Beyond Suspicion

44

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The blood business was booming, and Jack wanted a firsthand look. He found the Gift of Life mobile blood unit just a block away from the same street corner that his friend Mike had told him about after tailing Katrina. Mike, however, had only watched from a distance. Jack was there on business.

It was a cool afternoon, which made his disguise easier. He stopped at Goodwill and bought a crummy sweatshirt, a pair of old tennis shoes that didn’t match, black pants with a few paint spots around the cuffs, and a knit cap that was frayed around the edges. Then he went home and burned a pile of garbage in the backyard, standing close enough to the cloud of dirty smoke to overpower the smell of mothballs. With his bare hands he dug a little hole in the earth, doggy-style, getting dirt under his nails, soiling his arms up to his biceps. A swig of cheap bourbon gave his breath the right adjustment. Streaks of engine grease on his hands, face, and clothes provided the finishing touches, compliments of the grimy engine block on his old Mustang.

A half-block away from the blood unit, he stopped along the sidewalk and checked his reflection in a storefront window. He genuinely looked homeless.

Not that his disguise needed to be foolproof. He wasn’t hiding from Katrina. In fact, he wanted to talk to her, but a visit to her house or the main office of Viatical Solutions, Inc., could have put them both at risk, depending on who might be watching. A phone call wouldn’t work, either, since her line might be tapped. Staking out the blood unit, dressed like a homeless guy, seemed like the best alternative. He was pretty sure that the low-level goons who worked with her in the truck had no idea who Jack Swyteck was, and the disguise was enough to fool them.

“Need twenty bucks, buddy?” said the guy outside the unit.

Jack looked around, not sure he was talking to him.

“Yeah, you,” the guy said. “Twenty bucks, and all you gotta do is roll up your sleeve. You interested?”

Jack thought for a second, but this was even better than he’d hoped for. Here was a chance to look around inside. “Sure.”

“Come on.”

Jack followed him toward the unit, stopping just outside the door to let the latest donor pass. It was a woman, probably in her thirties, who looked about seventy. She appeared to be wearing every stitch of clothing she owned, several dirty layers that smelled of life on the streets and dried vomit.

She smiled at the doorman, half of her teeth missing, and then laid her hand on his belt buckle and said, “How’s about I collect some of your specimen, honey?”

“Get away from me,” he said, wincing.

“Whatsa matter? Your nice little nurse stuck me with her needle. You don’t want to stick me with yours?”

“Get lost.”

She snarled and said, “Needle dick.”

He pushed her to the pavement.

“Hey, go easy on her,” said Jack.

“Needle dick!” she shouted.

“You shut your trap, lady,” the doorman said.

“Needle dick, needle dick!”

He stepped toward her, fists clenched, but Jack stopped him. “Come on. I ain’t got all day.”

The man seemed torn, but finally his business mind prevailed. He hurled a few cuss words at the woman and led Jack up the stairs.

The air inside was stale, trapped by windows that probably hadn’t opened in years. The staff was minimal, just a phlebotomist, a cashier, and a thick-necked thug seated near the door. Jack presumed he was packing heat. Donors were paid in cash, so a guard with good aim and plenty of ammunition would have been indispensable, even if he was a blockhead, a matching bookend for Jack’s escort.

“Got another one for you,” the man said.

The phlebotomist put her cheese sandwich aside and said, “Come on over.”

Jack took a seat. A rubber strap, gauze packages, several plastic blood bags, and a needle with a syringe were spread across the table.

“You HIV-positive, partner?” asked the phlebotomist.

Jack looked around. The floors looked as if they hadn’t been mopped in months, plenty of dried blood spots on grimy, beige tile. The seats and tabletop weren’t much cleaner, and the windows were practically opaque with dirt. How this woman could eat in this place was beyond him. He wasn’t about to let her poke him with one of her needles.

“Yeah, HIV,” said Jack. “As a matter of fact, I got full-blown AIDS.”

“Perfect,” she said. “Roll up your sleeve.”

He tried not to look confused. “You want bad blood?”

“Of course. Now, come on. Show me a vein.”

He didn’t move fast enough, so she grabbed his wrist and pushed his sleeve up to his elbow. “Hmm. No tracks.”

“I shoot between my toes,” he said.

“Make a fist.”

Jack obliged, keeping an anxious eye on the syringe. “Is that a new needle?”

She chuckled, still searching his arm for the right vein. “Only been used once by a little old lady who likes needle dicks.”

“Don’t you start,” said Needle Dick.

She tied the rubber strap around his elbow like a tourniquet. If he didn’t think fast, he was about to share a junkie’s needle. “This is fifty bucks, right?” said Jack.

“I told you twenty,” the goon said.

“I ain’t doing this for no twenty dollars.”

“Shut up and be a good boy. Maybe I’ll throw in a half-pint of whiskey.”

“No. It’s fifty or I’m outta here.”

The other goon stood up beside his buddy. With the two of them together, it was like trying to blow by a couple of pro-Bowl linebackers. “Sit down and shut up,” he told Jack.

Jack was half-sitting, half-standing. Getting stuck with a dirty needle wasn’t an option, but he wasn’t quite sure how he was going to get past these two pork chops.

“I said, sit!” the guy shouted.

“What’s going on?”

Jack looked past the goons, relieved to see Katrina.

“Just a little matter of money,” said Needle Dick. “Junior here thinks his blood’s worth fifty bucks.”

She took a good look at Jack, and he could see in her eyes that she’d recognized him instantly, even with the old clothes, knit cap on his head, and grease on his face. He wasn’t really worried about a confidential informant giving him up and blowing her own cover, but his heart skipped a beat as he waited for her to say something.

“This jerk’s blood isn’t worth fifty cents. He scammed us on Miami Beach two weeks ago. His veins are clean. Get him out of here.”

The men came toward him, each grabbing an arm. They kicked open the door and threw him out. He landed on the pavement right beside the bag lady.

She looked at him with disgust. “You gonna let a needle dick push you around like that?”

Jack picked himself up, checked the scrape on his elbow where he’d hit the pavement. He glanced toward the van, then answered. “It’s okay. I’m a hotshot lawyer. I’ll sue his ass.”

She flashed a toothless grin, said something about him looking more like a senator, and then just kept talking. Jack listened for about a minute, till he realized that she was chatting with herself.

He felt as though he should walk her to a shelter or something, but he had to stay focused. She went one way, and he went the other, continuing a half block north, where he found a bus bench at the corner and waited. Getting inside the mobile unit had been a bonus, but he still hadn’t spoken to Katrina, his main objective. He sensed she wouldn’t be far behind him. In ten minutes, his hunch proved correct.

“What the hell were you doing in there?” she said as she took a seat on the bench beside him.

“Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“You and your friend Theo have to stay clear and let me do my job.”

“Just exactly what is your job?”

“None of your business.”

“You’re not even going to let me guess?”

She shot him a look, as if not sure what to make of him. “Okay, Swyteck. Show me how smart you are.”

“It’s interesting the way you set up these mobile units in high-crime areas, places where the average Joe walking off the street might carry around any number of infectious diseases in his bloodstream.”

“Hey, if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain…”

“So, for twenty bucks and a half-pint of cheap booze they’ll gladly drain their veins of infected blood. Then what?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think Drayton would let you work undercover in this operation if you were using bad blood to contaminate the blood supply or some other terrorist activity. So, I figure you must be selling it to someone who actually wants infected blood for legitimate reasons. Like a medical researcher. Am I right?”

She didn’t answer.

Jack nodded, figuring he was right. “Good money in that. I think I saw something on the Internet where some diseased blood can fetch as much as ten thousand dollars a liter on the medical research market.”

She focused on the bus across the street. “I’m not talking to you.”

“Extremely high margins, I’d say. Especially when the company that collects and sells the blood doesn’t even try to comply with the multitude of regulations governing the drawing, handling, storage, shipping, and disposal of blood specimens that, because of their diseased state, technically meet the legal definition of medical waste.”

“How do you know we don’t comply?”

“I didn’t come here without doing my homework.”

A low-riding Volvo cruised by, music blasting from the boom box in the truck. Saturday night was starting early.

Jack said, “From the looks of things, I’d say your crew is a lot more interested in appearances than profit. Like every good money-laundering operation.”

She looked him in the eye and said, “You have no idea how much money there is in blood.”

“My guess is that you sell a whole lot more blood than you ever collect.”

“You’re a very lucky guesser, Swyteck.”

“You produce just enough product to make things look legitimate, but it’s a limitless supply of inventory. You create as many sales as you want, no one the wiser. Nice money-laundering operation.”

“You’re learning a lot more than is healthy for you to know.”

“Maybe.”

“The irony is, this could really be a good business for someone. All these goons on my crew care about is generating phony invoices to legitimize the cash that washes through our company. With a little effort to collect more specimens, the blood research business could be the most profitable money-laundering operation around.”

“Except for viatical settlements,” said Jack.

She smiled thinly. “Except for viatical settlements.”

Jack crossed his legs, picked at the hole in his old tennis shoe. “Of course, now the million-and-half-dollar question is: What’s the connection between the two businesses?”

“None. It’s just another way of laundering money. Like going into video rentals and opening a Chinese restaurant. No connection, really. Just another sink to wash your dirty money in.”

“I think differently.”

“Is this another one of your guesses?”

“No. This time it’s research.”

“A sole practitioner who does research? I’m impressed.”

“When I took Jessie’s case, I subscribed to an on-line news service about the viatical industry. Kept me right up to date on any development in the industry-trends, lawsuits, whatever.”

“And they said something about Jessie?”

“They did, but that’s not my point. I’ve been following it more closely since Jessie’s death. What really caught my interest was a recent write-up about a case in Georgia.”

“Georgia?”

“A thirty-something-year-old woman had AIDS. They found the West Nile virus in her blood. First documented case in Georgia in decades.”

“Not a good thing for someone with a weakened immune system.”

“No. But it might be a very good thing for her viatical investors.”

“You’re being way too suspicious. Viatical settlements are pretty common among AIDS patients.”

“Yeah, but this one has a twist. Not only did she have this rare virus, but she was missing three liters of blood.”

“She bled to death?”

“No. Somebody took it.”

Her look was incredulous. “What?”

“You heard me. Somebody drained three liters of diseased blood from her body and sent her into cardiac arrest.”

“And triggered payment under a viatical settlement,” she said, finishing his thought for him.

“No one’s proved step three yet. That’s why I’m here.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want to know about step three.”

“You’re talking about Georgia, a whole different state.”

“We’re talking about the Russian Mafiya. It’s a very small world.”

“Look, my plate is full working for Sam Drayton and his task force. I don’t have the time or the inclination to be playing Sherlock Holmes for you and your wild-ass theories about some woman in Georgia.”

“You need to work with me on this.”

“I don’t need to do anything with you.”

“I can help you.”

“How?”

“I know that my friend Theo’s been poking around your operation.”

“Poking’s a good word for it. Like a finger in my eye.”

“I don’t know exactly what he’s up to, or how much danger he’s gotten himself into. But I don’t want him doing it.”

“And neither do I, damn it. Eight months I’ve been working undercover. I know this blood and viatical stuff inside out, partly from running this hellhole of an operation, but mostly from risking my neck and snooping after hours. All of it’s at risk now, thanks to Theo Knight.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“So what are you proposing?”

“Help me out on this Georgia angle. See if my hunch is correct.”

“And what’s in it for me?”

“I’ll get Theo out of your hair, before my big-hearted buddy with the good intentions gets us all in trouble.”

She thought for a moment, then said, “I’m not promising I’m going to find anything.”

“Do the best you can.”

“You’re just going to trust me?”

“Yeah. Money laundering is one thing. But I don’t think you’d knowingly be involved with a company that’s killing off viatical investors.”

She paused, as if sizing him up. Then she pulled a pen from her pocket and took Jack’s hand. She inked out a phone number as she spoke. “This is another level of snooping, and snooping is dangerous stuff. If you get any inkling that your friend Theo is going to do anything stupid, I want a heads-up in time to get out alive.”

Jack checked the number on the back of his hand. “Is this a secure line?”

“No cell is secure. But it’s safer than calling me at home or the office, where I can never be sure who’s listening. Just keep it to yourself.”

“You’re just going to trust me?” he said, using her own words.

“Yeah,” she said, responding in kind. “Jessie Merrill is one thing. But I don’t think you’d knowingly blow your only shot to find out if this company’s killing off other viatical investors.”

Their eyes met, and Jack felt that an understanding had been reached. She rose and said, “So, exactly how are you going to keep Theo under control?”

“Don’t worry. I can take care of Theo Knight.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Because if you don’t, I promise you: Someone else will.” She started up the sidewalk, then stopped and said, “By the way. Nice outfit.”

Jack struck a model’s pose, showing off the Goodwill special. “Thanks.”

She smiled a little, then continued on toward the blood unit. Jack had a slight bounce in his step as crossed the street and headed for the Metrorail station, digging his hands deep into his pockets, keeping Katrina’s phone number to himself.