Guilt

CHAPTER 8

Milo’s request to find an old-timer got me shuffling the reminiscence Rolodex. The first two people I thought of turned out to be dead. My third choice was in her late eighties and still training residents at Western Pediatric Medical Center.

Salome Greiner picked up her own phone.

“Hi, Sal, it’s Alex Delaware.”

“Well, well,” she said. “What favor does Alex Delaware need?”

“Who says I need anything?”

“You don’t write, you don’t call, you don’t even email or text or tweet.” Her cackle had the dry confidence of someone who’d outlived her enemies. “And yes, I am still alluring but I don’t see you asking me on a hot date. What do you need?”

“I was wondering if you remembered Swedish Hospital.”

“That place,” she said. “Yes, I remember it. Why?”

“It’s related to a police case.”

“You’re still doing that,” she said.

“At times.”

“What kind of police case?”

I told her about the bones.

She said, “I read about it.” Chirps in the background. “Ahh, a page, need to run, Alex. Do you have time for coffee?”

“Where and when?”

“Here and … let’s say an hour. The alleged emergency won’t last long, just a hysterical intern. A man, I might add. Roll that in your sexist cigar, Sigmund.”

“I’ll be there,” I said, wondering why she didn’t just ask me to call back.

“Meet me in the doctors’ dining room-you still have your badge, no?”

“On my altar with all the other icons.”

“Ha,” said Salome. “You were always quick with a retort, that’s a sign of aggressiveness, no? But no doubt you hid it from patients, good psychologist that you are.”

Western Pediatric Medical Center is three acres of gleaming optimism set in an otherwise shabby section of East Hollywood. During the hospital’s hundred years of existence L.A. money and status migrated relentlessly westward, leaving Western Peds with patients dependent on the ebb and flow of governmental goodwill. That keeps the place chronically broke but it doesn’t stop some of the smartest, most dedicated doctors in the world from joining the staff. My time on the cancer ward comprised some of the best years of my life. Back in those days I rarely left my office doubting I’d done something worthwhile. I should have missed it more than I did.

The drive ate up fifty minutes, parking and hiking to the main building, another ten. The doctors’ dining room is in the basement, accessible through an unmarked door just beyond the cafeteria steam tables. Wood-paneled and quiet and staffed by white-shirted servers, it makes a good first impression. But the food’s not much different from the fare ladled to people without advanced degrees.

The room was nearly empty and Salome was easy to spot, tiny, nearly swallowed by her white coat, back to the wall at a corner table eating cottage cheese and neon-red gelatin molded into a daisy. A misshapen sludge-colored coffee mug looked like a preschool project or something dreamed up by the hottest Big Deal grad of the hippest Big Deal art school.

Salome saw me, raised the mug in greeting. I got close enough to read crude lettering on the sludge. To Doctor Great-Gramma.

A blunt-nailed finger pinged ceramic. “Brilliant, no? Fashioned by Number Six of Generation Four. She just turned five, taught herself to read, and is able to add single digits.”

“Congratulations.”

“The Gee-Gees are entertaining, but you don’t get as close as with the grandchildren. More like diversion from senility. Get yourself some coffee and we’ll chat.”

I filled a cup and sat down.

“You look the same, Alex.”

“So do you.”

“You lie the same, too.”

Dipping her head, she batted long white lashes. I’d seen a photo from her youth: Grace Kelly’s undersized sib. Her eyes were still clear, a delicate shade of aqua. Her hair, once dyed ash-blond, had been left its natural silver. The cut hadn’t changed: jaw-length pageboy, shiny as a freshly chromed bumper, bangs snipped architecturally straight.

Born to a wealthy Berlin family, she was one-quarter Jewish, which qualified her to enroll in Dachau. Escaping to New York in the thirties, she worked as a governess while attending City College night school, got into Harvard Med, trained at Boston Children’s where she did research on whooping cough. At thirty, she married a Chaucer scholar who never made much money but dressed as if he did. Widowed at fifty, she raised five kids who’d turned out well.

“Down to business,” she said. “Tell me more about that skeleton.”

I filled in a few more details.

“Ach,” she said. “A fully formed baby?”

“Four to six months old.”

“Intact.”

“Yes.”

“Interesting,” she said. “In view of the rumors about that place.”

She returned to her cottage cheese. It took me a moment to decode her remark.

“It was an abortion mill?”

“Not exclusively, my dear.”

“But …”

“If you were a girl from a well-to-do family who’d gotten into a predicament, the talk was Swedish could be exceptionally discreet. The founders were well-meaning Lutheran missionaries, seeking to help the poor. Over the years, any religious affiliation was dropped and priorities changed.”

“They went for-profit?”

“What else? One thing they didn’t have was a pediatrics department. Or a conventional maternity ward. So I really can’t see how a baby would ever come in contact with the place.”

I described the blue box, asked if she knew what it was.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing. We wrap our bodies in shrouds, then bag them. Typically, mortuaries pick them up, there’d be no reason to use solid brass containers.”

“Maybe it was designed for something else and whoever buried the baby improvised.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Yes, why not-how about storage for tissue samples? A precaution when dealing with infectious material. Back in those days all kinds of nasties were rampant-TB, polio. My old friend, pertussis. I don’t see bronze serving any particular antiseptic purpose but someone could’ve had a theory.”

“Makes sense. Did you know any of the staff?”

“My work was always here.”

Not really an answer. I said, “But you know quite a bit about the place.”

She smiled. “It’s not only psychologists who know how to listen.”

“Who did the talking?”

“A friend of mine attended there briefly.”

“Why only briefly?”

She used her fork to section a perfect cube of Jell-O. “I’d imagine something drew his attention elsewhere.”

“Was he bothered by what went on?”

She speared the Jell-O, ate, drank tea. “I can’t remember what was related to me back in the Jurassic era.”

“I’ll bet you can, Salome.”

“Then you lose the bet.”

“Was it the abortions?”

Carving and piercing another cube, she withdrew the tines slowly. Red liquid oozed onto her plate. “I don’t need to tell you, Alex. Those were different times. In any event, I can’t see any direct link between Swedish Hospital and a full-term baby.”

I said, “Eleanor Green.”

The fork wavered. She put it down. “Who’s that?”

“A pediatric nurse. She lived in the house where the bones were found.”

“If you already have a name, why all the circumlocution? Go and track her down.”

“She seems to have disappeared.”

“Nurse on the run.” She chuckled. “Sounds like a bad movie.”

I said, “The friend who told you about Swedish-”

“Is gone, Alex. Everyone from my wanton youth is gone, leaving me the last woman standing. That’s either my triumph or cause for clinical depression, take your pick.”

“No peds, no ob-gyn,” I said. “Besides abortions, what brought in the profit?”

“My guess would be the same kinds of things that bring it in now. Procedures-radiology, short-term surgery.”

“Were the attending physicians from any particular part of town?”

She stared at me. “I appreciate your persistence, darling, but you’re pressing me for data I simply don’t have. But if we’re still in a betting mood, I’d wager against Watts or Boyle Heights.” She took hold of the fork, speared the abandoned Jell-O. Savored. “How have things been going for you, my dear? Doing anything interesting other than police work?”

“Some court work,” I said.

“Custody?”

“Custody and injury. One more question, Sal: Did your friend ever mention a doctor who drove a Duesenberg?”

She blinked. “That’s a car.”

I said, “It’s a very expensive car, made in the thirties and forties.”

“I’ve never been much for automobiles, Alex. A fact that greatly distressed my boys when they wanted fancy-shmancy wheels and I insisted on no-frills functionality.” She looked at her watch. “Oops, need to get going.”

Standing on tiptoes, she pecked my cheek hard, marched away, stiff-shouldered, stethoscope swinging.

I called her name but she never broke step.