Dr. Knox (23 page)

I called Anne Crane early Tuesday morning and asked her if she could take a statement from someone, and if she knew a videographer who could get it all on tape.

Her voice was tired and furry. “Get what on tape? Statement from who?”

“Her name's Elena.”

“Just Elena, no last name?”

I realized that I didn't know it. “Ask her when you take her statement.”

“Statement about what? I need a little background if I'm going to ask her questions.”

“She…she's in the country illegally. I want you to ask her about how she came here, and why.”

“That's not nearly enough information.”

“I'll fax you some notes.”

“What the hell is going on, doctor?”

“I'll bring her by your office tomorrow, after hours. Does that work?”

“I have to check with the video guy. And you haven't answered my question.”

“My notes should explain it.”

“Somehow I doubt it.”

Lydia gave me a suspicious look when I told her I needed to be out of the clinic by one that afternoon, but she didn't ask why and I didn't tell. She was watching from the front window when Sutter and I drove off in his bullet-holed BMW.

Sutter was wearing jeans and a white shirt with a buttoned-down collar. His clothes were fresh and pressed, but his eyes were bleary. “Lunch is at Siggy's house,” he said.

“Is that a good thing?”

Sutter shrugged. “The food should be decent, so that's something. On the other hand, it'll be easier for him to shoot us.”

I looked over. “You think that's what he has in mind?”

Sutter smiled thinly.

Siggy lived up in La Cañada Flintridge, north and east of Glendale. Sutter got on the 5 and then the 2, and despite his skill the drive took an hour. It was shimmering hot when we turned onto Foothill Boulevard, and the San Gabriels were close, black, and serrated, like the fossilized plates of an ancient, armored thing.

Siggy's place was south of Foothill, on a quiet lane off Berkshire Avenue. Dense hedges hid the wire-topped wall that circled his property, and an elaborate gate guarded the cobbled drive. Three of Siggy's steers guarded the gates. They patted us down and pointed us to a golf cart that one of them then drove up to the main house. The cart had a red-and-gold striped canopy that matched the awnings over the terraces and piazzas of Château Siggy—a freakish Valley Versailles, with more than a little Vegas in its bloodlines.

The golf cart parked at a fountain that featured many frolicking, gilded sylphs, and we followed the driver's bulk down well-groomed paths to a sunny plaza behind the house. A lawn in Technicolor green unspooled to a glass-walled pavilion beside a long white pool. The golf cart driver pointed, another large man beckoned from the pavilion, and Sutter and I set off across the lawn.

“Lots of water to keep this green,” I said as we walked. “Hasn't he heard about the drought?”

Sutter nodded. “When I first knew him, Siggy operated out of a warehouse in San Pedro. Had a cot and a hot plate, a little fridge, and a view of the cargo cranes.”

“Now he's living the dream.”

“Somebody's dream.”

Siggy's toadlike lieutenant waited outside the pavilion. His blue linen suit fit like a sack, and emphasized the lumpiness of his frame and the gun under his arm. He had a soldier with him, who frisked us again and pointed us inside.

Siggy was at a black refectory table large enough for a couple of dozen diners and a few roasted boars, but holding just then only an iPad, three iPhones, a copy of the
Financial Times,
a coffee carafe, and a china coffee cup. Siggy held a glossy brochure on Gulfstream jets in his white machine hands, and he didn't look up when we came in, or offer us seats, perhaps because his was the only one in sight. The lieutenant and the soldier took flanking positions behind him.

“We late for lunch?” Sutter asked.

“You're right on time,” Siggy said, still looking at the jets. “But I was hungry an hour ago, so…”

The soldier snickered. Siggy brushed something imaginary from the sleeve of his pale-blue shirt and turned the glossy pages of his brochure. I looked around, at the glass walls and the long green views. There were two women on the far side of the swimming pool, one tall and slender, one short and thick, walking three borzois with delicate legs and long curved tails. A little blond girl, maybe four, ran ahead of the group in an aimless zigzag through the grass. The dogs tracked her as if she were a rabbit. I looked at Sutter, who was staring at Siggy.

Siggy glanced up, his colorless face impassive. There was a fresh bandage on the side of his neck—another tattoo erased. “There's pizza at the shopping center on Foothill,” Siggy said. “You probably passed it on the way. I hear it's good.”

Sutter nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe we'll grab a slice on the way back. So, if that's all you wanted to say, we'll find our way out.” He pivoted for the door and Siggy chuckled.

“Not yet, soldier.”

“Well, can we get the hell to it? 'Cause I have things to do, Siggy—crap to clean up around the house, that sort of thing.”

The lieutenant didn't like that and neither did the soldier, and they both straightened up and leaned toward us. Siggy waved them off. “I'm still missing property, and I still want it back. You forget about that?”

I glanced at Sutter, who was looking out at the lawn. He ran his fingers along his chin. “I didn't forget.”

“And?”

“And I might have a line on her.”

Siggy closed his brochure and sent it skidding across the tabletop. “
A line?
That's it?”

“You think I have her in my car?”

“My guys say you have her somewhere.”

Sutter shrugged. “What can I tell you, Siggy? Your guys can't hold a tail, so they think the worst—
if
they think at all.”

“You're funny today, soldier. You have her or not?”

“Like I said, I might have a line. I have to see how it plays out.”

“And were you gonna call and tell me about this? Or did you forget that too?”

“I didn't forget anything.”

“So what—you think you don't
need
to call me? You
wanted
to piss me off. You
wanted
to say
Fuck you, Siggy
?”

“You know I'm not rude like that. I just didn't see the point in wasting your time if things didn't pan out.”

“You don't decide that—
I
decide. Just like I set the price on that bitch. Or is that another thing you forgot?”

“I didn't forget about the seventy-five either.”

“No? Well, it's a hundred now. Cash. Or you bring her back. Your choice.”

“Still that simple?”

“I like simple. You remember that much, don't you, even with your leaky fucking memory? Maybe your pal should check you out. Maybe you got Alzheimer's. Maybe I should write things down for you, tattoo them on your head:
$100,000, one day.
”

Sutter smiled thinly. “One day? That's not enough time to locate her or get any cash together.”

“That's not my problem, is it? You don't have the money, give me back my property. It's one or the other; otherwise, you're a thief. You're stealing from me.”

Sutter sighed again. “You like simple? A week and no trouble is simpler than a day and trouble, isn't it?”

Siggy sat up, and his men shifted behind him. “You threatening me, soldier?”

“I'm making an observation.”

“How about I observe Josef putting you down right now, you and your friend both? How about if that's the simplest thing?”

Sutter shrugged. “If Josef can manage it. And even if he can, it leaves you without the girl or the cash.”

The men behind Siggy suddenly had guns in their hands. I felt my throat close and my shoulders tighten. Siggy smiled. “But it'd leave me with one less pain in my ass, soldier. And maybe it'd just make me happy.”

“You used to have more self-control than that, Siggy, more discipline. Don't tell me this large life has made you soft.”

The gaunt face froze. “I can afford to be impulsive now, soldier, or any other damn thing I like.”

“So you can afford a little time to—”

“Don't tell me what I can afford. Don't tell me anything. You just do what I fucking say.”

Sutter smiled and shook his head. “You make it sound like I work for you, Siggy.”

Color bloomed on Siggy's ropy neck—an angry red that rose to his ears. “You think that you don't?”

“Didn't I take a pass on that, once upon a time?”

“Maybe you get another chance now. One more chance.”

“You don't need me.”

Siggy's hands were like bone on the black table. He pushed his chair back. “You think you're above things, don't you? You think you're fucking special, that the rules don't apply. Like you're exempt. Let me tell you—you're not.”

Sutter sighed deeply. “Are we really going to do this—a pissing contest? Here and now? Who benefits from that? You want me to say that you're the man? Fine—you're the man, Sig, biggest guy in the city, in the Valley, in all the Southland. I bow down to you—whatever you want. But I'm still gonna need a week.”

“A week.”
Siggy spit the words. He shook his head and looked at me. “You hear this, doctor? All his shit? You get that he's dragging you into this, right?”

“I get it.”

Siggy pointed a white finger at me. “So you're on the fucking hook too,” he said. “Three days. I give you three days—the money or the whore.”

Sutter nodded. “Three days, then,” he said. “And thanks again for lunch.” He touched my arm and we turned to the door, but Siggy raised a hand.

“Three days, plus I want the other bitch.”

Sutter turned. “What're you talking about?”

“The other whore—what's her name, Josef?”

“She goes by ‘Stella' sometimes, sometimes ‘Shelly,' ” the lumpy lieutenant said, never taking his eyes from Sutter.

“Who is that?” Sutter said.

“Tell him, Josef.”

“She's a nothing street whore, works downtown and east, on San Pablo sometimes, not far from his shithole clinic. Our guys say she helped Elena run away. They saw the two of them together. Almost got 'em both a couple of days back.”

Sutter looked at Siggy. “I don't know anything about this, and if you're trying to squeeze more cash—”

“I don't want money for her,” Siggy said. “Her you deliver.”

“I'm not fucking FedEx. I don't know this girl and I don't know where to find her.”

Siggy looked at me. “And you don't know her either?”

“Doesn't ring any bells.”

“Well, I want this fucking girl. She talks shit about me, she gets in the way—”

I cleared my throat. “You don't think that looks bad?” I said. “I mean, if she's such a nothing, why bother with her? It makes you look small.”

Siggy froze, his colorless eyes locked on me. His face was like a flint hatchet and his voice was low. His gaze shifted to Sutter. “Your friend's a pretty stupid guy, for a doctor,” he said.

“He doesn't have your range of experience,” Sutter said.

“Stupid,” Siggy said. “Explain it to him.”

Sutter nodded. “People get ideas,” he said. “Siggy doesn't want people getting any ideas.”

“Damn right,” Siggy said. “Now get him the fuck out of my sight.”

We were hungry after our nonlunch with Siggy, and we stopped for pizza at the joint he mentioned, in a shopping center on Foothill. We ate Sicilian and drank beer, and Sutter sighed when he finished the last slice, breaking the silence that had enveloped us since we left the pavilion.

“He wasn't lying about the pizza,” he said.

“Yeah—he's better than Yelp,” I said. “But how about the rest of his speech? How much of that was bullshit?”

Sutter drank some beer. Food and drink had revived him somewhat, but he still looked weary. “Bluster, maybe, but not bullshit. He's serious about wanting the girl or the money, and serious about coming after our hides otherwise.”

“I guess that's not all he's serious about.”

Sutter squinted at me. “You think?” he said. His voice was bitter. He shook his head. “Sorry. Yeah, Siggy's got a hair up his ass about me. And if he starts thinking I've made him look bad in front of his guys—made him look weak—it's only going to get worse.” He finished his beer and set the bottle carefully on the table. “Got a cure for that? A hair extraction procedure?”

I shook my head. “Cash might work. Lots of people swear by its soothing relief.”

He smiled. “We can hope.”

“The problem is, we're not going to get anything out of the Brays in three days' time—if we get anything from them at all.”

Sutter shook his head. “How're you fixed for cash?”

I watched the traffic on Foothill, which passed in an endless, hypnotic stream and fluttered in waves of heat from the pavement. I sighed. “I've got what I put aside for a down payment on the building. It's a little over a hundred grand.”

Sutter nodded slowly. “If things work out, you can take it out of what we get from the Brays.”

“And if they don't work out?”

He shrugged.
“Mi sofá es tu sofá.”

The clinic was closed when I returned, buttoned up and dark. I felt guilty about running out at midday, but grateful that I had to face neither patients nor Lydia. I climbed the stairs, kicked off my shoes, and lay on the bed; I was drifting into sleep when my phone chirped.

“Tomorrow night's good,” Anne Crane said. Her voice was clipped and tired, and there were other voices in the background. “My video guy will be here, and I have a conference room booked for eight o'clock, and a stenographer.”

“Thanks, Anne. I appreciate it.”

“Just be here at eight with…whoever,” she said, “and don't forget—you're supposed to send me notes.” And then she was gone.

Along with any chance of sleep. I sighed and cranked up my Mac, and spent forty-five minutes drinking coffee and typing three pages of bullet points that I e-mailed to Anne. Then I grabbed my car keys.

Jiffy-Lab was a twenty-four-hour drug, STD, and DNA testing lab in a Koreatown strip mall, wedged between a martial arts studio and a UPS store. And Nate Rash, who worked there, owed me for restarting his sister's heart when she stopped it with heroin. It was past eight on Tuesday night when I parked my Honda out front. The UPS was dark, and the sensei was locking his dojo, but the gruesome fluorescents were still lit at Jiffy-Lab. I killed my engine, and Nate climbed into the passenger seat.

He was red-haired and gangly, with a patchy beard and piercings in his nose and both ears. His purple scrubs were wrinkled and dotted with what I hoped were food stains.

Nate eyed the plastic zip bags in my hand. His voice was soft and reedy. “Those for me?”

I nodded. “Two buccal samples. A is a woman, B is a male child.”

He took the bags. “Mother and son?”

“That's what you're going to tell me.”

“I guess you're not worried about chain of custody.”

“We'll get to that later, depending on what you say. How long?”

He shrugged. “A couple days.”

“Sooner would be better.”

“Getting paid wouldn't suck either,” he said, and climbed from the car.

The parking lot was quiet, and I sat there for a while, my hands at twelve o'clock on the steering wheel, my forehead on my hands. The air in the Honda was stale, and smelled of exhaustion and fear—chronic conditions of late. I'd been driving with one eye on my rearview mirror for days now, jumping at shadows, and searching passing faces for ones I'd seen too many times before. Worse still, I was getting tired of looking over my shoulder—too tired to take care. That, I knew, was when bad things—lethal things—could happen. I thought about turning the key in the ignition, but my hands were suddenly like someone else's hands, and my arms felt like lead. The smart move was to head home, bar the doors, raise the drawbridge, and pull the covers over my head, but the thought of the empty apartment in the empty building—the dark clinic like a cave below, the echo of my footsteps on the stairs, and the silence afterward—turned my chest icy.

There was a rap on the car window and I bolted up. It was a woman, worried-looking, with one earbud plugged in and the other dangling near her clavicle. I ran the window down.

“You okay?” she asked. “You looked like you passed out or something. Or like you were crying.”

“I'm all right,” I said, and the woman nodded. I watched her climb into an ancient Volvo, and watched the car dissolve into the blur of headlights on Third Street. Passed out or crying—that seemed to cover the range of my options just then.