Blind-sided

by Monette Michaels

  “I’ve seen him do it, boss. I’d say that would be a right nice send off.” Walter stood up to leave. “I’ll set it up for tonight. No use wasting time.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Monday evening, Rock ‘N Bowl, South Carrollton Avenue.

  The bowling alley cum jazz club was busy for a Monday. Most of the alleys were filled with happy and, truth-be-told, slight tipsy bowlers jumping up and down at every roll of the ball, no matter if it were a gutter ball or a strike. Amateur night, Jeanette figured. League bowlers would be more serious about their games.

  Charles had arranged to meet her and Scott here, because his jazz group had scheduled to play a gig this week in order to warm up for the Jazz Fest. Charles was almost as intense about his music as he was his law practice.

  Jeanette sipped white wine. The warm tones of Charles’s alto sax solo washed over her, giving her an excuse to close her eyes and relax. She shut out the background noise of balls striking pins, triumphant shouts, and less happy moans. She attempted to shut out thoughts of Scott, whom she thought she knew and now realized she didn’t.

  Ever since the kiss, she’d reexamined every aspect of her life before and after Paul’s death to discover if there had been any clues about Scott’s professed feelings for her.

  She’d found none, or at least nothing she could specifically put her finger on.

  Simply put, he’d always been there.

  First, as Paul’s best friend.

  Later, during the aftermath of Paul’s death, as her sole support, a rock of strength and advice.

  And lately, as her good friend, helping her to deal with life’s ups and downs — providing a daddy figure for Brigitte. He was someone who’d known Brigitte’s daddy and could tell her the childhood stories that had died with Paul.

  “Jeannie?” Scott’s low, rough tones cut through the babble in the club. “Stop worrying it.”

  She opened her eyes. Scott stared at her, his eyes reflecting understanding and warmth. “Worrying what? I’m just enjoying the music, and wondering what Charles has to tell us.”

  “Little liar.” Scott caressed her face with an intimate look which caused her to blush. “I meant what I said. I won’t rush you — much. It’s just that…”

  “I know… it’s just that you could’ve lost me today, and you’ve been patient long enough.” Staring into the wine glass, she blew out a breath, causing little waves to ripple over the surface of the wine. “It’s so sudden. I never even thought… had a glimmer of what you’ve been feeling. How…”

  “How long have I known I loved you? Wanted to make you mine?” Scott took a sip of his beer, then sighed. “From the day Paul and I first met you.”

  Shocked, Jeanette didn’t know what to think, what to say. So long ago — and he’d never said one thing; never acted out of line at any time. Even during the funeral, he’d touched her, held her, with what she’d interpreted to be friendly compassion. And in the years of grief which followed, he was always there with a strong shoulder to cry on and a compassionate ear. There’d never been one iota of sexual passion in his touch, his eyes.

  Or had she missed it? So centered on herself that she’d just plumb missed it.

  “Darlin’, stop it.” Scott leaned across the table and stroked the hands clutching the wine glass in a bone-crunching grip. “You won’t find anything in the past.”

  How had he known what she was thinking? Was he that in tune with her? In the years since Paul’s death, she’d never once asked him what he wanted, felt or needed. She’d just used him for her own comfort, her own needs. Shame spread through her. She’d taken him for granted — and he loved her.

  “Jeannie, listen to me. Stop beating yourself up.” Scott took the wine glass out of her hands, then grasped them gently.

  She looked at him.

  “I never let on, because when Paul was alive you were his wife — and I loved Paul too much to hurt him in any way. Then afterwards, well, you weren’t ready.”

  “And you think I’m ready now?”

  “That’s for you to say.” Scott’s smile vanished. “For my sake, I hope so.”

  “Hey, you two.” Charles’s East-coast tones shattered the intimacy of their conversation. “What’s so serious here? Something I need to know about besides Jeanette almost getting killed this afternoon?”

  Numb, Jeanette sat and stared at the mural of historic New Orleans which covered the wall behind the stage.

  “Everything’s fine,” Scott said. “You play a mighty mean sax.”

  “Thanks.” Charles sat, then signaled the club’s owner, John Blancher, who worked the bar this evening. “Heineken for me, John.”

  Jeanette envied Scott’s ability to switch emotional wave-lengths at will. She was still trying to process that the passion he displayed this afternoon was not recent, but had lain dormant for years. If the attack on her hadn’t occurred, he might never have told her. And, yes, she had to admit that she was still wondering about her body’s immediate and wholly passionate response to his declaration of love — and that kiss. For God’s sake, what kind of person was she? She was supposed to be falling in love with Charles. Now, she didn’t know what she felt.

  Oh, Paul, why did you have to die? I don’t know what to do. How to deal with this.

  Scott and Charles covered her awkward silence and idly chatted about jazz, the group Charles played with and the various clubs they both enjoyed. Jeanette allowed the normalcy of the men’s conversation to lull her into a false sense that things could be sane again.

  But she kept coming back to the fact that circumstances were anything but normal — and it didn’t look like she would be returning to a regular routine anytime soon.

  John’s delivery of Charles’s beer signaled an end to her escape from reality.

  Pitching his voice so only the three of them could hear, Scott asked, “What have you found out about Rutherford and his holdings?”

  Charles glanced around the area near the corner booth in which they sat. The relative seclusion must have satisfied him. Or, maybe he realized no one could hear them above the music, the dozens of conversations, and the bowling alley noise.

  Taking his cue from Scott, Charles lowered his voice. “Rutherford is Silver River Pharmaceuticals. He owns over fifty percent of the company.”

  His eyes teemed with emotion. It was an expression Jeanette had never seen on his face before, not even when he’d professed to love her and wanted to live with her.

  It was passion. Passion for the hunt.

  In that moment, she knew Charles would never fully be there for any woman. Knew that Scott had been right this afternoon when he’d intimated that Charles had other interests in this case besides her welfare. He wanted to get ahead in his career. He would use any situation, any person he could to do so.

  Being a lawyer would always be number one in his life. The challenge of it, the gamesmanship, fed him, kept him alive. Somehow she’d always sensed that. It might have been what had attracted her at first, this passion for his chosen career. So different than Paul, whose passion had been for her, and then their daughter. So different than Scott.

  Charles brought her out of her epiphany. “Who did you say owned stock besides Rutherford?”

  Charles stopped, not replying right away, as if he had to replay his last statements mentally to find out where he’d lost her. “I said, most of the other stock is in the hands of a Dr. Manual Lopez. He’s the creator of…”

  “One World. I met him at the training seminar.” Chills ran through her body at the memory of the swarthy man who’d attempted to corner her at the conference.

  “You didn’t like him,” concluded Scott in harsh tones. “Did the bastard come on to you? What did he do, Jeannie?”

  He read her too easily. Why hadn’t she ever realized this before? “How did you know?”

  Jeanette strained to hear him, hoped that Charles hadn’t sensed the vibrations flowing between her and Scott. She couldn’t deal wit
h one of Charles’s tantrums at this moment. He might value his occupation more, but he was still male enough to be possessive of someone he considered his.

  “I know all your moods,” whispered Scott.

  “Jeanette, is Scott right? Did the Latino bastard bother you?” Charles’s face darkened.

  His bluster proved her point. But she knew he wasn’t the type to act on his emotion. Charles’s chief weapons were words, whereas Scott’s were deeds. The resolve to teach Lopez a lesson blazed from Scott’s dark eyes as the muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched.

  “Dr. Rutherford was with us most of the evening,” she said, attempting to control her revulsion at the memory of Lopez’s clammy hands.

  She must have failed, because Scott swore vilely, shocking both her and Charles.

  “Scott, please. Nothing happened, really.”

  Oddly enough, Alex Randolph had saved her from more serious groping by the South American. Alex’s interruption, even though he later used the situation to needle her, had ended Lopez’s attempts.

  “I left as soon as I could.” Jeanette shuddered. “I didn’t like the man at all. He gave me the creeps.”

  Charles nodded. “As well he should.”

  He pulled out a folder from a brief case. Jeanette, distracted by Scott’s feelings for her, hadn’t even noted the case. God, she must be really out of it not to notice something that big and bulky.

  “The good doctor, a Mexican by birth, looks clean on the surface,” Charles said. “He founded One World, a third-world, medical relief charitable organization, which ostensibly provides both preventive medical care and needed surgical procedures to the needy people of countries in South and Central America.”

  “Doesn’t he ask for volunteer doctors and nurses? I thought I saw something on the house staff bulletin board about helping out for a month during residency.” Scott reached for the documents.

  “Yeah, that’s one way he gets his clinics and surgeries staffed.” Charles snorted. “It just saves him that much more money by not paying for the health care professionals.” Taking a deep pull of his beer, he leaned back against the booth and sighed. “Good ole Manuel is making money off One World right and left. Would it surprise you to know that Dr. Rutherford is on the Board of Directors of his good friend Manuel’s organization? And, besides owning stock, that Manuel is on the Board of SRP?”

  Confused, Jeanette shook her head. “How is he making money off a charitable organization that helps people? I mean, those kinds of groups always need more money than they can get.”

  Charles set his beer down. Opening another folder, he pulled out a thick sheaf of papers stapled along the side like a book. As he leafed through the pages, he talked. “I had a friend who has some talent with computers do some research on Silver River, its products, its research projects and its customer base.”

  “You had him hack into the corporate files.” Scott grinned.

  Charles smiled back. “Well, uh, yeah.” Turning back to the papers, he said, “Ah, here is what I found extremely interesting.” He put his finger in the page to hold the place, then looked at them. “It would seem that the majority of Silver River’s products are not pharmaceuticals like pills, vaccines, and the like. Most of their profits come from commercial sales of body parts.”

  “Like the corneas Rutherford got for the Epi Study,” Jeanette blurted.

  “Not just corneas, right, Charles?” Scott stared at the place Charles marked with his finger.

  Jeanette couldn’t read the page, but realized whatever was on it had Scott incandescent with anger, so much so he shook. What would make him that furious?

  He growled, slamming his hand on the table, causing the glasses to shift and Jeanette to jump. “It’s all sorts of body parts. A regular warehouse of human tissue.” He swore under his breath, foul, vulgar Cajun swear words.

  Charles nodded his agreement even though Jeanette knew he couldn’t have known what the words meant.

  “But what’s upsetting you both?” she asked. “It wasn’t a secret that SRP sold body parts. Stu Thomas said as much at the annual convention. There were even brochures. It isn’t illegal to harvest and resell body parts. There are guidelines set out by the AMA. So what’s the problem? And what has that to do with One World?”

  Scott looked at Charles, who said, “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you, Scott? You tell her.”

  “There are not enough volunteer donors to supply all the needed organs. Plus, a business couldn’t make money on donated organs, which are considered gifts, because protocols only allow a minimal processing and possibly shipping and handling fee. That means these body parts are gotten through illegal means, cher. They kill or maim people to get the organs. One World is SRP’s source for donor tissue. There’s a large market for this sort of thing. The United Nations commissioned a study. The anthropologist writing the report called it the commodification of the body. And as with anything that can make money, ruthless men get involved and take it to extremes.”

  Jeanette couldn’t speak, couldn’t breath. The concept was so depraved that she couldn’t even begin to imagine any person could do such a thing. She especially couldn’t imagine Dr. Rutherford involved in something so criminal.

  Come on, Bootsie. You thought he had Stu Thomas killed, didn’t ya? This is just more of the same thing. Don’t be so naive.

  “Okay, let’s say Silver River is part of this, this…” Jeanette didn’t know what to call it.

  “Body mafia,” Charles said. “They call it the body mafia.”

  Jeanette cringed at the images the words conjured. She’d closed her eyes during the scenes of violence in movies like The Godfather. Paul and Scott had teased her about being squeamish, especially considering she wanted to go into a health profession.

  “If SRP and One World are a part of this criminal activity,” she said, “then Dr. Rutherford doesn’t have to be aware of it, does he? Maybe this Lopez is the one who does all that, and Rutherford only sees the money.”

  “No. I thought of that, so I checked.” Charles pulled out another bunch of papers. “In the SRP’s annual report and in the statement of purpose for One World, I found several references to Lopez and Rutherford meeting in the jungles of Central America. They worked together as young doctors. Later, Lopez, with Rutherford’s help, formed One World, then they formed Silver River.”

  “They needed a way to market the products they found in the jungles,” Scott said.

  Charles nodded. “Yes, exactly. Together, they came up with the idea of taking body parts and selling them. So, I surmised, they created a legitimate-looking front to cover up the dirty work, then created the company to sell the products. They’ve done some half-assed research into medicinal rain forest plants to make SRP look like a regular pharmaceutical company. All in all, a very efficient use of marketplace theory.”

  “In reality, SRP is a body-part clearing house,” Scott said, his voice rough with banked anger.

  “Yeah. A clearing house,” agreed Charles. “I took a chance, called my brother’s friend at the CIA and had him look into the backgrounds of old Manuel and Byron. My thinking was because of the large amount of drugs coming in from Central and South America, the CIA would keep tabs on all Americans who spend a great deal of time down there and who also ship people and products in and out of our neighboring countries. I hoped we’d get lucky.”

  “Good move, Charles. Smart, really smart. I assume they found a drug connection. You’ve been bouncing with energy ever since you sat down.”

  Charles beamed at Scott’s compliment.

  Jeanette just felt out of her depth.

  “Dr. Lopez has a rep with the CIA, DEA and Interpol. Not only do they suspect — but haven’t been able to prove — One World of running drugs, but they also have some knowledge of the killing and maiming of people for spare parts. Of course, they are more interested in the drug aspect, since the other crimes occur within sovereign countries and they can’t prove that peop
le were actually murdered. Habeas corpus rears its ugly head.”

  “So they are using SRP as a front for drug smuggling.” Scott nodded. “That makes sense. I mean, they’ve set up a shipping routine. Why not use it to make more money? It’s efficient and cost-effective.”

  “But how does that prove Dr. Rutherford is involved? So, they were friends.” Jeanette shrugged, still trying to find excuses for her mentor. “Scott and I are friends, and I wouldn’t know if he were running drugs.”

  Charles smiled. “Better watch it, Fontenot. She’s on to you now.”

  “Can it, Charles.” Turning to Jeanette, Scott covered her fisted hands lying on the table. “Rutherford is making lots of money. You saw the bank reports, right?”

  “Yes, the night Charles and I looked in his office.”

  “You told me there were tens of millions of dollars — more than could be accounted for in the Epi Study budget and the scam you concluded he was running.” Rubbing her frigid hands between his warms ones, he asked, “Where is the money coming from?”

  “From the sale of the body parts?”

  Scott glanced at Charles. “What does the annual report say about those sales?”

  “Looks like they charted expenses on donated organs of four million on sales of said body parts for five million, leaving a net profit of around a million.”

  “How about the sale of legitimate drugs?”

  “Net profit is a negative half a million dollars. Looks like they wrote off two or three research projects as totally useless.”