Bad City by Paul Pringle

Author:Paul Pringle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Celadon Books

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On the same day of the Voigt interview, I decided to poke Nikias again. I wrote an email for him with the 911 recording attached. My idea was to send it and then have Sarah and Matt, the Trojans, confront Nikias at his office an hour or so later. They were eager to do so. I’d showed a draft of the email to the team for their suggestions, and Harriet replied with this: “My only concern is that our work will be shut down internally before we can nail it completely if Nikias complains anew.”

A good point. We’d been working for two weeks without the knowledge of Maharaj and Duvoisin, as far as we could tell, and I had to assume the email and the unannounced visit by Sarah and Matt might well generate another Nikias complaint, which could get the story killed again. But I was confident we now had enough, with Sarah’s identity and her arrests and rehab stays, that Nikias would see the wisdom in finally talking. I was confident but not certain. And as I mulled the prospect of Nikias cooperating, rather than complaining, I had to reflect again on how unreal and disturbing it was that I had to worry about the editor and managing editor of the Times getting in the way of the story.

Screw them. I sent the email a few minutes after nine on a Thursday morning. I wrote:

President Nikias—

Let me say once more that I hope you will make yourself available for an interview about the circumstances surrounding Carmen Puliafito’s resignation as dean of the Keck School of Medicine.

My colleagues and I are reporting that, three weeks before he quit, Dr. Puliafito was a witness to the drug overdose of a 21-year-old woman in a Pasadena hotel room registered to him. This was on a weekday afternoon during the school term.

A Pasadena police report identifies Dr. Puliafito as the woman’s “friend.” A man recorded on a 911 call about the overdose, who sounds very much like Dr. Puliafito, describes himself as a doctor and the woman as his “girlfriend.” (The 911 recording is attached.)

The woman was passed out and unresponsive. Paramedics took her to the hospital, where she recovered.

A police report states that methamphetamine was seized from the hotel room. The police confirmed to me that the woman overdosed on the drugs found in the room. As we have come to understand, the woman has a history of drug abuse and other problems, and her troubles escalated in the months after the overdose.

I have firsthand information that another witness to the overdose called your office and demanded that action be taken against Dr. Puliafito. Shortly afterward, Dr. Puliafito resigned.

I filled out the email with questions about the overdose, any contact USC had with Pasadena, and the celebration for Puliafito at Keck. I closed with: “Also, for the record, I have never followed you on Instagram, and I have no interest in your travel schedule.”

If an email like that didn’t

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