Boston Cream

CHAPTER 30

In the past few days, it seemed, I’d spent all my time in the studies of men who were supposed to be doing good in this world. A rabbi, a doctor, a congressman. Learned, righteous men in their studies, getting people killed. Now I was in Stayner’s again while Ryan went to Lugo’s to fill out his deadly list.

“You have to understand,” Stayner said, “nothing like this was supposed to happen to David. Daggett told me all along he wanted David to assist in the surgery Monday. If David got in touch, I was supposed to reassure him of that.”

“You sure he never did?”

“Never. Not a word after our last conversation.”

“But why would Daggett kill David if Dr. Reimer hasn’t healed yet?”

“But he has.”

“What do you mean?”

“We met Thursday. I’m not saying he’d be ready to lead such a procedure, but as far as assisting, his injuries had sufficiently healed.”

“Did you tell Daggett that?”

Stayner hesitated, losing some of his assertiveness. “He asked. I answered. That’s how it works with Sean Daggett.”

“Didn’t you realize what that meant? You made David expendable.”

“How was I to know you’d lead them to him? Don’t project your guilt onto me, Geller. It’s your fault he got killed. And it was up to you to keep your partner from being grabbed, not me!”

He was leaning against his desk, legs crossed at the ankles. I came at him fast from his right. He pushed off and moved instinctively toward the wall where his family photos hung in black frames. I squared up with him, crowded him against the wall and drove my left fist through the drywall next to his ear. Two family photos slid down and crashed against the floor, the glass shattering loudly. Plaster dust fell like snowflakes into his finely combed hair.

“That’s me projecting,” I said.

“Jesus Christ, you’re crazy!”

“If I hit your chest that hard,” I said, “I could stop your heart.”

I heard footsteps outside the door and his wife’s voice calling, “Honey? Is everything okay?”

“Tell her,” I said.

Stayner was shaking; whether in fear or anger was his business.

“Everything’s fine,” he called. “Just me being clumsy.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Please, Gwen, leave me alone. Everything’s under control.”

“Don’t you wish,” I said in his ear.

“It was the media that did me in,” Stayner said, once his wife had left the house on an errand he encouraged her to run.

“That’s original.”

“It’s true. When our transplant program marked its fiftieth anniversary a couple of years ago, we made all the local papers. The Herald ran a feature on me and my role in shaping the program. Sean Daggett got it into his head that I was the only man to help his boy.”

“How did you get Carol-Ann involved?” I asked.

“Rather easily. She’s one of those women who hit forty and realize they’re as likely to get blown up by a terrorist as they are to get married. So she wanted the one other thing that would provide security, and that was a house. She’d bent everyone’s ears about it around the department. She wanted a foreclosure she could fix up, with tenants to help pay off the mortgage. She jumped at the chance to make some cash.”

“How did it work?”

“We ran Michael Daggett’s blood and tissue samples against all the ones she’d collected to date. Matches don’t have to be perfect,” he said. “But the better they are, the fewer anti-rejection drugs the patient has to take, which means a lighter toll on the body. We isolated eight matches in the Greater Boston Area that were more than acceptable. Three were discarded immediately because of age or health concerns. Of the remaining five, I’m told, Daggett found one who responded to whatever offer he made.”

“You sure it wasn’t at gunpoint? Was the donor even conscious when he was brought in?”

“I told you before, I don’t know. I only entered once he had been prepped.”

“For all you know he could have been disposed of after the surgery.”

“That wasn’t my understanding,” he said. “I was told he was a willing donor.”

“How long before Daggett approached you again?”

“About three months. He told me he had found someone else who needed a kidney and didn’t trust the system to provide one in time. Of course, this person also happened to have the money to obtain one illegally. Daggett found out what these surgeries cost in hospitals and charged him double. Half a million. And then he told me we were in business. Anyone who left the team would be killed. If I tipped anyone off, my son would be killed. He would pay us the same amount as before-ten thousand per team member, twenty-five for me.”

“How many have you done?”

“We’ve averaged one surgery a month, so about fifteen so far.”

“That’s more than enough to know the place inside out. So here’s what you’re going to do: sit down with a pad and sketch every inch of Halladay’s, every door, window and chimney. Write down who’s usually there the night of a transplant by way of security. Who packs a gun.” I moved in closer, advancing slowly, never taking my eyes off Stayner’s, backing him up until he was angled over the harvest table, his palms on the table to support him. “You’re going to show us how you get in, how the others get in. Are you usually patted down when you get there? Does anyone check your equipment? What does Reimer look like? Would they recognize him with a mask on? Come on, get writing. You’re such a Harvard genius, write it down.”

His arms were shaking from the strain. His elbows quivered and the table shook. An apple fell out of a basket of fruit and rolled along the table to the far end, where it dropped onto the floor.

“Quit crowding me and I’ll do it.”

“This isn’t crowding. Crowding will be if anything happens to Jenn because you left something out.”

I let him up. He stood up straight and brushed at his shirt. Smoothed back his hair, his hands still trembling. He got scrap paper and pencils out of a kitchen drawer and set them on the table. “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “there’s a very good chance your friend is still alive.”

“Why?”

“The fresher tissue is when you transplant it, the better. And as in your supermarket, fresh is always better than frozen. I can’t assemble the team twice in two days, so if Daggett is sick enough to do this to her, it will be tomorrow night, either before or after Mrs. McConnell’s surgery.”

“Insist it be done after.”

“You don’t insist with Daggett.”

“This time you do. Tell him you’re not feeling well, you have to do the McConnell transplant first. Tell him it doesn’t matter if the woman dies, so you’d rather do her after, when you’re tired.”

“He’s greedy enough to buy that,” Stayner said. “Okay, I’ll try it. The least I can do is buy you that time for her.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the fact that Stayner could draw; he was a meticulous man and good with his hands. But his renderings of Halladay’s Funeral Home from a range of perspectives were excellent. He started with a street view, placing the mortuary on Wellington Hill Street with two other properties on each side. Then filled in the front and rear entrances with all doors and windows.

He talked me through the procedure in five-minute blocks of time from the team’s arrival, through the set-up, scrubbing and surgery itself: the swift laparoscopic removal of the organ; the stapling and suturing of the donor while the organ sat on ice; the insertion of the organ and the stapling and suturing of the recipient. The diseased kidney was not removed but left in to wither and die. Done sequentially, it took four to six hours, assuming no bleeding, misfired staples or other complications.

Stayner told me security during a transplant was usually limited to four men. The day shift and night shift would simply overlap for the duration.

“What about Daggett? Does he usually come?”

“He attended Michael’s, of course, and the first half-dozen or so. Then he seemed to lose interest. It’s more sporadic now.”

“When he does come, is he alone?”

“Never. He always has that hulking friend of his. Kieran.”

“Kieran’s out,” I said. “Jenn took him out before Daggett grabbed her.”

“Then he’ll have someone else,” Stayner said. “Daggett is never alone.”

He made a list of all his team members and the equipment they typically brought in with them for each procedure. “We don’t leave much at Halladay’s. Even with their security, you don’t want to leave anything of value in that neighbourhood.”

“Which means we can hide a gun in your stuff. I don’t suppose you’re handy with a pistol.”

“Not even if it were filled with water.”

“Any of your team?”

“Please, we’re surgeons.”

“Don’t get huffy,” I said. “You did plenty of damage by agreeing to Mrs. McConnell’s surgery.”

“Daggett forced me to-”

“Save it. Lerner could only bring the deal as far as you. You took it to Daggett. He didn’t know about it until you volunteered, knowing McConnell would pay ten times what you’d been throwing back. And that extra step helped get David killed.”

“You’re determined to blame that on me.”

“It’s that or punch more holes in your walls.”