Fatal Care

by Leonard Goldberg

  Farelli led the way over to a water cooler in the corner of the room. He sipped water from a conical paper cup, keeping his back to the receptionist. “The doctor is doing a procedure,” Farelli said gruffly in a low voice. “They make it sound like he’s doing something good back there.”

  “It’s legal,” Jake reminded him.

  “That doesn’t make it right.” Farelli crushed the cup into a tight ball and threw it into a nearby wastebasket. “You should have seen the ad in the phone book, Jake. It read ‘Abortions up to twenty-four weeks.’ That comes out to six months of age. Don’t tell me that baby is not alive and moving then.”

  “I guess,” Jake said, and glanced around the well-appointed reception area. The walls were covered with pale yellow grass cloth, the furniture upholstered in dark leather. On a couch near the window a teenage girl was sitting next to her mother. They were holding hands, their expressions a mixture of fear and sadness.

  “You don’t think the doc is going to split out the back door on us, do you?” Farelli asked.

  “He can’t be that stupid,” Jake said, reaching for a cup of water. “Did you check to see if the Russian worked anywhere else other than this clinic?”

  “Only here, according to his W-2 forms,” Farelli reported.

  Jake shook his head slowly. “How the hell is Mervin Tuch tied into a Russian immigrant?”

  Farelli shrugged. “I haven’t gotten that far yet. But they’ve got to be connected somehow.”

  Jake thought about the question at length. Other than the blond hitter, there was no common denominator between Tuch and the Russian. And there were no possible witnesses to tie the two together. A paper trail would be their best hope, Jake decided. And lawyers generated plenty of papers. “You’ve got to triple-check everything Tuch was involved in, and I mean everything. His law practice, his financial dealings, even his phone calls. Somewhere along the line Tuch and the Russian crossed paths.”

  “Talking about phone calls,” Farelli said as he turned pages in his notepad, “we did find something interesting in the phone records from Tuch’s office. He called a bar named Club West.”

  “So?”

  “So somebody called the same bar from the Argonaut,” Farelli said, and then added, “twice.”

  “Did you check it out?”

  “We’re on it now.”

  “It’d be nice if we could somehow put the Russian in that bar.”

  “That ain’t going to happen,” Farelli said sourly. “It’s an upgrade bar. The Russian would never go in there.”

  “Shit,” Jake growled.

  “Yeah.” Farelli quickly flipped to another page. “We got a little luckier with the blond hitter’s license plate. It’s a California plate, and the first number is a four. After that there are letters we can’t be sure of because of mud splatter.”

  “Even with photo-image enhancement?”

  “Even with that,” Farelli replied. “The FBI guys think the mud was smeared on intentionally to cover up the plate. Our blond hitter isn’t that stupid.”

  “Could they give us any more information on the hitter’s car?”

  “It’s a Toyota Camry,” Farelli said, and put away his notepad. “It’s this year’s model with a California license that starts with a four. The FBI thinks the next letter may be a W or V or U. At least, that’s their best guess.”

  “Assuming they’re right, how many cars are we talking about?”

  “According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, there are over two thousand Camrys that fit that description.”

  Jake’s eyes narrowed. “In Southern California alone?”

  “Right.”

  “Narrow it down,” Jake advised. “Look for female owners who are under the age of forty.”

  “And blond?”

  “No,” Jake said quickly, remembering that the hitter could be wearing a wig. “Don’t limit it to blondes. Women can change hair color faster than you can blink.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Jake refilled his water cup and sipped it. It tasted lukewarm. “Anything else?”

  “Just a phone call this morning from Alex Mirren’s ex-wife in Florida,” Farelli answered. “You don’t want to hear about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s a real nutcase,” Farelli said disgustedly. “She spent the first five minutes telling me why she went back to her maiden name, which is Faye Plum. ‘Just like the fruit,’ she told me—as if I gave a shit.”

  “Did she tell you anything about Alex Mirren?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Farelli said. “Apparently old Alex didn’t want Faye to invite one of her favorite aunts to the wedding. That caused a feud that goes on to this day. She holds Alex responsible for all the turmoil in her family.”

  Jake flicked his hand. “Spare me.”

  “It gets better,” Farelli went on. “Because Alex was so mean, Faye put a curse on him, and that’s why Alex got whacked. She wasn’t unhappy over his passing, I’ll tell you that.”

  Jake scratched his head. “Did she benefit any from his death?”

  “Not according to Alex’s will,” Farelli replied. “Everything goes into a blind trust that pays child support until his daughter reaches twenty-one. Then the daughter inherits everything.”

  Jake nodded knowingly. “And I’ll bet Faye Plum wants it all now so she can control it.”

  “That was the phone call,” Farelli said, nodding back. “But of course, she also wanted me to know why she changed her name to Faye Plum. That was very important.”

  “She sounds crazy as a loon.”

  “And mean on top of it. Getting close to that is like getting close to a rattlesnake.”

  “Well, Mirren isn’t going to have to worry about that anymore, is he?”

  “Not in this world.”

  They turned as a heavyset nurse came through the door by the receptionist’s desk. She signaled the detectives over, but stood squarely in the middle of the doorway.

  “I hope this won’t take long,” the nurse said, not the least bit intimidated by the detectives.

  “We just have a few questions for Dr. Decker,” Jake told her.

  The nurse made a guttural, disapproving sound. Then she turned and said, “This way.”

  Jake and Farelli followed the nurse in and down a wide corridor. All the doors were closed. In the distance Jake thought he heard a muffled groan, but he wasn’t sure. As they turned onto another corridor, Jake could detect the odor of anesthetic gas. He heard the groan, clearer this time.

  The nurse led the way into the doctors lounge and closed the door behind them. The lounge was drab with light green plaster walls and furniture upholstered in well-worn Naugahyde. A noisy refrigerator was in the corner. Dr. Ted Decker was seated at a dinette table, munching on a jelly doughnut. He ate hurriedly and washed the food down with bottled water. Decker dusted off his hands and looked up at the detectives, not bothering to stand. “What can I do for you?”

  “We need some information on Vladimir Belov,” Jake began. “We understand he used to work here.”

  Decker jabbed his thumb toward the nurse. “She hires the help in the clinic.”

  Jake turned to the nurse. She was a stocky, unattractive woman with her hair pulled back severely into a bun. “When did you see Vladimir Belov last?”

  The nurse thought for a moment. “It’s been almost three weeks now. He just disappeared.”

  “Had he ever done that before?”

  “Never,” the nurse said at once. “And he would certainly never do that around payday.”

  “So you still have his last paycheck?”

  “As far as I know.”

  Jake took out his notepad and flipped pages. “What was his job here?”

  “He was a janitor-handyman,” the nurse answered. “May I ask what this is all about?”

  “Vladimir Belov was murdered,” Jake said evenly.

  “Oh,” the nurse said with no emotion.

  Dr.
Decker looked up briefly and then started on another doughnut. Jake noticed that the young, curly-haired doctor was wearing tennis shoes along with his scrub suit.

  “Did he do a good job for you?” Jake asked.

  “He was okay,” the nurse said carefully, more guarded now.

  “Did you know anything about his life outside the clinic?”

  The nurse shook her head. “He came to work, did his job, and left when we closed. That’s all I know, and that’s all I wanted to know.”

  Farelli asked, “Did he leave a number or name to call in case of an emergency?”

  “We don’t ask for that information,” the nurse replied.

  “What are you going to do with his last paycheck?”

  The nurse shrugged. “That will be up to the owners.”

  “Who owns this place?” Jake asked.

  The nurse hesitated, eyeing him suspiciously. “Why do you need to know that?”

  “Just answer the question,” Jake said, his voice harder.

  “A group of doctors,” the nurse answered.

  “Are there any outside investors?” Jake asked, thinking about Mervin Tuch and any possible connection he might have had with the Russian.

  “I think it’s only doctors,” the nurse said, not certain. “Maybe Dr. Decker knows.”

  Jake turned to Decker, who was licking jelly off his fingers. “Well?”

  “Well, what?” Decker smirked.

  Jake put his knuckles on the dinette table and leaned forward, giving the doctor a long stare. “If I were you, I’d listen carefully to each question, and I’d answer it as accurately as I could. Because if you give me one wrong answer, I’ll run your ass in and turn your life into a living hell. By the time I’m done, you’ll never practice medicine in the state of California again.”

  Decker’s face went pale. “Wh-what’s this all about?”

  “Dead babies.”

  “What!”

  “Dead babies,” Jake repeated. “Have I got your attention now?”

  “What we do here is legal,” the nurse blurted out. “You have no—”

  “Put a lid on it!” Jake snapped at her. “You answer questions when they’re directed to you. Understand?”

  The nurse nodded weakly, wondering whether she should call the owners.

  Jake glared down at Decker, resisting the urge to drive his fist through the young doctor’s arrogant face. “Now, let’s get back to dead babies.”

  Decker tried to gather himself, but his legs were shaking under the table. He reached down to steady them. “Are you talking about babies or fetuses?”

  “You tell me the difference.”

  “Fetuses are in the womb until they’re nine months old,” Decker explained. “When they’re born they’re called babies.”

  “Well then,” Jake said, “we’re talking about dead fetuses.”

  Decker shrugged, wondering what all the fuss was about. “Look, Lieutenant,” he said calmly, “we do abortions here. The fetuses are nonviable when they’re removed from the woman’s uterus.”

  “What do you do with these nonviable fetuses once they’re removed?”

  Decker shrugged again. “That’s not my department.”

  Jake slapped the top of the table with an open palm, hard enough to cause the bottle of water to rattle. “You goddamn well better make it your department.”

  “I just work here,” Decker said defensively. “I do abortions, get paid, and get the hell out.”

  “Who handles the dead babies?” Jake persisted.

  “I put the fetuses in an aluminum pan,” Decker answered. “That’s the last I see of them.”

  “And who takes the pan?”

  Decker motioned with his head to the nurse. “She does.”

  Jake turned to the nurse. “What do you do with those babies?”

  “They are disposed of appropriately,” she said in a clinical tone.

  “Uh-huh,” Jake said, sensing that the woman was lying. “Let me spell things out for you. If you obstruct a murder investigation in this state, it’s a felony. You go to jail for that.” Jake narrowed his eyes into a hard squint. “With that in mind, let’s try again. What do you do with those babies?”

  The nurse hesitated but finally caved in. “We sell them.”

  “To whom?”

  “Dr. Alex Mirren.”

  Jake blinked, caught totally off guard. He reached for his notepad and turned pages, buying time as he collected his thoughts. So Mirren was purchasing dead babies, or fetuses, or whatever the hell you wanted to call them. And that meant Bio-Med was involved. “Did Mirren say why he wanted the fetuses?”

  The nurse shook her head. “He only said that the fetuses had to be fresh and intact. And if they were, we would receive five hundred dollars for each fetus.”

  Jake, clearly out of his depth, looked over to Farelli, who looked back blankly. Fresh and intact, Jake kept thinking. What the hell did that mean? “Wouldn’t all the babies be intact? Aren’t they usually intact?”

  “Not in abortion clinics,” Decker explained, relieved that the nurse hadn’t mentioned that he received half of every fee from Mirren. “If abortions are done by D and C, as they usually are, the fetuses are often cut and sometimes dismembered. So, they wouldn’t be intact.”

  “So how do you keep the fetuses intact?” Jake asked.

  “We don’t abort with D and C,” Decker went on. “We induce miscarriages with Ru-486, that new abortion pill. Then we remove the fetus intact with a vacuum device. It’s really a lot easier on the mothers.”

  “And Mirren gets his intact babies,” Jake added.

  “It’s the only type he wanted,” Decker said, as if he were talking about some kind of produce. “They had to be intact or Mirren wouldn’t buy them from us.”

  Jake stared at the doctor. So the little prick was in on it, too. A goddamn black market for dead babies. Jake thought that he had seen it all until now. “Did Mirren pick up the babies himself?”

  Decker shook his head. “We never saw him.”

  “Then how did he get the babies?”

  “We had them delivered.”

  “Who did the actual delivery?”

  “Our handyman,” Decker told him. “Vladimir Belov.”

  28

  Nancy Tanaka picked at her salad with a fork while she considered Joanna’s question about Alex Mirren. What kind of a person was he? At last she said, “Actually he could be pretty interesting when he wasn’t in the lab. He read about a lot of things.”

  “Like what?” Joanna asked.

  “About immortality and how one day science would allow man to live on and on indefinitely.”

  “Do you think he was talking about the lipolytic enzyme and how it could clean arteries to improve organ function?”

  “It wasn’t that,” Nancy said thoughtfully. “It was more along the lines of genetic manipulation that would keep people disease-free and maybe double their life spans.”

  “Did he think that was really possible?”

  “From a hypothetical standpoint he thought it was possible,” Nancy went on, nibbling on a small tomato. “But that, of course, would greatly expand the earth’s population, and Alex was concerned about how all those people could be fed.”

  “Did he have an answer for that?”

  Nancy nodded. “He was convinced that one day all crops would be genetically modified so they would grow in abundance in virtually any soil in virtually any climate. Thus, genetic manipulation of crops would provide the food for the ever-expanding, genetically manipulated population.”

  “That doesn’t sound very appealing to me.”

  Nancy Tanaka shrugged. “It was all hypothetical. But it was interesting to talk about.”

  They were sitting in a large, family-style restaurant on the outskirts of Lancaster. All the tables and booths were occupied by the lunchtime crowd. A line of people was waiting patiently for seats.

  Outside, the day was bright and sunny. And for
once, Joanna thought as she looked out the window beside their table, the desert looked beautiful. But she could never work or live out here, never in a million years. It was too isolated, too monotonous. She was a big-city girl and always would be.

  Joanna brought her mind back to Nancy Tanaka and Alex Mirren. She decided to dig deeper.

  “So,” Joanna said, breaking the silence, “most of your conversations were about science?”

  “Almost all of them were.”

  “Did he ever talk about himself or personal things?”

  “Rarely,” Nancy replied. “Except for the nightmares. He’d talk about those some.”

  Joanna leaned forward across the table. “Tell me about his nightmares.”

  Nancy looked around to make sure no one was listening. Then she, too, leaned forward. “It had to do with dead babies.”

  “Tell me everything he said.” Joanna lowered her voice even further. “I want his exact words.”

  “He’d say something like, ‘They’re dead, they’re dead.’ Then he’d twist and turn and wake up sweating and really nervous.”

  Joanna wondered if Mirren was referring to the dead fetuses found at the construction site in Santa Monica. But Mirren had no connection to the Russian as far as she knew. “Did you ever ask him about the dead babies?”

  “A couple of times, but he wouldn’t talk about it,” Nancy answered. “He would only say that it was personal.”

  “Maybe when he was married his wife had a miscarriage,” Joanna suggested.

  “I asked him that,” Nancy said, nodding. “But all he’d say was that his wife was crazy and he didn’t want to talk about her.”

  “So he could have been dreaming about a miscarriage his wife had?”

  “I guess.” Nancy stared down at her salad, lost in thought; then she pushed her plate away. “You know, I don’t want it to sound like he was an ogre. He really wasn’t a bad guy.”

  “Until he decided to go kinky on you?” Joanna coaxed.

  “Jesus,” Nancy hissed softly. “I couldn’t believe it. Who needs that kind of stuff?”

  “Apparently Alex Mirren did.”

  Nancy nodded again, her face hardening. “He became such a bastard after that. He literally threw me out of the back lab, and that hurt.”