The Clinic Page 3

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Suzette Band,” he said, reading off a Hollywood exchange. “She probably won't call back without a hassle, so feel free to be extremely annoying.”

  It took five times to reach Suzette Band, but when she finally came on her voice was pleasant and amused.

  “The police? One Adam Twelve, One Adam Twelve?”

  Committing felony impersonation of a police officer seemed easier than explaining my precise role, so I said, “Do you remember a guest you had on last year, Professor Hope Devane?”

  “Oh . . . yes, of course, that was terrible. Has her murderer been caught?”

  “No.”

  “Well, please tell us when he is. We'd love to do a follow-up. I'm serious.”

  Bet you are.

  “I'll do my best, Ms. Band. In the meantime, maybe you can help us. There was another guest on with Professor Devane, a man named Karl Neese—”

  “What about him?”

  “We'd like to speak to him.”

  “Why— oh, no, you can't be serious.” She laughed. “That's a scream. No, I can see why you'd— but don't waste your time with Karl.”

  “Why not?”

  Long pause.

  “Is this on tape or something?”

  “No.”

  Silence.

  “Ms. Band?”

  “You're sure this isn't being taped?”

  “Positive. What's the problem?”

  “Well . . . the person you really want to speak to is Eileen Pietsch, the producer. But she's traveling. I'll have her office call you when—”

  “Why waste time if Karl's someone we shouldn't worry about?”

  “He really isn't. It's just that we . . . our show . . . Karl's a . . .”

  “Professional guest?”

  “I didn't say that.”

  “Then why shouldn't we worry about him?”

  “Listen— I shouldn't be talking to you at all but I don't want you making a big deal about this and getting the show bad exposure. Lord knows we've had plenty of that with all the bluenoses in Washington hunting for scapegoats. We feel we provide a bona fide public service.”

  “And Karl was part of that?”

  I heard a sigh on the other end.

  “Okay,” I said. “So he was paid to come on and be the professor's foil.”

  “I wouldn't put it that way.”

  “But he's an actor, right? If I go through the SAG book or the agent rosters I can probably find him.”

  “Look,” she said, louder. Then she sighed again. “Yes, he's an actor. But for all I know he really does hold those views.”

  “Then why shouldn't I worry about him? Things got pretty nasty between him and Professor Devane.”

  “But that was . . . boy, you don't let up . . . okay, to be perfectly honest, Karl is a pro. But he's a really nice guy. We've used him before and so have other shows. We bring guys like him on to spice things up. Especially with professors because those types can be dry. All the shows do it. Some of the others even salt the audience. We never do that.”

  “So you're saying he wasn't really hostile toward Professor Devane.”

  “Of course not, he's mellow. In fact I think we had him on our Nice Guy show a year ago— you know, finishing last and all that. He's quite good. Adaptable. One of those faces you forget.”

  “So no one remembers they've seen him before?”

  “We stick a beard on them, or a wig. People aren't that observant, anyway.”

  “I'd still like to speak to him. Do you have a number handy?”

  Another pause. “Tell you what, I'll make you a deal.”

  “Do I get to choose between the money and what's behind Curtain Number Three?”

  “Very funny,” she said, but the friendliness was back in her voice. “Here's the deal: Call me as soon as you get a solve on the murder so we can have first dibs on a follow-up show, and I'll give you Karl. Okay?”

  I pretended to deliberate. “Okay.”

  “Excellent— hey, maybe you can come on, too. Ace detective and all that. Do you photograph well?”

  “Camera lights turn my eyes red but my fangs stay white.”

  “Ha ha, very funny. You'd probably do real well. We've had cops on before but most of them are pretty wooden.”

  “Like professors.”

  “Like professors. Most people are wooden without help. Or some big story to tell.”

  “I watched Professor Devane's tape,” I said. “She seemed pretty good.”

  “You know, she was. Class act. Really knew how to work the audience. It's really terrible about what happened to her. She could have become a regular.”

  Karl Neese's number was out in the Valley but his machine said to reach him at work if it was about a part. Bo Bancroft's Men's Fashions on Robertson Boulevard.

  I looked up the address. Between Beverly and Third, right off Designer Row. At this hour, a twenty-minute drive.

  The store was closet-sized, full of mirrors, weathered Brazilian antiques painted with roses and religious icons, and racks of three-thousand-dollar suits. Disco-remixed easy listening on the sound system, two people working, both in black: a blond girl with bored eyes behind the register and Neese folding cashmere sweaters.

  Since the show, the actor had let his hair grow to his shoulders and raised a prickly beard. In person, he looked younger. Pale and hungry-looking. Very long, very white fingers.

  I introduced myself and told him why I was there.

  He finished folding and turned around slowly. “You're kidding.”

  “Wish I was, Mr. Neese.”

  “You know, right after it happened I wondered if someone would call me.”

  “Why's that?”

  “Because the show got nasty.”

  “Nastier than it was supposed to get?”

  “No, they paid me for nasty. “Go out and be an asshole.' ” He laughed. “How's that for artistic direction?”

  “What else did they tell you?”

  “They gave me her book, told me to read it so I'd know what she was about. Then come on like a schmuck, get on her case to the max. Not a bad gig, actually. Six months ago I was on Xavier! as an incestuous father with no remorse. Cheap beard and sunglasses and a shirt I wouldn't be caught dead in, but even with that I kept worrying some idiot would see me on the street and take a punch.”

  “You do a lot of this?”

  “Not as much as I'd like to. It pays five, six hundred a throw but there're only so many openings a year. Anyway, I'm not saying it's weird for you to come by, see if I'm the big bad wolf, but I'm not. The night she was killed I was doing dinner theater out in Costa Mesa. Man of La Mancha. Four hundred senior citizens saw me.” He smiled. “At least fuzzily. Hell, some of them might even have been sober. Here's the producer's number.”

  He read off a 714 exchange, then said, “Too bad.”

  “About what?”

  “Her being killed. I didn't like her but she was sharp, really handled my bullshit beautifully. You'd be amazed how many can't cope, even when they know what's going down.”

  “So she knew?”

  “Of course. We never had a formal rehearsal but they did get us together before the show. In the greenroom. I told her I'd be coming on like Frankenstein with a militia card, she said fine.”

  “So why didn't you like her?”

  “Because she tried to psych me out. Right before we went on. Acted friendly to me when the producer was there, all through makeup. But the minute we were alone she sidled in close to me, talking in my ear— almost seductively. Telling me she'd met plenty of actors and every one of them was screwed up psychologically. “Uncomfortable with their identities' is the way she put it. “Playing roles to feel in control.' ” He chuckled. “Which is true, but who the hell wants to hear it?”

  “Think she was trying to intimidate you?”

  “She was definitely trying to intimidate me. And what was the point? It was all phony bullshit. Like TV wrestl
ing. I was the bad guy, she was the good guy. We both knew she'd be tossing my ass on the mat. So why gild the lily?”

  Playing roles to feel in control.

  Little boxes.

  Maybe Hope had seen herself as an actress.

  Returning home, I called the producer of the Costa Mesa production. His assistant checked her logs and verified that Karl Neese had, indeed, been onstage the night of the murder.

  “Yeah, that was one of our better ones,” she said. “Good ticket sales.”

  “Still on?”

  “Hardly. Nothing lasts long in California.”

  Milo checked in at ten to five. “Any protein in the house?”

  “I'm sure I can find something.”

  “Start looking. The thrill of the hunt is ripe in my nostrils and I am hungry.”

  He sounded exhilarated.

  “The visit to the dean was productive?” I said.

  “Feed me and I'll tell you. I'll be over in half an hour.”

  No shortage of protein. Robin and I had just shopped and the new refrigerator was double the capacity of the old one.

  I made him a roast beef sandwich. The white kitchen seemed vast. Too big. Too white. I was still getting used to the new house.

  The old one had been eighteen hundred square feet of silvered redwood, weathered shingles, tinted glass, and half-mad angles, built from antique materials and recycled wood by a Hungarian artist who'd gone broke in L.A. and returned to Budapest to sell Russian cars.

  I'd bought it years ago, seduced by the site: Deep in the foothills north of Beverly Glen and separated from neighbors by a wide patch of thickly wooded, high-table public land, it afforded a privacy that had me encountering more coyotes than people.

  The seclusion had proved perfect for the psychopath who burned the house down one dry summer night. Tinder on a foundation, the fire marshal had called it.

  Robin and I decided to rebuild. After a couple of false starts with miscreant contractors, she began supervising the construction herself. We ended up with twenty-six hundred square feet of white stucco and gray ceramic roof, whitewashed wood floors and stairs, brass railings, skylights, and as many windows as the energy-conservation regulations would allow. At the rear of the property was the workshop where Robin went happily each morning, accompanied by Spike, our French bulldog. Several old trees had been immolated but we craned in boxed eucalyptus and Canary Island pines and coast redwoods, dug a new Japanese garden and a pond full of young koi.

  Robin loved it. The few people we'd had over said it had come out great. Milo's appraisal was “Tray chick, but I like it anyway.” I nodded and smiled and remembered the slightly moldy smell of old wood in the morning, arthritic casement windows, the creak of foot-polished pine floorboards.

  Adding a pickle to Milo's sandwich, I put the plate back in the giant fridge, brewed some coffee, and reviewed the notes on my most recent custody consultation to Family Court: both parents engineers, two adopted sons, ages three and five. The mother had fled to a dude ranch in Idaho, the father was furious and ill-equipped for child care.

  The boys were painfully polite but their drawings said they had a good fix on the situation. The judge who'd referred the case was a capable man but the dolt to whom it had been transferred rarely read reports. Lawyers on both sides were miffed that I didn't agree with their respective party lines. Lately, Robin and I had started talking about having children of our own.

  I was working on a final draft of the report when the bell rang.

  I went to the front, looked through the peephole, saw Milo's big face, and opened the door. His unmarked was parked crookedly behind Robin's pickup. From the rear came the buzz of a power saw, then Spike's help-I'm-choking bark.

  “Yo, pooch.” He looked at his Timex. “How's that for time? Five minutes from campus.”

  “You really should set a better example.”

  Grinning, he wiped his feet on the mat and stomped in. The new Persian rug was soft, with a silky sheen, and I supposed I liked it just fine. None of my art had come through the fire and the walls were bare as fresh notepaper.

  Old house or new, the kitchen remained Milo's magnet. As he continued toward it, light shot in from above and bleached him. Giant snowman.

  By the time I got there, he had the sandwich out with a carton of milk and was sitting at the table.

  He ate it in three bites.

  “Want another?”

  “No thanks— yeah, why not.” Raising the carton to his lips, he drained it, then patted his gut. This month he was cutting back on alcohol and his weight had dropped a bit, maybe to 240. Most of it saddled his middle and swelled his face. The long legs that stretched him to six-three weren't particularly thin, but the contrast made them seem that way.

  He wore a pale green blazer over a white shirt and black tie, brown pants and tan suede desert boots. He'd shaved closely except for a small gray patch behind his left ear, and the lumps on his face stood out like unfinished clay modeling. Static made his hair dance.

  As I prepared a second sandwich he began pulling papers out of his briefcase.

  “Spoils of the hunt: potential enemies list.” He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Nixon had nothing over Professor Devane.”

  I brought him the food.

  “Delicious,” he said, chomping. “Where do you get the meat?”

  “At the supermarket.”

  “You do the shopping, now? Hey, you can run for president. Or do you and the little lady take turns?”

  “The little lady,” I said. “Care to call her that to her face?”

  He laughed. “Actually, this case has gotten me thinking. Used to consider myself excluded from the whole gender-bender thing but the truth is, all of us with Y chromosomes were brought up as little savages, weren't we? Anyway, the dean turned out to be fun. Nice and squirrelly when I finally got in to see him. Which wasn't easy til I started flashing the badge and talking media exposure of the conduct committee. Then all of a sudden I'm ushered into the sanctum sanctorum and he's offering me coffee, shaking my hand. Telling me there's no reason to bring up the committee, it was “inconsequential.' Not to mention “provisional' and “of short duration.' The whole thing was disbanded because of “constitutional and free-speech concerns.' ”

  He pulled a folder out of his briefcase. “Luckily, he's assuming I know more than I did. So I bluff, say I've heard differently around campus. He says no way, it's a dead issue. I say Professor Devane's dead, too. Why don't you just start from the beginning, sir. Which he does.”

  He shook the carton. “Any more milk?”

  I got him some and he gulped and wiped his lip.

  “You were right about it being a sexual-harassment thing. But not between students and faculty. Between students and students. Professor Devane's idea. They heard three cases, all girls who'd taken her class on sex-roles and complained to her. Devane didn't go through official channels, just winged it. Notifying the complainants and the accused, setting up a little tribunal.”

  “The students had no idea it was unofficial?”

  “No, says the dean. Really ethical, huh?”

  “Oh boy,” I said. “Constitutional and free-speech concerns— more like financial concerns, as in lawsuit.”

  “He wouldn't admit that, but that's the picture I got. Then he tells me the committee couldn't have had anything to do with the murder but when I asked him why not, he didn't have an answer. Then he says it would be a grave error to go public, one that could cause problems for the police department, because all the participants— accusers and defendants— had demanded strict confidentiality and they might sue us. When I didn't answer, he threatened to call the police chief. I sat there and smiled. He picked up the phone, put it down, started begging. I said I understand your position and I don't want to make problems, so give me all your written records without a hassle and I'll exercise maximum discretion.”

  He waved the folder. “Transcripts of the three sessions. Hope
taped them.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows? Maybe she was planning another book. Incidentally, the dean said she put up a fuss about having the committee kiboshed. Academic freedom and all that. Then Wolves and Sheep came out and she lost interest.”