Dr. Death (34 page)

She got up, marched to our waiter, who was talking with a colleague, stood there for a few seconds, then said something that caused his head to retract, as if he'd been bitten. He stalked away and she returned, finished her drink while standing. "Snotty little bastard. I'm waiting to tell him we're ready for the check, he's discussing his latest
audition.
"

Looking off to one side, the object of her wrath raced over, flung the check at the table and fled. Judy reached for it, but I got there first.

"What?" she said. "Bribing the judge?"

"Thanking the judge for her time," I said.

"That's all I've given you," she said. "Time. Heat, no light."

• • •

Her Lexus had been left at the curb and I waited for her to drive away. As I waited for the Seville, I tried to make sense out of the last half hour.

She'd arrived at the restaurant looking strained— more tense than I'd ever seen her— and each of my questions seemed to yank her psyche's drawstring tighter. Before she left, she warned off further inquiry. So I'd opened some kind of wound but had no idea what it was.

No chance to get to the topic of hospitals, no way to work it into the conversation.

I'd watched her in court, seen her handle the tough- est of cases with aplomb, so this was something per- sonal. . . . The closest she'd gotten to autobiography was self-loathing about her teenage obesity.

I was repugnant. . . .
But if that related to the Dosses, I was missing the connection.

I can't carry any more on my shoulders.

Burdened by the Dosses, as was her husband? Bob expressing it as anger because he was a man of a certain generation?

Some kind of intimacy gone terribly bad? Bob jealous of Richard and Joanne in the pool— did it all reduce to another sleazy suburban couples' swap?

And had that related, in some way, to Joanne's decline? Something Richard couldn't forgive her for?

Guilt and expiation. Had
Eric
found out?

Eric and Allison breaking up, Becky in therapy, eating disorders, poor grades, Joanne quitting as tutor, Stacy losing focus, Eric dropping out. Bob enraged, Judy on the edge . . . Joanne dead.

Put together a certain way, I could make it sound like a psychopathology stew.

Even so, what did it have to do with Mate's corpse stretched out in the back of a van, geometry on flesh?

Why hadn't Mate taken credit for Joanne?

The Seville screeched to a halt and the attendant held my door with an expression that said I didn't deserve it. Driving away, I went over it again, finally decided I'd wasted my time and Judy's, most certainly damaged my relationship with the presiding judge of family court.

Another day, another triumph. The car was low on gas and I filled up at a station on Wilshire, used the pay phone near the men's room to call my service. Joseph Safer had phoned five minutes earlier from the Dosses' home number.

Richard answered, hoarse, quieter than usual. "Doctor— hold on." A second later, Safer's melodious voice flowed through the receiver.

"Doctor, thanks so much for getting back promptly."

"What's up?"

"Richard and the children are home. Richard arrived four hours ago, but I waited until the hubbub died down before I called you."

"Press hubbub?"

"Press, police, what you'd expect. As far as I can tell, everyone's departed with the exception of a single unmarked police car parked down the block. Occupied by the two gentlemen who accosted Richard at your home, as a matter of fact."

Korn and Demetri on butt-numbing duty. So Milo had regained at least some of the upper hand.

"Not too subtle," I said.

"We-ell." Safer chuckled. "Cossacks aren't generally known for subtlety."

"Did they search the house?"

"They threatened to," said Safer. "We're disputing their contentions, urging the judge to exercise some restraint. I realize it's an imposition at this hour— however, if you could find time to come over to chat with Richard and the children, that would be marvelous."

"At the house?"

"I could bring them to your office, but with all they've been through . . ."

"No, that's fine," I said. "I'll be right over."

26

SAFER GAVE ME directions to the house: west on Sunset, past the Pacific Palisades shopping district, a mile beyond the old Will Rogers estate, then a quick turn north.

Twenty minutes or so from the Village, just as close to my home. In all the time I'd spent with the Dosses, I'd never seen them in their natural surroundings. Back when I was an intern at Western Peds, I found time to make house calls, school visits. After I got licensed, I rarely ventured from the comfort of my own furniture. Was I nothing more than a primatologist deluding himself that he understood chimps because he'd observed them scratching and swinging behind the bars of zoo cages?

House calls were impractical.

Practicality could be confining. Now I'd have the chance to stretch.

• • •

I found the turnoff easily enough and sped up a very dark street that climbed into the Palisades. No sidewalks, front lawns the size of small parks, walls and gates and talkboxes, night-black shrubbery, towering cascades of old-growth trees.

Close enough to the ocean to feel the breeze and smell the brine. Were ugly September mornings better up here? I caught glimmers of moon-blanched water between the bulk of big houses. As I continued, the properties got wider, offered broader glimpses of Pacific. Now I was high enough to see all of the moon, gravid and low. The sky was a cloudless indigo comforter.

Very few cars were parked on the street, and the unmarked, fifty yards up, was as inconspicuous as a roach on a fridge. I sped by, vaguely aware of two heads in front, not bothering to notice if Korn or Demetri made me. Assuming they had. Now I was a notation in the murder book.

I cruised, looked for the address Safer had given me, wondered which neighboring structure housed the Manitows' dreams and nightmares.

Richard's monument to success turned out to be a two-story Monterey colonial, pale and ambitious above a hillock of ryegrass spacious enough to host several clusters of trees. Coconut palms, Canary Island pines, lemon eucalyptus, pittosporum, all prettified by clean white lighting that created herbal sculpture. Meticulous flower beds kissed the front of the house. Lights from within turned curtained windows amber. The lack of wall and gate implied openness, welcome. So much for architectural cues.

Stacy's Mustang sat in the driveway, in front of a silver Cadillac Fleetwood of a size no longer manufactured. No sign of Richard's black BMW. Perhaps the auto warrant had gone through and the vehicle was being raked and combed and vacuumed and luminoled in some forensic garage.

I pulled in behind the Caddy. Its plates read SHYSTER.

A Bouquet Canyon rock pathway snaked to a heavy door banded with hand-forged iron. Before I got to the entrance, the door opened and a rabbi gazed out at me. A tall, rangy, black-suited, yarmulked, gray-bearded rabbi in his sixties. The beard was clipped square and blocked the knot of his silver-gray tie. The suit was double-breasted and tailored. He stood with his hands behind his back and rocked. His presence threw me. The Dosses were Greek-Sicilian, not Jewish.

The rabbi said, "Doctor? Joe Safer."

One hand appeared. We shook, and Safer motioned me into a chandeliered entry hall guarded by a pair of blue-and-white vases as high as my shoulder. An iron-railed staircase swept upward to the second story. Safer and I walked under it and continued to another vestibule bottomed by a crimson Persian runner that fed into a wide, bright hallway. To the left was a dining room papered in blue and set up with plum-colored rosewood furniture that looked old. Across the foyer was a high-ceilinged living room. Ivory ceiling, cream silk sofas, cherrywood floors. If the neutral tones had been designed to show off what was on the walls, they worked.

Case after case of brass-framed, mirror-backed, glassed-in étagères, custom-fit to the crown molding. Glass shelves so clear they were rendered nearly invisible. What rested upon them appeared suspended in midair, just as Milo had described.

Hundreds of bowls, chargers, ewers, jars, shapes I couldn't identify, each piece spotlit and gleaming. One side wall of more blue and white, the other filled with simple-looking gray-green pieces, the widest expanse populated by a porcelain bestiary: horses and camels and dogs and fantastic, bat-eared creatures that resembled the spawn of a dragon with a monkey, all dappled in beautifully dripping mixtures of blue, green and chartreuse. Human figurines rode some of the horses. On a seven-foot coffee table sat what looked like a miniature temple glazed with the same multicolored splotch.

"Something, eh?" said Safer. "Richard informs me that those animals are all Tang dynasty. Over a thousand years old. They pull them up out of graves in China, beautifully preserved. Quite remarkable, wouldn't you say?"

"Quite brave keeping them here," I said, "given the seismic risks."

Safer stroked his beard and pushed his yarmulke back on his head. His hair was an iron gray crew cut specked with red. I still couldn't get rid of the rabbinical image. Remembered his comment about the death of his gay son.
His diagnosis sped my learning curve.
His eyes were gray-green, borderline warm. Like many tall men, he stooped.

"Richard's a courageous man," he said. "The children are courageous. Let's go see them."

We continued through the center hallway. Black carpeting muffled our steps as we passed more brass cases. Monochrome bowls of every color, the mirror backs reflecting Chinese inscriptions on white bases, tiny mud-colored figurines, shelves of potters' creations in white and cream and gray, more of that pale, clean green that I decided I liked best. A row of closed doors, two more at the rear. Safer beckoned me through the one that was open.

Cathedral ceiling, black leather sofas and chairs, black grand piano filling a corner. Through a wall of french doors, an aqua pool and green-lit foliage. Beyond the chlorinated water, palm fringes and the hint of ocean. The seating faced rosewood bookshelves filled with hardcovers, a Bang & Olufsen stereo system, a seventy-inch TV, laser-disc machine, other amusements. On an upper shelf, four family photos. Three of Richard and the kids, a single portrait of Joanne as a smiling young woman.

Richard sat upright on the largest of the sofas, unshaven, sleeves rolled to the elbows, kinky hair ragged— pulled-at, as if birds had attacked, seeking nesting material. He wore the usual all-black and blended so thoroughly with the couch that his body contours were obscured. It made him seem very small— like a growth that had sprouted from the upholstery.

"You're here," he said, sounding half asleep. "Thanks."

I took an armchair and Richard gazed up at Joe Safer.

Safer said, "I'll go see how the kids are doing," and left. Richard picked something out of the corner of his mouth. Sweat beads ringed his hairline.

When Safer's footsteps had faded completely, he said, "They say he's the best." Staring past me. "This is our family room."

"Beautiful house," I said.

"So I've been told."

"What happened?" I said. Any way he took that would be fine.

He didn't answer, kept his gaze above me— focused on the blank TV. As if waiting for the set to come on by itself and feed him some form of enlightenment.

"So," he said, finally. "Here we are."

"What can I do for you, Richard?"

"Safer says anything I tell you is confidential, unless you think I'm a direct threat to someone else."

"That's true."

"I'm no threat to anyone."

"Good."

He jammed his fingers in his hair, tugged at the wiry strands. "Still, let's keep it hypothetical. For the sake of all concerned."

"Keep what hypothetical?" I said.

"The situation. Say a person— a man, by no means a stupid man but not infallible— say he falls prey to an impulse and does something stupid."

"What impulse?"

"The drive to attain closure. Not a smart move, in fact it's the single stupidest, most insane thing he's ever done in his life, but he's not in his right mind because events have . . . changed him. In the past, he's lived a life full of expectations. That's not to say he's wedded to optimism. Of all people, he knows things don't always work out according to plan. He's earned a
living
understanding that. But still, after all these years of building, establishing, he's done very well, gotten sucked in by the trap of rising expectations. Feels he has a right to some degree of comfort. Then he learns differently." He shrugged. "What's done is done."

"His acting on impulse," I said.

He sucked in breath, gave a sick smile. "He's not in his right mind, let's leave it at that."

Crossing his legs, he sat back, as if giving me time to digest. I had a pretty good idea what he was up to. Working on a diminished-capacity defense. Safer's advice or his own idea?

"Temporary insanity," I said.