The Organ Broker

by Stu Strumwasser

  It was 1993 and I didn’t even have a cell phone yet. I made outgoing calls from payphones, very cloak and dagger. Back in those days, people drove for an hour just to talk to a guy for five minutes—and I did that too. I started off by calling my Jersey guys. These guys were all pro dealers. First I had to explain where I’d been for the last few months and insist that I really didn’t need any blow for the club kids. Then I would have to convince each of them that I hadn’t gotten arrested and wasn’t trying to cop a plea by flipping on someone else. That was my preamble. Once we got past that, I could explain what it was that I was actually looking for as if it was a punch-line to an old joke. “Actually, I got a sick, rich guy who needs a kidney.” There was no real risk in it. I knew who I was calling and none of them gave much of a shit about anything. Sometimes they laughed, or busted my balls a little, or said, “Get the fuck …” and just hung right up on me. But so what? Sometimes they’d say, “dis shit dey teach at college?” I didn’t care.

  Three or four or six calls into it, the routine went something like this: “Jack. NYU, Jack. Yeah, I know… . No, I don’t need anything. It’s about something else. No. Thanks. I don’t need that either. Shit, that’s the last thing I need, Lou,” (or Tommy or Ralph or Miguel or who the hell knew their real names anyway). “I’ve been doing other things. I graduated. Got a regular job now …” I’d say. “Yeah, no. I’m looking for something else right now. I’ve got a sick, rich guy and I’m looking for a kidney.” Pause. No immediate response. “The guy’s O Positive, needs a kidney transplant—Yes. Yes. Kidney. That IS what I said actually … Well, that’s fucking hilarious. Yes. I said kidney … You want to screw around or you want to make a lot of money? Fine. Yes. You’re a real comedian. Fine … O Positive can only get one from another O Positive, so that’s only around thirty percent of the population … I just know. Don’t worry about how I know. Because I do. What are you, a doctor now? I know. I found this all out … There’s also this thing called HLA matching, but it’s less important. He’ll pay $10K for a healthy one … No, I shit you not… . No, I never liked that shit much anyway. I just sold it. Yeah. It is funny. Laugh it up, but I’ve got a guy with $10K cash if you happen to know anyone who could help …” It doesn’t take long to get a drug dealer’s attention with a pile of cash. “Hey, and it’s ten, not twenty. I gotta make a living too … Well, because it’s not that good of a job, that’s why.”

  It turned out one of my Newark guys had a guy in Atlantic City whose friend was some kind of multi-tasker who had actually done a couple of deals like this before. A trailblazer. The kidney was coming from some Italian maintenance worker. He was an immigrant from Sicily and lived in a poor neighborhood in southern Jersey, not far from AC. The Atlantic City guy put the word out and the next thing you know he’s got some poor schlub who wants to trade a kidney for a better lifestyle. The guy was a janitor at a middle school, friend of a cousin or something. I think about it now and it’s amazing. Most everything in those days was happening in India. There was business getting done in South Africa, but not a lot was happening here. This was a fluke. It was just because of who I happened to know in New York and Jersey. I would have liked to think that the guy was raising the money to put his oldest son through college, or to pay for his little girl’s asthma medicine or something like that, but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that at least half the cash went for strippers and tequila and better wine than he normally drank, and that his body couldn’t process as well anymore.

  I had the merchandise lined up in a little over a week. Much to my amazement, it was easy. I felt a sense of control over things. I had to have that deal, and I started feeling the old charge again. I felt eyes on me as I walked through New York; I felt attractive, wanted, cocked and ready to fire.

  During that time I spent hours each night out on my narrow balcony with my best telescope, looking at random stars. I have been doing that since I was a kid—charting stars, reading about what systems might have habitable planets, reading Sagan and Hawking … Billions of galaxies, Sagan would say, with billions of stars and countless planets and some that simply have to support life. Some might have hosted intelligent and sophisticated societies that went through their life cycle and died out millions of year ago. Were any out there now? Watching us? Would they see us as friends, or a threat, maybe as food, the way we look at cows and chickens? Would they find some use in harvesting something from us?

  The guy I worked for at Blake & Holcomb was named Walter Conway. He wore custom-tailored shirts made of Sea Island cotton. The cuffs and collars were white even if the shirt was a different color, and he wore cuff links—for real, actual cuff links. My excitement about the kidney deal grew in inverse proportion to my waning interest in my day-job. I found myself frequently looking Walter straight in the eye during those days, each time saying something like, “Is that a fact, Walter?” Or, “Is that what I should do, should that be my system too, my ultimate goal?” dripping in enough sarcasm so that he wouldn’t even touch it for fear of getting his hands sticky. He’d smugly exhale and turn his back to me and mutter, “asshole” as he walked away, but it wasn’t generating the desired effect. Instead of making me feel bad or fear for my job, I thought it was hysterical.

  A few days after I secured the kidney I finally called Kimball. It was like waiting to call a girl back for a second date. The more I wanted to make the call the more I felt obligated to wait just another day, and frame the whole thing perfectly. I stroked myself with the anticipation of it, with the beautiful way it made me anxious to think about it—that beautiful feeling of, “I’ve got the thing … I matter.” I also enjoyed the ultimate ego stroke of playing the hero. I wanted the money, but I also wanted to have the genuine satisfaction of having saved someone. Anyone.

  “Hey Billy?” “Who’s this?” he asked, sounding fairly spirited.

  “Well, you sound chipper,” I said. “That’s good.”

  “Trayner? Is that you?” “Billy, you sound good today. Do you still need the part we were talking about? That part for your car? Because you sound damned rested, like a guy ready for a 10K run.”

  “Funny, Jack.” The verve was gone from his voice. It went off like a switch.

  “Do you still need it?” I asked again. “Because I may be able to hook you up, Billy. You may be in luck. But I need to discuss some of the details with your dad.” “Why? Just tell me how much they want.”

  “Your dad, Billy. That’s who I need to talk to. Can you arrange a call for us? So your dad and I can get acquainted? Like you said, everyone knew what I did in college and I’ve been thinking I probably need to be a little more careful about how I conduct myself.” I thought negotiating directly with the father of a dying young man would give me the greatest opportunity to get the best price. Kimball didn’t believe that I needed to talk to his dad, but what else could the guy do?

  I wanted to help Kimball, I really did. No one wants to watch a young man die for no good reason. But I was focused on the money. Of course I was. The Newark guys moved me to twelve grand and never insulted me by claiming to pay the janitor any particular amount. We all knew it couldn’t be much more than a few thousand dollars, maybe five grand. They even got me to go twelve-five because at the last minute they claimed the guy was demanding a couple of eight balls and for some reason the Newark guys thought it was only fair that I finance it. I threw them a bone. After all, I got Kimball’s father for eighty K. If only they knew! I felt high for days. It was my first taste of the Organ Rush.

  ◆

  I told Kimball’s father that the donor and his “agent” were going to need fifty grand, that there was no negotiating with these people. I still wanted my twenty-five all clear or I would waste no less than the count of three to get off the phone and never take Billy’s calls again. The guy was agreeable. He even thanked me profusely. I knew they’d eventually find out that I had lied and kept most of the money, and I didn’t care about that either. It was so much easier than I expec
ted. I felt a tinge of guilt but after all, I was saving his son’s life and what’s a fair price on that? Time was working against him—it was limiting.

  My first closed sale in the business. I often think back on it with a feeling of nostalgia, on the events and details, and I always get a real kick out of that part about the janitor wanting coke. “Okay, sir, here’s your receipt, here are your antibiotics—make sure to take them every day and not risk any life-threatening infections. You’re short one kidney now, but you should be fine. Oh, and here are your two eight balls. Party on, goombatz.”

  The craziest part about that first transaction, my initiation, is that I was so jazzed about it, so proud of my role as hero, that I actually drove Kimball and Michael the janitor to a meeting at the clinic in Jersey City. Executing on a nephrectomy and kidney transplant can take months here in the US—lots of tests and a few meetings before the surgery gets ordered. Looking back, it’s hard to stomach how clueless I was then. I was even in the room while the doctor asked some of the qualifying questions. Michael was presented as an altruistic donor. They can direct their organ “donation” to anyone of their choosing with no regard for lists or matching criteria, but the doctor still has a professional obligation to make sure that the match can work, and an obligation to ensure that no money has changed hands.

  “Yes, doctor,” Billy Kimball said, “my second cousin. Once removed, I think. My mother’s side. Well, her maiden name is Barrett but her mother’s mother, my maternal grandmother… . That’s how I’m Italian. On that side.” Kimball was well-rehearsed and smooth. He was a smart guy and he never had to try too hard. “Cousin Michael is a saint. We were closer as kids, but people get busy. But he tells me he’ll come and save the life of a cousin he hasn’t even seen more than twice since we were ten …” Michael’s hair was neatly combed and somehow I just knew that had been a special effort. He wore a WalMart-issue suit with a shiny sort of faux shark-skin finish. He looked like an older version of a poorly dressed recent college grad on his first round of interviews.

  For the most part, the doctor didn’t seem to really care. Kimball’s preparation was unnecessary. The doctor had a clipboard and made notes on a form as they spoke. It seemed like he was going down a checklist and barely noting the answers. He often glanced at his nails while Michael or Kimball responded to one of his rote questions. You see, it’s like this: if they turn down the procedure, they lose a lot of money and that money will just go elsewhere, and who is really helped by that? One way or another, legal or not, somewhere else or some other country—it’s going to get done. Once it’s done, a life has been saved. Why not be on the side of saving lives—and getting paid? The doctors were very easily convinced by thin cover-stories. They still are. After that, I even insisted on being there for the procedure when it was done.

  I waited at the hospital for hours until it was over, but I did not remain glib. That kidney moved from Michael in one adjoining room to William Kimball (of the Greenwich Kimballs) in the other, and I got sick to my core. Kimball’s family was scattered around waiting, pacing, talking, not talking. I don’t mean to imply that I got nauseous. It’s bigger than that. There was a subtle but penetrating sickness that spread to everyone in that waiting room. It spread through me like fog in a science fiction movie, washed over me like the slow, black swell of an ocean wave. I was disgusted at what I was part of, the baseness of it, the way I had relieved Kimball’s family of so much more than a fair price, and of taking that poor moron’s kidney so he could do some blow and patronize the local hookers for a few weeks—or whatever it was he intended to do.

  At one point a nurse asked me, “Are you his brother?” I laughed inwardly at how incredibly stupid and careless I had been, standing right there in the waiting room. Since the passage of NOTA (the National Organ Transplant Act) in 1986 it’s illegal to exchange “anything of value” for an organ. I never sold someone a gram in college and then stuck around to watch him do bumps in the bathroom. I had even made some of the arrangements in my own name at the time—Tuckman—and then debated for weeks if perhaps I should change it again. I was concerned that if I did, it could raise a red flag for the bar association. I decided to leave it alone and just start using new names going forward. All the time. And rotate phones. A lot of this stuff is probably obvious. The Internet changed everything.

  As for Billy Kimball, he’s living in Connecticut, working for a hedge fund, and he’s fine. It’s actually amazing, considering all of the circumstances. Billy Kimball has three kids—at least three kids. It could be more by now. I’ll bet they’re glad I found him that kidney. I occasionally check up on him by casually touching base with one or another person from our NYU days who knows someone who thinks that perhaps he and I were friends. It’s enough to get me a rough update. “Yeah, his firm this, and such and such deal that” or “Yeah, Billy’s wife’s brother was the guy on that show about everyone trapped on an island,” without it ever evolving into, “Hey, I’ll tell Alex to tell him Jack Trayner says hi. What’s your cell number?”

  In the beginning, he was the only one I checked up on. Maybe I should have kept it that way. Those damn follow-up calls; that’s how the infection started. I kept a distant eye on Kimball’s progress for years. You see, he’s alive. And at least three more people—his kids—are alive, and it is because of me. I did that, and no one can ever take that away from me. That has to count for something.

  When it was over and settled, I put about thirty grand in a safe deposit box in a bank here in New York. Then, I actually took the time to fly to Tucson to open an account and put the other thirty into a safe deposit box out there. (No, there was no real significance to the choice of Tucson. Carrie and I had been there one Thanksgiving to visit her relatives. I just needed any place far away and random. Not LA or Chicago. Not too small a town either. Meticulous Jack.) I spent a lot of time at the driving ranges for a day or two before I came back. I was starting to hit the ball well then. The following week Walter dropped a bomb on my desk, making a loud clap with the papers—which I thought was intentional—and said, “Sorry, pal, but I need it all in the morning,” as he walked by without bothering to make eye contact. He was pulling on his waistband to move his pants a little higher on his hips as he walked away.

  “Yeah. Well, fuck you very much!” I said with a bright smile and without hesitation, as if I were joking. Of course we both knew that I was not.

  He didn’t say anything, but he stopped. He turned to face me and looked me squarely in the eyes. I expected him to make some condescending false-bravado threat about teaching me a lesson, but neither of us spoke. A smile crept over his face. He didn’t even have to say anything. From that moment on, I didn’t work there anymore, and we never exchanged any words about it. I was of no consequence. He turned and walked away and I yelled out one last comment: “Starting my own firm, Walter. See you at the club, my good man!”

  ◆

  Now, I will end my years as an organ broker. It will finally end. It began accidentally, in 1993 with Billy Kimball, and then I worked toward the goal of growing the business, but there was never a plan. Now I have a plan. And I know two things about plans: the fewer plans you have the less likely you are to be disappointed, and the more complex a plan is the more likely it is to fail. So mine is a bad plan; but it’s mine.

  I am going to arrange to kill my partner and by doing so, help save a lot of innocent people. I’ll be like a rat on the stand at the Gotti trial, but I will also be Robin Hood again, finally on the side of doing what’s right. I am also going to take down the murder-ring-organ-farm I helped to create at Royston, burn it down like an old email address, and with it my entire career. I have no choice. If I have learned anything through this whole miserable affair it’s this: to do any good in the world requires an element of self-sacrifice.

  The client will be incredibly wealthy. He will need to travel but we’ll be on a private jet, provided by his father, with a ton of medical equipment and an attending
nurse sitting beside him. This is not a kidney. Wallace will be on the plane. He will have to travel with me on this one and will gladly do so to serve his own agenda of wanting to someday cut me out of the loop. The money will be on the plane. The client, and the broker, and the supplier. Wallace will be told that the plane is headed for South Africa, but it will go to Rio instead. I have few friends in this world, and fewer still who I can trust, but my friend in Brazil is one of them and he won’t let me down. Most situations are controlled best by money, but some require more.

  Wallace may note at some point that we are heading south and not east, but he may not, and either way, it will not matter. There will be nothing he can do. There will be no guns on the plane, no parachutes. When we land in Rio we’ll all be transferred to a limo to take us to the hospital, but the limo will be followed. This time the conspiracy will be mine; the plan, mine.

  Leaving the airport the limo will be followed by two motorcycles, each with two men on them. A few miles away from the airport, on an open stretch of highway, the motorcycles will pull up beside the car. The men on the backs of the bikes will point guns at the driver and order him to pull over, and he will comply. They will order us out of the car. There will be confusion. They will ask our names, in English. I will say, “Jack,” and offer to fist-pump the man talking—not shake hands, not high-five … “fist-pump” and “Jack” will be the signal. Then, I will say, “This is Wallace,” and point at him. Wallace will turn and look at me, a knowing look of shock mixed with fear and outrage and he’ll loudly say, “Jack?” and the man will quickly put two or three bullets in my partner’s head. The nurse and client’s father may scream. They will be told to shut up. The men will carry Wallace’s lifeless, bloody body and place it into the trunk which the driver will have already opened. I will say, “Get back in the car,” to the others, while thinking, “don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.” One of the armed men will get into the limo with us. The motorcycles will speed away and the limo will speed away and the client will probably say, “Jack, what the hell happened?” He might say, “Jack, why did you do this?!” and the only answer he will get will be, “Shut up. We’re going to save your son.” He might say, “Take us back to the plane,” and all he’ll hear in response will be, “Shut up. We’re going to save your son.”