'Pretty well, too. He cut them open and sewed them up again. Sometimes he even got what he was after. Apparently he had some medical school in a previous life. After that he was arrested for running a weight-loss clinic, pretending to be the doctor in charge. They put people on a diet and then fed them all sorts of bright little pills and injected them with water and B-12 every couple of days. Also, apparently, a little cat piss.'
'Wilburforce running a weight-loss clinic?' I asked. 'He's bigger than Luciano Pavarotti.'
'He was svelte in those days,' Hammond said. 'Weighed a chic two-oh-five when he was booked. Called himself Dr. Pounzoff, with a Russian spelling. Place was called the Pounzoff Clinic. Cute, no? The fat lady is his wife, Clara. She was pretending to be a nurse then.'
Dexter poured a cup of coffee and waved it questioningly at me. I nodded, and he went to the counter and got my cup.
'Why was he arrested?' I asked. 'L.A. has more phony weight clinics than fire hydrants.'
'Couple of customers got hepatitis and complained. This is in the early seventies, before AIDS. Even then, we dumb cops knew that meant that someone wasn't being really scrupulous about sterilizing needles. And then, of course, there was his surgery conviction. We couldn't have him getting delusions of grandeur and cutting honest citizens open again. Think how the doctors at Cedars would have felt.'
'Since then?'
'After the Pounzoff dodge he dropped out of sight. Went somewhere and gained weight. Then he surfaced in the Church of the Eternal Moment.'
'And you guys left him alone?'
Dexter handed me my cup. The coffee wasn't as good as Roxanne's, but it was better than nothing.
'Freedom of religion, remember?' Hammond said. 'Anyway, he didn't seem to be bothering anybody.'
'He was passing himself off as the little girl's personal physician.'
'Well, we didn't know that. Unless somebody gets killed, we leave the religions alone.'
'Somebody got killed,' I said.
'Yeah, and you went all cute about it, didn't you? Our buddy Jenks was long gone by then anyhow. Set up his own shop, didn't he?'
I slurped my coffee. Dexter crossed his legs and examined the crease in his pants.
'So tell me about this year's Jenks. Dr. Richard Merryman.'
'Nothing.'
'By which you mean?'
'Nothing at all. Nothing illegal, nothing legal. He's a whaddya-call-it, a blank slate.'
'Tabula rasa.'
'You took the word out of my mouth. Or words, maybe. Not even a parking ticket. The lad is cleaner than a nun's conscience.'
'Licensed for California?'
'Not so far as we can tell. He could have been licensed in the past six months or so. Sometimes they're a little slow up there in Sacramento.'
'Can you get them to hurry?'
'Not without telling them why I'm interested. You want I should do that?'
'I'd rather you got leprosy.'
'Wo,' Dexter said. 'That's cold.'
'I agree with the man from Animal Homicide,' Hammond said. 'Anything happening on your end?'
'A dead cat,' I said. 'I'll call you when there's something more interesting.'
'You'd better,' Hammond said, meaning it. 'Listen, one more thing about Sally Oldfield-you probably should know it although we're keeping it out of the papers.'
'What's that?' I didn't like the edge in Hammond's voice.
'She was hurt.'
I chewed the inside of my lip and remembered Sally's face, Sally's smile. 'Hurt like how?'
'The man left with four of her fingernails in his pocket.'
'The son of a bitch.'
'She'd been gagged with her own panty hose, a big knot stuffed in her mouth. Kind of odd, don't you think?'
'To keep her quiet,' I said, and then I said, 'Oh. Right.'
'Yeah,' Hammond said. 'Let's say in four cases out of five the guy who takes the time to pull someone's nails out before he closes the door for good wants to learn something. And if the person whose nails he's removing wants to say something, he's not going to be able to understand her with a big knot of nylon in her mouth, is he?'
'He did it for fun.'
'There was probably nothing on TV. But then he goes and tosses her house. So maybe there was something he wanted to learn.'
'No,' I said. 'I think he did it for fun. I think he already knew whatever it was, or he wouldn't have killed her. I think he held off killing her until he was sure about what she knew.'
'Then why take the house apart?'
'To find out if she'd told anyone else. Think about what they took, Al.'
'Girl's hands were a mess,' Hammond said. 'You get any closer to the man, let me know. I'd like an introduction. He had such a good time that he jerked off on her before he left. Ten-four,' he said, knowing I hated it. He hung up.
'Ten-four,' I said automatically as my mind tried briefly to reject the last thing Hammond had told me. Thinking very hard about Needle-nose, I looked up into the eyes of Dexter Smif.
'Ol' Broderick Crawford always said that,' Dexter said. 'Ten-four. Like it mean something. How come the man can't say good-bye?'
'He couldn't get his upper lip down far enough for the B.' I wanted to get up and out of the house, to work off a little unwholesome energy before focusing on the day.
'Lotta cops do that. Look like they tryin' to give they teeth a tan.'
I pushed Needle-nose from my mind's eye and an image of Merryman floated in to take his place. 'If you were a doctor,' I said, 'why would you go into religion?'
'This detective work?'
'No,' I said. 'It's the fevered questioning of a philosophical mind.'
'Right, be nasty. Some lady been killed apparently, but be nasty. Take refuge in philosphy. Okay, me too. Nothin' comes from nothin', right? I'd say he's after a little less nothin'. '
'Money.'
'Why does anybody go into religion? I mean, unless they soul in peril. Most folks, they soul in peril, they the last one gone to know. Look at all those dildos in the three-piece suits and the dry-cleaned hair preachin' on the TV. All they worried about is the cost per thousand. It's the good folks worry about they soul.'
'There's a sucker reborn every minute,' I said.
'And they all got they dollar-fifty to send in every three days. From then on it's all multiplication. Be fruitful and multiply. 'Cept I don't think that's what it supposed to mean.'
'So how do you trace a doctor?'
'Ask a doctor.'
'Good idea.' I picked up the phone and started to dial.
My friend Bernie picked up the phone on the third ring. Outside, the rain used the roof for a kettle drum. 'Wo, listen to that,' Dexter said. Have to go out through the valley.'
'Bernie,' I said. 'How's Joyce?'
'Okay,' Bernie said. 'She's on call at the hospital.'
'What are you doing?'
'Studying.' Bernie was always studying. He was the only person I knew who had more degrees than I did, and he still couldn't bring himself to leave school.
'Can I buy you guys dinner?'
'Anybody can buy me dinner. But I don't know about Joyce. She thawed something before she went to
