Silent Partner

15

On Thursday morning I called Paul Kruse’s university office, not really knowing what I was going to say to him. He was out; the department secretary had no idea when he’d be back. I looked up his private office in the phone book. He had two: the one on Sunset and the one he’d leased for Sharon. No answer at either. Same old song- I’d become a virtuoso at playing it. I thought of calling the airlines again, didn’t relish handling more phone abuse. My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door- a messenger with a check from Trenton, Worthy and La Rosa and two large, gift-wrapped packages, also from the law firm.

I tipped him and after he left I opened the packages. One held a case of Chivas Regal, the other a case of Moët & Chandon.

A tip for me. As I wondered why, the phone rang.

“Did it get there?” asked Mal.

“A minute ago.”

“He-ey! Perfect timing or what? Don’t drink it all in one place.”

“Why the gratuity, Mal?”

“Seven-figure settlement is why. All that legal talent got together and decided to divvy up.”

“Moretti too?”

“Moretti especially. Insurance company’s putting in the biggest chunk. He called a couple of hours after your depo, didn’t even bother to play hard to get. After he tumbled, the rest crashed like dominoes. Denise and little Darren have just won the lottery, Doctor.”

“I’m happy for them. Try to see that both of them get some help.”

“Being rich should help, but sure, I’ll push her. By the way, after we settled on a figure, Moretti asked for your number. He was very impressed.”

“Flattered.”

“I gave it to him.”

“He’s wasting his time.”

“That’s what I figured. But it wasn’t my place to tell him to shove it. Do it yourself. I imagine the new you will enjoy it.”

At one o’clock I went out and made another try at grocery shopping. In the produce section my cart collided with one pushed by a tall auburn-haired woman.

“Oops, sorry.” I disengaged, moved aside, and edged over to the tomatoes.

“Sorry myself,” she said cheerfully. “Gets like the freeway in here sometimes, doesn’t it?”

The market was nearly empty but I said, “Sure does.”

She smiled at me with even white teeth and I took a closer look. Late thirties or well-preserved early forties, a thick shag of dark hair surrounding a roundish, pretty face. Snub nose and freckles, eyes the color of a choppy sea. She wore denim short shorts that advertised long, tan, runner’s legs, and a lavender T-shirt that did the same for high, sharp breasts. Around one ankle was a thin gold chain. Her nails were long and silver; the ones on the index fingers had been inlaid with diamond chips.

“What do you think of this?” she asked, handing me a cantaloupe. “Too firm to be ripe?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Just right, huh?” Big grin, one leg bent and resting against the other. She stretched and the T-shirt rose up, exposing a flat, bronze tummy.

I turned the melon in my palms and knocked on it a couple of times. “Just right.” When I handed it back, our fingers touched.

“I’m Julie.”

“Alex.”

“I’ve seen you here before, Alex. You buy lots of Chinese vegetables, don’t you?”

A shot in the dark- and a miss- but why make her feel bad? “Sure do.”

“Love that bok choy,” she said as she hefted the cantaloupe. Placing it in her basket, she turned her attention to half a pineapple wrapped in plastic. “Mmm, everything looks so good and ripe today. Yum.”

I bagged some tomatoes, selected a head of lettuce and a bunch of scallions, and began to wheel away.

“Lawyer, right?”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Um, let’s see… architect.”

“No, I’m a psychologist.”

“Are you really? I love psychologists. Mine helped me so much.”

“That’s great, Julie.” I began pushing my cart away. “Nice meeting you.”

“Listen,” she said. “I’m on this one-meal-a-day cleansing diet, just lunch- lots of complex carbohydrates- and I haven’t had it yet. I’m famished. There’s a pasta bar up the block. Would you care to join me?”

“Love to, Julie, but I can’t. Thanks, though.”

She waited for me to make a move. When I didn’t, her face fell.

“Nothing personal,” I said. “It’s just a bad time.”

“Sure,” she said, and snapped her head away. As I left I heard her mutter, “All the cute ones are faggots.”

At six Milo came by. Despite the fact that he wasn’t due back at the station until Monday, he was dressed for work- wilted seersucker suit, wash-and-wear shirt, atrocious tie, desert boots.

“Spent all day detecting,” he said, after getting himself a beer and remarking that I was a good boy for restocking my cupboards. “Hollywood Division, the coroner’s, Hall of Records, Building and Safety. Your lady doc’s a goddam phantom. I’d sure love to know what the hell’s going on.”

He sat down at the kitchen table. I settled across from him and waited for him to finish the beer.

“It’s as if she never was processed through anyone’s system,” he said. “I had to skulk around at Hollywood, pretend to be looking at something else while I checked for any file on her. Nothing. Not on paper or in the central computer. I couldn’t even find out who put the call in the night she died, or who took it. Zilch at the coroner’s, too- no autopsy report, no cold-storage log, death certificate, release. I mean, there’s cover-up and there’s cover-up but this is twilight zone stuff.”

He rubbed his hand over his face.

“One of the pathologists,” he said, “is a guy Rick knew in med school. Usually I can get him to talk to me off the record, give me results before he writes up the final report, speculate about stuff that he can’t put into writing. I thought he’d at least get me a copy of the report. No way. He made a big deal out of showing me there was no report, made it clear I shouldn’t ask for any favors on this one.”

“Same pathologist Del spoke to?”

“No. That was Itatani. I talked to him first, and it was the same thing. The fix has come down hard and heavy on this one. I confess to being intrigued.”

“Maybe it wasn’t suicide.”

“Any reason to think that?”

“She made lots of people angry.”

“Such as?”

I told him about the patient seductions, keeping Leslie Weingarden’s name out of it.

“Beautiful, Alex. Why didn’t you let me know about this in the first place?”

“Confidential source. I can’t give you any more details.”

“Jesus.” He got up, walked around, sat back down. “You ask me to dig you a hole, but won’t give me a shovel. Jesus, Alex.” He went to get another beer. “It’s bad enough being back in Realityville, without spinning my wheels all day.”

“I didn’t mean to send you on a wild-goose chase.”

“Honk honk.”

Then he waved his hand. “Nah, who am I kidding- I didn’t do it for you. I did it for myself. Trapp. And I still don’t think there’s any big whodunit here. Ransom killed herself. She was a maladjust- what you just told me corroborates that.”

Out on the ledge. I nodded. “Find out anything about the twin sister?”

“Nada. Another phantom. No Shirlee Ransom in any of our files or anyone else’s. If you came up with the name of that hospital you saw her at, we could search the business transfer and bankruptcy files. But even then, tracing individual patients would be a very long shot.”

“I can’t come up with it, because I never knew it, Milo. What about checking the Medi-Cal files?”

“You said Ransom was rich. Why would her sister be on Medi-Cal?”

“The parents were rich, but that was years ago. Money runs out. Also…”

“Also,” he said, “with all the lying she did, you don’t know what to believe.”

I nodded.

“Lie she did, pal. Like about owning the Jalmia house. The place is deeded to a corporation, just like the real estate agent said. A management company named Western Properties that’s owned by a holding company that’s owned by a savings-and-loan that’s owned by the Magna Corporation. I think that’s where it ends, but I wouldn’t swear to it.”

“Magna,” I said. “Isn’t that Leland Belding’s company?”

“Was till he died. No idea who owns it now.” He drank beer. “The old basket-case billionaire himself. Now a guy like that you could see putting on a big fix. But he’s been buried for… what? Fifteen years?”

“Something like that. Wasn’t his death disputed?”

“By who? The guy who wrote that hoax book? He killed himself after they exposed it, which is a pretty good indication he had something to be ashamed of. Even the conspiracy freaks didn’t believe that one. Anyway, whoever owns it, the corporation lives on- clerk told me it’s one of the biggest landowners west of the Mississippi, thousands of parcels. Ransom’s house happened to be one of them. With that kind of landlord, you can see why there’d be a quick sale.”

He finished his beer, got up to get a third.

“How’s your liver?” I asked.

“Peachy. Mom.” He made a point of guzzling. “Okay, so where were we? Magna, Medi-Cal files on the sister. All right, I guess it might be worth a try in terms of finding her, though I don’t know what the hell finding her’s going to tell us. How disabled was she?”

“Very.”

“Could she talk?”

“No.”

“Terrific.” He wiped foam from his lips. “I want to interview vegetables, I’ll go to a salad bar. What I am going to do is drive up Jalmia and talk to the neighbors. Maybe one of them phoned in the call, knows something about her.”

“About her and Trapp?”

“That would be nice.”

He went into the living room, turned on the TV, put his feet up, and watched the evening news. Within moments he was asleep. And I was remembering a black-and-white snapshot and thinking, despite what he’d said, about Shirlee Ransom. I went into the library and called Olivia Brickerman.

“Hello, darling,” she said, “I just got in and started tending to Prince Albert.”

“If I’m catching you in the middle of something-”

“What? Prunes and oat bran is something? Just hold on one second and I’ll be with you.”

When she came back on the line, she said, “There, he’s taken care of for the evening.”

“How’s Al doing?”

“Still the life of the party.”

Her husband, a grandmaster and former chess editor for the Times, was a white-haired, white-bearded man who looked like an Old Testament prophet and had been known to go for days at a time without talking.

“I keep him around for torrid sex,” she said. “So, how are you, handsome?”

“Just fine, Olivia. How about yourself? Still enjoying the private sector?”

“Actually, right now I’m feeling pretty abandoned by the private sector. You remember how I got into this hotshot group, don’t you? My sister’s boy, Steve, the psychiatrist, wanted to rescue me from civil service hell and set me up as benefits coordinator? It was fine for a while, nothing too stimulating, but the pay was good, no winos vomiting all over my desk, and I could walk to the beach during lunch. Then, all of a sudden, Stevie takes a position at some drug-abuse hospital out in Utah. He got hooked on skiing; now it’s a religion with him. ‘Gotta go with the snow, Aunt Livvy.’ That’s an M.D. talking. Yale. The guy who replaced him is a real yutz, very cold, thinks social workers are a notch below secretaries. We’re already having friction. So if you hear I’ve retired permanently, don’t be surprised. Enough about me. How’ve you been?”

“Fine.”

“How’s Robin?”

“Terrific,” I said. “Keeping busy.”

“I’m waiting for an invitation, Alex.”

“One of these days.”

“One of these days, eh? Just make sure you tie the knot while I’m still functioning and can enjoy it. Want to hear a terrible joke? What’s the good thing about Alzheimer’s disease?”

“What?”

“You get to meet new people every day. Isn’t that terrible? The yutz told it to me. You think there was an underlying message?”

“Probably.”

“That’s what I think. The S.O.B.”

“Olivia, I need a favor.”

“And here I thought you were after my body.”

I thought of Olivia’s body, which resembled Alfred Hitchcock’s, and couldn’t help but smile.

“That too,” I said.

“Big talk! What do you need, handsome?”

“Do you still have access to the Medi-Cal files?”

“You kidding? We’ve got Medi-Cal, Medicare, Short-Doyle, Workmen’s Comp, CCS, AFDC, FDI, ATD- every file you can imagine, alphabet soup. These guys are serious billers, Alex. They know how to squeeze all the juice out of a claim. The yutz went back to school after his residency, and got an M.B.A.”

“I’m trying to locate a former patient. She was disabled, needed chronic care, and was hospitalized at a small rehab place in Glendale- on South Brand. The place is no longer there and I can’t remember the name. Ring any bells?”

“Brand Boulevard? No. Lots of places don’t exist anymore. Everything’s going corporate- these smart boys just sold out to some conglomerate from Minneapolis. If she’s totally disabled, that would be ATD. If it’s partial and she worked, she could be on FDI.”

“ATD,” I said. “Could she be on Medi-Cal too?”

“Sure. What’s the name of this person?”

“Shirlee Ransom, with two e’s. Thirty-four years old, with a birthday in May. May 15, 1953.”

“Diagnosis?”

“She had multiple problems. The main diagnoses were probably neurological.”

“Probably? I thought she was your patient.”

I hesitated. “It’s complicated, Olivia.”

“I see. You’re not getting yourself in trouble again, are you?”

“Nothing like that, Olivia. It’s just that there are some confidentiality issues here. I’m sorry I can’t get into it and if it’s too much of a hassle-”

“Stop being such a Goody Two-shoes. It’s not like you’re asking me to commit a crime.” Pause. “Right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, in terms of getting hold of the data, our on-line access is limited to patients treated in California. If your Ms. Ransom is still being treated somewhere in the state, I should be able to get you the information immediately. If she moved out of state I’d have to tap into the master file in Minnesota, and that would take time, maybe even a week. Either way, if she’s getting government money, I’ll get you an address.”

“That simple?”

“Sure, everything’s on computer. We’re all on someone’s list. Some yutz with a giant mainframe has a record of what you and I ate for breakfast this morning, darling.”

“Privacy, the last luxury,” I said.

“You’d better believe it,” she said. “Package it; market it; make a billion.”