Vulture Peak sj-5

by John Burdett

  9

  Ever do something you absolutely know is going to lead you into a whole heap of trouble, DFR, but you just cannot seem to stop yourself? I don’t mean the kind of thing you’re forced into against your will-say, doing something illegal under pressure from the boss-trading in human organs would be a good example. No, I mean something you are quite free to refuse, where the pressure is minimal to nonexistent? Something that from one perspective makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, but from the other possesses an irresistible attraction? So the answer to your question, DFR, is: Yes, I did get myself tarted up and took a cab to Lilly’s six star to arrive fashionably late at about twenty past nine that fateful evening. Standing behind the bellhop outside her door, I was all in a dither about which one she would be. Would I at last find out if there were indeed two of them? Or was I dealing with a total psycho here, albeit a psycho of genius?

  The door opened on a chain, a soft female voice spoke in Arabic, and the bellhop nodded at me and strode off down the corridor. I watched the door close so the chain could be unlatched and waited. The door remained slightly ajar. After thirty seconds I pushed and-feeling like a jerk-called out: “Lilly? Oh, Lilly!” No answer. I pushed harder. The door did not resist. Lights were tastefully dimmed. I closed the door behind me and made my entrance into the vast lounge area. I was pleased that it was too dark to see the sailboats, assuming they were still there. Instead I fixated on a tall, slim female figure standing by the window. The woman by the window did not move, and neither did I, for I was suddenly in the grip of an intense speculation of the erotic kind. It went like this:

  I pray in aid the ancients who meditated on the erotic possibilities of twin sisters. (Don’t ask me which ancients-we all know what horny and imaginative buggers they were.) Suppose, for example, Twin One (let’s call her Lilly) stood before you in a man’s long-sleeve white shirt and nothing else. And suppose, further, that one made passionate love to her, after which one became, so to speak, mere putty in her hands. Now, by presenting appropriate proof, she demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that she is not Lilly but Polly: Are you head over heels in love with Polly or with Lilly? Or has the whole experiment busted the great taboo of courtly love by demonstrating existentially that crotches do not differ much in quality and kind from one lover to another, so what/who exactly were you in love with anyway? Don’t answer unless you intend a voyage into the mysteries of the I versus the Not-I, DFR.

  Well, I have news. The lady standing at the window turned to face me, and guess what? She was wearing a man’s shirt with all the buttons done up except the top three (the shirt was black, not white) and was this very minute tapping the glass-top table with her finely manicured left index finger, transmitting a nerve-wracking mixed message of impatience, disdain, vulnerability, and impenetrable cunning combined with a most convincing and charming invitation for sophisticated erotic adventure expressed in the faux innocence of her eyes and the pleasing scent of musk, which may have been her own or that of a butchered doe, it was hard to say. Now what?

  The bathroom door opened, and-yes-an identical woman appeared wearing-yes again-a man’s shirt with all the buttons done up save the top three and apparently nothing else. No prizes for guessing this shirt was white.

  I must have still been disoriented by the eyes, and by the association of 1,764-divided-by-two-equals-882 cadavers with these two beauties. My knees turned to jelly. I grabbed the back of a chair to steady myself, then decided to accept defeat and sit down, thus fatally lowering myself before the two of them, who were now transformed into Giant Female Powers towering above me. I felt a twitch in my left cheek, a frown disfiguring my brow, an erotic-neurotic sweat both cold and hot causing my body to shiver while my eyes flitted from Blackshirt to Whiteshirt. “Will you please tell me who is who?” I gurgled.

  Whiteshirt walked slowly toward me on exquisite bare feet, her shapely thighs appearing and disappearing under the impeccably laundered shirt (I’m pretty sure it was of the Arrow brand) until she reached my chair, whereupon she bent over me in a way that ensured an unobstructed view of her breasts. She passed her fingers through my hair. “Stop pretending it matters. Do what we want, and we’ll be yours for the weekend.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You have to guess. One clue: we’ve booked three first-class seats to Nice for tomorrow morning.”

  It was one hell of a moment for a quiz. Fortunately, as a Bangkok cop I had had a great deal to do with Chinese from the Swatow region, and on the flight over I had studied the airline’s most popular routes. The reason why Dubai-Nice is a favorite in the Muslim Middle East did not escape me. I had the answer in less than a second. “You want me to take you to Monte Carlo?”

  Four black Chinese eyes opened wide with delight, and the two women burst out laughing. “Smart,” said Whiteshirt, “very, very smart.”

  “Of course we could go on our own, but we’re old-fashioned.”

  “It’s the way we were brought up.”

  “We’re strictly Confucian.”

  “And you are very, very cute when you’re horny.”

  More laughter. The erotic moment dissolved. They both disappeared for a moment, then returned, one, whom I shall call Lilly, in the preppy uniform of late afternoon, and the other, Polly, in the Vogue business kit.

  “Shall we go into the business area?” Polly said. “I wanted to show you some e-mails.”

  The thirty-six-inch monitor sat on a teak credenza under a window. Polly clicked on her black wireless mouse, while Lilly sat at the coffee table and dropped large black grapes into her mouth. On the monitor the Yahoo e-mail window opened: Dear Dr. Black, I know that’s not your real name but that’s the one they told me to use. I’m desperate. My husband is all I have left in the world after our only child Sebastian died in a car crash last year. My husband Abe was also in the crash-he was driving the car-and they amputated his left arm from the elbow and both his kidneys and liver are damaged. They won’t put him anywhere high on the lists because they’re jerks and blame him for the accident because there was alcohol in his blood and since the accident he drinks a lot to bury his sorrow so they decided he wasn’t worth saving, even though they would never admit that in court. We have lots of money and we’ll pay anything, go anywhere to get our life back. Abe made his first fortune in pornography and the second in Internet gambling, so you can be sure we’re good for the dough. I know you maybe can’t do much about the arm right now, but that can wait. I can’t tell you what misery we’re in, otherwise I would never write to anyone like this. Please, please help us, I am on my knees to God every day, I love my husband like no modern woman would understand, he’s taken care of me all my life and if he goes I go too. Please, please, Dr. Black, just say the word, give us the account number, whatever, we’ll get on a plane yesterday, anywhere, anytime. Yours very truly, Rita Smith (okay, that’s not my name either but I’m scared of the FBI)

  Polly was watching my face. I looked up. “What do you think?”

  I tried to work out what the question was getting at. She had to prompt me: “How would you rate them as potential clients?”

  I shrugged. “How would you?”

  Her lips tightened; I seemed to have failed this part of the test. “Triple A.”

  “How so?”

  “Pampered, sentimental, self-pitying, semicriminal, rich, no qualms.” She tapped the e-mail. “Generally, women are safer to deal with-they put survival of the family before survival of the species and survival of the ego above everything-but we cover up so much better than men. Now, take a look at this.”

  She was on the point of showing me another e-mail from another Yahoo account, then paused to lean back and appraise me. “You’re so brand-new, you don’t know about the cyclosporine revolution, do you?”

  “Cyclosporine?”

  “Yes. The reason why trade is booming and the likes of Vikorn have decided to give it a second look.” She was standing next to me where I sat
at the computer. Her white hand of the perfect manicure flicked to take in the view, then came to rest on my shoulder for a moment. I was surprised. With a subtle, almost imperceptible jerk of her chin toward her twin, she lifted the hand from my shoulder. Without a word she clicked on the mouse. Dear Dr. Pink, I am in pain. I’ve been in pain all my life, I couldn’t have done anything to deserve it because I’ve been too sick since childhood to hurt anyone. I am innocent and now I’m forty-two years old and I can’t take it anymore. I don’t care what you have to do, I don’t care who has to die, it’s my turn to live a whole day without pain. Get me the fuck out of here. I have the money. Do you hear me? I HAVE THE MONEY. Yours very truly, Michael James Conran

  She was looking at me, waiting for my reaction. “Well?”

  “How would I rate it? I would say a perfect client. Rich, desperate, no qualms.”

  A shrug. “Sure, but he doesn’t tell us what is wrong with him. We only do organ transplants. If he’s been in pain since childhood, it’s likely something incurable, in the bones, perhaps, or the immune system itself. More likely it’s psychological. Someone else’s body parts won’t help.” She tapped the e-mail. “You get lots like this, lots and lots. Whoever thinks life is wonderful doesn’t practice medicine. How about this one?” She clicked onto yet another Yahoo account: Dear Doctor White, Sorry I don’t speak Inglish so good. I am mother of Chad. My husband bring us to America but he dye. My little girl need diyalisi for kidneys. We don’t have insurance. I heard you help poor people, you very good woman. Doctor White, my little girl she need kidneys. We love you Doctore White. Abena Abeni

  We remained silent for a moment. Finally she clicked back to the first e-mail and smiled her Vogue smile. “So, do you think you and Vikorn can find a liver for poor Abe?”

  A liver for poor Abe? “I’d have to ask Vikorn,” I heard myself say.

  She nodded. A grin, then she cocked her head. “But however rich Abe is, he won’t expect to pay more than a few thousand dollars for half a liver. You want to hang on to clients like that. After a few years the second liver starts to fail-that’s when you get into the serious money. Second transplants are a serious business and generally you need a whole liver, a perfectly healthy whole liver.”

  “From a cadaver? Or someone brain-dead?”

  “Then you’re talking about waiting lists, priority allocation, just-in-time contacts with traffic police or some other authority. That’s hard for us in the parallel trade to set up. Perhaps impossible.” I gasped. She noticed how I recoiled and scrolled back to the e-mail from Michael James Conran. “You read what the man says. He doesn’t care who has to die.” She stood up. “If you really want to be a player, this is what you have to realize. All human beings are cannibals when it comes to brute survival. That is really what the trade is all about, no matter how they care to dress it up for the folks at home. Think about it, Detective. But don’t take too long. I can get over three hundred thousand dollars for a good-quality whole liver from a recently deceased donor, whether brain-dead, volunteer-or otherwise.”

  I walked out of the business suite into the silk rugs and damascene chaise longues of the sitting area. The door to the master bedroom had been left ajar; I saw a brilliant white pillowcase, a Turkish bedspread turned back, a pair of naked white feet. Polly caught my gaze and stopped moving for a telling moment. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up; somewhere under my skull prohibited synapses were making a thrilling connection between sex and death. Then I seemed to hear Chanya’s voice: One move, one hint that you’re ready for sex, and you’re done for. They don’t care who dies.

  I coughed. “Cyclosporine,” I said. “You were going to tell me about it, then we got distracted.”

  She nodded, as if conceding that the moment had passed. “Modern solid-organ transplant is decades old. You could date it from the first-ever kidney transplant in 1950 in Illinois, or from the first heart transplant by Christiaan Barnard in South Africa in 1967, but there are plenty of other landmarks. What’s new, though, and what has transformed an exotic sideline into a global business that is about to explode, is the discovery and commercial production of cyclosporine. Before, there was the laborious task of matching organs to try to avoid rejection by the recipient’s immune system. The new drug changed all that-it suppresses the immune system. It’s not quite a case of throwing any working kidney into any body that needs it, but almost. In fact, at the seedier end of the trade, that’s pretty much what happens. Of course, the recipient dies in a few years. Even if the new organ functions properly, the immune system is paralyzed by the cyclosporine and the patient starts to grow every kind of tumor imaginable, but without the transplant they would have died sooner. That’s an important factor that can’t be disputed. Actually, they’re kept temporarily alive by the cyclosporine as much as by the new kidney, but who’s splitting hairs?”

  10

  Next morning we shared a limo to the airport. Lilly dressed down in jeans, designer T-shirt, and sandals while Polly, in a navy dress suit, decked herself in gold, especially in the form of bracelets on her wrists. On the plane Lilly took the window seat, Polly took the aisle, and I was the meat in the sandwich. Not that it really mattered: in first there was so much space between pods, we could have been flying solo. There were buttons that, when pressed, sent screens up from the armrests to shut out the neighbors on either side. Being friends, none of us used the facility, which enabled me to make what may have been a key observation. Lilly said something to Polly in one of their Chinese dialects-I fancy it was Fukienese-which attracted her twin’s attention. A stowaway fly had infiltrated First and was free-riding on Lilly’s window. I assumed a HiSo fastidiousness had been invoked, and I looked forward to an indignant word from one or both of them to the purser.

  Wrong. Polly said something back to Lilly in an excited voice. Lilly responded with still greater excitement. All six of our eyes were now fixated on the fly. I had no idea of the odds or the sums agreed on, but something told me neither was minimal. The fly made a dash toward the top of the window-a move in Lilly’s favor for sure, to judge from the glee in her eyes and the glum in her sister’s. True to its nature, though, the fly would not be so easily predicted and made a series of jerks in a W pattern, which left it pretty much where it had started in terms of suspension between earth and sky.

  More hurried punting. I had a feeling the stakes were getting serious. A middle-aged woman in the seat behind me looked up from her video and understood; now eight eyeballs awaited the fly’s next move. The fly jerked a couple of inches skyward. To my right Polly fidgeted unhappily with one of her solid gold bracelets. Lilly pressed her palms together and wrung her hands. But the fly was nothing if not a tease. He decided to give himself a body wipe with his legs, all over from head to feet, about a dozen times with extra attention to face and eyes. Who said flies are dirty?

  Unable to resist, I leaned toward Polly. “What’s the betting so far?”

  She glared. “Don’t ask.”

  “I ask.”

  She slipped off her gold bracelet to invite me to heft it. More than two ounces, that’s for sure. Maybe five. I remembered the figures from the Gold Souk. Well over a thousand dollars an ounce, close to twelve hundred if I remembered correctly. We were talking about a six-thousand-dollar fly. Now Polly lost it and said something fast-desperate, I would say.

  Lilly turned to stone but nodded her head.

  “How much now?” I asked.

  Polly refused to answer. The woman behind me got up to lean over my pod. She had an American accent. “Please tell me how much they are betting on the fly?”

  “About six thousand dollars, I think.”

  “If it gets to the top of the window before flying away?”

  “I think so.”

  “If it gets to the bottom of the window before flying away, she pays double,” Polly hissed.

  Lilly remained stone-faced, silently urging her fly heavenward.

  Now the fly was clean as a
whistle and good to go. In a sudden burst he shifted four inches up. Only about an inch and a half more, and Polly’s gold bracelet changed owners.

  I stared at the bracelet for a moment. Polly understood my thought. “It’s gone up a lot more than that.”

  “Oh, please tell me how much you’re betting,” the American woman said.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” Polly said.

  Lilly broke into a grin. “Tell them.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” Polly said.

  The American woman turned pale. “You’re serious?”

  “We’re Chinese,” the Twins explained in unison; without humor, though. They were still fixated on the fly.

  “That’s a lot of kidneys and livers,” I exclaimed, and covered my mouth. Polly nodded as if she’d had the same thought. The American woman stared at me, then sat down.