Dr. Knox (26 page)

“Is that a threat?” Nora said.

Mandy looked at her and shook her head and laughed. “Nice meeting you, doctor,” she said, and left.

There was long silence when she'd gone. Nora looked at me, and at the trash bag at my feet. Her voice was low and tight with anger. “Take that crap with you when you leave,” she said, and went into her bedroom, and shut the door.

My feet were loud on the pavement as I walked back to my car, and the night was darker. The porch lights and televisions were out, and the little wind was gone. I tossed the trash bag into my back seat and shut the car door; it sounded like a thunderclap. I put my hands on the wheel, and the cold went up my arms. I closed my eyes.

“Shit,” I said to no one. Then I took some deep breaths and pulled out my phone. It rang just once before Mandy answered.

Amanda Danzig's waiting room was nicer than mine, which was very short on polished stone floors, Barcelona chairs, Japanese ink-wash paintings, glossy trade magazines that made oil pipeline valves look glamorous, and a robotically genial young woman named Jenny who produced superb espresso, seemingly from thin air. I was working on my second hour of pacing in Bray Consolidated's black glass tower in Westwood, and on my fourth coffee, and I had memorized the twentieth-floor views of the UCLA campus, the Federal Building, and a traffic-clogged stretch of the 405. Through the tinted windows, the cloudless sky was mauve.

I sighed and ran my thumb along the Bray coat of arms, emblazoned on my demitasse cup—a black shield with two red maces crossed in the center, and underneath, also in red,
Sine missione.
I emptied the cup and sat, which was Jenny's cue.

“Another coffee, sir?” she asked, smiling.

I wondered if she'd been given instructions to induce tachycardia, or maybe kidney failure. I smiled back but declined cup five.

I thought again about calling Nate Rash at Jiffy-Lab for the results of the DNA tests I'd requested, but he hadn't answered his cell a half-hour before, and the woman I spoke with at the lab wouldn't say when he'd be in.

I also thought about calling Nora Roby. She hadn't answered my calls last night, after she'd kicked me out, or this morning, and the messages I'd left had yielded only dead air. What could I say that I hadn't said already?
I'm sorry that a lunatic has been following me around, and that he bled all over your foyer
?
I'm sorry that his slightly less crazy cousin brought her thugs into your home, and insulted you
? I took a deep breath and untied the cord that bound the red file folder in my lap.

The contents hadn't changed since the last time I'd checked: the printed transcript of Elena's statement and a disc with the highlights. It would've been nice to have the DNA test results too, but I hoped Elena's statement would be enough, and that its threat to Bray-world would be clear. Still, my stomach turned over. A pair of doors opened, and I looked up to see Amanda Danzig beckoning.

“Dr. Knox!” she said, surprised and delighted, as if we'd bumped into each other at the polo matches. She wore black pumps, a snug gray skirt, a fitted white blouse, and a Bluetooth earpiece in her right ear. Her cropped blond hair was slicked, and her teeth were very white. There was a thick platinum chain around her neck, and an emerald pendant on it the size of a table grape.

“Look at you,” she said, smiling, “All dressed up in khakis and a nice blue blazer—it's like Parents' Day at Choate.”

I stood, and looked down into her button-bright eyes. “Even so, the guys in the lobby almost made me use the service entrance.”

“They're paid to be superficial. But, fortunately for you, I see beyond the cosmetic.” Her eyes went to the file folder under my arm. “I have to tell you, I was surprised to hear from you last night, doctor. I thought after Kyle and I screwed up your date with Dr. MILF—”

“Don't call her that.”

Mandy chuckled and raised her hands. “Sorry, sorry. Anyway, I'm glad you phoned. Surprised, but glad. Now, have you been thinking about what you want? Is that a Christmas list you have there?” She didn't wait for an answer, but took my elbow and led me into her office.

It was even nicer than her waiting room—larger, brighter, and with more view. Her desk was a sweep of steel and glass that ran along some of the windows. Along some others was a seating area—more Barcelona chairs and sofas, and a glass coffee table holding a bowl of cut flowers, bottles of water, and yet more coffee. “So tell me what I can do for you, and tell me where I can find my cousin.”

I followed her to the seating area, where she perched on a sofa, kicked off her shoes, hitched up her skirt, and tucked her neat legs beneath her. I took one of the chairs, but before I could speak, Danzig held up one finger and touched another to her earpiece.

“I'm still here,” she said to someone else. Then she frowned, shook her head, and spoke in Russian. She spoke for a while, looking down at her knees as she did. She finished in English. “No. And don't waste my time with those assholes again. Call me when we actually have something to talk about, or don't call at all.”

Danzig pulled out the earpiece, tossed it on the table, and smirked. “Moscow office. Bunch of crazy bastards, if you ask me—half drunk all the time. You want coffee? Water?”

I shook my head. “Speaking of crazy, how's Kyle?”

Danzig laughed. She reached for a bottle of water, twisted the top, and took a sip. “He's gone—what—eighteen hours without a brawl. That could be a record for him. I'm pretty sure he still hates you, though.”

“You might be feeling the same way soon.”

She put on a theatrical pout. “About you, doctor? I couldn't. Or are you telling me that's not a wish list you've got there?”

I took a deep breath. “What I have is Elena's story,” I said. “I found it convincing, and I think anyone else hearing would agree.” Then I handed her the folder.

Amanda Danzig scowled as she opened the folder. She took out the thick sheaf of the transcript, and then the disc. She shook her head. “What am I supposed to do with this, besides marvel at the waste of paper?”

“You should read it, when you've got some time. For now, you should put the disc in your Mac and watch.”

“You disappoint me,” she said, shaking her head, but she slipped into her shoes and carried the DVD to her desk.

I watched her as she watched Elena and listened to Elena's flat, accented words, but Danzig's face remained perfectly blank. When the highlight reel ended, she picked up a thick silver fountain pen and tapped it lightly on her desk for what seemed a long time. Then she looked at me.

“So—that was it? That was your shot? And—what—am I supposed to curl into a ball now? Am I supposed to weep? Anyone can tell a story, doctor—and with a little imagination, they can make it a real tearjerker too—a lurid, harrowing, heartrending tale of woe. But the fact that you've made a nice video of it, dressed up with a lawyer, doesn't make it true.”

“She's not his aunt, Mandy, she's his mother. If you saw them together, you'd—”

“That's what you're banking on—how they look to you, side by side? You have any facts behind that?”

“DNA doesn't lie.”

“DNA may not lie, but sample collection, testing facilities, procedures, all those things do. That's why they ask about that shit in court. And is that really where you want to go with us, doctor, into a courtroom? 'Cause I guarantee you, we're going to have a lot of company in there, and you're going to feel pretty lonely. Maybe more lonely than you feel already. Think hard on this, doc, because if we head down that road we won't turn back. Not ever.

“You want to have a court swab Elena and Alex, or you want your lawyers to do it—that's fine. They can swab Kyle too, while they're at it. I'm confident of the results, so long as everyone involved keeps an eye on the samples.

“And then what—the case becomes a custody battle? Is that really appealing? On one side you'll have what, with all modesty, is a fairly prominent family: philanthropists, generous donors to noble causes, employers of many thousands of worker bees around the world. And on the other you'll have a twenty-something prostitute from East Mudhump, Romania, an illegal alien to boot, with God knows what kinds of vices a motivated investigator might find. And I assure you, doctor, our investigators are highly motivated. Which one do you think would provide a better environment for raising that boy? What do you think a judge would think?

“But when it comes to it, you won't have time to worry much about it. You'll be too busy trying to find a new home for your little health-care bodega, and a new place to live besides. And that's before we get to kidnap charges, attempted extortion, defamation, and those are just the appetizers. But, sure, if that's the way you want to go…” Mandy twisted a finger in her necklace, and her pendant flashed green as it caught the sun. Her cheeks were pink with excitement.

I shrugged. “You seem to want to go that way—you've got it all planned out. In which case, I guess I should stop ducking the reporter who's been calling me. I don't know how he got my name, but it sounds like he's got a corner of something, and a whole bunch of questions, and if we're headed to court I should probably get my story out there.”

Danzig squinted at me, took a breath, and opened her mouth, but whatever she might've said was lost when her office doors swung wide. The lovely Jenny was there, but decidedly less genial. She was trying—without success—to impede the progress of a large man with a white crew cut and Naugahyde skin.

“I'm sorry, Ms. Danzig,” Jenny said, “but he wouldn't wait. He wouldn't listen to anything—”

Danzig's face darkened. “It's all right, Jen. Tiger, what the
fuck
do you think you're doing?”

Conti stepped around the assistant and smoothed the lapels on his black suit. “Sorry, Mandy—”

“You can call me Ms. Danzig.”

“Yeah, sure. Anyway, Cap wants to see him.” Conti flicked a thumb in my direction.

Danzig stood, and her chair rolled away behind her and rebounded off the window glass. Her hands were balled into white fists. “He wants
what
? I'm in the middle of something, for chrissakes.”

Conti walked slowly to the desk and dropped a meatloaf hand on my shoulder. He shrugged at Mandy. “Guess you have to take that up with the Captain. Ms. Danzig.”

Conti didn't take me to a conference room or to another office suite. Instead, he led me into an elevator, out again, up a short flight of metal stairs, through a metal door, and onto Bray Consolidated's rooftop helipad. There was a chopper waiting there, a sleek white machine with the Bray coat of arms on its side. Its engines were idling and its rotors spinning slowly. The pilot donned his headphones and adjusted his mike when he saw us coming. Fuel vapors pricked my eyes.

Leather seats faced each other across a leather-lined passenger cabin. Conti waited until I climbed into a window spot and then took a seat opposite. He pulled the hatch shut and pointed at my seatbelts while he fastened his. When I'd buckled up, he tossed me a set of headphones.

“The jack's in the armrest,” he said, positioning his own headphones over his ears. He swung his mike down and spoke to the pilot. “We're all good back here, Jerry.”

Jerry's twang came through my headphones. “Roger that, Tiger. We are wheels up.” The engines revved, the cabin vibrated and swayed, and then the rooftop slanted away.

I looked out the porthole at the world rotating below—the 405, the cemetery, Brentwood, and, to the north and west, the brown, shadowed folds of the Santa Monica Mountains and a bright haze off the Pacific.

Conti's voice was in my ear again. “You're not gonna puke, are you?” His shark grin was wide. I shook my head. “Then you want a drink?” He pressed on the divider between his seat and the next, and a panel slid away to reveal a bar. I shook my head again and he shrugged. He reached in and pulled out a small bottle of tonic water. He opened it and drank.

“I thought you'd put up more of a fight,” he said. “Or at least ask questions.”

I pulled my own mike down. “What's the point? I want to talk to the guy who can make things happen. Apparently, that's not Amanda.” Conti snorted. “I guess now we're going to see that guy.”

“Got that right,” Conti said.

I looked through the porthole again. The ridges and ravines of the Santa Monicas were closer now, and away to my left I could see a white strip of beach and the PCH running alongside. “I thought Bray lived in Bel Air,” I said.

“That's one place. Malibu's another.”

The chopper dipped lower over a canyon—Topanga I thought, from the tortuous road that wound down to the ocean, and from the size of the homes on its slopes. Pools and tennis courts and vast decks were like shining tiles on the parched hillsides, a mosaic that spelled out
money
in the Ur-language of real estate.

“Keep an eye out—you almost always see tits around here, a couple pairs at least, lying out in the sun. Nice ones too. Don't know if they're real or not, but from up here they look good. Sometimes the chicks wave.” I looked at Conti and shook my head.

He squinted at me. “You don't like tits? Or you see so many in your line of work, the magic is gone?”

I ignored his questions. “Bray senior keeps an eye on Mandy's appointments?”

Conti barely shrugged. “It's his company and his building. Everything goes on there is his business.”

“And he pays you to watch over it?”

“That's as good a job description as any.”

“That include babysitting?”

“Ask him yourself. We're almost there.”

The engine sounds changed, and so did the vibrations through the cabin, and we slid to the right. The sea rotated in the cabin window—slate blue, with breaking waves like lace. There was a stretch of sand like a tawny thigh, then the green of an irrigated hillside, and then a slab of white cement as we hovered above a helipad. And then we were down.

The pad was on a terraced slope far above the ocean and the PCH, but below the hilltop. I followed Conti up a stone path through manzanita and yarrow and salt air, and another man followed behind us. He had a crew cut and made no effort to hide the gun beneath his suit jacket. The ocean swayed and sighed behind us, and gulls hung overhead.

Near the crest of the hill we came to a line of wind-twisted scrub oak. Beyond were a meadow, a horse paddock, stables in whitewashed stucco, and then the main event—a Spanish Renaissance palace in white stone, with a green tiled roof and leaded glass windows. It looked like the Beverly Hills City Hall, only larger and without the tower.

Conti led me past a fountain full of mottled koi, and up steps to a wide patio. The highway was invisible from this vantage, and so was the beach—the view was all ocean and sky—two things Harris Bray could yet aspire to own. Unless they were his already.

There was furniture on the patio—wrought-iron chairs and glass-topped tables—and signs of recent entertainment, but no guests. The only other people were four waiters in white shirts and black vests, moving silently among the tables, clearing empty highball glasses, hors d'oeuvre plates, and crumpled cloth napkins. Conti stopped and put out his hand.

“Cell phone,” he said. I dug my phone out and gave it to him. He powered it down and gave it to the crew-cut man. “You'll get it back when you leave. Arms out to the side.” Conti demonstrated, and the crew-cut man ran a wand up and down my body, pausing at my belt and wristwatch.

“He's good,” Crew Cut said. He hung back while Conti and I crossed the patio to a set of French doors on the far side. The doors were open, but Conti stopped at the threshold.

“A minute,” he said softly. He slipped a cigarette from his breast pocket and dangled it, unlit, from his lower lip. He turned to watch the ocean, and I looked inside.

The room was a rosewood chapel, with paneling and bookshelves that ascended to a coffered ceiling, and a red-tiled floor covered in Persian rugs. The books were leather-bound, and so was much of the furniture. The green silk drapes were pulled back, and sunlight fell on an ebony standing desk. There was a phone on it, a keyboard, a thin monitor, a highball glass with something amber at the bottom, and a stack of papers. A leather chair crouched before it—a place for supplicants to sit and stare upward and await the word of God.

Harris Bray stood behind the desk, nearly motionless. He was dressed not for an afternoon in Malibu, but for a board meeting in New York, or maybe a centerfold in
Forbes.
He wore a snow-white shirt, gray tie, navy trousers, navy suspenders, and gleaming wingtips. His navy suit jacket hung from an ebony peg on the side of his desk.

Bray wasn't handing down law just then, but listening to a man's voice from a phone speaker. I couldn't make out the words, but the voice was pleading and desperate, which seemed to make Bray angry. His jaw was rigid, and his large mottled hands clutched at each other. His own replies were curt and chilly—ice on a windowpane. His words too were lost to me, but his scorn hung like a fog in the air.

My glimpse of Bray, in the PRP corridor, was of little more than a looming shadow, and the photos I'd seen were of a beige Rotarian—an auditor or a pasty tax attorney—if not genial, then at least reassuringly bland. In person, up close, he was not. Cameras hadn't captured his crowding, aggressive presence, his heavy, sloping shoulders, long arms, and thick, hard torso. And they'd softened and civilized a face that in reality was brutal and crudely made—hacked from ice, and animated by contempt.

Bray wore rimless glasses, and behind them his eyes were flint splinters, and as jangly as Kyle's. His nose was a hatchet, and his mouth a bitter seam, too long and nearly lipless. His skin was pale even against the collar of his white shirt, but pink patches bloomed on his cheeks whenever the man on the phone spoke. Flushing isn't necessarily a symptom of hypertension, but I wondered if something wasn't ready to rupture beneath that ridged white scalp. He leaned forward as he listened, and his hands strangled one another.

Bray's frozen whisper rose to a growl, and he stabbed a thick finger at his phone. The pleading voice cut out, and Bray smoothed his tie. He read something on his computer screen and tapped at his keyboard.

“He's here?” he said without looking up.

Conti nudged past me and through the French doors. “Right here, Cap.”

Eyes still on his screen, Bray pointed at the chair in front of his desk.

I shook my head. “I've been sitting all day.”

Bray sighed and looked at Conti, who took my elbow. “That wasn't an invite,” Conti said, ushering me to the chair.

I sat, and Conti retreated to the patio. I watched Bray scan his monitor for a few minutes, and type in rapid bursts. The color was gone from his face, and so was any expression. When he looked at me again it was disconcerting, like locking eyes with a statue.

“Do you know why you're here?” he asked. His voice was low and rumbling now, and like an inquisitor's—uncomfortably close, but without a trace of warmth.

“I assume you were listening to my conversation with Mandy.” Bray shot a glance at the patio and Conti. “He didn't say anything,” I continued, “I'm a good guesser. So my guess is that you didn't like how Mandy was handling things, and decided to take over.”

Bray pursed his lips minutely. “My niece has strengths, but she doesn't always recognize when the time for conversation has passed. It's a limitation of her sex, I find.”

“Does that mean you didn't bring me here to talk? Because I thought that was the purpose of meetings—to converse.”

Bray lifted the highball glass from his desk, turned it in his hand, and extended it toward me. He tapped on the black shield, red maces, and Latin script printed underneath. “You know what this is?” he asked.

“Your company logo?”

He made a disdainful noise. “It's our family crest, and our motto—
sine missione.
I don't expect you know what the Latin means. It translates as—”

“ ‘Without quarter,' if I remember from high school.
Sine missione—
without quarter.”

Bray lifted an eyebrow. “My niece forgets that these aren't simply words. They are a fundamental principle of operation. A code of behavior. A way of being.
Without quarter.
”

“Did you bring me out here to threaten me, then? Because if that's the purpose—”

“My niece is the one who threatens, doctor, and promises. She's the one who pretends to listen to what people say, and pretends to care. She can even charm at times. In your case, she's threatened to bring pressures to bear on you if the child is not returned to our family immediately. And she's made promises as well—implied that certain benefits might accrue if you bring him home. I don't operate on those terms.

“Instead, I
act.
I don't
say
that harm may come—I
do
harm. And not only to you, doctor. So the
purpose
of this meeting is not to converse. It's for me to describe the mace that's poised above your head, and above the heads of those you care for.”

He checked his watch again, and took a sheet of paper from the small pile on his desk. He cleared his throat. “And so, as of nine-fifteen this morning, Southland Liberty Development Corporation became the sole owner of Kashmarian Properties, assuming its various assets and obligations, including and particularly the property which currently houses your clinic and is your residence. Southland Liberty, by the way, is a division of Eureka Pacific Real Property, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bray Real Estate Development. I—”

“You can't do that. My lease gives me the right of first refusal on any sale of the building. I'm supposed to receive notice of a proposed sale.”

“You have a lease with a corporation, doctor, and that hasn't changed. I simply bought that corporation. But by all means, consult your attorneys; take the matter up in court. My lawyers assured me this wasn't an issue, and I'm told Mr. Kashmarian made no mention of it at the closing—though the price he was paid may have left him speechless.”

“I—”

Bray held up his white palm. “It's in your interest to keep still, doctor. Now, in a separate transaction that took place late this morning, Southland Liberty also assumed ownership of a second property, a six-unit rental building on Roderick Road, in Glassell Park, the current residence of Mr. Luis Enrique Torres, who is your employee, and Mr. Arthur Silva, who is an information technology consultant. Your consultant.”

Bray rubbed his fingers across his marble chin and held up more papers. “We will return to Mr. Silva in a moment, but before we do, I direct your attention to these. These are two complaints, one against yourself that will be filed shortly with the Medical Board of California, and another against Lydia Torres, your nurse, that will be filed with the state Board of Registered Nursing. The complaint against you is made by a Flora Brickel, and alleges that you sexually assaulted her during a medical examination. The complaint against your nurse is made by a Patrick Goins, who alleges that Ms. Torres offered to sell him a dozen oxycodone tablets, though no doctor had prescribed the medication for him, and that she also offered to sell him a forged oxycodone prescription.”

I wasn't aware of standing, but suddenly I was up and halfway around the desk. Bray took a step back and Conti was on me, with an arm across my throat and a gun in my kidney.

“You don't want to go that way, doc,” he whispered in my ear.

I didn't fight, but I didn't move either. I stared at Bray. “That's bullshit! Flora's a mean drunk, who'll say anything for the price of a box of wine, and Goins is a pimp and a junkie. I haven't seen either one of them in over a year, and those complaints are nonsense.”

Bray smiled, small and nasty. “I'm sure. And the licensing boards may reach the same conclusion—eventually. But Tiger's people assure me that Ms. Brickel and Mr. Goins will remain committed to their stories. And who knows how many corroborating witnesses or other complainants may come forward in the meantime.” Bray looked at Conti. “Sit him down.”