Parts Unknown

by Rex Burns

  “I’m not certain. I’ve read some things, but I’m really not certain.”

  “I’m not going to quote you. What’s a body worth in the private sector?”

  “You have to remember that a healthy cadaver has a number of harvestable components, some of which are mutually exclusive, some of which aren’t.”

  “You mean,” Bunch said, “you might have to screw up one body part to get at another.”

  He nodded. “There are the organs, if the body can be kept alive artificially, and the corneas and skin, which can be removed shortly after death. Bone powder can be obtained even longer after death.”

  “Bone powder?”

  “An element essential to much transplant surgery—the average male cadaver can supply nearly five pounds of powder. It currently costs around four hundred fifty dollars for a tenth of a gram, so it comes to about nine hundred thousand. And the price is going up.”

  “For bone dust? Who pays for all this?”

  “By law, the procuring agency. In fact, it’s usually medical insurance of one kind or another.”

  “You mean my bones are worth almost a million?” asked Bunch.

  Vogel glanced at the big man and a slight humor came into the dark eyes. “I’d say you’re worth considerably more.”

  “How about that! A millionaire and I didn’t even know it!”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why so much?”

  “There are more transplants being done, for one thing, so demand is up. But the real cost is in extraction. In pieces, select bones from a male cadaver can be sold for almost seventy thousand dollars. But to properly procure and process the bones into dust, with the quality and technical standards required for surgical use, costs a tremendous amount. It’s the processed dust, not just the bones themselves, that accounts for that.”

  “Isn’t this done by hospital laboratories?”

  “Some. But the laws governing it and a number of for-profit groups are vague or not even drafted yet. These for-profits promise tremendous returns to investors and pay fantastic salaries to their medical staffs.”

  “Like Antibodies Research.”

  “Yes. Like them. In fact, there’s no way a for-profit group can generate an income like that without cutting a lot of corners in quality of procurement and processing.”

  I gave that some thought. “Have you ever met Mark Gilbert?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “Obviously, you don’t like him.”

  “As I said, we compete.”

  “He finds donors?”

  “Usually at small private hospitals in Colorado and elsewhere—those whose operating margins are slim. The county hospitals—public hospitals that I visit—are required by law to notify the nonprofit agencies if they have a donor. Private hospitals can accept finders’ fees, and some do.”

  Bunch leaned forward. “Is he snatching enough bodies to make a good living?”

  Vogel’s eyebrows raised until he decided Bunch was making a joke. Then his lips lifted in a polite smile. “Body snatching— that’s very funny. Gilbert does quite well, I understand, by procuring donors from other areas of the country. Atlanta, Houston, Albuquerque, New Orleans—states and areas where the regulations and laws haven’t yet been implemented as well as they have here.”

  “Have you ever worked with Dr. Morris Matheney?”

  “Yes. He’s one of our real experts in antigens. He’s made some major contributions to allograft research.”

  “Allograft?”

  “Transplants between two individuals of the same species. If you transplant between identical twins, that’s isograft. Autograft is moving tissue about within the same host. Xenograft is transplantation between different species. Research is going on there, too, though it’s been slowed a lot by animal rights activists.”

  “You have high regard for Dr. Matheney.”

  “Certainly! In fact, I’ve often thought he’d be my choice for a physician if I had to undergo transplant.”

  CHAPTER 11

  ON THE WAY back to the office, Bunch heaved a long sigh. “I got a good idea where Nestor disappeared to, Dev.”

  “It sounds possible. But it’s damned hard to believe. And let’s face it, it’s not all that easy. There must be regulations for a paper trail on parts of human bodies delivered for transplant.”

  “Vogel said the laws haven’t even been drafted yet.”

  And Vogel emphasized the confidentiality surrounding donors and recipients, a secrecy which, no matter how necessary, could lead to exploitation. “It has to be damned expensive, too. Think of the cost of setting up an operating room and the—what did Vogel call it?—the harvesting process.” Still the devil’s advocate, I added, “And there would be parts left over to get rid of.”

  “So? The facilities are already set up, Dev. Remember, Matheney has an operating room right in his clinic. And he has the skills.”

  As well as an interest in developing technology for transporting human organs. “There would be records, Bunch. Even in a clinic. No, the operating room would have to be someplace secret, and you’re talking big money to set that up with all its monitoring equipment, life-support equipment, quality control stuff. Big money.”

  “Think about it, Dev. Hospitals and clinics charge plenty—enough to cover all that overhead. A private company could too. Figure it out: you sell the organs at ‘cost,’ the skin, the bones, the tissues … . Christ, if you work it right, anything you don’t make money off you can flush down the toilet. It sounds like the greatest thing since chrome hamburgers.”

  “It’s also dangerous. You don’t just grab somebody off the street, Bunch.”

  “Illegal aliens?”

  Alone and invisible to official eyes … . The supply side of an economic equation that would be even more favorable: cheap raw material with fewer rights than someone’s pet dog. And no antivivisection groups picketing for them. “Nestor was, what, twenty-two? Twenty-three?”

  “Nice, healthy young lad,” said Bunch.

  “With very rare blood.”

  When we got back to the office, I ignored the red message light on the answering machine and made a quick call back to Vogel.

  “Don’t blood types have to be similar for successful transplants? Doesn’t the donor have to be the same blood type as the recipient?”

  “Generally, that’s the first prerequisite, especially for allografts: histocompatibility of blood and tissue.”

  “And it takes a lot of tests to determine this compatibility?”

  “It can. You certainly don’t want to make a mistake at an early stage and waste all the subsequent effort and expense.”

  “Have you had any special requests in the last couple of months for donors with Rh null blood?”

  A brief silence that might have been surprise. “Why, yes! There was one. An extremely rare type of blood. In fact, I’d never heard of it before.”

  “Who was the requesting party?”

  “That’s confidential information, Mr. Kirk.”

  “Did you find an Rh null donor?”

  “No.”

  “Is the transplant center still asking for an Rh null?”

  “No. They dropped off the computer.”

  “Meaning they found one?”

  “More likely, the patient died. As I said, it’s a very rare blood type. The chances of a match would be quite small.”

  “Who has access to the organ procurement lists?”

  “If you mean the computer, only those hospitals in the Colorado Organ Recovery System. But as I told you earlier, much of the search is done by telephone—personal contact. I get on the phone and call hospitals.” He added, “In small hospitals particularly, when an accident victim comes in, things are pretty frenetic and often they don’t have time to file a notice until too late.”

  “How does a private firm do it? Such as Antibodies Research?”

  “Telephone. And finders’ fees.”

  “Can you remember when the request fo
r Rh null came in?”

  Another pause. “Three weeks ago? A month? I’m not certain. It could have been over a month ago.”

  “Did it come from Empire State Hospital in New York?” A longer pause, and before he could say “No comment” or hang up, I went on, “Obviously, Mr. Vogel, I’ve talked to other sources. I’m merely trying to verify their reliability so I can write the most accurate—and sympathetic—story I can. Did it come from Empire State? Your reply is entirely confidential.”

  “Well, yes, it did. They do a lot of the more difficult cases.”

  “Can you tell me who from that hospital requested it?”

  “No. I’ve revealed too much already. If you want that, you’ll have to talk to the hospital yourself.”

  I thanked Vogel again and hung up and stared for a long time out the window at the mountains. Strange how in the afternoon light they seemed to hunker down and look less steep and jagged as their shadows softened the rock faces above timberline. They weren’t any different, of course. The cliffs and tumbled scree were the same, and it was just as much labor to walk the long, steep switchbacks up their faces toward the wind-scoured tundra. In a way it was good to know they were the same, regardless of how they looked from this distance or at different times of day. It was good to know there were those clean and unchanging spots left.

  “Dev? Oh, Dev!” Bunch rapped his knuckles on the desk to pull me back to the office. “Check out the messages, my man.” He turned the rewind switch to run the tape through garbled voices and replay it for me. Among the sales pitches and blank spots was a statement to the effect that someone knew fucking-a well who stole their dog, and Kirk and Associates better start looking over their shoulders. Because the unnamed someone was coming after their asses.

  Another voice, more familiar, asked me to call Security Underwriters as soon as possible. And finally, the last message was from Archy Archer to let me know he’d found another wrecked Austin-Healey in Port Arthur, Texas, and for a fee could have it trucked up to Denver to cannibalize the parts.

  Schute was paying for his information. I called him first.

  “What have you found out, Kirk?”

  “We still don’t have the kind of evidence that will stand up in court. But we’re getting close—I hope to have something useful in the next few days.”

  “I certainly hope so. I’ve had to tell our lawyers to reserve a court date so we can come in under the statute of limitations. We’ll delay notice of filing as long as possible, but Taylor will have to be notified then. Or we’ll have to drop the case.”

  “How soon?”

  “My guess is a week or so. But that’s cutting it damned thin.”

  “We’re working on it, Mr. Schute.”

  “And I’m counting on you.”

  He didn’t say anything else; he didn’t have to. No firm would rehire or recommend somebody they couldn’t count on, especially when a lot of other agencies were willing to take their money.

  I looked at Bunch, who had listened to the conversation over the phone speaker. “Any ideas?”

  “Figure some way to lure Taylor out dancing?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Hey, like you told Schute, I’m working on it.”

  “And in the meantime, we keep looking over our shoulders.”

  “Yeah. About that, Dev, they’ve got you picked out. What say I sort of trail around behind you just in case?”

  “I don’t need a bodyguard, Bunch.”

  “I didn’t say you did. I’m thinking trap—next time they try to jump you, I jump them.”

  I shook my head. “Ties us both up too much. We’ll just keep our eyes open.”

  He shrugged. “Just don’t meet anybody alone, okay?”

  I promised, and we divided up the rest of the afternoon. Bunch would learn what he could about Antibodies Research, using newspaper files, the telephone, friends, and, most especially, friends of friends. I’d see what a trip to Warner Memorial could tell us before swinging by the new Ace Roofing job and following the workmen home; our angle this time was to see if they might meet Taylor after work.

  The trip to Warner led me on a trail of diamond patterns and circle patterns in the floor tiles of institutional hallways. Wall arrows directed me along the large building’s maze toward the office I had been referred to by the receptionist. There, the hospital’s public relations spokeswoman assured me she could provide a press package that would answer most of my questions about Warner’s famous transplant activities. I took it and then, like a true newshound, told her I wanted to get a different angle—something personal and up close was the phrase—especially about the wonder docs who made these miracles happen. But, I found out, most of them weren’t available, and those who were had little time for the press. In fact, Dr. Gold was downright hostile: “I appreciate the fact that you’re a reporter, but the answer is no. If a call comes, I may have a hundred minutes to scrub up, get the patient prepped, operate, and have him in post-op. There’s no time for you. Good-bye.”

  Public relations, however, is public relations; the hospital spokeswoman, apologizing for the doctor’s abruptness—“They’re under tremendous pressure, you understand”—gave me a list of stations that I could visit: The patient preparation area, where the recipient, called from home as soon as word on a donor arrived, would come in breathless and more than a little frightened, yet hopeful and excited nonetheless. The operating room itself, not nearly so filled with space-age technology as the television shows reported. In fact, compared to the hospital’s bare, starkly lit room, where everything was on wheels, the surgery in Matheney’s suite of offices a block or so away seemed cheerfully luxurious. Finally, the computer with its twenty-four-hour monitor and a backup sheet prominently posted that listed the types of recipients waiting.

  “We have a program that automatically places calls to the transplant team when a suitable donor comes on the screen.” The nurse’s aide pointed to the bank of machines that filled one wall of a cramped and windowless room. “But just in case, the backup list is on the wall and I’m supposed to answer when the alert beep calls our control number.”

  “So all the doctors are rousted when a donor shows up?”

  “No, only our specialty team and its surgeon. We don’t do hearts, for example, so our beepers don’t sound for those donors. St. Luke’s gets them.”

  “What specialty does Warner have?”

  “Kidney. We currently have two kidney surgeons, and we’re negotiating with a surgeon in Baltimore to come and open a liver transplant center. The kidney transplant’s really more difficult than a heart transplant,” she sniffed. “But of course, hearts get all the attention.”

  “Why is it more difficult?”

  “The organ. A kidney’s just a mass of blood vessels that are extremely difficult to work with.”

  “Dr. Matheney’s one of your surgeons?”

  “Yes. And Dr. Gold is the other. Both are very good.”

  “Does Dr. Matheney ever do transplants in his own clinic?”

  “Oh, no! Those facilities wouldn’t do. Our operating rooms are especially placed in the hospital not only for access to patient care but also to decrease vibrations. I can’t imagine doing that type of delicate transplant surgery in a clinic’s operating room.”

  “But other kinds of transplants?”

  “Perhaps in an extreme emergency. But I really can’t imagine it.”

  I asked a few more questions, but the main thing I discovered was Matheney’s access to the computer. He would know when a donor somewhere in the country was suitable for one of the hospital’s waiting patients. And he would know what the hospitals were waiting for, even if it had nothing to do with kidneys.

  “Dr. Matheney drops in quite often to look over the printouts of requests. He’s really dedicated.” She showed me the sheets, with their lines of abbreviations and numbers that outlined pertinent histological information and the assigned number of the requesting center. “A lot of t
his is superfluous—any donor’s going to find someone somewhere with a need. But the urgent ones come on line; it’s sort of a final hope.” She amplified: “If we have a donor, for instance, we input the blood and tissue types into the computer, and the program searches for a matching request. It’s all done at a computer bank in Philadelphia, and in a couple minutes, back comes an answer. A hospital in Florida or California might be looking for an organ with just those specifications. I’m sorry we don’t have a donor now in the hospital so you could see how it works.”

  I told her I was, too, and thanked her for all the information.

  Ace Roofing’s familiar truck and tar trailer sat in the parking lot surrounding a long apartment building. Its roof was a shingled mansard topped by tar and pea gravel. Beneath the mansard, which formed the third tier of apartments whose windows protruded past the slope of shingles, the building was a mixture of brick and plaster designed to look old-fashioned and match the name: Camelot West. It looked like the biggest job Ace had landed yet, and I was disappointed that the work force was the same size and had the same faces.

  When I arrived, pulling the van into position at the far end of the parking lot, the crew was just finishing for the day. The boss, heavyset with a skin tanned boot dark, gestured where to leave the equipment for the next day’s work, and I watched as they meticulously stored the stiff mops and spreaders near a series of vent pipes on the roof, and telescoped the long aluminum ladders and shoved them into the truck bed. Then they caravaned out, leaving the tar trailer parked at a far edge—first the pickup, then a Chevrolet Camaro spotted with primer and rumbling deeply. I pulled in behind, giving them plenty of room in the heavy traffic of late afternoon.

  Knowing pretty much where they were headed, I could afford to drop back out of sight and move up only for periodic checks. The quickest route was Wadsworth north, and that’s what they took, avoiding the tangle of downtown traffic that always clogged the I-70—I-25 mousetrap at rush hour. By the time we crossed over the Boulder turnpike, traffic thinned enough for me to stay far behind and still keep them in sight. They made the expected turn onto U.S. 287 North, but instead of turning off east toward Erie and the Wilcox farm, they passed one road after another and headed for Longmont. At the southern edge of the town and before they reached the city limits, where car dealers and fast-food restaurants crowded the frontage, they pulled into the graveled lot of a small, nondescript box of a building with two high windows on each side of a single door. Above the door a painted sign read CACTUS LOUNGE. In one of the windows was a red Coors sign; another said TOPLESS DANCING EVERY WEEKEND. A clutch of gleaming Harley choppers had been backed against the grimy brown of the bar’s stucco.