Dr. Knox (4 page)

It was ten when Nora dropped me at home, and eleven when I went out again. The marine layer had burned off by then, and it was brighter and hotter on the street. I squinted through my sunglasses, tucked the still photos from the clinic video into the pocket of my shorts, and locked the door behind me.

My neighborhood, a drunken trapezoid bounded roughly by the L.A. River in the east, Main Street in the west, and Fourth and Tenth Streets in the north and south—where the shiny new downtown faded into the warehouse district and Skid Row, and the main veins of gentrification dwindled to gritty, artsy capillaries—was an odd sort of small town, and definitely not of the Norman Rockwell variety. Not unless you accessorized his Main Street with coils of razor wire, security cameras, barred windows, and roll-down metal curtains, punctuated the blocks with trash-strewn lots and fire-gutted buildings, and for his rosy kids and smug burghers swapped battered working folks, streetwalkers, dopers, and dusty platoons of the homeless pushing mounded shopping carts or slumped in doorways. It was a decidedly unlovely place, as distant from the glossy Westside, or even from freshly scrubbed Pershing Square, as it was from Oslo or Mars. And there was nothing easy or secure in the lives of the townspeople, under siege as they were from a moribund economy, La Migra, dope-dealing street gangs and their clients, the relentless tide of gentrification, and their own diseases, demons, and bad, bad luck. But still they hung on. Some of the villagers recognized their local doctor; some even waved as I passed.

My first stop was Carmen's—a low cinder-block bunker around the corner from the clinic, and tucked between a sheet metal shop and a fabric wholesaler. It was painted in horizontal bands of yellow and parrot green, had two red metal doors, and a sign above advertising sandwiches, soda, beer, and an ATM. I stopped at the outdoor counter and spoke to Mateo through the service window.

Mateo owned the place, did the cooking, and came to see me about his hypertension. Sometimes he brought his wife, who was diabetic, or his mother-in-law, Carmen, who was mildly asthmatic and awesomely mean. Mateo made a wicked iced coffee—pitch black, but smooth—and he poured it over plenty of ice in a tall plastic cup. He pushed a jar of sugar syrup through the window, along with my coffee and a straw.

“¿
Qué tal,
doc?” he said, and his heavy brown face creased into a smile.

“I'm all right, Mateo. How about you?”

Mateo nodded. “Still here.”

“That's what it's all about. How's Ana, and her mom?”

“Ana's good—trying to get exercise and watch the diet, like you said. And Carmen…” Mateo shrugged.

I smiled at him and took the photos from my pocket. “Maybe you can help me out,” I said. “I'm looking for a woman who came by the clinic yesterday. She left something behind, and I'm trying to get it back to her.” I slid the photos of the woman and the boy across the counter.

Mateo pulled a pair of smudged half-glasses from his apron and perched them on his nose. He squinted. After a while he shook his head.

“How about these guys?” I asked, and passed photos of the two crew cuts across the counter.

Mateo squinted harder. “Sorry, doc. Don't know
los soldados
either.”

“You think they're soldiers?”

Another shrug. “The hair, the big necks, kinda mean-looking—that's what I think of.”

I took back the prints and stared at the two men.
Los soldados.
I thanked Mateo and tried to pay for the coffee. He refused my money and refilled my cup, and I continued down the street.

The next few hours were much the same, except hotter and without free drinks. At soup kitchens, shelters, bodegas, check-cashing joints, building-supply yards, and wholesalers of fruits, vegetables, and candy, I exchanged greetings and small talk, heard about symptoms, looked in a few throats, palpated some necks, bellies, and limbs, and passed my pictures around. And people studied them, shook their heads, and said, “Sorry, doc,” in many languages.

Under the relentless sun, the city was a baking brick: hard, brown, parched, and cracked. I bought a lime Jarritos at a bodega on Eighth Street and found some meager shade to stand in. I drank the soda and held the bottle to my neck and looked across the street. A line of the homeless, ten of them, genders obscured by layers of clothing, sheltered beneath the frayed awning of a boarded storefront. Some held signs, crudely scrawled on cardboard, that asserted past lives—
OIF veteran;
Five kids;
Fry cook
—advertised a willingness to work for food, or simply pleaded:
Need money food home NEED HELP.
At the end of the line, the smallest figure held the largest sign. It wasn't hand printed, but a collage of words and letters cut from newspapers and magazines. The text twisted this way and that, and finally wound into an illegible knot—an incoherent ransom note from a mind held hostage by itself.

I shook my head, then finished my soda and went back to the grocery. I returned my empty bottle and bought ten gallon-jugs of water. It took me two trips across Eighth Street to deliver them. It wasn't world-changing, I knew; improving the next few hours for them was the most I could hope for. Another holding action. Sometimes it was the only action to be had.

I sighed and pulled out my phone. I called Lydia and asked about the boy.

“Of course he's okay, doctor,” Lydia said. Her voice was low, and I could hear television in the background. “What do you think—I wouldn't call if there was a problem? He awoke at eight last night, a little disoriented but with good vitals, and an appetite. I kept his diet bland, but let him have as much as he wanted. He went back to bed around ten-thirty, and slept till nine this morning.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said he'd gotten sick, and the lady he was with brought him to the clinic. I said we'd look out for him until she comes back.”

“Did he say anything? Did he tell you his name?”

“He says his name is Alex.”

“Just Alex?”

“That's all he says when you ask.”

“So he speaks English.”

“Yes, what little he says is in English.”

“Did he say anything about the woman?”

“He calls her
mamá.
”

“I told you.”

“But he doesn't say anything else about her—no name or anything—and he shuts down when you try to talk about her.”

“And nothing about where he lives?”

Lydia sighed. “He's looking at cartoons now, doctor. I'm no detective like you, but I didn't think it was the time to interrogate him. If you want to come over…”

“I'm out trying to find his mother now.”

Lydia sighed. “Try hard,” she said. “The boy is not in a good way.”

“You said he was doing okay.”

“Physically he's fine, but there's something else going on. I'm pretty sure this isn't the first trouble he's had.”

“Meaning what?”

“I'm talking about his reactions. The kid doesn't cry, he doesn't ask any questions, he does what he's told, but otherwise doesn't say a word. He pretends to watch the cartoons, but he doesn't laugh—he doesn't even smile. And the whole time he's really watching me—like, every move I make.”

“Watchful, guarded, lack of affect…”

“You got it—the kid's seen hard times before. I don't know if it was neglect or abuse or what, but this isn't his first trauma. He needs help.”

“Shit,” I whispered.

“Exactly, doctor.”

By two I hadn't found Alex's mother, or much else, and the heat and glare were like a vise as I jaywalked on Agatha Street. There was a knot of adolescent boys on the far corner, leaning against a pickup with a red metallic paint job—gang kids, on break from dealing rock and rolling addicts on the nearby blocks. The guy in the driver's seat, scarcely more than a kid himself, was their boss: the shot caller, the headman of the crossroads. Squads like this could be found at intersections around the neighborhood—legations from gangs across the city, all drawn by the endless supply of victims.

I knew some of the shot callers, though not this one. I could feel the weight of his gaze—the gauging of effort and payoff—as I crossed, and adrenaline bubbled in my veins. The kids watched me and laughed derisively. I didn't look, but I didn't look away. Psychosis wafted off them like cheap cologne as I passed, and I was reminded of child soldiers I'd seen years ago, driving by in trucks, in clouds of dust and madness. As I walked by, I thought of what Nora said about boredom, and what Sutter said about my fondness for rooms full of guns, and shook loose another memory.

It was of driving, with my mother. I was eleven, and it was summer and night—quite late—and my mother had only just returned from the hospital; my father was still there. My mother was restless and fidgety when she walked through the door, irritable and brusque as she paid the sitter, pacing the house afterward, from room to room, chain smoking. Finally, she picked up her keys and her purse and said that she needed air and was going for a drive. She paused at the door to ask if I wanted to go along. I didn't need to change out of my pajamas, she said, or even put on shoes.

It was a warm night, cloudless, with a moon, and the wind was deafening when she put all the windows down. The road was fresh-paved—still smelled of tar—and was like a black carpet as it unspooled, empty and smooth, through the Connecticut hills. There was one stretch, a mile or more long, of blind curves and quick rises and dips through pasture and woods; with the right touch on the gas and on the wheel, my mother said, we could fly. We drove its length dozens of times that night, laughing when we felt the tires lift, shrieking at the swoops and sudden drops, screaming and crying in elated terror when she put the headlights out and the fields and trees turned silver, and when she took her hands off the wheel.

Nora and Sutter weren't quite right: I wasn't chasing trouble, or chasing off boredom, but maybe, sometimes, I was chasing something else. I remembered the body rush of that ride—could still feel it sometimes—the hurtle and plunge, the crazy swing between thrill and panic. And sometimes I could smell her eucalyptus soap and her cigarettes. I let out a long breath as I left the gangbangers behind.

The photos in my pocket were damp and wrinkled, and so was I, and I was thinking about another iced coffee when I rounded the next corner and saw the slack-bellied silhouette of Gary Fleck in the doorway of his auto body shop. He was sucking on a cigarette, and when he saw me he took a last, furtive puff and flicked his smoke to the curb.

“Dr. Knox,” Gary said. “I seen you marchin' around all day. You collectin' for somethin'?” His voice was raspy and, thanks to the emphysema, empty of force. He had sallow skin and blasted capillaries across his nose and cheeks. His khaki shirt had stains down the front, and someone else's name over the pocket. His thick, stained hands grasped each other nervously.

“Those things will kill you, Gary.”

“So you keep tellin' me.”

“But you keep on smoking.”

“I know my limits, doc. I quit the smokes, I'm gonna pick up a bottle again—simple as that. Fifteen years sober won't mean shit. And the booze'll kill me quicker than the ciggies will, and maybe not just me.”

Gary's face sagged with his sad insight, and I knew a lecture was worse than pointless. I patted his arm. “I'm the one who needs help today,” I said, and I took out my wilted photos.

Gary looked relieved, and took them. He squinted and brought each one almost to the tip of his nose. He shook his head. “They haven't been here, not when I've been around, but I was at jury duty most of last week. Lemme ask Scotty.”

I remembered Scotty as the nervous kid whom Gary had dragged into the clinic a year back, with a suppurating puncture wound in his right calf. Gary pushed through the dirty glass door to his shop and I followed.

It was dim inside, but no cooler. An exhaust fan was working to little effect, and the smells of epoxy and paint were heavy in the air. There was a garage bay to the right, and Scotty was there, studying the crumpled door panel of a black Lincoln. Gary waved him over.

Scotty wiped his hands on a rag as he approached. He was skinnier than I remembered, and the ink on his arms was new, but the big eyes, big ears, and bobbing Adam's apple were the same, as was the confounded expression.

“Check these out for Dr. Knox,” Gary said. “Tell him if you seen any of these people around.”

Scotty didn't ask why, but took the stills and peered at them. And slowly nodded. “I seen her and the kid too, but not around here.”

It took a moment for it to sink in. I wiped a hand across my damp forehead. “Where and when, Scotty?”

“A few days ago—must've been Wednesday. I noticed her 'cause of the kid, and 'cause she was all banged up—like she was in an accident. That why she came to see you?”

I shook my head. “Where did you see them?”

“That's the other reason I noticed: you don't see moms or kids coming out of that place.”

“What place?”

“A couple blocks over—on Sixth, near Town. You know, that hotel place—the Harney it's called.”

Gary laughed out loud. “Jesus, Scotty, the frickin'
Horney
? I wouldn't call that a hotel, boy—they rent their rooms by the quarter-hour.”

Scotty blushed. “I know that—it's why I noticed 'em.”

“Oh, he
knows,
doc,” Gary said. “Kid knows all about the girls over there. I told him, he's gonna catch something, he keeps going there, but he don't listen.”

“You think the woman and her son were staying there?” I asked.

Scotty shrugged. “I saw them coming out, and then I saw them like an hour later, on the way back in. She was carrying a grocery bag, like from a bodega.”