Dr. Knox (27 page)

Conti led me to my seat and stood behind me. “And now back to Mr. Silva,” Bray said, and the smile broadened across his brutal face. “He has many other clients besides yourself, all over the city—a thriving little business. But I doubt it will survive after his clients are made aware of certain files hidden on their servers, certain photos and videos that only someone with Mr. Silva's access could have placed there. I'm referring to quite disturbing images, doctor—altogether sickening, I'm told, and entirely illegal. People in this city may tell themselves they don't mind living alongside of homosexuals, but I doubt their liberal attitudes extend to pederasts.”

I tried to stand, but Conti dropped a hand on my shoulder. Bray looked at his watch and sighed. “As I said, the mace is raised, and not just above your head. And it will come down, I assure you. The only person who can stop it is you, Dr. Knox. You have twenty-four hours to decide if you and your nurse will spend the next eight or ten months defending yourselves before licensing boards, if your clinic will be evicted from its current space, if you and some of your employees will be evicted from your respective residences, and if your consultant will lose his business and be brought up on child pornography charges.”

His words barely sounded through the rushing in my head. My pulse was bounding, and I could feel it in my carotid. My face was hot. I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. I smelled eucalyptus and sage and sea air, leather and liquor and old paper. Harris Bray propped his forearms on his desk and stared down at me, as if I was an ant beneath a lens and he was waiting for the first wisp of smoke. I took another deep breath.

“If you were listening to me and your niece, then you heard Elena's story. You know—”

“Let me stop you there, doctor, because you're already spouting irrelevancies. It doesn't matter one iota what I heard or what that woman has to say—you might as well be reciting last month's weather reports. The only thing that matters to your situation—and the situation of your makeshift family—is what you decide to do about the child. Everything else is noise.” Bray's eyes were somehow darker and shining, and they bored into mine.

“If you were listening,” I continued, “then you know Elena insists that Alex is her son. DNA testing will confirm—”

Bray made an irritated wave. “I heard all that. I also heard Amanda ask you if you wanted this to devolve into a custody battle. She didn't think it was to your advantage, and I couldn't agree more.”

“DNA—”

“Assuming the results are what you think they will be, do you really think we can't produce adoption documents, doctor?”

“Valid ones?”

He smiled. “I imagine only Elena would say otherwise, but she wouldn't be able to prove it. And then will follow much legal posturing about the best interests of the child, who is the more fit parent, and so forth. It will be lengthy and expensive and tedious, but the results are a foregone conclusion.”

“And you're not worried about Elena's story getting out? You must see it's beyond damning—to your company, your family—to your son especially. If the press got ahold of—”

Bray laughed, a rough barking noise. “Is that a
threat,
doctor? Are you threatening me with the press? Do you really think any news outlet would run that story? What editor or news director would do something so foolish? Assuming you could find a reporter stupid enough to write it.”

“A story like that would sell a lot of advertising.”

Another bark, and his nasty smile got wider. “Are you really so naïve? The people who make these decisions answer to management—chief operating officers, presidents, CEOs—who themselves answer to boards of directors. I happen to sit on several boards, doctor, including the boards of media companies, and I assure you that, while they might find an incremental bump in ad revenues appealing, they would find my lawsuits completely terrifying. The huge legal fees, the years of distraction, the potential for crippling judgments against them, not to mention the reputational wounds—they would simply have no appetite for it; the cost-benefit equation would never make sense. Though, really, I doubt my lawyers would ever have to take things that far.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “Because the editors and news directors—even the reporters—who might bring this woman's nonsense to public attention are all human beings, Dr. Knox. And as such they operate according to their own self-interests. They have assets they wish to protect, secrets they wish kept, loved ones they wish to safeguard, and when they understand what they must do to achieve those ends, they will act accordingly. I promise you, faced with a situation like the one you are in, none of them would take as long to make the only rational decision.”

“There are other ways her story could get out—social media, blogs….”

Bray shook his head. “
Publicly held
social media companies, doctor, blogs hosted by
publicly held
firms and written by human beings. I'm afraid it all comes back to risk, reward, and self-interest.”

“
Risk, reward, and self-interest
—is that how you dress it up?”

Bray took up his highball glass again, tapped a finger on his family crest, and drained it. He sighed and looked at me. “Dress what? It's all about self-interested actors competing in a free marketplace, nothing more. It's the way of the world.”

“This is theatre, right—for my benefit? You can't really believe that crap.”

Bray barked out another laugh. “Your immaturity is amazing. What I
do
find hard to believe is that you spent time in Africa, yet apparently find these concepts so alien. The continent provides so many splendid models of the power of unfettered markets.”

“If by that you mean the power of warlords and child soldiers over unarmed men, women, and children, then, yes, I'm well acquainted. Except that what you call pursuit of
self-interest
I call intimidation, coercion, extortion, rape, and murder.”

“A distinction without a difference.”

I let out a long breath and shook my head. “You set a new benchmark for arrogance, Mr. Bray.”

He straightened up. “And you, doctor, are smug and superior even by the standards of your profession. So certain you know what's best for the world—precisely how to improve it. Honestly, do you think you're the first scruffy man to stumble out of the jungle with fantasies about changing the world? Your story is unoriginal, doctor—old, boring, and fundamentally wrongheaded. The world is what it is—what it's always been. It doesn't want changing; it doesn't accept it. And it's the height of hubris to think you're at all qualified to try.

“In any event, I've indulged this pointless rambling for too long. You have twenty-four hours. Tiger will give you your phone back and give you a number you can call. Or don't call. You know the outcome.
Sine missione,
doctor.” Then Bray took his suit jacket from the peg, crossed the room, and disappeared through a paneled door.

Conti tapped my shoulder. “Ride's waitin', doc,” he said. He went to the patio and I followed. Outside, the sun was lower over the ocean and the air was cooler. The gulls were closer and more angry.

The noodle shop was on Sawtelle, not far from Bray Consolidated. It was a new place—sharp-edged and colorful, like something made from Legos—and I'd pulled in when I noticed that my hands were shaking and I had no idea at all where I was driving. I took a table near the open kitchen and called Sutter. Then I spent the next half-hour drinking iced matcha and watching steam rise from the shiny ranges. A narcotic flow of electronic music seeped from speakers in the ceiling, and the comforting aromas of soy and ginger and simmering broth washed over me, and by the time Sutter sat down across from me, I'd managed to purge a few of the visions of Lydia and Arthur getting hauled off to jail from my head.

Sutter squinted at me and looked as if he might ask something, but then the waitress came. Sutter ordered a Kirin and I finished my matcha and ordered the same. Then I told him about my day. The story carried us through one round of beers and part of the next.

“The evil emperor himself,” Sutter said when I finished, “and he brings you to the Death Star. Awesome.” He made room on the table for the steaming bowls of ramen that were approaching.

“It was more San Simeon Lite than Death Star,” I said, “though I saw a few storm troopers.”

“Probably more you didn't see.” Sutter picked up chopsticks and turned the ramen in his bowl. A thicker cloud of steam rose up. He looked at me through it. “You read him as serious?”

“As cancer.”

“So you've got a decision to make.”

“I'm not giving him the kid.”

“Which means?”

“I don't know what the fuck it means,” I said. It was louder than I meant it to be, and the other customers turned to look. Sutter smiled and lifted some noodles from his bowl. We ate and drank in silence for a while, and then Sutter drained his second beer and sighed.

“You don't give him the kid, you're going to war with him, and he's got the tactical advantage. He rolled out the shock and awe today to tell you that—to tell you that your choices are surrender or suicide.”

“I got that. I just can't believe those are my only options. Maybe I don't want to believe it.”

“Maybe they're not.”

I looked up. “Then what?”

Sutter caught the waitress's eye and held up his empty glass. “I'm not saying you've got
good
options. But maybe you can run the clock a little, distract Bray, give him some other things to worry about for a while.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged. “In another part of the world, or another part of town, you could blow up some of his shit. But here—maybe the niece.”

I sat up. “Mandy? You're not thinking of—?”

Sutter laughed. “Wrapping her in duct tape and throwing her in the trunk of my car? No, but I'm thinking maybe we wire you up and send you back to talk to her some more. You whisper some bullshit in her ear, whatever, and get her to threaten you—get it on tape. Then we turn the recording over to some wannabe Glenn Greenwald, and turn him loose on Mandy.”

“Which accomplishes what?”

“Throws her off balance, scares her, makes her go running to Uncle. Best case, the recording makes Bray reassess, or at least pause. It buys you some time.”

“Time for what? Nothing I heard today leads me to believe he isn't going to make good on his threats.”

“Time to prepare, time to mitigate, time to think of something else. A holding action's the best you can do, brother. Of course, you want to go another way—I always have a few spare rolls of duct tape around. But I don't think you want to go that way.”

“Give me a minute.”

Sutter frowned. “Seriously, that's what this boils down to. The old man is going to war. Unless you are too, a little extra time's all you're going to manage.”

I finished my beer and took a deep breath. “I've got to tell them. Lydia and Lucho and Arthur—I've got to tell them what's happening. What could happen to them.”

He pushed his chair back from the table and shook his head. “That won't be pretty.”

“No. They didn't sign up for any of this, didn't want any of it. Lydia has thought that we should stay the hell away from this since the day Elena and Alex turned up, and she's made no secret of it. Lucho has mostly kept his own counsel, but I know he thinks our day jobs are hard enough without the extracurricular shit. And Arthur—half of what he does for me is on a pro bono basis, and now…Shit.”

“Noncombatant casualties. Collateral damage. It sucks.”

I looked at my empty beer glass and thought about having another one, maybe ten more, but didn't. “I don't even know how to tell them,” I said.

Sutter nodded. “While you're figuring that, work out what you're going to tell Elena too.”

“Shit,” I said again. “Shit.”

Sutter drove to El Segundo, and neither of us said a word the whole way. It was nearly dark when we got there, and another one of Sutter's mercs, a sinewy black woman with scarred forearms and a Glock on her hip, spoke to him in French.

Shelly was at the kitchen table, working on a burrito the size of a cat, and Alex was just finishing a plate of enchiladas verdes. Alex smiled and waved and Shelly said “Yo” through a mouthful of rice. Elena was curled on the sofa, eating yogurt from a cup, and she rose when she saw me, as if she knew I had news.

“Let's talk in back,” I said to her. She shuttered her face, put her yogurt cup on the kitchen counter, and walked down the narrow hall to the rear bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed. Her feet were flat on the floor, and her mouth was a straight line.

“So?” she said.

I nodded and told her about my meeting with Mandy, its interruption, and my visit to Malibu. I didn't go into the details of Bray's threats, but I did say that I thought he was serious.

“He wants Alex returned, and he wants it on his terms,” I said, limping to conclusion. “He left no room for negotiation.”

Elena's silence was long and heavy, and neither Shelly's pitchy laughter from the other room, nor Alex's giggles made a dent in it. Her gaze was fixed on the window behind me, and the darkness beyond.

“So you meet the old man, face-to-face,” she said finally. “What you think?”

“Scary guy,” I said. “Maybe a little crazy.”

“No maybe. And not a little,” she said. “How he scare you?” Elena's eyes were locked on mine now. I swallowed hard.

“He threatened to shut down my clinic, and to hurt some people I care about.”

She nodded. “But if you give him Alex, then everything's fine. For you.”

“I'm not going to do that, Elena.”

She nodded again, slowly. Her gaze went back to the black glass. “So—what are you going to do?”

I took a deep breath. “I'm still working on that. Sutter had an idea about trying to get Mandy on tape, making the same threats her uncle did. That might give us some leverage.”

A smile flitted across Elena's small mouth so quickly I wasn't sure I'd seen it. She shrugged. “Sure, that could work, or maybe something else. You keep thinking.”

“I will. And you just sit tight. You and Alex are safe here.”

Elena's eyes didn't stray from the window, but the little smile came and went again. “
Sit tight.
Sure—what else I'm doing? Nothing but sitting.”

Sutter brought me back to my car. I drove home slowly and reluctantly, trying as I did to come up with a way of telling Lydia and Lucho and Arthur what Harris Bray had said that made his plans for them seem less disastrous than Godzilla's for Tokyo. Trying and failing.

The clinic was dark when I got there, but I could feel Lydia's irritation and exhaustion in every room, like background radiation, even before I found the note taped to my desk chair:
Sent 7 to ER @ County this afternoon. Assume they went. Hope so. Assume you remember we're open both days this weekend. Hope so.
Her handwriting was firm, precise, and angry.

I dropped into my chair, and dust rose in the darkness. It settled around me as I debated not calling Lydia and Lucho and Arthur just then, and instead waiting until morning to tell them. Or perhaps crawling upstairs, into my bed, and not coming out again. Or perhaps never moving from this chair. What difference would a few hours make, with a giant radioactive dinosaur bearing down? Better to let the good citizens of Tokyo have a few hours more of sleep and blissful ignorance. Somebody should dream—why not them? Then I thought about the files Bray said were squirreled away on the servers of Arthur's clients. God only knew what kind of sewage they contained, and a few hours might make the difference between finding and not finding them, between defusing the situation and having it detonate in Arthur's face. I sighed heavily and reached for the phone.

Of course they knew it was bad news. Why else would I call Lydia and Lucho back in at nine in the evening? Why else would I ask Lucho to bring Arthur along? They looked vulnerable in the waiting room's plastic chairs, in their after-hours clothes—tee shirts and sagging jeans, Lydia in a faded tracksuit—like our patients, pale, small, disheveled, and bewildered. Lucho brought coffee for me. I took it from him but couldn't bear to drink it.

“It's Kashmarian, right?” he asked. “He's selling the place on us? We gonna shut down?”

I shook my head and told them, without preamble or pause, and without looking any of them in the eye.

The silence afterward was leaden and sickening, and went on for a long time. Then Arthur muttered “Motherfucker” and sprang up and disappeared down the hall. In a moment I heard the sound of rapid fingers on a keyboard. Lydia made a shuddering sigh, put her head in her hands, and murmured
“Dios.”
Lucho squinted at me and shook his head.

“What the fuck, doc? This asshole is the kid's grandfather? And he bought my fucking apartment building—and this place too—just so he could kick us to the curb? Who does that? And what the fuck does he want from Artie? Artie never did anything to him, or to anybody—he doesn't even work here, for chrissakes. What the
fuck
?”

Lydia looked up. “It's got nothing to do with Arturo or you or me,” she said, her voice low and tight. “It's got to do with
him.
” She pointed a blunt finger, and I thought she was about to stand, to come at me from across the room. But then the breath and everything else left her, and tears ran down her face. When she looked at me again she was a decade older. Her voice was quiet and beaten.

“I'm not even going to ask what you'll do—I don't want to hear it. Anyway, it's always the same: you do what
you
want to do, like always, and the hell with what anybody else wants, or what it costs them.”

“Lyd—”

She held up a hand, as if she were warding off the evil eye. “Don't. Just don't fucking bother.”