One afternoon in March of 2016, Devon Khan, a reservations supervisor at Pasadena’s Hotel Constance, placed a 911 call. In one of the hotel’s guest rooms, staff had found an unconscious young woman, clothed only in underwear and a robe. With her was a much older man, who seemed disheveled and strung out. He called the woman his “girlfriend” but was oddly unconcerned about her condition—his primary interest was in extending their stay in the hotel. Paramedics arrived and rushed the woman, who had clearly overdosed, to a hospital. Police inspected the ample evidence of drug use in the room. Khan assumed the creepy older man was in for a world of legal pain.
But a few days later, Khan was surprised to learn that no legal action had followed the incident. This, he suspected, had something to do with the identity of the strange male guest, who was, it turned out, not your average junkie or john. He was, in fact, Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the celebrated dean of the U.S.C. medical school, owner of a $5 million Tudor-revival mansion, and a mainstay of the Los Angeles establishment. The sort of man with the connections to make unpleasant incidents disappear.
