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.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about him,” he said honestly, “but depending on what your
sister knows, she could go down with him. She may know nothing, even if the charges
against him are true. But if she does know, or is involved in some way, even covering
up what he does, she could get hurt by this, Billie. Badly. At worst, she could go to
prison too. I want to know what you want me to do about it. I can give the story back to
Joe now, and tell him I have a personal connection and can’t do it. I will absolutely do
that if you want me to. If I take the story, I have to follow it to the end, no matter what I
find. I don’t want to take your sister down with him, but I can’t stop the train once I start
it. I’m fine if you tell me not to do it. I don’t want to start the investigation without your
permission,” he said simply, as Billie stared at him, her stomach churning. And knowing
her sister, she knew anything was possible. Mickie could be in it up to her ears and be
fine with it. Or she might know absolutely nothing. Or the three women’s claims could
be bogus. She was grateful that Jason had given her the option, but ethically, she thought
there was only one answer.
“You have to do it,” she said simply. “These women deserve a fair shot at the truth.”
“If I don’t do it, they won’t bury it,” Jason assured her. “They’ll assign it to someone
else. That might be the best answer for you, and for Mickie.”
“You’ll do a better job. She needs to know the truth too, no matter who tells it. If he’s
hurting people he needs to be stopped, and Mickie needs to get the hell out of there.”
“What if she’s involved in some way?” Jason didn’t think much of Mickie, but felt
like an executioner.
Billie took a breath before she answered. “If she’s involved, she has to face the
consequences. You can’t spare her. I don’t want her to go to prison, but what you are
saying is horrific. Do the story, and I’ll just pray she has no part in it. And if she does,
she’ll have to pay for it.”
“Do you want a couple of hours to think about it?” Their lunch came, but neither of
them was hungry, and she shook her head.
“No. Do it. It’s good for you, and it’s better to know the whole story.”
“You can’t tell her,” he said seriously, “or warn her.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s your decision, Billie. I’ll give it up in a hot minute if you want me to.”
“I don’t. For her sake and everyone’s, for those women.” He nodded, then took the
file out of the envelope and handed it to her. It was the last time he could show it to her
before he started working on it. She winced and almost cried when she saw the
pictures. They were horrendous. “If it’s true, the man is a monster.”
“He may be. Stranger things have happened. It’s not the first time I’ve heard stories
like it,” he said.
“Thank you for asking me.” She was touched. He didn’t even like Mickie, but he
loved Billie, and they were sisters. He had done the noble thing, and the right thing.
After this, they’d have to see what he would find out, and then what happened when he
went to the police with the evidence, which was how it worked.
They both picked at their lunch and finished quickly, so she could go back to work on
time, and he could get started. He kissed her when he left her at the hospital door. He
was going back to his office to start his research by calling the Medical Board of
California to verify that Alex’s license was in order. It seemed like a good place to
begin.
Jason logged onto the site of the Medical Board of California, clicked on the section for
License Verification, put in Alex’s name, and waited. Alex Addison’s license would be
a matter of public record. Jason wanted to know when it had been issued, how long
Addison had had a California license to practice. It was an ordinary request and it
would be easy to get the information. It seemed to take a very long time and the
response came back that there was no medical license issued under that name, which
was clearly a computer error. So he called the phone number listed for the Medical
Board and made the same request. They left him on hold and came back with the same
response. There was no California license issued to a physician by that name.
“He practiced in Florida before. Could he be practicing here with his Florida
license?” Jason asked the clerk on the phone, after double-checking the spelling.
“Not legally. It’s against the law. Did you check Florida? Maybe he didn’t have one
there either. Maybe he had a felony on his record, so he couldn’t get one. You’d be
surprised what people get away with, or try to. You can check Florida, but for a copy of
an out-of-state license you have to make the request in writing, and it takes time,” the
clerk informed Jason, and he thanked him, puzzled that he couldn’t find Alex’s license.
A Harvard-trained physician would not want to practice without a license. Jason
wondered if the clerk was right, and Addison had an old felony charge of some kind. He
would have to get that information from the police, and he didn’t want to contact them
yet. That would be further down the road. He was trying to get the simple pieces of the
puzzle in place first. Then he’d have to figure out where the pieces of sky belonged, the
pieces that didn’t fall into place until the very end. He had already hit a wall with a
piece that didn’t fit, the very first one, and in theory, the easiest one to get. He tried all
the standard methods to check for a license in Florida, through the Florida Department
of Health and their license verification portal. Nothing showed up. He couldn’t find
proof of a license in Florida or California.
Jason sat at his desk, thinking about it, and remembered someone he knew in New
York. Ed Manning was third-generation Harvard and head of the Harvard Club in New
York. He was a lawyer at Jason’s father’s firm. Jason got the number on the internet and
called him. Ed was surprised to hear from Jason. He hadn’t seen him in several years.
“I’m writing a piece about a Harvard alum,” Jason explained after the initial niceties.
“Undergraduate and med school, I need to know what year he graduated. How do I get
that info? What department should I call? Is there an alumni office that handles basic
inquiries like that?”
“I can get that for you. Give me his name, I’ll call you back,” Ed said, very obliging
and happy to help.
“I hate to put you out,” Jason said politely.
“No problem, that’s what I do. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
“You’re a champ, thanks, Ed.”
Jason’s cellphone rang ten minutes later.
“No luck, my friend. I checked a couple of different ways. I thought it was a glitch in
the system, but it isn’t. I checked the registrar’s office. We have a bunch of Addisons,
but no Alexander. And weirdly, not a single one in the med school. He didn’t go to
Harvard, undergrad or med. You know, you’d be surprised how many people claim they
went to Harvard, and aren’t telling the truth. They think no one will ever check. You’re
smart to fact-check on that. Your Dr. Addison never did.”
“You’re sure?” Jason pressed him again.
“Absolutely. Nice to talk to you. Give me a call next time you’re in New York.”
“I will.” Jason sat staring into space for a minute. Alex Addison, if that was his real
name, which Jason now wondered, was practicing medicine in the state of California
without a license. The diplomas that according to Billie’s sister hung on his office wall
were frauds. He had never gone to Harvard as an undergraduate, or for med school. So
where did he go to med school? Or did he? A shudder ran down Jason’s spine as he
thought of it. Was he even a doctor? It was beginning to get ugly, and he had only just
started.
