He said, “Oh! Please excuse me.”
And he went back out.
I sat there, looking at the closed door, and perhaps two minutes later, he came in and blinked at me again.
This time I stood, however, and stopped him before he could rush out. “Dr. Dailey?”
He looked at me carefully. “Yes? Am I interrupting?”
“No. I was waiting for you. My name is Nathan Heller. I just spoke to your receptionist, your nurse? I wanted a moment of your time.”
“Certainly.” He smiled, nodded. “Certainly.”
He took his place behind the desk and folded his hands. “What can I do for you, Mr. Heller?”
I explained that I was the president of the A-1, that my Chicago agency had merged with Rubinski’s.
“And I understand we’ve been sending you some referrals,” I said.
The doctor frowned in seeming thought. “Have you?”
“Yes. But I wanted to ask you about a specific young woman-Elizabeth Short.”
That name-the hottest topic on the lips of just about every newspaper reader in Los Angeles-got no visible reaction out of him. He just shook his head. “I don’t recall that particular patient. I’m afraid I’m growing a bit forgetful, Mr… uh…!”
“Heller. Elizabeth Short was her name-she may have been an old family friend.”
Nodding, eyes narrowed behind the wireframes, he admitted, “Now that does sound familiar… Not the name, but…”
“Did you practice medicine in New England, Dr. Dailey, before coming to California?”
He sat up straight. “Did I? I could have…”
“Surely, Dr. Dailey, you can remember where you practiced medicine.”
“Certainly. Medford Memorial Hospital.”
This response had been crisp, immediate.
I said, “Then Elizabeth Short did come here to make an appointment.”
“Did she?”
“Pretty girl, with black hair, fair complexion-she wore a lot of makeup.”
“Like a geisha!” he said, snapping his fingers. He stood. The eyes seemed alert, suddenly. “Let me show you my jade collection.”
“Uh… all right.”
The little doctor moved quickly to the cabinet, where I followed him, and for several minutes he described the pieces in detail, in particular a tiny Fei Tsui jade dragon that was particularly valuable.
“Should be in a safe deposit box, I suppose,” he said, shaking his head, “but I just couldn’t bear to hide away such beauty.”
Throughout this mini-lecture, Dailey was entirely coherent and focused; it was no great stretch to see that he’d been a professor. And his hands, gesturing confidently, suggested the respected surgeon he’d once been.
“What was your name?” he asked me, as he settled himself behind his desk again, and I took my chair.
“Yes, what is your name?” another voice asked-female, strong, sultry.
She stood framed in the doorway-unmistakably the amazon Fred had referred to-tall, perhaps as much as six feet, in white smock and pants that neither emphasized nor hid her generously well-shaped form. Not beautiful, exactly, Dr. Maria Winter was indeed “handsome,” her oval face home to large, languid yet piercing dark brown eyes, her nose aquiline, her mouth thin lipped and touched lightly red, her jaw firm, like her expression. Brown hair sat in a bun atop the rather oversize head; her smooth, clear complexion had an olive cast.
“I’m Nathan Heller,” I said, standing. “I gave your receptionist my card-I’m president of the A-1 Detective Agency… your neighbor.”
I offered her a hand and she shook it, firmly, introducing herself.
“I’m afraid Sharon neglected to tell me you were here,” she said. “We’re closing for the day. Is this a business matter, or-”
“Since my agency is sending referrals to you, I thought I should pay a courtesy call.”
“How kind.”
“But I also have a few questions about one of your patients.”
And I went back and sat down. “Dr. Dailey was just telling me about working in Massachusetts.”
She was still framed in the doorway, staring at me as if from two glass eyes.
Dailey turned to her and said, “Would you mind if I showed the gentleman my jade collection?”
Her mouth formed a smile, as she gazed at him, but it didn’t soften the hard, brittle mask of her face. She strode to him, put a hand on his shoulder-gently-and said, “You’ve had a hard day, a long day.”
He touched the hand on his shoulder, beamed up at her lovingly. “Shall we go home, dear?”
“Soon.” Her hand still on the doctor’s shoulder, she stared at me coldly. “Mr. Heller, Dr. Dailey is a fine man, and a fine physician… but he has his good days and bad, and his sapient moments and his…”
“Not so sapient moments?” I offered.
“The doctor is suffering from encephalomalacia, cerebral and coronary arteriosclerosis, and threat of myocardial infarction.”
“He’s senile and at risk of heart attack.”
“Yes.”
Dailey was smiling at me, hands folded, seemingly oblivious to the conversation we were having about him.
“The doctor and I work side by side,” she said. “He is often quite lucid, and-together-we are able to help many patients.”
“I trust the doctor isn’t performing surgery, any longer.”
“He is not… and as for the, uh, procedure in question…”
“Abortions, you mean.”
The eyes tightened in the terrible handsome mask. “Mr. Heller, I’m surprised a man in your line of work would be so indiscreet. Surely I don’t have to tell you that a private office can easily be bugged with dictaphones?”
I smiled, shrugged. “My understanding is that you’re protected.”
She folded her arms over the shelf of her breasts; she looked like an annoyed genie. “Be that as it may, the procedure is performed either by myself or by a physician’s assistant.”
“Not a physician?”
“An assistant with sufficient medical training to safely perform this simple procedure.”
“Skip the hard sell, Dr. Winter. I know you’re good; otherwise you and Doc Dailey wouldn’t be the film colony’s favorite mistake correctors.”
A frown disrupted the perfect smoothness of her face. “Is the referral fee we’ve been paying Mr. Rubinski in your view insufficient? I would hope you stand by the terms your partner and I negotiated, when-”
“No, that’s fine. I’m here about Elizabeth Short. You know-the Black Dahlia.”
Only the slightest twitch around her mouth indicated that what I had said had thrown her in any way. She said, simply, “I read the papers.”
I leaned back in the chair. “Don’t play games, Dr. Winter. I know the Short woman was a patient, or anyway a prospective one-she knew Dr. Dailey back in her hometown. She must’ve heard his name bandied about among her Hollywood girl friends, as the reliable quack to go to for ‘the procedure’… and recognized the name as that of an old family friend.”
Dr. Winter came around the desk, sat on the edge of it, looming over me. Dailey was smiling, giving no indication of whether he was following any of this or not.
She said, “Confidentiality between patient and doctor is a sacred pact, Mr. Heller.”
“Get off your high horse, lady-this is an abortion mill… kindly old doc, respectable offices, and fancy jade collection don’t change that.”
“I’m not going to confirm or deny Elizabeth Short as one of our patients.”
“This a murder case, get it? That alone should be enough to catch your attention; but it’s also not just any murder case. If the Short girl gets connected back to you, and this office… and then the A-1 office… we’re-”
The door opened. A tall, broad-shouldered man in doctor’s whites leaned in and said, “Excuse me-am I needed any longer?”
“Dr. Dailey and I are done for the day, Floyd,” Dr. Winter said, “but I’d like you to finish putting away those supplies, if you haven’t already.”
“Glad to,” Floyd said. Though clearly in his early forties, he had a boyish look, his hair blond, his eyes ice-blue. “That’ll only take a few minutes.”