The Heart Does Not Grow Back: A Novel (12 page)

She took my hand again. My once-broken ribs tightened around my lungs and I got a little dizzy. “Are you okay, Dale? I mean really okay?”

“What happened to your eye?” I asked.

She let go of my hand again.

“I fell,” she said.

“I know what that’s code for.”

“I can walk the rest of the way.”

“You didn’t even tell me his name. You haven’t said anything about him at all.”

“Do you really want to know?”

“I do now,” I said. “Tell me about your husband. About marriage. Do you have any kids or anything?”

She walked away from me. I followed her, hoping she’d turn around and invite me back into lockstep with her. She didn’t. She stared at the sidewalk as we got closer to her street. Finally, she stopped at a corner and turned to me.

“You need to go,” she said. “I’m not mad or anything, but you just have to.”

“Can we walk again sometime?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I just can’t walk you any farther than this?”

“You’re already too far,” she said, looking around. “If he sees us—”

“It’s okay. I understand.”

She thanked me for the company and turned down Marshall Lane. I waited, then peeked around the corner. I saw her shadow moving in the distance, walking faster than she had before. I wanted to follow her home. I wanted to go inside and meet her shitty husband and let him know that if he touched her ever again, I’d make him pay. I wanted her fear and my fear to disappear. I wanted to see her eyes again without the marring of bruises and swelling. But most of all, I wanted her to hold my hand just one more time.

Instead, I headed back to my car. I slept and dreamt of kissing a blue-eyed girl, as I often did, but for the first time I didn’t know which twin I was kissing.

ELEVEN

Frank Winston was the proprietor of the biggest crematorium in the tri-county area. He insisted on speaking in person, and said nothing specific over the phone. I took this to mean I had struck black-market gold.

Frank was a big guy, thick-shouldered with a salt-and-pepper mustache and a handshake that could crack a stone. He didn’t know how I could come up with body parts, and didn’t care to know.

Turns out that tissue is one of the last bootlegging frontiers in America, poorly regulated and improperly structured. Guys like Frank knew how to turn a profit, and they weren’t hard to find. I just cold-called funeral homes and crematoriums, asking if I they knew how I could sell body parts. Most conversations turned incredibly uncomfortable. Frank kept it short, cutting me off. I thought he was a nonstarter, just blowing me off. However, he called me right back from a different number and, after making it clear I was serious, we decided to meet in person.

He took me at my word when I told him I could supply a steady stream of body parts, and he was more than excited to take a piece off the top in order to broker the exchanges. He chatted me up in immense detail, proud of his business, sounding more like a polished CEO than a black-market peddler.

I can only imagine he was comfortable enough to reveal layers of his operation because I had a cooler packed with ice, and inside were the dismembered toes from my right foot. Probably not worth much, but enough for him to know I meant business.

And yes, it hurt like a bitch.

One weekend a month, he had a diener with connections come in to do some disarticulation, which sounds fancy, but I got Winston to explain it a bit more simply: he found out he could make extra money selling off body parts from dead bodies he was supposed to incinerate, so he had a pathology assistant come in once a month to chop the bodies up and get the parts ready for the highest bidder. Dieners are the grunts of the medical world. They often cut apart the dead bodies during autopsies, as the pathologist gets to keep his hands clean while he talks into a tape recorder, weighs the organs, and reports the results. Since dieners aren’t doctors and don’t get paid like them, they’re always on the lookout for an extra buck, and one corpse could be taken apart for about fifteen grand for the sum of its parts.

None of these parts went to people. They went to companies. A knee to the orthopedist medical summit, some bone to a tissue company that sterilizes it and uses it for its supply of bone paste, a foot to the medical research company looking to attract the best podiatrists in the country to a convention.

To the body-parts industry, I’m a gold mine. Demand for dead bodies overwhelms supply. I’m an income stream without the need to fabricate medical records or death certificates. I’m the legit way to get parts, as opposed to handing a grieving family an urn full of Kingsford charcoal that they think is Uncle Ted.

Guys like Frank have a big drum full of ashes stashed in the crematorium. If he cut and sold a body, he could give the family a scoop of ashes and they’d never know the difference. Ashes contain nothing that can be traced—the DNA is destroyed just as thoroughly as the flesh itself.

We discussed all the details surrounded by the comforting environs of the Winston-Day Funeral Home. His office was adorned with flowers and soft colors highlighted by ambient lighting. We sat at his desk, wooden but slick, a too-clean and glossy surface where it would be tough to pick up coins. A brochure holder displayed company literature, a picture of an every-family with a slug line that proclaimed, “Helping you honor life.”

He asked me about what I could acquire in my supply chain while I looked at the front of the brochure. “Do you have a price list?” I asked.

He seemed surprised by this, but started naming off parts and their value, from memory. The brochure said, “Because your family means so much.” He started rattling off the prices from top to bottom.

“A skull with the teeth in it, a little over a grand.”

Family members had sat in this very chair. He would talk in hushed tones, no doubt, about the peace and tranquility they were buying for their investment.

“Five hundred for a shoulder. Skin is a flat ten bucks per square inch. A hand with the forearm attached is about four hundred.”

So this is what it feels like to deal drugs or run hookers, I thought. To make money off of ruining people.

“Pull out a good coronary artery, fifteen hundred. A foot is about two to four hundred.”

These were not impressive dollar amounts, considering the time and pain I’d have to endure. But it was either this or the gun, selling off parts or dying all at once.

“If the torso is already eviscerated, it’s worth a lot less, but it’s easier to come by.” He paused and leaned closer, as if to tell me a secret. “The fresh stuff is where the real money’s at. Blood, tissue, a fresh set of eyeballs to tinker with … If all you’ve got are toes, I’m afraid you’re not going to make much money.”

He winked, smiled, and I battled the urge to jump across the desk and choke him. Probably would have, if my foot were capable of jumping. Underneath the gauze of my fresh dismemberment, I already felt the deep, destructive itch that comes with my special healing.

“So what’s a kidney worth?”

He leaned back in his chair, looking a bit uncomfortable.

“From a cadaver?”

“Live,” I said. “Ready for transplant. Fresh from a healthy donor.”

“I’m not the guy for that,” he said. “You’re talking about heavier shit than I dabble in. You’re talking organ brokerage, some real dirty stuff. Cutting up bums from overseas for peanuts to give their parts to rich donors.”

“How much?” I asked again.

“Depends. A bum in Brazil can sell a kidney for six grand,” he said, “but that’s because he doesn’t know any better. But the operation? Rich-ass recipients pay around two-fifty. The broker who sets it all up and makes the connections makes an assload. He gets the recipient a mini-vacation, where they come home with a healthy kidney inside of them and a new lease on life. They don’t check for that shit at customs, you know? But there’s a reason it’s done in shit countries. The situation can get pretty hot.”

“So can you get me a broker?” I grabbed one of his brochures. “I can call you in a couple weeks.”

“If you’re looking to sell your own kidney, I don’t want to get involved in that,” he said. “There’s no heat on the small stuff. The bigger stuff takes a broker with more balls than me.” He walked by me, not making eye contact, presumably to show me the door.

“You can call somebody, so call them. Tell the broker it’s all you can eat. I can get him a steady supply of stateside organ donors, and not just kidneys. No need to screw with permissions or medical records. I can tap the mother lode.” Was I sure my organs would regenerate like everything else? No, but in situations like this, you bluff or you fail.

Winston thought about my offer for a long time. He stood up, approached me, and snapped the brochure away from me.

“I noticed you were walking like a guy who just lost his toes in some sort of freak … accident.”

I shrugged. “Athlete’s foot.”

“Toes are worthless, and that’s got to hurt like a bitch.”

“You in or out?”

“What’s my cut?”

“Reasonable. Depends on price, but expect a wedge of the action. I’m a fair guy.”

“I’ll have to make a few calls,” he said.

“If that’s the case, I need about five hundred for those toes.”

“They aren’t worth that.”

“I’m worth that,” I said. “Like I said, all you can eat.”

“You’re a weird little fuck, you know that?”

“And you’re in the healing and consoling business. Sure.”

I left, determined not to limp, the fire from my missing toes forcing me to bite deep into my cheek.

Toes, fingers, ears, tonsils. They had all returned. But organs? Knowing my luck, the only commodity I could home-grow that was worth a shit would be the things that wouldn’t grow back. Only one way to find out.

I pulled out my cell phone and I heard Winston behind me.

“Wait,” he said. He handed me a white envelope. “Am I lighting this money on fire, kid?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“That’s not the most encouraging answer, but a gamble is a gamble. There’s three hundred in there, not five. More than fair.”

“Like I said, I’m a fair guy,” I said. More important, it was enough to pick up a hefty dinner tab and fill up a cart with some groceries.

*   *   *

Mack arrived the next night, looking tanned and weathered, his hair cut shorter than ever before, his undersized shirt no match for his thickened biceps.

“Sampsonite!”

He had a backpack slung over his right shoulder, making it clear he meant to stay a night or two. I shook his hand and he pulled me into a half hug.

We ate at the closest chain steakhouse, which to us was a fancy-ass restaurant. Dinner started out with small talk and beers that went down fast. We kept refills coming—he knew I was picking up the check and I simply needed the drinks, knowing that eventually we’d have to get down to the things we never talked about once we ran out of the things we always talked about.

That moment occurred when he said, “You healed up good.”

“Seems that way,” I said, making a fist, then opening it.

“When were you going to tell me about it?” Mack asked.

“When you noticed,” I said. “But you’ve never been the detail-oriented type. It’s not your hand, after all.”

“I noticed,” he said, “at your mom’s funeral.”

“I wore the bandage at her funeral,” I said.

“I’m talking after,” Mack replied. “When everyone was leaving. I sat in my truck and hated how I left you. I mean, I hugged you and all, I told you I was sorry, but there always felt like something more to say, something to make you stop hurting. You stayed with her. By the time I got close, you were on your knees, your bare hands were pressed against her headstone, sobbing your ass off. You remember?”

Like anyone could forget a moment like that. “You left, then,” I said.

“I didn’t know what to make of it, what to say. I knew your hand was fucked up, but I saw it healed and whole, plain as day. Figured I might have been fucked up in the head myself or something, but seeing you now, it all came back.”

“I should have told you,” I said. “At least you.”

“Your hand ain’t my business,” he said. “Truth is, I didn’t want to know. Figured that God gave you the Reset button while he gave me the middle finger. Won’t be the first time. Fuck that dude.

“So,” he added, sucking the swill out of the bottom of his bottle, “is it time to tell me about it, or we just going to get fucked up and bang some chicks tonight?”

It was time. I told him about the hand, the ear, the tonsils. How I cut them off, and waited, and tested myself. Finally, “I’m about broke and the reason I’m limping is because I sold my toes.”

Takes a lot to crack Mack Tucker’s veneer, but he went bug-eyed. It took him a long time to digest that one.

“Just to try it out,” I said. “They’ll buy anything. But the big money is in organs—I’m not sure about those. I need a doctor’s help, so that’s why I’m here. I’ve got a guy that’s going to knock out a kidney. At least, I think he will. If it doesn’t grow back, no big deal, I can live with one. But if it does? I can cash one of those fuckers out for six figures or more. Set me up for life.”

“Yeah, if life is a shit house, fucking ramen noodles, and ketchup,” he said. “Have you really thought this through?”

“I guess.”

“No, you haven’t. You’re a gold mine and you’re sifting through the wrong parts. The hard parts.”

I had already thought about what he was getting at, and didn’t like the choice. “I don’t want to live in a lab,” I said. “It’s my body; I’ll portion myself out as I see fit.”

“Do you get sick?”

“Haven’t since I can remember.”

“But you’re not invincible.”

“My limp should tell you that. I’m just
repeatedly vincible
. Let’s just eat, okay?”

We ate. Actually, we wolfed the steaks down, tearing chunks of flesh from the bone before the knife was even through with the cut, pausing occasionally to take a swig of light beer.

“You look good, too, though,” I said, breaking the silence. “Healed up and fit.”

“Steroids,” he said, waving his hand. “My shoulder is crap. I can barely work out. I lift more syringes than weights, but I can lift enough to get myself by. You’d be surprised how far a decent tan, a smile, and a big dick will get you.”