Not for the first time I didn't like the gleam in Leon's eye or the lilt in his voice when he told me I had an assignment. He was much too pleased with himself when he handed me the envelope containing the address and the gate key. We'd been getting along better than usual lately—or had been up to the time he seemed to think that meant I was warming to him and he propositioned me again and I turned him down flat again. But if there was a little twist to this assignation, at least it would be short-lived. The address was right here in the city. The Gordan Institute up in the Hollywood Hills.
I knew this to be a tony private plastic surgery hospital for those who wanted to be recarved without losing sight of their swimming pools and movie star mansions. Not because I'd done anything like that myself, of course. I was still at my peak, thank you, very much, and wouldn't need any of that sort of help for a good ten years more. Depending, though, I guessed, on what I did between now and then to earn my pay. And when I did need plastic surgery, there was no way I was going to be able to afford the Gordan Institute.
I just hoped that Leon hadn't agreed to let me get sliced up.
"So, what costume?" I asked.
"Oh, just go as you are," Leon answered. And then he laughed. "Chances are you won't be wearing it long anyway."
I took the envelope from Leon's claws and gave him a wan "you don't intimidate me—much" smile and headed my Beamer convertible up slope. It was late afternoon on a Sunday and it was "another damn beautiful" day enhanced by the relative lack of bumper-to-bumper traffic.
I halfway knew where the Gordan Institute was, and I found it without too much trouble, hulking behind a high stuccoed privacy wall next door to what had once been Bela Lugosi's haunted manse. Leon had given me a plastic key card like they use for hotel room entry, and it opened up the iron gates at the institute a charm. No one was about as I drove in and parked next to a silver Mercedes convertible in an otherwise empty, bricked-over parking pad. By the time I got to the front entrance, hidden in the shadows behind a porte cochere, no doubt designed for privacy in arrival and departure of the well-heeled patients, the entry door was opening and I could see there was at least one other person than me here on a Sunday. The absence of other cars disturbed me a bit. This was a residential facility; was there some sort of law against rich people getting tummy tucks on weekends in May? I wondered.
"You were sent by the agency?" a well-modulated baritone voice asked from the depths beyond the opening door.
"Umm, yes. Alphonse?"
"Come in. Yes, yes, you'll do nicely."
I knew that. He didn't have to tell me that. They charged three thou an hour for my attentions. And for that I did quite a bit more than "nicely."
The door swung open, and I was facing "Alphonse." He wasn't really Alphonse. I knew that, and I'm sure he knew I knew that. His mug, no matter how many times it had been redone, was well known in town. He was Grant Gordan, the celebrated magic surgeon of beauty. This was his institute.
He was playing doctor. Starched, stark-white three-quarter-length doctor's smock over soft-cotton, institutional green scrubs that somehow still gave the impression they had been tailored and cost a bundle. Crinkling transparent plastic booties on what looked like gray bedroom slippers. He was tricked out to be playing the senior physician in a long-running television medical drama. Gray-haired, in his fifties, but handsome, and chiseled to an epitome of perfection that only a millionaire's billfold or an "in the business" discount could provide. A very nice bedside smile that, alone, would have cost me a fortune.
"Oh, excuse me," I stammered. "Did I get the day or time wrong? Have I interrupted a procedure?"
"No, no, of course not. You're right on time. No procedures today. We're undergoing renovations this week, so no procedures at all. No patients in residence."
"Oh, but—"
"Oh, these. I was just trying on a new shipment of surgical wear. Dr. Gordan just had these sent in."
Hokay, I thought. It's your ten thou, "Alphonse," I thought. I had peeked at Leon's chart—as I always tried to do so I knew when I should be going off the clock. This guy had bought four hours and gotten a discount of two thousand for booking that block of time. This almost always meant at least a double, but I was just as happy if they thought of that in advance and padded the time. Often trying to hammer a recharge and second fucking into an hour—or even two hours—became quite frustrating for the client and often played out in their attitude as something unpleasant.
"Follow me, please." And with that, "Alphonse" turned and walked briskly down a corridor leading off to the right of the plush reception room that, with its yawning stone fireplace, vaulted ceiling, and big expanse of glass overlooking a sea of green grass, majestic pines, and parts of of the city looked more like the living room in a mountain lodge than a hospital waiting room.
I followed in the wake of the crinkling noise his surgical booties were making with the thought that, if I had known we were going to play doctor, I would have seen if Leon had a nurse's uniform in his wardrobe room.
I was ushered into a large, wood-paneled room with book-lined walls except for one well-lit panel that sported what I'm sure was meant to be an intimidating number of framed university diplomas, medical licenses, honorary plaques, and photos of "Alphonse" shaking hands with various extremely well-preserved movie stars and industry titans of old—or at least of older than they had been made to appear.
The mahogany desk was massive, the throne behind it that "Alphonse" perched in momentarily was massive, and the sort of wheel chair contraption he waved my butt into was nothing short of strange. It was a comfortable chair and all that, but did he put his prospective clients into wheel chairs this early in the sales pitch? I didn't have time to let this thought percolate, however.
"I trust you've been told the scenario and the service."