“I know. It’s frustrating. You never realize how much of our work depends on contacts until you have none. Anyway, don’t be hard on yourself. We know where she lives. And she could have been going anywhere. There’s nothing to suggest it’s related to our case.”
“But you agree she knows more than she’s telling.”
“Absolutely. Let’s turn up the heat on her tomorrow. Drop in on her unannounced.”
“We’ve got also the congressman’s thing to crash at noon.”
“So much mischief to get into.”
“I’m sorry I blew it,” Jenn said.
“Forget it. As long as we keep moving forward, we’ll find something. And that something will lead to something else.”
She yawned and stretched, and I told her if she fell asleep there was no way I was carrying her next door. “I’m not falling asleep,” she said. “I’m just finding the inside of my eyelids extremely fascinating.”
“Give me your room key, then. If you fall asleep, I can crash there.”
“In a minute …”
And she was gone. Out. Her eyelids stopped fluttering and her breath started whistling through her nose. I sighed and started to sort out the papers on the other bed. I went through all the bank statements, credit card bills and phone bills again, stacking them in piles. Finding nothing but the beginning of a headache. I went into the bathroom and rinsed my face in cold water and laid a wet cloth on the back of my neck. Then I started flipping through David’s research papers. One explored the social and economic barriers that seemed to be keeping some groups, especially African Americans, from following through on the application process to get onto a waiting list. Another examined a group of live donors in India who had sold organs through brokers, to see how well they fared afterwards. In a city called Chennai, people sold kidneys primarily to pay off crippling debts or provide elaborate dowries. The organs would sell for ten or fifteen thousand dollars but the broker kept most of that. The donors received about a thousand U.S. dollars on average, which would help them in the short term but do nothing for their long-term prospects. Very few ever used the money to start a business or pursue an education. Many actually wound up worse off than before, because they didn’t get proper follow-up care and developed infections or other problems. The researchers had gone to Chennai and found living conditions unsanitary and access to medical care sporadic. But the thing that really jumped out at me was that Chennai used to be known as Madras.
I jumped off the bed and woke Jenn, waving the paper at her and telling her what I thought it meant. Once she was fully awake and with me, we decided that before we tried to trip up Carol-Ann or blindsided the congressman at the party, we would drive to Somerville, to the Madras Grocery, and see if any of what was going through my head could be real.
CHAPTER 18
A Red Sox scout comes to my hotel room to try me out. He says they’re thinking about me for second base. He’s a wiry old guy, a Johnny Pesky type. He likes my arm as I zip the ball across the room into his glove. Then he says we need more space to really see what I can do, and like that we’re in Fenway. The night lights are blinding in their towering banks. I’m in the dirt near second, firing balls to him at first. My arm is fine, really live, but I can’t catch the return throws. My right thumb and index finger are completely numb inside the glove and it won’t close on the ball. All the years I played such great defence, with such hunger and instinct for the ball, and now I drop every throw, the ball banging off the glove and into the ground. The old scout says, “Too bad, kid, you were looking good there for a minute, but you ain’t ready for the majors.” I ask for one more chance, one more throw, and he says, “Okay, but not from me. From him.” Standing at first, in shadows cast by the big light, is a glowering Boston reliever, their feared closer who throws ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastballs. He winds up and throws one at me with all his might and I freeze, my glove hanging uselessly at my side, as it burns through the air toward the bridge of my nose.
After breakfast the next morning, I told Jenn there was no point in both of us going to Somerville. “Sammy knows me already, and I think he trusts me. I can be there and back inside two hours. You stay here and see what you can find on organ rings in the U.S. Get Colin working on it too.”
“Is it all just because the man comes from Madras?”
“You read the article. Before the Indian government banned it, there was a culture there of selling kidneys to pay off debts. Why not do it here? According to Sammy, they were on the verge of losing the store.”
“For a thousand bucks?”
“That’s what they got in India. I’m sure it would be more here. A lot more.”
“I did look a few things up last night, after we talked,” Jenn said. “And there have been a couple of instances of people selling organs here, both investigated by the FBI.”
“Here in Boston?”
“No, the U.S. One was in New Jersey, which I hate to tell you involved a rabbi.”
“Doing what?”
“Bringing in people from Israel and Turkey who posed as relatives of patients.”
“And the second case?”
“Virginia. Also bringing in people posing as relatives, this time from Moldova.”
“Very distant relatives. And the hospitals turned a blind eye?”
“The money is huge, Jonah. A hospital bill is a minimum of two hundred and fifty thousand for a kidney transplant-which costs the least of any organ. And that’s not including any of the medications: that’s just the procurement of the organ and the actual surgery. The more complex organs like the heart or lungs are well over a million. So yeah, they seem to turn a blind eye. This one article I read said there were four documented cases of large donations or endowments made to hospitals by people who had transplants involving these foreign relatives.”
“All right. If a kidney is worth a quarter of a million dollars to a hospital,” I said, “think what it would be worth on the black market.”
“If one exists.”
“It exists. Otherwise, McCudden and Walsh would be alive and David would be here.”
“Then it has to be two, three times as much. Black markets never settle for less.”
“Okay,” I said. “We know Patel had a growth removed from his neck eight months ago at Sinai. If he consented, his blood would have been sent to the gene study. Suppose Carol-Ann has a list of people who need organs and he comes up as a match. Someone contacts him and asks if he wants to part with a kidney. Maybe he agrees, but something goes wrong, or he doesn’t agree and they kill him for it.”
“And you see David taking part?”
“No. Never. Not without a gun to his head.”
“But how else do we explain him suddenly acquiring ten thousand, half of which he gives to the Patel family?”
“I’m hoping Sammy knows something. Maybe he’ll remember someone coming around, or something his father said or did that will help.”
“You sure you don’t want me to come?” Jenn asked.
“I’ve been there once, I know the way.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“We beat the two goons Daggett sent after us. If he tries again, he’ll send someone better.”
“It’s eight o’clock in the morning. I’ll be there and back by ten. Then we surprise Carol-Ann.”
“Okay.”
“How long from here to her place?” I asked.
“We get on the Pike, about fifteen minutes.”
“What about the art institute, where is that in relation to her place?”
“Near the harbour, basically across from the airport. Also about fifteen minutes.”
“All right,” I said. “We’re rocking. You feel it? We’re lining them up and they’re all going to fall. By the end of the day, we’re going to know a lot more about what David was doing. We might even have something worth calling his parents about.”