Chapter 9
Jason had a text from his boss when he reported for work the day after New Year’s.
He’d had a wonderful vacation with his family, and he had almost hated to come back to L.A.
He missed the East at times, particularly New York.
It had been fun to be back in the midst of winter and play in the snow.
They stayed home on New Year’s Eve, watched old movies on TV, and drank champagne Jason had bought.
It was perfect, and New Year’s Day was balmy in L.A.
, which wasn’t too bad either. The snow was beautiful in Connecticut, but it would be a mess in the city.
His parents were going back to work too.
The vacation was over. His mother would be going back to her challenging corporate ethics case, and his father had a whole new year of books to publish.
The text Jason had gotten from his boss said to check in with him as soon as he got to work. That usually meant either that he had screwed something up or that they wanted to assign a story to him. He hoped it wasn’t another Mafia profile. He was tired of them.
He knocked on his boss’s office door at the Crime Bureau. Joe McCarthy was sitting at his desk with a stack of files in front of him, and he looked up as Jason walked in.
“Hi, good holiday?” Joe asked him politely.
“Very nice, thanks. You too?”
“Relatively,” Joe said with a grin. He had five young children who were always up to mischief. “One of the kids caught the flu and we all got it. And one of the twins got a broken arm falling out of his new bunk bed. Other than that, it was perfect.
“I have a story for you,” he continued. “Investigative. It may just be a few crackpots complaining.” The paper got those a lot too.
“But where there’s smoke, there’s fire, some of the time at least. If this is for real, it could be a big story.
Stories like this come up sometimes. I’d like you to do some digging and see if you think it’s for real.
“I called a couple of my buddies at LAPD, and they say they have nothing on it. I’m not sure I believe them.
Either they haven’t checked their files, or the women involved haven’t called the police, although two of them say they did, or the cops don’t know, don’t care, or haven’t gotten around to it yet.
” He handed a file across his desk to Jason.
“It’s medical. We’ve gotten letters from three women who claim that a local L.A.
plastic surgeon injected illegal, non-FDA approved substances into them.
All three of them almost died, and if the photos they sent are real, they are seriously disfigured.
The pictures are graphic and terrifying. They think the guy is a charlatan.”
Joe handed Jason the file. “I looked him up on the internet. Apparently he’s a big deal, with an office in Bel Air.
He’s hot stuff, a society doctor, big with the Hollywood celebrity set, everybody loves him, and he has his own ‘beauty center.’ He’s a plastic surgeon, but doesn’t do invasive surgery.
But if what these women say about him is true, he’s shooting some bad stuff into them, and he’s going to kill someone if he hasn’t yet, or at least disfigure them, like these three.
I don’t know if he’s careless, a charlatan or a quack, or if these women are crazy.
If you find anything out, it’s a story worth pursuing, but I’m not looking for a lawsuit if the guy is a reputable doctor.
He’s a Harvard graduate, so he must know what he’s doing.
Anyway, you do great research, and this kind of thing is right up your alley. ”
Jason listened. The story had an uncomfortably familiar ring to it.
He hoped that what he was thinking wasn’t the case.
But it sounded interesting, and Joe was right.
If the three women the doctor had disfigured were telling the truth, the doctor needed to be exposed.
If they were lunatics, the paper would bury the story.
He flipped open the file and got a glimpse of the photographs.
They were brutally ugly. The women were completely deformed.
There was a before picture of one of them, and the after picture was tragic.
“See what you turn up. Maybe nothing. Or maybe there’s a lot more to this story.
You never know. I’ll tell them to leave you alone on the drug wars and the standard homicides.
I’d like you to stay on this until you figure out if there’s a story here or not.
It could be big, if it’s for real.” Jason snapped the file shut, and thanked Joe for the assignment.
He was smiling. Joe was right. This was the kind of work he loved.
He got to play detective and then write about it.
You never knew what you’d turn up in the process.
This was real journalism, not just a litany of ongoing Mafia killings that had been happening for decades and never seemed to stop.
The weapons they used weren’t even much different from those they used in Al Capone’s day.
It was like a time warp except that people were still dying.
“I’ll keep you posted on my progress,” Jason promised before he left Joe’s office, and he went back to his own desk to go through the file carefully. There was one name he hoped he wouldn’t find there.
He sat down at his desk, glanced at what he had, and decided to read the letters first so he knew what the claims were.
He saw the photographs again and studied them carefully, and then he read the letters from the injured women.
Sometimes people went to the press instead of the police, hoping to get media attention or because the police hadn’t given credence to the story or didn’t care. Or they contacted both in desperation.
The three women were clearly desperate. Their stories were very similar even if the substances varied slightly.
Liquid silicone, not FDA approved, which he’d have to check, seemed to be the main culprit, and they said it could have killed them and nearly had.
Jason had never heard of counterfeit Botox before but anything was possible.
He kept reading and he cringed. There it was.
The name he hoped he wouldn’t see in the file, and the person who was alleged to be the cause of their tragedies. Alexander Addison IV, Harvard graduate.
Jason sat and stared at the name for a minute, wondering what to do next.
Give Joe back the file immediately and recuse himself due to a personal connection?
Check it out anyway, and if it came too close to home, then give it back to Joe?
Or do the story as if he didn’t know anyone involved, and report the truth no matter who got injured in the process?
As he closed the file again, he knew what he had to do first, before he did anything else, possibly finding incriminating information that would implicate others.
By then, it would be too late. But the name of the doctor didn’t surprise him.
There was something about what Billie had told him that didn’t smell right to him, and he knew it didn’t to Billie either.
He thought he knew what she would say, but he still had to ask her.
He loved her, and he couldn’t do this to her with no warning.
He couldn’t touch the file until he talked to her.
He sent Billie a text. She was at work by then, and he knew how busy she’d be after a holiday.
There were people waiting to find out if they had cancer or not.
His text said “Please call me as soon as you can.” The lack of an affectionate greeting would tell her it was important.
She called back in less than five minutes.
She was whispering, and calling him from the staff bathroom.
“Hi, what’s up? Something wrong?”
“No. Yes. It’s about work. Can you meet me for lunch?”
“Did you get a promotion?” she asked, and he smiled.
“Not yet.”
“Did you get fired?”
“Not yet either, but I’m working on it,” he said, and she laughed. “I need to see you.”
“Okay. But I can’t stay out too long. Our deli?”
“Perfect. Noon?”
“Great. Bye, I love you.” She hung up then.
He was at the deli waiting for her when she walked in wearing her lab coat, her hair in a braid down her back. He looked serious and had a confidential envelope from the paper in his hand. The file was in it.
They sat down at the far end of the restaurant, where it would be quieter. After they placed their order, he got straight to the point.
“I got an assignment from my boss today. It could be a big story or it could be nothing. It’s an investigative piece.
I have to do the digging myself. To sum it up, three different women want to bring criminal charges against a doctor, a plastic surgeon, for disfigurement, negligence, fraud.
They claim he almost killed them. They’re permanently disfigured from the substances they say he injected into them, some of them illegal or possibly defective.
If it’s true, it will be a big story. He could go to prison. ”
“Who’s the doctor?” Billie asked. Her stomach turned over while she waited for the answer.
“You guessed. It’s Alex.”
“Oh shit,” she said, and looked into Jason’s eyes.