Blood Test

5

The next morning I drove east on Sunset under a sky streaked with tin-strip clouds and thought about last night’s dreams — the same kind of spooky, murky images that had plagued my sleep when I first started working in oncology. It had taken a good year to chase those demons away and now I wondered if they’d ever been gone or had just been lurking in my subconscious, ever ready for mischief.

Raoul’s world was madness and I found myself resenting him for drawing me back into it.

Children weren’t supposed to get cancer.

Nobody was supposed to get cancer.

The diseases that fell under the domain of the marauding crab were ultimate acts of histologic treason, the body assaulting, battering, raping, murdering itself in a feeding frenzy of rogue cells gone berserk.

I slipped a Lenny Breau cassette into the tape deck and hoped that the guitarist’s fluid genius would take my mind far away from plastic rooms and bald children and one little boy with henna-colored curls and a Why Me? look in his eyes. But I could see his face and the faces of so many other sick children I’d known, weaving in and out of the arpeggios, ephemeral, persistent, begging for rescue…

Given that state of mind, even the sleaze that heralded the entry into Hollywood seemed benign, the half-naked whores nothing more than big-hearted welcome wagoners.

I drove through the last mile of boulevard in a blue funk, parked the Seville in the doctors’ lot, and walked through the front door of the hospital with my head down, warding off social overtures.

I climbed the four flights to the oncology ward and was halfway down the hall before hearing the ruckus. Opening the door to the Laminar Airflow Unit turned up the volume.

Raoul stood, bug-eyed, his back to the modules, alternately cursing in rapid Spanish and screaming in English at a group of three people:

Beverly Lucas held her purse across her chest like a shield, but it wouldn’t stay in one place because the hands that clutched it were shaking. She stared at a distant point beyond Melendez-Lynch’s white-coated shoulder and bit her lip, straining not to choke on anger and humiliation.

The broad face of Ellen Beckwith bore the startled, terrified look of someone caught in the midst of a smarmy, private ritual. She was primed for confession, but unsure of her crime.

The third member of the audience was a tall, shaggy-haired man with a hound dog face and squinty, heavy-lidded eyes. His white coat was unbuttoned and worn carelessly over faded jeans and a cheap-looking shirt of the sort that used to be called psychedelic but now looked merely garish. A belt with an oversized buckle in the shape of an Indian chief bit into a soft-looking middle. His feet were large and the toes were long, almost prehensible. I could tell because he’d encased them, sockless, in Mexican huaraches. His face was clean-shaven and his skin was pale. The shaggy hair was medium brown, streaked with gray, and it hung to his shoulders. A puka shell necklace ringed a neck that had begun to turn to wattle.

He stood impassively, as if in a trance, a serene look in the hooded eyes.

Raoul saw me and stopped his harangue.

“He’s gone, Alex.” He pointed to the plastic room where I’d played checkers less than twenty-four hours ago. The bed was empty.

“Removed from under the noses of these so-called professionals.” He dismissed the trio with a contemptuous wave of his hand.

“Why don’t we talk about it somewhere else,” I suggested. The black teenager in the unit next door was peering out through the transparent wall with a puzzled look on his face.

Raoul ignored me.

“They did it. Those quacks. Came in as radiation techs and kidnapped him. Of course, if anyone had possessed the good sense to read the chart to find out if radiologic studies had been ordered, they might have prevented this — felony!”

He was boring in on the fat nurse now, and she was on the verge of tears. The tall man came out of his trance and tried to rescue her.

“You can’t expect a nurse to think like a cop.” His speech was just barely tinged with a Gallic lilt.

Raoul wheeled on him.

“You! Keep your damned comments to yourself! If you had an iota of understanding of what medicine is all about we might not be in this mess. Like a cop! If that means exercising vigilance and care to insure a patient’s safety and security, then she damn well does have to think like a cop! This isn’t an Indian reservation, Valcroix! It’s life-threatening disease and invasive procedures and using the brain that God gave us to make inferences and deductions and decisions, for God’s sake! It’s not managing a reverse isolation unit like a bus terminal, where people come in and out and tell you they’re someone they’re not and whisk your patient away from under your lazy, sloppy, careless nose!”

The other doctor’s response was a cosmic smile as he zoned back out into never-never land.

Raoul glared at him, ready to pounce. The gangly black boy watched the confrontation, eyes wide and frightened, from behind his plastic screen. A mother visiting her child in the third module stared, then drew the curtains protectively.

I took Raoul by the elbow and escorted him to the nurses’ office. The Filipino nurse was there, charting. After one look at us, she grabbed her paperwork and left.

He picked up a pencil from the desk and snapped it between his fingers. Tossing the broken pieces to the floor, he kicked them into a corner.

“That bastard! The arrogance, to debate me in front of ancillary staff — I’ll terminate his fellowship and get rid of him once and for all.”

He ran a hand over his brow, chewed on his mustache, and tugged at his jowls until the swarthy flesh turned rosy.

“They took him,” he said. “Just like that.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“What I want is to find those Touchers and strangle them with my bare hands and—”

I picked up the phone. “You want me to call Security?”

“Ha! A bunch of senile alcoholics who need help finding their own flashlights—”

“What about the police? It’s an abduction now.”

“No,” he said quickly. “They won’t do a damned thing and it will be a freakshow for the media.”

He found Woody’s chart and leafed through it, hissing.

“Radiology — why would I schedule x-rays for a child whose treatment is up in the air! It makes no sense. Nobody thinks anymore. Automatons, all of them!”

“What do you want to do about it?” I repeated.

“Damned if I know,” he admitted and slapped the chart on the desktop.

We sat in glum silence for a moment.

“They’re probably halfway to Tijuana,” he said, “on a pilgrimage to some damned Laetrile clinica — did you ever see those places? Murals of crabs on filthy adobe walls. That’s their salvation! Fools!”

“It’s possible they haven’t gone anywhere. Why don’t we check?”

“How?”

“Beverly has the number of the place they’re staying. We can call and find out if they’ve checked out.”

“Play detective — yes, why not? Call her in.”

“Be civil to her, Raoul.”

“Fine, fine.”

I beckoned the social worker away from a powwow with Valcroix and Ellen Beckwith, who gave me the kind of look usually reserved for plague carriers.

I told her what I wanted and she nodded wearily.

Once in the office she avoided looking at Raoul and silently dialed the phone. There was a brief exchange with the motel clerk, after which she hung up and said:

“The guy was real uncooperative. He hasn’t seen them today but they haven’t checked out. The car’s still there.”

“If you’d like,” I offered, “I’ll go there, try to make contact with them.”

Raoul consulted his appointment book.

“Meetings until three. I’ll cancel out. Let’s go.”

“I don’t think you should be there, Raoul.”

“That’s absurd, Alex! I’m the physician! This is a medical issue—”

“Only nominally. Let me handle it.”

His thick brows curled and fury rose in the coffee bean eyes. He started to say something but I cut him off.

“We have to at least consider the possibility,” I said softly, “that this whole thing may be due to a conflict between the family and you.”

He stared at me, making sure he’d heard right, purpled, choked on his anger, and threw up his hands in despair.

“How could you even—”

“I’m not saying it’s so. Just that we need to consider it. What we want is that boy back in treatment. Let’s maximize the probability of success by covering all contingencies.”

He was mad as hell but I’d given him something to think about.

“Fine. There’s no shortage of things for me to do anyway. Go yourself.”

“I want Beverly along. Of anyone she’s got the best feel for the family.”

“Fine, fine. Take Beverly. Take whomever you want.”

He straightened his tie and smoothed nonexistent wrinkles in the long white coat.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, my friend,” he said, straining to be cordial, “I’ll be off to the lab.”

The Sea Breeze Motel was on west Pico, set amid cheap apartments, dusty storefronts, and auto garages on a dingy slice of the boulevard just before L.A. surrenders to Santa Monica. The place was two stories of pitted chartreuse stucco and drooping pink wrought-iron railing. Thirty or so units looked down upon an asphalt motor court and a swimming pool half-filled with algae-clogged water. The only breeze evident was the steaming layer of exhaust fumes that rose from the oily pavement as we pulled in beside a camper with Utah plates.

“Not exactly five star,” I said, getting out of the Seville. “And far from the hospital.”

Beverly frowned.

“I tried to tell them that when I saw the address but there was no convincing the father. Said he wanted to be near the beach where the air was good. Even launched into a speech about how the whole hospital should move to the beach, how the smog was harmful to patients. I told you, the man is weird.”

The front office was a glass booth on the other side of a warped plywood door. A thin, bespectacled Iranian with the numb demeanor of a habitual opium smoker sat behind a chipped, hinged plastic counter poring over the Motor Vehicle Code. A revolving rack of combs and cheap sunglasses took up one corner, a low table covered with ancient copies of throwaway travel magazines squatted in the other.

The Iranian pretended not to notice us. I cleared my throat with tubercular fervor and he looked up slowly.

“Yes?”

“What room is the Swope family in?”

He looked us over, decided we were safe, said, “Fifteen,” and returned to the wondrous world of road signs.

There was a dusty brown Chevy station wagon parked in front of Room 15. Except for a sweater on the front seat and an empty cardboard box in the rear deck, the car was empty.

“That’s theirs,” said Beverly. “They used to leave it parked illegally by the front entrance. One time when the security guard put a warning sticker on the windshield, Emma ran out crying about her sick child and he tore it up.”

I knocked on the door. No answer. Knocked again harder. Still no response. The room had a single grimy window, but the view within was blocked by oilcloth curtains. I knocked one more time, and when the silence was unbroken, we returned to the office.

“Excuse me,” I said, “do you know if the Swopes are in their room?”

A lethargic shake of the head.

“Do you have a switchboard?” Beverly asked him.

The Iranian raised his eyes from his reading and blinked.

“Who are you? What do you want?” His English was heavily accented, his manner surly.

“We’re from Western Pediatric Hospital. The Swopes’ child is being treated there. It’s important that we speak to them.”

“I don’t know anything.” He shifted his glance back to the vehicle code.

“Do you have a switchboard?” she repeated.

A barely visible nod.

“Then please ring the room.”

With a theatrical sigh, he dragged himself up and walked through a door at the rear. A minute later he reappeared.

“Nobody there.”

“But their car’s there.”

“Listen, lady, I don’t know cars. You want a room, okay. Otherwise, leave alone.”

“Call the police, Bev,” I said.

Somehow he must have sneaked in a hit of amphetamine because his face came alive suddenly and he spoke and gesticulated with renewed vigor.

“What for police? What for you cause trouble?”

“No trouble,” I said. “We just need to talk to the Swopes.”

He threw up his hands.

“They take walk — I see them. Walking that way.” He pointed east.

“Unlikely. They’ve got a sick child with them.” To Bev: “I saw a phone at the gas station on the corner. Call it in as a suspicious disappearance.”

She moved toward the door.

The Iranian lifted the hinged counter and came around to our side.

“What do you want? Why you make trouble?”

“Listen,” I told him, “I don’t care what kind of nasty little games you’ve got going on in the other rooms. We need to talk to the family in fifteen.”

He pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket. “Come, I show you, they not here. Then you leave me alone, okay?”

“It’s a deal.”

His pants were baggy and they flapped as he strode across the asphalt, muttering and jingling the keys.

A quick turn of the wrist and the lock released. The door groaned as it opened. We stepped inside. The desk clerk blanched, Beverly whispered Ohmigod, and I fought down a rising feeling of dread.

The room was small and dark and it had been savaged.

The earthly belongings of the family Swope had been removed from three cardboard suitcases, which lay crushed on one of the twin beds. Clothing and personal articles were strewn about: lotion, shampoo, and detergent leaked from broken bottles in viscous trails across the threadbare carpeting. Female undergarments hung limply over the chain of the plastic swag lamp. Paperback books and newspapers had been shredded and scattered like confetti. Open cans and boxes of food were everywhere, the contents oozing out in congealing mounds. The room reeked of rot and dead air.

Next to the bed was a patch of carpet that was clear of litter, but far from empty. It was filled with a dark brown amoebalike stain half a foot across.

“Oh no,” said Beverly. She staggered, lost her balance, and I caught her.

You don’t have to spend much time in a hospital to know the sight of dried blood.

The Iranian’s face was waxen. His jaws worked soundlessly.

“Come on,” I took hold of his bony shoulders and guided him out, “we have to call the police now.”

It’s nice to know someone on the force. Especially when that someone is your best friend and won’t assume you’re a suspect when you call in a crime. I bypassed 911 and called Milo’s extension directly. He was in a meeting but I pushed a bit and they called him out.

“Detective Sturgis.”

“Milo, it’s Alex.”

“Hello, pal. You pulled me out of a fascinating lecture. It seems the west side has become the latest hot spot for PCP labs — they rent glitzy houses and park Mercedes in the driveway. Why I need to know all about it is beyond me but tell that to the brass. Anyway, what’s up?”

I told him and he turned businesslike immediately.

“All right. Stay there. Don’t let anyone touch anything. I’ll get everything moving. There’s gonna be a lot of people converging so don’t let the girl get spooked. I’ll crap out of this meeting and be there as soon as I can but I may not be the first, so if someone gives you a hard time, drop my name and hope they don’t give you a harder time because you did. Bye.”

I hung up and went to Beverly. She had the drained, lost look of a stranded traveler. I put my arm around her and sat her down next to the clerk, who’d progressed to muttering to himself in Farsi, no doubt reminiscing about the good old days with the Ayatollah.

There was a coffee machine on the other side of the counter and I went through and poured three cups. The Iranian took his gratefully, held it with both hands, and gulped noisily. Beverly put hers down on the table, and I sipped as we waited.

Five minutes later we saw the first flashing lights.