Dr. Death (39 page)

"Because Milo's busy."

"Seems to be. Isn't everyone?"

"Better than the alternative," I said.

"You said it. By the way, I'm seeing Billy tomorrow. We're going over to see the new science center at Exposition Park. Anything you want to pass along?"

"Best regards and continue doing what he's doing. And keep busy. Not that he needs me to tell him that."

She laughed. "Yes, he's a wonder, isn't he?"

30

IT TOOK FORTY minutes on the 10 East and surface streets to get to the shabby section of East Hollywood where Beverly meets Temple.

Second hospital of the day.

Hollywood Mercy was five stories of earthquake-stressed, putty-colored stucco teetering atop a scrubby knoll that overlooked downtown. The building had an inadequate parking lot, a cracked tile roof, some nice ornate moldings from the days when labor was cheap, most with chunks missing. City ambulances ringed the entry. The front vestibule was crowded with long lines of sad-looking people waiting for approval from clerks in glass cages. CAT scans, PET scans, MRIs; the same high-tech alphabet I'd seen at St. Michael's, but this place looked like something out of a black-and-white movie and it smelled like an old man's bedroom.

Mate's bedroom.

His son was recuperating on the fourth floor, in something called the Special Care Unit. An unarmed security guard was posted at the swinging doors that led to the ward, and my I.D. badge got me waved through. On the other side was a chunky corridor five doors long with a nurses' station at the end. A black man with a shaved head sat near a stack of charts, writing, and a lantern-jawed, straw-haired woman in her sixties tapped her finger to soft reggae thumping from an unseen radio. I announced myself.

"In there," said the female nurse.

"How's he doing?"

"He'll survive." She pulled out a chart. A lot thinner than Joanne Doss's encyclopedia of confusion. A Hollywood Division police report was stapled to the inside front cover.

Eldon Salcido had been found beaten and semiconscious at 6:12 A.M. in the gutter of a residential block of Poinsettia Place, north of Sunset.

Three blocks from his father's apartment on Vista.

Paramedics had transported him, and an E.R. resident had admitted him for repair and observation. Contusions, abrasions, possible concussion later ruled absent. No broken bones. Extreme mental agitation and confusion, possibly related to preexisting alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness or some combination of all three. The patient had refused to identify himself, but police at the scene had supplied the vitals. The fact that Salcido was an ex-con with a felony record was duly noted.

Restraints ordered after the patient assaulted staff.

"Who'd he hit?" I said.

"One of our predecessors, last shift," said the male nurse. "Her big crime was offering him orange juice. He knocked it out of her hand, tried to punch her. She managed to lock him in and called security."

"Another day in paradise," said the woman. "Probably a candidate for detox, but our detox unit shut down last month. You here to evaluate him for transfer?"

"Just to see him," I said. "Basic consult."

"Well, you might end up doing it for free. We can't find a Medi-Cal card on him and he isn't talking."

"That's okay."

"Hey, if you don't care, I sure don't. Room 405."

She came out from behind the counter and unlocked the door. The room was cell-size and green, with a lone, grilled window that framed an air shaft, a single bed and an I.V. bottle on a stand, not hooked up. The vital-signs monitor above the headboard was switched off and so was the tiny TV bracketed to the far wall. A low industrial buzz seeped through the window.

Donny Salcido Mate lay on his back, bare-chested, shackled with leather cuffs, staring at the ceiling. A tight, sweat-stained top sheet bound him from the waist down. His trunk was hairless, undernourished, off-white where it wasn't blue-black.

Blue coils squirmed all over him. Skin art, continuing around his back and down both arms. Pictorial arms striped by bandages. Dried blood crusted the edges of the dressings. A swatch of gauze banded his forehead, a smaller square bottomed his chin. Purpling bruises cupped both eyes and his lower lip was a slab of liver. Other dermal images peeked out from within the coils: the leering face of a nightmarishly fanged cobra, a flabby, naked woman with a sad mouth, one wide-open eye emitting a single tear. Gothic lettering spelling out "Donny, Mamacita, Big Boy."

Technically well-done tattoos, but the jumble made me want to rearrange his skin.

"A walking canvas," opined the straw-haired nurse. "Like that book by the
Martian Chronicles
guy. Visitor, Mr. Salcido. Ain't that grand?"

She walked out and the door hissed shut. Donny Salcido Mate didn't budge. His hair was long, stringy, the burnt bronze of old motor oil. An untrimmed beard, two shades darker, blanketed his face from cheekbone to jowl.

No resemblance to the mug shot I'd seen. That made me think of the beard Michael Burke had grown when adopting his Huey Mitchell persona in Ann Ar- bor. In fact,
Donny
's hirsute face bore a resemblance to Mitchell's. But not the same man. None of that cold, blank stagnancy in the eyes. These rheumy browns were bouncy, heated, hyperactive. Hundred percent scared prey, not predator.

I stepped closer to the bed. Donny Salcido moaned and twisted away from me. A tattoo tendril climbed up his carotid, disappearing into the beard thatch like a vining rose. Yellowing crust flecked the edges of his mustache. His lips were cracked, his nose had been broken, but not recently, probably more than once; the cartilage between his eyes was sunken, as if scooped by a dull blade, the flesh below a nest of gaping black pores. Orange splotches remained on his skin where he'd been disinfected with Betadine, but whoever had cleaned him up hadn't gotten rid of the street stink.

"Mr. Salcido, I'm Dr. Delaware."

His eyes jammed shut.

"How're you doing?"

"Let me out of here." Clear enunciation, no slur. I waited, got caught up in the skin mural. Subtle shadings, good composition. I got past that, searched for an image that would tie in with his father. Nothing obvious. The tattoos seemed to encroach on one another. This was the junction of talent and chaos.

Bumps in the crook of his arm caught my eye. Fibrosed needle marks.

His eyes opened. "Get these things off," he said, rattling the cuffs.

"The nurses got a little upset when you tried to hit one of them."

"Never happened."

"You didn't try to hit a nurse?"

Headshake. "She aggressed on me. Tried to force juice down my windpipe. Not my esophagus, my windpipe,
get
it? Nasopharynx, epiglottis— know what happens when you do
that
?"

"You choke."

"You aspirate. Fluid straight into the lungs. Even if you don't suffocate, it creates a pleural cesspool, perfect culture for bacteria. She was out to drown me— if she couldn't accomplish that, infect me." A tongue, gray and fuzzed, caressed his lips. He gulped.

"Thirsty?" I said.

"Strangling. Get these things off of me."

"How'd you get hurt?"

"You tell me."

"How would I know?"

"You're the doctor."

"The police say someone hit you."

"Not some
one. Ones.
I got jumped."

"Right there on Poinsettia?"

"No, San Francisco. I walked all the way here because this glorious place is where I wanted to be treated." His head rolled toward me. "Better get me outta here or give me my Tegretol. When I'm out of my Tegretol, I get interesting."

"You suffer from seizures?"

"No, stupid. Cognitive dysfunction, affective scrambling, inability to regulate emotional outbursts. I'm prone to a mood disorder, get too unhappy, everything gets scrambled, no telling what I'll do." His wrists shot upward. The cuffs rattled louder.

"Who prescribed the Tegretol for you?"

"I did. Got a hoard at my place, but you supposed healers won't let me get to it."

"Where's your place?"

"Me to know, you to find out."

"What dosage do you take?"

"Depends," he said, grinning. His gums were swollen, inflamed, rotted black at the tooth line. "Three hundred migs on a good day, more if I'm feeling baaad— better be careful, I'm getting that
baaad
feeling right now. The old prodrome: everything turning glassy, circular, convex, pistons pumping, heart jumping. Soon I'm going to be all scrambled, who knows, maybe I could break free of these, eat you
up—
where's your white coat, what kind of doctor are you, anyway?"

"Psychologist."

"Fuck. Useless. Get me someone who can prescribe. Or let me outta here. I'm the victim, once this story gets out you and everyone else associated with it are not going to look good. Assuming the publishers print it. But they won't. They're part of it, too."

"Part of what?"

"The great conspiracy to denude my brain." Smile. "Nah, that's bullshit. I'm not paranoid, I've got a mood disorder."

"Who attacked you?" I said.

"Mexicans. Gangbangers. Punks. Illegal aliens, refuse of society."

"Did they try to rob you?"

"They tried and they succeeded. I'm walking down the street, minding my own, they drive up to the curb, get out, beat the shit out of me, go through my pockets."

"What did they get?"

"Everything in my pockets." He shook his head. "You're useless, I'm terminating this interview."

"Were you carrying a weapon?" I said.

He began to hum.

"Poinsettia is three blocks from your father's place."

The humming got louder. His eyelids twitched. He started breathing faster.

"Planning a visit to your father's place?" I said, talking over it. "Last time you tried, the lady downstairs interrupted you. How many times have you gotten inside?"

His head snapped toward me. "I
am
going to bite off your nose. Eye for an eye— avenge what that other psychologist did— Lecter. No, he was a psychiatrist, that was a great movie. I watched it and ate fava beans for weeks afterward."

"Did you kill your father?" I said.

"Sure," he said. "Bit off
his
nose, too. Had it with
pinto
beans and . . . some kind of wine . . . why am I thinking Chablis? Get me my fucking Tegretol."

"I'll see what I can do," I said.

"Don't lie to me, degree-boy."

"I'll do what I can."

"No, you won't."

I left him, returned to the station, paged the doc- tor who'd written the last note— early this morning. A woman named Greenbaum, first-year resident. Meaning she'd only been in training for a few months. She called back, saying she was at County General, wouldn't be rotating back in Hollywood until tomorrow. I told her why I was with Salcido and asked her about the medication.

"Yes," she said, "he claims he needs it to maintain 'internal stability.' He played that tune for me, too. I'm waiting to talk to the attending."

"He's self-medicating for assaultiveness and mood swings. If he's already on Tegretol, he's probably gone through lithium and the neuroleptics. Maybe in prison."

"Maybe, but I can't get anything out of him re- sembling a clinical history. Tegretol's okay, but there's the issue of side effects. I need blood levels on him."

"Did you have a chance to talk to him?"

"He didn't talk."

"He's a bit more verbal now," I said. "There's some IQ there. He knows how it feels before the assaultiveness comes on, is fighting to maintain control."

"So what're you saying?"

"I'm suggesting that at least in one respect he may know what's best for him."

"Did you see that skin of his?" she said.

"Hard to miss."

"Pretty disorganized for someone who knows what's best for him."

"True, but—"

"I get it," she said. "The police sent you to see him and you want him coherent so he'll talk to you."

"That's part of it. The other part is he's already been assaultive and if something works for him, maybe it should be considered. I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job—"

"No, actually you are." She laughed. "But sure, why not? Everyone else does. Okay, no sense having him freak out and me getting a three A.M. call. I'll try to get hold of the attending again. If she okays it, he gets dosed."

"He says he's been taking three hundred milligrams daily."

"He says? The lunatics run the asylum?"

"Look at Washington, D.C."

She laughed harder. "What do the police want with him?"

"Information."

"On what?"

"A homicide."

"Oh. Great. A murderer. Can't wait to see him again."