The Clinic (35 page)

“That’s all I know, okay? You had to come out here because the same fuckhead did some girl in L.A., right? Same way Mandy was done.”

Milo didn’t answer.

“One of those serial killers, right?” said Barnaby. “Figures.”

“What does?”

“They always go after hookers.” Frowning. “Which is what Mandy was, even though she thought of herself as an actress.”

“She tell you she was an actress?”

“Yeah, but half-kidding.” Barnaby looked down at the pavement, bounced one sharp toe against the other.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, I pretend to be what the customer wants, Teddy. I’m an actress.”

“She ever do porn movies?”

“Not that I know.”

“No?”

“No!”

“She ever get specific about what kind of pretending?”

“No.”

“Or who she pretended for?”

“When I asked she got pissed, so I stopped asking. Like I said, she kept everything separate.”

Psychic link between call girl and professor. Milo glanced at me.

“She had her place, you had yours, Ted?”

“Right.”

Page 235

“Where’d you and she get together?”

“Mostly my place.”

“Never hers?”

“Hers on Tuesdays. Her day off.” He licked his lips. “I got another girlfriend, now. She doesn’t know about Mandy.” Flexing his fingers. “Only thing she’s gonna know now is I signed a lease, and all of a sudden no job.”

“What line of work is your new girlfriend in?”

“Not Mandy’s.” The hands were fists again. “Cashier, okay? She works at Thrifty Drug. Not evenclose to Mandy in the looks department but that’s fine with me. She lives out in Indio, we been talking about moving in together.”

“Where’d you meet?”

“Here. What’s it matter? At a party.”

“Where’d you meet Mandy?”

“On the floor at my casino. I was good so they put me on the 500-dollar table and she used to hang around there. She played once in a while but I knew what she was after.”

“What?”

“Snagging a high roller. She used to look for the highest pile of chips, edge her way over to the table wearing a low-cut dress, lean over, blow in the guy’s ear, you know.”

“Did it work?”

“What do you think?”

“She have regulars?”

“I don’t know, man. Can I go?”

“Soon, Ted,” said Milo. “So what you’re telling me is in terms of your relationship she called all the shots.”

“I let her,” said Barnaby. “She wasgorgeous. But I learned. Like the song. If you wanna be happy, marry an ugly girl.”

“You and Mandy ever talk marriage?”

“Right. Picket fence, two kids, and a fucking station wagon. I told you—she likedstuff. ”

“Clothes and jewelry and cars.”

“Yeah.”

Page 236

“And coke.”

Barnaby’s hands clenched again. He looked upward. “I am not getting into that.”

“Why not?”

“You got no rights on the reservation, I’m just talking to you ’cause I cared about Mandy. I can walk anytime. It’s my right.”

“True,” said Milo. “But what happens if I drive over to Cathedral City PD and tell them about your past?”

“Whatpast ?”

“Vegas cops said you and Mandy used heavily and that you were her source.”

“Bullshit.”

“They said after she died you used even more. That’s why no one in Vegas wanted you back.”

The sweat on Barnaby’s creviced face gave it the look of a fresh-glazed doughnut. He turned his back on us. The scars on his neck stood out like braille. “Why’re you doing this to me?”

“I’m not doing anything to you, Ted. I just want to know as much as possible about Mandy.”

“And I’mtelling you what I know!”

“I brought up the dope because I’m interested in Mandy’s lifestyle.”

“Her lifestyle? What do you think it was? Doing johns!”

“Dope means bad guys. Bad guys hurt people.”

Barnaby didn’t answer.

“Did she owe money to anyone?” said Milo.

“I never saw her bankbook.”

“Any of the guys you bought coke from pissed at her?”

“Yousay I bought for her.”

“Any bad guys pissed at her?”

“Not that I knew.”

“She trade sex for coke?”

“Not that I knew.”

Page 237

“And you never set her up to do that?”

“I’m no pimp.”

“Just her spare-time buddy.”

“Look,” said Barnaby, “it wasn’t like that. I had nothing over her, she was her own boss. She liked me ’cause I listened to her. I’m a good listener, okay? Work the casinos, you hear sad stories all day long.”

“What were Mandy’s problems?”

“She didn’t have any that I saw.”

“Happy girl.”

“Seemed to be.”

“And you have no idea who her regulars were?”

“No.”

“The night she was killed, did she say anything about who she was going to meet?”

Barnaby massaged his neck. “You’re notgetting it. She never saidanything about work.”

“You told Vegas you were working that night.”

“I didn’t have to tell them. Tons of people saw me. I didn’t even find out about her being killed until the next day when I called her and some cop picked up the phone. They asked me to drive over to the station. Then they asked me to go to the morgue and identify her.”

“Did she work anywhere else but her apartment?”

“Probably.”

“Probably?”

“If she picked up some player and he had a room in the casino, they probably went upstairs.”

“If?”

“Okay, when.”

“She ever work the street?”

“Yeah, right. She was a hard-up, two-bit hooker.”

“Any idea why she was killed out on the street?”

Page 238

“Probably walking the john out and he freaked.”

“Did she make a habit of walking johns out?”

“How would I know? You asked me to guess, I’m guessing.”

“You never dropped in on her during working hours?”

“Yeah, right. And piss her off grandly.”

“Soshe laid down the rules.”

“She was the star, man.” Faint smile. “One time, when we were—she was in a good mood, she said, I know you’re bugged by what I do, Teddy, but try to get past it, it’s no big deal, just acting. Right, I said. And the Oscar goes to. And she laughed and said, exactly. They shouldgive an Oscar for what I do—best supporting actress with her legs spread. I—it, that bugged me. I didn’t like hearing it. But she thought it was funny, laughed like crazy.”

“When did she get sterilized?”

Barnaby’s hands dropped. “What?”

“When did she get sterilized—have her tubes tied?”

“Before I knew her.”

“How long before?”

“I don’t know.”

“So she told you.”

“It only came up because I got stupid, started talking about how I liked kids, one day it would be cool to have a couple. She laughed—she laughed a lot.”

He licked his lips again. “I said what’s funny, babe? She said you’re cute, Teddy. Go ahead, have some rug rats with some nice girl. Have an extra one for me ’cause I got fixed. I said what do you mean? And she saidfixed. Operated on. I said what’d you go and do that for? She said no fuss, no mess, no pills to give me cancer. Then she laughed again, said I consider it a business expense, wish I coulda taken it off as a tax deduction. Big joke. I didn’t like it but with Mandy, you went along or you got off the bus. When you went along with her, laughed with her, things were cool.”

“And when you didn’t?”

“She shut you out.”

“So she got sterilized before you met her. Meaning over a year ago.”

“I met her a year and a half before she died and it was before that.”

Page 239

“Did she say where she had the operation?”

Second’s hesitation. “No.”

“She ever mention the name of the doctor?”

“No.”

“What, Ted?”

“She never mentioned the name.”

“She tell you something else about him?”

“No, but I saw him.”

“Where?”

“The casino.”

“When?”

“Maybe a month before.”

“Before she was killed?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Why, is he some kind of—”

Milo held a big hand up. “Tell me, Ted.”

“Okay, okay, I was working and saw her doing her thing. Slinking around in a little black halter dress, her hair up, fake diamond earrings.” He closed his eyes for a second, preserving the image, opened them, tugged at his red shirt. “I tried to catch her eye, so I could maybe get to see her later. She gave a big smile, then I saw she was smiling past me, not at me. At someone else.”

“The doctor,” said Milo.

“I didn’t know he was a doctor. Later she told me he was. She walked right past my table, he was at another 500-dollar table, big pile of chips. She said hi to him and some other guy, hugs and kisses, like old friends. He collected his chips and they all walked off. Next day I told her nice of you to say hi. She said don’t get touchy, I go way back with the guy. He’s the doctor who fixed me. I owe him.”

“What’d she owe him for?”

“Maybe he did it for free, who knows?”

Page 240

“A trade?”

Barnaby shrugged.

“What did he look like?” said Milo.

“Nothing special. Thirty-five, forty. Short. But big here.” Touching a shoulder. “Like a gym rat.

Short hair, almost skinned, kind of jap eyes. Good threads—suit, tie, the works.”

“And the other one?”

“What other one?”

“You said there was another guy.”

“Yeah, but he was old, no big deal. Sick-looking—yellow skin, in a wheelchair. The doctor was pushing him around. Maybe he was a big-bucks patient having a last fling. You see that all the time in Vegas. Totally fucked- up people, paraplegics, people on air tanks, losers with no legs.

Getting pushed around the casino with cups full of chips. Like a last fling, you know?”

“What else did Mandy say about them?”

“She didn’t say nothing at all about the old guy.”

“And the doctor?”

“Just that he fixed her.”

“And she owed him.”

“Yeah. Is he some wacko?”

“No,” said Milo. “He’s a hero.”

Barnaby looked confused.

Milo said, “Anything else you can think of?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome.”

“The address on Vista Chino your current one?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the address of the place you’re leasing?”

“What’s the diff, you got me busted, I can’t take it now.”

Page 241

“Just in case.”

Barnaby recited some numbers and a street. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he started to walk off.

“Want me to talk to Giovanne?” said Milo.

“It won’t do any good.”

“Suit yourself.”

Barnaby stopped. “Hey, you wanna do it, fine. You wanna feel like a hero, too, fine.”

We played five hands of losing blackjack, thanked the pit boss, got back on the highway, and raced through the desert. A gray moon sat low in the sky and the sand looked like snow.

“Old man in a wheelchair,” I said. “Maybe Big Micky Kruvinski?”

Milo shifted his bulk in the driver’s seat and rolled his neck. “Or maybe hewas a rich patient.

Getting his ashes hauled, bill it to Medi-Cal as physical therapy. Lord only knows what kinds of things Cruvic does for a buck.”

“The main thing: Cruvic knew Mandy.”

“Bastard. Gotta find a way to get into his records. Barone’s an expert on building paper walls and all we have against Cruvic so far is suspicion, no grounds for a warrant.”

“Did you ask Barnaby about dope because you think there might be a dope angle?”

“I asked him because he’s still a user—did you see all that sweat, those eyes? I meant what I said about bad guys.”

“Hope and cocaine? No evidence she ever used.”

“No evidence on Hope, period.”

“Casey Locking might be able to provide some,” I said. “He has some connection to Cruvic. I keep thinking about the time we talked on campus, his taking the law-and-order line. Which is standard psychopath behavior—the rules apply to everyone but me. Maybe I can learn something about him from Hope’s other student—the one in London. I’ll try her again.”

He pushed the Porsche over ninety. “It’s weird, Alex. The case starts out all high-tone—professors, the high-IQ crowd, but now we’re back on the usual terrain: dopers,
Page 242

dealers, hookers, characters.”

“Hope’s little boxes,” I said.

He thought about that for a mile or two, finally said, “Yeah. But which box had the rattlesnake?”

We stopped for coffee at an all-night diner in Ontario and were back in L.A. just before 2:00A.M. Another note had been added to the scrap on the dining-room table: Talk about your ships in the night!

Wake me if you want.

Your pen pal. R.

Despite four cups of decaf my throat was dry from the desert air and I poured myself an iced soda water and sat drinking in the kitchen. Then I realized it was morning in England and went to the library to find Mary Ann Gonsalvez’s number.

This time she answered, in a soft, curious voice. “Hello?”

I told her who I was.

“Yes. I got your messages.” No emotion.

“Do you have time to talk about Professor Devane?”

“I suppose—it’s so terrible. Have they any idea who did it?”

“No.”

“Terrible,” she repeated. “I didn’t find out until a week after, when the department notified me by fax. I couldn’t believe it. But . . . I don’t know how I can help.”

“We’re trying to learn as much as possible about Professor Devane,” I said. “The kind of person she was. Her relationships.”

“That’s why you’re involved, Dr. Delaware?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting . . . new uses for our field. I’m sorry I didn’t call back, but I just didn’t think I had anything to say. She was a fine advisor for me.”

Dropping pitch on the last two words.

Page 243

“For you but not for someone else?” I said.

Another pause. “What I meant was her style suited mine. Hands-off, she had her own life. She did help get me funding for my year in England.”