The Traffickers

V
ONE

Temple Burn Center Temple University Hospital North Broad and West Tioga Streets, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 10:10 A.M.

The third-floor Intensive Care Unit was ringed by a corridor that went around the entire floor by the exterior windows. Chad Nesbitt stood leaning against the northwest corner window, which looked out onto Broad and Tioga and, across the street, the Shriners Children’s Hospital. The two medical facilities were connected by an enclosed sky bridge.

Inside, Nesbitt had a view down the north and west corridors. Near the ends of each were pairs of swinging doors that led into the Intensive Care Unit sterile areas. The ICU room at the end of the corridor to Nesbitt’s left was where the doctors had put the burn victim initially admitted as “John Doe.” Sitting in a chrome-framed plastic chair across from it was Skipper Olde’s father.

Joseph Warren Olde, Sr., had his head in his hands and was staring at the highly polished tile floor, seemingly frozen. He was tall and lanky, with thin, patrician features.

Nesbitt knew that he was a graduate of Harvard, and even now he had on the school’s unofficial uniform. He wore it damn near every day-a Brooks Brothers two-piece striped woolen suit (summer weight now, the cuff of the pants barely covering his ankles) with blood-and-blue rep necktie, white button-down shirt, and Alden black leather shoes.

It’s on twenty-four/seven, Chad thought.

I’ve even seen him in it in Florida. He looked like Richard Nixon walking down the beach. Ridiculous.

It’s like he hides behind that suit.

Skipper said he’d overhead his grandfather once say, “Joey never really excelled at anything, except perhaps being arrogant.”

Sitting in another chrome-framed plastic chair beside him was a blue shirt Philadelphia Police Department patrol officer.

Police Officer Stephanie Kowenski was twenty-five years old, five-foot-four, and 150 pounds. She more than filled out her uniform, and her bulletproof vest served only to accentuate her bulk. In the molded polymer holster on her right hip she carried a Glock Model 17 nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with a fully charged magazine of seventeen rounds and one round in the chamber. Two additional fully charged magazines were on her kit.

Police Officer Kowenski’s orders were to keep watch on the door. She had a police radio on her belt, its coiled cord snaking up to her shoulder mic-the microphone pinned to her right shoulder epaulet. The orders further said to immediately report any news of any kind concerning J. Warren Olde, Jr. She was reading for the third time a People magazine she’d taken from the dog-eared stack on the coffee table next to her chair, and was attempting not to notice the anguished father of the victim.

At the end of the corridor to the right was the ICU room in which they’d put Becca Benjamin. There, a male version of Police Officer Kowenski-short, squat, bored, but reading a paperback novel-guarded the door.

Pacing in front of the swinging doors was Mr. James Henry Benjamin. The fifty-year-old president and chief executive officer of Benjamin Securities, who was five-eleven and 160 with a striking resemblance to the actor Pierce Bros nan, kept shaking his head and muttering, “I don’t understand this. I just don’t understand…”

His wife, Andrea, who also was fifty and a very attractive older version of her daughter Becca, sat in one of three chrome-framed plastic chairs against the wall of windows. She held a cellular phone in one hand, a white linen handkerchief in the other. After every third or fourth pass of her husband, she tried to calm him, and added, “Honey, please sit down.”

Nesbitt pulled out his phone and hit the key that speed-dialed Matt Payne’s mobile. It rang only once before he heard Payne’s voice.

“Hey, Chad. What’s up? Where’re you?”

“At Temple. The Burn Center? I felt it best to be here…”

His voice trailed off.

Matt Payne knew the hospital. And he knew why Becca and Skipper had been taken there, and not to Nazareth Hospital, even though it was only blocks away from the Philly Inn.

Tony Harris had explained to him that the “Where do we take ’em?” decision for the medics on the scene had been a no-brainer.

“The medics followed the trauma triage protocol,” Harris had told Payne. “The first thing, they measured for vital signs and level of consciousness. Then came other immediate steps, including establishing an airway, immobilizing the spine, beginning a high flow of oh-two-maintaining an oxygen saturation of at least eighty or ninety percent-controlling the hemorrhaging, attempting to determine the level of injury. Then there’s a long list of criteria that, if a patient meets any one of them and certainly more than one, the medics contact the Level One Trauma Center. And because both of these victims were pretty fucked up, and ‘trauma with burns’ is one criterion, it was a simple call. Temple has (a) the only Level One Trauma Center, and (b) it has the Burn Center.”

“Matt,” Nesbitt then went on, “any chance you can swing by? You know the Benjamins better than I do. They could use a friendly face to maybe answer any questions.”

“What kind of questions, Chad?”

“Hell, I don’t know. What kind of fucking questions go through a parent’s mind when their daughter’s just suffered through an explosion and now lies in a burn unit ICU? And the parent has no idea what’s happened and what may happen.” He paused. “I’d guess those kinds of fucking questions. Maybe if you were a parent, Matt, you’d understand.”

Nesbitt saw that Police Officer Kowenski had looked up from her magazine, and he realized how loud he’d been. He looked down the other corridor; luckily, it appeared that the Benjamins hadn’t overheard him.

“Sorry, Matt,” he said more quietly. “Can you come?”

“I’m maybe ten minutes out. Just coming up on Broad and Race now. See you shortly.”

“Thanks, pal.”

Omar Quintanilla was at the wheel of the rusty white Plymouth minivan as it drove up Broad Street. The Temple Burn Center was no more than a fifteen-minute drive from the row house on Hancock Street and about a dozen blocks north of Susquehanna, where Juan Paulo Delgado had delivered Ana’s head at the laundromat. Quintanilla made a right turn onto West Tiago Street and pulled to the curb just shy of Germantown Avenue.

Jes?s Jim?nez opened the front passenger door, stepped out, and slammed the door shut without any formalities.

The minivan drove off.

Jim?nez was nineteen years old, stood five-feet-one, and weighed just over a hundred pounds. He kept his dark hair cut somewhat short, and his attempt at growing a mustache left it looking a bit ragged. On occasion, El Gato called him “El Gigante”-but always from a distance and always with a smile. Jim?nez could have a vicious temper.

He wore a top and bottom of royal blue cotton hospital scrubs over a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt. A black nine-millimeter Beretta Model 92 was hidden inside the front of his waistband. The 92 was the civilian variant of the M9 semiautomatic pistol that was standard U.S. military issue.

Jim?nez started back toward Broad Street, setting a slow pace until he saw a clump of four others in hospital scrubs moving toward the Temple Burn Clinic entrance. He quickened his pace so that he more or less joined their flow. The group of men and women entered the building.

Once inside, he headed for the bank of elevators and there joined a mix of visitors in street clothing and others in various colored scrubs.

In the elevator, one of the female visitors pushed the button for the third floor, then quickly corrected herself and pushed the one for four. He slipped to the back of the car.

At the second floor, all but two visitors got off.

The elevator doors closed, and it rose to the third floor.

When the doors next opened, the visitors did not move. But then they realized there was a hospital worker behind them and stepped aside.

He squeezed through the closing doors and stepped off the elevator. He turned a corner and found himself looking down a corridor. Halfway down it, he saw an empty gurney along the wall and went to it.

He pushed the gurney to a nurse’s stand. There, an obviously overworked, and overweight, white female nurse with a puffy face and thin brown hair sat behind the counter, looking at a chart.

“Excuse me?” Jes?s Jim?nez said, using a meek tone. “They call for this. For the burned one, the man?”

The overworked nurse looked up from the chart and made no effort at all to conceal the fact that she was annoyed (a) by the interruption and (b) by an orderly’s interruption.

Then that look changed to one of confusion.

“Why,” she said, “would they call for a gurney for him? There’re gurneys everywhere.”

Jes?s Jim?nez shrugged, his facial expression saying, I just do as I’m told.

Then she answered her own question, muttering: “Unless they’re preparing for the inevitable. If he ain’t dead yet, it’s only a matter of time.”

Jes?s Jim?nez looked at her with a blank face.

He thought, If you only knew…

The nurse then pointed. “ICU 303. Around the corner, at the end. Can’t miss it. Look for the woman cop.”

Woman cop? Jesus, Jimenez thought.

Shit!

But he simply said, “Gracias,” and began pushing the gurney in the direction she’d pointed.

“It’s so good of you to come by, Matt,” Mrs. Andrea Benjamin said after she had given him a big hug. “It’s such a terrible time. Did you see Chad?” She looked down the corridor. “He was just here…”

“Yes, ma’am, earlier,” Payne said. “He sent me a text message saying he got a call and had to run an errand.”

James Benjamin was not in the mood for niceties.

“Matt, this situation has all the makings of that goddamn Skipper Olde. You know he’s a no-good sonofabitch. Had to be his drug deal gone bad. And he dragged in my girl.” He paused. “You can’t charge her with anything for just sitting in her car in a damned parking lot!”

Payne, out of the corner of his eye, saw the blue shirt look up from his paperback.

Well, that got the bored guy’s attention.

“James!” Mrs. Benjamin said softly. “Please.”

“Mr. Benjamin,” Payne replied, “I’m not charging anyone with anything. That will be someone else’s call, most likely a white shirt at the Roundhouse. There’re a lot of questions yet to be answered.”

And that really got his attention.

Then one of the swinging doors to the ICU beside the cop opened.

“Dr. Law!” James Benjamin said. “Any news?”

Matt Payne turned to see an absolutely beautiful blond woman in the white coat of a doctor step out into the corridor. She pulled a powder-blue surgical mask down from her face. She looked to be not quite thirty, five-feet-five and maybe 110 pounds, her golden hair pulled back in a short ponytail under a surgical cap. She had the lean look of a runner, and an air about her of complete confidence.

Jesus! Payne thought. Now, that is a gorgeous woman!

Bright, intelligent face and eyes.

And the body of a goddess.

She walked up to them, a clipboard under her left arm.

Payne’s eye went to the left patch pocket of her white lab coat. There, enhanced by a magnificent mound of bosom beneath the fabric, was stitched in blue: Amanda Law, M.D., F.A.C.S., F.C.C.M.

Payne mentally translated the alphabet soup:

A medical doctor who’s a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Critical Care Medicine.

Correction: An absolutely stunning Fellow.

Payne decided he must have been staring, because Dr. Law suddenly turned and looked at him questioningly.

“Doctor,” Mrs. Benjamin then said, “this is an old friend of the family. And of course Becca’s. Matthew Payne, Dr. Law.”

Dr. Amanda Law looked at him again, curtly nodded once, then turned back to the Benjamins.

She pulled the clipboard out and flipped pages.

“As we discussed briefly, the trauma is significant, worse than the burns, which are about three percent TBSA-”

“Would you mind going over that for me?” Payne said.

She made a face of annoyance at the interruption. She looked to the Benjamins for permission.

They nodded their assent.

“Total Body Surface Area,” Dr. Law said. “A specialized burn center is required for any injury over five percent TBSA, or a burn of the face or hands or one that encircles an extremity. Third-degree-what do you know about burns, Mr. Payne?”

He held up his right hand about ear high. The palm faced her, the thumb holding down the pinky to leave the middle three fingers extended together.

“Everything! I’m an Eagle Scout! And, please, call me Matt.”

She looked at him incredulously.

“First-degree burns,” he went on, lowering his Scout sign, “are mildest. Only the skin’s outer layer is damaged. Second-degrees are worse-deep and very painful. Usually blisters. And third-degree burns, also called full-thickness burns because all skin layers have been affected, are the worst. Very deep and serious. And there may be no pain in the burn because of destroyed nerve endings.”

“Not bad,” Dr. Law said with a serious face. “That is, for a Boy Scout. But there is a fourth-degree. They extend down to the muscle, sometimes to the bone. Fourth-degree is rare.”

Payne nodded. “The pair who died in the explosion had fourth-degree. I just assumed those were categorized as severe third-degree burns. Which, now that I say it, would appear redundant.”

Payne then wondered if Skipper had fourth-degree burns.

Tony Harris also had told him that when Skipper bolted out of the burning motel room, he thought that the staggering man had been damn lucky to get out alive with only his clothes blown to shreds. Then Harris had realized the man was naked. What he’d thought were strips of clothing actually had been his flesh blown into strips.

“You were at the motel, Matt?” Mrs. Benjamin said with great interest.

“Yes, ma’am. Afterward. After the firefighters finished.”

“And you saw the ones who died?” Dr. Law asked.

Payne nodded. “The tech from the Medical Examiner’s Office showed me.”

“May I ask what you were doing there?” Dr. Law asked.

“I’m with the Homicide Unit.” He reached into his front pants pocket and pulled out a wad of cash folded under a silver money clip. From the middle of the bills he slipped out one of the three or four business cards he kept there. He held out one to her. “Sergeant Matt Payne. My information, in case you can think of something I should know later.”

And with that statement the blue shirt now has figured me out.

She looked at it, then wordlessly-and perfunctorily-took it. She stuck it on her clipboard, then looked him in the eyes.

Do I detect, my dear doctor, something more than idle interest?

Please? You’re certainly Law. I would like to study…

“Matt,” Mr. Benjamin injected, “do you mind if we get back to Becca?”

Dr. Law said: “My apology, Mr. Benjamin. Your daughter is now heavily sedated and immobilized. The windshield that hit her actually did her a bit of a favor. That is to say, what hurt her also helped her.”

“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Benjamin said.

“It served to protect her from worse injury. Her burns are limited to her upper scalp and her right hand. The glass protected the rest of her body.”

“Thank God!” Andrea Benjamin said, then audibly sighed with relief.

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Law continued, “the blunt-force trauma of the windshield has caused intracranial hypertension-”

“Becca’s brain is swelling?” Payne interrupted.

Dr. Law nodded. And it was clear by the look on her face she was impressed Payne even knew the term “intracranial hypertension.”

She looked between the Benjamins and went on: “We are going to try some first steps, ones that could correct the problem. But, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin, I must caution you to be prepared that it may come to us having to induce a coma.”

“A coma!” James Benjamin said.

Andrea Benjamin put the handkerchief to her face and sniffled.

“We may not,” Dr. Law said, her tone soft yet reassuring. “I will of course be conferring with colleagues, specialists, before deciding. And of course with you.”

James Benjamin shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus!”

Payne could see that Benjamin’s muscles were now even more tense.

“Can you tell us what is going to happen now?” Andrea Benjamin said.

“Yes, of course,” Dr. Law said. “As I said, we have your daughter as comfortable as possible. She is in what might be described as a plastic tent. It creates an absolute sterile environment. There is a HEPA filter system hooked up to it that removes dust, dirt, and other particles from the air inside the tent to reduce the chances of infection of the patient.”

“What about the burns?” Andrea Benjamin said. “Will she require… oh, what’s the word?”

“Grafts?” Payne offered.

That earned him the glare of Dr. Law.

“Mrs. Benjamin,” she then said calmly, “I do not think skin grafts will be necessary. We have come a long way with specialized treatments. There are, for example, enzymatic agents. These dissolve the burn’s dead tissue on the surface. The process then lets the tissue underneath heal. Also, we have the option of artificial skin, with which we have had significant positive results.”

“Oh, that is all such wonderful information,” Andrea Benjamin said, her tone somewhat hopeful. “Thank you, Doctor.”

Dr. Law nodded and said, “But please remember: We’re very early in this process. There’s much work”-there was a perceptible pause as her eyes looked down the corridor-“to do.”

Payne looked to where she’d glanced. Joseph Olde was walking toward them.

“Good morning,” Olde called as he saw them looking at him.

“What the hell is good about it?” James Benjamin blurted.

“James…” Andrea said reprovingly. She looked at Olde. “Any news on Skipper, Joseph?”

“Nothing new yet.” He stared at Payne. “You’re Matt Payne, aren’t you?”

You didn’t have the decency to return the courtesy? Payne thought.

You could’ve at least asked Mrs. Benjamin about Becca.

Even if apparently you don’t give a damn.

Matt looked at James Benjamin.

And that’s not lost on her father…

No wonder Skipper can be such a prick.

Clearly, the nut didn’t fall far from the fucking tree.

“That’s right, Mr. Olde,” Payne replied.

“You still playing cop?” Olde said, but didn’t wait for a response before looking at James Benjamin. “Listen, Jim, I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones, but this time, this meth-”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Benjamin snapped.

Payne could see the veins in Benjamin’s temples pulsing.

Olde arrogantly went on: “Well, clearly this girl of yours has an established long pattern of substance abuse-”

“Why, you son… of… a… bitch!” James Benjamin shouted, furiously drawing out his declaration of sonofabitch.

What happened next transpired so quickly that Payne did not have time to even try to stop it.

Benjamin balled his right fist and swung. His punch hit Olde square in the left cheek, causing Olde to stagger back two steps. But remarkably Olde quickly recovered, and practically launched his lanky body at Benjamin, knocking them both to the floor.

“Stop it, you two!” Andrea Benjamin demanded.

The blue shirt sitting by the swinging doors dropped his paperback book. He reached up to his right epaulet, where the microphone of his radio was pinned.

He keyed the mic, and barked, “Kowenski! Get your ass down here!”

Then he jumped out of the chair and moved toward the brawl to break it up.

As Payne also moved that way, he saw a gurney come around the corner and into the corridor. It was being pushed by an orderly in blue scrubs.