“You too, Sturgis. Yours ain’t scorchproof.”
I got Helen Leidecker’s number from San Bernardino information. No answer. Frustrated but relieved- I hadn’t relished testing her integrity- I found a U.S. atlas and located Port Wallace, Texas, in the southernmost part of the state, just west of Laredo. A faint black speck on the Texas side of the Rio Grande.
I called the operator for the South Texas area code, dialed 512 information, and asked for the Port Wallace Chamber of Commerce.
“One second, sir,” came the drawled reply, followed by clicks and several computer squeaks. “No such listing, sir.”
“Are there any government offices listed in Port Wallace?”
“I’ll check, sir.” Click. “A United States Post Office, sir.”
“I’ll take that.”
“Hold for that number, sir.”
I called the post office. No answer there either. Checked my watch. Eight A.M. here, two hours later there. Maybe they believed in the leisurely life.
I called again. Nothing. So much for my assignments. But there was still plenty to do.
The research library had a single listing for Neurath, Donald. A 1951 book on fertility published by a university press and housed, across campus, in the biomedical library. The date and subject matter fit, but it was hard to reconcile an abortionist with the author of something that scholarly. Nevertheless, I made the trek to BioMed, consulted the Index Medicus, and found two other articles on fertility, authored in 1951 and 1952 by a Donald Neurath with a Los Angeles address. The L.A. County Medical Association Directory features photos of members. I found the one from 1950 and flipped to the N’s.
His face jumped out at me, slicked hair, pencil-line mustache, and lemon-sucking expression, as if life had treated him poorly. Or maybe it was living too close to the edge.
His office was on Wilshire, just where Crotty had put it. A member of AMA, education at a first-rate medical school, excellent internship and residency, an academic appointment at the school that loosely employed me.
The two faces of Dr. N.
Another split identity.
I hurried to the BioMed stacks, found his book and the two articles. The former was an edited compendium of current fertility research. Eight chapters by other doctors, the last one by Neurath.
His research involved the treatment of infertility with injections of sex hormones to stimulate ovulation- revolutionary stuff during a period in which human fertility remained a medical mystery. Neurath emphasized this, listed previous treatments as slapshot and generally unsuccessful: endometrial biopsies, surgical enlargement of the pelvic veins, implantation of radioactive metal in the uterus, even long-term psychoanalysis combined with tranquilizers to overcome “ovulation-blocking anxiety stemming from hostile mother-daughter identification.”
Though researchers had begun to make a connection between sex hormones and ovulation as early as the 1930’s, experimentation had been limited to animals.
Neurath had taken it a step further, injecting half a dozen barren women with hormones obtained from the ovaries and pituitaries of female cadavers. Combining the injections with a regimen of temperature-taking and blood tests in order to get a precise fix on the time of ovulation. After several months of repeated treatments, three of the women became pregnant. Two suffered miscarriages, but one carried a healthy baby to term.
While stressing that his findings were preliminary and needed to be replicated by controlled studies, Neurath suggested that hormonal manipulation promised hope for childless couples and should be attempted on a large scale.
The 1951 article was a shorter version of the book chapter. The one from ’52 was a letter to the editor, responding to the ’51 article, by a group of doctors who complained that Neurath’s treating of humans was premature, based on flimsy data, and his findings were tainted by poor research design. Medical science, the letter emphasized, knew little about the effects of gonadotropic hormones on general health. In addition to not helping his patients, Neurath might very well be endangering them.
He countered with a four-paragraph retort that boiled down to: the ends justified the means. But he hadn’t published further.
Fertility and abortion.
Neurath giveth; Neurath taketh away.
Power on an intoxicating level. Power lust loomed as the motivating force behind so many of the lives that had brushed up against Sharon’s.
I wanted very much to speak to Dr. Donald Neurath. Looked him up in the current County Directory and found nothing. I kept backtracking. His last entry was 1953.
Very busy year.
I searched the
Same month, same year as Linda Lanier and brother Cable.
The effects of gonadotropic hormones…
Ahead of his time.
Pieces began to fall into place. A new slant on an old problem- improbable, but it explained so many other things. I thought of something else, another part of the puzzle crying out for solution. Left BioMed and headed for the north side of campus. Running, feeling light-footed, for the first time in a long time.
The Special Collections Room was in the basement of the research library, down a long quiet hall that discouraged casual drop-ins. Smallish, cool, humidity-controlled, furnished with dark oak reading tables that matched the raised panels on the walls. I showed my faculty card and my requisition slip to the librarian. He went searching and came back shortly with everything I wanted, handed me two pencils and a pad of lined paper, then went back to studying his chemistry book.
There were two other people hunkered down for serious study: a woman in a batik dress examining an old map with a magnifying glass, and a fat man in a blue blazer, gray slacks, and ascot, alternating trifocaled attention between a folio of Audubon prints and a lap-top computer.
By comparison, my own reading material was unimpressive. A pile of small books bound in blue cloth. Selections from the L.A. Social Register. Thin paper and small print. Neatly ordered listings of country clubs, charity galas, genealogical societies, but mainly a roster of The Right People: addresses, phone numbers, ancestral minutiae. Self-congratulation for those whose fascination with the us-them game hadn’t ended in high school.
I found what I wanted quickly enough, copied down names, connected the dots until the truth, or something damned close to it, began to take shape.
Closer and closer. But still theoretical.
I left the room, found a phone. Still no answer at Helen Leidecker’s. But a sleepy male voice answered in Port Wallace, Texas.
“Brotherton’s.”
“Is this the post office?”
“Post office, tackle and bait, pickled eggs, cold beer. Name your game, we’re game.”
“This is Mr. Baxter, State of California Bureau of Records, Los Angeles Branch.”
