Three parking spots, all of them empty. The building's back entrance was an old-fashioned wooden garage door, dark and crisscrossed by beams. Heavy hasp secured by a large padlock. More like storage space than a doctor's private entry.
No cars said this doctor had left for the day. Maybe for his nighttime gig at the clinic?
I reversed direction again, taking little Santa Monica to Century City, then Avenue of the Stars south to Olympic Boulevard West. Another twenty minutes and I was in Santa Monica, and by that time the sky was black.
A few lights on at the Women's Health Center, a dozen or so cars parked in the sunken lot. Mostly compacts, with the exception of a gleaming silver Bentley Turbo pulled up close to the clinic's main door.
The chain across the driveway was fastened and locked and a uniformed guard patrolled slowly. Even in the dim light I made out the holster on his hip. When he saw me, he picked up his pace. I sped away before we could read each other's faces.
17
Tying up loose ends.
The next morning I called the Psychology office and got Mary Ann Gonsalvez's number. The time difference made it 5:00 P.M. in London. No answer, no machine.
I made coffee and toast and ate without tasting, thinking of the crowd at the women's clinic last night.
The armed guard, the chain blocking the parking lot.
Dr. Cruvic operating.
On patients like Chenise Farney?
Fifteen cars. Even allowing for staff, probably ten or more procedures. And for all I knew he'd been going for hours, bringing them in in shifts.
Idealism, or profit motive?
The profit could be high if he was using the clinic's facilities at no cost, and billing the state. The clinic happy to have someone volunteer services to its poor clientele.
Poor women meant Medi-Cal. Abortion funding was always subject to political fluctuations and I had no idea if Medi-Cal paid.
I made a call to the L.A. Medi-Cal office, was referred to an 800 number in Sacramento, put on hold for ten minutes, and cut off. Trying again, I endured another hold, got through, and was transferred to another 800 number, more holds, two shell-shocked-sounding clerks, and finally someone coherent who admitted that Medi-Cal did indeed reimburse for both terminations and tubal ligations, but that I would need procedure codes, too, in order to obtain specific reimbursement allowances.
I phoned the med school crosstown and used my faculty status to get the business office at Women's Hospital. The head clerk there referred me to the billing office, which referred me to the direct Medi-Cal billing office. Finally, someone whose tone implied I should have known without asking informed me that abortions were indeed reimbursable by the state at nine hundred dollars per procedure, not including hospital costs, anesthesia, and other incidentals.
I hung up.
Nine hundred per procedure. And if you were a canny biller, as Cruvic seemed to be, you could throw in things like nursing charges, operating-room costs, supplies, anesthesia, and jack up the reimbursement.
Twenty abortions a week added up to just short of a seven-figure income.
Nice little supplement to the fertility practice.
Implanting fetuses in the rich, removing them from the poor.
There were risks, of course: an antiabortion fanatic lashing out violently. And if the papers got hold of it, bad press: BEVERLY HILLS FERTILITY DOCTOR RUNS NIGHTTIME ABORTION MILL. Pro-lifers would excoriate Cruvic for murdering babies and liberals would wax indignant over class inequality.
And whatever their political bent, Cruvic's fertility patients would shrink from that kind of publicity. And from the fact that their doctor's activities weren't limited to abetting pregnancy— despite the claim on his business card.
But with that kind of money, Cruvic probably figured the risk was worth it.
Off-the-path medical building.
Chains around the clinic parking lot, armed guard.
Had he been greedy and wanted even more?
Bloated billing? Cooking the books?
Hope going along with the fraud?
But Cruvic had paid her only thirty-six thousand a year, a very small chunk of a million-dollar business.
Maybe the thirty-six represented only what she'd reported on her tax returns and there'd been other payments, in cash.
Or had Hope not been a willing partner to fraud and, learning the truth, quit, or threatened to expose Cruvic?
And died because of it?
Then what about Mandy Wright? Her only link to obstetrics, so far, was a terminated pregnancy and a tubal ligation.
Far-fetched, Delaware.
The most likely scenario was that she and Hope had been murdered by a psychopathic stranger and Cruvic, however mercenary and ethically slippery, had nothing to do with it.
Still, I'd promised Milo to check out his credentials, Deborah Brittain would be in class for the next few hours, and the panicked Tessa Bowlby had a day off. Lots of days off, as a matter of fact: enrolled in only two classes, both on Tuesday and Thursday.
Reduced academic load.
Trouble coping?
I'd give her another try, too, but first things first.
Calling the state medical board, I found out no malpractice complaints had been lodged against Milan Cruvic, M.D., nor was his license in jeopardy.
Farther fetched.
I got dressed and drove to school.
At the Biomed Library, I looked Cruvic up in the Directory of Medical Specialists.
B.A., Berkeley— Hope's alma mater, another possible link. They were the same age, too, had graduated in the same class.
Old friends? I read on. M.D., UC San Francisco— once again, studying in the same city as Hope.
Then, she'd come down to L.A. for her clinical training and he'd moved to Seattle for a surgery internship at the University of Washington.
By the book, so far.
But then it got interesting.
He completed only one year of his surgery residency at U of W before taking a leave of absence and spending a year at the Brooke-Hastings Institute in Corte Madera, California.
Then, instead of returning to Washington, he'd transferred specialties from surgery to obstetrics-gynecology, signing on as a first-year resident at Fidelity Medical Center in Carson, California, where he'd finished, passed his boards, and gotten his specialty certification in OB-GYN.
No listing of any postgraduate work in fertility.
That wasn't illegal— an M.D. and a state license allowed any physician to do just about anything medical— but it was surprising, even reckless, because fertility techniques were highly specialized.
Where had Cruvic learned his craft?
The year at the Brooke-Hastings Institute? No, because he'd been just a first-year resident at the time and no reputable institution would take someone for advanced training at that point.
Self-taught?
Cutting corners in a daring and dangerous way?
Was that the real reason he practiced away from the other Beverly Hills doctors?
If so, who sent him referrals?
People who also wanted to skirt the rules?
But maybe there was a simple solution: He'd undergone bona fide training but the fact had been accidentally left off his bio.
Still, you'd think that was the kind of thing he'd be careful to correct. And the directory was updated each year.
Freelance fertility cowboy?
Cutting corners?
Taking on cases no one else would go near?
Something on the fringe . . .
Perhaps a daring nature was what had attracted Hope to Cruvic.
So different from the stodgy, routine-bound Seacrest.
Old Volvo versus shiny Bentley.
Something on the fringe . . .
Something gone bad?
Now Hope was dead and Cruvic, as he himself had pointed out, was alive, busy, bouncy, doing God knew what.
But what of Mandy Wright?
What did a scholar and a call girl have in common but gruesome death?
Nothing fit.
I stayed with it, plugging Cruvic's name into every scientific and medical data bank the library offered. No publications, so his year at Brooke-Hastings probably hadn't been for research.
The institute wasn't listed anywhere, either.
By the time I finished, my gut was tight with suspicion, but there was nothing more to do and it was time to find Deborah Brittain.
I spotted her leaving Monroe Hall and heading toward a bike rack.
The photo ID had given no indication of her size.
Six feet tall, lean and big-boned with long, dirty-blond hair and sharp cheekbones. She wore a white polo shirt bearing the University seal, navy shorts, white socks and sneakers, a red mountaineer's backpack.
Her racing bicycle was one of a dozen two-wheelers hitched to a rack in back of the ruby-brick structure. I watched her slip an elastic sweatband over her forehead then remove the chain lock. As she rolled the bike out, I stepped up and introduced myself.
“Yes?” Her blue eyes switched channels, from preoccupied to alarmed. I showed her my ID.
“Professor Devane?” she said in a husky voice. “It sure took a long time.” Her hands tightened around the handlebars. “I've got volleyball practice in half an hour but I want to talk to you— let's walk.”
She guided the bicycle up the walkway, fast enough to make me lengthen my stride.
“I want to tell you,” she said, “that Professor Devane was a truly great woman. A wonderful person. The sicko who killed her should get the death penalty but of course he won't.”
“Why's that?”
“Even if you catch him and he gets convicted they never enforce the law fully.”
She glanced at me without breaking step. “Want to know about Huang?”
“I want to know anything you can tell me.”
“Are you thinking Huang did it?”
“No. We're just talking to everyone associated with the conduct committee.”
“So you think the committee had something to do with it?”
“We don't know much, period, Ms. Brittain.”
“Well, I'm sure people have been bad-mouthing the committee but I think it was a great idea. It saved my life— not literally, but Huang was making my life miserable until Professor Devane put an end to all that.”
She stopped suddenly. Her eyes were wet and the sweatband had slipped down. She shoved it higher and we started moving again. “He used to come up behind me in the library. I'd turn to get a book and he'd be there. Staring, smiling. Suggestive smiles— do you understand?”
I nodded. “Was this after he asked you out or before?”
“After. The creep. It was obviously his way of getting back at me. Three separate times he asked me, three times I told him no. Three strikes and you're out, right? But he wouldn't accept it. Everywhere I'd go I'd turn around and he'd be looking at me. A creepy look. It was really starting to get to me.”
“Was this all over campus?”
“No, only the library,” she said. “As if the library was his little den. He probably stayed down there looking for women to spook, because there was no other reason for him to be there. He's an engineering major and engineering has its own library.”
She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “I'm not paranoid, I've always been able to take care of myself. But this was horrible. I couldn't concentrate. School's tough enough without getting so distracted. Why should I have to deal with that, too? But I wouldn't have had the courage to do anything about it without Professor Devane.”
She bit back tears. “It's such an incredible loss! So unfair!”
She rolled the bike faster.
“Has Huang stopped bothering you?”
“Yes. So God bless Professor Devane and to hell with the administration for caving in.”
“Who'd they cave in to?”
“What I heard was there was a rich alumnus who ordered them to shut it down.” She thrust her jaw out. “Is Huang dangerous?”
“Not that we've learned so far.”
Her laugh was unsteady. “Well, that's really comforting.”
“So you're still worried about him.”
“I really wasn't— we pass each other on campus sometimes and I feel empowered. But then I start thinking about Professor Devane's murder. Could it have been something to do with the committee? And I just get sick.”
We walked a bit before she said, “When I start to get anxious, I think back to something Professor Devane told me: Harassers are underassertive cowards, that's why they sneak around. The key is to face up to them, show your inner strength. Which is what I do when I see Huang. But look what happened to her.”
The bike came to a skidding halt so sudden she had to pull back to maintain balance. “The fact that she could become victimized enrages me! I've got to find a way to make something good out of it— is there any chance it could be Huang?”
“He seems to have an excellent alibi.”
“So at least you took him seriously enough to investigate him. Good. Let him know what it feels like to be under scrutiny. But if you don't suspect him, why are you talking to me?”
“I'm after any information I can get about Professor Devane. People she was close to, her activities, anyone she might have angered.”
“Well, we weren't close. We only spoke a couple of times— before the hearing and after, when she coached me on how to handle myself. She was incredibly kind. So understanding. As if she really knew.”
“About harassment?”
“About what it felt like to be the victim.”
“Did she talk about having been a victim?”
“No, nothing like that. Just empathy— genuine empathy, not someone trying to fake it.”
The blue eyes were unwavering.
“She was an amazing woman. I'll never forget her.”
Tessa Bowlby's dorm was one of several six-story boxes propped at the northwest edge of the U's sprawling acreage. A big wooden sign on posts said STUDENT HOUSING, NO UNAUTHORIZED PARKING. The landscaping was rolling lawn and bearded coco palms. Just down the road was the cream-stucco-and-smoked-glass recreation center where Philip Seacrest and Hope Devane had met, years ago.
I parked in a loading zone at the side of the building, entered the lobby, and walked up to the front desk. A black woman in her twenties sat underlining a book with a thick pink marker. Her lips were the same shade of pink. Behind her was a switchboard. It blinked and beeped and as she turned to take the call she noticed me. Her book was full of fine print and pie graphs. I read the title, upside down. Fundamentals of Economics.
Plugging the board, she faced me. “Can I help you?”
“Tessa Bowlby, please.”
She slid over a sheaf of papers. Typed list of names. The B's began on the second page and continued onto the third. She checked twice before shaking her head.
“Sorry, no one by that name.”
“Tessa might be a nickname.”
She inspected me and looked again. “No Bowlbys at all. Try another dorm.”
I checked all of them. Same results.
Maybe Tessa had moved off-campus. Students did it all the time. But combined with the fear I'd seen in her eyes, plus her reduced workload, it added up to escape.
I used a pay phone in the last dorm to call Milo, wondering if he had her home address and wanting to tell him about the holes in Cruvic's training. He was away and the cell phone didn't answer, either. Maybe he'd found another three-stab murder or something else that would make my train of thought irrelevant.
Driving away from the U, I pulled into the first filling station I found in Westwood Village. The phone booth was a tilting aluminum wreck, but a Westside directory dangled under the phone, coverless and shredded, lots of pages missing. The page with all the Bowlbys was there.
All two of them:
Bowlby, T. J., Venice, no address listed.<
br />
Bowlby, Walter E., Mississippi Avenue in West L.A.
L.A.'s a random toss of residential pickup sticks, and with a dozen directories covering the county, the odds of either Bowlby being related to Tessa were low. But I went with what I had, starting with Walter on Mississippi because he was closer.
The Clinic Page 17