Devil's Harbor (32 page)

“They diagnosed me with kidney disease just after the New Year,” he said. “Both of them failing. They put me on the organ-donor list. Then they tell me I have to attend the support group here at the hospital.

“I walk in, sit down, and this woman starts staring at my tattoos. When it's her turn to talk, I find out she's not a patient: she's there for her little girl. The counselors tell us we should have faith and live in the day. But I know I'm going to die if I don't get an organ, lad. Linda knows it, too, about Lucy. The kid has less chance than me, even. It's depressing. I never go back.

“Then one night a few weeks later, Linda walks into my bar. She says she knows a way of getting us both donors, but she needs my help.” Cutts laughed an ugly laugh. He had Finn's full attention now. “She says she knows a doctor living in France who can help us. Trouble is, she can't get him into the country because Homeland Security has him on a list. She thought maybe, with my IRA background, I could help.”

“How could she have known you were in the IRA?” asked Finn.

Cutts pointed at the tattoos of the Kalashnikov and the Celtic knot on his arm. “You make a statement like that when you're young, you're still making it fifty years later.”

“Linda tells me her plan,” Cutts went on. “She says she knows where to get donors. She says her sister's a nurse here at the hospital, she can get the kidneys into the organ network and make sure they're allocated to us, as well as to whoever else is willing to pay.”

At the mention of Linda's sister, Finn automatically reached for the security swipe card hanging around his neck. He took it off and put it in his pocket.

“The only thing she needs is someone to harvest them from the donors,” Cutts continued. “I still have a few contacts from the old days. I call some people I know, Serpil arrives. We set him up on Catalina because we figured no one patrols the island—not you guys in the CBP and not the coast guard. Perez brings up the donors and the product in
La Catrina
and takes them to Serpil at Two Harbors. Serpil harvests what he needs. Then Linda brings the narcotics and the organs across, and dumps the bodies in the channel.”

Finn's stomach churned.

“But the donors Perez is bringing up, they're unscreened. None of them are a match for Lucy. Turns out, the kid has a rare blood type. She can only have a kidney from another kid with that exact same blood type. Meanwhile, she's deteriorating fast. That's when her mother comes up with the malaria idea.”

“Malaria idea?”

“Linda sets up a charity at an orphanage down there to screen kids for malaria. Testing their blood.”

Finn's eyebrow twitched. He remembered Linda's visit to the orphanage. “You're making this up, Cutts. I just saw Lucy, asleep in her bed.”

But even as he said it, the seed of doubt germinated in his mind. What had he seen, really? A shape under a duvet?

Cutts shrugged. “I'm telling you, lad, Linda's kid is right here in the hospital, in the children's ward on the fifth floor. Go see for yourself.”

Finn took several hard, shallow breaths through his nose.

Mona.

With his spare hand, he pulled out Linda's cell and dialed Mona's number.

Straight to voice mail.

He raised his gun again at Cutts's head. “This is a bunch of bullshit, Cutts. You're trying to save yourself. You kidnapped Lucy and terrorized Linda into submission. I was there. I saw it myself.”

“Pure fucking theater, lad, for an audience of one. Open your eyes. What we should've done, after you found Espendoza, we should've laid low and waited for things to die down. But that's not what Linda did. She had to put to sea. And she duped you into helping her.”

“Why? Why would she do that?”

“The same week you found Espendoza, she got word from the orphanage that they'd found a compatible donor. Right age, right blood, everything. She said she couldn't afford to wait for things to die down.
Lucy
couldn't afford to wait. I pointed out that Perez was dead and
La Catrina
impounded, and she said she'd just have to go down herself on the
Belle
. I told her, you and Diego in the bar, you'd mentioned the
Pacific Belle
specifically. I said CBP Interceptors would be on the lookout for her. She said she'd just have to take extra precautions.”

Cutts gave Finn a piercing look.

“It had taken her months to find that donor. Lucy had weeks to live. Linda knew she
had
to get through. You and Diego, you were a threat. So she waited for you outside the bar with a couple of fishermen friends of hers. It was Linda who took your gun and sent that text to Diego.”

All the time Cutts was talking, Finn was holding a gun on him with one hand and frantically redialing Mona's number with the other.

“Who pulled the trigger?”

Cutts sniffed. “Linda,” he said.

Finn wanted to throw something through the window.

“Why just Diego? Why not me, too?”

“She wanted insurance—someone to take the fall if she got busted. That's you, Finn. Her husband was a drunk, too, so she recognized it in you. She figured she could play you, and she was right. Did you even hear what her sister said to her on the phone that night? For all you know, she was giving her a recipe for cake. The whole thing was staged, lad. All that wailing around on the ground—all of it. The child was asleep at home, in her aunt's care, next to her fucking teddy bear, probably.

“Once Linda got the Mexican girl across the line, she didn't need you anymore. You stopped being insurance and became a liability. She decided to make you disappear the same way she'd made all the others disappear. Open your goddamn eyes.”

In his mind's eye, Finn saw a dark vision. He saw Linda holding Navidad, stroking her hair. Almost as an afterthought, his voice soft, he said, “You killed Espendoza and stole his kidney.”

Cutts shrugged wearily. “It's a cannibal world we've fashioned for ourselves, Finn. If you're not eating others, you're getting eaten. For what it's worth, I bought his kidney, I didn't steal it. I paid him a small fortune. He wasn't supposed to die. Serpil stitched him up. But he's forgotten how to keep patients alive. The wound got infected. Espendoza died out there on the island, a few days after my operation.”

Mona's phone kept going straight to voice mail. A terrible sense of dread took hold of Finn.
Stay calm,
he told himself.
Do what you have to do, one task at a time, and focus on that.
He stopped dialing, pulled out the handcuffs, and slapped one onto the old man's left wrist. He closed the other around one of the bars of the safety rail on the side of the bed. Then he pulled the IV stand closer to the bed, within Cutts's reach. But the old man just lay there, not bothering to reinsert the tube into his arm. An uncharacteristic expression had slipped onto his face: remorse. He looked at Finn, his eyes old, rheumy, contrite.

“You don't want your medicine?” said Finn.

Cutts shook his head. “I spent the eighties fighting the British army,” he said, a tremor in his voice. “In the nineties, I saw things in Central Africa and in Kosovo that no one should ever see. I spent a decade running guns into Mexico. I've met some bad people in my time, Finn, but Linda Blake…” He turned away, his sentence unfinished.

“I'm tired of this world. I'm ready to go,” he said to his reflection in the window.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Finn left Cutts's room feeling polluted to his very core. In the corridor, nothing seemed real. The linoleum floor, the fluorescent lights, and the posters encouraging people to “know the signs” felt sketchy, and if the walls and ceiling had suddenly disappeared to reveal a vast and hostile sky, he wouldn't have been surprised. He went to the nurses' station. It was empty. He glanced both ways down the corridor, then hurried around the counter and sat down in front of the computer. He toggled to the hospital's patient-management system, typed “Lucy Blake” into the search tab, then selected the “search by patient” filter.

A new window popped up.

Name: Blake, Lucy

Sex: F

DOB: 12/27/2005

Blood type: O-

Diagnosis summary: end-stage renal disease

Treatment: Kidney transplantation

Scheduled: 11:00, November 10

Just two days away.

Next to the word
donor,
Finn read: “dead, unrelated
.
”

For a moment, all he saw were those two words. He refocused, then toggled to the staff directory and typed in “Rhonda Blake.”

Rhonda Blake, RN

Transplantation Services

Transplantation Procurement Coordinator

The woman in the picture was the woman he'd seen wearing a nurse's uniform outside the house in Palos Verdes, strapping Lucy into the car. He typed “Brian Wilson,” the name Linda had given him, into the staff directory. The message read: “This search has zero results. Try again?”

Finn breathed hard and fast through his nose and remembered his father's words:
The world doesn't care if you live or die.

But that wasn't true, thought Finn.

He
cared.

He cared about Mona.

He cared about Navidad.

Navidad had saved his life that night in Two Harbors. Time to return the favor. He made a mental note of Lucy's room number. In the elevator, he swiped Rhonda's card and he pressed the button for the fifth floor—pediatrics.

The children's ward was decorated in a nautical theme. The linoleum floor was an underwater-green-blue color covered with stylized sea creatures. Finn walked over a friendly-looking octopus, a dopey-looking turtle, and a shark with a surprisingly menacing smile. Desert islands with palm trees and treasure chests decorated the walls. Between two of them, someone had painted a cloud with a human face, his cheeks puffed like balloons, blowing a sailboat across the surface of the sea. A couple of nurses were busy talking to each other at their station.

“Visiting hours are over,” said one in an irritated tone.

“I'm here to see my daughter, Lucy Blake? Room 517. She's being operated on day after tomorrow. I just want … I just want to sit with her for half an hour, if you don't mind.”

The nurse's expression changed. Now she gave him the earnest half smile that people reserve for those facing tragic life circumstances.

“Of course, Mr. Blake. I'm sure Lucy will be happy to see you.”

*   *   *

Like all the doors on the children's ward, Lucy's had been left open. The child lay in the bed, asleep. Finn went over to her. The room was softly lit. Her face was turned toward the window, through which could be seen the sky glow thrown up by the city's innumerable lights. Lucy's dirty-blond hair was fanned out on the pillow around her heart-shaped face.

A tall, white machine—taller than she was—stood by her bed. It had a screen at the top and a sort of control pad lined with dials and buttons. It looked like the square, primitive robots Finn had seen on TV as a boy. His eyes followed the tube snaking out of it and into Lucy's arm. He shook his head.
No goddamn justice in this world,
he thought.

Linda's phone rang, catching him off-guard. His heart leaped when he recognized Mona's number on the screen, the number he'd just called two dozen times.

“Thank god. I've been trying to reach you. Where are you? Are you all right?” he said.

Finn thought he heard someone snigger.

“You mean me, or your wife?” said Linda's voice.

Finn's throat constricted. “If you've hurt her…”

“Relax. She's alive.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“I'm afraid that's not possible.”

“Why not.”

“I dosed her with propofol.”

Finn took a breath. “Where is she?”

Linda ignored his question. “I just called the hospital to see how Lucy is,” she said. “Imagine my surprise when they told me her father was visiting! You're fond of her, aren't you, Finn?”

“You hurt Mona, Linda, and I swear I'll kill you.”

“Do you know much about the human kidney, Finn?” said Linda, carrying on as though he hadn't said a word. “It's a hardworking organ that does several things at once. It filters all the waste from our blood. It absorbs glucose and amino acids, and it produces hormones. It's a crucial organ, which is why nature gives us two of them. If they both fail, you die.”

Lucy turned her head in her sleep and made a soft, plaintive sound.

“Both Lucy's kidneys are failing,” said Linda. “She was born with polycystic kidney disease. You ever heard of that? It means she has to have regular dialysis just to stay alive. But six weeks ago her fistula got infected, Finn. She almost died. They can't use it anymore. Now they have to perform the dialysis through a catheter. Lucy can't live like that, Finn. Look at her. She's just a child. She needs a new kidney. A healthy one.”

“Where is Mona?”

“Approximately six thousand Americans die a year waiting for a suitable donor. For someone like Lucy, with type O-negative blood, the chances are … You know what the doctor told me when I asked her what Lucy's chances were? She said it would be like winning the lottery. You ever met anyone who's won the lottery, Finn?”

Finn said nothing.

“Neither have I,” said the voice on the phone. “She's beautiful, don't you think?”

Finn glanced at the child. He saw in her face her mother's arched eyebrows and full lips. There was no denying it: she
was
beautiful.

“The worldwide shortage of suitable organs creates a market,” said Linda. “In Egypt, people sell their kidneys on the Internet. In Kosovo … well, I already told you about that. In Iran, the organ trade is legal. There's no waiting list in Iran. The Chinese harvest theirs from their executed prisoners. The Chinese executed almost two thousand people last year. That would've made up almost a third of the supply shortage here, if there weren't so many Chinese who needed organs themselves. Why should it be any different here? Lucy needs a kidney, but there's no market in America, even though we're supposed to be the home of the free market. So you see, I
had
to steal it, Finn. You understand? I had no choice.