Lady Justice and the Organ Traders

by Robert Thornhill

  REVIEWS

  Robert Thornhill's next installment in the Lady Justice series, Lady Justice and the Organ Traders, features our favorite hero, Walt Williams, who once again finds himself on an unforgettable adventure.

  Luckily, fans of mystery are granted a ringside seat to witness the fast-paced action, and are whisked away on the ride of a lifetime alongside well-developed characters.

  Walt finds himself in Kansas City, attempting to unearth the mystery behind a body which was horribly mutilated, and he's surprised to discover that the cadaver's kidney had been stolen. Now, he's thrust into a world of an organ trading ring.

  In a race against time, he struggles to find a way to halt the bootleggers and keep his sanity, especially when a personal issue has him questioning his motives.

  The author's wild imagination and skilled craft of writing join together synonymously and harmoniously which results in a novel that will keep one on the edge of their seat and even releasing a few giggles every now and then.

  The multiple twists and turns throughout will have readers gasping at the appropriate times and keep them enthralled within the original and gripping storyline all the way up to the breathtaking finish. Book lovers will agree, hands down, that this is truly another entertaining masterpiece! Jaime Geraldi, ArticleWriteUp

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  Thrills, laughter, suspense and a new philosophical topic to ponder, satisfyingly come together in Lady Justice and the Organ Traders, the 16th volume in the Robert Thornhill’s Lady Justice Mystery/Comedy Series.

  Formerly a real estate agent, Walt is now a senior citizen who works with the Kansas City Police Department to fulfill his lifelong dream of helping Lady Justice rid the world of bad guys. Once again, Walt finds that the world is made of shades of gray rather than the black & white we wish it could be.

  Thornhill weaves an engaging storyline around the complex moral issues surrounding the growing black market trading of healthy organs (specifically kidney in this story). He asks us to consider if we would break the law to save the life of a loved one, and at what cost. Definitely worth a 5-star rating! Christina Jones, Independence, MO.

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  What would you do if you were on the organ transplant list, waiting for a kidney that would never come?

  If you had the money, would you do whatever was necessary to buy one?

  What would you do if you and your family were in desperate need of money? Would you be willing to sell one of your organs, even if it was not legal?

  Lady Justice and the Organ Traders hits the mark with a controversial subject. It really left me wondering what I would do in either situation. Once again Robert Thornhill pens another 5 star read! Sheri Wilkinson, Princeton, IL.

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  Lady Justice tackles another moral/ethical conundrum. Should it be legal to buy and sell transplant organs from living donors?

  When so many people die each year waiting on the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network’s ever growing list for a kidney, liver, heart, or other lifesaving transplant, what would be so wrong with paying a healthy person to share a part of themselves that they might never miss? That is the question asked of our buddy, Walt, and his friends in Lady Justice and the Organ Traders.

  For more information on how you can become a legal organ donor, please check out The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) at http://www.unos.org. Cynthia Coer Butcher, Blue Springs, MO.

  LADY JUSTICE

  AND THE

  ORGAN TRADERS

  A WALT WILLIAMS

  MYSTERY/COMEDY NOVEL

  ROBERT THORNHILL

  Lady Justice and the Organ Traders

  Copyright March, 2014 by Robert Thornhill

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, incidents and entities included in the story are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events and entities is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America

  Cover design by Peg Thornhill

  Fiction, Humorous

  Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General

  PROLOGUE

  Every year, 87,000 people worldwide die from kidney failure.

  In the United States over a half-million people suffer from kidney disease and by 2015 that number is expected to rise to over 700,000.

  One hundred thousand people are on the organ transplant list waiting for a donor kidney and 3,000 new names are added to the list every month, but in an average year, only 17,000 transplants actually occur.

  Every year in the U.S., 5,000 people die waiting for a transplant that never comes.

  Supply and demand.

  People need donor kidneys to survive, but only a third of all kidney transplants come from living donors and 96% of those are family members.

  The demand is there, but the supply is limited, not because kidneys are not available, but because selling an organ is illegal in every country in the world except Iran.

  Where there is demand, someone will come forward to supply the need.

  During the prohibition years when alcohol was illegal, bootleggers stepped in to supply the demand.

  Until most recently, marijuana was illegal in most states, allowing Columbian and Mexican drug lords to flood our country with illegal pot.

  Likewise, the demand for kidneys from living donors is so great that organ traders have thrived, setting up complex organizations involving surgeons, nephrologists, clinics and laboratories.

  They have found a bountiful supply of donors willing to sell a kidney for a price ranging from $1,200.00 to $20,000.00. The vast majority of donors come from the ranks of the world’s disadvantaged, eager to part with a kidney for a sum that might equal twice what they could earn in a year.

  Recipients, for the most part, are wealthy and able to pay upwards of a hundred thousand dollars for a black market kidney.

  These ‘transplant tourists’ travel to countries such as Kosovo, Turkey and the Philippines where officials can be bribed to look the other way.

  There is a growing lobby for a government regulated system to compensate kidney donors in which the organs would be allocated anonymously so that everyone, both rich and poor, would be able to receive a life-saving transplant.

  In Iran, a nation considered backward by modern standards, where women are still stoned to death for adultery, selling an organ is legal and a transplant waiting list does not exist.

  Yet today, the World Health Organization opposes all efforts to legalize payments for human organs and the National Kidney Foundation is against a pilot program to see if financial incentives are a viable solution to the problem, stating that such a program would have a ‘corrosive effect’ on the ethical, moral and social fabric of our society.

  Supply and demand.

  As long as people are dying of kidney disease and their only hope for survival is a kidney transplant, organ traders will continue to have a thriving business.

  For the average American, all of these statistics mean very little and few of us are caught up in the moral dilemma of whether buying an organ is right or wrong --- until kidney disease impacts our own family.

  If it was your child, your husband or your wife that was dying, waiting for a legal donor that would never come, and you were approached by an individual that offered a life-saving
kidney for a price you could afford --- what would you do?

  CHAPTER 1

  The black SUV pulled up to the curb in front of the Three Trails Hotel on Linwood Boulevard and honked once.

  Leroy Grubbs stepped out onto the front porch carrying a small suitcase. He tried to slip by old man Feeney who was peacefully rocking on the porch swing, but it wasn’t to be.

  “Hey Leroy! Sorry about the stink in the #4 crapper this mornin’. Too many tamales off Jim’s cart last night. Shoudda knowed better.”

  Leroy grimaced as he recalled the stench in the #4 toilet. Twenty sleeping rooms shared four hall baths and it was just his luck that the other three were occupied and he had to follow old man Feeney, famous at the Three Trails for his aromatic deposits.

  “No problem --- I survived.”

  Feeney pressed on. “Mighty fancy ride out there. You headed someplace special?”

  Indeed he was, but Leroy wasn’t about to share the information with Feeney, whose mouth was as notorious around the hotel as his rear end.

  “No, just a ride to a temp job. Nothing special.”

  That seemed to satisfy Feeney. He knew that Leroy had been working out of the day labor pool since he lost his job.

  Leroy slipped into the back seat and as the SUV pulled away from the curb he took one last look at the flop house he had called home for the last six months.

  With the money he would be receiving today, he would finally be able to afford a decent apartment. In fact, he had put a deposit on a small studio just a block off Broadway. It wasn’t much but at least it had a private bath and a small kitchen. Compared to the Three Trails, it would be like living at the Hilton.

  Two weeks ago, having his own place wasn’t even on the horizon. Then one day, after waiting at the labor pool unsuccessfully for hours for a job to open up, he was approached by a stranger who offered to buy him a sandwich and a cup of coffee for a few minutes of his time. He figured that he had nothing to lose, so he followed the guy to Denny’s.

  That meeting changed the course of his life.

  During the time it took Leroy to devour a Grand Slam, the man told Leroy that he represented the interests of a wealthy businessman that was dying of renal failure and that he had been authorized to offer a willing donor twenty thousand dollars for a viable kidney.

  Leroy was speechless as he tried to process the offer. His first thought was, “But isn’t that illegal?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” the man replied, “but such transactions take place all of the time. It’s illegal to smoke marijuana but I’m willing to bet you have some acquaintances that use it on a regular basis.”

  Leroy had to admit that he did. In fact, he had taken a few puffs off a friend’s toke one evening after a particularly brutal day.

  “So how would this work?”

  “The first step would be a visit to the free clinic on Eighteenth Street. Do you know the place?”

  Leroy knew it all right. He had sold blood there several times to come up with the forty bucks to pay for the next week at the Three Trails.

  “Yeah, I know the place.”

  “Good! There will need to be some tests run to see if you are a compatible donor.”

  “And if I am?”

  “Then if you’re still willing, we will proceed.”

  “And if I’m not?”

  “Then this conversation never took place.”

  Now, two weeks later, all the tests had been run and the bogus consent forms signed where he swore that he was a willing donor and not being paid or coerced.

  In a few hours, he would wake from the anesthesia, pocket the twenty grand and get a new lease on life.

  The SUV headed downtown and took the 12th Street Viaduct to the West Bottoms.

  As the driver pulled up to an overhead door, Leroy noticed the faded name painted on the side of the old three-story structure, Armour Meat Packing Company.

  He smiled at the irony of the situation. The abandoned stockyards, just a few blocks away, had once been the hub of the meat slaughtering business in the Midwest. Companies such as Armour and Swift processed the beef and pork carcasses in buildings like this one. Now it was being used for meat processing of a very different kind.

  The overhead door groaned on its rusty tracks and the driver pulled inside to a loading dock where refrigerated trucks once hauled the processed meat to local grocers.

  As he ascended the concrete stairs to the dock, he noticed rats as large as small cats scurrying into the dark corners.

  “Not exactly the Mayo Clinic,” he thought.

  But when he opened the door to the building’s interior, it felt as if he had stepped into a different world.

  Bright lights illuminated white walls and glistening tile. The unmistakable smell of whatever chemicals that hospitals use filled the air. The far end of the room was hidden behind curtains like he had seen in a hospital emergency room.

  A man dressed in hospital scrubs emerged from behind the curtain.

  “Mr. Grubbs, I’m Dr. Vargas. I will be performing your surgery today. Are you ready to proceed?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Good! My assistants will get you prepped and ready to go. You remember, of course, that you will be spending the night with us --- just to be sure that everything’s okay.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Leroy said, holding up his small suitcase.

  “Splendid! Then let’s get started.”

  “Hold on just a second,” Leroy protested. “What about my twenty grand?”

  “Ahhh, of course,” the doctor replied with a smile. “How callous of me.” He nodded to an assistant who disappeared into another room and returned with a satchel.

  Dr. Vargas opened the satchel exposing neat stacks of hundred dollar bills. “It’s all here. Count it if you like. It’s all yours when we release you tomorrow.”

  “That’s okay,” Leroy said, peering into the satchel. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Leroy was led to a small room where he undressed and donned a hospital gown. He climbed aboard a gurney and was wheeled behind the curtain into the operating area. He noticed another curtain and he surmised that the recipient of his kidney was on the other side. He had been told from the beginning that both he and the recipient would remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

  “We’ll be administering a general anesthesia,” Dr. Vargas said. “My assistant will place a mask over your face. Please count backward from 100.” He nodded to the assistant.

  Leroy heard the ‘hiss’ as the anesthesia filled the mask. “One hundred -- ninety-nine -- ninety --.” It was the last thing he remembered.

  Dr. Vargas made the incision and carefully exposed the kidney. After it was successfully removed, Dr. Vargas carried it to the other side of the curtain. “Clean him up and close him up while I get started over here.”

  The assistant nodded.

  A few moments later, Vargas heard the assistant mutter, “Oh, crap! We’ve got a problem!”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got a bleeder! Clamp! Somebody get me a clamp!”

  Silence

  “Son-of-a-bitch! I’ve got another one. Blood pressures dropping! We’re losing him! Doctor, I need you! Now!”

  “Can’t! I’m at a critical point. We can’t risk losing them both. Do what you can.”

  When Vargas was finished, he returned to Leroy’s bedside.

  “We lost him,” the assistant muttered.

  “Damn shame,” Vargas said, shaking his head. He summoned two men that had been waiting outside the curtain. He nodded to the body. “Take care of this.”

  “Same as usual?”

  “No, let’s do the car thing this time.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  Vargas slumped into a chair and watched as Grubb’s body was wheeled out of the operating area. He hated losing a patient, but sometimes, under these conditions, it was unavoidable.

  But the day hadn’t been a total loss. Grubb’s ki
dney had been successfully transplanted into the wife of the CEO of one of Kansas City’s largest corporations.

  Thankfully, his mortality rate had dropped considerably since he moved his operation from the Philippines to Kansas City.

  While he could operate openly in the Philippine clinics, thanks to the considerable sums he had given to local officials to look the other way, the facilities left a lot to be desired.

  Using the money he would have spent greasing Philippine palms, he was able to open and staff his own clinic in the old warehouse.

  There had been a lot of water under the bridge since that day, many years ago, when he stood at the bedside of his sister who died of renal failure while waiting for a kidney from the transplant list.

  He remembered the vow he had taken as he held her frail hand --- a vow to become a surgeon so that he could help as many families as possible avoid the pain and loss that he was feeling.

  Little did he know that vow would lead him to a deserted warehouse in Kansas City’s West Bottoms where he would hide like a common criminal.

  CHAPTER 2

  Black Friday --- I hate it!

  It’s nothing but a scheme conjured up by the world’s retailers to separate families from their money and husbands from their recliners.

  I had managed to finagle a four day weekend from my duties as a patrol officer with the Kansas City Police Department and at the ripe old age of seventy, the prospect of ninety-six hours of relative peace and quiet was most appealing.

  Unfortunately, it just wasn’t going to happen.

  After four years of wedded bliss with Maggie, my sweetheart and soul mate, I had learned a valuable lesson --- marital harmony requires, among other things, negotiation and compromise. Maggie negotiates and I compromise.

  “Football --- all afternoon and evening? Sure, I can live with that and I’m sure you won’t mind taking me to the shopping mall tomorrow. Deal?”