Silver Lining - A Carpelli Adventure: Sequel To The Bestselling Thriller Fatal Mistake

by Cliff Roberts

  I checked my watch and saw it was just after noon and by the time I drove over to the diner they would have all gone home, so it would have to be tomorrow morning before Betty and I could talk.

  The whole time I was driving over to Daniel’s flop, I couldn’t help but think of Betty. She’d had good instincts not to get involved with me. I didn’t exactly lead a quiet life. At any moment, I could find myself in a fight for my life and she was right to not want to be a part of that.

  When I turned on to Gertrude Street I was struck by the fact that it didn’t look any different in the daylight than it did in the dark. It was poor and very run down. Several of the buildings had signs in the front yards saying they were scheduled for urban renewal three years prior. So far the only renewal that was taking place was when the wind blew away the old trash and new trash was blown in.

  I pulled up to the four plex that supposedly was Daniel’s flop. The street was deserted which wasn’t a surprise, since every house on the street was vacant. The only other car in sight was in the front yard of four plex three units down. It was a burned out hulk that looked like it might have been a Chevy Malibu or a Buick Skylark. I parked at the curb in front of the four plex and got out, checking for my weaponry as I did so. I had my taser and my gun, plus my handy dandy collapsible baton. I was as ready, as I going to get.

  I slipped through a hole in the fence and crossed the yard to what had been the front door. It was now just an opening where the door used to be. The floor was strewn with trash of every variety from newspapers to food wrappers to tampons and condoms. Who took a babe in here to have sex? This was probably one of the places strung out hookers brought johns for a quickie to score cash or drugs or both.

  I checked over the first floor and found it empty, so I went upstairs to the second floor. Daniel’s flop was supposedly in the back right corner. Climbing to the second floor, I gave the second floor a cursory once over, just to be sure, there wasn’t some junkie waiting to sneak up behind me and stab me for few bucks. I figured I really didn’t need to add more drama to my life, after what had already transpired today.

  Once I felt somewhat comfortable, I entered into the apartment in the back right corner of the building. I was struck with a weird feeling as I walked in. I was unsure if I should knock before going in. Talk about strange. This wasn’t anyone’s home, it was a condemned building, yet for a moment, I thought I was being impolite by just walking in. In the end, I yelled out, “Daniel, you here?” and after a three count, I continued on.

  The apartment was the same as the rest of the building. There was trash everywhere. I checked each room, the bedrooms, kitchen, bath and living room. Other than two extremely dirty and worn out mattresses in the back bedroom, there was nothing, nothing but trash. I didn’t wait around for Daniel; I had a massacre to plan.

  As I was leaving the building, I saw a guy slip off to the side of the building, clearly trying to avoid me. I decided maybe he could shed a little light on where I might find Daniel, so I ran after him. I found him hiding behind the chimney.

  “Hey buddy, you flop here?” I asked, but the guy didn’t respond, he just stared down at the ground. “Dude, there’s twenty bucks in it, if you can help me out by answering a few questions.”

  That seemed to do it. He looked up and smiled toothlessly, which had made me glad, I hadn’t had breakfast today and he said, “Make it forty.”

  “I’m okay with that. So do you know Daniel or Danny?”

  “Where’s the money?” He asked.

  “Here’s twenty,” I held out the bill and let him take it. “You get the other twenty, when you answered my questions, okay?”

  “Okay,” he mumbled as he clenched the twenty tightly in his fist which he held against his chest.

  “Do you know Daniel or Danny?” I asked again.

  “Yeah, I used to.”

  “Why do say you used to know him? Doesn’t he live here anymore?”

  “I don’t know. He left one night and ain’t been back.” He answered absently.

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know. They just came and said he had to go with them.”

  “Them? Who is them?” I inquired

  “I don’t know, they work for the big drug boss and they said he owed them money.”

  “How long ago was this?” I questioned.

  “I don’t know. It’s been a long time, maybe two, three weeks, maybe a year. I’m not too good at keeping track of time.”

  “So who is the big drug boss?” I pressed the guy, though I was pretty sure I knew already.

  “I don’t know, but Smith and Jones are pretty close to him.” Yeah, just as I thought. Kelly and Washington had done something to Daniel some time ago. I doubted that Daniel was still alive but I needed something more substantial than the ramblings of a strung out druggie.

  “So the drug bosses men, came here to the flop and took Daniel?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Can I see the other twenty?” he muttered and I held it out so he could see it without any difficulty. He made an awkward lunge towards it, in an effort to grab it, which I easily parried and then held it out of reach saying.

  “Not yet. I have a few more questions.”

  “Okay, okay, just a few more. Not many, okay? Not many.” He was struggling to keep his act together and I almost felt sorry for him, all most. Mostly, I felt like kicking his ass for being such an idiot and it took a good deal of will power not to. I couldn’t pity him. I could laugh at him, but I couldn’t bring myself to pity him. He chose to be this way. He took the drugs and now that he was addicted, the liberals would have us all bending over backwards to pity him and take care of him, the whole time blaming someone else for his choices.

  “Had you or Daniel bought drugs the day the men took him?” I was searching for anything to tie Daniel to Smith and Jones.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t had to buy drugs for some time. The Doctor, he fixes us up,” the druggie shared.

  “The doctor, which doctor? What the doctor’s name?” I asked in rapid succession and it seemed to be too much, too fast for the guy, he stood gnawing on his own hand and turned his back to me. I tried again, “What’s the doctor’s name?” I asked again.

  “I don’t know. He gives us prescriptions and we go get them filled.” The guy stated without making eye contact.

  “What kind of medicine are the prescriptions for?” I then asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s always for Oxy man or Vicodin, the good stuff. The doc, he pays us in cocaine.”

  “Wow, that sounds great, where can I get some?” I tried yet another way to jog his memory of who the doctor was.

  “I don’t know. Oh hey, he’d like that. He’s always asking where we could find another dozen just like Danny and me. We don’t…We don’t steal from him. But you got to take a blood test.”

  “Why?” I inquired.

  “I don’t know. They want to know your blood type.”

  “Did they give Daniel a blood test that day?” I asked

  “I don’t know. We got poked in the arm by a needle.”

  “So what’s the Doctor’s name?” I asked yet again.

  “I don’t know. He’ right up the block on Martin Luther. He’s short, really short.” he raised his hand to about his chest level. “Yeah, Doctor Kyeong is real short but real cool. He even gives us food now and then.” There it was. I had the next name I needed, to get to the bottom of the Daniel issue. I gave him the second twenty and left him to whatever it is druggies do, when no one is around.

  I drove up and down Martin Luther King in both directions several times and was about to give up when I noticed a woman stumbling out of an unmarked door on an unmarked building. She was clutching a small slip of paper in her right hand. I pulled over to the curb across the street and watched the door for almost an hour and struggled not to think about Betty. I saw seven street people come and go over that hour and that was all I had the patience for, so I got out o
f my car and went across the street to wait for the next person to come out of the office. When they exited I would catch the door and slip inside without having to be buzzed in.

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait very long, two minutes after I staked a place on the wall next to the door, out stumbles this dude who smelled like he just took a dump in his pants. I grabbed the door as he stepped through and hurried off, clutching his prescription in his hot little hand. I had to admit it was a slick way to sell drugs. You used druggies to fill prescriptions for the controlled prescription drugs and you paid them with Cocaine which at the moment was quite plentiful on the street making it cheaper than money. You then took the prescription drugs you got for practically nothing and sell those for an enormous profit. I’m sure the doctor had gone out and made a deal with a handful of pharmacies to fill the prescriptions as well. He would have picked failing pharmacies providing a life line to the struggling owner.

  I’ve found when most people are behind the eight ball and their business thus their life is about to go down the drain, they don’t care to distinguish whether the new business is legal or illegal, so long as it improves the bottom line with enough to save them. From the look of the neighborhood, any pharmacy within a couple of miles of here would most likely make any deal they could that helped them stay in business.

  Upon entering the building, I was confronted by a choice. There were two doors. Neither one was labeled. So, I was left to choose by other means. I looked at the floor and saw that the linoleum was worn practically away leading to the door on the right and the door on the left the linoleum was in quite good shape. Most of the traffic had gone to the right, which probably meant it was a waiting room. I picked the left door and slowly opened it. I had been right. Before me was a hallway that took a right turn about ten feet in. I followed the hallway down and around the corner stopping short of the next open door because I could hear voices now. They were speaking English but there was also another language intermixed that I didn’t recognize. It sounded almost like Chinese.

  I stepped closer to the doorway and risked a peek around the door jam. I discovered I was right behind the front desk. I could hear the druggies all complaining about being stuck here sitting and waiting to get their prescriptions. The girl at the counter was trying very hard to keep the druggies in line and seated, but you could tell she was moments from losing it.

  The hallway behind the front desk led to the exam rooms and that left just the two doors across the hall from me. The first one turned out to be a supply closet, but the second one turned out to be the doctor’s private office. I slipped inside and closed the door.

  The doctor’s name was, Dae-Jung Kyeong. I think that’s Korean. He’d graduated from the Seoul University of Medicine. He also had a license to practice medicine from the State of Tennessee. There was a picture of him taking his oath of citizenship. Another a picture was of him at some convention of some sort. The other three walls were devoid of pictures.

  I decided to wait for the good doctor, in his office and made myself at home in his office chair. I began rifling through his desk and his files, looking for anything that could help me confirm they had killed Daniel. The doctor apparently didn’t take too many breaks, because I was left alone in his office for over an hour. It gave me plenty of time to find the files he kept about organ transplants. They were in the file cabinet in the corner in a previously locked drawer. It even gave me time to pull up his history from Korea, using his computer, which wasn’t encrypted or even password protected.

  It seems the good doctor, wasn’t exactly the image of professional conduct in his homeland. He was a skilled surgeon that left Korea under a cloud of suspicion in regards to organ harvesting and pill pedaling. I scanned the good doctor’s paper files for any mention of Daniel Harris, but found none. Every single patient was identified by a number and nothing else. The doctor was smart but not that smart. I found Daniel’s name on a list stating what organs were removed and where each of the organs went. The file was titled shipping. It was the smoking gun, but I wanted to hear what the good Doctor had to say in his defense. So, I sat back down in his chair, put my feet up on the desk and waited for the man to step into the room. It took another twenty minutes.

  “Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?” He yelled. He was short, like most Orientals and just like the druggie had said he was.

  “I’m William Bennett and I am an auditor for the IRS. You’ve got some explaining to do doctor.” I retorted, as I smirked at him.

  “My records are perfect. I have no problems. Get out of my office. I am calling the police.” I waved my gun over my head making sure he could see it in response to his toothless threat.

  “You won’t do that, Doc. That would be very stupid of you to call the police, I’d have to speed up my interview time table and go right to where I have to hurt you, when that might not be even be necessary. But then, you’re the Doctor, you know what’s best. Make the call.” I leveled the gun at him and he suddenly had a change of heart.

  “Perhaps it would be best I listened to you for a few minutes, before I made any calls.” The doctor stated and took a seat in the chair opposite the desk.

  “I knew you were smart, Doc. Good choice.” I teased him.

  “Do you have a death wish or something?” He asked straight faced.

  “No, do you?” I replied.

  “Do you know who I work with?” he inquired.

  “Let’s see, if I had just one guess, I’d guess, Smith and Jones.”

  “If you know this, why do you insist on giving them cause to kill you?”

  “Oh, they started it, Doc. I was minding my own business until they tried to frame me for murder. So now, it’s my job to repay the favor. By the way, what is the combination to the safe?” The Doc visibly blanched, so I added, “Doc, don’t try anything stupid, ‘because I will kill you, as easily as squashing a bug under my foot. Now open the safe.”

  As he began working the combination he asked, “What do you want, money?”

  “No, I’m looking for justice,” I countered.

  “Justice? For what, the pills we sell? The people who buy them will do anything to get them, but the government won’t allow them to have the pain relief they seek.” I jumped in hard on the Doc, to stop the circle jerk he was starting, I didn’t have the time.

  “Stow it, Doc. I’m not interested in your justifications for selling the shit. I’m out for justice for one, Daniel Harris and his mother, Anne. Now get this safe open.” I demanded.

  “Doctor Anne Harris sent you?” The doc blurted out, his face a question mark.

  “Yes, Doctor Harris. Why does that surprise you?” I asked seeing his obvious concern and confusion.

  “Oh she is beautiful lady. A friend of mine, is all. She not send you here. I no treat Daniel.” The Doc lied. It was written all over his face as his eyes were darting all over the place. I let it slide to avoid his sidetracking me from the safe any longer.

  “The safe Doc or it’s going to ugly.” I snarled and then changed the subject. “It seems the men you work for, have been using Daniel and his drug addiction to force his mother, the coroner, do some really bad things, allowing them get away with murder.” I watched the doc for a reaction to his friends and business partners being called, ‘Murders’, but there wasn’t any, he face was a total blank. I continued.

  “I found out a short time ago, Daniel Harris, the ME’s son, was picked up a few weeks back by men who worked for the big drug bosses, Smith and Jones. That was one day after he was here to see you and his blood was taken for testing. Smith and Jones had been threatening his mother saying they would harvest his organs, if she didn’t cooperate. They also promised to produce him for treatment, if she did as she was told and so she cooperated, but they’ve never produced him.”

  “In fact, the corner dealers all say, it’s been a couple of months since they last saw him. So here’s the deal Doc, I want Smith and Jones but you not so much,
I’m going to give you a choice. You can either go down with them or get the hell out of town. Find a new place to play doctor, one where I’m not living and do it within the next five days or I’ll help you move on, to a new plain of existence.”

  “You have no proof. I’ve done nothing wrong.” He whined.

  “That’s the nice thing about my situation. I don’t need to have absolute proof or even hard evidence. A gut feeling will do and my gut is telling me, you’re all bad. So, things have got to change and I am the agent of that change. There is nowhere, you can hide and no one you can call to protect you. I am the ultimate Judge, jury and executioner,” I explained. “Now open that safe.” I snarled and banged the barrel of my gun against his head. Not enough to actually hurt him but enough to make sure he knew it was coming down to that.

  “It is not fair. You cannot get away with this. There are laws!” The Doc bellowed.

  “Laws? Doc don’t be such pussy. You’ve broken at least two dozen, major felony laws. So who you going to call? The police?” I snickered at him briefly, then continued. “Go ahead, call them. They’ll arrest you far faster than they will me.” I glanced at the safe now that it was finally open and saw it was literally stuffed with money. “Pack all that money into your brief case there on your desk and while you’re doing that, tell me, did you harvest Daniel Harris’s organs?”

  “I did nothing. I am being falsely accused.” The Doc had a truly sour look on his face as he dumped the papers out of the brief case and began packing it with of money.

  “Doc, I’m only going to ask you one more time and then it’s going to get really ugly real fast.” I pointed my gun at the Doctor’s left knee.

  “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot. I’ll leave, but you’re making a big mistake. We could make a deal with you and you’d get rich too.”

  “Doc, I am rich and I’m getting richer right now.” I looked at the brief case which was begining bulge with cash and then I looked back over at the doctor. “What happened to Daniel Harris’s body?” I asked.