Boston Cream

CHAPTER 9

Jenn and I had a late lunch at the hotel coffee shop. I told her about my visit to Stayner and the question of whether David could have taken money to get someone onto, or higher up on, a donor waiting list.

“But Stayner says he couldn’t have,” she said.

“Right. Even he can’t, he says.”

“Are we going to take his word for it?”

“Not a chance.”

“You think he knew more than he was letting on.”

“Something about the money,” I said. “That’s when he flinched, and this is not a man who lets go easily.”

She agreed to stay behind at the hotel and work the phones, to try to get confirmation from the New England Organ Bank about its protocols and track down more people David Fine had spoken to in the days before he went missing. I drove back to Summit Avenue without getting lost and parked near the house he shared with Sheldon. There were a lot of other houses to canvass-too many for one night-so I walked to the plateau of the hill where a dozen or so people stood or sat in the park known as the Corey Hill Outlook. With the trees bare of foliage, there was a striking view of some of downtown’s taller buildings, lit up against the dark spring sky. Three people sat on a curved stone bench, watching the first evening stars come out. A young boy stood on a large stone sundial laid into the grass, while his father explained how it would work if the sun was out.

I started with the people on the bench, showing them David’s picture, asking if they remembered seeing him in the area two weeks ago, or at any time. They held the photo closer to the lights that shined down from tall iron stands, but eventually shook their heads and said sorry. I went over to the sundial; standing next to it, I could see a small stone laid in the grass above the twelve like a grave marker, telling how to find the time in different seasons. The twelve had once been gold. Now the one was completely stripped down to grey and the two had only splotches of gilt left. The father told me he didn’t recognize David, either. “Who was that?” the boy asked as I walked away. “It doesn’t matter,” the father said.

A young couple holding hands, leaning into each other at the edge of the grass, thought David looked vaguely familiar but couldn’t place him at any specific time or place.

I tried a cyclist stretching his calves out against a tree, his bike lying on its side beside him. He took one look at the photo and scowled. “The rabbit,” he said.

“You recognize him?”

“Damn right I do.”

He was in his early twenties, tall and lean, dressed in Lycra pants and a long-sleeved shirt that was stained with sweat. Despite the low light of dusk I could see deep shadowed bruises under both eyes and a healing cut on the bridge of his nose.

“Why’d you call him a rabbit?” I asked.

“Because he ran like one.”

My heart started to race a little, the way it does when I know I’ve found something. “From what?”

He pointed to the bruises on his face. Pulled up his sleeves to show angry scrapes on both elbows. “I ride this hill every day, unless it snows,” he said. “Up one side and down the other, then back again. I’m trying out for Boston College track next fall.”

“When did you see him?”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“Could it have been a Thursday?”

“Probably was. That Wednesday it snowed, I think, and Friday a bunch of us went to New Hampshire for the weekend.”

“So what happened?”

“I’m coming up the hill, right? The steepest part back there. Killing my lungs, man. I can barely breathe. Then the road starts to straighten out and I reach back for a little extra, get the legs pumping. I hit the plateau and I pick up a little speed. I love to fly down the other side. You feel the wind in your face, drying the sweat-it’s nirvana, man. So here I come, picking up speed, and just as I’m getting ready to roll this asshole throws the door of his van open without looking.”

“Him?” I asked, pointing to David’s picture.

“No, another asshole. I slam into the door, I go ass over handlebars and do a face plant in the street.”

“Where was this man?”

“On the sidewalk. Him and another guy who came out the passenger side. The sliding door.”

“Wait. My guy here, David, he was walking along and these guys both opened their doors? Driver’s side and rear passenger.”

“Right.”

“Like they were waiting for him?”

“Could be. It didn’t strike me at the time. I was lying in the road, trying to figure out how bad I was hurt. There was blood gushing out of my nose and mouth and my arms were scraped to the bone.”

“Then what?”

“The passenger, he kind of grabs your guy, whatever, they start arguing about something.”

“Arguing?”

“Well, voices raised. Some physical contact. The driver, he’s totally ignoring me, he’s going to help his buddy. I start yelling at the top of my lungs, calling him an asshole, hoping the people in the park will hear me. Your guy twists away somehow, gets free and takes off like a scared rabbit. My only witness. I fucking needed him if I wanted to press charges against the driver but he just split on me.”

“Where?”

“Down the path.”

“What path?”

“Summit Path.” He pointed to a sign that was partly hidden behind the branches of a tree.

“Where does that go?”

“All the way down to Beacon Street. Only he wasn’t walking, he was flying.”

“What about the guys in the van, what did they do?”

“Got back in and took off.”

“Did you get a licence plate on the van?”

“I wish. I mean, I tried but it was covered with mud.”

“What kind of van was it, do you remember?”

“Old. Kind of grey. American, not Japanese, like a Safari or something.”

“Did you call the police?”

“What for? They were gone, my witness was gone. And no one gives a shit about cyclists in this town. Especially the BPD.”

“Isn’t this Brookline?”

“Huh? Oh, I guess. I don’t live here, I just ride the hill.”

“Get a good look at either guy?”

“Not the passenger, except to say he was white. The driver too. Tall, a little older than me, maybe thirty. Blond hair. Black leather jacket. That’s really all I took in at the time. I wanted to follow the van but what was I going to do if I caught it? Against two guys? I was fucked up enough already. I just got myself to the hospital, got my nose set. Got my arms cleaned up. Luckily my bike was okay. I don’t have the coin to get that fixed.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Freddy Macklin. Yours?”

“Jonah Geller. Listen, thanks, Freddy.”

“For what?”

“I think you might have saved David’s life.”

Summit Path might have been a path at one time but it was a staircase now, wide stone steps heading down with black wrought-iron railings on either side. I walked down the first flight to a gravel laneway and looked right and left. There didn’t seem to be anywhere there to run to or hide. Beyond them was the open space of the park opposite the lookout, not where a man on the run would want to be.

I kept going down another flight, which ran alongside an apartment building. Could he have run down into the parking lot, maybe to a doorway, hoping someone would buzz him in? I tried to put myself in his shoes. He’d been on his way home from work. Minding his own business. Two guys get out of a van, one of whom tries to grab him. Despite the fact that a cyclist is lying hurt in the street, he takes off. Why? Because he knows these guys are after him. He knows what they want. To abduct him or kill him. He gets free but he can’t be sure he’s not being followed. His heart is pounding, his feet flying. He’s not an athlete. He’s not used to this. No, I thought. He wouldn’t stop here. He could wind up trapped, pounding on doors, pushing buzzers, getting only silence in reply. I was sure he’d have kept going. I would have.

The third flight was narrower and ended at a street where cars rushed past going west. I swivelled around, taking in a 180-degree view, trying to see it as David would have. Beyond the street was one more shallow flight to Beacon Street. More options for him there. Maybe a cab, a cop car, pedestrians who might help out. And halfway across the boulevard a trolley stop where a green-and-white car sat as passengers got on at both the front and rear exits. Think, Jonah. What would you do? If there’s a cab, I flag it, whether I have the fare or not. I could always get the cabbie to drive past a bank machine. If there’s a cop car-big if-I throw myself at it, unless there are things I don’t want to tell the cops. If I’m David I know the area, probably better than the guys in the van do. I know how long it might take them to drive down from the top of Summit Avenue.

I probably know this trolley route too. Maybe I’ve taken it to work before, or to class when I was still in school. Maybe I run for it and jump on, blending in with the other passengers, hoping to attain some kind of invisibility. The rear doors had been tantalizingly close.

I ducked between cars and crossed to the trolley platform. It was seven-thirty. Roughly the same time he might have come two weeks ago. Nothing to lose by asking. I lined up behind other commuters and waited for the next car to come rolling along.

The driver was a man of about fifty, a solid gut resting on his thighs, rheumy blue eyes and a few busted veins in his nose.

I paid the two-dollar cash fare, took out one of my photos of David Fine and asked the driver if he had seen him board the car on a Thursday evening two weeks ago.

“You kiddin’ me?” he said. “You know how many people get on and off this route? I don’t even look at faces half the time. I’m checkin’ they’re payin’ their fare.”

“Just have a look at it, please.”

The driver sighed. “What time was this?”

“Around seven-thirty.”

“Probably would have been the car before this one.”

“Any way to find out who that was?”

“Yeah,” the driver said. “Stay on until we get to the end of the run at Cleveland Circle. If you’re lucky, you might catch him before he heads back east.”

I elbowed my way to the doorway so I could be first off, then sprinted to the bay where the eastbound car was boarding. I waited until everyone had paid their fare and found seats before approaching the driver, a black man with a touch of grey at his temples and in his goatee. I showed him David’s photo and asked if he remembered him boarding two Thursdays ago. “He would have boarded at Summit Path,” I said. “And he might have been out of breath like he’d been running.”

“A lot of people run to catch the train,” he said. “Else they have to wait for the next one.”

“He was wearing a skullcap.”

“Muslim or Hebrew?”

“Hebrew. Clipped to his hair.”

A light came into his eyes when I said that. “You know what? Two Thursdays ago-yeah, a young guy, not too big, maybe thirty? I remember him now and you know why? He came in the rear door, just as I was about to pull out. Huffing and puffing like you said. Which ain’t so unusual, I told you. So he gets on all out of breath, walks up to the front and pays his fare and-why I remember it-he gets off at the very next stop. See, we got a problem with fare jumpers on this line. It’s the only one you can get on at the rear and we’re supposed to keep an eye on them, make sure they pay. So I eyeballed him in the mirror when he got on back there, made sure he paid, which he did, but only rode one stop. This is an honest guy. He could have hung around the back door and just stepped off. Plus I wondered, why run like that to catch a train when you’re getting off one stop later.”

“You sure it was him?”

“Pretty sure. He had a briefcase too, I remember that now. Clutching it to his chest.”

“He say anything?”

“Nope. Just paid his two bucks, stood there till we got to Washington Street and got off.”

“You see which way he went?”

“Man, you want your money’s worth.”

“He’s been missing since that night. I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”

“Missing, huh? From here? No shit. I mean, I’m only surprised ’cause Brookline’s not a bad area, compared to some. Where I’m from, Mattapan? You could fill a whole lot of milk cartons with everyone goes missing from there.”

“You were gone a while,” Jenn said. “I was getting a little antsy.”

“You could have called me.”

“I did. Your phone was off.”

“Oops.”

“You need to stay in touch.”

“Don’t worry so much. I have a mother for that.”

“Consider me her stand-in. So what happened? Find anyone who saw him?”

I filled her in on my talks with the cyclist and the trolley driver. When she had taken in all the details, she said, “So, someone really tried to grab David that night.”

“Yes.”

“But he got away.”

“For the moment,” I said. “They could have tried again and succeeded.”

“Or he found a good hiding place and doesn’t want to come out.”

“Not even to call his parents? He’d know they’d be worried sick.”

“I know. I’ve got a couple of things on my end,” she said. “I called the New England Organ Bank and spoke to a woman named Wendy Carroll who confirms what Stayner told you. There’s no way a doctor can manipulate the waiting list for a transplant. When an organ becomes available, the bank evaluates the candidates on the list as far as their health, their readiness for surgery, the severity of their illness, etcetera, and they contact the hospital. It doesn’t work the other way around.”

“So David didn’t get that money for influence peddling.”

“No. Have you signed your donor card, by the way?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Me too. ’Cause I’ll tell you, the numbers are scary. There’s over five thousand people in Massachusetts alone waiting for organs, mostly kidneys, and maybe one in five will get one. Cadavers are hard to come by.”

“Not in Mattapan, I hear.”

“Next,” she said. “Carol-Ann Meacham.”

“The one who called David all those times.”

“And vice versa. But when I asked her about it, she couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. And I don’t think it was just a matter of being busy. These are all busy people. I just mentioned David’s name and boom, she shut down. Said she couldn’t help me. Pretty much hung up on me.”

“You get the feeling they were dating?”

“I’d like to ask, if we can get some face time with her.”

“What does she do again?”

“According to the hospital website, she coordinates a gene study there.” She called up the web page on her laptop, then swivelled it so I could see the screen.

It was a year-old news release announcing that Sinai Hospital would be asking all patients seeking treatment to provide a blood sample for genetic testing, with the results to be used to build a massive genome database.

According to the release, the research team hoped to collect samples from a hundred thousand patients, even those seeking routine care, and follow them over time to see how their genetic makeup, lifestyle and environment affected their health.

At the bottom was a contact number for media relations. I called it, got voice mail and left a message saying I wanted to interview Carol-Ann Meacham about the gene study as soon as possible. Then Jenn and I went over other options for the next day.

“With luck,” I said, “Karl will get David’s computer open and we can find out more from his email and browser. I also want to talk to Gianelli again, tell him about the attempted grab.”

“The alleged grab, he’ll say.”

“The problem is all the different police forces at work here. The fact that Mr. Patel is missing too, that would normally stir some interest, but one’s in Brookline, the other’s in Somerville. Can you imagine Toronto working this way?”

“I’m just trying to imagine Toronto working,” she said.