Under the Knife

by Diane Fanning

  Patty and Mark chimed in, too, ganging up on him. After spouting a few words of pent-up venom, Greg gathered up his clothes and stormed out of the house, never to return. His relationship with Dean was over.

  Dean gathered the few things that hadn’t already been stuffed in boxes, packed them up and moved into the third floor of Mark’s home just a couple blocks away.

  Greg did not hear from Dean again for three long days—three days in which he hung in anxiety. He felt his future hinging on Dean and whether Dean would pay back the money Greg invested in the house. Three days wondering if Dean was capable of doing the right thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  AT LAST, DEAN CALLED GREG. AT THE SOUND OF DEAN’S voice, Greg’s heart filled with joy and his mind with turmoil. He knew Dean had treated him badly. He knew their romantic relationship was over. But still Dean stirred him. They had a pleasant conversation and Greg invited him to come into the city, offering to treat him to dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. Over their meal, the two talked about bringing their relationship to an amiable close. Dean apologized for not telling him that he planned to move in with Mark. It was just easier, he reasoned. “I didn’t want to tell because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  Greg accepted his apology and Dean stayed the night at Greg’s. They parted the next day, expressing a mutual desire to remain friends. Although they talked on the phone several times in the coming months, they never again saw each other face-to-face that summer.

  THEIR NEXT PHONE CONVERSATION STARTED OUT FINE, BUT turned into an argument. “I’ve been thinking of going to Italy,” Dean announced. The terms of his bond permitted leaving the country as long as he returned for any court dates.

  “That would be wonderful for you. You’ve never been to Italy,” Greg said. “You ought to go and enjoy a vacation before you go to jail. But before you do, pay me the money you owe me first.”

  Dean blasted Greg for always thinking of himself, then promptly hung up.

  ON JUNE 26, 2003, DEAN RETURNED TO COURT TO PLEAD GUILTY to the three felony counts related to his arrest for practicing medicine without a license. His sentencing date was set for September 5.

  MEANWHILE, DEBRA HAD BEGUN HANDLING A LOT OF DEAN’S financial affairs. As soon as the sale of the house was final, she sent Greg a check for $10,000, an amount that covered only a portion of his expenditures on Dean’s behalf. He was still owed another $85,000 for the cash he shelled out on Dean’s mortgage payments, legal costs, living expenses and home repairs. Dean made excuses for not paying Greg, claiming that he wanted to, but couldn’t at that moment.

  Debra questioned every penny that Greg requested. Despite her previous promises, she now expressed certainty that Greg was not entitled to reimbursement for all the expenses he claimed. She took particular umbrage at Greg’s request for repayment of money he shelled out in supporting Dean for nine months, demanding an itemized list. She insisted that every expense be backed with a receipt. Greg had not expected that documentation would be required and so did not keep an organized file. It took him weeks to get it together, and when he turned it over to Debra, he expected to be paid. Instead, Debra sent the packet of material off to an attorney.

  THE NEXT MONTH, DEAN CALLED GREG, WHINING ABOUT Patty “I can’t get her out of my life. What can I do?”

  At first, Greg did not comprehend the depth of Dean’s problem. He made a few suggestions, which Dean dismissed out of hand.

  “What’s the real problem, Dean?”

  He spelled it out in crude terms: Dean had had sex with Patty on more than one occasion. Patty had done so much for him, he explained, and that was how she’d wanted Dean to pay her back.

  You mean that’s how you were able to take advantage of her for so long, Greg thought. Suddenly, it all made sense. Much of what Patty had done and said took on a different cast. Patty was hostile to Greg because she was jealous; she’d wanted Dean as her boyfriend. She saw herself as an exception—the one woman who could captivate and capture the handsome gay guy—and she wanted to keep him for her own.

  Greg now understood: Patty hadn’t told him about Dean’s affair with Stephen Schwartz out of friendship. She did it because she wanted to drive Greg out of Dean’s life. She didn’t stay up all night getting documents ready for Dean’s attorney out of the unbridled goodness of her heart. She did it to weave a web of need around Dean, and to draw him away from Greg.

  Greg couldn’t be angry at Patty—now, he only felt sorry for her. She had put herself in a position to be used and tossed aside, and that was just what was happening to her now. As he ended the conversation, Greg could barely keep the disgust out of his voice.

  DEAN CALLED GREG AGAIN IN MID-SUMMER TO TELL HIM about a vision he’d had. “I was driving down a road and had to stop because a mother deer and her two baby deer were crossing the road,” he said. “While I waited, I had a vision of my mother standing in the road. She had a sad expression on her face. I realized then how disappointed she would be if she knew you and Debra were fighting about money.” Dean paused, expecting a sympathetic response. Greg had always been a soft touch whenever Dean evoked his mother.

  Greg, however, was not swayed by Dean’s bald attempt at manipulation. This is just more of Dean’s crap, Greg thought. And I’m sick of listening to it. This time, it was Greg who hung up the phone.

  BY LATE AUGUST, GREG WAS FED UP. HE CALLED DEBRA AND explained his current economic hardship and his need for repayment. She said, “I would not have done what you did with Dean. You got yourself into this mess; you can get yourself out of it.”

  In anger, Greg called Dean. “If you’re gonna fuck me over on this, I’m gonna fuck you over back.”

  “No, you’re not,” Dean said. “You’re not that type.”

  Ashamed, Greg knew Dean was right.

  “What are you going to do, Greg?” Dean taunted. Greg still did not respond, and Dean laughed at him. He considered threatening to report Dean for still seeing clients, but before he could, Dean hung up.

  At the same time, Dean was also driving Mark crazy. He slept all day, snorted cocaine all night. He never remembered to lock the door, and he shamelessly rifled through Mark’s belongings—even borrowing Mark’s clothing. Dean cranked up the air conditioning on high all day while Mark worked in Manhattan as a hair stylist. That drove Mark’s electricity bill up close to $500 for the month of July alone. Mark told him to stop, even wrote notes ordering it, but Dean persisted.

  Mark tried talking to his boarder, but Dean would not change. In addition to his annoying and costly habits, Mark was concerned that he might be arrested if Dean was caught in his house with drugs. He ordered Dean out in mid-August. Dean took refuge in Patty Rosado’s home.

  Soon thereafter, Mark spent an afternoon out in the garage shifting around the belongings Dean had left behind for storage. He wanted to fit them all into a tighter space in order to have a pathway through the garage.

  In the process, he picked up a piece of luggage. Lifting it onto a stack of boxes, he heard something move around inside. Mark set down the pack, unzipped it and found a woman’s purse. It contained tampons and an address book, along with credit cards and a driver’s license belonging to someone named Maria Cruz.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and picked a number at random from the address book. It rang and rang but no one ever answered. He tried another number but no one picked up there either. On the third call, he got an answer.

  “Do you know Maria Cruz?” Mark asked.

  He was told he had the wrong number.

  Mark decided he didn’t want to know why Maria Cruz’s purse was in Dean’s things. He put it back in the suitcase and added it to the top of a stack of boxes against the wall. He never mentioned his discovery to Dean.

  ONE NIGHT IN LATE AUGUST, DEAN DROVE UP TO BELLEVILLE, looking for a home to buy. A neighbor spotted him peering into the windows of one house and called the police. When they responded, Dean could not produce a li
cense, registration or proof of insurance. The police found something in his car, though: cocaine. They hauled him to jail, where Patty came to bail him out.

  In no time, Dean wore out his welcome at Patty’s place. He moved into a motel in Secaucus.

  On September 5, Dean was due in court. He didn’t show. His attorney did not know where he was, and the bail bondsman could not find him. The attorney general’s office threatened to revoke his plea agreement.

  Five days later, Dean visited his safe-deposit box at Wachovia bank. He removed the cash he’d been stashing there since Maria’s death.

  Two weeks later, Mark Ritchey discovered a message in his voicemail intended for Dean. It was an airline courtesy call confirming his reservation that day. Dean boarded a Continental flight bound for Costa Rica with a three-month visa.

  Within days, Greg got a call from Dean’s former housekeeper, Elizabeth. She told him that a hysterical Patty Rosado had telephoned. Sobbing, she’d told Elizabeth, “Dean’s left the country and he’s never coming back.”

  A few hours later, the bail company called Greg. They wanted to know where Dean was, and Greg told them what he knew. They informed him that if Dean did not show for his next court appearance, Greg, as the person who originally posted bail, would have to come up with the rest of the money.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE SUN GLISTENED OFF THE AIRCRAFT AND THE ASTONISHing blues of the Caribbean Sea as the Continental flight approached Costa Rica. Lazy waves splashed against immaculate black and white sand beaches, the plane passing them and moving inland. Intense emerald green vistas soon emerged.

  Costa Rica possesses as many species of plant life as all of Europe. From his window, Dean could view dense forest canopies and rugged mountains. Four volcanoes—two of them active—thrust into the sky near the plane’s destination. It had been forty years since the last eruption brought devastation to the people of Costa Rica—the danger, though now dormant, remained quite alive.

  Wheels touched down, bouncing off the tarmac of Juan Santamaria Airport in San Jose, a city four thousand feet above sea level. Dean had successfully left his home country—where the body of Maria Cruz lay encased in concrete.

  BORDERED BY NICARAGUA AND PANAMA TO THE NORTH AND south and by the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the east and west, Costa Rica is a land of lush jungles filled with the shrieks and antics of monkeys, the threat of crocodiles, jungle cats and poison dart frogs, the hypnotizing slow-motion movement of three-toed sloths and a mind-boggling assortment of lizards, exotic birds and butterflies. On both coasts, endangered sea turtles nest.

  All of these natural wonders and a population of four million are contained in a nation not quite the size of West Virginia. Unlike its neighbors, Costa Rica is a stable entity—only two brief periods of violence rocked its history since the late nineteenth century.

  Although its culture is far different from what Dean had known all his life, Costa Rica’s class structure felt a lot like home. The government made a marked impact on the lives of its poorer citizens—reducing poverty and constructing a strong social safety net, creating the largest middle class in Central America—a population far more upwardly mobile than any of the other nations in the area.

  Racially, Dean fit right in, too. Ninety per cent of the citizens are whites of Spanish origin with a mixture of German, Italian, English and other European nationalities, making this country the most homogenized population in the region. Adding to the gringo cast of the country, about a quarter of a million full-time residents of Coast Rica are foreigners—mostly Americans and Canadians.

  Despite these influences, the culture of Costa Rica remains very Latin—Catholicism dominates and the extended family is the basis for social life.

  DEAN LANDED IN A CITY WHERE SPRING IS ALWAYS IN THE AIR. The average year-round temperature is 74 degrees—a radical departure from New Jersey and New York. He arrived in the middle of the rainy season, when most of the day is sunny but the early afternoon is marked by an hour or two of intense rain.

  More than the weather separated the residents of Dean’s new home from his native country. He faced a new world where the language of the masses was Spanish. Although Costa Ricans were known for their patience with non–Spanish speaking visitors, it nonetheless presented a barrier for Dean.

  There was a marked difference in the lifestyle of the people. The pace slowed dramatically. To Dean, who lived in the orbit of a major urban center all his life, it appeared as if there was no evidence of planning in daily life—as if to-do lists were an alien concept.

  Long lines were a common experience in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital since 1823. Josefinos waited at banks, telephone offices, post offices, nearly everywhere. They accepted this inconvenience and treated it as a social opportunity. This tendency drove Dean to distraction—like most Americans, he did not possess an abundance of patience.

  Dean emerged from his flight, passed through customs and hailed an official orange airport taxi for the ride to his hotel. He’d just set foot in San Jose, the only over-populated area in the country—70 percent of the nation’s people resided in the city and its surrounding metropolitan area.

  For a homosexual male like Dean, there appeared at first glance to be an innate conflict between his sexual preference and the people of Costa Rica, who, as a rule, clung to conservative family values and traditional gender roles. Machismo reigned—men and women were expected to behave differently and conform to the parameters of the gender of their birth. Women achieved success in business and government here, but their role in the family remained caught in the past.

  Yet surprisingly the practice of homosexuality is accepted, even legal, in Costa Rica after a citizen has reached the age of consent—legally defined as 15 years old. There are laws, too, against homophobia and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Add to that enlightened legal stance the anything-goes attitude in the depths of San Jose, and Dean’s choice of Costa Rica made a lot more sense.

  Since San Jose was a transshipment point for cocaine and heroin from South America, Dean would have no trouble finding recreational drugs.

  Dean adjusted rapidly to the no-holds-barred approach of the inner city, and participated in the exuberant and wild night life. At 11 P.M., discos were full, and with $200,000 in his pocket, Dean was ready to party hard. Nightly, he mingled with the crowds until the first rays of sun streaked across the tropical horizon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  DR. LAURIE POLIS HEARD THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE THAT Dean had gotten out on bail and fled the country. She assumed that neither local authorities nor Interpol were interested in wasting the time and money to find him, or to extradite him, when all he faced was a possible sentence of 4 years. Dean Faiello, she thought, was no longer a threat—just a low-level fugitive of interest to no one. She did not hear his name again for many months.

  IN OCTOBER, INVESTIGATOR DELLA ROCCA FINALLY GOT THE search warrant providing the authorization to access Maria’s email account. In it, he discovered his first strong lead. Maria had an appointment with a Doctor Faiello on April 13. Dean appeared to be the last person to see Maria alive. Della Rocca wanted to talk to him. But where was he?

  In no time, Della Rocca sniffed out Dean’s recent legal troubles. That led him to Dean’s attorney Margaret Shalley, but she had no idea of Dean’s whereabouts.

  THAT SAME MONTH, DEBRA FAIELLO RECEIVED AN EMAIL FROM Dean with instructions on what he needed done. She followed them to the letter. She ransomed Dean’s Jeep Cherokee from the New Jersey impound lot. She and Patty Rosado went to Mark Ritchey’s house and retrieved the title to the car. Later, Debra transferred the vehicle to her name.

  While at Mark’s place, Debra and Patty picked up Dean’s furniture and all of his patient files. They also took possession of the piece of luggage Mark had found—the one containing Maria Cruz’s purse.

  At this point, Greg Bach thought that Dean’s worst deeds had been inflicted on him. H
e knew Dean skipped town leaving Mark Ritchey with a pile of bills, and owing money to Stephen Schwartz. But none of those debts approached the magnitude of what Greg was owed.

  How does Dean get away with this crap? Greg wondered. Because people let him. And at that moment, Greg decided to stop being one of those people.

  Through a friend, Greg learned that Dean had a new business partner—a man with a wife and children. He felt a moral obligation to find this person, wherever he was, and to warn him before he, too, was left penniless. Greg could not remain silent. But where was Dean?

  AROUND THIS SAME TIME, GREG BACH LEARNED THAT THE ATtorney general’s office was looking for Dean. He called Ronda Lustman, the prosecutor who had led the state’s case against Dean for practicing medicine without a license, to find out if she knew Dean’s whereabouts. She didn’t have a clue.

  “If you have any information about Dean’s credit card accounts,” Lustman suggested, “it would help us track him down.” However, Greg no longer had access to any of that information.

  He did have one tidbit for Lustman. He told her about the telephone call Martin Mannert, Dean’s accountant, had received back in April, in which Dean mentioned a woman he rushed to the hospital.

  Ronda wanted Greg to share this information with Brian Ford, the investigator in the attorney general’s office covering the case. She thought it was something Brian would want to look into. At first, Greg was reluctant to make the call. Despite everything, he still cared for Dean. For two months, Greg tried to put it all out of his mind and get on with his life. But no matter how hard he tried, it haunted him.

  Just before the holidays, Greg placed a call to Investigator Ford. Ford said that they just couldn’t figure out why Dean would disappear. “He hasn’t done anything that bad. Maybe it was because we wanted to question him about a missing person—a woman.”