Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop: 2 Bugman Novels in 1

by Tim Downs

  “I was always warned not to get involved with a man like that.”

  “There is no other kind. But why should that discourage you? We’re all tortured souls—aren’t we, Riley?”

  She looked down at her feet.

  “Leo, what happened to Nick? What hurt him?”

  “I think he should answer that question for himself. But I can tell you this much: Tarentum was a very tough town when Nick and I were growing up. The mills and factories were all closing down, people were out of work. Lean times can make meanspirited people; Nick’s father was one of them. He abandoned the family early, but he kept on returning like a plague—seemingly just to torment Nick. And then there was Nick’s obvious visual impairment—people can be very unkind, can’t they? That’s the world Nick grew up in, Riley. Early on, he discovered two things: that he had a most unusual intellect, and that—once he got his glasses—he could see things other people couldn’t see.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “My family liked to do jigsaw puzzles. We had lots of puzzles, and we would assemble them again and again—but over time we lost the boxes, and then we would store the pieces in plastic bags. So when we began a puzzle, we had no idea what the final image would be. Is it the lighthouse? Is it the old mill? It was always a kind of competition to see who could recognize the subject first. One evening Nick came over for dinner, and after dinner he joined us to start a new puzzle. Nick watched us lay down the first three pieces, and then he said, ‘It’s a clipper ship with three masts.’ And you know what? He was right. And after that, my family didn’t want Nick to help with the jigsaw puzzle anymore. Do you know why? Because Nick takes all the fun out of it. He sees things that other people can’t see, and that puts him in a world of his own.”

  “Does he really think of himself as an insect?”

  “He has no love for the human species—at least, not the members of it he’s met. Human beings can be so unpredictable, so irrational—so hurtful. I think Nick came to appreciate the orderliness and predictability of the insect world. I believe there’s a cure for his malady—but I don’t think it will come in the form of a pill or a therapy. I think it will have to have a human face.”

  “Leo, I need to ask you something: what do you think of Nick’s theory, this whole idea of a black market in human organs?”

  “I would call it absurd,” Leo said, “except for the fact that it’s Nick’s theory. Remember the clipper ship, Riley. Nick has a kind of intuition that he borrows from the insect world; he makes connections in a most remarkable way. He may be wrong about this, but I would not discount his instincts.”

  Now Leo took Riley’s hand and looked her full in the eyes. “I want to tell you why I really called,” he said, lifting a folder from the wooden bench beside him. “Nick asked me to see if I could hack into the patient database at UPMC Presbyterian.”

  “What? What for?”

  “Because you told him that most of the organ transplants in this area are performed there. He asked me to find a list of patients awaiting kidney transplants there. He also asked me to search for old lists; he wants to compare them, to see if anyone has dropped off the list without having their surgery. If anyone has, he plans to check them against the obituaries. Nick is putting his theory to the test, Riley. If anyone is still alive who shouldn’t be, he wants to know why.”

  Riley said nothing. Leo squeezed her hand a little tighter.

  “How long have you been on the waiting list, Riley?”

  She turned to him with a look of both sadness and relief. “Six years, eight months, and seventeen days.”

  “That’s a long time to wait—a long time to hope.”

  “I have a rare compatibility problem, Leo. There’s very little chance a kidney will ever turn up for me.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “I was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure; when my kidney function fell below 10 percent, it became end-stage renal disease. Dialysis can buy you some time, but a transplant is the only cure.” She turned to the window. “The word among doctors is that kidney failure is a pretty good way to go. Your blood becomes more and more polluted, and you just sort of run down like a battery. My battery is pretty low.”

  “Are there no family members who can help?”

  “I have one sister; she’s not a match.”

  Leo put his arm around her, pulled her close, and kissed her hair. “I can see why things are complicated.”

  “I think Nick suspects anyway.”

  “Nick knows you’re ill. When he was at your apartment the other night, he looked through your medicine cabinet and found your medications.”

  Riley straightened. “He had no right!”

  “Breaking and entering, hacking into patient databases—the question of ‘rights’ here is a little slippery, don’t you think? The point is, Riley, when I hand Nick this list, he’s going to see your name on it. He’s going to know the full extent of your illness. He’s going to know, Riley. Is that what you want?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  Leo opened the folder and took out several sheets of paper. “As a friend—as someone who loves you—I’m offering to remove your name from this list.”

  Riley stared at him. “Would you be willing to do that?”

  “I might—but first you have to answer some questions for me: Why are you involved in all this, Riley McKay? What’s your true motivation? And what does this have to do with your own need for a kidney transplant?”

  Riley took a minute to collect her thoughts. “When Lassiter refused to release that man’s organs for transplant, I thought, ‘Those could have been my kidneys!’ And even if they weren’t, they could have saved someone’s life. People die on the waiting list every day, Leo. Someday soon, I will. I had to know why Lassiter would do that. It just triggered something inside me; I didn’t know where all this would lead.” She looked into his eyes. “Do you believe me?”

  “Without question,” he nodded. “Nick lives in a world of the mind—but I happen to know hearts. If you were lying to me, I would have known it before you finished your first sentence. Now, about this list—what do you want me to do?”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “If Nick knows you’re dying, he’ll either throw himself at you or run away. Either way, it could no longer be an ordinary relationship—and that’s what I want for him most. The time may come when you have to tell him yourself, Riley, but I want you to have the freedom to make that choice.”

  Leo tore the top sheet of paper in half and put it back in the folder.

  She kissed him on the cheek again. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

  They looked out the back window; the car was approaching the end of the steel track. Their piece of the jigsaw puzzle was about to slide into place, completing the picture of the upper station with its white beveled siding and twin towers with violet caps. Riley began to turn toward the door as the car came to its final stop—but Leo held on to her hand until she turned back to him again.

  “I don’t know if you’ll be the cure for Nick,” he said, “but I hope you won’t contribute to his disease.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “You know, Riley, it isn’t enough for you to be Nick’s cure—he has to cure something in you as well.”

  “Oh, Leo—I don’t know if that’s possible.”

  Leo kissed the back of her hand. “You never know,” he said. “Love heals all kinds of wounds.”

  Make a right on 19,” Riley said, studying the MapQuest directions.

  Nick pushed harder on the gas as they started up a long hill; the engine made a whining sound, coughing and wheezing like an old man climbing stairs. Each time one of the four cylinders missed, another puff of blue smoke belched out behind them, punctuating the still morning air.

  “Nick, I’ve heard model airplanes that sound better than this.”

  “That’s because they cost more. I got a dea
l on this.”

  “Somebody got a deal. How old is this thing?”

  “Car talk bores me. Which way at this intersection?”

  “Left.” Riley sipped her Starbucks and glanced at her watch: five-thirty. She was giving up her every-other-weekend-off for this? Her only consolation was that Nick had no way of flipping the car over and dumping her onto the roadway—but looking at the shuddering car around her, she wasn’t entirely sure. She picked up a half-eaten croissant from her lap, nibbled at it, then wadded it up in her napkin and turned to Nick. “What do I do with this?”

  “There’s a place for trash in the backseat.”

  She turned and looked. The backseat and floor were piled high with faded textbooks, drab-looking journals, and glutted three-ring binders spewing disheveled papers. There were two knapsacks, wadded-up articles of multicolored clothing, and a strange assortment of lidded plastic and foam containers.

  She looked back at Nick. He took the napkin from her hand and tossed it over his shoulder. It bounced off something that looked like a butterfly net and came to rest under the rear window.

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re a slob?” she said.

  “Only rude people.”

  Riley folded her arms tightly and settled back in her seat, trying her best not to touch anything around her. “You sure know how to treat a girl,” she grumbled.

  “Stop complaining. Aren’t I taking you to Upper St. Clair? It’s the classiest neighborhood in all of Pittsburgh.”

  Riley looked out her window. Through breaks in the tall hedges she began to catch passing glimpses of sprawling private estates with manicured shrubbery, sculptured fountains, and winding driveways paved in sulfur-gray Pennsylvania flagstone.

  “Look at this place,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “You’re not from around here?”

  “Hardly. I grew up about forty miles south of here—a little coalmining town called Mencken. My father was a coal miner from the time he was old enough to go to work until the day he died.”

  “What did he die of?”

  Riley shrugged. “A coal mine is a toxic place—so are the towns that grow up around them. There’s coal dust, fly ash, cadmium, iron oxides—take your pick. My father just began to waste away one day. A month later he was dead. The cause of death was never determined. I think that’s one of the reasons I went into pathology: it’s nice to know why someone you love died.”

  “Mencken—why does that sound familiar?”

  “Probably our underground coal-mine fire; it’s been burning for forty years now.”

  “Forty years?”

  “There are places where the coal vein comes right up to the surface. The miners’ families used to go there to gather our own coal to use in our furnaces. People dumped their trash there too, and years ago someone got the bright idea to burn it. That set fire to the coal seam, and the fire’s been smoldering underground ever since.”

  “That’s bizarre.”

  “There are underground coal-mine fires all over Pennsylvania—five in Allegheny County alone. Of course, what makes Mencken so special is that we’ve got a bony pile fire too.”

  “A what?”

  Riley looked at him. “You’re from Pittsburgh, and you’ve never heard of a bony pile?”

  “My family was in steel,” he said. “The Carnegies and the Polchaks.”

  “A coal mine produces a lot of scrap—shale, coal tailings, old timbers, stuff like that. In the old days, when the miners came out of the shaft, they just dumped it all beside the mouth of the mine. Over the years those piles grew to enormous sizes. The Mencken bony pile is two hundred feet high and half a mile long; it went right past our back door. The problem is, those piles contain a lot of low-grade coal, and sometimes they catch fire just like the mines do. Our bony pile has been burning for years now.”

  “Like a giant pile of charcoal briquettes?”

  “Only it burns from the inside out. To look at it, you wouldn’t even know it’s on fire. I used to play on it all the time as a little girl.”

  “You used to play on it? Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

  “It is if you don’t know where you’re going. A man from the Department of Environmental Protection came out once. He climbed halfway up the bony pile and stuck a temperature probe into the ground by his feet. A foot and a half below the surface it was eight hundred degrees. He came down off that pile fast.”

  “And you used to play on it?”

  “Like I said, you just have to know where you’re going. Every winter, when it snowed, the bony pile looked like a ski area. The snow would melt off all the hot spots, and stick to all the cold ones. It made a sort of map; it told us where it was safe to walk.”

  “And you just hoped it stayed that way until the following winter.”

  “I’m a coal miner’s daughter. We didn’t have it soft like you steel tycoons.”

  “So the mine is on fire, and the bony pile is on fire. That’s got to be a little hard on property values.”

  “My sister and I still own the house, if that’s what you mean. How could we sell it? Mencken is a ghost town. The basements collect carbon monoxide, smoke seeps out of cracks in the ground, and after it rains the bony pile steams like a giant compost mound. It’s not exactly Upper St. Clair.”

  “So you and your sister are blue collar girls. Somehow I thought the blue was in your veins.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’re a doctor. I don’t imagine many Mencken High graduates went on to medical school.”

  “Sarah and I both went into medicine. We thought it’s what our father would have wanted.”

  Nick looked at her. “Your father would have been very proud of you.”

  She met his eyes. “What about your father? Was he proud of you?”

  Nick turned away. “Boyce Street. What do we do here?”

  “This is it. Make a right—it should be just a couple of houses down.”

  They passed a series of tall brick posts capped in limestone finials the shape of chess pawns. The posts were connected by sections of intricate wrought-iron fence; in the center of each was a flowering fleur-de-lis. After the sixth post there was a wide, arching gate that spanned an immaculate crushed-stone driveway. Nick pulled to the center of the gate and stopped the car. At the end of the long driveway, visible between a colonnade of stately elms and poplars, was the seemingly endless English Tudor estate of Mr. Miles Vandenborre.

  “Five million at least,” Nick whistled.

  “Nick—don’t stop here!”

  “Why not?”

  “Look at that place—and look at this car.”

  “OK …”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you? Their garbage is worth more than this car!”

  “I hope so,” Nick said. “That’s the whole idea.” He stepped out of the car and lifted the trunk with a rusty groan. To the right of the gate, two thirty-gallon garbage cans stood sentry, surrounded by a series of smaller white plastic bags neatly twist-tied at the tops. He flipped the lid off each can, pulled out the black cinch-top bags, and carried them to his trunk. He rounded up the white bags in a single armload, and in less than two minutes they were under way again.

  Nick glanced over at Riley, who was slumping even lower in her seat. “Now you know why I wanted to bring my car—the right tool for the right job.”

  “Just drive,” she said, cupping her right hand over her eyes.

  “Your first time Dumpster diving? I guess you’ve never been a teacher.”

  “What are we going to do with all this stuff?”

  “We’re taking it to Leo’s. Mr. Vandenborre is a rich man in need of a kidney transplant, but for some reason he removed himself from the waiting list—yet he’s still alive. I want to know why.”

  “And you think his trash is going to tell us.”

  Nick glanced at the backseat. “You can tell a lot about a person by his trash—don’t you think?”
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  They parallel parked in front of Forest Hills Apartments. Riley took the two black bags; Nick gathered the assortment of white bags and closed the trunk behind him. They disappeared through a stone archway and up a flight of stairs.

  Across the street, Cruz Santangelo set his binoculars on the dashboard, took a pen from his coat pocket, and jotted down the address.

  Set them there, on the kitchen floor,” Leo said.

  Riley set the two black bags side by side on the linoleum. Nick was right behind her with an armload of bulging white plastic.

  “Don’t get them mixed up with your own trash,” Nick said. “Mr. Vandenborre could turn out to be really weird.”

  “I’ll get the door,” Riley said, crossing back across the living room.

  “Don’t bother,” Leo called after her. “I never close the door—to my apartment or to my heart. It helps with the electric bills.”

  “You have an electric heart?” Nick said.

  Leo turned to Riley with a look of disgust. “Have you spent the entire morning with … this?”

  “I had to ride in his car too.”

  Leo grimaced. “How could you tell it from the trash? Why didn’t you drive the whole thing up here?”

  Riley looked around the apartment. The entry door was braced open by a small entertainment center; she wondered if he ever closed it at all. The windows were open too, and the summer breeze caused the drapes to flutter in like flags. The room was sparsely furnished, but the walls were crowded with framed reproductions of the masters of the Italian High Renaissance. Along the far wall was a long workbench covered with computers, monitors, storage drives, scanners, and devices that Riley had never seen outside the coroner’s own forensics lab. In the center of the workbench, a flat-screen plasma display hung under a copy of Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love. Behind a high-speed optical scanner stood a marble reproduction of Michelangelo’s Bacchus. The entire room was an endless anachronism: it was a computer lab within an art museum, a brave new world under the watchful eye of the old.

  At the end of the workbench, a charcoal gray flat-panel monitor displayed the PharmaGen logo. As Riley watched, the image changed to the company’s most recent corporate report.