Lifeblood (25 page)

Rachel tried to quiet her nerves. The last time she’d been in this ward she was arrested when she left. What would happen this time?

Miguel reappeared, put his hand to her forearm, and drew her through the doorway. “Is okay now.”

Did he mean he understood, or that there was no staff around? Rachel desperately hoped it was at least the latter.

He half pulled, half pushed her down the corridor. Three rooms down on the left she could see the heads of the other two boys poke out to peer down the hall. One motioned for them to hurry.

There were three beds in the room, but only one in use.

Miguel pointed to the child in it. “Soledad.”

The child frowned, sat up, peered shyly at Rachel. “Who you? You want me? Porqué?”

Rachel moved toward the bed. Yes. The face seemed faintly familiar. This might be one of the kids she had taken to the emergency room. The hair was a little longer but still boyish. “You are a girl?”

The child’s nod was so tentative Rachel suspected that if she preferred a male, Soledad would do her best to be a boy.

“How old are you?”

“Once.” She pronounced it own-say.

“Diez y uno,” Miguel said. “Ten and one.”

“Eleven?”

“Sí.” This from both Miguel and Soledad.

“Why are you here?” Rachel asked her. “Here in the hospital?”

The girl looked puzzled. “I wake. I here.”

Thank God the child spoke some English. “You just woke up and you were here?”

Soledad nodded.

“How long have you been here?”

The girl held up three fingers. “Tres semanas.”

“Three week,” Miguel agreed. “Más o menos.” More or less.

Three weeks, plus or minus. Time-wise, that fit.

“Maria?” Soledad asked.

“Who is Maria?”

“Quién,” Miguel inserted.

“Mi amiga.” Soledad said and added something in rapid Spanish to Miguel.

Oh, no. The other kid. The one who died. Rachel dodged the question. “Do you remember being locked in a van? A truck?”

Soledad’s brows drew together.

“Van.” Rachel looked at Miguel, whose expression was blank.

“Car? Automobile?”

They all exclaimed, “Coche.”

A faint dinging came from somewhere in the bowels of the hospital. Rachel’s eyes darted nervously to her watch. “I have to go. I’ll come back. Will you talk with me again?”

The four in hospital gowns nodded solemnly, but she wasn’t sure how much they understood.

999

“Meet me for lunch,” Rachel said into the phone.

“I don’t get up till then. I have breakfast at one,” came Goldie’s groggy voice.

“Okay, one.”

“What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock. I waited as long as I could.”

“Eight o’clock? I just got to bed. Why are you doing this to me?”

“You aren’t going to believe what I found out this morning.”

There was a long pause on Goldie’s end, then, “I don’t think I want to know.”

“Please. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“Okay, okay. Where?”

“Philippe’s.”

“Oh, well. Twist my arm.”

“Come on. How long has it been since you had a good French dip.”

“I ain’t never had a French dip, honey. That’s for you white girls.”

“Goldie!”

“That’s what you get when you don’t let me sleep. Okay!” she added quickly. “I’ll be there. Two o’clock, right?”

“One,” Rachel said, then, “Wait. Can you pick me up?”

“Something wrong with your car?”

“No. It was due for a tune-up, oil change, all that stuff. Johnny Mack says he has time now, so I want to get it out of the way.”

As soon as Rachel hung up, she dialed the main number at Jefferson hospital. “Can you page Dr. Johnson? Emma Johnson.”

How much did Emma know about all this? Could something like that be going on right under her nose without her knowing it? Very unlikely. Possible? A small maybe, but still a maybe. Jefferson was big, old and sprawling. The people who knew every inch of it were probably few.

“Dr. Emma Johnson. Paging Dr. Emma Johnson.” Rachel could hear the hollow tones of the PA system. She ran her mind over what she would say when the doctor came to the phone. She would invite her to lunch, and once seated across a table, she would ask some very direct questions.

The receptionist came back on the line. “Sorry. Dr. Johnson isn’t here. I’ve been told she is out of the country.”

“When will she be back?” Rachel asked, but the line had gone dead.

999

Marty stared at the second card that fell face up on the green felt tabletop in front of him. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, then opened them wide. Both cards were clubs. The nine and ten.

His hair was shaggy, his eyes felt like two burned holes in his face. He had been up for how many hours? He looked at his watch. Thirty? The effect was worse than jet lag.

He tried to do the math, figure the odds. This was important. Real important. Rachel had called. Things were going from bad to worse for her. Now some stupid hunter had shot Hank.

Someone called from across the table, “Hey, Marty. Let’s go.”

“Hang on, hang on.” Marty lifted the corner of the first hole card, then the other. The queen and jack of clubs.

He moved a stack of chips into the pot.

Chapter Forty-nine

There was a distinct bounce to his step as he moved through the parking lot. The silver 4Runner gleamed under the lights. The lot was sparsely littered with cars. An old man with a cane was hobbling along on the sidewalk. Marty thought his gait looked a little like Charlie Chaplin’s.

He took a deep breath. The air tasted so good he wished he could liquefy it and drink it, get drunk on it. It was just after three a.m., but he wasn’t tired.

His wallet no longer fit in his back pants pocket. It barely fit in his jacket pocket. For that matter, he could hardly fold it. The wallet was probably ruined, the jacket pocket might be ruined, too. But he didn’t care. He could buy others. He could buy a thousand others.

Marty always took his winnings in hundred-dollar bills. For luck. To prime the luck-pump for the next game.

Wait till he told Rachel. He would call her as soon as he got home. Wake her up.

He punched a button on his key ring, the 4Runner’s lights flashed, and he heard the click as the locks opened.

He was reaching for the door handle when a wooden hook grabbed his shoulder and twisted him around. Marty looked into the face of someone who was definitely not Charlie Chaplin.

A fist ground into his face and he slumped to the ground. Sharp pebbles bit into his cheek.

Something slammed into the back of his head, and the world faded to black.

999

Goldie crossed her arms and looked over her eyeglasses at Rachel. They were standing in line at Philippe’s. “I guess it would be asking too much for you to tell me what the hell I’m doing here.”

Rachel rubbed the toe of her sneaker on the sawdust-covered floor and glanced around. “Wait till we get a table.”

Goldie reached the counter and ordered a beef sandwich and potato salad. “What do you want?” she asked Rachel.

“Turkey, coleslaw, and lemonade.”

They took their trays of paper-plated sandwiches and found a table at the back.

“Okay, what’s up?”

“They were girls in the van. Both of them. One is up in that ward.”

“No shit?”

Keeping her voice low, Rachel started a rapid blow-by-blow of her visit to the ward in the east wing of the hospital’s fourth floor.

“You’re talking with your mouth full,” Goldie observed.

“I don’t want my lunch to get cold. Since when do you stand on ceremony?”

“I don’t. It’s just harder to understand what you’re saying.”

Rachel put her sandwich down and sipped her lemonade. “What do you think they’re doing up there with those Mexican kids?”

“Nothing good.”

“I’ve got more than a sneaking suspicion. I’m just about certain.”

Goldie took a bite of potato salad. “Like what?”

“Think about what Inez said. Her boyfriend was ‘cut.’ They’re stealing body parts.”

“Gak!” Goldie put her sandwich down. “Arms and legs? I swear. You must want my lunch telling me stuff like that.”

“No, I mean organs. It’s pretty obvious that’s what Inez was saying.”

“I thought she was talking about experimental operations. Some kind of research.”

Rachel shook her head. “Think money. There’s not enough money in developing new surgical procedures. But there’s probably a lot of money in something like black-market human organs.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. You think they’re killing those kids?”

“No. At least not most of them.”

“How else can they steal their gizzards?”

“Well, I read or saw somewhere recently that if they take out half your liver, it grows back. And if they transplant the part they took into someone else, that part grows back whole, too.”

Goldie made a face. “I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a little creepy.”

“And these kids are poor, young Mexican kids.”

Goldie’s face knotted into a frown. “You think they’re kidnapping them in Mexico and bringing them up here to steal their livers?”

“Maybe half a liver. Or a kidney. Or who knows what else.”

“How much can you get for a kidney or half a liver?”

“No idea.” Rachel set down her lemonade.

“Well, if there’s a lot of money in it, no wonder they didn’t like you nosing around.”

“If it really is a lot, and it just might be, I can even see how they might send somebody to take me out—because I got too close. I watched that surgery and then I saw that ward, both on the same morning.”

“And the thug they sent got Hank instead,” Goldie said. “Which means you’re livin’ a risky life right now. Real risky.”

“Mind if I join you?”

They both looked up, startled, to see Gabe standing there with a tray.

Rachel brought her napkin to her mouth, tried to think of an excuse to say no, but couldn’t. “Sure.” She gave Goldie a look that said, “Why this, why now?”

“You got me, kid,” Goldie said.

When Rachel had introduced them, and moved her tray to make room for Gabe’s, Goldie stood up. “I’m going to get some lemonade. You make it sound good slurping it through that straw.”

“Good sandwich,” Gabe said when he had taken a few bites.

Rachel was wondering how much he had heard. “I guess that’s why this place has been around more than a hundred years.”

“You must know all the funky restaurants.”

Goldie returned with a cup and straw. “Yessir, she does. What she doesn’t know is how to stay out of trouble.”

Rachel tried to think of something innocuous they could talk about until Gabe finished his meal.

Goldie solved that by asking, “You’re a pharmacist, right? One of those guys who just fills prescriptions all day.”

“Well, not exactly “just.” At Jefferson, we work with various medical teams. I work with the pain program. There are so many medications these days, no doc could keep up with them all. We give advice to MDs, DOs, even to dentists, as well as to patients. And yes, of course we count out pills and fill prescriptions.”

“You must have to take a course in reading bad handwriting,” Goldie said.

Gabe chuckled. “Well, yes. That is a problem.”

“I guess prescription drugs are pretty expensive these days,” Rachel said.

Gabe nodded, chewing.

“I mean, that OxyContin they accused me of stealing, you said that was worth maybe a thousand bucks.”

“Drug prices are getting worse by the day,” Gabe agreed.

“Is OxyContin the most expensive one in your pharmacy?”

“Oh, no.” Gabe shook his head. “Not even close.”

Rachel wished he would finish his sandwich and leave. She was wondering about something else now and wanted to talk to Goldie. If she shut up, maybe he would chew faster. But that might seem rude. “What high-priced drugs do you sell the most of?”

Gabe thought about that. “Jefferson has a big transplant program. So for our pharmacy it might be immunosuppressants.”

That was a more interesting answer than she expected. Rachel forced herself not to shoot a look at Goldie.

“Immunosuppressants are expensive?” Goldie was asking in a voice that sounded half bored.

“You better believe it.” Gabe finished his sandwich and stood up. “Sorry to eat and run, but I gotta get back.”

“Oh, no problem,” Rachel said.

“Nice meeting you,” he said to Goldie, and to Rachel, “Good to see you again.” And he was gone.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Goldie said. “Immunosuppressants. Isn’t that what they give to people who get someone else’s kidney, or whatever?”

“You got it. To keep the body’s immune system from rejecting foreign tissue.”

Goldie narrowed her eyes. “You think he heard anything?”

“Didn’t seem like it.”

Goldie stacked their paper plates and cups. “That doctor friend of yours, you think she might be in on something?”

“I’ve been wondering about that, but I really don’t think so. If she is, she’s the best actress I’ve ever seen. Emma has a real strong feeling for the Mexican people. It seemed hard for her to even talk about how poor they were down where her clinic was.”

The two women made their way out of the diner.

“I ran out of time this morning,” Rachel said. “I’m going back tomorrow.”

“If you get caught, girl, it’s gonna be splat. There won’t be enough of you left to mop up with a paper towel.”

A cell phone tootled. They looked at each other.

“Mine.” Rachel pulled it from her handbag. “Yes?” Her face went startled, then puzzled. “You’re kidding….No, that’s crazy. I have no idea….Can you take it off? Yes, for God’s sake, get rid of it.”

“What’s going on?” Goldie asked when Rachel had disconnected.

“You won’t believe this.”

“From your end of the conversation, you may be right.”

“That was Johnny Mack.”

“That’s all you need. Something expensive is wrong with your car?”

“No, the car’s fine. This is totally bizarre. I’d been wondering why some random goon took it into his head to shoot at Hank and me.”

“I’m kinda hoping it was just some lunatic hunter gone postal,” Goldie said. “Like the cops suggested.”