When the Bough Breaks (43 page)

He saw the empty car late and had to screech to a stop. He left his motor running, the lights on, and walked into the beam, cursing. The white hair gleamed silver. He wore a charcoal double-breasted blazer over a white open-necked shirt, along with black flannel pants and black-and-white golf shoes with tassles. Not a crease, not a wrinkle.

He ran a hand alongside the flank of the little car, touched the hood, grunted, and leaned through the open driver’s door.

It was then that I sprang silently on crepe and put the gun in the small of his back.

As a matter of taste and principle I hate firearms. My father loved them, collected them. First there were the Lugers he brought home as World War II mementos. Then the deer rifles, the shotguns, automatic pistols picked up in pawn shops, an old rusted Colt .45, nasty-looking Italian pistols with long snouts and engraved butts, blue steel .22’s. Lovingly polished and displayed in the den, behind the glass of a cherrywood case. Most of them loaded, the old man toying with them while watching TV. Calling me over to show off the details of construction,
the niceties of ornamentation; talk of chamber velocity, core, bore, muzzle, grip. The smell of machine oil. The odor of burnt matches that permeated his hands. As a small child I’d have nightmares of the guns leaving their perches, like pets slipping out of their cages, taking on instincts of their own, barking and snarling …

One time he had a fight with my mother, a loud and nasty one. In anger he went to the case and snatched at the first thing he put his hands on—a Luger: Teutonically efficient. He pointed it at her. I could see it now: she screaming “Harry!”; he realizing what he was doing; horrified, dropping the gun as if it were a venomous sea creature; reaching out to her, stuttering apologies. He never did it again, but the memory changed him, them—and me, five years old, standing, blanket in hand, half-hidden by the door, watching. Since then I’ve hated guns. But at that moment I loved the feel of the .38 as it dented Towle’s blazer.

“Get in the car,” I whispered. “Sit behind the wheel and don’t move or I’ll blow your guts out.”

He obeyed. Quickly I ran to the passenger side and in beside him.

“You,” he said.

“Start the engine.” I put the gun in his side, rougher than I had to be.

The little car coughed to life.

“Pull it to the side of the road, so that the driver’s door is right up against that rock. Then turn off the engine and throw the key out the window.” He did as he was told, the noble profile steady.

I got out and ordered him to do likewise. The way I’d had him park, the exit from the driver’s side was blocked by forty feet of granite. He slid out the passenger’s side and stood motionless and stoic at the edge of the empty road.

“Hands up.”

He gave me a superior look and complied.

“This is outrageous,” he said.

“Use one hand to remove your car keys. Toss them
gently
on the ground over there.” I pointed to a spot fifteen feet away. Keeping the gun trained on him, I scooped them up.

“Walk to your car, get in on the driver’s side. Put both hands on the wheel where I can see them.”

I followed him to the Lincoln. I got in the back, right behind him, and placed the tip of the gun in the hollow at the base of his skull.

“You know your anatomy,” I said softly. “One bullet to the medulla oblongata and the lights go out forever.”

He said nothing.

“You’ve done a fine job of mucking up your life and the lives of plenty of others. Now it’s coming down on you. What I’m offering
you is a chance for partial redemption. Save a life for once, instead of destroying it.”

“I’ve saved many lives in my day. I’m a physician.”

“I know, you’re a saintly healer. Where were you when it came to saving Cary Nemeth?”

A dry, croaking sound came from deep inside of him. But he maintained his composure.

“You know everything, I suppose.”

“Just about. Cousin Tim can be talkative when the circumstances are right.” I gave him a few examples of what I knew. He was unmoved, stoic, hands melded to the wheel, a white-haired mannikin set up for display.

“You knew my name before we met,” I said, “from the Hickle thing. When I called you invited me to the office. To see how much Melody had told me. It didn’t make sense to me then, a busy pediatrician taking the time to sit and chat face-to-face. Anything we spoke about could have been discussed over the phone. You wanted to sound me out. Then you tried to block me.”

“You had a reputation as a persistent young man,” he said. “Things were piling up.”

“Things? Don’t you mean bodies?”

“There’s no need to be melodramatic.” He talked like a Disneyland android: flat, without inflection, devoid of self-doubt.

“I’m not trying to be. It’s just that multiple murder still gets to me. The Nemeth boy. Handler. Elena Gutierrez. Morry Bruno. Now, Bonita Quinn and good old Ronnie Lee.”

At the mention of the last name he gave a small, but noticeable start.

“Ronnie Lee’s death bother you, in particular?”

“I’m not familiar with that name. That’s all.”

“Ronnie Lee Quinn. Bonita’s ex. Melody’s father. R.L. A blond fellow, tall, crazy-looking, with a bad left side. Hemiparesis. With McCaffrey’s southern accent it may have sounded like he was calling him Earl.”

“Ah,” he said, pleased that things made sense once again, “Earl. Disgusting fellow. Unwashed. I remember meeting him once or twice.”

“Piss-poor protoplasm, right?”

“If you will.”

“He was one of McCaffrey’s bad guys from Mexico, brought back to do a dirty job or two. Probably wanted to see his kid, so McCaffrey found her and Bonita for him. Then it dawned on him how she could fit in. She was a bright one, Bonita, wasn’t she? Probably thought you were Santa Claus when you got her the job managing Minassian’s building.”

“She was appreciative,” said Towle.

“You were doing her a big favor. You set her up so you could have access to Handler’s apartment. She’s the manager, she gets a master key. Then the next time she’s in the office for Melody’s checkup, she ‘loses’ her purse. It’s easy to do, the lady’s a scatterbrain. She didn’t
have it together
. That’s what your office girl told me. Always losing things. Meanwhile you lift the key and McCaffrey’s monsters can get in whenever they want—look for tapes, do a little slashing and hacking. No sweat off poor Bonita’s back, except when she becomes expendable and ends up as food for next season’s zucchini crop. A dull woman. More piss-poor protoplasm.”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. That wasn’t in the plan.”

“You know how it is, the best-laid plans and all that.”

“You’re a sarcastic young man. I hope you aren’t that way with your patients.”

“Ronnie Lee finishes off Bonita—he may have done it because McCaffrey told him to, or perhaps it was just settling an old score. But now McCaffrey has to get rid of Ronnie Lee, too, because fiend that he is, even he may balk at watching his own daughter die.”

“You’re very bright, Alex,” he said. “But the sarcasm really is an unattractive trait.”

“Thanks for the advice. I know you’re an expert on bedside manner.”

“As a matter of fact, I am. I pride myself on it. Obtain early rapport with the child and family no matter how disparate your background may be from theirs. That’s the first step in delivering good care. It’s what I instruct the first-year students when I proctor the pediatric section of Introduction to Clinical Medicine.”

“Fascinating.”

“The students give me excellent ratings on my teaching. I’m an excellent teacher.”

I exerted forward pressure with the .38. His silver hair parted but he didn’t flinch. I smelled his hair tonic, cloves and lime.

“Start the car and pull it to the side of the road. Just behind that giant eucalyptus.”

The Lincoln rumbled and rolled, then stopped.

“Turn off the engine.”

“Don’t be rude,” he said. “There’s no need to try to intimidate me.”

“Turn it off, Will.”

“Doctor
Towle.”

“Doctor Towle.”

The engine quieted.

“Is it necessary to keep that thing at the back of my head?”

“I’ll ask the questions.”

“It seems needless—superfluous. This isn’t some cheap Western movie.”

“It’s worse. The blood is real and nobody gets up and walks away when the smoke clears.”

“More melodrama. Mellow drama. Strange phrase.”

“Stop playing around,” I said angrily.

“Playing? Are we playing? I thought only children played. Jump rope, Hopscotch.” His voice rose in pitch.

“Grownups play too,” I said. “Nasty games.”

“Games. Games help the child maintain ego integrity. I read that somewhere—Erikson? Piaget?”

Either Kruger wasn’t the only actor in the family or something was happening that I hadn’t been prepared for …

“Anna Freud,” I whispered.

“Yes. Anna. Fine woman. Would have loved to meet her, but both of us so busy … Pity …The ego must maintain integrity. At all costs.” He was silent for a minute, then: “These seats need cleaning. I see spots on the leather. They make a good leather cleaner now … I saw it at the car wash.”

“Melody Quinn,” I said, trying to reel him back in. “We need to save her.”

“Melody. Pretty girl. A pretty girl is like a melody. Pretty little child. Almost familiar …”

I talked to him but he kept fading away. Minute by minute he regressed, the rambling growing progressively more incoherent and out of context, so that at his worse, he was emitting word salad. He seemed to be suffering, the aristocratic face crowded with pain. Every few minutes he repeated the phrase, “The ego must maintain integrity,” as if it was a catechism.

I needed him to get into La Casa but in his present state he was useless. I started to panic. His hands remained on the steering wheel but they trembled.

“Pills,” he said.

“Where?”

“Pocket …”

“Go ahead.” I said, not without suspicion, “reach in and get them. The pills and nothing else. Don’t take too many.”

“No … two pills … recommended dosage … never more … nevermore … quoth the raven … nevermore …”

“Get them.”

I kept the gun trained on him. He lowered one hand and drew out a vial not unlike the one that had held Melody’s Ritalin. Carefully he shook out two white tablets, closed the vial and put it down.

“Water?” he asked, childlike.

“Take them dry.”

“I shall … nuisance.”

He swallowed the pills.

Kruger had been right. He
was
good at adjusting dosages. Within twelve minutes on my watch he was looking and sounding much better. I thought of the strain he underwent each day maintaining himself in the public eye. No doubt talking about the murders had hastened the deterioration.

“Silly of me to miss … the afternoon dose. Never forget.”

I observed him with morbid fascination, watching the changes in his speech and behavior as the psychoactive chemicals took hold of his central nervous system, making note of the gradually increasing attention span, the diminishing non sequiturs, the restoration of adult conversational patterns. It was like peering into a microscope and watching a primitive organism mitose into something far more complex.

When the drug was still in its initial stage he said:

“I’ve done many … bad things. Gus had me do bad things. Very wrong for a … man of my stature. For someone of my breeding.”

I let it pass.

Eventually he was lucid. Alert, seemingly undamaged.

“What is it, Thorazine?” I asked him.

“A variant. I’ve managed my own pharmacologic care for some time now. Tried a number of the phenothiazines … Thorazine was good but it made me too drowsy. Couldn’t have that while conducting physicals … Wouldn’t want to drop a baby. No, nothing like that. Dreadful, drop an infant. This is a new agent, far superior to the others. Experimental. Sent to me by the manufacturer. Just write away for samples, use M.D. after the name, no need to justify or explain. They’re more than happy to oblige … I have a healthy supply. Must take the afternoon dose, though, or everything gets confused—that’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“Yes. How long does it take for kick in?”

“In a man my size twenty to twenty-five minutes—remarkable, isn’t it? Pop, down the hatch, wait, and the picture tube regains clarity. Life is so much more bearable. Things hurt so much less. Even now I feel it working, like muddy waters turning crystalline. Where were we?”

“We were talking about the nasty games McCaffrey’s perverts play with little children.”

“I’m not one of those,” he said quickly.

“I know. But you helped those perverts molest hundreds of children, gave time and money to McCaffrey, set up Handler and Gutierrez and Hickle. You overdosed Melody Quinn to keep her mouth shut. Why?”

“It’s all over, isn’t it?” he asked, sounding relieved.

“Yes.”

“They’ll take away my license to practice medicine.”

“Definitely. Don’t you think that’s best?”

“I suppose so,” he said reluctantly. “I still feel there’s plenty left in me, plenty of good work to be done.”

“You’ll have your chance,” I reassured him, realizing that the pills were less than perfect. “They’ll send you some place for the rest of your life where you’ll experience little in the way of stress. No paperwork, no billing, none of the hassles of medical practice. No Gus McCaffrey telling you what to do, how to run your life. Just you—and you’ll look and feel fine because they’ll let you continue to take your pills—and help other people. People in need of help. You’re a healer, you’ll be able to help them.”

“I’ll be able to help,” he repeated.

“Absolutely.”

“One human being to another. Unencumbered.”

“Yes.”

“I have a good bedside manner. When I’m well. When I’m not well things get confused and things hurt—even ideas hurt, thoughts can be painful. I’m not at my best, when that happens. But when I’m functioning well I can’t be beat for helping people.”

“I know that, Doctor. I know your reputation.”

McCaffrey had spoken to me of an innate drive toward altruism. I knew whose buttons he’d been pushing with that one.