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"Rooney?"
"Don't be funny."
"Who then? And does Rooney know you've been playing pattyfingers?"
"I didn't do the knocking-up."
"A likely story."
"Cut it, man. I'm serious. This thing has lost its funny for me. It isn't my
woman, and I didn't do the job on her, and I need a D&C man. Now can you help
me or not?"
"I suppose so. I've had occasion to--"
"I don't want to know. Everyone agrees you're the finest swordsman in these
parts. Can you get me a guy ... this is a favor I need, Boffer. It's for a
friend."
"You know, everybody you call is gonna think it was you."
"I know."
"Since when did you get such humanitarian instincts?"
"A recent malady. What's his name? Is there a number?"
"You're a lot more noble and friendly than I'd be. This kinda scam is liable
to ruin your reputation."
"I haven't got a reputation. What's his name? Give!"
There was a pause, as though The Boffer was seriously considering saying no.
He's peculiar that way. His reasoning is on a very furry plane, taken up by
intricacies even he barely understands, and informed by a scurrying rodentlike
deviousness that comes from having been on the Hollywood merry-go-round for
too many years. "Take this down. You got a pencil? Okay, take this down: S.
Jaime Quintano: the number is--"
He rattled it off twice and I still didn't get it. So he laid it on me slowly,
and I wrote it as accurately as I could.
"Thanks, Boffer. You've got one coming."
I gave the information to Jenny, and she stared at it as though it was
contaminated. "You'll have to do the calling," I told her. "Apparently he's a
good man, has his own clinic, works most of the week in the Miguel Aleman
Hospital, that's the big one down there. This friend of mine says he's taken
girls down there a couple of times and this man has been very clean, very
good. Three hundred dollars."
She continued to stare at the slip of paper.
"This is the number," I emphasized. It was like talking to a statue.
"D-U-five-three-three-seven-
two, that's in Tijuana, and I think I have his name spelled right. Jenny ...
?"
First her shoulders began to heave. Silently. Then her entire body shook, as
though possessed. And in a second she was dry-crying, her head sunk down on
her chest almost, the top of her head bobbing like a cork in a rough sea. It
had started to get through to her: what she had undergone had not been love,
it had been something far more indelicate, something simpler, more
destructive.
She felt contaminated, felt insulted, in the strictest possible sense of the
outmoded term, she felt sullied.
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I moved over to her and put my arms around her. She was incapable, at that
moment, of even knowing
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I was there. I held her very tightly for what seemed a long time, and slowly
the shaking passed, and her head came up. The front of my shirt was soaked.
She came out from the burrow of my arms. "What's the area code to Tijuana?"
she said softly.
"Nine-o-three," Rooney said, from the other side of the room. I looked at her,
startled. "I've been there, too." Her face was very sad, and I realized: no
one comes to anyone untouched.
Everyone goes through fire.
Jenny picked up the receiver and started to dial.
By the time the Thursday rolled around, I had six more names. A doctor in
Monterey Park who was rumored to charge between three and five hundred, but
had apparently been busted some time before, and was very much under wraps
now. It would have entailed a drive out to that suburb. Five more in
Tijuana. Two brothers with their own Enfermería, who only charged one hundred
and fifty, and to whom you had to say, "Nurse Carlotta suggested I call you."
Apparently Nurse Carlotta was a swinger in L.A. that the brothers dug. Another
was alleged to keep the patient over for eight hours, and that was too
terrifying for consideration. Overnight in that town would he worse than the
operation for Jenny. There was an American doctor down there, Oswald Tremaine,
Jr., who was appended with the title "butcher" by my informant, but he only
charged one hundred and twenty-
five. We decided Quintano was the best bet. His name had come up again, from a
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