The Clinic (10 page)

“No, thanks.”

She’d taken us into a short, bright hallway. Dark wood doors, all closed, and dense tan carpeting that smothered our footsteps. The walls were white and looked freshly painted. She opened the fourth door and stepped aside.

The room was small with a low ceiling. Two beige cotton armchairs and a matching love seat sat
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on a black area rug. A chrome-and-glass coffee table separated them. A pair of high windows exposed the brick wall of the beauty-parlor building. No desk, no books, no phone.

“Dr. Cruvic’s offices are on the other side but he’d like you to remain here so as not to upset the patients. You’re sure you don’t want coffee? Or tea?”

Milo declined again and smiled.

“Okay, then. Make yourselves comfortable, he should be right in.”

“Nice old building,” said Milo. “Must be good to have this kind of space in Beverly Hills.”

“Oh, it is neat,” she said. “I think it used to be some kind of stable—they ran horses around here back in the old days. I think Mary Pickford kept her horses here, or maybe it was another of those old-time stars.”

I said, “Does Dr. Cruvic do his operating right here or does he go over to Cedars or Century City?”

Her taut face turned glassy. “Mostly we do outpatient procedures. Nice to meet you.”

She left, closing the door. Milo waited several moments, then opened it and looked out. Four long strides took him to the end of the corridor and a door markedTO WEST WING. He tried the knob. Locked. On his way back, he jiggled others. All bolted.

“Is my paranoia kicking in “cause I don’t like doctors’ offices or did she not like your question about where he operates?”

“It did seem to throw her,” I said. “Sorry to put a stress on her face-lift.”

“Yeah, sheis glossy. I thought she might have been recuperating from a sunburn, but with that chest you’re probably right. . . . Didyou want coffee? Far be it for me to speak for the entire class.”

“No, this room is stimulating enough.”

He laughed. “Warm and cozy, huh—could you do therapy, here?”

“I can do therapy anywhere but I’d prefer something a little less stark.”

“Maybe this was Hope’s therapy room.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s separate from the west wing. Noupsetting the patients. Assuming she worked here.

Which isn’t that big of a stretch: He paid her almost forty grand, we haven’t found patient files anywhere else.”

The door opened and a very broad-shouldered man about five-nine gusted in wearing a very wide frown.

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He was around forty with thick gray hair styled in a long, spiky crew cut, the sideburns clipped high above small, close-set ears. Dark, extremely alert eyes studied us. Slanted—five degrees short of an Asian tilt.

His face was round with pronounced, rosy cheekbones, a straight nose with flared nostrils, and a strong chin already shadowed with morning growth.

He wore a tailored white double-breasted jacket over a spread-collar blue shirt and a black silk crepe tie hand-painted with crimson and gold swirls. Black slacks broke perfectly over two-tone black-leather-and-gray-suede wing tips. He stuck out his hand and revealed a French cuff held together by a gold-barrel link. His wrist was thick and coated with straight black hair.

“Mike Cruvic.” Nodding, as if we’d just come to a consensus. Even when he stood still he seemed to bounce.

“Doctor,” said Milo. They shook, then I got Cruvic’s hand. Muscular grip but soft palm. Buffed nails.

“Thanks for taking the time, sir.”

“Happy to, though I really don’t know how I can help you find Hope’s killer.” He shook his head. “Let’s sit, okay? Got myself a heel spur from running in old shoes. You’d think I’d know better.” He knuckled his forehead three times and sank into the love seat.

“You know what they say,” said Milo. “The doctor’s kids go barefoot.”

Cruvic smiled and stretched his arms. “In this case the doctor gets sore feet. I never thought I’d be talking to the police about murder, let alone Hope’s.”

Tucking his finger into a wing tip, he rubbed the side of his foot and winced.

“Creak, creak,” he said, rolling his shoulders. Their bulk wasn’t due to padding. His posture was perfect, his belly board-flat. I pictured him in his home gym at daybreak, bouncing and pedaling and pumping. One of those early risers just waiting to take on the day and knock it out in two rounds.

“So,” he said, finally sitting still. “What would you like to know?”

“We have on record that you paid Dr. Devane thirty-six thousand dollars last year,” said Milo.

“Did she work for you?”

Cruvic floated a palm over the spikes of his crew cut. “I never tallied it up but that sounds right.

She consulted to the practice.”

“In what capacity, Doctor?”

Cruvic touched a finger to a broad, pale lip. “Let’s see, how can I be forthcoming without compromising my patients . . . are you aware of what we do here?”

“Obstetrics-gynecology and fertility.”

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Cruvic produced a business card from an inner pocket of the white jacket. Milo read it, then handed it to me.

MILANA. CRUVIC, M.D., FACOG

PRACTICELIMITED TOPROBLEMS OFFERTILITY

“I used to do OB-GYN but for the last few years I’ve been doing just fertility.”

“The hours?” said Milo.

“Pardon?”

“Delivering babies. The hours can be rough.”

Cruvic laughed. “No, that never bothered me, I don’t need much sleep. I justlike doing fertility.

People come in, sometimes there’s absolutely no medical reason they can’t conceive. It tears them apart. You analyze it, come up with a solution.” He grinned. “I guess I fancy myself a detective of sorts.” He looked at his watch.

“What was Professor Devane’s role in all of that, sir?”

“I called Hope in when I had doubts.”

“About what?”

“Patients’ psychological preparedness.” Cruvic’s brow creased and the gray spikes tilted down.

“Fertility enhancement’s an exhausting process. Physicallyand psychologically. And sometimes nothing we do works. I warn patients beforehand but not everyone can handle it. When they can’t, it’s best not to start. Sometimes I can judge who’s likely to have problems. If I can’t, I call in experts.”

“Do you use other psychologists besides Professor Devane?”

“I have in the past. And some patients have their own therapists. But after I met Hope she became my preferred choice.”

He put both hands on his knees. “She was terrific. Very insightful. A great judge of people. And excellent with the patients. Because unlike other psychologists and psychiatrists she had no stake in sucking people into long-term treatment.”

“Why’s that?”

“She was busy enough.”

“With her book?”

“Her book, teaching.” He clapped his hands. “Quick, to the point, the least amount of treatment necessary. I guess that appealed to the surgeon in me.”

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His ruddy cheeks were almost scarlet and his eyes had turned distant. Rubbing his foot some more, he leaned forward. “I—the practice misses her. Some of these shrinks are weirder than the patients. Hope talked plain English. She was fantastic.”

“How many cases did you refer to her?”

“I never counted.”

“Were there any patients who weren’t happy with her?”

“Not a one—oh, come on, you can’t be serious. No, no, Detective, not a chance. I deal with civilized people, not nutcases.”

Milo shrugged and smiled. “Gotta ask. . . . Is it my imagination, Doctor, or is there more infertility, nowadays?”

“It’s not your imagination at all. Some of it’s probably due to people waiting longer to start.

The ideal conception age for a woman is early to mid-twenties. Tack on ten, fifteen years and you’ve got an aging uterus and diminished probability.”

He put a hand on each knee and his slacks stretched over thick, muscular thighs. “I’d never say this to a patient because they’ve got enough guilt, but some of it’s also due to all the messing around people did in the seventies. Promiscuity, repetitive subclinical infections, endometriosis—that’s internal scarring. That’s also part of what I used Hope for. The guilt.”

“Why’d you pay her directly instead of having her do her own billing?”

Cruvic’s head moved back. The hands came off the knees and pressed down hard on the love-seat cushion.

“Insurance,” said Cruvic. “We tried it the other way and found out it was easier to recover payment for a gynecologic-behavioral consult than for psychotherapy.”

Another stroke of the crew cut. “My CPA assures me it’s all on the up-and-up. Now, if that’s all—”

“Did she work well with the husbands, too?” I said.

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“Her opinions about men were controversial.”

“In what sense?”

“Her book.”

“Oh, that. Well, she was never controversial here. Everyone was very satisfied with her work.

. . . Not that it’s my place to tell you how to do your job, but it seems to me you’re barking up a completely wrong tree. Hope’s murder had nothing to do with her work for me.”

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“I’m sure you’re right,” said Milo. “Where’d you meet her?”

“At another health facility.”

“Where?”

“A charity clinic in Santa Monica.”

“Name?”

“The Women’s Health Center. I’ve been active there for a while. Once a year they throw a fund-raiser. Hope and I sat next to each other on the dais and we began talking.”

He stood. His tie had ridden up and he pulled it down. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some ladies out there who want to be mommies.”

“Sure. Thanks, Doctor.” Milo stood, too. Blocking the door. “One more thing. Did Professor Devane keep her patient files here?”

“She had no files of her own. Made notes in mine. That way we could communicate easily. My files are kept strictly confidential, so it wasn’t a problem.”

“But she did see patients here.”

“Yes.”

“In this room, by any chance?”

“You know,” said Cruvic, “I believe she may have. I don’t assign rooms, the staff does.”

“But she stayed in this wing,” said Milo. “The privacy issue.”

“Exactly.”

“Nice setup for privacy. Location-wise, I mean. Off the beaten path.”

Cruvic’s bulky shoulders rose, then fell. “We like it.”

He tried to sight around Milo.

Milo seemed to move aside, then his notepad came out. “This Women’s Center, you do fertility work there?”

Cruvic inhaled, forced a smile. “Fertility is rarely an issue for the poor. At the center I donate my time to general women’s health care.”

“Does that include abortions?”

“With all due respect, I don’t see that that’s relevant.”

Milo smiled. “It probably isn’t.”

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“I’m sure you know I’m not free to discuss any of my cases. Even poor women have a right to confid—”

“Sorry, Doc. I wasn’t asking about specific cases, just a general question about what you do there.”

“Why raise the abortion issue at all? What’s the point, Detective?”

“Abortion’s legal but it’s still controversial. And some people express their opposition to it violently. So if you do perform abortions and Professor Devane was involved in that, as well, it might give us another angle.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Cruvic. “I support a woman’s right to choose and so did Hope, but if anyone would be targeted it would be the person actually performing the procedure.” He tapped his chest. “And I’m obviously here.”

“Obviously,” said Milo. “Once again, I have to ask, Doc.”

“I understand,” said Cruvic, but he didn’t look mollified. “I’m sure my opinion doesn’t mean much but I think Hope was murdered by some psychotic who hates women and chose her because she’d achieved fame. A nut. Not a patient here or at the Women’s Center.”

“On the contrary, Doctor. Your opinion does matter. That’s exactly what we need. Opinions of people who knew her.”

Cruvic colored and he touched his tie. “I only knew her professionally. But I think her death represents so much that’s wrong with our society.”

“How so, sir?”

“Success and the malignant jealousy it evokes. We adulate talented people, put them on a pedestal, then enjoy knocking them off. Why? Because their success threatens us.”

The cheeks bright red now.

He walked around Milo. Stopped at the door and looked back at us.

“The losers punish the winners, gentlemen. If it keeps going that way, we all lose. Good luck.”

Milo said, “If you think of anything, Doc,” and gave him a business card. The straight version, not the one the detectives pass among themselves that readsROBBERY-HOMICIDE: OUR

DAY BEGINS WHEN YOURS ENDS.

Cruvic pocketed it. Charging into the hallway, he unlocked the door to the west wing and was gone.

“Any hypotheses?” said Milo.

“Well,” I said, “he blushed when he said he only knew her professionally, so maybe it was more.

And he got a little antsy talking about his billing, so there could have been something funny
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about that—taking a cut of her fee, kickbacks for referrals, billing for gynecology instead of psychology to up the reimbursement, whatever. The abortion question got his dander up a bit, meaning he probably does them at the center. Maybe here, too, for the high-priced crowd. If so, he wouldn’t want it publicized, apart from the controversy. Because a pro-choice fertility patient might find it difficult to submit to the care of someone who also destroys fetuses. But he made a good point about his being the target. And I stick with what I said about a political murderer going public.”

When we got to the exit door, he said, “If he was sleeping with her the consultant thing could have been a way of shunting money to a girlfriend.”

“She didn’t need his forty. She made six hundred grand last year.”

“He knew her before the book. Maybe it’s been going on for years. And Seacrest found out. I know I’m reaching but we keep talking about that heart-genitals-back thing. Revenge. Some kind of betrayal. Cruvic did get a little passionate talking about her, wouldn’t you say?”