“Radiation therapy.”
Hearing words of any sophistication coming from those beer-sucking lips causes you to sit up and make sure you’re still tuned to the right channel, but these words are truly terrifying, because they mean that even Moby Dick has been forced to learn a new vocabulary concerning my grandfather — the vocabulary of serious illness.
“Tell him I’ll be there soon, I’m just wrapping up a case. How’s he doing?”
“A little wiped but bad as ever. You know the Commissioner.”
• • •
Under the best of circumstances, a search and seizure takes a week to push through but I am empowered by fear. Aside from the excruciating pressure from Galloway I know I must go out and take control of Poppy’s situation as soon as possible, so I heave myself against the bureaucracy the way you would bench-press twenty pounds more than you were ever capable of before, on the exhale and praying for a miracle.
I bully and beg. Little by little we build momentum. I get the title report back in a record six hours. It confirms that the converted Victorian on Fifteenth Street is owned by the Dana Orthopedic Clinic, Inc., of which Randall Eberhardt is chairman of the board. I go in person to the Federal Building on Los Angeles Street and hassle with the forfeiture attorneys, leaving with the paperwork in hand that the U.S. Attorney’s office needs to issue a warrant and writ of entry, which will enable me to walk into Dr. Randall Eberhardt’s office and take possession of all evidence in clear view on behalf of the federal government.
Twenty-four hours later—
I have it on videotape, me leading the charge, Randall Eberhardt coming out to the reception area after his nurse has told him something unpleasant is going on.
“Good morning. I am Special Agent Ana Grey with the FBI. We have a seizure warrant for your office.”
The doctor looks at me quizzically.
“Don’t I know you? Did I ever see you as a patient?”
“It’s possible. May we come in?”
“No, you may not come in.”
“I have a warrant, sir.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the contents of these offices are now the property of the United States government.”
A search and seizure is generally the end of the line for the bad guys, because it means you have finally come around to collect the evidence that will indict them. They also don’t like it because someone is taking away their toys and they are used to being the one who take from others. They’ll rant and shout and deny or point their weapons or try to escape or break down and cry, but you rarely see a subject retain his dignity the way Dr. Eberhardt did that morning.
“Is this a result of the outrageous charges made by Jayne Mason against me in the press?”
“I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”
“I’d like to know,” he says evenly. “Just for my own personal sense of the absurd.”
“Maybe you would like to call your attorney.”
“Maybe so. I’ve never been in the center of a media circus before.” He picks up the phone but lowers it again without dialing when he sees the marshals heading for the examining rooms.
“Wait a minute, I have patients back there!”
I march past him like an S.S. commandant leading the infantry and Dr. Eberhardt’s confidence gives way to horror as he realizes these indifferent thugs are truly going to invade his world, the world of medicine, like Nazis tramping through the great libraries of Poland and burning them to the ground, a thousand years of reason perishing in the flames. Dread rises as Dr. Eberhardt begins to understand that reason won’t protect him here; a lifetime spent puzzling out the exquisite logic of the bones can also be obliterated by a single senseless act.
“There’s a locked cabinet back there,” I say.
All of us have assembled in the examination room where I once posed as a patient. It is crowded now with the federal marshals, Eberhardt in the white lab coat, and two thunderstruck nurses.
“May we have the keys?”
He nods and one of the nurses hands them to me.
It is close and hot with too much breathing. I reach toward the lock like an observer outside my own drama, hoping that in the next moment I will be proven wrong and lose all credibility at the Bureau, that Jayne Mason will be vindicated and the shelves will be stuffed with narcotics — not because I want to see Eberhardt suffer, but at least then all this destruction would be for a reason.
“Why do you keep this cabinet locked, sir?”
“I do a lot of work with children who have disorders of the spine.” Randall Eberhardt licks his lips as if they have suddenly become dry. “You know how kids get into everything.”
There is silent tense anticipation in the room as the door swings open. Inside is a collection of tiny teddy bears.
“My patients give them to me. I used to keep them on display but they started disappearing. Then some kid would get upset because his special bear wasn’t there on his next visit.”
In front of everyone I must examine the teddy bears as solemnly as I would any evidence. Alone, I think I would have banged my head against the door. There must be a hundred little cutesy figures of every conceivable material — clay, calico, metal, origami, even homemade teddies of pink cotton balls with wiggly plastic eyes.
I run a flashlight over the inside of the cabinet, feeling for false compartments as if I am firmly in charge here, then get up from my knees. “Let’s get started.”
As the marshals pack medical equipment and records into card board cartons, Dr. Eberhardt shoulders his way down the hall toward the sound of hammering.
He opens the front door, appalled to find that a locksmith is already changing the locks and another guy is nailing up a sign over the dove gray paint that says “Property of the U.S. Marshals.” Then, suddenly, he is confronted by a sea of cameras and questions shouted about charges by the actress Jayne Mason that illegal narcotics were dispensed from these offices, and that’s when the shock sets in.
He turns back pale and disoriented.
“This isn’t really happening to me.” His eyes are watery and enlarged.
I take his arm and steer him away with pity, remembering that he once put a compassionate hand on me, guiding him to a quiet corner of the waiting room, where he slumps into a peach and gray chair with a look of dissociation that comes from being deeply violated, when the only way to escape the torture of humiliation is for the body and mind to shut down; a look of passive despair I have seen before in victims of rape.
PART FOUR. THE FOUR ROADS
NINETEEN
THE SECURITY NATIONAL BANK building on Wilshire where Poppy opened a savings account as a young Santa Monica police officer is now the Ishimaru Bank of California. It must have gone through several face-lifts since the sixties, but all the changes have added up to nothing more than a box made of beige bricks, inside and out.
