Do No Harm (32 page)

"Nice outfit, Spier," the man said. "I appreciate your not calling attention to us."

David literally did a double take as Ed shook his hand roughly and slid into the love seat opposite the couch, slightly favoring his left side. "Don't say anything loud," Ed said softly. "Don't raise your voice, don't act surprised. Just start talking."

David swallowed hard, finding his train of thought. "The orange zinc lozenges that Clyde was sucking--I think he uses them because he's taking meds that can cause a dry or metallic mouth as a side effect. Doctors usually recommend Altoids or zinc lozenges to cover it." David's voice was high and shaky; he could feel his heart hammering.

"Slow down. Calm down. Can't you use anything to cover the taste? Like gum?"

"You can, but generally something stronger is more effective."

The waitress came over, and Ed ordered a Sapphire martini, up, chilled, with three olives. David ordered cranberry juice.

"And guess which drugs most commonly have that side effect?" David said, as soon as she departed. "Psychiatric drugs. Sure, now and then an antihistamine like Claritin will dry you out, but classically it's antipyschotics--clozapine, Mellaril, Haldol, Prolixin, risperidone, Zyprexa--or antidepressants, like Paxil or Prozac."

David pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and smoothed it on the cocktail table between them. "I made a list of Clyde's symptoms. Jerking pupils, headaches, difficulty concentrating, clouding of consciousness, slurred speech, restlessness, and drunken walking. These all pointed me to nervous system diseases and conditions."

"But you think these traits are actually drug side effects, not symptoms of a disease?"

"Exactly. I was so focused on the nervous system presentation, I neglected to write down other relevant traits. So I went back in my mind and tried to think of what I might have missed." Pulling a pen from his scrub top, David added dry or metallic-tasting mouth to the list. "Remember I told you he had swollen hands? Well, I recalled his neck was a bit swollen as well, which could indicate hypothyroidism. He left hair behind on the pillow when he fled, so it could be falling out. Acne and pitted fingernails should be on the list as well." He wrote down swollen hands--hypothyroidism?; alopecia--loss of hair; acne; pitted fingernails.

David glanced down at the potential diagnoses he'd written beneath. The new symptoms did not fit the symptom clusters for most of the diagnoses on the list. He drew a line through them all except drug toxicity and insecticide poisoning. But insecticide poisoning generally causes excessive salivation, the opposite of a dry or metallic-tasting mouth, so he crossed that one out as well. "We're probably dealing with a drug toxicity issue here. Whatever he's taking, he's taking too much of it and it's poisoning him."

David looked at Ed with sudden irritation. "And you--where have you been? What happened with the print? When did you tip off the police? Did you know Clyde's not even Clyde anymore? He's Douglas DaVella. He used to work at the hospital."

"No," Ed said. "Douglas DaVella died three years ago Sunday of colon cancer. He was a sixty-seven-year-old veteran of the Korean War. I ran the print, and the results came back this morning." Before David could say anything, Ed held up his hand. "I got the print results over to the police, as I promised I would. Our boy is indeed Clyde. Clyde C. Slade, to be precise. DOB January 2, 1963." He adjusted his wig with a subtle gesture that looked as if he were straightening his hair in the front.

"Holy shit," David said. "So he really is named Clyde. But how did he . . . ?"

"Clyde took Douglas DaVella over. Someone's social security number isn't placed on the social security death index when they die, it gets put there when their death benefit gets claimed. As far as the records go, no claimed death benefit, no dead guy."

"Don't registrars cross-index birth and death certificates?"

"Only by county, sometimes state. California does it statewide, but our boy Doug was from Virginia. He didn't move out here till after his tour in Korea. When he died, Clyde stole his social security number so he could apply for a job at the hospital under a false name. One might argue that showed premeditation, were one prone to legal arguing."

"How did you find out about DaVella?"

"Public Utilities Commission records. The cops always go the DMV route, which takes longer and is easier for criminals to deceive. But no one thinks to lie to the gas company. My scanner gave me a heads-up they were going after a Douglas DaVella, and my intelligence showed that Clyde C. Slade had changed his name on a gas bill to Douglas DaVella three years back, right after DaVella kicked. Unfortunately, he's not at that address anymore, and there's no new utilities listing for either name. So either he's living in some economy shithole where utilities are provided or he's got a new fake name. Back to square one."

"They got a current address on DaVella from security. I listened to the news on the way over to see if there was anything about an arrest. Or a shooting. Have you heard?"

"It was a fake address--some crib off Palms in West LA."

"How'd he get his paychecks?"

Ed shrugged. "Maybe he picked them up himself. All I know is, the address is a bust."

"How did Clyde know Douglas died? There could be a connection there. Maybe they lived in the same apartment complex."

"I'm checking it out, as, evidently, are the cops. Nothing yet."

"DaVella had two complaints filed against him when he worked at the hospital, one of them over at the Neuropsychiatric Institute where he wasn't supposed to be. He also had a violent reaction to one of our psychiatrists, who's black, and we'd hypothesized that he was afraid of shrinks or blacks. Now I'm thinking he's got a hang-up revolving around the NPI. I'm planning on checking it out when I get back to the hospital. The cops took the security records, but I can get at the medical records. In this case, I'm hoping, that'll give me the upper hand."

"Looks that way so far."

"What did you get on Clyde's background?"

"Thirty-eight years old. Spent his childhood shuttled from foster home to foster home. Eleven different homes in the first fifteen years of his life. Then he ran away. His juvenile record's expunged--which is odd for someone in his demographic, given the resources that takes--but he's got two adult priors. An indecent exposure and a 647.6."

"Which is?"

"Child molestation." He took note of David's expression. "Not like you think. It's not necessarily sexual. It can be anytime someone annoys a kid under eighteen. This was your standard Peeping Tom scenario. He was staring at a seventeen-year-old girl through an open window. They tried to get a resburg" --Ed caught himself and backed up-- "a residential burglary, but they couldn't prove he crossed the plane of the window." He bit his lip. "It was a dusty sill, so they would've seen prints if he had. He just stood there and stared at her--freaked her out. It's pretty much just that and the weenie wagger."

"Who'd he flash?"

"A hooker."

"And she reported it?"

"She got picked up ten minutes later. She claimed she was merely propositioning the UC--the undercover cop--to catch a ride out of the area, because there was a flasher on the prowl. When they rounded up Clyde, he copped to. Said he was just trying to scare her."

Ed leaned back, took a sip of his drink, and grimaced.

"You don't like martinis?" David asked.

"I hate them."

"So why . . . ?"

"Because two grown men sipping juice in a bar are bound to be remembered, just as a waitress might remember a man dressed in a thousand-dollar suit for ordering a Bud. Which is what I really want." He leaned back, crossing his legs daintily. He had indeed mastered the affect of a polished businessman. "Besides, one should always change one's habits. Habits are trails that lead back to you. Never drive the same route, never shop at the same stores, never order the same thing twice."

David realized from the expression on Ed's face that his brief speech was more than informational--he was consciously showing David that a trust and rapport was growing between them. Information was Ed's currency, and he spent it cautiously.

"I'm working a sting right now in the financial district. Thus the attire."

"I thought you were on the wrong side of the law."

"When you have a particular skill set," Ed said, "there are no sides of the law. Just things that need to get done." His tone changed quickly; the small talk was over. "So, now that we know that Clyde is, in all likelihood, taking psychiatric medication--too much psychiatric medication from the sound of it--how does that help us?"

"I can find out which drugs were prescribed for Douglas DaVella while he was at UCLA, who prescribed them, and what pharmacies they were called in to. That gives us a few trails. Plus, the NPI incident involved an alleged attempt on his part to steal a patient's meds, so when I look into that, it may dovetail."

Ed sucked an olive; the pimiento left the core with a popping sound. "I'm beginning to like you more and more. When can you get on that?"

"Right now. I'm off today, and I'll have someone cover my shift tomorrow."

"But you haven't taken a single vacation day in two years," Ed said. "Two years and fourteen days, to be precise."

"How do you know that?"

"You think I'd do anything for you without running you? I know how much you owe on your mortgage. I know that asshole Jenkins gave you a fix-it ticket last night, and that the word is it was a break-it fix-it. I know the only B you ever got in your life was in embryology your first year of medical school."

David smiled, impressed. "Goddamn embryology." He straightened up on the couch. "I have to proceed somewhat cautiously--too much time off in the midst of this could further damage my reputation at the hospital."

Ed arched a red eyebrow. "Still care about that, do we?"

"If it undercuts my effectiveness, yes."

Ed's pale face remained blank. "Let me keep shaking on the paper trail. Get back to me with any info about the meds--that front seems stronger."

"Do I need to . . . Should I pay you for any of this?"

"Free of charge for now. In my line of work, sixty percent of what I do ends up being favors for good people. Think of me as a guardian angel." He popped the last olive in his mouth and chewed it. "Plus I owe you for repairing my ass."

CLYDE'S pate, visible through his thin veil of hair, glistened with sweat. With a final glance to the quiet upstairs window, he stepped from his car onto the curb. He kept his head lowered and moved swiftly to the apartment building entrance.

A kid with a deficient mustache and a blaring Walkman cleaned the floor with imprecise swipes of a mop. He'd propped open the front door, enabling a breeze through the lobby. Clyde waited until the kid made a dancing half turn toward the far wall, then scurried through the lobby and into the stairwell.

Flattening himself against the wall, he caught his breath, the redness slowly draining from his face. He mopped the sweat from his forehead with his T-shirt, leaving a crescent stain on the collar.

He turned and headed upstairs.

David called Diane in the ER on his way back to the hospital and filled her in as best he could. One of her college friends worked at the Drug Enforcement Agency, so Diane promised to follow up the prescription route before meeting David at Carson's.

David stopped off in the cafeteria to grab a sandwich and a Coke. As he waited in line at the cash register, he was acutely aware of the murmuring that seemed to follow him, the quick glances in his direction. The cashier's newspaper was pinned beneath a half-eaten, browning apple on the counter at her side, awaiting the next customer lull. The photograph on the cover was of David, sitting in the backseat of Jenkins's patrol car, looking as if he'd been arrested. The headline: TENSIONS BETWEEN SPIER AND LAPD ESCALATE. The fact that he'd joined the list of nefarious LA last names--Menendez, Furhman, Fleiss--elicited in him a mixture of embarrassment and alarm. It was as if he'd passed some point of no return and found himself suddenly lost.

David paid and went into the adjoining courtyard to eat in peace. A group of male nurses were playing pickup basketball on a worn wooden backboard someone had hammered up. David wolfed down the sandwich and was just on his way to the NPI when he noticed Peter wobbling across the courtyard and waving, holding a lunch tray in his other hand.

David caught up to Peter and walked patiently beside him, resisting the urge to offer to carry his tray. "How are you?" David asked.

"Oh, you know. I'm moving my procedure suite from across the street to upstairs from my office. Getting the damn thing up and running again has been something of a hassle, but aside from that-- " Peter misstepped and grimaced, setting down his tray on a nearby picnic table. An empty wrapper blew from his tray, but he pretended not to notice. "Would you mind resting a moment?"

"No," David said. "Not at all."

Peter released his leg braces and they sat at the table, watching the men leap and pivot and shoot. One of the nurses took a low pass, biceps flexing beneath the cut sleeves of his scrub top, and shot a turn-around jumper from ten feet out. The ball missed wide and a flurry of legs and arms fought for it beneath the basket.