Dr. Knox (20 page)

Elena returned to the table and sat. She sighed again and looked at nothing.

“You were pregnant then?”

Her eyes flashed and she looked at me hard. “I didn't know then; I didn't know for six weeks. After, there was no mistake. So tired, throwing up like crazy…” Her voice grew soft and there was a wistfulness to it. Then she shivered. “My
bunica
knew. She took care of me. Of us. She was the only one.”

“Your brother didn't help?”

Her mouth turned bitter. “Nico? No. I didn't hear from him at all. He was traveling then, taking Germans and Russians all over the country. He didn't call us or visit, not for years.”

“And no help from Kyle?”

Elena shook her head. “What help did we need? When I stopped throwing up, I got a job. Nothing much—there was a factory not far, and it had an office. I worked there awhile, and they let me come back after Alex was born.

“And then, for short time, everything was okay. Fine. I went to work. My
bunica
took care of the boy, and she worked too, like she always did—washing clothes, ironing, mending. She even made dresses. They all looked like the curtains in her kitchen, made everybody look like potatoes in a flowered sack, but the old ladies liked them.” Elena smiled and chuckled softly. “We were okay. Fine. Until Nico decides after a few years it's time to visit.” Elena rose again, and this time she froze in the middle, and put a hand to her belly. Her face was gray.

“You all right?” I said, and put a hand out.

She brushed it away and shook her head. “First time I see Nico since Bucharest. Last time too.”

“Was he still angry at you?”

“No, no—he was…he was friendly. He had a new car, money in his pocket, and he wanted to be friends. He brought flowers and chocolates and a bolt of fancy fabric for our
bunica,
and he had Italian wine and a bottle of vodka, and…then he saw Alex. He saw his nephew for the first time.”

“He didn't know you'd had a baby?”

“He didn't know anything,” Elena said. She walked to the sink, touched the taps, but didn't run the water. “Nico just stared at Alex, watched him chase a little football—soccer ball—around the sitting room. Finally, he asks how old, and I tell him almost four years, and I see him doing sums. Then he asks if that bastard sends us money, and I say he should leave it alone. I tell him the Brays know nothing about Alex, and that he's not their business, and he should leave it alone. But I can tell by his voice and his crazy eyes and how red his face is getting that he won't. I beg and plead with him, and so does our
bunica.
We cry, we get angry, but it doesn't matter to Nico. He's drinking the vodka from the bottle, the wheels are turning in his head, and he doesn't listen. He drives to Bucharest that night.

“Two days after, the police call. Nico's car went off a road somewhere, and into a ditch, and there was a fire, and maybe bears or an earthquake too. I didn't know what the hell they were saying, but I knew it didn't matter. I knew they were full of shit. I knew what happened to him.” She touched the taps again, and this time she turned them on and watched the water.

“What did you think happened?”

“Not
think,
doctor—I
know.
I
know
what happened. Nico went to Kyle and wanted money and God knows what else. He got paid another way.”

“Kyle was still in Romania?”

“Oh yes. Petroplan was running fine again—better than ever. They bought other companies, they get bigger, important contracts with the government, and Kyle was the big fish in the little sea.”

“And you knew that Nico went to see him?”

She nodded over the sink, and took the steel plug from the drain. She turned the taps some more, and the water flowed faster. “I knew Nico, and I knew what he did. I just never knew they would…I never thought of it.” And then Elena vomited into the sink.

I was at her side fast, and caught her around the shoulders. She shrugged my arm off and pushed me away. She rinsed her mouth and spit, then wiped her lips on the back of her hand. She ran water in the sink until the vomit was gone.

“Are you—”

“I'm fine. It comes whenever I…It comes every time.”

I nodded. “What happened next?” I asked.

“What happened? I went to work the next day, and the days after that. I had to go—I needed that job. But the policeman who called me, to tell about Nico, I called him up to tell him what really happened. He didn't want to hear from me—not at all. He was angry and said he was busy, and that I could get in trouble with that kind of talk. He said I should never call back. I didn't care. On the weekend, I went to Bucharest, to talk to police face-to-face. That was worse. These two guys, they put me in a room for hours, with no water or food, no one else, no bathroom. Then they questioned me about Nico—did we get along, where was I that night, that kind of thing. They yelled and slammed the table and grabbed my arms, and it was midnight when they finally threw me out and told me never to come back. Fucking bastards.”

She wiped her mouth again and looked at her hands. “Then, the next week, I start seeing a car, a big black SUV with black windows, like we don't see in Lanurile, parked down the street, parked outside my work, near the market, parked everywhere I go. I look at it or walk toward it, it drives away. I go a different way to work or the market, it's behind me anyway. This goes on for two weeks. I talk to the police—not the pricks in Bucharest, the local pricks—and they do nothing. But nothing. They laugh.”

Elena turned quickly and bent over the sink, and I thought she might vomit again, but she didn't. “Then, one day—a Tuesday—I go to work and, finally, I don't see the car. Nowhere. And when I get home, my
bunica
's apartment is like…It looks like thieves were there, or animals—everything smashed, broken, torn apart. And blood.” Elena's voice tightened and stopped. She was breathing hard.

“Your grandmother?” I said after a while.

“Dead. Beaten. Arm broke, ribs broke, neck broke. She is seventy-one. Did she even weigh fifty kilos?”

“And Alex?”

“Gone,” she whispered, and her shoulders shook and fat tears fell down her cheeks. She covered her face with her hands, and the tears seeped between her fingers.

I put my hand on her back, and she shuddered but didn't shake it off. Her skin was burning through the thin fabric of her shirt. “Sit down,” I said. “Let me get you some water.”

“I don't want water, and I don't want to sit. You wanted your story, and you're going to have it.” Her voice was low and choked. “I called the police, and they came and looked around and talked to some neighbors. And finally they say it is robbery. Thieves. Thieves steal my child, and steal my grandmother's life.”

I shook my head. “What about the kidnapping? Didn't they do something about that?”

“It's like they were sleeping, those bastards. They did nothing. They take a picture of him from me—that's it. They say they talk to neighbors, put out bulletins, but find nothing. They
do
nothing.”

“You told them about the SUV, about Kyle?”

“It's the first thing I say. I say I know who did this! I say where to look for my boy—who to talk to! They look like I'm telling them to clean the toilets. They tell me they talk to Kyle, or to
his people.
His people
say he went back to America weeks before, and
his people
don't know nothing about my boy. But they know enough to tell the police that I'm some kind of crazy woman, some crazy ex-girlfriend.”

“Did you try the U.S. Embassy? If they took him out of the country, they would've had to get him a passport.”

She laughed bitterly. “You think Kyle travels on a regular plane? You think any of them do? They have their own planes. And you think they couldn't get a little boy”—she lost her voice again, and for a while gasped for breath—“my good little boy—you think they couldn't get him on their plane without anyone seeing? You think they couldn't pay people not to see, the way they paid the bastard police in my country, and anybody else they wanted?”

“You think that's what happened?”

“I thought you had to be smart to be a doctor. Of course that's what happened. And I said so to police, people at the embassy, everybody I meet. And you know what happened? They throw me out of the embassy, out of the police station, out of my job, and out of my grandmother's apartment—right onto the street. So I take my suitcase and I go to a girl I work with—worked with—and she lets me stay with her, until, one day, a man visits. A big man, old, with big arms and short white hair, and skin like leather, and burn marks along here.” Elena ran a hand along the side of her neck.

“Conti,” I said.

“I don't know his name, but I see him right before I come into your clinic with Alex. He is one of the bastards chasing us. I see him again, I'm going to stab his eyes.”

“What did he do to you back in Romania?”

“What he did? He grabs me like this”—she wrapped a hand around her own neck—“and holds me up against a wall and says if I don't shut my fucking mouth he's going to cut my tongue out. Then he throws me in a corner, goes through my things—all of my things—until he finds the little bit of money I have and my passport, my driving license, my identity cards, and these he burns right in front of me. He holds them under my nose and waves them around—I can still smell the burning—and he says,
Now you stay close to home, keep your head down, don't bother people, and maybe you get to live.
I can hear him say it.”

“Christ,” I whispered.

“My friend throws me out after that—she's scared—and I go to police again. This time they lock me up a few days and hit me a little. After that, I go for new passport. The ministry won't give it me, though—I got no permanent address, they say, no identification papers. Without those, it's like I'm not even a person. They throw me out, and I sleep on the street a few nights, and spend my days in the library.

“Finally, one of the ladies there, behind the counter, she takes pity on me. She lets me stay all day in the library if I do some cleaning, and she lets me sleep in back at night, on a mattress in an empty room. There's a dead rat in there, and spiders, but they got Internet, and I do a lot of reading. All about the Brays, the things they own, about Los Angeles, and about how people—girls, young ones—can travel to the States, even with no money and no documents. I knew about girls who did this, and it didn't take much to find Kurt, and then that shit Vladi.” I thought for a moment she might spit on the floor, but she shook her head and wiped a hand across her mouth. She looked at me.

“When I get here, Siggy puts me in apartments, first near airport, then in West Hollywood. I knew before I left Romania where Brays live—I found it on the Internet, like I found the school they sent Alex to, the same school Kyle went to, with Bray library and Bray gymnasium. I knew where to find Alex, and when it was time, I…I took Hoover's car and his money and his clothes. I drive over to Alex's school. I park, I wait, and when he is on playground, and people are not watching, he comes with me. We run.”

Elena sighed deeply, and ran a hand through her hair. “So now you got my story, doctor. You happy now?”

I was exhausted, shocked, deeply sad, and more than a little nauseated, but not remotely happy. I sat at the table again and rubbed my eyes. “And now what?” I asked. “Now that you have Alex, what're you going to do?”

Elena ran cold water, drank from the faucet, and splashed some on her face. “Do? I want to go home, doctor—I want to take my little boy home. But it turns out I got no passport, no money, no home to go to. And the only people I know with these things is the fucking Brays. They got to pay, doctor. They got to pay for me and Alex.”

I never saw Kabul Tommy, but when he left he was replaced by Yossi, a tall guy with a three-day beard, a deep tan, and a line of Chinese characters tattooed down the side of his neck. He wore wraparound shades and an automatic on his hip, and Sutter said he would stay with Elena and Alex and Shelly for a while. When we left, Elena and Alex were in the kitchen, holding hands and whispering, and Shelly was staring into space. Yossi was at the front window, scanning the street.

Sutter swung the Escalade onto Acacia and then Loma Vista, and drove widening circles around the house, looking for a long time at cars parked on the street. Finally, he turned onto Sepulveda, headed north. He looked at me.

“What's the deal with your girl?” he asked.

I told him what Elena had told me, and Sutter listened and nodded occasionally. When I was done, he let out a long breath.

“She's badass,” he said. “Like a fox that chews its leg off to get out of a trap.”

“If it's true.”

“You have doubts?”

“First thing we learned in med school: patients lie.”

“And not just them,” Sutter said, laughing. “But this particular patient…?” He raised his eyebrows quizzically.

I watched the traffic stop and go in Culver City, and squinted into the hard glare off windshields and car hoods and white pavement. We drove beneath the 405, and the darkness of the underpass was a relief.

“I don't know,” I said. “Her story explains why the Brays haven't gone to the cops; I'm just not sure it's the whole story. She's not the most forthcoming person I've met.”

Sutter smiled. “Whole truth or not, it doesn't solve today's problems. Like getting Siggy off her back, or the Brays off of the kid's.”

“Siggy wants money. As for the Brays—the only thing they want is the kid, and I don't know how to change their minds about that.”

“Sounds like Elena has the start of a plan: she needs cash, and the Brays have plenty of it.”

“So—what—we get the Brays to pay off Siggy? How the hell do we manage that? I expect they'd be pretty damned happy if Siggy just swallowed her whole.”

“It's not about making them happy—it's about motivating them.”

“Motivating them with what?”

“With what scares them.”

“Murder and kidnap allegations.”

Sutter nodded. “It's why they haven't called the cops, right? If you buy Elena's story.”

“But we have nothing to make those allegations stick—nothing besides Elena's say-so. And that didn't work out too well for her back in Romania.”

“Maybe they don't need to stick. Assholes like the Brays might be bothered by the charges alone—especially if they were made in public and very loud.”

“So that's the plan—threaten to say bad things about the Brays on Facebook unless they pony up some cash?”

“I wouldn't say it was exactly a plan yet,” Sutter said as we turned onto Culver Boulevard. “You have something better?”

I thought about it for a while, as I watched shopping strips and gas stations and crappy little apartment buildings slide by. Finally, I shook my head.

“Not a damn thing,” I said.

It was past noon when he dropped me at the clinic. There were no afternoon hours that Saturday, and Lydia and Lucho had seen the morning's patients and already locked up. The clinic was cool and quiet inside, the street noise muted and far off. There were messages on my desk, three of them from my landlord, Tony Kashmarian, and one from our lawyer, Anne Crane. I looked at the pink slips and thought about what they might want, and then I heard a tired sigh and the sound of papers from down the hall.

Lydia was at the desk in the records room. She had a stack of charts before her, and a chipped coffee mug that said
Big Nurse
on it. She'd taken her scrub top off, and the blue tee shirt underneath had a faded marlin on it. She looked up at me; in the cone of dusty light from the gooseneck lamp, she looked a couple of decades older than her fifty-five years.

She sighed again, more deeply this time. “I didn't think you were gonna show,” she said. Her voice was low and scratchy.

“Not too bad this morning, I hope.”

“Pretty slow, for us. Two more cases of the runs. A guy from the flower market who had too many Red Bulls and vodka and thought he was having a coronary. An eight-year-old girl with a fractured arm.”

I leaned in the doorway. “Shit,” I said. “We know her?”

“Never seen her, or the woman who brought her in.”

“She wasn't the mother?”

Lydia shrugged. “She said she was.”

“You think she was beating on the girl?”

Lydia turned her palms up like a scale. “Not sure.”

“You call Family Services?”

She shook her head. “No clear indicators. I put the girl in an air cast and sent them to County. Told an ER nurse over there to keep an eye out, but who knows if they'll show up.”

It was my turn to sigh. I took a folding metal chair from the corner, opened it, and sat across the desk from her. “There any more of that?” I asked, pointing to her mug.

“Help yourself.” She slid the mug across to me.

I drank and made a face. “That sucks.”

“Bottom of the pot. How's Shelly doing?” I told her, and she nodded. “And Elena?” I told her that too, and that Danni had brought Alex to his mom that morning.

“That's good,” she said. “That's nice. For him. For her too. And now that they're back together, what next?” she asked. “They going on their way?”

I looked into Lydia's coffee mug, at the muddy dregs. “It's not a simple situation,” I said.

Lydia took a file off the stack in front of her, swiveled in her chair, and started typing. “Of course not,” she said softly.

Her back was solid, and there was a faint line of sweat on her blue tee shirt, along her spine. I watched her for a while, and then I took a deep breath and told her Elena's story. At some point she stopped typing, but she didn't turn around. The quiet was thick in the little room when I'd finished, and then Lydia began to type again.

“There's nothing you can do for them,” she said after a while.

“I'm not sure.”

“That wasn't a question, doctor. I'm saying: there's nothing you can do for them. Their trouble is big and complicated; you can't solve it.”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Half the people who come here have big, complicated problems. We help them.”

“We
patch
them. We get them well, some of them, or well enough so they maybe can get back on their feet. So they can go on a while longer. That's all we do—that's all we
can
do, and it's more than most. But sometimes—like with this girl and her little boy—you get an idea that you can…I don't know what. Fix them? Fix their lives?”

“Don't you ever want that, Lyd—something more than a temporary patch? Don't you want an outright win sometimes?”

Lydia wiped a hand across her forehead and looked at me with a mix of disbelief and pity. “You know better, doctor—you know, unless you got a magic wand, that's not gonna happen. And while you try, you're risking this place.”

“I'm not risking—”

“Sure you are. Those people she's involved with—they have a lot of juice. More than enough to shut us down. And those Russian pigs—I'm surprised they haven't torched this place already. They still might.”

Lydia turned in her chair. Her face was lined and sagging. “I know you worry about the people who come in here, doctor, even the ones you don't see. I tell you about some girl with a fracture and you're worried she's in trouble, and you don't even know her. You care about them. So don't you want to keep doing what you can for them? Why put that at risk?”

“I'm…I'm not.”

She pursed her lips and looked at me for a long time. Then she shook her head. “I'm going out to the desert this weekend, with Junie. We're going to work on that cabin of his. No Russians, no skinheads in polo shirts, just sandpaper and paint—nice and quiet. Nice when we have some of that around here.”

My face burned. “Lydia, I—”

She reached across the desk and put her heavy hand against my neck. “I'm not looking for promises,
chico
—I know what happens with those.” Then she patted my cheek and picked up her coffee mug. “Now, go away. I got all this shit to update.”

“You want some help?”

Lydia laughed and shook her head. “That's almost funny, doctor.”