Blood Test

“I really have, Detective. Please don’t pull me into this.”

“I’ll do the best I can.”

We left. Back in the car Milo checked in with the dispatcher. There were no important messages.

“So what’s the diagnosis on Surfer Boy?” he asked.

“Off the cuff? Personality problems, probably narcissistic.”

“Which means?”

“That he’s got low self-esteem and it expresses itself in self-obsession — muscles, vitamins, constant attention paid to his body.”

“Sounds like half of L.A.,” he growled and turned on the ignition. As we pulled away, Carmichael came out of his house in swim trunks carrying a surfboard, a towel, and tanning lotion. He saw us, smiled, waved, and headed toward the beach.

Milo parked in a no parking zone near the entrance to Western Peds. “I hate hospitals,” he said, as we boarded the elevator and rode up to the fifth floor. It took a while to locate Valcroix. He was examining a patient and we waited for him in a small conference room off the ward.

He came in fifteen minutes later, gave me a disgusted look, and told Milo to hurry, he was busy. When the detective began talking, he made a show of pulling out a medical chart, perusing it, and writing notes.

Milo’s a skilled interrogator but he struck out with the Canadian. Valcroix continued to chart, unflustered, as the detective confronted him with knowing the Touch visitors and his affair with Nona Swope.

“Are you through, Officer?”

“For the time being, Doctor.”

“What am I supposed to do, defend myself?”

“You might start by explaining your role in the disappearance.”

“That will be quite simple. There is none.”

“No collaboration between you and the couple from the Touch?”

“Absolutely not. I visited them once. That’s the extent of it.”

“What was the purpose of your visit?”

“Educational. I’m interested in communal societies.”

“Did you learn much, Doctor?”

Valcroix smiled.

“It was a peaceful place. They have no need for policemen.”

“What were the names of the people who visited the Swopes?”

“The man was called Baron, the woman, Delilah.”

“Surnames?”

“They don’t use them.”

“And you’ve only visited the Touch once or twice.”

“Once.”

“All right. We’ll be verifying that.”

“Feel free.”

Milo fixed him with a hard stare. The Fellow smiled contemptuously.

“Did Nona Swope tell you anything that would lead us to her family’s whereabouts?”

“We didn’t talk much. We just fucked.”

“Doctor, I suggest you rethink your attitude.”

“Oh really?” The squinty eyes became hyphens. “You interrupt my work to ask me stupid questions about my personal life and expect me to have a good attitude?”

“In your case personal and professional seem pretty enmeshed.”

“How insightful of you to notice.”

“Is that all you have to say, Doctor?”

“What more would you like to hear? That I like to fuck women? All right. I do. I crave it. I’m going to fuck as many women as I can in this life and if there’s a life thereafter I hope it will provide an endless chain of warm, willing women so I can keep fucking. Last I heard, fucking was no crime, or have they passed a new law in America?”

“Go back to work, Doctor.”

Valcroix gathered his charts and left, dreamy-eyed.

“What an asshole,” said Milo walking back to the car. “I wouldn’t let him near my hangnail.” There was an illegal parking warning from Hospital Security taped on the windshield. He ripped it off and put it in his pocket. “I hope he’s not typical of what they’re passing off as doctors nowadays.”

“He’s one of a kind. He won’t last much longer here.”

We headed west on Sunset.

“You going to check out his story?” I asked.

“I could ask the Touch people how well they know him but if there is some kind of conspiracy they’d lie. Best thing is to call the sheriff down there and find out if the joker’s been spotted more than once. Small town like that the law tends to notice things.”

“I know someone who might be familiar with the Touch. Want me to call him?”

“Why not? Couldn’t hurt.”

He drove me home and stayed for a minute to look at the koi. He was transfixed by the colorful fish and smiled as they gobbled down the pellets he tossed them. When he tore himself away to leave, his big body seemed heavy and slow.

“Any longer, I’d stay here till my beard turned white.”

We shook hands, he gave a little salute, turned and ambled off for another afternoon of witnessing the human animal at its worst.

12

I phoned Professor Seth Fiacre at UCLA. He’s an old classmate from grad school, a social psychologist who’d been studying cults for several years.

“Hi, Alex,” he said, cheerful as always, “just got back from Sacramento. Senate hearings. Stultifying.”

We reminisced and played catch-up and then I told him why I’d called.

“The Touch? I’m surprised you’ve even heard of them. They’re not well-known and they don’t proselytize. They’ve got a place called the Retreat, used to be a monastery, down near the Mexican border.”

“What about the leader — Matthias?”

“Noble Matthias. He was a lawyer originally. Used to call himself Norman Matthews.”

“What kind of law did he practice?”

“I don’t know. But it was high powered. Beverly Hills.”