First Thrills

by Lee Child

  My whole body started tingling with a mix of anticipation and excitement, but there was some revulsion, too. It was a feeling I knew well from Vegas, as though a thousand army ants had taken up residence underneath my skin and were now burrowing long tunnels alongside my veins and arteries. Grove was right, I thought, as I read through the anonymous record. There really wasn’t anything wrong with what the club was doing.

  The poor patient had endured the usual barrage of treatments, including chemotherapy, radiation, and even biological therapy. I looked up the statistics. Rarely did survival for Stage IVA pancreatic cancer, even with aggressive treatment, exceed one year. I modified the rate of deterioration, taking into consideration the man’s medical history, general condition, and chemotherapy regimen that included Gemzar and Camptosar, both fairly recent. I weighed each factor, most importantly, his advanced age and thirty years of type-two diabetes. For this guy to make it six months would be a miracle.

  Lee Anne popped her head inside my home office. I was so engrossed in reviewing the medical file that I didn’t even hear her calling my name.

  “Bobby, are you going deaf?” she said. “Dinner’s on the table.”

  I jumped at the sound of her voice and quickly hid the browser with a well-placed click of my mouse.

  “Just give me a minute,” I said, without bothering to turn around.

  My heart pounded in my chest. Lee Anne departed with my assurance that I’d follow, but I went back to the site as soon as she had left the room. The betting system for The Dead Club was even more ingenious than Grove had described. It was a kitty-based system, five-thousand-dollar uniform bet for all players wagering on an open case. Players were allowed to pick a time period from the options given, in this case, every two weeks for a year, and then every month. And just like The Price is Right, the winner had to be the closest without going over. There were already at least twenty doctors involved in this case, because the kitty was up to one hundred thousand dollars.

  At risk was my five grand. If I won, I’d split with any doctor who picked the same time period as I did. Whoever was behind this operation possessed some serious computer chops to make the site so sophisticated, but still easy to use.

  I had a bank account with ten grand in it that Lee Anne didn’t even know existed. I was planning to use it for a surprise mega-trip to Italy in celebration of our fifteenth wedding anniversary. My mouth went dry thinking about what we would do in Europe when I won this bet, and every nerve in my body told me I was going to. I never for a moment considered we might end up celebrating our anniversary at an Outback Steakhouse.

  The Dead Club wasn’t luck, it was skill.

  I imagined gondolas, floating down a river of champagne, with Lee Anne nestled in my arms, and then the two of us touring the lush English countryside in a rented Bentley. I felt a sudden rage at all those arrogant surgeons in The Dead Club with their gilded lives, looking down with disdain on my chosen specialty. But what they didn’t know was that I possessed skills to interpret medical records in ways the other docs simply could not. I decided then and there that I’d mail a bank check, as required, to the post- office-box address provided, to give myself a minimum kitty of five-thousand dollars to play with.

  One measly bet couldn’t hurt.

  I won.

  John Doe died two months and twenty-five days from my first Dead Club bet. I wasn’t the only winner, though. Competition was tougher than I had anticipated. Fifteen of us split a hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar kitty. Just like that, I had doubled my money, and those army ants were now dancing the Lambada in my head, but at 75 r.p.m.

  I hadn’t bet on another case since my inaugural John Doe play, but now I couldn’t wait for April the first to arrive, because that meant a new record would be posted for betting. The pool would be open again and I was ready and willing to take the plunge.

  I won again.

  This time, I split the kitty with only two other docs who agreed with me that the woman, halfway into her fourth year with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, would be gone in four months. The safe bet would have been eight months, given that the average life expectancy for ALS sufferers was between three and five years. But this Jane Doe had a subtle abnormality on her cardiogram and an elevation in her serum calcium that I decided was worth at least a deduction of six weeks.

  It was a tough bet, given that 10 percent of ALS patients live ten years or longer. Still, there were enough indicators that, like me, two other skilled docs had calculated death would soon be knocking on her door. Her demise netted me sixty-three thousand dollars. Forget gondolas. Now, it was the Riviera that was flooded with champagne.

  But winning streaks, even a streak of two, run the risk of ending and mine came to a crashing halt that August. I lost four in a row. Four! Two Jane Does and two John Does. It would have been a twenty-five-thousand-dollar loss, five thousand dollars per bet. But I didn’t bet five thousand dollars. The Dead Club also had a high rollers game with a thirty-thousand- dollar minimum ante and my winnings qualified me for that club membership as well. For a man of my income and means, the rush of placing a thirty-thousand- dollar bet was indescribable. I was sure my winning ways were going to continue. I never would have started playing the thirty-thousand-dollar kitty game otherwise. Never has being wrong about a hunch hurt so much.

  A mere twelve months after placing my initial wager on the stage IVA John Doe, I had blown not only my winnings, but a second mortgage on my house and a chunk of my kids’ college fund. Lee Anne hadn’t found out just yet, but she was suspicious, that’s for sure.

  Confessing to her my involvement with The Dead Club would be akin to signing my divorce papers. Just when I thought my luck had officially run out, I saw the January bet.

  The unimaginable had happened.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The name of a consulting neurologist for a terribly ill man had been left in at the bottom of his note. Ivan Dworsky, a neurologist I knew well. Barring an incredible coincidence, the case was a patient at my hospital! All I had to do was determine and confirm the identity, and that I was quickly able to do. The gondolas were floating again.

  Richard Generoso—sixty-seven years old with invasive glioblastoma multiforme, a grade-four malignant brain tumor.

  I had only three days to place my bet. This was like betting blackjack while seeing the dealer’s hand. It was one thing trying to predict the outcome by reading a medical record, but another thing entirely to have access to the actual patient. I could review his CT scans with the best radiologists around.

  It was no problem tracking Generoso down. I was standing by his bed when in came my second pot of gold. His doctor, whom I happened to have played racquetball with on a few occasions, entered the room with his patient’s latest lab results. I explained that Generoso and I were acquaintances. The invasive radiologists had just performed a spinal tap, I was told, and the results were bad—very bad. Cancer cells were filling the spinal canal—a quick ticket to heaven. The news was as good as gold, because it was fresh and not something included in the medical records the rest of The Dead Club had reviewed. It was better than seeing the dealer’s cards. This was knowing I had blackjack on my next hand.

  Three weeks, that’s what I gave him—no more than twenty-one days to live. The cancer itself wasn’t that large, and sure enough, I was the only one to bet his end would come so soon. I took out a third mortgage on my house, forged Lee Anne’s signatures, and put the money in the kitty. If I lost, I’d be over a hundred grand in the hole. But I had no intention on losing this one.

  Fast-forward nineteen days. Richard Generoso is beginning to fail, but not that rapidly. He has finally been readmitted, but he is hanging on and still conscious most of the time. I’ve checked on him enough so that he thinks I’m his new physician and his doc thinks that he’s my long- lost uncle.

  “How’re you feeling today, Richard?” I asked. It was less than forty hours before I was going permanently under water if he
didn’t die.

  “Feeling okay,” he replied dreamily. “My daughter is looking into hospice care.”

  Richard’s eyes were rheumy with memory.

  He knew he was going to die and I knew he was going to die, but for him to pointlessly pass away three days or a week or a month from now in hospice care would have thrown my life into an unrecoverable tailspin. The money was already gone, and trying to find The Dead Club, let alone trying to blow the whistle on them, was fruitless.

  The next day, with less than twelve hours remaining on my bet—make that life as I knew it—Richard was still alert most of the time.

  It simply wasn’t going to happen.

  I went to my office and returned with just fifteen minutes left, as panicked as I had ever been about anything.

  Generoso’s doctor and nurse had just left. I walked nonchalantly down the hall and into his room, closing the door behind me.

  I don’t really remember injecting the Diprivan into his IV port. In less than two minutes, his eyes closed. Moments later, his breathing stopped. His face turned waxy and pale. I notified the nurses and they called the attending physician. There was no resuscitation. I watched as the time of death was logged.

  11:58 P.M.

  Two minutes later and I would have killed the man for nothing.

  Grove sat across from me.

  “You look well,” he said.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “I can imagine,” he said.

  I hadn’t seen Grove since that week in Vegas, but somehow his hair looked even whiter, the goatee fuller; same for his belly.

  For a few awkward minutes, we didn’t say anything to each other; then he broke the silence.

  “I came here to thank you,” he said.

  “For what? I tried to shut down The Dead Club. But I never could find you.”

  “Yeah, well, our application makes it easy to erase all information about the club from a member’s computer. And Grover Marshall isn’t my real name.”

  “Figured that. So what are you here thanking me for?”

  “Well, you made me a lot of money.”

  “Yeah? How’s that?”

  I asked the question, but I already had a knot forming in my stomach. I knew what his answer would be.

  “You deserve to know that you were never in The Dead Club, Bobby.”

  I swallowed hard. My throat was tightening, but I still managed a slight, near-imperceptible nod.

  “You were The Dead Club, Bobby.”

  I caught a devilish gleam in his eyes and it made me shiver.

  “You were betting on me?” I croaked.

  Grove didn’t budge, but he did jump in his seat when I smacked my hand hard against the reinforced Plexiglas that separated us.

  “Hands off the glass, Tomlinson!” A guard’s voice boomed from a crackly PA system.

  I glanced down the long hallway, past the row of other prisoners on my side of the glass, toward the guard’s station. I waved my hands in the air, the well-understood signal that I promised no further breech of prison protocol.

  “I wouldn’t tell you this if they recorded our conversation,” Grove said, smiling again. “But I thought you’d appreciate knowing that a lot of members were betting you wouldn’t go through with it. I mean, they really didn’t think you could. But I gambled with you in Vegas, Bobby. I guess I had the inside skinny. I doubled down and bet half a million that you’d kill that guy to win the bet. I really owe you for coming through.”

  “My win streak, the neurologist in Generoso’s hospital record not being blanked out, all part of the set up to suck me in?”

  Grove nodded, real slow and deliberate.

  “I also bet a bundle that you’d get caught,” he said. “Gotta hand it to you, Bobby. You don’t disappoint.”

  “This isn’t over, Grove, or what ever your name is. Not by a long shot. Five years from now I’m up for parole. When I’m out, I’m going to track you down and make sure you’re either sitting on my side of the glass, or lying somewhere six feet underground. You hear me? That’s what’s going to happen.”

  Grove laughed in a jolly, warm guffaw that reminded me of the week we met in Vegas.

  “You’re not going to do anything of the sort, Bobby. And don’t count on making parole either.”

  “Oh yeah?” I replied.

  My eyes narrowed on Grove as I balled my hands into tight fists.

  “Yeah,” Grove said.

  “You want to bet?” I said.

  *

  Massachusetts native DR. MICHAEL PALMER is the author of fourteen novels of medical suspense, all international bestsellers. His books have millions of copies in print worldwide, and have been translated into thirty- eight languages. Palmer was educated at Wesleyan University and Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. His most recent novel is The Last Surgeon, dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. His novel Extreme Measures was made into the hit film of the same name starring Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman, and Sarah Jessica Parker. Palmer also works as an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s Physician Health Services, helping doctors with physical and mental illness, as well as drug dependence, including alcoholism. He has three sons, two cats, and some fish.

  DANIEL JAMES PALMER holds a master’s degree in communications from Boston University, and is a musician, songwriter, and software professional. His debut thriller novel, Delirious, is scheduled to be published by Kensington Publishing in early 2011, part of a three-book contract with the publisher. He lives with his wife and two children in one of those sleepy New England towns.

  GRANT McKENZIE

  Shorty Lemon poked his index finger between tiny nylon teeth and gave it a wiggle. The teeth parted easily and the brass slider ran smooth, but it still took some dexterous finger kung fu to unzip the suitcase from the inside.

  Once he negotiated the first awkward corner, the lid opened wide enough for him to peek out.

  The compartment was dark and noisy.

  Just beyond thin metal walls, a Cummins diesel roared as the transaxle drove eight massive steel-belted radials. On the other side, wind slapped against baggage doors, desperate to force its way inside. And below, the pavement whined as if protesting the weight of twenty-eight thousand pounds of fast-moving steel.

  Noise was good. It stopped the passengers in soft seats a short distance above Shorty’s head from hearing his movements.

  Shorty finished unzipping the case and stood to stretch. Even at three feet ten and one-quarter inches, a suitcase was a tight fit.

  Dressed in black cargo pants and turtleneck, Shorty liked to believe he looked as cool as Steve McQueen in Bullitt. With an excited grin, he pulled on his spelunking lamp, tightened the headband, and flipped the switch. Three super bright LEDs lit up the cabin to reveal a mountain of luggage.

  He hoped at least one of them contained chocolate. Milky Swiss was his favorite, but he had to be careful. Two months earlier he wolfed down a full box of festive Irish whisky liqueurs. The alcohol-filled chocolates had sent him into a near sugar coma and he was barely able to zip himself back inside the case before passing out. When his partner retrieved the case at the terminal, he discovered Shorty had puked all over his favorite McQueens.

  The memory still made him shudder.

  After rubbing his hands together to get the blood flowing, Shorty ripped bags open.

  He started with the largest one, but was disappointed to find that all it contained was a collection of old lady clothes. And from the look of them, they would have found more use in a landfill than in somebody’s wardrobe.

  He rolled his eyes. “Freakin’ loser.”

  He shoved the bag aside.

  The second bag contained a slick digital camera, a superthin Mac laptop, and a snack pack of Ritz Crackers with the fake cheese goop in the middle. A nest of rolled socks protected the crackers as though they were some kind of luxury treat.

  “Loser number two.”

  Shorty crush
ed the crackers in his hand before sprinkling the disgusting remains over the own er’s clothes. Whoever ate that garbage, he decided, deserved to wear it, too.

  He slipped the camera and laptop inside his own suitcase and moved to the next.

  Unzipping the bag, he stared at a gun . . . attached to a hand . . . pointing at a spot between his eyes.

  “Shorty.” A familiar scratchy voice was attached to the hand that was aiming the gun.

  “Twinkle?” Shorty lifted his head and exposed the gunman’s face to his headlamp. “What the hell are you doing? You’re Wednesdays on the Washington run.”

  Twinkle squinted against the light and his upper lip curled in a sneer. “Change of plans.”

  Jonathon “Twinkle” Toews climbed out of the suitcase, his gun never wavering from Shorty’s head. Shorty had heard Twinkle brag he had a quarter-inch on him in the height department, but he suspected the lying dwarf wore lifts.

  “Well fuck me blue,” Shorty said with a laugh. “This is some mix-up.”

  “No mix-up, Shorty. Big haul on this bus and I want my cut.”

  “Big haul?”

  Twinkle snorted. “Don’t play dumb. The horse is trotting crosscountry, but it ain’t gonna make the stable.”

  Twinkle cocked the hammer. Even amid the blanket of engine noise, it was decidedly menacing.

  “Whoa, back up.” Shorty raised his hands in surrender. “I ain’t part of your circus, so what the fuck?”

  Twinkle snorted again. “You don’t know, for real?”

  Shorty shook his head and the light from his lamp danced around the cabin like the return of E.T.

  Twinkle resettled the hammer and lowered the gun. “Guess that’s why you ain’t packing.”

  “Exactly,” Shorty agreed. “I’m not packing because . . .” He hesitated, then sighed. “Really, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Heroin,” said Twinkle. “Sixty keys.”