The Clinic

girl, smartest boy. She kept trying to tell me I deserved the award for teaching her so much. Wanted to give me the trophy.”

“Mature sentiment for a teenager.”

“I told you, she was always mature. It was a one-room school and with most of the older kids out working the crop, it was easy to give her lots of personal attention. All I did was keep supplying her with new books. She chewed up information like a combine.”

Springing up, she left the parlor without explanation and disappeared in the back of the house again. I went over to the battered Shih Tzu's crate and wiggled a finger through the mesh door. The little dog showed me pleading eyes. Its breathing was rapid.

“Hey, cutie,” I whispered. “Heal up.”

Shaggy white ears managed to twitch. I put a finger through the grate and stroked silky white fur.

“Here,” said Elsa Campos behind me.

She was holding a small gold-plated trophy. Brass cup on a walnut base, the metal spotted and in need of polishing. As she thrust it at me I read the base plate:

THE BROOKE-HASTINGS AWARDFOR ACADEMIC EXCELLENCEPRESENTED TOHOPE ALICE DEVANESENIOR GIRLS DIVISION

“Brooke-Hastings,” I said.

“That was the stock company.”

I gave her back the trophy and she placed it on an end table. We sat down again.

“She insisted I take it. After my second husband died I put things away, had it in a closet. Forgot about it til just now.”

“Did Hope talk about anything else?”

“We discussed where she should go to college, what she should major in. I told her Berkeley was as good as any Ivy League school and it was cheap. I never found out if she listened to me.”

“She did, got a Ph.D. there,” I said, and that brought a smile to her face.

“I was already taking dogs in, and we talked about that, too. The virtue of caring. She was interested in life sciences, I thought she might very well become a doctor or a veterinarian. Psychologist… that fits, too.”

She began playing with her braid. “Want another soda?”

“No, thanks.”

“No more beer for me or you'll think I'm an old wetback rummy… Anyway, she was a polite girl, very well- groomed, used beautiful language. This was a tough town but she never seemed part of it- as if she was just visiting. In some ways that applied to Lottie, too… Even with her… behavior, she carried herself above it all. Hope also told me what Lottie was doing in Bakersfield. Dancing. You know the kind I mean, don't make me spell it out. Place called the Blue Barn. One of those cowboy joints. They used to have a whole row of them as you left the city, out past the stockyards and the rendering plants. Pig-bars they called them. Country-and-western plus bump-and- grind for the white boys, mariachi plus bump-and-grind for the Mexicans, lots of girls dancing, sitting on laps. Et cetera. My second husband went there a few times til I found out and set him straight.”

“The Blue Barn,” I said.

“Don't bother looking for it. It closed down years ago. Owned by some immigrant gangster who dealt cattle with questionable brands. He opened the clubs during the sixties when the hippies made it okay to take off your clothes, raked in a fortune. Then he shut everything and moved to San Francisco.”

“Why?”

“Probably because you could get away with even more up there.”

“When was this?”

She thought. “The seventies. I heard he made dirty movies, too.”

“And he was Lottie's boss.”

“If you call that working.”

“Must have been hard for Hope.”

“She cried when she told me. And not just about the kinds of things Lottie was doing for a living, but because she thought Lottie was doing them for her. As if the woman would have been taking shorthand except for having a child. Let's face it- some women are not going to take the time to learn a real skill if they can get by with something else. The first day Lottie arrived in Higginsville, she went into her cabin and came out that night wearing a tight red dress that advertised her.”

“Did she move to San Francisco with the club owner?”

“I wouldn't know, but why would he take her, with all the young hippie girls running around? By then she'd have been too old for his type of business.”

“What was his name?”

“Kruvinski. Polish or Yugoslavian or Czechoslovakian or something. They said he'd been a foreign general during World War Two, brought money out of Europe, came to California, and started buying up land. Why?”

“Hope worked with a doctor named Milan Cruvic.”

“Well, then,” she said, smiling. “Looks like you've got yourself a clue. Because Milan was Kruvinski's first name, too. But everyone called him Micky. Big Micky Kruvinski, big this way.” She touched her waist. “Not that he was short, but it was his thickness you noticed. Thick all over. Big thick neck. Thick waist, thick lips. Once when I went up to Bakersfield with my second husband, we ran into him eating breakfast. Big smile, nice, dry handshake, you'd never know. But Joe- my husband- warned me away from him, said you have no idea, Ellie, what this joker does. How old's Dr. Cruvic?”

“Around Hope's age.”

“Then it would have to be the son. Because Big Micky only had one kid. Little Micky. He and Hope were in the same class at Bakersfield High. In fact, he was the boy who won the Brooke-Hastings Award with Hope. Everyone suspected a put-up, but if he became a doctor, maybe he was genuinely smart.”

“Why'd they suspect a put-up?”

“Because Big Micky owned the Brooke-Hastings Company. And the biggest slaughterhouse in town, and packing plants, vending machines, a gas station, farm acreage. All that on top of the clubs. The man just kept buying things up.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Don't know. I stay away from the city, sit right here, and mind my own business.”

She picked up the trophy and tapped it with a fingernail. The plating was cheap and bits of gold flaked off and floated to the ground. “Joe, my husband, was a smoker, four packs a day, so eventually he got emphysema. The day Hope came to visit he was in the rear bedroom on oxygen. After she left I went in and showed him the trophy and the article and he burst out laughing. Wheezing so hard he nearly passed out. I said what's funny and he said, guess who won the boys'? Big Micky's kid. Then he laughed some more and said, guess the tramp worked overtime to help her daughter. It made me feel rotten. Here I was feeling proud of my teaching and he popped a big balloon in my face. But I didn't say anything because how can you argue with a man in that condition? Also, I suspected there might be some truth to it, because I knew what Lottie was like. Still, Hope was gifted and I'll bet she earned it. What kind of doctor did Little Micky become?”

“Gynecologist.”

“Poking women? Guess the apple doesn't fall far. And Hope worked with him? Why?”

“He does fertility work,” I said. “Told us Hope counseled patients.”

“Fertility,” she said. “That is a laugh.”

“Why?”

“Big Micky's son helping get life going. Is he a decent man?”

“I don't know.”

“It would be nice if he was decent. Both he and Hope managing to get past their origins. Helping nurture life instead of ending it the way his father did.”

“Big Micky killed people?”

“That could very well be, but what I'm talking about is the way he finished those girls off spiritually. Just used them up.”

She squeezed her hands together. “And his way with animals. That's always the tip-off. His slaughterhouse