The Clinic

34

Next stop: Mulholland Drive.

The road was beautiful in the daylight, the house behind the electric gate a brown-brick contemporary, sparkling with color around the borders- flowers invisible in the dark.

I'd kept my sweat-stained T-shirt on but had substituted jeans for the running shorts. In my hand was a bag picked up from a pharmacy in Beverly Hills an hour ago. I'd bought toothpaste and dental floss and vitamin C to get it. The Seville, parked just down the road, was old enough to pass for a delivery vehicle, I supposed. I was too old a delivery boy for most cities but L.A. was full of underachievers.

I rang the bell on the gatepost. After a moment's delay a voice came through the speaker, “Yeah?”

“Delivery.”

“Hold on.”

A few minutes later, the front door opened and a man in a black shirt and black jeans came out, stared at me, and approached in a flat-footed, plodding walk.

He was in his late thirties, short and wide, with thinning black hair on top, the side wisps tied into a barely long-enough ponytail. Bushy sideburns longer than Milo's, oily skin that shone, wire-rimmed glasses, pummeled features.

Sleepy expression, except for little piggy eyes that never left me.

The black shirt was silk, oversized, untucked, and he kept his right hand in front of him, as if protecting something. Plainclothes cops wore their shirts out to conceal guns and I supposed thugs did the same.

“Yeah?”

“Delivery for Mr. Kruvinski.”

I held the druggist's bag out.

“What's in it?”

“Medicine, I guess.”

“He gets his medicine from his doctor.”

I tried to look apathetic.

“Lemme see.”

I gave him the bag and he pulled out a small amber bottle filled with yellow tablets. The right color, but the wrong shape. My Physicians' Desk Reference chart showed Imuran as a scored doublet, these were singles. Vitamin Cs. Black shirt didn't react. As I'd hoped, not observant.

The label was a work of art. I'd steamed off an old one for penicillin, whited out all the specifics but left the pharmacy's name and address and the RX, DATE, and PRESCRIBING PHYSICIAN blanks. Photocopied it, typed in the new information, put some glue on the back, stuck it back on the vial. Pretty good job, though I wasn't ready for twenty-dollar bills.

He read the label now and his mouth pursed when he got to PRESCRIBING PHYSICIAN: M. CRUVIC, M.D. Followed by Cruvic's real license number, obtained from the medical board.

Confusion seamed his meaty forehead.

“We just got a big box of this shi- who ordered this?”

Bingo.

I tried to look stupid and peeved rather than elated. “Dunno, I just go where they tell me. You wan' me to take it back?”

Dropping the bottle back in the bag, he kept it and started for the house.

“Hey,” I said.

Stopping short, he looked over his shoulder at me. His shoulders were enormous, his elbows dimpled. Pink scalp showed through the hair; the ponytail was a sad thing.

“You gotta problem?”

“COD,” I said. “You gotta pay for it.” Keeping it going for realism; I'd already learned what I wanted to know.

Lifting his free hand, he made a skin-gun and aimed it at my face.

“Wait, bucko.”

I did. Til he got inside and closed the door.

Then I ran back to the Seville and was pulling out by the time he got back. Along with Anna the tight-faced nurse.

The two of them standing behind the iron gate, perplexed, as I got the hell out of there.