“I don’t keep track of my patients’ nationalities. How would I even know?”
“Don’t you talk to them before you cut them open?”
“Of course, but I don’t go into those kinds of details.”
“What’s your specialty?”
Rosenbaum hesitated. “Heart surgery, liver, kidneys, anything related to internal organs.”
Vermeulen nodded, but none of this made any sense.
“Maybe you saved someone’s life ….”
“I save someone’s life every day. I can’t keep track of where they come from.”
The combination of hubris and disdain made Vermeulen want to smack the man.
“So you don’t recall any foreign patients?” he said.
Rosenbaum hesitated a moment before answering that he didn’t, but the moment was long enough for Vermeulen. Maybe the doctor hadn’t seen anyone from Moldova, but he’d definitely seen foreign patients.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Rosenbaum said. “I’m expecting another visitor.”
“Any idea why your address ended up in that man’s pocket?”
“None whatsoever. If there’s nothing more, I’d appreciate your leaving now.”
Rosenbaum had transformed himself from a nervous wreck barely in control of his twitches to the kind of person Vermeulen expected to see in an intensive care unit—in charge and used to issuing orders. While that might have been reassuring if Vermeulen were a patient, it didn’t serve his purpose right then.
“I’m not quite done yet. You see, that man didn’t have your address by accident. It’s not like you’re in the Moldovan phone book. He couldn’t have gotten it in the U.S. because he never made it into the country. That means someone must have given it to him before he left Moldova. And I’m pretty certain you have an idea about how or why that happened.”
Rosenbaum’s face began twitching again. Vermeulen almost pitied the man. Fear and resolve seemed to be at war with each other in Rosenbaum’s psyche. Such mood swings had to take their toll.
“I have no idea what you are talking about. If you don’t leave now, I will call the police.”
“What do you know about the Kenyan man who died near Broad Street Station?” It was a shot in the dark, but Abasi was the only man who’d made it into the U.S. that Vermeulen knew of. If Rosenbaum was involved, it stood to reason that he’d met him.
He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Rosenbaum pushed him backward toward the stairs. Vermeulen stumbled, grabbed Rosenbaum’s arm, missed and got hold of the man’s tie. That kept him from falling down the stairs, but it pulled Rosenbaum forward. The two men ended up standing cheek to jowl on the stoop.
A loud laugh came from the bottom of the stairs. Vermeulen let go of the tie, turned, and saw a blonde woman with a big grin on her face. She wore a well fitted down jacket, smart pants, and a scarf around her neck. Her short hair gave her a boyish look. If she wore any makeup at all, it was expertly applied.
“That was quite the recovery,” she said to Vermeulen. “The old grab-the-tie trick. I love it. Good thing the doc had enough dead weight to keep you upright.”
Rosenbaum snorted behind Vermeulen.
“Well,” Vermeulen said. “I’ll be off, then.”
He extended his hand to the woman who was coming up the stairs.
“I’m Valentin Vermeulen. Nice to meet someone with a sense of humor.”
The woman shook his hand. “It’s the one thing that keeps you sane in this crazy world,” she said.
What she didn’t say was her name.
Chapter Seventeen
Jackson couldn’t make heads or tails of what he’d just seen. The man he’d pegged as the third party had gone up the stairs and rung the doorbell. After a while, another man, probably the doctor, had opened the door. That’s when things got strange. The two men didn’t know each other. Their body language was pretty clear. Which meant that the visitor wasn’t the other party the doctor needed to consult before he could cut Jackson in on whatever scheme they had going.
The conversation didn’t seem to go well. The doctor kept shaking his head. What was going on? The other man wasn’t a patient either. Jackson was certain about that. Patients didn’t show up after the office was closed, and the doctor wouldn’t bother talking to one.
The visitor wasn’t eager to leave. He leaned forward and kept talking. Rosenbaum only wanted to get rid of the man. Their argument seemed to get more intense. Right then a woman arrived. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and just watched. Neither of the others had seen her. Who was she? The wife, a girlfriend?
Finally, the discussion got physical. The doctor pushed the man, who grabbed onto the doctor’s tie to keep from falling down the stoop. The two ended up in a funny embrace. Jackson could see the woman at the bottom of the stairs laugh. The visitor turned and left, but not before shaking the woman’s hand. It wasn’t clear if they knew each other or not. The first man went back to his car and drove off.
Jackson had taken the time to write down the tag number of the car. It was a plain Ford Fusion, not the kind of car he expected some well connected hood to drive. And it was a rental. He’d seen the telltale barcodes on the windshield and the rear window. Not at all what he expected. Rental cars could easily be tracked. Nobody doing anything remotely illegal would rent a car, unless they had fake identities.
Since the barcodes were black on yellow, he assumed it was a Hertz rental. He’d written down the barcode too. His buddy Jamal worked at the Hertz rental office at the Newark airport.
Jackson knew Jamal wouldn’t be happy to get his call. He was at work and wasn’t supposed to get personal calls. They weren’t really buddies anymore since Jamal went on the strait and narrow. He’d made it from counter rep to branch manager trainee.
“What’s happening?” Jackson said.
“What do you want, Earle? You know I can’t talk to you.”
“What’s bitten you? Can’t I call my old friend?”
“We haven’t been friends in a while.”
“Ah, come on, man. That’s harsh.”
“I moved on. I’m trying to make something of myself. And you? You keep fleecing old folks.”
“I ain’t fleecing old folks. I guide them to my doctors.”
“Who rip them off.”
“They rip off the government. That’s a big difference.”
“Not to me it isn’t. You could’ve made something of yourself.”
“Well, that’s why I’m calling you. I turned over a new leaf, just like you. And I need your help.”
Silence.
Good, Jackson thought. I got him thinking.
“What do you want?” Jamal said.
“I got the barcode from a Hertz rental car. Can you find out who rented that car?”
“I knew it. No way.”
“Come on, Jamal. This guy and I are partnering up for a new thing. Except I lost his business card, so I don’t know how to contact him.”
“Right. But you got the barcode from his rental? Gimme a break.”
“Jamal. Don’t be that way. I bet you can just look it up right there on your computers. I just need the man’s address and phone number.”
“Why? So you can steal from him, too?”
“No, I don’t want to steal from him. I want to talk to him. He and I may have a common interest.”
“What interest?”
This wasn’t right. Jamal was quizzing him like he was a suspect or something.
“Come on, man. Just look it up.”
“Earle, if you don’t tell me why you need that information, I’ll hang up right now.”
“Wait, wait. Don’t hang up.”
And so Jackson told him the story about finding the Kenyan at Broad Street Station, about the man dying in his arms and about the paper in his pocket, about checking out the address and seeing another man argue with the doctor. He left out the bit about the twenty-five hundred dollars. He embellished the story, telling Jama
l how having a man die in his arms had shaken him up. How the doctor had done wrong by Abasi. How he wouldn’t have done that to a white patient.
“So you want to talk to the man in the rental because …?”
“You ain’t listening, man. I think the doctor is responsible for the Kenyan brother’s death and I think that the man who came around feels the same. I just want to talk with him and see what we can do to bring that doctor to justice. If I went to the police, nobody’d believe me. But if that man and I go together, maybe we can do something.”
Jamal must have sensed the sincerity in Jackson, because his voice softened. “You know I could get in serious trouble for this. So, don’t ever come back to me and ask for something like this again.”
“I won’t, Jamal.”
“I’ll call you back.”
A half hour later, Jamal came through for him. “That car wasn’t rented at Newark,” he said. “It was rented on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. It’s already been returned. The renter is one Valentin Vermeulen. Here’s his phone number.”
Jackson wrote it down.
“What about his address?”
“I won’t give that to you.”
“What? Why not?”
“I checked and found the story about the dead man. So that’s true. But I have no way of checking the rest. If you want to talk to the man, call him. That’s all I’m gonna do for you.”
Jackson knew better than to press his luck. “I really appreciate that, Jamal. You’ve been a true friend. I’ll make it up to you.”
“That’s okay. Don’t call me again unless you’re really ready to turn over a new leaf.”
“I am, man. I am.”
Jackson ended the call and looked at the number. A man from Manhattan rents a car to drive to Newark and argue with Dr. Rosenbaum. Very strange. Why didn’t he take the train from Penn Station? Renting a car seemed over the top. Maybe he didn’t like public transit. There was only one way to find out.
He dialed the number. The call connected.
“This is Vermeulen,” a voice said.
“Yeah. You wanna talk about why you went to Dr. Rosenbaum today?”
Chapter Eighteen
Vermeulen had just opened a bottle of De Koninck when his phone rang. He had half a mind not to answer. His back was sore from sitting in the car all day. Add to that the bizarre experience in Newark, and all he wanted was a beer and a smoke. But the caller was Sunderland.
“Vermoolen, I have an update on Abasi. He died from blood loss caused by a knife wound. Somebody must’ve stabbed him and taken his things.”
Vermeulen sucked in his breath. “In broad daylight? At a light rail station? That doesn’t sound right.”
“Give me a break. Life is cheap in Newark. If Abasi had anything of value on him, he’d be in danger, broad daylight or not.”
Vermeulen put down his beer. Goosebumps crawled up his arm. Two illegal immigrants from Kenya. Both come to the U.S. using forged invitation letters from the UN. Both end up murdered, hours apart. It couldn’t be a coincidence. But they weren’t killed by the same person. The man who killed Odinga at the Elizabeth detention center couldn’t have been at Broad Street Station to kill Abasi.
“I drove to York to speak with Luca, one of the other people you detained,” he said. “Why do you hold him so far away?”
“It’s all dependent on available spaces.”
Vermeulen remembered Alma’s point that moving detainees also made representation very difficult, but didn’t pursue it.
“The man was scared out of his mind. Someone had offered him ten thousand dollars. He refused to say for what or give me a name. He as much as told me that his family would be harmed if he said anything. He asked me to write to them. Who or what could scare a man so much he wouldn’t talk, even in prison?”
“Beats me,” Sunderland said. “Not my concern. Let’s hope Luca gets deported before something happens to him. You have no idea how much trouble Odinga’s death is going to cause us. The pro-immigration nuts are probably already planning their march to the federal building in Newark.”
Vermeulen opened his mouth but thought better of it. Sunderland’s callousness was getting unbearable.
“Are you still there?” Sunderland said.
“Yes. I’m thinking. This thing is bigger than just a few fake letters.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“No, it’s not. You are talking about numbers. I’m talking about the fact that someone can threaten Luca’s family in Moldova. What organization has such a global reach?”
“The Russian mob?” Sunderland said.
“In Moldova, maybe, but Kenya. That seems a stretch.”
“Whatever, the real issue is that I want this flood of people with false UN invitations to stop. People in your outfit are issuing them. Find those people and stop them. That’s my only concern.”
“Listen to me, Sunderland. The issue isn’t numbers. The issue is there’s a network with international reach that smuggles people into the US. The UN invitations are just a small part of that. Don’t you want to stop them?”
“Sorry, Vermoolen. I’m not Interpol, just Immigration and Customs Enforcement. All I need is you stopping those fake invitations that allow people to get visas. Are you going to do that?”
Vermeulen shook his head. “Yes. I’ll be in touch.”
He ended the call. He was glad he hadn’t mentioned the meeting with Dr. Rosenbaum. He took a deep swallow from the bottle, lit a Gitane and sat down at the kitchen table. He didn’t know what to do next. Here he was, working for the one organization that had the necessary global reach to deal with this network, except he had no authority to do so. But the people who had the power to act focused only on their little end. The irony would have been laughable, were it not for the fear that he’d seen in Luca’s face, that Abasi and Odinga must have felt as they were being murdered. There would be more Abasis and Odingas, unless he did something.
Since moving back to New York, Vermeulen had quickly adopted the empty refrigerator habits of Manhattan residents. That wasn’t a problem on most days, since there was so much prepared food available everywhere. But he didn’t feel like going out again. Besides the beer, his fridge contained a jar of pickles, four eggs, some packets of soy sauce from the Chinese place down the street, and an old bagel. That limited his culinary options. He was in the middle of frying two eggs when his phone rang again.
Without thinking, he answered. “This is Vermeulen.”
A male voice he’d never heard before said, “You wanna talk about why you visited Dr. Rosenbaum today?”
The spatula clattered on the stovetop, then to the floor. He stared out the window as if the mysterious caller were right outside, looking in at him. The eggs sizzled in the hot pan.
“Hold on,” Vermeulen said and put the phone down. Who the hell was this? It obviously wasn’t the woman with the short blonde hair. And it wasn’t the doctor. He reached down to pick up the spatula. He turned down the burner. Nobody else knew he’d stopped by the doctor’s office. He tried to remember faces he’d seen on the street. There was really only one candidate—the black man who’d followed him.
He picked up the phone again. “Who are you?”
“That’s not important. What is important is you visiting the doctor. Why’d you go to him?”
“You’re the black man who bumped into me and then followed me. So don’t think for a moment I can’t find out who you are.”
The silence at the other end told him he was right.
“Okay, you saw me,” the man said. “So did many people. That don’t mean you’re gonna find out anything. But I know you talked to the doctor who’s got things to hide. So I’m thinking you’ve got things to hide, too. And that’s what I want to talk about.”
The eggs were done. Vermeulen managed to slip them onto the plate. He popped the bagel halves from the toaster, pulled over a stool, and sat do
wn. This might take a while, and he wasn’t going to let his eggs get cold.
“Sorry,” he said, after forking a bite into his mouth. “You caught me in the middle of supper, and I hate cold eggs.” He took a sip from the bottle. “Besides, you’re operating on the wrong assumptions. I have nothing to hide. You, on the other hand, sound like an extortionist. Last I heard, that was still a crime in this country. I got your phone number on my display. It’ll only be a matter of time before the police find you.”
The last comment was pure bluster. He took a bite from the bagel and had another swig of beer.
“You’re eating while I’m trying to have a conversation with you? Man, how ’bout a little respect?”
“You’re the one who interrupted my supper. And why should I respect someone who’s trying to blackmail me?”
“I thought you were somebody else. Just forget I called.”
“No, I’m not going to do that. I’m also interested in what Rosenbaum has to hide. You seem to know something. How about telling me why you’re after him?”
He finished the eggs and wiped the remaining yolk with a piece of bagel.
“Nah, let’s just forget the whole thing, okay?” the caller said.
“No, not okay. How’d you like the Newark PD on your tail?” It was an easy guess. “Believe me, I can make that happen.”
“I said forget about it.”
“I won’t, unless you tell me what you know. Right now.”
“I’ll only do it face to face.”
“Fine with me. Be at the Azure Lounge in downtown Newark in an hour.”
Chapter Nineteen
Vermeulen had to hustle to get to Newark. With the rush hour over, train service was less frequent. He made it to Newark’s Penn Station and got a cab to take him to the Azure Lounge near the Prudential Center on Broad Street. He could have chosen a place in Manhattan, but he figured meeting the man on his own turf would make him more talkative. One of his colleagues had spoken highly of the Azure Lounge and it was right in downtown Newark.
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