Jonathan Kellerman - The Clinic

Muscadine telling me more: Tried for three-twenty on the bench press. It felt like a knife going through me.

A slip? Or playing with me?

Acting?

A good actor. Professor Dirkhoff's prize student. Dirkhoff had been distressed because Muscadine had dropped out to take a job on a soap opera.

A job that sounded definite.

But Muscadine had lost the part.

I can practice Stanislavsky from now til tomorrow, but if the bod goes so does my marketability.

Not remembering the name of the soap opera. Unlikely. Starving actors attuned themselves to every detail.

But giving me enough to sound credible.

Something about spies and diplomats, foreign embassies.

That had narrowed it down enough for Suzette Band to come up with a name.

Embassy Row. She'd gotten me the number of the show's casting director, a woman named Chloe Gold, and I'd called her posing as Muscadine's new agent. Asking her if Reed could get another chance because the boy was really talented.

She'd looked him up in her files and said No, thanks, he was bumped 'cause of physical factors.

What physical factors?

You don't know? You're his agent.

We haven't gotten into-

Ask him. Gotta go.

Physical factors.

The blood test, not just for HIV, but also for tissue compatibility. Hope with faculty clout, getting access to the sample.

It fit.

Not hard evidence but enough to hypothesize.

Cruvic's real clinic was the house on Mulholland Drive.

Honor thy father…

Milo drank the rest of the water and looked up at the track lighting. “Maybe we should throw a wrap party. Maybe the department will even compensate me for the rental and the ad in Variety .”

“You paid for it yourself?”

“Department doesn't authorize sting dough on the basis of hypotheses and I didn't want to spend six goddamn months going through channels. And what other choice was there? The wimpo judge said no warrant on Muscadine's medical records and apartment 'cause he doesn't like hypotheses. Meaning if I'd just walked up to the asshole and yanked his shirt up it would be no grounds, illegal search, and the scar would be excluded from evidence. Let alone forcing him to take an X ray, see if his kidney's missing.”

“And not much chance the surgeon kept records.”

“And as asshole Barone came to tell me, the asshole surgeon is out of the country. And, for the time being, with multiple murders on the agenda, busting Dr. Heelspur for malpractice isn't going to be the D.A.'s priority. But eventually, when what he did gets out, he ain't going to be working in Beverly Hills or anywhere else.”

“Any chance of jail time for him?”

He shrugged.

“Forced retirement may not mean much to him,” I said. “He probably doesn't need the money. Though being a doctor's a big deal to him psychologically. A very big deal. So maybe it'll hurt.”

“Why do you say it's such a big deal?”

“He stole Muscadine's kidney but sewed him up and let him live. Fatal error for Hope and Mandy and Locking, and, if Muscadine ever learned who'd cut him, for himself. But Cruvic wanted to see himself as a healer, not a killer. Working through his own childhood, just as Hope had tried to do.”

“Hope,” he said, shaking his head. “Setting Muscadine up for the knife.”

“Smartest girl and smartest boy, devising a project to save Big Micky,” I said. “She and Cruvic went back a long way. Strong bond. Maybe because Cruvic was someone who understood what it was like to be an A student with a parent who lived on the wrong side of the law. To have a secret life. I'll bet Big Micky paid Lottie Devane's medical bills at Stanford- one of the places he'd gotten a kidney. And the consultation money Hope's been getting from Junior and Barone is probably really some kind of allowance from Senior. Before the book, forty grand would have made a lot of difference in her life.”

“Payback time,” he said. “And Mandy was the bait. Where does Locking fit in?”

“I don't know, but keep looking up north.”

“Another smart boy,” he said. “You think the entire conduct committee was just a ploy to find a donor for Daddy?”

“No,” I said. “I think Hope believed in it. But she and Cruvic had probably been discussing what to do for Big Micky for some time. We know from the doctors at Stanford that he'd already tried going through channels but was unlikely to qualify for another kidney because two failures made him a very high risk for rejection and so did his poor general health and his age. Maybe Cruvic and Hope even considered using one of the women at the clinic as a donor- sterilize, then snip something extra. Maybe they were just waiting around for the right girl- someone with no family ties whatsoever. Then Hope came face-to-face with Muscadine, big and strong and healthy and no family ties. Plus, she believed him to be a rapist who was going to get away with it, so there was her moral justification. They tested his blood, ruled out HIV and other infections, and did a tissue match. Bingo. Not that it was any big miracle. The more compatibility factors the better, but kidney transplants are often done just on the basis of an ABO match, and both Kruvinski and Muscadine were O-positive, the most common type.”

“Christ,” he said. “For all we know, they did do some poor girl at the clinic and that failed, too. When all this comes out, we may hear about all sorts of people with scars and backaches.”

“There'd be a limit for the old man. He could only tolerate so much surgery. This was probably his last chance. That's why they had to find an ideal donor.”

“Muscadine…”

“Who Professor Steinberger never met, because she'd resigned from the committee before his case came up.”

“Hope didn't like the Storm kid much, either, but he had family ties.”

“The worst kind of ties: a wealthy father more than willing to make waves. And for all Kenny's obnoxiousness, his guilt was a lot more ambiguous. Maybe Hope still held on to a sense of fairness.”

“Maybe.” He shook his head. “Setting up Muscadine for involuntary charity. Harvesting him. Christ, it's an urban legend come to life. I almost feel sympathy for the bastard.”

“It would be traumatic for anyone,” I said, “but for someone like Muscadine- prizing his body, trying to merchandise his looks- it was so much more. When I spoke to him at his apartment, he said he'd found the blood test Kafkaesque. He also said his back injury had felt like a knife going through him. Playing with me. Or just getting it off his chest without letting on.”

“Free therapy?”

“Why not?” I said. “Don't actors learn that? Seize the moment?”

Big Micky was anything but.

He sat facing us under a huge live oak. Nothing grew under the tree, and the ground had reverted to sand. The rest of the yard was perfect bonsai grass around a half-Olympic black-bottom pool with a spitting-dolphin waterfall, herringbone-brick hardscape, statuary on pedestals, blood-red azalea beds, more big trees. Through the foliage, a spreading, hazy view of the San Gabriels said money couldn't buy clean air.

The old man was so shrunken he made the wheelchair look like a high-back. No shoulders, no neck- his smallish head seemed to sprout from his sternum. His skin was legal-pad yellow, his brown eyes filmed, the skin around them bagged, defatted, jeweled with blackheads. A fleshy red blob of a nose reached nearly to his gray upper lip. Bad dentures made his jaws work constantly. Only his hair was youthful: thick, coarse, still dark, with only a few sparks of gray.