Boston Cream

CHAPTER 15

There were two of them, each one uglier than the other. And one was a woman, built like one of those brick houses they put around high-voltage substations. She was about thirty-five, black with a shaved head and round rimless glasses, dressed in a baggy dark purple suit over a black shirt buttoned to the top. She was no more than five-five and probably outweighed me-and I’m carrying 190 now. Her partner was over forty and definitely outweighed me. Be hard not to, given he was a good six-three and not built small. Between them, they could more than handle me. They could stop a bullet train.

“Jonah Geller, these are Detectives Betts and Simenko from the Boston police,” Gianelli said; Betts was the woman. “They’d like to ask you a couple of questions about the photos you emailed me.”

“Why are the Boston police interested?”

“We’ll sort out the jurisdictional issues later.”

“There are no jurisdictional issues,” Betts said. Being short, she maintained an outward thrust of her chin that was probably supposed to intimidate people but just made her look defensive.

Gianelli didn’t seem intimidated. “Like I said, we’ll sort that out later. Geller, you sent me this picture by email, right?” He placed a printout of the Kevin Walsh photo on the table.

There was no point in denying it. The cyberlink was there. “Yes.”

“And this one?”

It was McCudden’s battered face, with blood coming out of his mouth and cheek.

“Handsome devil,” Simenko said.

“You said it was your belief that these men attempted to abduct David Fine on Summit Avenue in Brookline on the evening of February 28?”

“This is starting to take on the rhythm of an interrogation,” I said.

“It’s a conversation,” Gianelli said.

“For now,” Simenko said. He took my licence out of the side pocket of his grey suit coat, examined it and dropped it back in, like that was supposed to make the score fifteen-love.

“You further stated,” Gianelli said, “that they-”

“Further stated?”

“You told me you caught them following you yesterday and there was an altercation?”

“Mostly verbal.”

“That was why McCudden was sleeping,” Simenko said. “You talked him unconscious.”

“Is that the last time you saw him?” Betts said.

“McCudden?”

“Him or Walsh.”

“Yes, that’s the last I saw of either.”

“No further altercations, verbal or otherwise?”

“There’s that rhythm again.”

“Do you have a firearm here in Boston?” Simenko asked.

“No. I already told Gianelli that.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“You have a licence to carry one?”

“No. No gun, therefore no licence.”

Betts said, “You’ll submit to GSR testing?”

“I should have asked for the coffee, Gianelli. A bottle of water isn’t worth this.”

“McCudden and Walsh were shot and killed late last night,” she said. “Dumped in the harbour. Which,” she said to Gianelli more than me, “definitely means no jurisdictional issues.”

Jesus, the two of them dead. For screwing up with us yesterday. Whoever they were working for didn’t have a long fuse.

“Can you account for your whereabouts?” Simenko said.

“I was sound asleep.”

“At the Sam Adams.”

“Correct.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Not with your partner?”

“She has her own room.”

Betts reached into her inside pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. Unfolded, it was an enlarged copy of a photo from Jenn’s investigator’s licence.

“I don’t know,” Simenko said. “If it was me, I’d be sharing one room.”

“Me too,” Betts said.

Hilarious, both of them. At least they’d still be ugly in the morning.

“You say Walsh admitted his part in this supposed abduction?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Apart from the two shots that took the back of his head off,” she said, “he had abrasions and bruising on one leg. That have anything to do with him admitting it?”

“He was entirely cooperative. Plus I found a witness who’d identify at least one of them,” I said.

“The cyclist,” Gianelli said. “We’re trying to get in contact with him.”

“This cyclist didn’t seem to think there was an abduction until Geller told him so,” Simenko said. “Otherwise he would have called it in at the time, right?”

“He’ll say they were there,” I said.

“On the sidewalk with Mr. Fine, if that was Mr. Fine. Maybe arguing. They could have bumped into each other. It could have been a simple grab for his wallet or briefcase.”

“Yeah, there’s a big market for papers on kidney disease.”

“They wouldn’t know what was in it.”

“He hasn’t been seen since and they were following us because we’re looking for him.”

“You don’t know that for a fact.”

“I know they’re dead. So who did they work for?” I asked.

“Right,” said Simenko. “You’re not from around here. Don’t know your locals.”

“But you do, so you know who killed them. For fucking up the abduction and getting taken by us.”

“By you and your feisty partner,” said Betts. “How long you going to be here?”

“Until we find out what happened to David.”

“You renting by the month?”

“Very funny. Do you know who they worked for or not?”

“That’s a conversation for the grown-ups,” Simenko said. “Gianelli, copy us on the file on this MisPer. We’ll be in touch if there’s anything else.”

They were on their way out the door when I said, “Hey. My licence.”

Simenko shrugged and tossed it on the table. “Ain’t worth shit here anyway.”

“You throw a nice ambush,” I said after they’d gone.

“I warned you,” Gianelli said. “I told you to introduce yourself.”

“You didn’t have to lure me down here with a phone call. You could have told me what it was about, I’d have come.”

“Hey, I did you a favour. They wanted you down at their place and that wouldn’t have been as much fun. They got security at the front door like an airport. Now, you want a coffee or not?”

He took me up to his second-floor office, fortuitously free now, and went and got us each a mug of coffee.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The man the two dead guys worked for.”

“You’re a civilian, Geller. There’s a limit on what I can tell you.”

“Then you must think I have something to tell you.”

“Why?”

“This cup of what you call coffee. If the conversation was over, you’d have sent me on my way. You didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t. Because I do think you know more than you’ve said.”

“I told you I’d share whatever I found and I did.” At least my legs were crossed when I said it. “So who is he?”

“The Irish are a lot less structured than the Italians,” Gianelli said. “You got more gangs than families. But my connections in organized crime tell me McCudden and Walsh used to work for a guy named Sean Daggett.”

“Used to?”

“He got sent up on a state weapons charge, just came out not that long ago. Well, maybe a year. And seems to be keeping straight. Hasn’t done dick since he got out.”

“What was he into before?”

“The usual. Extortion, gambling, hijacking, armed robbery.”

“What kind of gambling?”

“Christ, I don’t know-numbers mostly.”

“Poker?”

“Cash games, you mean? I suppose. Why?”

“Just a wild swing,” I said. “David played on his computer so we thought maybe he’d ventured into a live game.”

“With what? We looked at his bank statements, the man had nothing.”

Unless I told him about David’s money, the story had all the credence of a federal budget. And if Sammy Patel wasn’t telling about his half, I was staying quiet about David’s. “Never mind. Like I said, a wild swing. So what does an Irish gangster want with a nice Jewish doctor?” I asked. “Those two thugs didn’t just happen to accost him for his wallet. Can we at least agree on that?”

“Of course we can. And don’t think Betts and Simenko wouldn’t. They just wouldn’t in front of you.”

“A kidnap with zero possibility of ransom. His parents have nothing except their house and I’ve seen it: it’s the kind of place the next owner will knock down. I asked his boss if he could influence donor lists and the answer was no. The only other thing he had in the world was his skill.”

“Maybe someone needed an operation done outside the box. The kind only he could do.”

“A transplant?”

“You know how impossible it is to get a kidney here?” His voice took on a different colour as he said it. A personal note.

“You know someone on a waiting list?” I asked.

“I did,” he said. “My brother-in-law. My wife’s younger brother. Great kid. He died waiting for a transplant, must be eight years ago now. He was thirty-eight when he passed. Anyway, all I’m saying is it’s not easy watching someone getting sicker and sicker when a transplant would help.”

“You think someone procured an organ on their own and demanded he implant it?”

“It sounds dumb, I know, but you said yourself, apart from his skills, what did he have? A simple mugging gone wrong, we’d have found his body by now.”

“But you’d need more than one guy to perform that kind of operation.”

“How many more?”

“I don’t know, but it’s got to be a few. I’ll ask Dr. Stayner. So what are you going to do about Daggett?”

“Me? Nothing. What’s Daggett got to do with me? He doesn’t live in Brookline and as far as I know he has no place of business here.”

“You have reason to believe a crime took place.”

“Maybe. But even if I believe it, there’s nothing I can act on. The best I can do is work behind the scenes a bit, see what else I can find. Just don’t expect me to bail you out of anything. You’re on your own here.”

Didn’t I know it.

I called Jenn as soon as I was out of the Brookline station and filled her in on my lovely chat with the Boston PD. I was pissed at Gianelli, pissed at the mugs from Boston. My heels were pounding bits of mica out of the sidewalk as I stalked toward my car.

“What do you think of Gianelli’s theory?” I asked.

“That David was kidnapped and made to operate on a gangster? That had to have been a Bogart movie.”

“Who plays the surgeon? Fredric March?”

“Or Leslie Howard. And are they supposed to have kidnapped an entire team? What did they do, show up with a bus?”

“Unless they already had a team in place and just needed one more. Look, I know it sounds too film noir,” I said, “but Gianelli and I agreed on this much: the fact that McCudden and Walsh were involved tells us this was no random mugging, it was a legitimate kidnap attempt. I think the poker angle is bullshit.”

“So do I.”

“And two different people have told us David couldn’t have manipulated the organ donor waiting list. We know ransom was out and there was nothing for him to embezzle. So what else did David Fine have in the world worth taking him for, if not this very special expertise of his, this world-class talent?”

“Maybe he witnessed something.”

“What, like a Mob hit?”

“It’s no less wacky than the Bogart script.”

“Still doesn’t explain the ten thousand he had. All right. Maybe I’ll find out something at dinner tonight. David might have gone to Rabbi Ed for help that night and he might know where he is.”

“That’s two mights in one theory, Holmes. And where he went that night is not necessarily where he is now.”

“No. Listen, I’m going to drive back to the hotel and drop off the car. I want to take the T to dinner.”

“The T-aren’t you a local boy!”

“I want to take the same ride David took, if he took it, get off where he did and walk to Rabbi Ed’s from there. I doubt there’s any sign of anything after two weeks but I’ll walk it. Try to see it through his eyes.”

“Good idea.”

“Plus you need the car.”

“To do what?”

“See what Carol-Ann Meacham does on a Friday night.”

Stayner himself didn’t call-he had left for the weekend-but one of his residents, Tania Hutchison, phoned me as I was walking into the hotel lobby. “According to Dr. Stayner,” she said, “the minimum team required to perform a simple transplant such as a kidney would be five. You’d need a lead surgeon, an assistant surgeon, an anesthesiologist, a scrub nurse and an OR nurse.”

“That’s it?”

“Ideally, you’d have one more nurse, but he said you could get by with five if the organ is coming from a cadaver.”

“And if not?”

“With a live donor, we always have two teams. The organ is taken out by one team, carried next door, where a second team one implants it while it’s fresh. Meanwhile, the first team tends to the donor. Prepares him or her for post-op care.”

“Can it all be done by one team?”

“Yes … but it would take a lot longer. They not only have to do it all, they’d have to rescrub in between.”

“What about space? How big a theatre would you need?”

There was a moment of silence while Tania considered it. “Not that big. You really just need a table with good light, and room for the team and their instruments. You could do it in the type of room where simple day surgeries are done. Cosmetic surgery, arthroscopy, that type of thing.”

“Okay. So how well do you know David?”

“We’ve spent a lot of time together,” she said. “A lot of time. We were residents together before being awarded our fellowships. And we were the only two who won them. I know his mind pretty well, what kind of problems he enjoys solving, how he approaches challenges, which is always the same. Study it closely, really closely, know everything about it and how it works, let it simmer a bit and then move decisively. And brilliantly. I don’t know if he plays chess, for example, but he’d be unbeatable if he does.”

“Apparently he prefers poker.”

“No! David? Really? Huh. I don’t associate him with that. But I can see that he’d be good at it. His temperament is actually pretty moderate for a surgeon. Some want to grow up to be Napoleon, I swear. I’m way more uptight than David, I can tell you that much. Although the last few weeks there …”

“What?”

“He never talks about anything personal. I don’t know to this day if he’s straight or gay. My gut feeling is he’s straight but I know he’d never go out with someone not Jewish so I never tested the waters. Maybe when he-”

“Tania? Did he seem upset?”

“Right. Sorry. Yeah, he did to me. It’s hard to describe changes in someone who keeps to himself as much as he does, but it’s like his screws got a little tighter. He’s always been pretty serious but the last few weeks he looked more grim. Not just soaking up information, which is like oxygen to him. Stewing about something. Did you ask Dr. Stayner?”

“Yes. He said he hadn’t noticed a change.”

“I doubt David would show any weakness around him. Stayner’s his idol. He’d never disappoint him. Or never did until he dropped out of sight.” Then she hesitated and said, “What feels the worst is I’ve really benefited from his disappearance. I’ve assisted on all of Stayner’s surgeries since then and if David doesn’t come back, I’ll be first in line for a fulltime position. It’s everything I’ve wanted since I started Harvard and I can’t enjoy it. I can’t tell you how badly I want him to come back.”

I thought of Ron Fine’s deeply lined face and the catch in his voice when he spoke about his missing son. I said, “You don’t have to.”