Dr. Knox (13 page)

For a man who made his living from engorged appetites, Siggy Rostov's own hungers were strictly managed things, at least at breakfast. He had a plate of egg whites before him, a pitcher of ice water with lemon slices in it, black coffee, toast that looked like baked gravel, and half a grapefruit. This lavish spread was served up on bone china, laid out on white linen, and set on a table in a stone courtyard, beneath the shade of a coral tree whose flowers were colorless and shriveled.

By early afternoon every table in the courtyard—in the whole restaurant—would be full, and by evening the line of cars for valet parking would jam traffic on Sunset. But just then, at seven on Wednesday morning, La Bouche d'Or was empty save for Siggy, his kitchen staff, his soldiers and lieutenants, and a queue of petitioners waiting at the edge of the courtyard. Sutter and I were at the end of the line.

According to Sutter, Siggy held court like this every Wednesday and Friday, at one of the several trendy eateries he owned on the Westside. Sutter thought it better that I go to Siggy than wait for his goons to come to me, and more prudent if he came along, and we'd been waiting for nearly an hour. The men ahead of us were a motley bunch, of various ages, colors, nationalities, and styles of dress, but they had in common a grim, resigned expression, as if they were waiting for lab results and bracing for bad news. They approached Siggy tentatively, and made their pitches in low, stumbling tones.

Siggy seemed to pay them no attention, but his number one, a dark man who sat beside him and had a face like a toad and a body like a sprung sofa, would nod and consult a laptop. On rare occasions the dark toad would glance at Siggy, who would look up momentarily from his iPad, though no words passed between them. Then the toad would speak, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in English, always softly, and the petitioner would move off. Some men looked more frightened as they departed, others just looked numb. I had yet to see anyone who looked pleased.

Siggy himself looked rather like his breakfast—pale, lean, and flinty. He was in his fifties, with close-cropped white hair, a gaunt, gray face, and eyes the color of overcast. He had an angular frame, and strong, bony hands like white machines. His shirt was white with gray stripes, and expensive-looking, and his wristwatch was a weighty chunk of steel that looked like a spare part from the Large Hadron Collider. Besides the watch, there was a bandage on the back of one of his hands, and a whiter patch on the white skin of the other. There were more white patches on his face—on his chin and on his right cheek. Sutter saw me looking at them.

“Looks like tattoo removal,” I said.

Sutter nodded. “Siggy's campaign to get respectable. The restaurants are another part of it.”

One of Siggy's guys—the same one who'd frisked us at the door—shot us a dirty look and grunted some Russian.

“No talking in line,” Sutter said, chuckling. “It's like seeing the pope, only it's not his ring we're supposed to kiss.”

Siggy's guy was about to say something else but stopped. The toad was standing, beckoning. The other petitioners had gone; it was our turn. Sutter crossed the courtyard and I followed, my heart pounding.

Siggy Rostov set aside his iPad, sipped his coffee, and said something softly to the toad, who shook his head and moved off. Siggy looked at Sutter.

“The very careful soldier,” Siggy said. “So very picky about the work he takes. I still regret not hiring you sometimes. Also I regret leaving you aboveground.” His voice was deep, and his speech was deliberate but without accent.

Sutter laughed. “You do fine without me, Siggy, better than fine. You're aces.”

“I lost men I shouldn't have—men I wouldn't have lost if you'd been there.”

Sutter shrugged. “Should've, could've, might've—you never know how things work out. I would've held you back.”

Siggy looked at me. “But you're not so very picky now, eh? This who you're working for?”

“This is Dr. Knox—”

Siggy cut him off. “I know who he is.”

“He's a buddy of mine. From Africa.”

Siggy pursed his lips and nodded. “He doesn't look African.” He turned to me. “And you, Dr. Knox, what makes you fuck with my livelihood?”

“I wasn't trying to do anything to your—”

“You weren't
trying
—like that means something. You go around asking about my lost property—threatening my associates, scaring my fucking customers, giving my men a hard time. You—”

“To be fair, Siggy,” Sutter cut in, “it was me who gave your boys a hard time.”

“So they tell me,” Siggy said, and he looked behind us.

There were voices, and the two men from the clinic alley stepped into the courtyard. Cornrows wore a blue French soccer jersey today. Tats wore the same ill-fitting pinstriped pants and pink shirt as he had in the alley. He gave Sutter a mad-dog stare, said something in Russian, and spit at Sutter's feet. Some of Siggy's men laughed.

Sutter smiled. “Speak of the devil.”

Siggy smiled too. “These two would've been to see you the next day if I let them, but I told them to wait. They don't like it on the leash.”

“Maybe they'd like muzzles better,” Sutter said.

Tats spit again and growled something and grabbed his own crotch.

Sutter replied in rapid Russian, and the only words I caught were
tvoyu mat.
Whatever it meant, it was more than enough for Tats, who turned a volcanic shade, lowered his head, and charged.

It happened quickly, in a fluid, twisting instant—like a pennant snapping, or a wave breaking—and it was oddly muffled, so that the only sounds were fast, shuffling steps, an explosive breath, a grunt, a gasp of pain, and then a meaty thud. And then Tats was on his back on the other side of the courtyard, his nose pulped, his right wrist, elbow, and shoulder all grossly dislocated. And Sutter somehow had a gun in his hand, a shiny automatic that he pointed at Siggy.

A smile flickered on Siggy's lips, and he shook his head. He looked over at his number one. “We stopped patting people down? Too much work,
mudak
?”

Sutter put the gun up and let the clip drop from the grip to the courtyard stones. Then he worked the slide and ejected a shell. “Not his fault. I took it off your boy as he went past.”

“Asshole,” Siggy said, though I wasn't sure to whom. He looked at me. “Enough with this fucking dinner theatre. You understand that if I want to hurt you I can. And I will—even if your friend here pushes my overhead up. He knows I'll pay the price, yes? So you tell me why I don't want to hurt you.”

“I'm not interested in interfering with your business. I'm just looking for the girl—Elena.”

Siggy's eyes grew colder. “The girl
is
my business, doctor.”

“I didn't know that when I started looking for her.”

“Finding out didn't stop you.”

I took a deep breath. “She has a child—a little boy. He—”

“Maybe she has five kids. Maybe she has an old babushka too, and ten cats and a blind goat—I don't give a shit. She owes me and she's got to work it off.”

“How much does she owe you?” I asked, and I heard Sutter sigh wearily.

“She comes off the boat owing me forty grand for travel expenses.”

I nodded. “Forty thousand,” I said. “Forty thousand is—”

“Forty is
not
the number,” Siggy said. “Forty is what she owed me off the boat. There's interest on that, which for the three months she's here comes to another five, and room and board on top of that, which is another fifteen—which, let me tell you, is a fucking bargain for West Hollywood.”

“Sixty thousand, then.”

“Which might've been the number, if she hadn't beat the shit out of one of my best customers, who—by the way—is close personal friends with half the fucking city council.”

Sutter cleared his throat. “So what is the number, Siggy?”

“The fact that there's a number at all—the fact I'm willing to
think
about not putting her down, and this doctor too, is because I know you, Sutter. Because we've got some history, and you've got a little credit with me.”

“And I appreciate it, I really do. What's the number?”

“Seventy-five.”

Sutter laughed. “Seventy-five thousand? You're—”

“It's seventy-five
now.
How long it stays that way—does it go up tomorrow, does it go away altogether—nobody knows.”

Sutter tossed the empty automatic on the table. “A number like that—it takes time,” he said.

“Take all the time you want. My guys won't stop looking, and if they find her first, then I guess they save you some cash.”

“Seventy-five,” I said, and then I said it again.

Sutter laughed. “You think, if you keep saying it, it's going to appear in a puff of smoke?” We were in his BMW, headed east on surface streets, and the morning rush was starting to thicken around us. “Anyway, you've got it—you've got more than enough. If you want to spend it.”

“That's down-payment money.”

“Like I said—
if you want to spend it.
”

“And if I do, what about Siggy?”

“I think he meant what he said: we come up with the scratch before they come up with her, he'll take our money.”

“And forget about the girl?”

He shrugged. “He won't forget anything, but he'll move on. So you've got some deciding to do.”

Sutter worked his way east and south, and I thought about the clinic, and about where else to look for Elena, and where else Siggy's men might be looking. I didn't get very far, and Siggy's white, automaton hands kept intruding on my efforts.

We came to City Hall Park and took a right off First onto Spring Street. There was a kid—a teenager—on the sidewalk, weaving lazily on a skateboard. He was skinny and his hair was dyed bright blue.

“Shelly,” I said aloud.

Sutter looked at me. “Who's Shelly?”

“She's a streetwalker—a patient. She was at the Harney the first time I went over there. I thought she had something to say to me, but she took off when she saw Troop watching.”

“She work out of there?” Sutter asked, and I nodded. “So she might've met Elena, or at least seen her around.” I nodded again. “You know where to find her?”

“Might have a number on file. Other than that, the Harney is my only guess. But the Harney makes me nervous—Siggy's guys could be hanging around, or maybe those assholes from PRP.”

Sutter said nothing, but turned the car onto my street. We were still a block from the clinic when he pulled to the curb. “I wouldn't worry about PRP's stakeouts,” he said. “I think they've moved on to other things.”

Sutter pointed toward the clinic. There were three cars parked out front—a sedan and two SUVs. The sedan was beige with a whip antenna, and looked government-issued; the SUVs definitely were. One was gray and had a city emblem on the door; the other belonged to the LAFD. The door to the clinic was propped open, and patients were streaming out, looking bewildered, irritated, and skittish. I climbed from the BMW and headed down the block at a run. Lydia and Lucho met me in front of the clinic.

“What the fuck?” I said. Lucho caught my elbow as I made for the door.

“They showed up twenty minutes ago,” he said. “A guy from the fire marshal, and some guys from Buildings and Safety. They say somebody called about code violations. They say we have to stay out for now.”

“What kind of bullshit is that? What code violations?”

“They didn't explain,” Lydia said. “They said they didn't have to.”

“That's crap. Did you call Anne Crane?” Anne was the clinic's pro bono lawyer.

Lydia nodded. “Her assistant said she's in court all day.”

I shook my head. “Is somebody in charge here?”

Lucho pointed to a paunchy guy leaning on the beige sedan. “Maybe him.”

I turned toward the sedan, and Lydia called behind me, “Don't make things worse.”

Close up, the paunchy guy looked like he had a hangover, and a massive weight riding his stooped shoulders. His thinning hair, short-sleeved poly shirt, rumpled pants, and the heavy folds of skin on his face and neck all matched the color of his car. He had a large paper coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“You want to tell me what's happening here?” I asked.

He swallowed hard and put his cup on the roof of his car. He plugged the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and pulled a square of paper from his pocket. He unfolded the paper and smoothed it on the car hood. His bloodshot eyes ran up and down the page. “You Dr. Knox? Adam Knox?” His voice had the faint twang of a Texas childhood.

“That's me.”

“You run this clinic?” I nodded. “We spoke to your landlord—Kashmarian—and he said you were the guy to talk to.”

“Sure. Let's start by you telling me why you've fucked with my practice, and put my staff and my patients on the street.”

The man coughed, and put his hands up. “Take it easy, doc, we're all on the same side here—public safety, and all that.” He reached into his pocket and offered me a business card. It was wrinkled and damp. “I'm Stengal, from Buildings and Safety. We got a report of violations, and we have to—”

“What violations? Report from who?”

The man drew on his cigarette and took a step back. “Report's confidential, doc—you can understand that. People call, they want to do their civic duty. They don't want trouble.”

“What about my trouble? Doesn't that count?”

“We get a report of fire hazards, wiring problems—at a clinic, no less—we have to investigate. Kashmarian said you could let us into the apartment upstairs.”

“You need to search my apartment?”

Stengal put his hands up again. “I wouldn't say
search,
but we got to check the whole place out—gas lines, wiring, that kind of thing.”

“And you go through all this for every anonymous call you get?”

He shook his head. “Seriously, doc, I'm not tryin' to bust your stones, but I'm on the downhill side of things, you know what I mean? As in the direction shit flows. People talk to people somewhere over my head, and finally my phone rings. I'm just doin' a job here.”

I counted to ten while he puffed nervously. His face was darkening and there was a vein throbbing in his neck. I sighed. “How long is this going to take?”

Stengal looked relieved. “A place this size won't take but a couple or three hours, and we won't leave too much mess.”

“Mess?”

“It happens when they have to go into walls—but, hey, maybe it won't come to that.”

Of course it came to that—gouges and channels in wallboard and plaster, vinyl flooring pulled back in spots, ceiling tiles askew or broken. Stengal's people, having found nothing to cite us for, made a show of sweeping up, but Lucho, Lydia, and I still spent an hour scrambling around the place with dustpans after they left. By one o'clock, the waiting room was full again, and we were jumping until six.

There was little time that afternoon for talk about much besides cases, and in those brief periods, Lydia was ominously monosyllabic. Lucho and I gave her a wide berth, and when the last patient was gone and the door was locked, we waited for the explosion. There was none, which was worse.

She sat heavily in a swivel chair at the reception desk. She pushed a hand through her thick, dark hair and sighed. She looked up at us. I could smell disinfecting soap, her flowery perfume, her sweat.

“Is this the way it's gonna be now, doctor—this kind of thing every day? People come in, they threaten, they send firemen, inspectors—who next? The sheriff? Drug cops? La Migra? You saw the way people ran out of here this morning. You think they all came back? I got news for you, doctor: they did not. And it won't take many more days like today before they stop coming at all—and not because they're all of a sudden healthy.” Lydia shook her head and sighed again, more deeply this time.

“But maybe that's for the best, yeah? Maybe we should stop kidding ourselves we're doing any good here—stop running around like one-armed jugglers and just shut this thing down.”

Lucho shook his head. “Jesus,
tía,
what the hell—”

She pointed at him. “Watch your language,
mijo.
”

“I'm serious,” he said. “What's with this talk?”

Lydia's voice was soft and frayed. “I'm tired,
mijo,
that's what's with it. I been doing this forever, and it's hard enough work when nobody's trying to stop you from doing it right.”

“And even harder,” I said, “when your boss gets you caught in a shit storm.”

“Shit storm?” Lydia said. “You don't even know
what
this is, or how to get out of it. How long do you think this can go on? How do you think it's gonna end?”

“I don't know how it's going to end, Lyd, but I hope it won't take much longer. I found out a little about his mom, and maybe that'll help us find her.”

“
Us
—you and that pirate.”

“Sutter's all right,
tía,
” Lucho said.

She snorted at him. “ 'Cause your time running with the Avenue Kings makes you such a great judge of character. Every time he goes off with that one…” She threw up her hands and hoisted herself from the chair.

“We'll sort this out, Lyd,” I said. “I promise.”

“Don't throw that word around, doctor. And even if we do get through this, what about next time? And the time after that? What about the rent, and the next paycheck? Is another magic cash deposit gonna take care of that? And when the lease is up—then what? We're living on borrowed time here.”

I didn't have answers to her questions, and Lydia didn't wait for any. She grabbed a stack of patient folders from the in-basket and carried them to the file room. In a moment I heard angry tapping at a keyboard. Lucho looked at me and shook his head. He took another stack of folders from the basket and rolled a chair over to the computer.

“I don't like this domestic shit,” he muttered, and started updating records.

I took the remaining folders to my office and banged away for I don't know how long. I typed and clicked and tried not to think about Siggy Rostov or the bull-necked PRP men, or Lydia's accusing looks, or Alex, or Elena. Still, they swam up at me from the depths of the monitor.

My cell phone rumbled in my pocket, and brought me back. It was Sutter, with traffic sounds behind him.

“Go out to your car,” he said.

“What?”

“Your crappy Honda—go out to the alley and open it and check the glove box.”

“What the hell are—?”

“Humor me. I'll hang on.”

I rubbed my eyes and pushed back from the desk and headed down the hall. A blast of hot air shoved me as I opened the back door. The alley was dim and smelled like a burnt skillet. I opened the Honda's passenger door and flipped the latch on the glove box. On top of the owner's manual and the gas receipts were two identical plastic boxes, shiny black and slightly larger than my iPhone. They were featureless but for a large adhesive square in the center, and a tiny column of Korean characters along one edge.

“You still there?” I asked Sutter.

“Yep.”

“What are these things?”

“I took one off Lucho's car and one off Lydia's while you guys were working. There was one on your car too.”

“What the hell are they?”

“Trackers. South Korean models. Kinda crappy, really. The GPS units are okay, but the power units are unreliable.”

A cold knot tightened in my stomach. “GPS trackers? On our cars? Where the fuck did they come from? And how long have they been there?”

“They're courtesy of PRP, and they've only been there a few hours. I watched one of those bristle-heads plant them this morning, while you were dicking around with the inspectors.”

“You hung around?”

“I figured firemen were just the opening act.”

I shook my head. “You said there was a tracker on my car too.”

Sutter laughed. “Yeah—I put that one under the bumper of a tourist bus—you know, one of those double-decker nightmares—
See All of L.A. in a Day.
Right now I'm at the Farmers Market, watching some confused-looking PRP grunts follow it around in a Suburban.”

“Jesus. They haven't figured out you messed with their stuff?”

“Not so far. I guess they're too lazy to run a proper tail—they're just relying on what the GPS says instead of using their eyes. I tell you, this has really lowered my opinion of these guys. Substandard equipment, sloppy tails—this is definitely not the A-team.”

“You think trackers are all they did? Could they have put something inside the clinic?”

“You mean mikes and cameras? No—they wouldn't have sicced the building inspectors on you if they'd done that. You might want to stay away from the landlines for a while, though.”

“Shit. And out front—what am I going to find there? More Suburbans? Maybe they'll just pull an RV up and move in.”

“You should be okay. The only PRP clowns I saw in your neighborhood were the ones I'm watching now, and they were parked three blocks away.”

I looked at the trackers and sighed. “Small favors,” I said. And then I heard myself speaking Lydia's words. “How long can this go on?”

Sutter made a clicking noise. “Until they find the kid, or Bray calls off the dogs.”

“Well, let's hope the former doesn't come to pass—but God only knows how we get the latter to happen.”

“Figuring out why they want him would be a good start,” he said.

“Any bright ideas about how?”

Sutter was quiet for a moment, and the traffic sounds grew louder in the phone. “You gotta wonder why they haven't called the cops,” he said finally. “I mean, they've shown you how well connected they are—why haven't they called their pal the police chief, have him send a few tactical units down to your place? Why wasn't that the first call they made?”

“Yet another in a long list of questions I can't answer.”

“Ask the PRP guys,” he said. “It won't be long before they come around for another talk.”

“Fuck.”

Sutter laughed loudly.

“What's funny about that?” I said.

“I'm not laughing at you. My tour bus is circling the block again, and I'm watching these dumbasses follow it. It never gets old.”