The Clinic (42 page)

The old man smiled. “I give a—”

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“Right,” said Milo. “You’re Don Corleone.”

Silence. “So what do you want from me?”

“I need to know if Junior operated on anyone else for your sake. And what was the connection between Hope and your family? Why’d you pay her allowance?”

Silence.

“It’s gonna come out. Better we let the prosecution have it before the defense.”

“Yeah,” said the old man, “we’re all on the same side.” He tried to spit, produced only a belch.

“God forbid,” said Milo.

Soft conversation drifted from the kitchen. Then loud snaps. Cops opening and closing cabinets.

“Shaddup!”screeched the old man, to no effect.

“Your people are all gone,” said Milo. “Some people. Armand and Little Miss Anna—the former Storm Breeze. Closest she ever came to an R.N. was playing one in that movie of yours—Head Nurse.Junior teach her the fundamentals of renal care?”

No answer.

“Little blur between reality and fantasy, Mr. K.? Like Junior’s Beverly Hills office, all those diplomas, business cards advertising fertility medicine, but no patients. Anything to make the kid feel important, huh?”

The old man spat.

Milo stretched and looked around. “That operating room. Those dialysis machines. A clinic for one man. At least Junior had his fling at medicine over in Santa Monica. Because the chance of him ever practicing again when all this comes out is zippo. Assuming the scumbag lets him live.”

Kruvinski didn’t speak for a long time.

“Push me outside,” he finally said. “Under that tree.”

Waving a claw hand toward the olive-green drapes.

“What tree?” said Milo.

“Behind the curtains, moe-ron. Open ’em, get me out in the air.”

In the shade of the oak, he said, “Gimme a name.”

“Don’t know your own donor’s name?”

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“I don’t know any donor.”

“You could be forced to submit to a checkup.”

“On what grounds?”

“I’m sure the defense will find one.”

“Good luck.” Gnarled hands rested in his lap. The jaws worked faster.

“How many other kidneys has Junior harvested for you?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Fine,” said Milo. “Play hard-to-get. Other victims start coming forward, Junior’s going to be in the hot seat and the scumbag’ll start looking like a hero. Maybe you don’t care about Hope, just another hooker’s kid. But little Casey—try explaining that to his grandma, your sister Sonia.

San Francisco cops told me you bailed him out of those meth-manufacturing busts at Berkeley, smoothed his record, got Hope to sponsor him into grad school. Which wasn’t that big of a stretch. He was a smart kid, top of his class, just like Hope. Just like Junior. But look where it got all of them.”

The old man looked up through the tree. A hairline of light had pierced the branches, creating a hot, white scar down the center of his degraded face.

“When it comes out that Casey died because of his association with Junior, how are you gonna explain that to your sister Sonia and Casey’s mommy, her daughter Cheryl? They trusted their baby to you. How you gonna explain why he’s cooling in the coroner’s fridge instead of writing his thesis?”

The old man gazed out at the pool. The black bottom gave it a mirrored surface, no visibility of the depths. Ten years ago, black bottoms had been the thing. Then a few kids fell in and no one noticed them.

“Family ties,” said Milo. “But Don Corleone tookcare of his people.”

“My son is—” said the old man. “You’ll never have such a son.”

“Amen.”

The cloudy eyes popped. “Fuckyou ! Coming in here, thinking you know, you don’t fu—”

“That’s the point,” said Milo. “Idon’t know.”

“Thinkingyouknow, ” repeated the old man. “Thinking you—moe-ron—lemmetell you”—a finger wagged—“shewas goodpeople, Hope. And hermama. Don’t shoot your mou—don’t disrespect people you don’t know. Don’t—you don’tknow soshaddup !”

“Was she family, too?”

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“Imade her family. Who the hell you think paid for herschooling ? Who the hell got her mama outta hooking and into managing a club, regular hours, a paycheck, goddamnpension plan?

Who? Some fucking social worker?”

The finger curled laboriously, managed to point at his caved-in chest. “I been working my whole life helping people! And one of the ones I helped most was that girlie’s mother. When she got cancer I helped with that, too. When she died, I paid for the funeral.”

“Why?”

“Because she was goodpeople .”

“Ah.”

“The girl, too. Little blondie, body like that, you think I couldn’ta got her into club work if I wanted to? But, no, I could see she wasfiner. Had abrain. So I told Lottie we keep herfar from the clubs. We make sure she getsschooling. I figured she’d be a doctor, like Mike. Botha them did the science projects together, geniuses. She changes her mind, decides to be a shrink, okay, it’s almost the same. I treated her like she was my daughter.”

“Smartest boy, smartest girl,” I said.

The wizened face snapped toward me. “Youbet, pal. My Mike was the smartest thing you ever seen, you shoulda had such a kid, reading at three, saying stuff people couldn’t believe. And you know where brains come from? Genes. Theyproved it.All the kids in my family are brains. Casey skipped two grades, got a brother studying at MIT, nuclear physics. I came to this country withnuttin’, no one gave me shit. Greatest country in the world, you’re smart and you work, you get what you want, not like the niggers on welfare.”

“Why’d you make Hope family?” said Milo. “ ’Cause you liked her mama?”

The old man glared at him. “Get your mind outta the gutter. If I wanted that kinda thing, I had plenty of others. You wanna know? I tell you. She helped Mike. Botha them helped Mike. Lottie and Hope. After that . . .” He crossed his index fingers. “Family.”

“Helped him with what?”

“He had a accident. Memorial Day picnic, I threw it every year for the employees—big barbecue on my land near the Kern River. Hot dogs, sausage, the best steaks from the plant.”

Smiling. “Like I said, I ate the best.”

He licked his lips again and his head lolled as if he was dozing off. Then it snapped up. He flinched. I tried to picture him swaggering, bull-necked and muscular, into the slaughterhouse late at night. Swinging the bat at trussed hogs.

“We had races,” he said, nearly inaudible. “Potato-sack, three-legged. I hired a band. Flags all over the place, best fucking party in town. Mike was thirteen, went over to the river, where the water was strong. He was a great swimmer—on the school team. But he hit his head on something, a piece of wood or something, went down, got pushed out into the white water. No one heard him yelling except Lottie and Hope ’cause they were down there by themselves, talking. They both jumped in, pulled him out. It was hard, them being girls, they almost
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drowned, too. He swallowed a lotta water but they gave him the respiration, got the water outta him. By the time I got there, he was okay.”

Moisture in the glazed eyes.

“From that time on,she was a queen andshe was aprincess ! Cutest little blond thing, coulda been a movie star but I said using the brain was better. I started this prize for science. They earned it, Mike was always straight As, never needed help on the homework, track and field, swimming, baseball, you name it—gotta fourteen hundred on his SAT test. So that’s it, Mr. Cop.

Nothingdirty. Smart kids being smart.”

“Until Mike got himself into trouble in Seattle.”

Healthy color finally came into the old man’s face. A pinkening around the edges of his mouth.

Clarity in the eyes—the health benefits of anger?

“Moe-rons! What’d he do, take some stiff and try to get somethinggood outta it?”

“Minor technicality. The stiff wasn’t dead.”

“What, no brain waves and it’s ready to get up and do the fuckingmamba ?Bullshit! It was dead as your dick—they do it every day—what do you think they give the medical students to practice on? Their fucking girlfriends?Stiffs they give ’em! They got hundreds of ’em stored, pickled like pigs’ feet. They take ’em apart, throw out the crap they don’t want, like garbage. So what wasMike’s crime? Not filling out the right forms? Big fucking deal. It was a put-up job.

They didn’t like him from day one ’cause he was too smart for them, showed them up all the time, pointed out their mistakes. I wanted to go up there, tell ’em they better cut out the bullshit but Mike said no, he was sick of ’em anyway, fuck ’em.”

“So he left and spent a year with the Brooke-Hastings program.”

“Fuck you, itwas a program. Those kids were starving junkies in the Tenderloin, getting butt-fucked in the alley by perverts and niggers. We cleaned ’em up, got ’em medical care—Mike’s agoddamn fine doctor.”

“Vocational training,” said Milo. “So they could get fucked by perverts who paidyou .”

The old man made another unsuccessful attempt to spit. “You know everything, moe-ron—if they were being abused how come the city never charged us with nothing? Because the city knew we got ’em off the welfare rolls. Those with talent we encouraged to go onstage. So what?

Others we sent to school—I musta sent fifteen, twenty girls to college, secretarial school. What the fuck didyou ever do for society?”

“Nothing,” said Milo, exaggerating a grimace. “Just a civil-servant leech.”

“You got that right.”

“Why’d Mike switch from surgery to gynecology?” I said.

“He liked delivering babies—he delivered hundreds of ’em. How many livesyou ever brought into the world?”

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“Deliveries and abortions,” I said. “And sterilizations.”

“So what? You don’t believe a lady’s got a right to choose?”

“Where’d he go after the residency at Fidelity hospital?” Milo said.

“Back to me. Helping me with the business, taking care of the girls and building up a practice.

Then, when I got sick, he concentrated on taking care of me. I tried to talk him outta it, said Mike, you got your own life, let me be. He said, Dad, I got plenty of life aheada me. I’m gonna take care ofyou .”

Another quick turn toward the pool.

“Fuck you,” the old man said. Softly, almost genially. “Fuck you, fuck your drug paper, fuck your life. You got no right to come in here under bullshit pretenses, insult my family.”

“Talk about gratitude,” said Milo.

“So what? You’re telling me the scumbag walks.”

“If Mike has a history of stealing people’s organs he sure does.”

“Mike’s a better man than you’ll—Mike’s dirtydiaper when he was ababy had more class than you’ll ever have.You say stealing. I say bullshit. Experts cut me up twice, put in kidneys that were worth shit. I was on the fucking machine, no veins left, listening to myself pee all day. One day I pass out, wake up, Mike tells me I don’t need to be on the machine anymore.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that.”

“What did Hope have to do with it?”

“Who says anything?”

“She visit you after the operation?”

“Why not?”

“Casey, too?”

“Why not?”

“What did Casey have to do with the operation?”

“Who says anything—and that’s all I’m putting up with from you, so fuck off.”

Waving a hand.

“Where’s Mike hiding out?”

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No answer.

“The old country?”

Nothing.

“He planning on ever coming back?”

No answer.

The old man closed his eyes.

“Suit yourself,” said Milo, getting up. “But you still got a problem.”

The old man kept his eyes shut. Smiled. “Problems can be solved.”

Back home I wondered how the case would resolve.

The D.A.’s office thought the casting-office thing was cute but maybe meaningless, because all it proved was that Muscadine had a scar on his back. The wheels of a bicycle found in Muscadine’s garage fit the tracks at the murder scene but it was a common tire. Muscadine’s assault upon Paige Bandura was fortunate because it gave them something to hold him on while the search for more evidence continued.

Would he walk on four murders?

Rape, too. Because the more I thought about Tessa Bowlby’s terror and mental deterioration the surer I was that he’d done something to her.

Hope had been there for her.

No one was now.

Had she withdrawn her complaint at the hearing? Because Muscadine terrorized her further?

I’d called her parents’ home several times yesterday and today. No one had picked up and I’d also left messages with Dr. Emerson. He couldn’t talk about his patient, but I had facts for him . . .

The phone rang.

“Dr. Delaware? My name is Ronald Oster. I’m the public defender representing Mr. Reed Muscadine.”

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“Okay.”

“Mr. Muscadine has requested to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“Mr. Muscadine understands that you consulted to the police on this case and, in that capacity, you’ve already interviewed him. He believes your psychological knowledge will help the court understand his motivation.”

“You want me to help him develop a diminished-capacity defense?”

Pause. “Not necessarily, Doctor.”

“But you’re looking for some kind of psychological excuse for what he did.”

“Not an excuse, Dr. Delaware. Motivation. And after what was perpetrated upon Mr.

Muscadine, mental anguish would be significant, wouldn’t you say?”

So Oster knew about the kidney theft. Milo’d said the D.A. was holding back, waiting to see how the case shaped up, what would be used as evidence and have to be turned over under the discovery rules.

Meaning Muscadine had told his lawyer about the surgery. But Muscadine still had no idea who the recipient was, and if the D.A. chose not to use the information, keeping the old man under wraps, and if Oster didn’t ask the right questions, the details might never come out.

But the defense’s problem could be turned back on the prosecution, too. Because if Muscadine didn’t confess openly, direct proof of his guilt was lacking: no weapons, no witnesses, no physical evidence.