Devil's Harbor (31 page)

“How?” said Mona.

Linda took a long while to answer. “Aboard the
Pacific Belle
.”

Mona could barely disguise the expression of loathing on her face. Linda looked at the floor.

“Then what happens?” Mona asked.

“Once they're on the mainland, Cutts has a contact at the hospital who gets them into the system.”

“Which hospital? What's the name of his contact?”

“A guy called Dr. Brian Wilson in the transplant program over at Pacific Memorial. He's the organ-procurement director there. He whitewashes the stolen organs. Then he makes sure that the organs are allocated to the people who paid for them.”

“‘Whitewashes them'—what does that mean?” said Mona.

“There's a centralized organ-allocation system. You need an organ, your name goes on the list, and you wait. When a consenting organ donor dies, his doctors flag his organs in the system. Dr. Wilson makes the stolen organs appear in the computer records like they came from legitimate sources. And he also makes sure the client gets it. Usually, when an organ becomes available, the computer uses a secret algorithm to determine who gets it. They keep the algorithm secret so that no one tries to game the system by pretending to be sicker or younger or whatever, stack the odds in their favor. But Dr. Wilson can game the system. He has access.”

“Why would he?” said Mona.

“You know how much you can get for a healthy adult kidney these days?” said Linda. She sucked on her cigarette and answered her own question: “A half million dollars.”

A black thought crossed Finn's mind. “So, Navidad…” he said.

Linda shook her head sadly. “Cutts says children are worth twice as much.”

Finn had heard enough. “Where is he now?” he said.

“You want to hear the definition of irony?” said Linda acidly. “He's back in the hospital. Turns out he needed an organ himself. Both his kidneys failed. So last month, he stole one. Espendoza's, actually. That's why he killed your brother, Mona. When Diego and your brother came around asking questions about the
Belle,
he let slip that he and Finn had found Espendoza's body—
to the very person who'd killed him
. Cutts had a part of Espendoza right there inside of him. If Diego hadn't mentioned Espendoza to Cutts, he'd still be alive today, and Finn wouldn't be framed for murder.”

She gave another bitter laugh before continuing. “That's why Cutts has lived as long as he has, he says—he
always
covers his tracks. Anyway, it looks like his luck might have finally failed him. His body started rejecting the kidney, which is why he's back in the hospital. I wouldn't feel too sorry for him, though—Pacific Memorial has the top-rated transplant team in the state. Cutts is getting the best care that money can buy. No doubt Dr. Wilson will find a fresh kidney for him any day now.”

“Do you know where Navidad is?” Mona said.

Linda shook her head. “I have no idea.” She started sobbing again.

Finn turned to Mona. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

They walked into the corridor, out of Linda's hearing. Mona spoke first.

“You believe her?” she asked.

“It adds up,” said Finn. “The coroner said Espendoza was missing a kidney. Cutts didn't look well that night Diego and I went to see him about Espendoza. We asked what was wrong, he said he'd just been operated on. He didn't like the questions we asked. And what about what La Abuelita told us, about all those young men from Escondido, who disappeared? And then, the sharks…”

“What sharks?”

Finn rubbed his face with his hand. Over Mona's shoulder, he watched Linda light yet another cigarette. At the rate she smoked, she'd need a lung transplant soon herself.

“A lot of sharks are being sighted off of Two Harbors. Way more than usual. All those bodies…” From the look of horror dawning on Mona's face, he saw that he didn't need to complete that sentence. “I think she's telling the truth,” he said.

Mona studied his face for a moment. “She's in deep,” she said. “She could spend the rest of her life in prison. Why's she telling us?”

“You see how frightened she is? She doesn't want to go to prison, be separated from her daughter. Her husband's dead, all she has is her daughter. It's all she talks about. She knows that we need her testimony. She's coming clean to us now, making it clear she's on our side.”

Mona nodded. “Okay. So then we should call the police, tell them to pick up Cutts at the hospital.”

Finn shook his head. “There's not enough time. You heard what she said about Navidad. You want the police to do anything, then you have to convince them first. You have to get Linda to repeat everything she just told us. Doesn't matter if you've recorded it—they'll need to hear it. And she's not going to do that until she feels Lucy is absolutely safe and she has a guarantee she's not going to prison. Navidad will be dead by then.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“You take Linda and her daughter to the safe house. Get them settled in, make her understand that Cutts will never hurt her again. Then call the police from there. Meanwhile, I'll go to the hospital and find out where Cutts is keeping Navidad.”

“What if he won't cooperate?” said Mona.

Finn's eyes went cold. “He will,” he said.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Finn drove Linda's Tahoe to the hospital. Along with her car keys, he'd relieved her of her cell phone, with which he planned to stay in touch with Mona. He also wanted to make sure Linda didn't change her mind again and use it to call Cutts. He wanted to see the surprise on Cutts's face when he walked in.

Pulling into the parking lot, he recognized the hospital as the one he'd tailed Linda to, where her sister worked. The car started beeping at him when he backed into a parking space. He put the car into park and killed the ignition. In the center console he noticed an employee swipe card on a lanyard. It had the same logo on it as the big neon one over the hospital's entrance. He figured it was a spare card belonging to Linda's sister. Finn slipped the lanyard over his neck. It was ten at night. Visiting hours were long over. A swipe card around his neck would open doors, literally.

He walked into the hospital. Ansel Adams prints decorated the walls. Nurses and doctors in blue smocks and white coats walked purposefully along the linoleum floor. A huge oil painting of Ronald Reagan hung on a wall. It was one of those paintings where the eyes follow the viewer, and it left Finn feeling found out, as though the Gipper, with his wily smile, was looking right through his shirt at the semiautomatic pressing into the small of his back. He scanned the big hospital-directory board nearby until he found what he was looking for: nephrology, seventh floor.

In the elevator, he needed the swipe card to get access to the seventh floor. The doors opened onto a long corridor, the floor lined with the same linoleum as on the ground level. A waist-high roll of heavy-duty rubber matting covered the walls, protection against gurneys banging into them. No black-and-white landscapes of mountain peaks and lakes here. Instead, Finn walked past a poster with a caption that read:
DIABETES—KNOW THE WARNING SIGNS.

A ward nurse was talking on the phone at her station by the elevator. Finn gave her a friendly smile and walked purposefully past her, like he knew where he was going. She nodded, glanced at the card around his neck, and continued her conversation. He walked down the corridor, glancing into each room he passed. Toward the end, he heard a pair of TV sportscasters calling a football game. The 49ers at Seattle. Something dark and thick and nameless mushroomed in his heart.

Cutts was lying on a hospital bed, above the sheets. The arms of his hospital gown were too short, and decades-old, coarsened tattoos snaked down from his shoulders to above his wrists. The top half of the bed was tilted up. The white hair on the back of his head was pressed flat against a pillow. Clear liquid dripped through a tube from a plastic bag on a stand, through a machine and into Cutts's left arm. There was an adjustable-height table on the other side of the bed with a tray and cell phone on it, a glass and a pitcher of water on the tray. Cutts was watching the football game, the TV attached high on the wall opposite the bed.

There was no one else in the room.

Finn shut the door behind him. He pointed the P7 at Cutts's head. It was a small room: a mere six feet separated the barrel of his gun from the space between Cutts's eyes. Finn put his fingers to his lips. He took a moment to let the blackness in his heart ebb and to enjoy the dumbfounded look on Cutts's ravaged face. Then he said, “Call for help and you're dead. Understand?”

Cutts nodded.

“Navidad. Where is she?” Finn said.

“Who?” Cutts looked genuinely surprised.

Finn couldn't believe it. The guy was playing games even now. He kept the gun pointed at Cutts's head while he moved around the bed to the IV stand.

“I got to hand it to you, Cutts, you're pragmatic. You're confronted with a problem, you don't dawdle, do you? You get the job done. Professional. I'm the same way myself. That's why I couldn't figure out why you stuck by Linda. An amateur like her, cracking under pressure, crying all the time? I mean, she almost brought you down once already, telling me about Diego.”

Finn tilted his head to read the name of the drug in the bag hanging on the stand. “‘Zenapax.' Sounds serious. What's it for?”

“It's an immunosuppressant,” said Cutts in a low voice. His face was very pale.

“Huh,” said Finn, his tone conversational. “So anyway, that's what I asked myself: why is Cutts sticking with Linda? Then I get it:
he thinks she's the perfect cover.
She's a woman, a veteran, a widow, a mother. Everything a smuggler's not, basically. Even if the
Belle
does get intercepted, she's not going to raise any red flags. But maybe you also realize, after she tells me about Diego, she's unstable. She's not thinking clearly. So you decide you need to reassert control. Really get into her head, make it clear to her what her priorities are. And how do you do that?”

Cutts looked like he was about to speak, so Finn shook his head and said, “That was a rhetorical question, Cutts. I know damn well how you did it. You take her most precious thing. You kidnap her daughter.”

With his spare hand, Finn started toying with the plastic tube that ran into the cannula in Cutts's arm. “An immunosuppressant. That's a drug that shuts down your immune system, right?”

Cutts nodded wearily. “What do you want, Finn?”

“Let me finish my story,” said Finn. “We head south, we get you your narcotics. But Linda's mental state is fragile. She's on the brink. We get to Escondido, they're celebrating the Day of the Dead. She sees this kid being pretend-sacrificed in this folk play, and she comes apart, mentally. She ‘rescues' the girl from the orphanage, ranting about how Aztecs sacrifice children—I mean, just outright crazy talk. I could see she was going out of her mind, but what could I do? It wasn't like we could take the kid back to Escondido.”

Finn yanked the tube out of the cannula. Cutts gave a little cry. The machine started beeping. Finn found the volume knob and turned it all the way down.

“You noticed how everything beeps at you these days? Bugs the hell out of me.”

Finn held up the end of the tube. Liquid dripped from it.

“Linda told me you took Navidad from her. She's somewhere safe now, her and her daughter, somewhere you'll never find them. No one knows I'm here. Serpil won't be coming through that door with a gun behind my back. It's just you and me, and, I suppose, a piece of Espendoza.”

He poked the barrel of his gun into Cutts's side. Cutts arched his back in pain.

“Where's Navidad?” said Finn.

Cutts clenched his fist. Sweat filmed his forehead. “I'm telling you, I don't fucking know, Finn.”

Finn jabbed him in the side again. Not particularly hard, but more than Cutts could stand. The Irishman's eyes bulged. He looked twenty years older. Spittle appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“Jesus Christ, Finn, if you're going to kill me with that thing, just shoot me and get it over with.”

At exactly that moment, the 49ers scored a touchdown. The roar of the crowd blared from the TV. Finn grabbed the remote and turned it up. Then he leaned over Cutts and pointed the gun right between Cutts's eyes.

“Last week, you gave me a choice, then you counted down till I decided,” said Finn. “Now it's your turn. Five…”

“Jesus Christ, Finn! I don't know where the girl is!”

“Four…”

“I never even laid eyes on her! Linda has her!”

“Three…”

“I swear to God, Finn!”

“Two…”

“Her daughter is sick! Lucy! She's right here in the hospital!”

“One…”

“Linda
bought
the child from the Caballeros because her own daughter needs a kidney!”

Finn's mind did a hand-brake turn and spun wild. “What are you talking about?” he said.

Cutts's breathing was short and shallow. “Just what I said. Linda's daughter is dying, renal failure, like me. She's here in the hospital, waiting for a transplant. That Mexican girl … what'd you call her?”

“Navidad.”

“Navidad.
She's
the donor. Get it? Linda's been screening for her for months.”

Finn bristled. He waved the gun at Cutts. “You better start making sense very soon, Cutts.”

Cutts sat up and raised both hands defensively. “Just hear me out, okay? I'll tell you everything. Just take it easy with that thing.”

Finn dropped his arm but kept the pistol in his hand.

Cutts settled back into the pillows.