Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel (26 page)

“Sorry,” I said, “but I’m not pregnant. I’m an assistant district attorney and I’m curious. How long have you been outside this clinic doing this?”

I wondered if Carmen and Carlos had encountered this pair three months earlier.

Both took a step away from me. “We have a legal right to do this,” the man declared. “It’s our constitutional right. We have lawyers, too, you know.”

“I simply asked you a question.”

“We’re not talking to you!” the woman exclaimed. “We’re not breaking any laws. We’re good, churchgoing, God-fearing people. Instead of bothering us, you should be arresting those doctors in there.” They retreated.

The waiting room on the eighth floor was depressing. Abortion Can Be Lonely was written on a wall poster. The Eagles hit “Hotel California” was playing over a loudspeaker in the ceiling. There were about a dozen molded red plastic chairs with chrome legs along with two worn sofas. A dusty plastic fern was sitting in a corner and a warning sign that said No Smoking was posted nearby. A chipped wood veneer coffee table in the center of the room was covered with thumbed-through magazines and brochures about sexually transmitted diseases and birth control. I counted four women, in addition to the mother and daughter whom I’d seen outside. All were young, age twenty-two or under, I guessed. Two had boyfriends with them. The other two had girlfriends. A black trash can in the corner was filled with the antiabortion pamphlets that the activists outside had been distributing. At the far end of the oblong room was a metal door that could be opened only by a receptionist who was perched behind a thick window, much like a bank teller. I slipped a business card through a slot in the Plexiglas. The receptionist, a tired-looking woman in her fifties, eyeballed me. Standing, she walked to the right, disappearing from my sight. About a minute later, a thirty-something woman wearing a medical gown with a tie-dyed surgical cap came into view. I heard a loud
thunk
coming from inside the metal door, and the woman in the surgical outfit stuck her head out of the door and said, “C’mon in.”

I followed her to an office that was barely big enough for a metal desk, office chair, and two uncomfortable-looking metal folding chairs.

“I’m Doctor Joyce Cox,” she said, immediately firing up a cigarette. “What’s this about, Ms. Fox?”

I’d expected a male doctor. Dr. Cox was thin with closely cropped black hair. Her fingernails were cut short and not painted. Even though she was not wearing makeup, there was a natural rose tint in her cheeks.

“I’m investigating a rape,” I explained. “I believe the girl’s father brought her here for an abortion.”

“Let’s be clear,” Dr. Cox said. “I don’t do ‘abortions.’ I do ‘procedures.’ And I don’t kill babies no matter what those screwballs outside claim. I remove unwanted ‘tissues.’”

“I’m not here to judge you or debate you. I’m fully aware of the Supreme Court’s nineteen seventy-three decision in
Roe v. Wade
that confirmed a woman’s right to self-determination.” I took the medical release that Carmen had signed and handed it to her. “I’ve been authorized by Carmen to discuss any medical procedures that she may have undergone here.”

Dr. Cox scanned the sheet. “Confidentiality is important to us,” she said. “As you can imagine, our clients want to keep their records private. I need to make a call.”

She dialed a number that was taped to her desk phone and asked for someone named Sandra. Dr. Cox explained over the phone who I was and read Sandra the medical release word for word. I could tell from Dr. Cox’s end of the conversation that Sandra was a lawyer who apparently wasn’t too happy with any of this, but after she asked if the release had been signed by a witness (it had) and was notarized (it was), she instructed Dr. Cox to ask me a question.

“If I don’t comply, are you going to subpoena these records?” Dr. Cox asked.

I was getting tired of this rigmarole, so I reached over and took the phone out of Dr. Cox’s hand and said, “Sandra, I’m an assistant district attorney dealing with a rape case. Of course, I can subpoena your records and also make Doctor Cox testify, but at this juncture, I’m mostly fact seeking, so if you want to do this the easy way, then you’ll inform the doctor to cooperate.”

Without waiting for Sandra to respond, I handed the phone back to Dr. Cox, who spent the next several moments answering questions with one-word grunts such as “huh,” “yep,” “okay,” and “sure.”

When she finally hung up, she said, “I’ll be happy to answer your questions.”

I asked, “Do you remember Carmen Gonzales?”

“We see about sixty women a day here. I don’t remember names. The women who come here don’t come to make friends and chitchat. But I think I remember the woman who you’re speaking about. Did she have black hair, young, Latino, and rather striking—could be a model?”

“That’s her. How come you remember her?”

Dr. Cox took a very long drag on her cigarette, which she then smashed in a black ceramic ash tray.

“Great question. We do have lots of women come in, but in the two years I’ve worked at this clinic, there has been only one girl who came in with her father—that’s the girl you’re asking about. That’s why I remember her. Girls come in with their girlfriends or boyfriends—if the guy is decent enough to show up—and we get lots of mothers who bring in daughters. But no girl—no one—ever comes with a father. Except her.”

She walked from her desk to the door and called down to the receptionist in the booth. When the aide came to see what she wanted, Dr. Cox gave her the medical release. “Make a copy of this for our file and bring this girl’s records to me.”

Returning to her desk chair, Dr. Cox said, “You’re going to be disappointed if you think our records are going to help you. All that’s in them is a photo, basic information provided by the client, and my medical notes about the procedure. We simply do our job and send them home.”

“There are no follow-up calls, no visits by social workers, no detailed interviews?”

“Ms. Fox,” Dr. Cox replied, “most of our patients never want to see or hear from us again. We explain the procedure, they sign the paperwork, and that’s it. Four to five hours tops and they’re gone. If we knocked on their doors later, some of these women would be mortified. Maybe they’re married and don’t want another mouth to feed. Maybe they’re cheating. Maybe they’re single. Maybe they’re unmarried teens. I’m not their therapist.”

“Was there anything about Carmen Gonzales that was different—besides her father being with her?”

Dr. Cox paused and then said, “I remember the father insisted on staying with his daughter during the entire procedure. He wouldn’t leave her alone, not for a second. Sometimes we have mothers do that, but I thought it was odd that a father would want to be in the room when we did the actual procedure.”

It was coming together just as I had suspected. Carlos had not been worried about Carmen’s health. He had been exercising total control to keep her from revealing the multiple rapes and scars.

“Did she appear frightened of her father?” I asked.

With an exasperated look, Dr. Cox said, “How would I know? Most of the teenage girls who come here are emotional wrecks. All I can tell you is that he didn’t hold her hand or try to comfort her. He seemed angry, suspicious, but I didn’t find that out of character given that he was the father. My first impression was that her boyfriend had gotten her pregnant. He mentioned that his wife had died. Suicide, he said. But then I did get a little bit suspicious.”

“Why?”

“He did all the talking for her. It’s not my job to speculate but it just seemed odd to me.”

I wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easy. “Did you suspect incest?”

“Like I said, I just thought it was odd behavior for a father.”

“But not odd enough to call anyone?”

Dr. Cox gave me an icy stare as her assistant walked in with a thin file folder. Dr. Cox opened it, withdrew a Polaroid picture, and handed it to me.

Carmen Gonzales seemed distraught. Her eyes looked frightened. Yet even without makeup and with uncombed hair, she remained striking.

Dr. Cox said, “She’s the one I remember.”

I quickly read the five pages in her file. She’d been given blood and urine tests at 9:45 a.m. to confirm she was pregnant and had met with a counselor who questioned her about why she wanted an abortion. According to the counselor’s notes, Carlos Gonzales had been present during questioning. Two hours later, after Dr. Cox had been satisfied that Carmen was in her first trimester, she authorized the procedure. With her father at her side, Carmen had been taken into a room and asked if she wanted to be asleep or awake. She’d chosen to be knocked out. Even then, Carlos refused to leave. The sixteen-year-old had been given an intravenous injection of Brevital and her legs had been put in stirrups, just as if she were about to give birth. The actual abortion had taken only two minutes. Her body had discharged the fetus without complication. The clinic had charged her father $150, which he’d paid in cash. Father and daughter had departed before four p.m. That was it.

“Is there any way to tell who the father of the fetus was?” I asked.

“No, we don’t keep removed tissues,” Dr. Cox replied. “Are you going to subpoena me if you file a rape charge?”

I was truthful. “Probably.” The medical records should have been enough, but sometimes testimony has more impact, especially if I asked Dr. Cox about Carlos Gonzales’s dominating presence.

“Look, if you call me, can you at least not ask me to reveal my home address? These zealots outside are always trying to discover where I live. I’ve had to move four times since I took this job. They follow me almost every night. They put out flyers with my picture on them calling me a Baby Killer. Neighbors always like living next to a doctor, but not one who does procedures.”

“Why do you do this then?”

“Ms. Fox,” she replied, “do you think Carmen Gonzales was raped by her father?”

“Absolutely. Multiple times.”

“And if I had not removed that tissue from her, and a baby had been born, a baby of incest, a baby of rape, with a brutalized teenage mother and an incestuous father, what sort of life would that baby have?”

Not waiting for my reply, she said, “I don’t think every piece of tissue needs to become an unwanted and unloved baby. Now let me ask you a question.”

“That’s fair,” I said.

“You a Catholic?”

“Actually, I am.”

“A third of the women who come here are Catholic. They’re going against their church’s adamant position by coming here. That same church forbids contraception. Those antiabortionists outside claim the Bible is against abortion. But sometimes I wonder how many of them actually have read the Bible or understand it.”

She lit another cigarette and said, “You familiar with Deuteronomy, chapter twenty-three, verse one, Ms. Fox?”

“No, I think the nuns skipped over that one when I was in school.”

“It says a man with smashed testicles and a cut-off penis shouldn’t be allowed inside a church.” She blew out a puff of smoke. “I’d like to see priests standing at the front doors checking that out. My point is there’s lots of stuff in the Bible that doesn’t make sense. No one should judge me or what I do.”

Standing, she said, “Don’t call me as a witness unless you really need me. The receptionist will let you out. I have a procedure to do.”

29

The New York field office of the FBI is located on the twenty-third floor at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan and is one of three field offices overseen by an assistant FBI director rather than a Special Agent in Charge. That’s because New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., are the largest of the bureau’s fifty-six field operations.