “get out of those clothes.” And she took the matter into her own hands.
“I do love you,” she said later. “Even if you are catatonic.”
I refused to budge, and lay spreadeagled on the floor.
“I’m cold.”
She covered me, stood and stretched, and laughed with pleasure.
“How can you jump around afterwards?” I groaned.
“Women are stronger than men,” she said gaily, and proceeded to dance around the room, humming, stretching more so that the muscles of her calves ascended in the slender columns of her legs like bubbles rising in a carpenter’s level. Her eyes reflected orange Halloween light. When she moved a shudder went through me.
“Keep jiggling like that and I’ll show you who’s stronger.”
“Later, big boy.” She teased me with her foot and leaped away from my grabbing paws with fluid agility.
By the time the steaks were ready Mrs. Gutierrez’s cuisine was a vague memory and I ate with gusto. We sat side by side in the breakfast nook, looking out through leaded glass as lights went on in the hills like the beacons of a distant search party. She rested her head on my shoulder. My arm went around her, my fingertips blindly traced the contours of her face. We took turns drinking from a single glass of wine.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you too.” She kissed the underside of my chin. After several more sips:
“You were investigating those murders today, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
She fortified herself with a large swallow and refilled the glass.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to hassle you about it. I can’t pretend I like it, but I won’t try to control you.”
I hugged her by way of thanks.
“I mean, I wouldn’t want you treating me that way, so I won’t do it to you.” She was giving liberation the old school try, but worry remained suspended in her voice like a fly in amber.
“I’m watching out for myself.”
“I know you are,” she said, too quickly. “You’re a bright man. You can take care of yourself.”
She handed me the wine.
“If you want to talk about it, Alex, I’ll listen.”
I hesitated.
“Tell me. I want to know what’s going on.”
I gave her a rehash of the last two days, ending it with the confrontation with Andy Gutierrez, leaving out the ten turbulent minutes with Raquel.
She listened, troubled and attentive, digested it, and told me, “I can see why you can’t drop it. So many suspicious things, no connecting thread.”
She was right. It was reverse Gestalt, the whole so much less than the sum of its parts. A random assortment of musicians, sawing, blowing, thumping, yearning for a conductor. But who the hell was I to play Ormandy?
“When are you going to tell Milo?”
“I’m not. I spoke to him this morning and he basically told me to mind my own business, stay out of it.”
“But it’s his job, Alex. He’ll know what to do.”
“Honey, Milo will get bent out of shape if I tell him I visited La Casa.”
“But that poor child, the retarded one, isn’t there something he could do about it?”
I shook my head.
“It’s not enough. There’d be an explanation for it. Milo’s got his suspicions—I’ll bet they’re stronger than he let on to me—but he’s hemmed in by rules and procedures.”
“And you’re not,” she said softly.
“Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry, yourself. I’m not going to try to stop you. I meant what I said.”
I drank more wine. My throat had constricted and the cool liquid was astringently soothing.
She got up and stood behind me, putting her arms over my shoulders. It was a gesture of support not dissimilar from the one I’d offered Raquel just a few hours ea
rlier. She reached down and played with the ridge of hair that vertically bisected my abdomen.
“I’m here for you, Alex, if you need me.”
“I always need you. But not to get involved in crap like this.”
“Whatever you need me for, I’m here.”
I rose out of the chair and drew her to me, kissing her neck, her ears, her eyes. She threw back her head and put my lips on the warm pulse at the base of her throat.
“Let’s get into bed and snuggle,” she said.
I turned on the radio and tuned it to KKGO. Sonny Rollins was extracting a liquid sonata from his horn. I switched on a dim light and drew back the covers.
The second surprise of the evening lay there, a plain white envelope, business-size, unmarked and partially covered by the pillow.
“Was this here when you arrived?”
She’d taken off her robe. Now she held it to her breasts, seeking cover, as if the envelope were a living, breathing intruder.
“Could have been. I didn’t go in the bedroom.”
I slit it open with my thumbnail and took out the single sheet of white paper folded inside. The page was devoid of date, address or any distinguishing logo. Just a white rectangle filled with lines of handwriting that slanted pessimistically downward. The penmanship, cramped and spidery, was familiar. I sat down on the edge of the bed and read.
Dear Doctor:
Here’s hoping you sleep in your own bed in the near future so you have the opportunity to read this. I took the liberty of jimmying your rear door to get in and deliver this—you should get a better lock, by the way.
This afternoon I was relieved of my duties in the H-G case. El Capitán feels the case would benefit by the infusion of fresh blood—the tasteless choice of words was his, not mine. I have my doubts about his motivation, but I haven’t exactly set any new detection records so I was in no position to debate it with him.
I must have looked pretty shattered by it, cause he got suddenly empathetic and suggested I take some R and R. In fact, he was very well-versed in the details of my personnel file, knew that I’d accrued lots of vacation time and strongly urged me to use some of it.
At first I wasn’t overjoyed at the idea, but I’ve since come to view it as an excellent one. I’ve found my place in the sun. A quaint little watering hole named Ahuacatlan, just north of Guadalajara. Some preliminary checking via long distance reveals that said burg is extremely well-suited for someone of my recreational interests. Hunting and fishing, in particular.
I expect to be gone for two or three days. Phone contact is tenuous and undesirable—the natives cherish privacy. Will call when I get back. Regards to Stradivarius (Stradivariette?) and stay out of trouble.
All the best,
Milo
I gave it to Robin to read. She finished it and handed it back.
“What’s he saying—that he was kicked off the case?”
“Yes. Probably because of outside pressure. But he’s going to Mexico to look into McCaffrey’s background. Apparently when he called down there he got enough over the phone to make him want to pursue it.”
“He’s going behind his captain’s back.”
“He must feel it’s worth it.” Milo was a brave man but no martyr. He wanted his pension as much as the next guy.
“You were right then. About La Casa.” She got under the covers and drew them up to her chin. She shivered, not from the cold.
“Yes.” Never had being right seemed of such meager solace.
The music from the radio peeked around corners and took an unexpected pirouette. A drummer had joined Rollins, and he slapped out a tropical tattoo on his tom-toms … I could think only of cannibals and snake-encrusted vines. Shrunken heads …
“Hold me.”
I got in beside her and kissed her and held her and tried to act calm. But all the while my mind was elsewhere, lost on some frozen piece of tundra, floating out to sea.
19
THE ENTRANCE LOBBY of Western Pediatric Medical Center was walled with marble slabs engraved with the names of long-dead benefactors. Inside, the lobby was filled with the injured, the ill and the doomed, all simmering in the endless wait that is as much a part of hospitals as are intravenous needles and bad food.
Mothers clutched bundles to their breasts, wails escaping from within the layers of blanket. Fathers chewed their nails, grappled with insurance forms and tried not to think about the loss of masculinity resulting from encounters with bureaucracy. Toddlers raced about, placing their hands on the marble, withdrawing them quickly at the cold and leaving behind grimy mementoes. A loudspeaker called out names and the chosen plodded to the admissions desk. A blue-haired lady in the green-and-white-striped uniform of a hospital volunteer sat behind the information counter, as baffled as those she was mandated to assist.
In a far corner of the lobby, children and grownups sat on plastic chairs and watched television. The TV was tuned to a serial that took place in a hospital. The doctors and nurses on the screen wore spotless white, had coiffed hair, perfect faces, and teeth that radiated a mucoid sparkle as they conversed in slow, low, earnest tones about love, hate, anguish and death. The doctors and nurses who elbowed their way through the throng in the lobby were altogether more human—rumpled, harried, sleepy-eyed. Those entering rushed, responding to beepers and emergency phone calls. Those exiting did so with the alacrity of escaping prisoners, fearing last-minute calls back to the wards.
I wore my white coat and hospital badge and carried my briefcase as the automatic doors allowed me through and the sixtyish, red-nosed guard nodded as I passed:
“Morning, Doctor.”
I rode the elevator to the basement along with a despondent black couple in their thirties and their son, a withered, gray-skinned nine-year-old in a wheelchair. At the mezzanine we were joined by a lab tech, a fat girl carrying a basket of syringes, needles, rubber tubing and glass cylinders full of the ruby syrup of life. The parents of the boy in the wheelchair looked longingly at the blood; the child turned his head to the wall.
The ride ended with a bump. We were disgorged into a dingy yellow corridor. The other passengers turned right, toward the lab. I went the other way, came to a door marked “Medical Records,” opened it and went in.
Nothing had changed since I’d left. I had to turn sideways to get through the narrow aisle carved into the floor-to-ceiling stacks of charts. No computer here, no high tech attempt at organizing the tens of thousands of dog-eared manila files into a coherent system. Hospitals are conservative institutions, and Western Pediatric was the most stodgy of hospitals, welcoming progress the way a dog welcomes the mange.
At the end of the aisle was a unadorned gray wall. Just in front of it sat a sleepy-looking Filipino girl, reading a glamor magazine.
“May I help you?”
“Yes. I’m Dr. Delaware. I need to get hold of a chart of a patient of mine.”
“You could have your secretary call us, Doctor, and we’d send it to you.”
Sure. In two weeks.
“I appreciate that, but I need to look at it right now and my secretary’s not here yet.”
“What’s the patient’s name?”
“Adams. Brian Adams.” The room was divided alphabetically. I picked a name that would take her to the far end of the A-K section.
“If you’ll just fill out this form, I’ll get it right for you.”
I filled out the form, falsifying with ease. She didn’t bother to look at it and dropped it into a metal filebox. When she was gone, hidden between the stacks, I went to the L-Z side of the room, searched among the N’s and found what I was looking for. I slipped it into my briefcase and returned.
She came back minutes later.
“I’ve got three Brian Adamses, here, Doctor. Which one is it?”
I scanned the three and picked one at random.
“This is it.”
“If you sign this”—she held out a second form—“I can let you have it on t
wenty-four-hour loan.”
“There’ll be no need for that. I’ll just examine it here.”
I made a show of looking scholarly, leafed through the medical history of Brian Adams, age eleven, admitted for a routine tonsillectomy five years previously, clucked my tongue, shook my head, jotted down some meaningless notes, and gave it back to her.
“Thanks. You’ve been most helpful.”
She didn’t answer, having already returned to the world of cosmetic camouflage and clothing designed for the sado-intellectual set.
I found an empty conference room down the hall next to the morgue, locked the door from the inside and sat down to examine the final chronicles of Cary Nemeth.
The boy had spent the last twenty-two hours of his life in the Intensive Care Unit at Western Pediatric, not a second of it in a conscious state. From a medical point of view it was open and shut: hopeless. The admitting intern had kept his notes factual and objective, labeling it Auto versus Pedestrian, in the quaint lexicon of medicine that makes tragedy sound like a sporting event.
He’d been brought in by ambulance, battered, crushed, skull shredded, all but his most rudimentary bodily functions gone. Yet thousands of dollars had been spent delaying the inevitable, and enough pages had been filled to create a medical chart the size of a textbook. I leafed through them: nursing notes, with their compulsive accounting of intake and output, the child reduced to cubic centimeters of fluid and plumbing; ICU graphs, progress notes—that was a cruel joke—consultations from neurosurgeons, neurologists, nephrologists, radiologists, cardiologists; blood tests, X-rays, scans, shunts, sutures, intravenous feedings, parenteral nutritional supplements, respiratory therapy, and, finally, the autopsy.
Stapled to the back inside cover was the sheriff’s report, another example of jargonistic reductionism. In this equally precious dialect, Cary Nemeth was V, for Victim.
V had been hit from behind while walking down Malibu Canyon Road just before midnight. He’d been barefoot, wearing pajamas—yellow, the report was careful to note. There were no skid marks, leading the reporting deputy to conclude that he’d been hit at full force. From the distance the body traveled, the estimated speed of the vehicle was between forty and fifty miles per hour.
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