“So that’s the patient profile at your boss’s clinic? The old? The people who suffer from other diseases?”
“Our patients aren’t all old, and they don’t all suffer from other diseases, but they’re all people that can scratch up four hundred thousand dollars. Mind you, even with us there’s no guarantee. We still have more patients than we can find hearts for. The money buys you a better chance, but it doesn’t give you a guarantee. If we could guarantee a heart to any-one who asked, we’d probably be able to charge twice as much. But one thing’s for sure: if you’re poor, you can’t afford us. You have to take your chances with a public hospital.”
“Where the likelihood of someone getting a heart is akin to one’s chances of winning the national lottery?”
“Exactly.”
“And you think that’s right?”
“I’m not a jurist, Gilda. I’m a surgeon. I don’t dictate how the system works. I’m just telling you how it is. Besides, rich people have as much right to life as poor people, wouldn’t you say?”
“But-”
“It’s all regulated, Gilda. The survivors can donate the heart to whomever they want.”
“But not for gain.”
“Not legally, no. But who’s to say it’s for gain?”
“You just implied that-”
Sylvie waved a finger in front of Gilda’s nose.
“No audit by health or tax authorities has ever detected an irregularity in my clinic’s paperwork. I made sure of that before I took the job. I want to earn money, that’s only nat-ural, but not if it involves a risk of losing my license to prac-tice medicine. What with my love life being the way it is, my profession might be the only thing I’ll have to sustain me in my old age.”
Gilda shook her head, more in condemnation of the prac-tice than denial at Sylvie’s prospects. Sylvie reached out and put a hand over one of hers. “Gilda, Gilda, you’re always painting things in black-and-white. The world doesn’t work that way. You have to see the other side of things.”
“Other side?”
Gilda tried to withdraw her hand, but Sylvie held on to it and leaned forward in her chair.
“Look,” she said, “if I’d stayed at the Hospital das Clinicas, I might have done a heart transplant every six months. These days, on the average, I do three times as many. I save more lives and I make more money. What’s wrong with that? Everybody wins. Not only me. The patients win, too.”
“But the public hospitals-”
“Forget the public hospitals. They can’t compete. Stop looking at me like that and eat your fish.”
“I lost my appetite.”
Sylvie shrugged and released Gilda’s hand. “Suit yourself. But now it’s your turn. I’ve been doing all the talking, and you haven’t told me a damn thing. What sparked all this curiosity about heart transplants, and what’s it to you?”
Gilda thought for a moment about how to begin. Finally, she just plunged in. “Have you seen the press coverage on that clandestine cemetery?”
“The one up in the Serra da Cantareira? All those desa-parecidos?”
“They weren’t desaparecidos. They couldn’t have been killed by the military government. The corpses hadn’t been in the ground long enough.”
“Okay. So when were they killed? And why were they killed? And who killed them?”
“That’s what I’m struggling with. The cop I’m seeing tonight is assigned to the case. That’s how I met him. He came to the morgue to view the bodies.”
“How romantic. What a great story to tell your grandchil-dren. How grandpa and I met one morning over the-”
“Not funny, Sylvie.”
“No? I thought it was. Maybe you should lighten up.”
“And maybe you should pay attention to what I’m saying. The cops seem to think that some cult is responsible for the murders.”
“Some cult?”
“People performing ritual murders. It’s happened before, apparently.”
“But you-”
“Have another idea. And it seems crazy, even to me. I don’t know whether I should tell him about it or not. I need a second opinion. You’re a cardiovascular surgeon; you’re the ideal person to ask.”
“Gilda, what the hell are you getting at?”
Gilda leaned across the table. “Sylvie, in every case, in every single case, the sternums of the victims had been sawn through. Not hacked, not chopped, sawn.”
Sylvie paused with her wine glass halfway to her lips. “With a sternal saw?”
“Yes. With a sternal saw.”
Sylvie put down her glass, pursed her lips, took in a deep breath, let it out slowly.
“Look, I wouldn’t tell you that organ theft doesn’t hap-pen-”
“So it does happen?”
“Let me finish, okay? I’m attuned to all of this stuff be-cause it directly affects what I do. There was a case a few months ago in one of the municipal mortuaries. A university student slit his wrists and died. His family sent clothes to dress him for his funeral. This is pretty macabre stuff. You sure you want to discuss it over lunch?”
“Have you forgotten what I do all day? Do you think I could do it if I had a weak stomach?”
“Okay, okay, take it easy.”
Gilda sniffed. “Yes, I want to discuss it.”
Sylvie took a hefty swallow of wine before she continued. “The student’s mother got it into her head that she didn’t like the choice of clothing, that she wanted to dress him herself. Last thing she could do for her son and all that. She goes to the mortuary, strips off his shirt, and finds stitches right down the middle of his chest. She goes ballistic and calls the cops. It turns out that one of the attendants had a nice little business going for himself, selling organs to a research lab.”
“Not for transplant?”
“No. They were no good for that. He wasn’t getting them out quickly enough. Then there was this ex-Israeli defense forces colonel up in Recife. You heard about him?”
“No.”
“I’m surprised. It was in all the papers.” Sylvie reached for the bottle of wine, refilled her glass, and made to top up Gilda’s. Gilda put her hand over the mouth of the glass.
“I must have missed it,” she said.
Sylvie shrugged and put down the bottle.
“It wasn’t a case of theft per se. The colonel wasn’t steal-ing, he was buying. Kidneys to be precise.”
“Kidneys?”
“Yeah. It’s damned near impossible to get kidney donors in Israel because there’s something in their religion about the body being buried intact. The colonel was recruiting poor people who were willing to sell one of their kidneys. He had a deal going with a hospital in Johannesburg. The recipients would fly from Israel, the donors from Recife. They’d do the operation there, and the donors would come back without one of their kidneys. It took awhile for the federal cops to catch on. The colonel’s partner was the local police chief.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. And then there was a couple who were willing to sell their kid.”
“Sell their kid? So somebody could extract his organs?”
“Uh-huh. How sick is that? They were Albanians, living in Italy. They held an auction. Infant hearts are extremely rare, so they figured they could get a good price. The cops heard about it, mounted a sting operation, and nailed them.”
Sylvie speared her last piece of fish and popped it into her mouth.
“So the baby survived?” Gilda asked.
Sylvie, still chewing, nodded. Then she swallowed and said, “In that case, yes.”
“A couple of years ago,” Gilda said, “I had a maid who told me foreigners were coming into the country, adopting kids out of favelas, taking them home, and cutting them up for their organs.”
“The consensus on that one,” Sylvie said, “is that it’s an urban legend, but the rumor was widespread enough for the government to tighten adoption regulations.”
“What about the regulations pertaining to transplants? Why don’t they do something about that?”
“They already have. Clinics like mine are very strict about the paperwork. The origin of any organ we receive has to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.”