The Clinic

hypotheses. Meaning if I'd just walked up to the asshole and yanked his shirt up it would be no grounds, illegal search, and the scar would be excluded from evidence. Let alone forcing him to take an X ray, see if his kidney's missing.”

“And not much chance the surgeon kept records.”

“And as asshole Barone came to tell me, the asshole surgeon is out of the country. And, for the time being, with multiple murders on the agenda, busting Dr. Heelspur for malpractice isn't going to be the D.A.'s priority. But eventually, when what he did gets out, he ain't going to be working in Beverly Hills or anywhere else.”

“Any chance of jail time for him?”

He shrugged.

“Forced retirement may not mean much to him,” I said. “He probably doesn't need the money. Though being a doctor's a big deal to him psychologically. A very big deal. So maybe it'll hurt.”

“Why do you say it's such a big deal?”

“He stole Muscadine's kidney but sewed him up and let him live. Fatal error for Hope and Mandy and Locking, and, if Muscadine ever learned who'd cut him, for himself. But Cruvic wanted to see himself as a healer, not a killer. Working through his own childhood, just as Hope had tried to do.”

“Hope,” he said, shaking his head. “Setting Muscadine up for the knife.”

“Smartest girl and smartest boy, devising a project to save Big Micky,” I said. “She and Cruvic went back a long way. Strong bond. Maybe because Cruvic was someone who understood what it was like to be an A student with a parent who lived on the wrong side of the law. To have a secret life. I'll bet Big Micky paid Lottie Devane's medical bills at Stanford- one of the places he'd gotten a kidney. And the consultation money Hope's been getting from Junior and Barone is probably really some kind of allowance from Senior. Before the book, forty grand would have made a lot of difference in her life.”

“Payback time,” he said. “And Mandy was the bait. Where does Locking fit in?”

“I don't know, but keep looking up north.”

“Another smart boy,” he said. “You think the entire conduct committee was just a ploy to find a donor for Daddy?”

“No,” I said. “I think Hope believed in it. But she and Cruvic had probably been discussing what to do for Big Micky for some time. We know from the doctors at Stanford that he'd already tried going through channels but was unlikely to qualify for another kidney because two failures made him a very high risk for rejection and so did his poor general health and his age. Maybe Cruvic and Hope even considered using one of the women at the clinic as a donor- sterilize, then snip something extra. Maybe they were just waiting around for the right girl- someone with no family ties whatsoever. Then Hope came face-to-face with Muscadine, big and strong and healthy and no family ties. Plus, she believed him to be a rapist who was going to get away with it, so there was her moral justification. They tested his blood, ruled out HIV and other infections, and did a tissue match. Bingo. Not that it was any big miracle. The more compatibility factors the better, but kidney transplants are often done just on the basis of an ABO match, and both Kruvinski and Muscadine were O-positive, the most common type.”

“Christ,” he said. “For all we know, they did do some poor girl at the clinic and that failed, too. When all this comes out, we may hear about all sorts of people with scars and backaches.”

“There'd be a limit for the old man. He could only tolerate so much surgery. This was probably his last chance. That's why they had to find an ideal donor.”

“Muscadine…”

“Who Professor Steinberger never met, because she'd resigned from the committee before his case came up.”

“Hope didn't like the Storm kid much, either, but he had family ties.”

“The worst kind of ties: a wealthy father more than willing to make waves. And for all Kenny's obnoxiousness, his guilt was a lot more ambiguous. Maybe Hope still held on to a sense of fairness.”

“Maybe.” He shook his head. “Setting up Muscadine for involuntary charity. Harvesting him. Christ, it's an urban legend come to life. I almost feel sympathy for the bastard.”

“It would be traumatic for anyone,” I said, “but for someone like Muscadine- prizing his body, trying to merchandise his looks- it was so much more. When I spoke to him at his apartment, he said he'd found the blood test Kafkaesque. He also said his back injury had felt like a knife going through him. Playing with me. Or just getting it off his chest without letting on.”

“Free therapy?”

“Why not?” I said. “Don't actors learn that? Seize the moment?”

37

Big Micky was anything but.

He sat facing us under a huge live oak. Nothing grew under the tree, and the ground had reverted to sand. The rest of the yard was perfect bonsai grass around a half-Olympic black-bottom pool with a spitting-dolphin waterfall, herringbone-brick hardscape, statuary on pedestals, blood-red azalea beds, more big trees. Through the foliage, a spreading, hazy view of the San Gabriels said money couldn't buy clean air.

The old man was so shrunken he made the wheelchair look like a high-back. No shoulders, no neck- his smallish head seemed to sprout from his sternum. His skin was legal-pad yellow, his brown eyes filmed, the skin around them bagged, defatted, jeweled with blackheads. A fleshy red blob of a nose reached nearly to his gray upper lip. Bad dentures made his jaws work constantly. Only his hair was youthful: thick, coarse, still dark, with only a few sparks of gray.

Milo's warrant had opened the electric gate of the house on Mulholland but no one had come up to greet us and he'd taken out his gun and let the uniforms come on like an army. Just as we'd reached the front door it had opened and the ponytailed frog I'd given the medicine vial to was leaning against the jamb, trying to look casual.

Milo put him against the wall, cuffed him, patted him down, took his automatic and his wallet, read his driver's license.

“Armand Jacszcyc, yeah, this looks like you. Who else is in the house, Armand?”

“Just Mr. K. and a nurse.”

“You're sure?”

“Yeah,” said Jacszcyc. Then he noticed me and his head retracted.

The uniforms went in. A sergeant came back a few minutes later, saying, “No one else. Lots of guns, we're pulling an arsenal.”

Another uniform came out with Nurse Anna. Her tight face was glossy with sweat and her big chest was emphasized by an electric-blue angora sweater.

She kept her head down as they took her away.

“Okay,” said Milo. “Leave me a couple of guys to tear up the place for dope.”

“No dope so far,” said the sergeant.

“Keep looking. And bust this one for concealed weapon.”

Frog was hustled off and we stepped in. The center of the house was one sixty-foot stretch of dark-paneled space clear to the back, sparkle-ceilinged and gold-carpeted, filled with groupings of green and brown couches, ceramic lamps with fringed shades, heavy, carved tables full of souvenir-shop porcelain and crystal. Clown paintings and Rodeo Drive oils of rainy Paris street scenes said all talent should not be encouraged. The rear wall was covered by pleated olive drapes that locked out the sun and sealed in the smell of decay.

A screech-bird voice from the back yelled, “Where's that water, Armand!”

A wheelchair sat next to a fake Louis XIV commode with an obscenely inlaid front. The marble top was