Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [78]
That was why Larry’s actions with Roseanne Orozco had so infuriated Gayle. It had been anything but discreet, and it would surely have brought the whole world down around their ears if Gayle hadn’t taken definitive action. The same thing almost happened again two years later, when one of Larry’s old poker-playing buddies was caught sticking his dick where he shouldn’t have. To save his sorry ass, he made a plea bargain that included shooting off his mouth about what had gone on in the hospital at Sells and had named names in the process—Larry’s included. As a result, Larry and several other physicians were summarily drummed out of the Indian Health Service.
But what had first seemed total disaster turned out to be not that bad after all. A few calls to one or two of Gretchen’s well-placed friends kept the story from making it into the local papers. Amazingly enough, arcane rules and regulations governing Indian Health Service physicians meant that lists of disciplined doctors were not made available to state or national medical associations, leaving Larry and the others free to practice medicine wherever they chose.
But by then Gayle no longer wanted to be married to a doctor. What had sounded like a great idea when she was in college had lost its allure. She didn’t want to live with someone who had to be on call. She didn’t like Larry’s being out of her sight that much, either. As long as he didn’t have brains enough to keep his pants zipped, she couldn’t risk his going off to work at a hospital or clinic. The Easter weekend interlude at the beachfront hotel in Mazatlán had proved to Gayle Stryker just what she’d suspected about her husband’s sexual preferences and had supplied her with the key to keeping Larry under her complete control.
Gayle had learned something about herself that afternoon as well. She’d been electrified by the girl’s first involuntary whimper as she tried to shy away from the invading touch of that chilled beer bottle. The child had been helpless. She couldn’t protect herself from what was coming, not from whatever Larry might want to do nor from what Gayle might want Larry to do. Gayle had felt that kind of power only once before in her life, but on the afternoon she had slaughtered Roseanne Orozco, it hadn’t occurred to her that the heady stuff was something that could be duplicated. That afternoon, as Larry finally did it—when at Gayle’s insistence he finally screwed up his courage and shoved the bottle home—Gayle had been thrilled. Hearing the cries, watching the girl writhe in agony had turned Gayle on in a way nothing else ever had.
That was when and why she had dreamed up Medicos for Mexico. Her parents, both of them, helped provide the initial seed money. Gretchen had written a check. Calvin had done his part by having the good grace to die and leave the ranch and a whole lot more to his daughter.
Over the years, running a cross-border charity had proved to be a gold mine. Yes, someone had to go out and raise money. That took work and skill, and Gayle was exceptionally good at schmoozing. But once those donated dollars flowed into the Medicos coffers, there was virtually no outside oversight—not from the public at large and not from the IRS. Medicos paid generous salaries to both Gayle and Larry. They paid their taxes on those without a whisper of complaint, but much of their lavish lifestyle was paid for in full or in part by monies gleaned from vaguely labeled items in the expense columns of the charity’s books. Artful skimming also accounted for the almost finished mansion Gayle was having