Loose Change: The Case Files of a Homeless Investigator

by Sean Huxter

  I got down next to him. “Hold on, T-Bill. What's wrong?”

  He looked into my eyes with a fear I hadn't seen before. His eyes rolled, and he fell flat on his face. I tried rolling him over to apply CPR. He was heavy, but with Fernie's frantic help we got him on his back and I began compressing his chest.

  “Fernie! Mouth-to-mouth!” I cried. Fernie looked a little lost... he'd never done this before. I had.

  “Just breathe into his lungs! We have to keep him alive!”

  Fernie did. Breath after breath. I compressed, hoping I was keeping his blood circulating. This wasn't good. If he was having a heart attack we'd need serious help.

  “Fernie! I got it! Go get help! Find a cell phone! Find a cop! Just call 911!”

  Fernie ran to the Tremont entrance to the Common. I knew Turley was off duty by now, so I was hoping he could find anyone to call 911. I kept up with the compressions, stopping every few to breathe into TBill's lungs.

  When Fernie got back I could already hear sirens. I kept compressing but I was getting tired and I didn't see it was doing much good, but I wasn't going to give up on T-Bill so easily.

  Fernie swiped up the bag of bills, stuffing it in his jacket.

  “What? Just making sure they cops don't take it in as evidence. TBill would lose it for sure.” I knew Fernie was as honest as the day was long. He meant it. He was keeping it safe for when T-Bill came back around.

  Miko and his crew came running too. “What happened? Is that TBill?”

  “Yeah,” I said as the EMTs came along the cobbled path with a stretcher. They examined T-Bill and pulled out a portable defibrillator. They ripped at his clothing until they found bare chest and applied several charges. “Clear!” I heard, over and over. They really didn't give up on him.

  As they loaded him onto the stretcher, police arrived and began questioning us. We told them what had happened, leaving out the bit about the money. The money was far from my mind, compared to what had just happened, but Fernie and I still weren't about to hand it over to the cops where it would sit in an evidence locker probably for years, or just conveniently disappear.

  “He just collapsed?”

  “Well,” I said, “he'd been drinking, partying kinda heavily, to be truthful.”

  “Clearly,” said the EMT. He could smell the alcohol on T-Bill.

  “And then he just started breathing hard. He turned gray and collapsed. I applied CPR until you arrived.”

  “The whole time?” he asked, eyes suddenly looking straight at me.

  “Yup.”

  “He's a lucky guy. He'da been dead by now if not for you.”

  I didn't feel much like a hero. T-Bill was bagged and the lead EMT was pumping air into his lungs. I looked at him, retreating down the cobbled path.

  “Hold on!” I shouted and ran to the stretcher.

  “Stop. Don't approach the patient,” the lead EMT said, holding out an arm to prevent me from getting too close. “We have to get him down to Emergency.”

  “Look!” I said pointing to T-Bill's beige fall jacket.

  There was blood oozing into the fabric.

  “Shit!” said the lead EMT. He lifted the fabric of T-Bill's jacket up and saw a patch of blood spreading. He and his partner rolled T-Bill over on the stretcher.

  “Jesus!” said the first EMT.

  There was a healing surgical scar running down T-Bill's back, right over his right kidney. The wound was bleeding badly.

  Chapter 2

  Before Miko and his skateboarding crew went back to their hard work, I gestured him over. “Miko, a word?”

  Miko waved his boys on, but stuck around.

  “You seen T-Bill before this today?”

  “Yeah, he was up by the Frog Pond handin' out twenties like a casino dealer hands out blackjack cards.”

  “Did he say anything? Where he got the money?”

  “Like we was askin',” he said.

  “You weren't the least bit curious?”

  “What the fuck I care? He was givin' out twenties.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Miko grabbed his deck and followed his buds. Miko was an aspiring Tony Hawk. I seen him on his ass more times than on his deck.

  “Fernie, you see that scar?”

  “Yup. Kidney operation.”

  “I know. Did you ever know T-Bill to have kidney troubles?” “Nope. He complained sometimes, but never anything specific.”

  I bade Fernie a good night and bedded myself down near my dumpster in Public Alley 437, hoping T-Bill would be ok.

  Chapter 3 The next morning I waited for Officer Turley's cruiser to show up for his beat duty. Turley patrolled the Common, Tremont, Downtown Crossing and this whole historic section of old Boston. Turley was a good guy. Really seemed to care for the homeless. Much more than most cops you see.

  “Officer Turley,” I greeted the man as he got out of his car.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Let me guess. You want to know the condition of William Burdeck, aka T-Bill.”

  “Got it in one,” I said. “How is he?”

  Turley settled against his car, crossing his arms. “It's not good. Turns out Burdeck had an operation to remove a kidney recently. Within the last seven days.”

  “Really? Fernie mentioned he complained sometimes about general health but he never mentioned anything about his kidneys.”

  “Ah,” Turley said, shaking his head. “The kidney that was removed was perfectly healthy, or so they determined at the hospital. And the real problem is that his other kidney is in bad shape. In fact it's in need of replacement and if he doesn't find a donor he may die.”

  “What? How the hell did that happen?”

  “Wish I knew. The doctors are furious. It looks like he donated a kidney. The problem is he should never have been allowed to do so. That's the kidney that was keeping him healthy, since his other one was losing the ability to function.”

  “What the hell?” I remembered years ago hearing all sorts of urban legends about people waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a scar and a stolen kidney. “Organ theft?”

  “Possibly,” Turley said. “But if so, it was done very professionally. The doctors said it had to have been done by a skilled surgeon.”

  My mind snapped back to the bag of twenties T-Bill had been carrying.

  “Is it legal to pay for organ donation in the US?” I asked. I suspected I wouldn't need an officer of the law to tell me what I was pretty sure I knew.

  “Not a bit. There are strict laws against incentivizing donations with cash. There's nothing illegal in putting up cash to ask people to get tested, blood type, that sort of thing, but if any money changes hands to actually procure an organ, that's highly illegal.”

  “And T-Bill?”

  “Now desperately needs a new kidney.”

  Chapter 4

  The next afternoon I told Old Fernie what happened and he and I were both considering getting tested, just in case we could donate. What possessed T-Bill to sell a kidney if he knew his other one was on the way out? He's not stupid, despite what anyone might think watching him from day to day.

  And what doctor would remove a kidney when he knew the other one was faulty? My nose for trouble was itching.

  I found a rare working phone booth and called the hospital holding T-Bill. I put on my best professional Boston-accented Police Detective voice and perpetrated that I was Detective Thomas Best, a detective I'd encountered once or twice before.

  I got some useful information from the attending physician on TBill's case. He had not known his kidney was failing, he was not on any donations list, he would not have been able to donate a kidney - not at any reputable hospital - due to the condition of his other kidney, the angry doctor didn't say as much but he certainly made it clear he'd like to have words with the surgeon who removed the kidney. A search of all area hospitals showed no one had donated a kidney in recent weeks. Oh. I also got that T-Bill's blood type was AB Negative. Very rare.

  I th
anked the good doctor and went back to talk to Fernie.

  “I'm O Positive,” Fernie said. “Been tested so I could give blood.”

  “Me too,” I said. Neither of us was going to be compatible. In fact it wasn't likely T-Bill was going to be able to get a donation with the rare AB Negative type. But that's probably why someone wanted his good kidney. Someone out there with a very rare blood type needed a kidney and had cash.

  I went to find Turley to see if he had any news.

  “Nope. The detectives I talked to checked all hospitals in New England and the search is spreading. So far no one matching Mr. Burdeck's description is on record donating a kidney. Had to have been done elsewhere, or by … freelance.”

  Damn. Organs for money. Never thought I'd see the day.

  Chapter 5 A few weeks later, about when the sun was low in the western sky, I was strolling the Charles River Esplanade.

  I was thinking about T-Bill. He was stabilized on dialysis but fading, and due to his chronic use of alcohol, and other socio-economic factors, he wasn't exactly bolting to the top of the donor list.

  It had been a sunny day, warm, pleasant breeze blowing off the river. Scullers were rowing up and down. It was now early September and summer was in full swing in Boston. Lots of people were out enjoying the day along the Charles. As they passed, people generally left me a lot of personal space, probably due to my appearance. Look, I try. It's hard out here for a good-looking fellow in his late forties like me. My clothes were fairly new, or at least new-to-me, and I was fairly clean and healthy. I was walking briskly, as if I had intent. Not a typical bum by appearance, I hoped.

  I was passing a bushy patch of walkway sandwiched between Storrow Drive and a boat dock near the western end when I noticed a buzzing of flies. A swarm of insects is not an unusual sight down by the marshier borders of the Charles, but these weren't mosquitos, they were loud, buzzing blue-assed flies. The noise attracted my attention, so I walked closer to the swarm.

  Joanie Jones was lying dead in the underbrush, her body on shore but her legs washing around in the Charles.

  Chapter 6 Familiar scene: Me standing around a dead body, EMTs working frantically, police standing around cordoning off the area, Coroners on the scene, me being questioned. Again.

  Yes, I knew the lady. Everyone knew the lady. Joanie Jones. Mentally ill. Often seen screaming at people to stay off the Public Library steps. Last seen a few days ago yelling at people to stop killing the frogs in the frog pond. No, she probably was talking about the toddlers who wade there daily. No, no one was killing them. No enemies I knew of. My association with her was casual and not much to speak of. No reason to know why she was dead on the marge of the Charles.

  It was near dark when the Coroner took the body to the morgue. I was watching most of her examination of the body, so I paid particular attention when she noted the two surgical scars, left wide open, right around where poor Joanie's kidneys used to be.

  Chapter 7 The next morning I was sitting next to Fernie on his wall. He was calling out the weather, since we were in one of those rare windows where no Boston sports team seemed to have a game going on.

  “No shit?” he said after hearing the news. “Damn. Poor Joanie. Never harmed a hair on anyone's head.”

  “Yup.”

  “Both kidneys?”

  “Well, I only observed. But yeah, there were two gaping wounds

  over her kidneys. T-Bill's wound was surgically sealed, and it was his own damn fault for not resting that it opened, but there looked to me to be not even an attempt to sew Joanie up. And both kidneys?

  “If we had any doubt that the doctor who took out T-Bill's good kidney was committing attempted murder,” I said, “there's no doubt at all that he was flat-out murdering Joanie.”

  “Tell me,” Fernie agreed. “But Joanie's never gonna be missed by anyone, right?” “Yeah, not like she mattered or anything, homeless, crazy as a loon. It was like she had these kidneys that were just going to waste, so let's give them to a human being or something.

  “If I ever get my hands on...” I shut up, fuming.

  I took a small piece of paper from my pocket.

  “I didn't mention to the police at the scene that I had my go at

  examining Joanie's body first,” I said to Fernie. “This is all I found out of the ordinary.” I showed him. It was a bright day-glo pink strip of paper about a half-inch wide and two inches long with a phone number on it in Times New Roman. Nothing else. Just a phone number. Common 617 Boston area code. It was a mobile number.

  “Is that,” Fernie asked, “what you'd call a bona fide clew?” “Tried it. Disconnected,” I said glumly. “Nothing points it out as a real clue anyway.”

  “So what now?”

  “Well, I feel bad about holding onto it, I'm gonna hand it over to Turley, explain it away as me being somewhat overwhelmed by all the questioning, perhaps play it off as an oversight, whatever. But the cops should have it.”

  “Yeah, not a bad idea,” Fernie said, lowly, then switched into high gear as a young couple with a stroller came by the cobble path: “Seventy four degrees, sunny all day, no cloud in sight!” he shouted with a pleasant smile that made him look like Morgan Freeman. The couple put a fiver into his cup and thanked him for the weather report.

  They even bought one of my copies of the latest

  Loose Change . Big day.

  Chapter 8 I went looking for Officer Turley. He wasn't posted in his cruiser at the Tremont entrance, so I wandered down into Downtown Crossing, no longer the fine shopping district it had once been. Since Filene's went out of business, the building sold to developers who left it with a gaping hole in its center, this place has really slid downhill. Now the Mayor was in dispute with the current owners who defaulted on guarantees they would fix it up, Boston's once-admired center was now a well-hidden Dresden. The facade of the building now hides the gaping scar from the people, but deep down – we know. We can't see it, but we can feel it.

  Turley's beat took him down here often, especially now that the homeless population use it as a base of sorts. Turley is well-suited to dealing with the troubles that brings. I asked a few familiar faces if they'd seen him and they all pointed in various directions.

  I had almost given up when I noticed something bright from the corner of my eye. A plywood wall was up next to a shop being renovated. Stapled all over it were posters for concerts, lost dogs, poetry workshops, but one stood out. A bright sheet of pink day-glo paper, half-buried behind newer postings, declared, once I cleared away some of the later posters, that if you wanted to sell your blood or donate organs, you might get eighty dollars for a pint of blood, depending on blood type, almost as much for plasma, various amounts for tissue service, $20,000 for a spare cornea, and up to $15,000 for that extra kidney you don't really need. It wasn't worded like that of course, but that was the gist of the posting. The organization called themselves “Giving and Caring Donations LLC.”.

  At the bottom of the poster were pre-cut strips with a phone number on them. Three of the strips were missing. I took out the strip I was trying to hand over to Turley and posed it next to the poster. It fit one of the missing strips perfectly and had the same now-disconnected phone number. I took the poster down so I could give the whole thing to Turley.

  As I turned I saw another poster across Summer Street. This one was orange but had the same day-glo fluorescent intensity. On it was the same message in a different font, worded somewhat differently and had strips with a completely different phone number, and was called “Caritas, Veritas” - in English: “Love, Truth”. Clearly this was an operation that kept changing names, phone numbers and fliers, and worked fast. Never the same number twice, never the same poster twice, never the same name twice. Harder to tie them down this way. And they only needed one or two hits per incarnation.

  I ripped this poster off the wall as well and took it with me. I decided I wasn't going to find Turley today, and he was almost off-duty anyway. Plu
s, I had a plan. A stupid, stupid plan.

  Chapter 9 The next morning I called the number on the new poster from a pay phone. A woman's voice answered, a real professional receptionist by the sound.

  “Caritas Veritas Donations, Carol speaking. How may I help you?” “Hello... I was... uh...”

  “Are you calling about donations, sir?” Carol asked, prompting me

  along, since I was a bit nervous.

  “Yeah, donations. Donations, yeah.” I said, trying to sound a bit

  out of it.

  “Well, sir, we can certainly help you with that. Charitable work is

  our cause and we're here to promote healthy giving to those in need.

  What were you looking to donate?”

  “Blood? Uh...” I said, hesitantly.

  “Certainly, sir. As you probably know, the Red Cross takes blood

  donations all the time, and while they don't pay the donors, they go on

  to make large profits themselves at your expense. Why do that when

  you can profit directly?”

  “And what about... uh... a kidney?”

  “A kidney? Sure. As you are surely aware, there are many

  unfortunate people out there in need of a kidney, and most people can

  get by on one for their whole lives, completely unaffected. And you'd

  be giving the gift of life to someone now struggling. It's a generous donation, for sure, and for that we pay up to $15,000, depending on

  blood type. Do you wish to donate a kidney, sir?”

  “Yeah. A kidney. Act of kindness and all...” I made sure I sounded

  like I was in serious need of the money.

  “We can arrange that, sir. Please stay on the line.” She put me on

  hold to some god-awful elevator music. I waited.

  A man's voice came next. “Sir, you indicated to our receptionist