“HOOD,” Ed said. “That was David’s idea. He had no standing on the rabbinic side, but he gave a lot to get this going and came up with the idea of the donor card. He looks shy and bookish but he is tougher than people think when he thinks he is right. Which he generally is.”
“Is he tough enough for what he’s into now?”
“We don’t know what he’s into.”
“Are you sure?”
The Rabbi sipped the last of his wine and stood. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can tell you, Jonah. Anything else he might have told me as his rabbi, I think will have to remain confidential. If getting more information was the only reason you came to dinner, you may have to go home disappointed.”
“It wasn’t and I won’t. May I propose a compromise?”
“How does one compromise confidentiality?”
“Anything he told you while you were his rabbi is between you and him,” I said.
“Then where is the wiggle room?”
“Because you were no longer his rabbi the night he vanished. You had already resigned from the shul by then.”
He started to say one thing, stopped himself, started again and came up with, “What do you mean?” It was enough to tell me there was more.
“We’ve interviewed new witnesses,” I said, “and we’ve pieced together what happened to David.”
“That’s great!” There was a reason the rabbi had left theatre school. He wasn’t a good enough actor to sell that one.
“On his way home that night, two men tried to abduct him.”
“No!”
“They worked for an Irish gangster named Sean Daggett.”
“Have the police arrested him? Or these other men?”
“The other two are dead, Rabbi. They were shot to death last night.”
Now his face fell for real, no acting involved. “What!”
“I just found out. By accident, maybe by the hand of God, David was able to get away from them that night. He ran down Summit Path all the way to Beacon and was lucky to catch a trolley that was just pulling out. The driver confirmed it. Once David was safely away, he could have gone anywhere, but he got off at the very next stop. Washington Square. Right where you told me to get off. Now that was kind of risky for him to do. Those hoods were cruising around looking for him. So he had to have had somewhere in mind. Someone close by who would let him in.”
Shana came in from the kitchen then. “Dad, are you okay? I thought I heard something.”
“It’s about David,” I said. “I know he was here the night he disappeared.”
She looked away from me to her father, then at the floor. I liked the fact that she didn’t try to tell any lies.
“About seven-thirty,” I said, “maybe a few minutes after, he showed up at your door, out of breath, frightened. Now if you don’t want to tell me what he said, fine. I’ll find out anyway. I figured out this part fast enough. But at least confirm he got away. That he was unharmed. You couldn’t give his parents a greater gift than that.”
Rabbi Ed looked at his daughter and they made eye contact. Then he looked back at me and said, “Yes. For his parents, I can do that. He came here like you said. We were just cleaning up from dinner. I had never seen him like that. If I didn’t know him better, I would have thought he was having some kind of psychotic episode.”
“What about?”
“He didn’t tell us.”
“He wouldn’t,” Shana said.
“Right. He said it was for our own protection. All he wanted was a place to stay the night. But he made us swear not to say anything about seeing him, not even to his parents. He said that was for their protection too.”
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“No,” Rabbi Ed said. “When I woke up in the morning he was gone.”
I looked at Sandy.
She said, “I woke up later.” It didn’t have the ring of truth.
“Did he have money?”
“About forty dollars,” Ed said. “I had a bit of cash that I gave him, about a hundred and twenty.”
“I gave him another eighty,” Shana said. “I had just gone to the bank machine.”
“So he had two hundred and forty dollars, no car, no clothes.”
“I gave him a coat when he left.”
“I thought you were asleep.”
“The night before, I meant. He told us he was going to leave early in the morning, so I made sure he had it before he went to bed.”
Okay, now she was bust-out lying.
CHAPTER 17
“So what do you think?” Jenn asked. “Is he alive?”
We were back in my room. Jenn was reclining on one bed, which I was facing in a club chair. The second queen bed was barely visible under the papers we’d been searching through. I had just told her everything about the dinner and David’s flight to the Lerners’ house the night he disappeared.
“I think he is,” I said. “At any rate, it’s the assumption we should work on. David is alive and in hiding, trying to work out whatever mess he’s in. And all we know is it will take a while.”
“What mess doesn’t? So what do we do with this news? Do we share it with his parents? With Gianelli?”
“If you were his parents, what would you make of it? Someone tried to abduct your son but he evaded it and went on the run. Does that help you or hurt you? Let’s wait until we know a little more before we call them.”
“And Gianelli?”
“Let’s wait on him too. So what happened with Carol-Ann Meacham last night? Did she go straight home after work or was she mobbed by suitors?”
The smile left Jenn’s face and she suddenly looked sheepish. She reached behind her to straighten the pillows behind her back. Fluffed them a bit and put them back the way they’d been. A sure sign she was blaming herself for something going wrong.
“What?”
“It all went fine at first. I matched her home number to an address in the phone book.”
“Where?”
“Roxbury.”
“Really? Gianelli made it sound like a war zone.”
“I wouldn’t go for long romantic walks after dark, but she lives in a real-estate pocket. The houses are big and in decent shape and apparently very affordable. Mostly because so many were foreclosures. They have signs up for a city program where you can get a fo-clo, as they are called, dirt cheap. Which Carol-Ann did, about six months ago.”
“What did you do, read her mail?”
“I did better. I found a neighbour across the street whose house is for sale. She was outside cleaning her garden and I chatted her up. Pretended I was interested in her house. Asked about the neighbours, the street. So Carol-Ann bought hers, did a little cosmetic renovation, and rents out the upstairs to help pay the mortgage.”
“Six months ago, you said.”
“Yes.”
“So she had a sudden influx of capital.”
“Yes. Anyway, I set up on a corner where I could see the house. She got there around quarter to eight, carrying her dinner. She was out of sight for about half an hour—the kitchen is at the back of the house—and then around eight-thirty she came to the front of the house and watched TV until a little after nine, when the TV light stopped flickering and she stood up. I think the phone rang and she paused what she was watching. I could see her shadow moving around, pacing, as if she were talking to someone on the phone. Two minutes later, she came out of the house and got in her car.”
“What kind?”
“White Camry. A few years old. So I followed her, and everything was fine at first but …”
“But what?”
“I realized I don’t know Boston as well as I thought I did. The Big Dig changed that whole part of the city. Plus she’s an unbelievably shitty driver. Never signalled, changed lanes at the last minute. Did unpredictable things. It was hard for me to stay on her and at this one light, she braked when it turned amber, then bombed through on the red. I had to stop
and I never caught up.”
“You think she knew you were following?”
“No, I think that’s how she always drives.”
“Which direction was she heading?”
“North on Dorchester Avenue. Maybe to the Pike, maybe not. I wish we were at home,” she said. “I could call our contact at the phone company and find out who called her.”
“I know. It’s frustrating. You never realize how much of our work depends on contacts until you have none. Anyway, don’t be hard on yourself. We know where she lives. And she could have been going anywhere. There’s nothing to suggest it’s related to our case.”
“But you agree she knows more than she’s telling.”
“Absolutely. Let’s turn up the heat on her tomorrow. Drop in on her unannounced.”
“We’ve got also the congressman’s thing to crash at noon.”
“So much mischief to get into.”
“I’m sorry I blew it,” Jenn said.
“Forget it. As long as we keep moving forward, we’ll find something. And that something will lead to something else.”
She yawned and stretched, and I told her if she fell asleep there was no way I was carrying her next door. “I’m not falling asleep,” she said. “I’m just finding the inside of my eyelids extremely fascinating.”
“Give me your room key, then. If you fall asleep, I can crash there.”
“In a minute …”
And she was gone. Out. Her eyelids stopped fluttering and her breath started whistling through her nose. I sighed and started to sort out the papers on the other bed. I went through all the bank statements, credit card bills and phone bills again, stacking them in piles. Finding nothing but the beginning of a headache. I went into the bathroom and rinsed my face in cold water and laid a wet cloth on the back of my neck. Then I started flipping through David’s research papers. One explored the social and economic barriers that seemed to be keeping some groups, especially African Americans, from following through on the application process to get onto a waiting list. Another examined a group of live donors in India who had sold organs through brokers, to see how well they fared afterwards. In a city called Chennai, people sold kidneys primarily to pay off crippling debts or provide elaborate dowries. The organs would sell for ten or fifteen thousand dollars but the broker kept most of that. The donors received about a thousand U.S. dollars on average, which would help them in the short term but do nothing for their long-term prospects. Very few ever used the money to start a business or pursue an education. Many actually wound up worse off than before, because they didn’t get proper follow-up care and developed infections or other problems. The researchers had gone to Chennai and found living conditions unsanitary and access to medical care sporadic. But the thing that really jumped out at me was that Chennai used to be known as Madras.
I jumped off the bed and woke Jenn, waving the paper at her and telling her what I thought it meant. Once she was fully awake and with me, we decided that before we tried to trip up Carol-Ann or blindsided the congressman at the party, we would drive to Somerville, to the Madras Grocery, and see if any of what was going through my head could be real.
CHAPTER 18
A Red Sox scout comes to my hotel room to try me out. He says they’re thinking about me for second base. He’s a wiry old guy, a Johnny Pesky type. He likes my arm as I zip the ball across the room into his glove. Then he says we need more space to really see what I can do, and like that we’re in Fenway. The night lights are blinding in their towering banks. I’m in the dirt near second, firing balls to him at first. My arm is fine, really live, but I can’t catch the return throws. My right thumb and index finger are completely numb inside the glove and it won’t close on the ball. All the years I played such great defence, with such hunger and instinct for the ball, and now I drop every throw, the ball banging off the glove and into the ground. The old scout says, “Too bad, kid, you were looking good there for a minute, but you ain’t ready for the majors.” I ask for one more chance, one more throw, and he says, “Okay, but not from me. From him.” Standing at first, in shadows cast by the big light, is a glowering Boston reliever, their feared closer who throws ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastballs. He winds up and throws one at me with all his might and I freeze, my glove hanging uselessly at my side, as it burns through the air toward the bridge of my nose.
After breakfast the next morning, I told Jenn there was no point in both of us going to Somerville. “Sammy knows me already, and I think he trusts me. I can be there and back inside two hours. You stay here and see what you can find on organ rings in the U.S. Get Colin working on it too.”
“Is it all just because the man comes from Madras?”
“You read the article. Before the Indian government banned it, there was a culture there of selling kidneys to pay off debts. Why not do it here? According to Sammy, they were on the verge of losing the store.”
“For a thousand bucks?”
“That’s what they got in India. I’m sure it would be more here. A lot more.”
“I did look a few things up last night, after we talked,” Jenn said. “And there have been a couple of instances of people selling organs here, both investigated by the FBI.”
“Here in Boston?”
“No, the U.S. One was in New Jersey, which I hate to tell you involved a rabbi.”
“Doing what?”
“Bringing in people from Israel and Turkey who posed as relatives of patients.”
“And the second case?”
“Virginia. Also bringing in people posing as relatives, this time from Moldova.”
“Very distant relatives. And the hospitals turned a blind eye?”
“The money is huge, Jonah. A hospital bill is a minimum of two hundred and fifty thousand for a kidney transplant—which costs the least of any organ. And that’s not including any of the medications: that’s just the procurement of the organ and the actual surgery. The more complex organs like the heart or lungs are well over a million. So yeah, they seem to turn a blind eye. This one article I read said there were four documented cases of large donations or endowments made to hospitals by people who had transplants involving these foreign relatives.”
“All right. If a kidney is worth a quarter of a million dollars to a hospital,” I said, “think what it would be worth on the black market.”
“If one exists.”
“It exists. Otherwise, McCudden and Walsh would be alive and David would be here.”
“Then it has to be two, three times as much. Black markets never settle for less.”
“Okay,” I said. “We know Patel had a growth removed from his neck eight months ago at Sinai. If he consented, his blood would have been sent to the gene study. Suppose Carol-Ann has a list of people who need organs and he comes up as a match. Someone contacts him and asks if he wants to part with a kidney. Maybe he agrees, but something goes wrong, or he doesn’t agree and they kill him for it.”
“And you see David taking part?”
“No. Never. Not without a gun to his head.”
“But how else do we explain him suddenly acquiring ten thousand, half of which he gives to the Patel family?”
“I’m hoping Sammy knows something. Maybe he’ll remember someone coming around, or something his father said or did that will help.”
“You sure you don’t want me to come?” Jenn asked.
“I’ve been there once, I know the way.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“We beat the two goons Daggett sent after us. If he tries again, he’ll send someone better.”
“It’s eight o’clock in the morning. I’ll be there and back by ten. Then we surprise Carol-Ann.”
“Okay.”
“How long from here to her place?” I asked.
“We get on the Pike, about fifteen minutes.”
“What about the art institute, where is that in relation to her place?”
> “Near the harbour, basically across from the airport. Also about fifteen minutes.”
“All right,” I said. “We’re rocking. You feel it? We’re lining them up and they’re all going to fall. By the end of the day, we’re going to know a lot more about what David was doing. We might even have something worth calling his parents about.”
Sammy Patel led me straight to the crowded storeroom at the back of Madras Grocery. It wasn’t as if we had to elbow any customers aside. His mother was at the front, alone, taking inventory with a small notebook and a pencil no longer than my pinky.
“Please tell me you’ve found something,” he said.
“Nothing concrete. But I have an idea I want to run by you.”
“Go.”
“You said your father had a cyst removed at Sinai Hospital.”
“Yes. Just before Labour Day.”
“Do you remember if he consented to participating in a gene study?”
“Absolutely. I had to translate part of it for him. His English is good but not that good.”
“Okay. Do you remember any unusual visitors or phone calls he might have received after that procedure? Anything that upset him or changed his behaviour?”
“In what way?”
How to explain it to this young man, so desperate to hear news about his father. If my scenario was correct, there was no way he was still alive.
“You said the store’s finances are in rough shape.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“Did he ever hint that there might be money coming in?”
Sammy thought about it a moment, then nodded. “About two months ago. Early in the new year, at any rate. His mood over Christmas had been miserable, rock bottom. Either snapping at my mother or brooding down here at night.”
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