Smuggling Blood

by Mike Gomes

  "Madam. You are very lucky," came a voice from over her shoulder that she immediately recognized as the Maître d'. Her mind jumped widely, wondering if the man had seen her putting anything into the drink.

  "He said he saved your son."

  "Yes, he did. And at the time, I didn't own this restaurant. I didn't even have a job and he did it... he took care of my son for free. That's why I call him such a great man, it's unbelievable what he did for me and my family."

  "I'm just happy that he picked me to be with tonight."

  "Are you trying to steal my girl?" Patel laughed as he walked over and placed his arm around the maître d'.

  "Oh no, no, sir, this beautiful woman is far too out of my league for me to even think of her like that. She needs a man like you."

  "Sir, you sell yourself too short," Patel patted him on the back. "I've seen your wife, she's a beautiful woman, one that turns heads every day she walks down the street."

  "Thank you, sir. It's my privilege to have you eat here tonight, and as always, there is no charge," the maître d' nodded and almost bowed, before turning himself away and moving back out to the front of the restaurant.

  "He lavishes me with praise," Patel said, sitting back down and placing the napkin upon his lap. "To be honest with you, I did help his son but the boy wasn't quite as sick as he thought. He looked a lot worse than he really was, and because of being young and strong, he was able to bounce back quickly."

  "You are the great man they all talk about, aren't you?"

  "But what I need now is a great woman. A woman who could satisfy me in all areas of my life, not just in my loins but throughout my heart and soul. That's something my wife doesn't give me," Patel allowed his voice to go gentle, just as he had practiced so many times before, "I think that woman can be you. I think you could make all the difference in the world to me. I just picture you hosting parties and being there. We would make quite the couple."

  "Now, it seems like you're the one taking the leap." Gabriella was sure that the man was playing her, but didn’t let on her disdain for what he was saying.

  "Well, then take up your glass. This is an opportunity for you and I to get to know each other, to build our relationship both emotionally and physically." Patel raised his glass into the air, looking for Gabriella's to touch it gently. "To us and what the future brings."

  Dr. Patel held the glass in front of him, and stared at the wine for just a moment with a smile across his face. Taking the glass and bringing it to his lips, he drew in a large amount, holding it in his mouth before he swallowed it down.

  "This wine is almost as perfect as you are." Patel complimented, completely unaware of what he ingested."

  Twenty-Two

  The meal came to an end as the soft flickering of the candlelight dropped down lower than it had been at the start of the meal. Moment by moment, Gabriella drew Patel in closer and closer, having him believe all the lies she was telling him. A fantasy of undying devotion and love, and a commitment to just him and nobody else.

  "I must admit, Gabriella, when I first met you, the attraction was purely physical." Patel pulled her chair to allow her to stand up.

  "Do tell," Gabriella urged him to continue his thought.

  "Well, you're a beautiful woman, seductive, intelligent, and extremely beautiful in every way." Patel placed his arm around her, turning her toward the door gently. "Your eyes are what first got me, that look, the color, the shape, everything about them was tantalizing in every way."

  "You got all of that from just a chance meeting when I came to donate blood?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I guess, I'm the lucky girl then, aren't I." Gabriella reaching for the front door and pushed it open, despite Patel’s attempts to get ahead of her and do it first.

  The couple walked out into the parking lot, getting back in to the white Mercedes. Patel opened the passenger door and guided her in softly, holding one hand before closing it and moving around the car to get into the driver's side. Fixing his hair slightly before he entered the car, Patel took a deep breath.

  "I think we spoke earlier about maybe going to see some of the stars," Patel said. "It's a beautiful night for it, not a cloud in the sky."

  "I don't think we could have asked for much more than this," Gabriella agreed, showing a soft smile and looking out of the corner of her eyes, attempting to use all of her powers of seduction to pull the man deeper in. "It's nights like this that can change people's lives."

  "I think you're right." Patel placed his hand on the woman's knee and gave it a gentle squeeze. "In some ways, I feel like I've been waiting for this for a long time."

  "I think we both have," Gabriella sighed softly. "I think we'll both get exactly what we deserve."

  The couple laughed as Gabriella placed her hand on top of his, as his held on to her knee. His fingers gently brushed the inside of her leg, turning further up on her thigh trying to create a sexual stimulation, only to be met by the stiffening of Gabriella’s hand letting him know that he could proceed no further.

  "It's over here on the west side of the town. This is the perfect place, if you want to star gaze. Absolutely beautiful in every way," Patel said. "One of the problems we have here in New Delhi, is that there's so much damn pollution. Smog gets caught up in the air and then all the light pollution, but you get over here in the hills and it could block a lot of that out, and you're able to just look up in the sky. Nothing like the desert, mind you, where everything is wide open and you see every little thing. But considering we're close to a city that has one of the highest populations in the world, I think it's pretty beautiful."

  After driving for another twenty minutes, the couple finally reached their destination. A high banking turn at the height of one of the high hills, it had large run-off areas where couples would often go to spend time with each other, and being out of the sight of others.

  "This is more like it." Patel opened up the sunroof and leaned his chair back. "Gabriella, lean your chair back with me. You get the best view this way, you don't have to crank your head up to see out."

  "I'm a little bit nervous with us both lying down, it seems... Too easy," Gabriella said. "Why don't you join me up here?"

  "I've played this game before, it's hard to get, right?" Patel laughed and moved his seat up halfway. "Join me in the middle. We're not laying down, but at least we don't have to hurt our necks."

  Gabriella did as he suggested, sliding the chair back and getting in position next to the man. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out her compact and opened the small mirror. "I hope you don't mind, I just wanna touch up a little bit."

  Reaching into her purse again, Gabriella pulled out lipstick, placing it on her lips, and then used the puff to apply a small amount of blush to her cheeks.

  "That's more like it," Gabriella said happily. "I know modern women are not supposed to worry about makeup and how we look, but I guess, I'm just a little bit old-fashioned like that."

  "Well, I think you're absolutely stunning. With or without makeup, it doesn't matter. The only thing that eclipses your beauty is the beauty of your mind."

  "Let me ask you, Dr. Patel, do these lines ever work on women?" Gabriella said playfully. "I'm not a school girl, you can be honest with me. I'm not going to run away. There's no need for the sappy lines and going over the top."

  "I'm usually not like this," Patel lied. "I feel something very genuine with you, something pure, something like I've never had."

  "Well, I can let you know, tonight's not going to end here," Gabriella said, again playing the bashful temptress. "It's just, when do we start."

  "How about with a kiss."

  "I think that would be more than acceptable." Gabriella leaned toward him. Meeting at the center of the car, the couple kissed gently before moving in for a more vigorous exchange. Their mouths shifting and adjusting as the passion flew through them unable to be contained.

  "Oh, my," Gabriella said, pulling back and trying to withhol
d her disgust as she placed her hand on her chest. "That was simply magnificent." She smiled as she looked over at the man with a smile on his face.

  "Thank you," Patel said with lust in his eyes, as his ego had been stroked to the appropriate point where he felt like nothing could stop him. “I guess, I'm lucky that I'm a good kisser."

  "I guess you have just about it all," Gabriella gushed. "You're a doctor, you're handsome, you're smart, and you know how to treat a woman the right way."

  "Thank you for saying that," he managed to say, as his mouth slightly grimaced as if he had caught himself starting to belch. "Excuse me, just the slightest bit of indigestion."

  "Do you really think it's indigestion?" Gabriella asked quizzically.

  "Yes, I do..." Patel placed his hand on his chest, catching himself from belching again, "It feels like I'm having some kind of reaction to the dinner. It's no comment on you, though, my darling."

  "I know it's not," Gabriella grinned. "It's a reaction to chemicals."

  Turning his eyes directly toward her, he was trying to form some explanation in his mind for what she said. "What do you mean chemical? Something with the foods I ate mixing?"

  "Oh, no, it was what I put in your drink." Gabriella picked up Patel’s cellphone and threw it to the floor in the back of the car.

  "You put something in my drink?" Patel asked, starting to slightly gasp for air as if he had just been hit hard in a sporting event. "What did you do?"

  "When you went to the bathroom to get the condom, I placed a little something in your drink. It was from a friend of mine," Gabriella informed him. "And it just sat happily inside you all this time. He developed a way to put a coating around the individual molecules so they wouldn't react with your system, at least not until the catalyst was also entered in. That came from my lipstick."

  Patel looked at the woman holding the tube of lipstick in her hand, and opened his mouth in an attempt to say some words, but nothing would come out. His throat had started to close, and the sweat dripped down from his head, like nothing he had ever felt before. The cramps were intense and his muscles all felt as if they were turning in on themselves.

  "You see, with the catalyst in the lipstick, it had no effect on me whatsoever, but when I kissed you, the exchange of the fluids in our mouths allowed the catalyst to drop down into your stomach. From there, the two just met each other and exploded," Gabriella said with a large smile and a low laugh. "And now you're dying. I was sent here from a long way away to make sure you never hurt anybody else again. It was only by chance that I got to meet some others around here that had felt your wrath and your shady business dealings."

  Patel's hand went up to his throat as it felt as if it was starting to collapse in on itself. His tongue rolled back, jammed the airway, providing no oxygen to get in, but made him scramble to reach inside his own mouth to try to alleviate the pain.

  "You brought this all on yourself, doctor. You could have had a good life. You had everything going for you, but then greed took over. And now, you're sitting here in the car, with a woman who completely manipulated you in every possible way. And I'm going to make sure you die with humiliation. I'm gonna drop your pants to your ankles, as well as your underwear, and then the newspapers will read that you were found here with your pants down, obviously involved in some kind of an illicit event that was unbecoming for a man of your stature."

  Patel's eyes fixed on the woman one last time as he tried to get any words out. Nothing came, just the gurgling sound of a man drowning on his own fluids and suffocating, a horrible death.

  "This isn't my first time killing someone, so I'm gonna give you some advice, just let go and let it happen. There's no use in making the end of your life any worse than it needs to be.”

  Twenty-Three

  "Could this be any more cliche?" Gabriella asked as she moved up behind Tyler and placed her hand on his shoulder.

  "Cliche?" Tyler turned his head, nodding for her to move around the bench and sit next to him.

  "Yes, Tyler, spies meeting in the park on a park bench," Gabriella chuckled.

  "You're right, I guess that one's been done in quite a few movies. But being out in the park, it's just beautiful," Tyler said. "You can also keep an eye on anybody around and see if they're trying to listen in on your conversation."

  It was late in the afternoon as the sun was starting to lower itself in the sky. Plenty of people still remained traveling back and forth through the park on the Boston Commons, even with a bit of brisk wind that filled the air.

  "Job's done," Gabriella said, sitting down next to Tyler and pulling out her phone from her purse. Looking down into the phone, she looked as if she had no interest in the man that was sitting next to her.

  "Well, I'm glad to see that you’ve still got your touch," said Tyler. "Honestly, getting this guy alone was 95% of the battle."

  "How would you know what's 95% of the battle, you weren't even there?" Gabriella said, sending a snarky tone toward Tyler that she knew that he'd take all in stride. "I was the one that had to deal with that guy and get him alone. And I have to tell you, I'm not very proud of it."

  "Sex?" Tyler asked. "Is it okay for me to ask that nowadays? I don't want you to going to human resources on me."

  "Does the system have human resources? Because if they do, I could have gone there many times about you," Gabriella grinned. "And to answer your question, no, no sex at all."

  "Then what was so bad about it?" Tyler asked curiously. "If you didn't have to sleep with the guy, then the other thing that could make it so distasteful is if you had to kill a bunch of people to get to him."

  "No, nothing like that, either. It's just he's kind of, well, slimy," Gabriella shivered. "It's nothing that you could see on the surface with him. He presents well, he looks good, he's intelligent, all of those things. But once you cut through that, he is just as nasty as can be."

  "Well, I love the touch about having him with his pants down," Tyler laughed. "I knew when I saw it that you must have been really pissed off at him."

  "You can't imagine what this guy was like. He just fed off of people, destroyed their lives, and for no reason at all," Gabriella sighed. "The more I tried to figure out why he was doing what he was doing, it always kept coming back to money and nothing more. He had so many customers he didn't know what to do with them."

  "Worst thing that can happen to a doctor is not to care," said Tyler, folding his arms in front of him. "A doctor that isn't invested in you can only lead to trouble."

  "You got that right," Gabriella agreed. "He'd pump blood into the wrong person and not think twice about it, and I gotta tell you, he was into some darker things than even that."

  "Well, this is your debriefing, let's hear it," Tyler urged.

  "As I was there and I started hearing the stories about him, people talked about him having this blood farm. I always assumed that it will be somewhere way out in the suburbs but it wasn't. It was right there in the basement of his building. He had everybody paid off and so much respect in the area, no one ever decided to cross him in any way."

  "So how bad was the farm?"

  "Pretty dismal," Gabriella closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. "I only got to see part of it. It was just this dark, dank, disgusting room that had junkies laying all over the floor. He'd trade them drugs for blood, and then keep them endlessly hooked, sleeping and staying down in the basement. He'd hire a couple of young guys to get the blood out of them, and hose down the floor every once in a while to keep them out of their own filth."

  "Good God," Tyler said in shock. "And this guy went through medical school and is actually trained to help people?"

  "Oh, there's another step to this," Gabriella continued. "If you were someone that couldn't handle it in a room like that, there was an alternative room off to the side. The tales of people going in there is that they didn't come out. They were brought in, basically put into small cages, and kept just for their blood. He didn't even give those ones
the drugs. He just made them so weak by taking a liter of blood every two days. They couldn't escape no matter what they did. They physically couldn't handle it."

  "And it seems he just kept doing it over and over again, so it got easier and easier," said Tyler, shaking his head side to side. "I'm really glad you got them. I don't think anybody else could have done it.

  "This one was my pleasure," Gabriella smiled. "But I still wanna get paid."

  "I've got your money, the usual way. You know how to link up to it," Tyler said. "It wasn't your job and had nothing to do with you, but did those people ever get out of the basement?"

  "Well, Tyler, it was all very, very strange," Gabriella said with a light shrug. "It seems that there was a fire there, destroyed the entire building. Everything was gone. Everybody assumed that Patel did it for the insurance money. There wasn't one body that was found in the basement or in the regular working area… it was a miracle."

  "Just like that, huh? Mysterious fire that just wipes everything out," Tyler nodded his head up and down. "And I suppose his widow now is going to get that money for the building getting destroyed, as well as the effect on his practice, so, she's still gonna be well off."

  "She will. And from what I understand, she has no idea that anything's going on. Pretty enabling, but still, she wasn't involved and she didn't have any first-hand information, from everything I gathered. So, why should his kids and her be put to blame for what he did?"

  "Gabriella, we know that you have a soft spot for issues like this. But we keep telling you, you need to stay within the parameters of the operation," Tyler said gently. "You put yourself at risk, you put the system at risk, you put everybody at risk."

  "I don't work for you, Tyler," Gabriella said with a grin.

  "You did on this one."