Prelude to a Scream (9 page)

“Once you belong to the news you're theirs forever.”

“Yeah. So.” Corrigan held up the computer. “That was nice of the CHP. Troubled hero and all that. Since the DUI happened over two years ago, and since you still drive for a living, may we presume you learned your lesson, and keep your drinking down to weekend nights?”

“Just nights. Including weekends.”

“Never in the daytime?”

“Never.”

“Seems reasonable.”

“On the contrary, it's yet another triumph of economy over passion.”

“Let's back up and try it again. Where were you drinking last Wednesday night?”

“At home, in front of the TV.”

“And Thursday?”

“At home. In front of the TV.”

“Yeah? What was on?”

Stanley colored. “All seven
Star Trek
movies. Just like Wednesday.”

“That's true,” Iris piped up, turning to Corrigan. “I watched a few of them myself.” She turned back to Stanley, her eyes glowing. “I never get tired of that one — is it
Star Trek Three
? — where they need a pregnant whale because there's no whales left in the future and they use the sun as a gravity slingshot to go back into the past only but if you're still in the past it's, like, us in the here and now? Remember?”

They all looked at her.

“Right?” She looked at Stanley.

“That's the fourth one,” said Stanley.

“And,” she continued brightly, “Captain Kirk tells Mr. Sulu to put her down there,” Iris pointed a gleeful finger, “in Golden Gate Park—?”

“Right where they put you,” Corrigan interrupted loudly.

“—And everybody in the San Francisco theater goes absolutely
nuts
—?”

“And on Friday night?” Corrigan continued, even more loudly.

Stanley pursed his lips. “No idea.”

“Do you remember getting drunk?”

“I didn't say I was drunk. I said I can't remember where I was. I was probably drinking. I also can't remember what happened, or who I was with.” Stanley thought for a moment. “It's a good bet I was drinking, though.”

“Have you had these blackouts before?”

Stanley bristled as well as a man can bristle, while he's taking the high road on morphine. “I've never had a blackout.”

“Hmm,” said Corrigan. “All that booze, no hookers, and no blackouts, either.”

Stanley said nothing.

“There's always a first time, Stanley, when you drink.”

“Thanks, Corrigan.” Stanley lay his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. “I'll be looking out for it.”

“It's possible,” said Sims sympathetically, “that with time and the narcotics wearing off he might remember a great number of things he's unable to recall at present.”

“Is that so,” said Corrigan acidly.

“Yes,” Sims said.

“Say, Dr. Sims,” said Stanley. “What's life like with only one kidney?”

Sims shrugged. “Perfectly livable, so long as the lone kidney remains healthy.”

Hiyo, Lone Kidney,
quipped an inner voice, to the French horns of the William Tell Overture.

“Livable? You mean normal?” said Stanley, swiping a hand at the voice as if it were a fly. The IV pole rattled.

“Sure.”

“I can eat? I can… drink?”

“Moderation is always a good idea,” said Sims. “Even with two kidneys.”

“I'm feeling crowded, here,” said Stanley.

“You shouldn't, Mr. Ahearn. It's a private room.”

“Moderation I tried, already.”

“And…?”

“Something missing.”

“Like what?”

“Excess.”

Corrigan was lost in thought. Iris seemed perfectly comfortable sitting on the edge of the bed, remembering
Star Trek
movies. Sims looked newly uncomfortable.

Stanley was feeling annoyed. He opened his eyes and focused them on Iris. She interrupted her reverie to smile at him. That soothed him somewhat.

“How much does a previously owned kidney cost, Doctor Sims?”

Sims cocked his head. “With or without insurance, Mr. Ahearn?”

Stanley shrugged. “Just for the presumption, let's say without.”

“Installed? Uninstalled?”

“You can get them uninstalled? Stand-alone?”

“They have to be very recently uninstalled, in order to be viable.”

“Used kidneys,” Stanley muttered.

Sims pursed his lips. “From a legitimate donor, let's say twenty to forty thousand dollars.”

Corrigan whistled.

“And installed?”

“In a legitimate clinic or hospital, you're talking seventy thousand dollars.”

“And from an illegitimate one?”

“Maybe twice that. Or, if you were to go to a developing nation like, say, India, you could score a kidney for, say, one-twentieth the American price — and maybe not even get hepatitis into the bargain. Plane tickets and gamma globulin extra. Although,” Sims primly adjusted his glasses, “I am not immediately acquainted with black market pricing.”

“So, supposing I could find one, it might cost anywhere from three thousand to seventy thousand dollars to replace my… lost kidney?”

Sims shuddered. “I'd
hate
to think of such a
delicate
operation performed by
untrained
personnel.
Hate
to think about it…”

“So don't think about it. How complicated an operation is it?”

“There are a lot of variables.”

“How complicated, for example, was
my
kidney operation?”

Sims smiled thinly. “Not very.”

“On the other hand,” Corrigan interjected, “you're still alive.”

“Which reminds me,” Stanley said, “why am I still alive? Why didn't they just kill me and take both kidneys?”

“That's easy,” said Corrigan. “They kill you, you're talking Murder One with Special Circumstances — causing a death while in the process of committing some other crime — one of the surest ways to pull a capital offense. On the other hand, if they merely steal something from you…” He shrugged.

“Grand theft?” said Stanley hopefully.

“Or larceny. Not a particularly big deal, legally speaking. Hell, they didn't even use a gun.” He glanced at Stanley. “Did they?”

“I told you,” Stanley said, affecting a neutral expression, “I remember nothing.”

“I heard you,” Corrigan said mildly. “No guns, no witness… No wonder the Chief puts only the one guy on it.”

“You?”

Corrigan grunted.

Stanley grunted. “How long do you think it took them?”

Sims raised an eyebrow. “A complete nephrectomy? Oh… two, maybe three hours, soup to nuts. Not including,” he smiled, “outpatient care.”

“You're referring to the five minutes it took to zip me into that sleeping bag?”

Sims smiled and nodded.

“Two or three hours for twenty thousand dollars. That's easy money.”

“In your case it was probably more like twenty-five or thirty thousand,” said Corrigan. “Your blood type is worth a premium. That's why they tapped you. If you go shopping for a new kidney, you'll find that out.”

“You know,” mused Stanley, “I had an old Ford truck once. Got in it one morning, started it up, put it in gear — and went nowhere. Turned out someone had stolen the drive-shaft. The drive-shaft! When I went to the junkyard to get a new one, I found out why.”

“They were rare.”

“Very rare. Extinct.”

“There you go,” said Corrigan. “In this case, there's a wrinkle, which is, O-Negative people are what they call universal donors. That is to say, with proper immunosuppression, almost anybody can accept an organ from an O-Negative donor.”

“A maximum utility thing. So they get a premium price.”

“Exactly.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sims, “I'd say they probably earned it. Think of the hard costs. Rent, the light bill, equipment, the anesthesiologist alone is a separate contract, and nursing staff, too. There's the girl to answer the phone…”

They all looked at him. His voice trailed off.

“Would you have to be a doctor to perform this operation?” Stanley asked.

“Oh, absolutely—,” Sims began. He stopped and looked around him. From one face to another, he was met by skepticism. “I mean, one would hope that… No one in their right mind would submit… I mean allow… It isn't… It wouldn't be…”

“So there would
almost
have to be a doctor involved?” Stanley surmised. “But it's not necessary?”

Sims was at a loss for words.

Corrigan nodded thoughtfully.

“How about a veterinarian?”

Sims gasped.

“Try not to faint,” said Stanley.

“Sure.” Corrigan agreed. “But you'd want a real anesthesiologist. And probably a third party, a medical practitioner or trained nurse. The more help the better.” He jerked a thumb at Iris. “Clamps, irrigation, sponging, drainage, supplies, monitoring, actually lifting the patient from whatever conveyance they use to get his Mickey-Finned ass from the bar to the operating table. And…”

“And…?”

Corrigan repressed a smile. “You need a florist.”

“Very funny.”

“And one more artist,” Corrigan added.

“One more — artist?”

“You'd need the pickup artist.”

“A pickup artist?” said Sims.

Corrigan's smile faded. He was looking at Stanley. “The pickup artist.”

They all looked at Stanley.

“With, let's say, green eyes?” Corrigan suggested.

Chapter Eight

A
SCREAM PENETRATED THE HALLWAY WALL.

Followed by shouts and running footsteps.

The shatter of heavy plate glass, like restaurant crockery.

“The dispensary door,” said Sims.

“Again,” said Iris.

“Why do they keep telling us it's shatter-proof?” said Sims.

A long, piercing wail. Then a crash against the hall door, which shivered as if shouldered by a giant.

“Maybe this guy just got his bill,” Stanley suggested.

Sounds of a struggle. Muffled curses. Fingernails dragging down the drywall. The ragged onomatopoeia of big zippers. A heart-rending ululation.

Sobbing.

The egg-timer ping of an arriving elevator.

Whispering. A distant shout. Diminishing sobs—abruptly ceased.

Stanley announced that he had more questions.

“So do I,” said Corrigan, still watching him.

“I haven't seen any green eyes,” said Stanley, meeting Iris' gaze. “Just violet ones.”

Iris blushed.

Corrigan groaned.

Sims replaced his glasses on his nose and looked at his watch. “I've got seriously ill patients to attend to. If you people will excuse me…”

“How long before I'm out of here?” Stanley interrupted.

“Well.” Sims cleared his throat. “A healthy man like yourself…” He cleared his throat again. “The fact is, at one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars a day — “

“
What?
”

“— you should get well very quickly.”

“You've increased my pain.”

Sims wagged a finger. “Morphine extra.”

A corner of Corrigan's lip raised and exposed the tip of a gold canine, as if he could not help but stare, in sociological horror, at a crime vista exceeding his most grisly experience.

Sims stood at parade rest, the back of one hand covered by the palm of its mate, the clipboard vertical out of it, and regarded Stanley.

“
There but for fortune go I
. Is that what you're thinking, Doctor?”

Corrigan pulled at his lower lip and said nothing. On his face, however, revulsion lingered.

“I want mercy and an itemized bill,” Stanley said.

“Mercy is Nurse Considine's duty,” said Sims primly. “Itemization is standard.”

The door to the hallway opened and a woman looked into the room. She was dressed more or less like Nurse Considine, but the little placard on her breast read Mary Blake, Pathology, and she carried a clipboard not unlike the one in Doctor Sims' hand.

“Dr. Sims,” she whispered. “May I see you for a moment?”

“I'm walking out of here tomorrow,” said Stanley.

Sims paused in the doorway. “Wheelchairs are down the hall.” The door closed silently behind him.

“He's not a bad man,” said Iris.

“Just a helpless cog in the system,” said Corrigan.

“Helpless or hopeless?”

“The prices aren't his fault.”

“Yeah,” said Stanley. “A cog, the system, the prices. Good and evil have nothing to do with it.”

“Listen, Stanley,” said Corrigan. “That hooker's the last we know of your whereabouts last weekend. If you remember anything, here's my card. Call day or night.”

The card spun over the foot of the bed and landed on the blanket. Stanley didn't even look at it.

“Inspector, does it even make sense to consider restitution? Or should I laugh, should I cry, should I kiss my kidney goodbye?”

Corrigan sighed. “Right this minute, your kidney could be anywhere from Geneva to Beverly Hills. It might even be in Redwood City. It might still be on ice, getting flushed with some stuff called Ringer's solution, what they call perfused by a special machine designed to keep the organ viable for as long as possible. But the odds are better that your kidney is already walking around again, installed in some clown who had the bucks to purchase a black-market body part. They've got only about three days to use it — five at the outside — after that, the organ is essentially dead.”

Iris said, “I'd hate to think it's somewhere in this town.”

Stanley considered this.

“You have to realize, Ahearn,” Corrigan continued. “It's not as if a guy shows up at a hospital with a ruined kidney in his back and a new one in a jar. The legitimate scenario is, a patient is referred to a clinic that specializes in transplants. The recipient is dealt a number cross-indexing his blood-type, the urgency of his request, and, well…”

“The quality of his insurance coverage?”

“Don't be bitter,” said Iris, patting Stanley's hand.

“They don't like to admit to that. Conditions vary all over the world. In an industrialized country with socialized medicine—”

“Which,” Iris interrupted, “is all but two.” She held up one finger. “The Union of South Africa, and,” she held up a second finger, “The United States of America. These are the only so-called first world countries with no nation-wide system of health care — the same two, I might add, that remain committed to capital punishment. Coincidence? I don't think so.”

“Lean and mean,” said Corrigan.

Iris wiggled the two fingers. “The
company
we keep.”

Corrigan cleared his throat. “Thank you, Iris. Although peacefully rolling back apartheid isn't a bad start.”

Man, thought Stanley, a cop and a nurse discussing global socioeconomics. Now I know I'm still in San Francisco.

“As I was saying. In an industrialized country with national health care—”

“
Socialism
, mind you,” said Iris. “The
shame
of it…”

“Nurse Considine—.”

“I'm through,” said Iris, taking up Stanley's hand again.

“…National health care… apartheid… what the hell was I talking about?”

Iris winked at Stanley. “Short-term memory loss, Inspector Corrigan. Brought on by jelly doughnuts, instant coffee, and non-dairy creamers.”

“In an industrialized country with socialized medicine, everybody is supposed to be treated equally. In a market economy like ours, it's firstest with the mostest. In practice, the two systems average out. In the one the rich guys end-run the system, and in the other case…”

“The rich guys end-run the system,” said Iris.

“Yeah, like that. But in the third world, it's really crazy. There're no controls, and it's capitalistic beyond our wildest franchises. As if we had no idea what ‘capitalistic' means, here in the States.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning we're moral about it,” said Iris acidly, “and the underdeveloped ignoramuses aren't.”

Corrigan rolled his eyes. “Meaning there are third-world clinics where poor people can sell an organ for more money than they're likely to earn otherwise in their entire lives. And who are we to say they shouldn't? But there are the shadier operations, too, into whose clutches these same peasants can fall, thinking it's a legitimate organ-for-cash deal, never to be seen alive again. When a body does turn up, it's a shell. Everything's been harvested and, needless to say, the donor didn't get paid. Another variation is the guy who takes a cab to a clinic for a hangnail and wakes up in a ditch with a nephrectomy. That's the difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy in the third world. The next step is an organization that buys and sells any organ you want. An organ broker. With overnight delivery. You place a purchase order for an out-of-stock organ and they guarantee to have the item for you by a certain date. The only questions asked or answered are when and how much. Forget whose it was and how it was ‘donated.' It's half down, half on delivery; end of procurement phase.

“There are clinics from Cairo to Zurich to Bombay to Rio where you can get any organ installed, no questions asked. You can get them removed, too. You can get them turned upside down, exchanged, steam-cleaned. You can get your heroin-saturated blood drained and replaced with the blood of new-born babes. You can get bone-marrow that's been taken from children, sold by their parents. Liver transplants, eyeballs, hearts.…”

Corrigan removed a pale white handkerchief from the pocket on the front of his brown jacket and mopped his face with it.

“I tell you Stanley,” he said, blowing his nose, “I tell you Stanley…” he examined the kerchief for a moment, then refolded it and stuffed it back into the jacket pocket, “that kidney of yours is nothing.”

“Oh, say, thanks, Corrigan,” said Iris. “Try to cheer the guy up, why don't you?”

Corrigan raised an eyebrow. “Who, me?”

“No,” said Iris disgustedly. “Decidedly
not
you.”

“That's okay, Iris,” said Stanley. “This is interesting.”

“I'll tell you something else, son,” Corrigan said darkly, pointing a finger at Stanley. “The supply of replaceable human organs will
never
meet the demand for them. It's a great racket to be in.”

Iris read a small wristwatch strapped to the inside of her left wrist. “Personally, I think it's time for your next dose of morphine, Mr. Ahearn.”

“Nurse, I —.”

“Don't worry sweetie,” she said. “In here, it's only nine dollars for fifteen milligrams. You can afford it.” She patted his leg and stood up from the bed. “I'll be right back. Shall I get a nice overdose for Inspector Corrigan while I'm at it?” She pulled open the door and left without waiting for an answer.

Corrigan sighed. “Sassy little thing, our Iris. I went to Mercy High with her mother. Two peas in a pod.”

Stanley was watching the door as it squeezed to nothing the vertical shaft of light from the hallway. “You've worked with her before?”

Corrigan walked to the window and looked down at the parking lot. “Eight times,” he said to the glass.

Stanley looked at his back. “Eight?”

Corrigan didn't respond.

“I'm the ninth?”

Silence.

“Inspector?”

Corrigan filled his trouser pockets with his hands and shrugged. “We figure Iris might pick up something from the victims that might otherwise elude us. She's been the nurse on every case.”

“Were they all kidneys?”

Corrigan nodded.

“They all survived?”

He shrugged.

“You've solved none of them?”

Corrigan ducked his chin and scrubbed one cheek on the shoulder of his jacket. It sounded like someone cleaning upholstery with a wire brush.

The door admitted Sims. This time he had two clipboards with him, and a disturbed look on his face.

“Mr. Ahearn.”

“Why, Dr. Sims, at last you seem upset.”

“What's the matter?” said Iris, following him into the room.

“Maybe they socialized medicine,” said Stanley.

Corrigan turned away from the window.

Sims took a deep breath. “I've just been handed this report from Pathology.”

“Yes?”

Sims looked as if he were about to faint.

“So?” said Stanley, annoyed. “Is something wrong? I mean, is something
else
wrong?”

Even as he said it, everybody in the room realized that, yes, something else was wrong.

Sims opened his mouth and moved his lips. No sound. His face turned red. He shook his head and moved his lips again. No syllables emerged.

Summoning what remained of his resolve, Stanley said weakly, “Out with it!”

“Mr. Ahearn,” Sims blurted. “How long have you had amyloidosis?”

Silence filled the room.

Finally Stanley asked, “How long have I what?”

“I'll tell you,” said Sims, adjusting his glasses. He appeared to study one of his clipboards. Before long he realized it was the wrong one. He quickly covered it with the second clipboard and began the study over again.

“Don't be so nervous,” said Stanley. “I might get the idea you made a mistake I can sue you for.”

“One to two years.”

“One to two years? For what?”

“You've had amyloidosis — or the condition that precipitates it — for one to two years.”

“What did you call it?”

“Amyloidosis.”

“It sounds like Gaelic square dancing.”

Corrigan and Iris nodded.

Sims nodded morosely. “I wish it were, Mr. Ahearn.”

Everybody waited.