Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Ebook457 pages6 hours

Infantry

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

Marty Sheffner MD is a rich, successful Hollywood obstetrician and abortionist to the stars. He has a beautiful partner and a beautiful life. But all this is thrown into turmoil by the death of one of his patients. An investigation threatens to throw up secrets from his past, which could see his glamorous world fall apart.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherTom Desmond
Release dateJun 10, 2012
ISBN9781476246369
Infantry

Related to Infantry

Related ebooks

Thrillers For You

View More

Related articles

Related categories

Reviews for Infantry

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Infantry - Tom Desmond

    Marty Sheffner MD is a rich, successful Hollywood obstetrician and abortionist to the stars. He has a beautiful partner and a beautiful life. But all this is thrown into turmoil by the death of one of his patients. An investigation threatens to throw up secrets from his past, which could see his glamorous world fall apart. Marty is pitted against both a clever female lawyer and time itself, to disentangle himself from his self-made web of deceit, duplicity, revenge and murder.

    INFANTRY

    Tom Desmond

    INFANTRY

    by Tom Desmond

    Published by Teedes Publishing London at Smashwords

    Copyright Tom Desmond 2012

    Smashwords Edition License Notes:

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    CONTENTS

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    Chapter Five

    Chapter Six

    Chapter Seven

    Chapter Eight

    Chapter Nine

    Chapter Ten

    Chapter Eleven

    Chapter Twelve

    Chapter Thirteen

    Chapter Fourteen

    Chapter Fifteen

    Chapter Sixteen

    Chapter Seventeen

    Chapter Eighteen

    Chapter Nineteen

    Chapter Twenty

    Postscript

    ONE

    All gone, Tiffany. We’ll get you back to your Mom in the recovery room, said Doctor Marc Cochran kindly, unaware that those fourteen innocuous words were the last he would ever speak.

    Twelve years–old Tiffany Ingram felt a mixture of apprehension and relief. She’d been worried for weeks about her dad. Although he was in jail facing a life sentence for the rape of his own daughter Tiffany still suffered the trauma of his dominant personality. So did her Mom. Mrs. Ingram was too scared even to make a statement against him until she was persuaded husband Jeff wasn’t going anywhere for a long time.

    In fact, had it not been for the fact that Tiffany– not knowing she was pregnant– had collapsed in the school gym and been rushed bleeding to hospital, dad, Jeff Ingram would still be out there raping her on a regular basis. She searched Dr. Marc Cochran’s chocolate eyes for reassurance. His eyes smiled down consolation from above his surgical mask and gown.

    He was smiling at a should–be–slim kid, made chubby by her diet of cheap takeaway food. An innocent kid– one of eight– from a world of never–off TV sets, sudden drunken violence, in a semi–criminal neighborhood. Tiffany’s world was a trailer park sandwiched between a 20–acre auto dismantling yard under the screaming Harbor Freeway in Watts, and school with armed schoolyard guards.

    Dr. Marc squeezed Tiffany’s hand, small in his own muscular one as the nurses moved her onto a gurney, Everything’s fine now, he said quietly, Now you can get on with school and the rest of your life. Here in Harrison–Langley Hospital he’d aborted hundreds of Tiffanies. But it never stopped him feeling genuinely sorry for each one. He raised a gloved hand slightly to wiggle a goodbye as Tiffany was wheeled toward the door of the procedure room 5. Tiffany weakly waved back.

    Dr. Marc Cochran turned, took a deep breath, exhaled and breathed another. It was his humanitarian punctuation between terminations. He began ingesting his next patient’s details on a TV monitor as the procedure room was disinfected and re–prepared.to receive her. As he moved toward the scrub–up room, a hurried bustle, which stopped Tiffany’s gurney from exiting, made him turn. Then a nurse’s piercing scream. That was the most dramatic thing that happened that evening.

    Doctor–?

    A masked gunman stood in the doorway beside Tiffany’s gurney. He held a Glock18 nine-millimeter. The procedure room became a placeful of statues. Before anyone else could react there was a popping sound. A red circled bloodstain appeared on Dr Cochran’s mask just where his mouth was and teeth used to be. As the bullet traveled upward, part of his dark hair, skull and brain tissue spat from the crown of his head. Marc Cochran dropped like a stone. A six–foot–three, 190lb one.

    The nurses handling Tiffany’s gurney had instinctively protected the kid with their bodies– one hiding her head in her arms, the other protecting the rest of her. But they weren’t quick enough. Tiffany had seen the whole thing and her sobbing and uncontrollable trembling– muffled by the nurses– was clinking the gurney. It was the only sound in the room.

    The other doctors, two females– an anesthesiologist and a gynaecologist– were for a second, unable to move neither eyes nor heads from the spot where Dr. Marc had fallen. But as the pool of his blood seeped silently over the floor its movement unfroze their brains enough to let out the most heart-rending screams.

    The decibels that the screaming produced did not affect the gunman. He aimed the gun steadily at the other two. These normally calm medics, sophisticated women now clung to one another like pre–kindergarden infants. For they knew instinctively that their view of Procedure Room 5 of the Harrison–Langley Memorial Hospital was the last thing on earth they’d ever see. The doctors could even see the date− June 14th− on their memorial markers. One of the doctors– thinking of her two year-old daughter− quickly yelled a mantra at the top of her voice, Jesus help me! Jesus help me! Jesus help me! Even though it was no use.

    But it was. The Glock jammed. The gunman fiddled, then calmly exited. No one dared follow him– was capable of following him– to see in which direction he’d gone. For two full minutes he had killed everybody in the procedure room. Only Tiffany was crying hysterically. Then, their automatic pilot returning, the nurses quickly spirited screaming Tiffany outta there. A year later somebody called 911.

    <><><>

    –And I agree with the many sentiments of revulsion expressed to me, your governor, by– not just medical professionals but ordinary citizens– that a sixth doctor could be murdered in cold blood whilst performing an act of compassion. I intend to make every hospital in the state of California increase security

    Governor Eastcox’s image became a dot when Louis Sizeberg flicked his TV remote, What the governor’s really looking for is compassion from voters come next election. I mean, up to this murder, giving themselves up has been a part of these nuts’ strategy. Martyring themselves for the unborn child kinda thing. And all the cops had to do was come and arrest them. Now just because one of them has the temerity to escape, the governor decides it’s a conspiracy? Going gung ho! like this just gives these morons free publicity. The governor adds to their craziness with more guns

    But Dr. Louis, I think it’s because Marc Cochran is the first doctor to be actually murdered in a hospital, ameliorated his wife.

    So–? That fact doesn’t make any of the other five less dead. In a way the governor’s re-murdering Marc Cochran– or some other abortion doctor– by encouraging some nut to copy–cat. And– notice because of his party’s Christian right wingers he never mentions the word ‘abortion.’ Leah, politicians make me

    –Sick? I know, but you mustn’t let them, Dr. Louis. His wife always called him Dr. Louis only if she thought a matter serious enough.

    "It’s not just the dolt governor I’m worried about. Upping security at Harrison–Langley Memorial maybe will make my patients at the Clinic nervous and affect business."

    Well, Dr. Louis, you’re chief consultant Harrison–Langley. You’ll just have to raise strong objections and get the Board to make representations to the mayor and the governor. Your clinic’s operated for thirty–odd years under the very shadow of H–L without security. Other than your patients and medical staff, I doubt anybody’s even heard of the Sizeberg Clinic.

    Precisely. And I wanna keep it that way.

    Well then, Dr Louis, that should be pitch of your board to the State Regulator, the mayor and governor. That if the Sizeberg Clinic can operate for thirty years anonymously just across the way from Harrison-Langley, why attract trouble.

    Nevertheless, the Governor got his way and for a time there was enhanced security at Harrison–Langley. But then Louis Sizeberg threw his influential punches at H–L. In turn the Harrison-Langley and other hospital regulators, backed by the health insurance companies joined background clamor. They all resented add-on security measures scaring patients from attending for treatment not to mention eating into profits. Doctors held their breath for three months. After that they just kept their fingers crossed. There were no more incidents. The extra security was quietly withdrawn.

    Over twenty months with other headline–grabbing crime stories inducing Californian amnesia, Marc Cochran’s death began to feel as ancient as the Sharon Tate or Black Daliah murders. Everyone began to relax that the sixth killing was the last and things returned to normal. But among some doctors the niggling unease that a maniac was still out there far from evaporated. All through those anxious months, Louis Sizeberg’s private Clinic operated without security of any kind; carried on. Recondite and anonymous, as usual.

    <><><>

    The legs, were spread wide and stirruped in position, the table section that once supported them had been removed. Above and around them were the sterile green drapes. Between the legs, was a fully dilated cervical canal the neck of which was kept open by toothed forceps, clamped wide for surgical access.

    Nothing could be heard except the tweaks from monitors and the muffled rumble of airconditioning. Here the temperature was kept at 70–75 degrees. Outside, beyond the double glazed windows, the cars silently roared down the Hollywood Freeway. The sun vainly tried to creep through the slats of the Venetian shades – it was 102.

    If Scarlett Revere could even have seen – let alone felt – the invasion of her womb she would have passed out long ago. Scarlett, a 31 year–old, glamorous thrice–divorced wealthy socialite, didn’t like blood. But she loved cock. Which was why she had lost count of the number of times she had been in this position on the operating table. In any case she absolutely trusted her gynaecologist.

    Everybody absolutely trusted Doctor Louis Sizeberg and his Clinic. Everybody in LA, that was, who could afford his multi–thousand dollar charges. As far as Mrs. Scarlett Revere was concerned, that was everybody. Louis Sizeberg was famed throughout California as an abortionist of some distinction.

    Distinction, because he used acupuncture in place of a general anaesthetic. This meant his patients recovered in a matter of hours after a termination. He inserted sixteen acupuncture needles into ‘pressure points’ in the lower abdomen. Among these sixteen only three were active or necessary. The rest were to conceal his triple–needle secret from professional predators. Medical insurance purposes demanded the supervision of a fully qualified anesthesiologist, but his actual services were never required.

    As well as Doctor Sizeberg and three other doctors, with Scarlett Revere’s permission a knot of students from nearby Harrison–Langley Memorial Hospital students stared transfixed as night rabbits might in an automobile beam into her interior. Some felt extremely apprehensive. Most were beginning to feel a little uncomfortable.

    Most, that is, except Marty Sheffner, who was very interested in the proceedings – being the only other doctor who knew Sizeberg’s three acupuncture location points. You OK, Scarlett? called out the old doctor, as nurse Holly Burns adjusted his mask, Doctor Carey – you ready?

    Mason Carey the anesthesiologist nodded. He had already fitted Scarlett Revere’s mask on her forehead ready to be pushed over her mouth if for any reason she required to be anaesthetised.

    I’m alright too, Dr. Sizeberg, Scarlett called from the other side of the green drape mountain, Just get that damn thing outta me, quick as you can, that’s all.

    Sure thing, Scarlett. Sure thing. Dr. Sizeberg, chief consultant, turned to his student group, Mrs. Revere is not talking about these – he held up a pair of embryotomy scissors – "She can feel nothing. She means the foetus. Her pregnancy is well advanced past the limit for routine dilation and curettage of the uterinal cavity.

    "But this–

    This case is special, so we’ll make twenty-five grand apiece for our compassion! thought Marty Sheffner –

    – Is being performed on strictly compassionate grounds, continued Sizeberg, For a start, Mrs. Revere is allergic to the pill. Other devices such as the cap or the coil cause her various problems – infectious allergies or undue discomfort–

    So? Why doesn’t she just say ‘no,’ huh? thought Marty mischievously.

    –She would in addition, suffer undue mental stress if she were to continue with this unwanted pregnancy, continued Dr. Sizeberg.

    Oh Louis, tell them the truth, for Chrissake! Scarlett Revere called out, That schmuck on the cruise told me he had been damn–well castrated– The students smiled.

    You mean, ‘vascectomized’.

    Yeah–yeah–yeah –whatever. But now I wish the jerk hadda been castrated.

    Now, resumed Dr. Sizeberg, Would any of you ladies or gentlemen like to pronounce on what kinda case we have here?

    The students looked at one another; if there was anything they had learned at medical school it was caution.

    No – Nobody?

    Marty could have answered: Thankfully, we’ve got here a sex maniac who has too much money and seen too many pricks! But he said nothing.

    Well, we’ve already established that Mrs. Revere is well advanced. If she were to complete the pregnancy and have the child it would be a breech birth. Most breeches we can turn around while still in the womb but this one for various reasons we can’t. I’ll explain with the help of the video at lecture tomorrow morning.

    He flicked a switch and a bright light lit up the yawning vagina. He inserted a curette; any amniotic fluid and debris, which began to flow, was immediately sucked away by another nurse.

    In this case we’ll start with any protruding limb we can snap off, and which I think in this case is – a leg. Now you mustn’t worry if you extract part of a limb. It’s the patient you must always consider. So, small limb fragments are fine. Main thing we must avoid is excessive friction or damage to the womb neck or cervix. Now

    He looped his embryotomy scissors around an unseen part of the foetus and gave a sharp wrench, There we are – I think we got ourselves a leg – No – by jiminey it’s an arm. Yip – one right arm it is. The nurse opened the door of a tiny freezer, which held only one foetus at a time. Known colloquially as the FF or foetus freezer, Louis Sizeberg would decide later whether this foetus might join his other retained, jarred specimens. He dropped the tiny limb into the FF. Let’s see if we can find a leg– Again the embryotomy scissors were inserted.

    Marty glanced into the receptacle as the first chopped–off limb was discarded. It was perfect. The arm was bent, slightly twisted, like the arm of a tiny clock that had been ripped away in mid–sweep; its arteries, veins and bones were complete, as were even the indents of the knuckles. The fist was bunched tightly together, resembling a desperate gesture of defiance.

    Now – as I was s–saying e–earlier, s–mall p–pieces at a time w–ill d–do just as l–long a–as y–you– r–remove e–everything – Dr. Sizeberg’s stuttering increased with each tug, J–Jesus! This one’s a tough o–one – He paused for a second, and the other nurse, Chloe Harkness efficiently wiped his brow. It was then that he heard it.

    Are you OK Scarlett?

    Sure, I’m OK, Louis. For cryin’ out loud, are you through? Scarlett Revere smiled contentedly.

    Dr. Sizeberg ignored his patient’s question and turned to his students, Who’s the wise guy, then? They simply stared back at him, bewildered, Come on, who’s the ventriloquist? Having got a negative response from his students Dr. Sizeberg reinserted his embryotomy scissors. He heard it again.

    A scream. A muffled, agonized scream. Dr. Sizeberg’s withdrew the scissors. Marty noticed a number tattooed on his forearm. The doctor caught Marty looking, then terrified, he too glanced down at his forearm. He read the number. It wasn’t the old number.

    He saw instead 6,000,000.

    Immediately he was back in Poland. A little boy, watching from a shivering hideout behind a truck, in Dachau. He watched a screaming infant being thrust over the heads of the people in the packed ‘shower room’ just before the doors were closed by the soldiers and the gas pellets dropped in through the roof.

    That scream, like his tattoo, should have been permanently etched on his soul. Little Louis Sizeberg put his fingers to his ears and closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear it. He was too young. He tried to blot the screaming out; but still it penetrated – the awful terror of the trapped, nude figures, the sound of their nails scraping the doors. Futile. For these after all, were the Chosen Race. Then came the wailing, then, most terribly, the silence. Young though he was, Louis looked up at the inscrutable winter sky and swore to God he would never forget this waste of human life. That if he ever got to Jerusalem he would –

    You alright, Doctor–? It was nurse Chloe Harkness.

    Yes – y–es I’m alright

    Well you don’t look it. You’d better sit down, Doctor.

    Louis Sizeberg’s face was grey. A chair was brought forward and he collapsed into it. Beads of sweat populated his forehead. Some water was brought and he sipped. Then, with a curious inevitability the embryotomy scissors fell from his hands as he collapsed forward onto the floor, sending the door of the FF flying wide open and the tactile contents of the freezer spinning. The arm came out and fell against the dead doctor’s neck, as though trying to cling in desperation. For a second the silent vacuum of death encompassed the medics in the room ensuring their remembrance.

    Then confusion. The other doctors, nurses, students, and later paramedics failed to revive the doctor. He was gurneyed across to trauma in the Harrison–Langley Memorial for more artificial respiration. The first time in years the Sizeberg Clinic had ever to use A&E services of the H–L. Marty deftly removed the hacked limb and replaced it in the refrigerated FF. He had just closed the door when he was jolted by what he thought he saw – It couldn’t be! He quickly looked again.

    The fore and middle finger of the tiny limb were crossed.

    <><><>

    The next day Marty got a call from Louis Sizeberg’s widow to come see her. Marty Sheffner was a brilliant but impulsive doctor. He was like an animal, in that the present was all that mattered. The past was just that. The future for Marty did not exist. The future was an asshole that was always under new management. So he never went there until the future became now.

    Ditto with problems. If they, like symptoms, did not present themselves they didn’t exist. He was a medic to the core. As for good advice? Why should he believe that people gave anything good away? The invitation to meet up with Sizeberg’s widow he regarded as good. He reckoned it must mean the crown being passed to him. He had never had the privilege of being invited to the Sizeberg home. So he had great expectations as his luxury limmo passed through electrified gates into the drive of the massive Spanish–styled villa deep in the platinum triangle of the Holmby hills.

    Oscar the butler−chauffer who ushered him in and asked him to wait looked as if he had made the furniture – craggy and shaky on his pegs. The place was cool as a mortuary slab; not airconditioning–cool, more the kind that clings to a place when there’s been a death in the family. The furniture and fittings were antiquely drab and expensive. European.

    A huge book entitled American Wildlife lay open at a picture of a deer and her foal. On top of the picture was the biggest pair of high−powered binoculars Marty had ever seen in his life. He remembered old Louis saying that he and his wife were keen nature watchers.

    No more than in her early sixties Leah Sizeberg looked about a hundred. Back straighter than a die. Heavily ringed fingers; still dressed formally for dinner. Face, pale and waxen. Brown eyes crammed with hurt and sorrow gazed unblinkingly from charcoal sockets. She looked like she was about to die anytime.

    But there was still a hell of a lot of soul in those eyes – an uncommon sight in Hollywood these days. Two sherries on a silver tray later, she dismissed the butler, waiting for his footsteps on the polished–tiled hall to die away before waving Marty to a proximal leather chair.

    Ma’am. It’s nice to make your acquaintance after hearing so much about you from your late– from Doctor Lou– his lies were cut short.

    How long you been practicing obstetrics? Her voice was steady, tinged with a mid–European accent.

    Three–four years, Ma’am.

    As a doctor? Her emphasis on the last word made him feel uneasy.

    He reflected even more uneasily. Louis Sizeberg had let him do dozens of unsupervised abortions when he’d picked Marty out as a whiz-kid student. Seemed Leah Sizeberg already knew this. Exactly how much else she knew he wasn’t sure.

    I gathered from my husband that you would have liked to have succeeded him in his clinic.

    Marty was taken aback by the woman’s directness. But this aback, he liked, so he thought, for Chrissake I’ve been busting for years to get my hands on the Sizeberg Clinic and all those dollars that go with it. But instead he said, Well, that was pretty nice of Doctor Sizeberg to say that, Ma’am.

    And what kind of figure would you put on the clinic?

    Another taken aback! Could Marty believe this? Sure he could because it was happening now. What a question to ask of a young sawbones! She had only to look at Marty’s limmo or her late husband’s or even her own Rolls–Royce to know – but he played it humble, My gosh, Mrs. Sizeberg, You really got me there – I – Well to tell you the truth, Ma’am I’ve never considered it. I’ve been so upset by your husband’s death, I

    Don’t give me that shit, Doctor Sheffner

    Jesus! Was he hearing the old girl right? Excuse me, Ma’am?

    You know exactly what I mean.

    "Do I? Honest, Mrs. Sizeberg, I’ve never even considered myself in that

    league." Who was he kidding? Not Leah Sizeberg.

    She was angry now, Cut out the crap, Doctor. You got a young wife at home, haven’t you? It’s not easy to keep a non–working wife, repay a mortgage and send kids to college, is it?

    She must be mixing him up with Myron Fitzgerald or Mason Carey, his gynae colleagues. But even though she’d got the wife and kids part wrong, he was beginning to perceive where she might be coming from, so he pretended, I don’t understand, Ma’am. What’s all this got

    –To do with you? Isn’t it true that you were performing abortions for my husband when you were a student?

    Shit! A drop of cold sweat ran down somewhere. She’d confirmed his worse fears. A picture of himself pleading clemency before Medical Board of California superimposed itself on to his brain. At once he dismissed that as the possible future. Even so, his mental dismissal interfered with his cognitive response. His mouth hadn’t caught up with his brain. It spluttered, I – I– his mouth was all denials – but his frigging head was nodding!

    I’ll take that as an affirmative.

    Marty had to recover his professional cool, Ma’am those allegations are without foundation was said with as much dignity as he couldn’t muster.

    She wasn’t buying. She nodded indifferently, If you want to play it that way, fine. Did my husband ever mention a Mrs. Hazlitt to you?

    The name tinkled a tiny bell in his memory – then a Notre Dame clanged, I–If he did it was in a purely professional capacity, and that being so I can’t confirm or deny it.

    Ah! A little bit of truth. Doctor Sheffner, Judy Hazlitt was one of my husband’s mistresses.

    Big tits – even bigger bank account. Had more tucks than a last–minute bridal dress! But she looked magnificent, even with her legs spread wide on the operating table – He was surprised by what he heard next, though.

    As well as Judy Hazlitt there was Simone Stern, Connie Lazenby, Kirsty Golden – do you want me to go on? I have found correspondence from all of them in my husband’s den. Some of their letters mention ‘that pleasant young assistant Doctor, Marty Sheffner.’ She became grave, You see, Doctor Sheffner, my husband has been unfaithful to me for most of his professional life. But – all men are the same, I suppose. Think we don’t know. Anyway I learned to live with it.

    Well – Whaddya know! Marty had difficulty in imagining Sizeberg without glasses let alone trousers.

    –What I cannot live with any longer, Doctor Sheffner, is my husband’s murders. Murders! This time Marty’s mental exclamation was genuine. What the fuck else was she gonna come out with? That Sizeberg murdered Michael Jackson? Abortion. That’s murder, Doctor Sheffner.

    Well hardly, Ma’am. If you saw the cases we get at Harrison–Langley – Drug addicts who can’t even spell their own name never mind parent a kid. Under–age daughters expectant with their uncle’s kid, sisters their brother’s – All kinds of people with mental retardation of one kind or the other who’ve been sexually molested by social psychos. I don’t– Call that murder, he was going to say, but his voice tailed away.

    Leah Sizeberg was one of those people you just knew had heard all the smart–ass arguments; the kind of woman with a moral outlook harder than Bethlehem Steel. The kind of woman who sounded right when she was wrong. How she ever managed to tag up with the old doctor was anybody’s guess.

    Your work at Harrison–Langley Memorial Hospital might well have had a social, if misguided purpose. But even for that misguided purpose Dr. Cochran and others paid with their lives a while back, didn’t they?

    That’s if you believe that nutters are capable of any rational sense of purpose–Marty thought he now detected her real motivation. Marc Cochran’s and the five other doctor murders had upset her genteel equilibrium. She wanted out of any business tainted with murder. But he was wrong.

    But my husband’s clinic had no sense of purpose, said Leah, resuming her original thread, Only women of tomcat morals and all the money in the world came there – ‘Clean’ was the term L.S. used, wasn’t it –when he was through with them?

    She made ‘clean’ sound the dirtiest word in the English language. Marty stood up; pushed away an invisible burden with his hands, M–Ma’am. I don’t want to get stuck in moral furrows. I leave moralizing to wise guys

    Please sit down Doctor. Hear me out, then you can go. Marty sat down. He had stopped listening to her. All he wanted was to get out. All my life, Doctor, I’ve wanted a child. In my younger days I consulted all the top gynecologists to see if they could help me. They all said there was nothing wrong with me. It was Louis. They said his sperm count was too low for me to conceive. And when I found out about my husband’s dalliances – his making his mistresses pregnant– I realized that there was nothing wrong with him

    Marty got the picture. Any competent obstetrician could temporarily minimize his own sperm production. She knew he knew.

    I need not tell you how cheated I feel, Doctor Sheffner

    It’s Marty, Ma’am– civility costs nothing

    – All those children he must've conceived with those other women –

    Ma’am, If it’s any consolation to you – all of the women you’ve just mentioned had their pregnancies terminated

    That makes no difference Marty – at least they all had something to terminate!

    The tears were rolling down her face, Marty was surprised that her black eye shadow didn’t run – before he realized it wasn’t eye shadow – it was age shadow which a certain type of aging European women get. He felt sorry for her as she stood there crying for all the children she could’ve had but didn’t. Like she actually saw them playing there before her.

    I could have had healthy babies if things had been left to God – But Louis preferred to have sex with tramps, then murder the evidence in his clinic

    Marty didn’t need to console himself with the fact that those who condemned abortion were always those least likely to conceive – old maids, nuns, priests, the Pope, cranks, do–gooders and fundamental this and that’s. He discounted the Right to Life brigade – most of them were young – and the young always needed a cause. Now he added embittered, childless widows to his list.

    I want to try and make amends for Louis’ and my sins against God.

    Her Sins? Marty giveaway look had registered with her before he could disguise it.

    Yes my sins. Deep down I suspected what he was up to. I should have stopped him but I remained silent.

    Marty still wasn’t properly listening and was idly wondering how it was that widows and criminals only ever found God in the end –especially when the bombshell of years of isolation suddenly stared them in the face.

    Dr. Sheffner I am closing the Clinic.

    Now a bombshell of his own suddenly blew up in Marty’s face. Close the clinic? No she fucking wouldn’t! Over his dead body. She’d be mentioning Babiana and California Light & Power in a minute –or would she? If Leah Sizeberg knew this much about him what didn’t she know? And if she did–! But keep your shirt on. Let her tell him, It’s a nice idea if you’re of that persuasion, he said calmly, but I must remind you, Ma’am, Doctor Sizeberg isn’t the only doctor in LA performing abortions. Did that sound cool? He hoped so.

    Of course I know that, she replied with indignation, "But Hollywood can live without one more – It’s one moral drop in a bucket of excrement. But at least it is something – my something. Do you understand me, Doctor Sheffner?"

    Keep talking shit. He had to find out whether she knew or didn’t know about Babiana –even if only by omission, Do you understand you’ll be breaking up a very experienced team? Marty countered with another question, "There’s Doctor Mason

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1