'Those are major divisions, Steph. Why do they put up with it?'
'No choice, Alex. They signed away their rights. They were supposed to be housed in the old Hollywood Lutheran TowerWestern Peds bought it a couple of years ago, after Lutheran had to divest because of their budget problems. The board promised to build fantastic suites for anyone who moved over there. Construction was supposed to start last year. The divisions that agreed were moved to the trailers and their old space was given to someone else. Then they discovered-Plumb discovered-that even though enough money had been raised to make a down payment on the tower and do some of the remodeling, insufficient funds had been allocated to do the rest and to maintain it. Trifling matter of thirteen million dollars. Try raising that in this climate-heroes are already in short supply because we've got a charity hospital image and no one wants their name on a bunch of doctors' offices.'
'Trailers,' I said. 'Melendez-Lynch must be overjoyed.'
'Melendez-Lynch went adios, last year.'
'You're kidding. Raoul lived here.'
'Not anymore. Miami. Some hospital offered him chief of staff, and he took it. I hear he's getting triple the salary and half the headaches.'
'It has been a long time,' I said. 'Raoul had all those research grants. How'd they let him get away?'
'Research doesn't matter to these people, Alex. They don't want to pay the overhead. It's a whole new game.' She let her arm fall from my waist. We began walking.
'Who's the other guy?' I said. 'Mr. Gray Suit.'
'Oh, him.' She looked unnerved. 'That's HuenengarthPesl~ Huenengarth.
Head of security.'
'He looks like an enforcer,' I said. 'Muscle for those who don't pay their bills?'
She laughed. 'That wouldn't be so terrible. The hospital's bad debt is over eighty percent. No, he doesn't seem to do much of anything, except follow Plumb around and lurk. Some of the staff think he's spooky.'
'In what way?'
She didn't answer for a moment. 'His manner, I guess.'
'You have any bad experiences with him?'
'Me? No. Why?'
'You look a little antsy talking about him.'
'No,' she said. 'It's nothing personal-just the way he acts to everyone. Showing up when you're not expecting him. Materializing around corners. You'll come out of a patient's room and he'll just be there.'
'Sounds charming.'
'Tres. But what's a girl to do? Call Security?'
I rode down to the ground floor alone, found Security open, endured a uniformed guard's five-minute interrogation, and finally earned the right to have a full-color badge made.
The picture came out looking like a mug shot. I snapped the badge onto my lapel and took the stairs down to the sub-basement level, heading for the hospital library, ready to check out Stephanie's references.
The door was locked. An undated memorandum taped to the door said new library hours were three to five P.M Monday through Wednesday.
I checked the adjoining reading room. Open but unoccupied. I stepped into another world: oiled paneling, tufted leather chesterfields and wing chairs, worn but good Persian rugs over a shoe-buffed herringbone oak floor.
Hollywood seemed planets away.
Once the study of a Cotswolds manor house, the entire room had been donated years ago-before I'd arrived as an intern-transported across the Atlantic and reconstructed under the financial guidance of an Anglophile patron
