by Nathan Roden
“Before anything is said, Marshall, I need to explain something. I work with MG. And MG works with Jack,” Babe said.
“As in, your father-in-law, Jack?” Marshall sat forward, his eyes bulging. He looked at MG.
“You’re a Feeb?”
“Easy, Marshall. There is no threat here. None.” Babe exclaimed.
“Dr. Gates,” MG began, “this whole situation is my…not fault, that’s not the right word. It was all my idea—all my doing. We needed help and we needed it to be discrete. I went to Babe because I knew he had been around doctors for a long time because of—”
“Because of my wife, Marshall,” Babe finished the thought.
“It’s the middle of the night. I don’t know what just happened, our friend is beat all to hell, we’re in a dentist office, and there is five hundred dollars on the table. Optimus Prime is freaking over the woman from the FBI.”
Babe turned and looked toward Chad Jenson, who had started toward them carrying coffees.
“And the dentist has spilled two cups of coffee and may have just shit in his pants.”
Jenson looked up, wide-eyed.
“I’m sorry. If anyone wants coffee, please get it yourself. I need to sit down.”
“I’m going to tell you whatever you want to know, Babe, but I need you to tell me about Millie and explain why there is an FBI agent in this office.”
“I’m not an agent, Dr. Gates,” MG said. “I’m an office manager and liaison. No badge, no gun, no arrest power, I don’t even have my own parking place.”
“Look, Marshall,” Babe said.
“We’re under a strict confidentiality agreement. What MG and I do is classified and has nothing to do with why we’re here. Millie is an office manager and secretary, slash receptionist and she works with us. She’s been dating this asshole and she caught him with somebody else.
“She’s a really tough girl, Marshall. I think I can guarantee you he that won’t be heard from again. Millie is afraid of losing her job, and as crazy as it may seem considering the nature of our business, well, you know what they say about a nail that sticks its head up.”
“Yeah, it gets hammered down. That’s one shitty deal, Babe. It’s real good that this guy is out of the picture. You know, if she had been much worse there wouldn’t have been anything we could do.”
“We’re extremely grateful, Dr. Gates. You have been just wonderful,” MG said.
“I’m happy to help, MG. And you call me Marshall.”
“So, for the love of GOD, Marshall, what just happened?” Babe asked, bringing his hands to his cheeks and pulling down to stretch the skin around his weary eyes.
Marshall sipped his coffee and turned to Chad Jenson. “You okay with this?”
Jenson shrugged.
“I know you must feel like you’re in the middle of a mafia plot or something, especially because of the money,” Marshall said.
“But it’s not what you’re thinking, not at all. Nobody is buying drugs or renting hookers or running gambling rings, or anything like that. Chad and I were recruited about the same time, but we didn’t even know each other before that.”
“Recruited? That sounds exactly like the mafia, Marshall,” Babe said.
“Hang on, Babe,” Marshall said.
“There’s a group, hell there might be a bunch of them for all we know. I was introduced to this group of doctors by doctors that I already knew. They took us to this exclusive country club—steak and lobster, open bar, and real Cuban cigars in a great room with an almost infinite ceiling. Thirty-foot waterfalls spilling into the most realistic looking rain forest pool you can imagine.
“I know you’re thinking that something crooked is about to happen but you would be mistaken. These doctors, in highly choreographed precision, began to lay out photographs. They covered up the biggest antique table I’ve ever seen, it was like something out of Camelot. All the pictures came in pairs; Befores and Afters.”
“There were pictures that showed deformed limbs, before and after. Facial disfigurements repaired; artificial limbs where limbs had been missing. Cleft lips and cleft palates: All races. All ages. Kids. LOTS of kids. They told me that none of these people were insured at all and none had any money for this kind of work. It made me tear up, man.
“These are my brothers, my fathers, my colleagues, and I was so damn proud. I told them, ‘This is some extremely impressive pro bono work. I want to help. What can I do?
“One of these physicians, a little old guy, he pointed this bony finger at me and looked me in the eye. He said, ‘These cases before you represent most of the extensive, real pro bono work done in this country over the course of a given year.’ I said, ‘I don’t understand’. So, Babe, MG, I’m going to present to you what was presented to me.”
“First of all, do you have any idea how many people need what you needed tonight? I’m talking about discretion. And I don’t mean the bad kind of discretion. Not people running from the law and not gut shot criminal types.
“Think about everything that can go wrong between the navel and the thighs. In almost all of those cases, somebody doesn’t want somebody else to know about it. Doctors aren’t worth a shit at hiding, Babe. We have big old hospitals and big old clinics all over the place. We have big old LOUD bright red ambulances that will pick you up and bring you to our big old brightly lit facilities with bright corridors and bright waiting rooms—maybe there are a few lawyers hanging around along with some reporters. You see where I’m going?”
“But you’re charging money,” Babe said.
“There are a ton of legal issues you’re not talking about. People could go to prison for…”
“You have to let me finish, Babe,” Marshall said.
“That money right there is just a handshake. It’s not a payment. Think of it as a ‘love offering’. Hell, pick it up and put it back in your pocket if you want to. The thing we need is your partnership. If our clients have no stake at all in this, no ties at all, then maybe they run their mouths a little more. Yeah, that money will get used. I’m on lunch break myself, but this is Chad’s clinic. And he will have to show up here in…shit.”
Marshall looked at his watch.
“Chad, it’s four-thirty, you might want to go get some sleep. I‘ll make sure the place gets locked up.”
“Are you crazy, Marshall? You’re spilling our guts to the FBI and you think I’m going to go have a nap?”
Marshall chuckled.
“Yeah, I guess that was kind of dumb. Did you pay attention to the exam room Millie is in? The x-ray machine?”
“That wasn’t a dental x-ray machine,” MG said, the mental gears falling into place.
“No ma’am, it’s not. But that’s not the kind of thing that’s going to set off alarms anywhere, is it? Especially if it just shows up in this little bitty back room without an invoice,“ Marshall said.
“Getting back to the navel and the thighs—example one. A wealthy family gets in touch with us because Junior came home from spring break with big old sores on his privates. Mommy and Daddy are horrified but they’re more likely to have that kid buried under the yacht shed than to be humiliated by a case of VD going public.
“Example two; we have some entertainment types that have, shall we say, exotic needs. Imagine some pop star showing up at the ER at two in the morning with flashbulbs going off and being asked for autographs while he’s lying face down on a gurney with a Perrier bottle stuck in his ass. Sorry, ma’am.”
Marshall lowered his head.
“Don’t apologize, Marshall. You tell a really good story,” MG said.
Marshall sat back in his chair.
“These are just a few examples. It’s not always rich people or famous people. And we don’t do everything. If Millie had been in much worse condition we would have had to walk away. We’re not set up to handle major bone breaks. We can do stitches but nothing even close to surgery. You may not get anything for pain, and if you do it will be samp
les. If anything smells like criminal activity, we walk away. We damn sure don’t cover up for battered women, either.
“If I didn’t know you, Babe, and I got a look at that girl in there, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“I want you to know that it means a lot to us, Marshall,” Babe said.
“But you’re not going to cover a lot of pro bono type work at five hundred dollars a pop.”
“Some people get, shall we say, a slightly higher rate,” Marshall smiled.
“But we don’t need your money. Every year millions of dollars come into colleges and universities through alumni associations. You hear about them because every once in a while the NCAA will pop its head out of the sand and make a big show of spanking the alumni of some university because Johnny Quarterback or Jimmy Jumpshot has a new Corvette. Or maybe he has a job at the car wash that pays him seventy five dollars an hour, a job that he doesn’t even have to show up for.
“It’s a scam, I’m telling you. And it will never change. Why not? Because there are people with more money than they know what to do with. People like us worry about the mortgage and the car payment and where little Tommy is going to go to school. Some of these alumni associations have members that think nothing about writing a check that would pay off all of our homes, all so that their alma mater, which is also their daddy’s and granddaddy’s alma mater, can have a shot at a bowl game or a conference title or a national championship or a trip to the Final Four.”
“This is what I’m talking about—The Medical Alumni Association. That’s not an official title. It’s just what I call it. There could be a hundred of us—might be a hundred thousand. I’m sure I’ll never know.
“ I’m proud to know that there are active and retired physicians, and some wealthy individuals with a conscience, that have decided to make better use of their money. We’re not trying to buy sports teams. This is God’s work. Let me show you something.”
Marshall reached inside his coat and pulled out a half-dozen well-worn and dog-eared photos. He arranged theses on a table. Three photos he placed face down.
“These are three before and afters. This pair and that pair are mother and son. The mother in this photo was maybe seventeen or eighteen. We’re not sure because it’s not like you’re going to find a birth certificate. We found her through our church—through my mother, really. Note the lack of bone structure on the left side, particularly the lack of support around the nose and the upper lip—birth defects. God knows how she lived. She was living with a small group of homeless that migrate around the canals. MG, I’m not sure you want to see the first picture of the little boy.”
MG nodded. She pointed at the table.
“Oh, my God,” MG and Babe exclaimed almost simultaneously while covering their mouths.
“We assume the mother was raped, based on her living conditions and her physical condition. Two of her group was all that would speak to us, and no one recalls the girl ever speaking more than one word at a time.
“Neither of them was present when the boy was born but they said that there were four women that took care of the baby. From what we were told he was a normal, healthy baby, until— everyone was asleep when the screaming woke them up,” Marshall pointed to the picture.
“It was a starving pit bull that belonged to another homeless person. It had a filthy old piece of rope tied around his neck. We know all that because the girl’s group beat the dog to death.”
Marshall sighed. He sat back and stretched his neck.
“Sure, any medical staff anywhere would have saved that boy’s life. They probably would have done some reconstructive surgery. And maybe, just maybe, there would have been some media attention, a little pressure to go farther and not just shovel these two back out to the street. Look at this.”
He flipped over the picture of the mother. She was clear-eyed and smiling. The signs of the reconstructive surgery were evident yet the difference was still amazing. Marshall flipped over the picture of the little boy who was maybe two and a half years old, and though his scarring was severe, he was a good looking kid and smiled like any happy toddler.
“Our church is taking care of these two,” Marshall said, “The girl sits in with the grade school classes. She is smart as a whip and she’s learning to speak at the same time that she’s learning to read,” Marshall chuckled, shaking his chair and the table.
“She talks a mile a damn minute, and she loves to read. She reads to that little boy all the time. When you see her reading Curious George to that baby and she’s hearing it for the first time, too, if that don’t turn on the eye faucets for you, then you ain’t no damned human.”
“That’s incredible, Marshall,” Babe said.
“This little girl,” Marshall said, pointing to the last pair of photos.
“This is my cousin’s little girl—bad cleft palate. Her jaw wasn’t fully formed and her gums were almost nonexistent. They thought they were going to lose her because she couldn’t eat and she was in an almost constant state of gag reflex. My cousin and his wife were freaking out. I talked to a couple of surgeons about the baby’s condition, and I took out a forty thousand dollar loan. We got everything scheduled and I had them cover up where the money was coming from. I canceled a cruise we had planned that year.
“Everything went perfectly. Chad says it looks like her teeth are going to come in normally. After the surgeries I took my checkbook to the financial office. The girl there said, ‘the balance is thirty eight seventy five’. I wrote a check for thirty eight thousand and seventy five dollars. She looked at it, and said, ‘So, is this my tip?’
She slid the check back to me and said, ‘thirty eight dollars and seventy five cents, please, Dr. Gates. I take it you have a fairy Godmother that you don’t know about?’”
“I guess I do,” Marshall said.
“Hell of a story, Marshall. Makes my head hurt, but man, this is amazing,” Babe said.
“You know who the most important people are?” Marshall asked.
“The dentists,” MG said.
“The dentists. That’s right, MG,” Marshall said.
“We could never pull this off without them. The offices are usually a little more low-key and isolated, and if anyone sees something happening there after hours, they just assume it’s a dental emergency and they thank God that it’s not them. Dentists know how to deal with trauma, pain, and bleeding. We have several setups like this one—x-ray machines and the like.”
Chad Jenson spoke up.
“I’ve been patiently waiting to have my ass kissed. Was that it?”
Everyone laughed.
“Well,” Marshall said, “It looks like Millie’s tummy is okay with the medicine. I have to get back.”
Babe shook hands with Chad and gave Marshall a big hug. MG hugged them both. She kissed Marshall on the cheek.
“Give your mother a kiss for me. She isn’t the only one who would be happy to see you on the Supreme Court.”
“Can you help me get Millie into her apartment before I take you home?” MG asked Babe as they pulled out of the parking lot.
“Of course,” Babe said, “Just drop me off at the office. I’m going to use Jordan’s apartment. I have a ten o’clock.”
“I guess I have an eight o’clock”, MG said. “Looks like I’ll be bringing you coffee for a little while. Just like the good old days.”
“Shit, that’s right,” Babe said. “What are we going to tell everyone?”
“There aren’t many options and it’s going to sound like bullshit no matter what we say. I guess we just go with she slipped on the stairs, fell, and hit her head,” MG said.
“And who do we tell?” Babe asked.
“I don’t expect Jordan in the office before Monday. Why don’t you call him and tell him what happened. And be sure to tell him that it was all my idea,” MG said.
“What about Jack?” Babe asked.
“I’ll talk to Jack. I’ll tell him I’m going to be covering
for Millie for a couple of weeks and if he asks why, I’ll just ask him if he really wants to know. Right now, I don’t think he does.”
Twenty-Three
Babe flipped on his workstation on his way to the apartment. He changed into a black track suit and a pair of athletic shoes. Before he draped his coat over a chair he reached into a pocket and took out Millie’s phone. A few keystrokes on his computer and he had what he wanted. He picked up the desk phone and called for a taxi.
Babe had the taxi driver stop two blocks from his destination. He paid the cabbie with a healthy tip and asked the cabbie to wait for him for what shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes. Babe walked up to the front door of a small house and rang the doorbell. He waited; one minute and no response. He knocked firmly on the door; still no answer. He knocked again, louder. The door jerked open, stopping at the security chain.
“What the fuck do you want, Joshua?” Bradley Weyner seethed through the opening. “This is none of your goddamned business.”
“You’re wrong about that, Bradley.” Babe said, leaning toward the three inches of open space. “It is very much my business.”
“She’ll be lucky if I don’t press charges. She could have killed me.”
“Do you really think a judge is going to look at her and not put you away? Try not being an idiot for a second,“ Babe said.
“Look, the fucking bitch—”
Babe pulled both hands from his coat pockets and slammed the heels of his palms into the door at the level of the security chain. The screws splintered the wood and the impact of the heavy door knocked Bradley’s feet from under him and put him onto his back. He scrambled backward against the door frame of the entry hall as Babe walked in. The only light in the entry trailed in from the rear bedroom. Babe knelt and leaned in toward Bradley.