by Lauren Brown
And just like that, I had managed to make a deal with the devil.
“This has been successful,” he said, holding the front door open for me. “I’m excited to see what you can do for us. I’ll send several patients in your direction next Monday. And we’ll play golf soon?”
“Sure.”
He flashed his white teeth as I began walking to my car.
“Dr. Livingston!” he called right as I opened my door. I looked up to see him with his hands in his pockets beneath the waving American flag. “Enjoy your meal with Hope.”
Sarah’s car was parked in the driveway when I arrived later that afternoon. I had gone to the grocery store to waste some time so Hope wouldn’t wonder why I was home before my usual 6:30. I had walked around the store, trying to come to terms with the new direction my practice had taken.
I carried in a bag and set it down on the kitchen counter. I could hear Hope and Sarah talking on the back deck. I cracked open a beer and joined them on the porch.
“John!” Sarah yelled as she jumped from the wicker chair to greet me. I hugged her. Sarah was shorter, thicker in the waist, with brunette hair and dark brown eyes. Sarah favored their father; Hope their mother. The only similarity between her and Hope was that both had a way of leaving a long-lasting impression.
“Hey, Sarah! It’s so good to see you. How was the drive?”
“It wasn’t too bad actually.”
“Where’s Tim?”
“He wasn’t able to make it. Business trip,” she said. She and her boyfriend Tim had been together since before Hope and I met, yet he still hadn’t proposed. It was always a touchy subject.
“That’s too bad. Well, I’m glad you could make it,” I said as she sat back down next to Hope. “Can I get you a beer?”
“That’s all right. Thank you, though.”
I sat across from them. The sun was setting and the air was cool. I took a large gulp to push my meeting with the Bear to the back of mind.
“How was your meeting today?” Hope asked. They both looked at me. At first I thought she was talking about the Bear, but then I realized she meant with my “former colleague.”
“Good. He was looking for advice on opening his own practice.”
“How’s that going, John?”
I took another sip of beer. “It wasn’t easy opening the clinic and, to be honest, the first year wasn’t that great. I hadn’t been sure it would even stay open. But everything seems to be working out now.” I forced a smile.
“That’s wonderful.”
“So,” I said, trying to take the attention off me, “Hope said you had some news for us.”
I watched Sarah look at Hope and smile.
“Well, Tim is being relocated to Johnson City. He’d been waiting for several months to hear of his new placement. We had suggested that he either be moved to the new branch in Knoxville or the one here. We just got the news two days ago.”
“That’s awesome news! We could use some more family here!” I cheered. I had thought maybe her presence would distract Hope enough to allow me to continue my business through the end of the year with the Bear.
Sarah continued, “Yes, we’re excited too. It’ll be nice being close. We’ll only be thirty minutes away. The bank won’t open until November, but we’re going to go ahead and start looking for a place to live. That’s why I came into town. I thought I would stay with you and Hope for a night. Maybe look at a few apartments.”
“What about your job?” Hope questioned.
“I’m going to look at assisted living and nursing homes in the area. I’d prefer to stay in that field. I enjoy it.”
“Surely there are places hiring. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for you. A change will be nice, Sarah.” Hope leaned over and hugged her. They both looked so happy, so encouraging.
“Great things to come.” I said, lifting my empty beer bottle then quickly lowering it when I noticed the tremble in my hand. A chill had crept down my back at the thought of the Bear and what lay ahead.
Chapter 9
July 2004
Just as the Bear had said, I had referral forms on my desk by midweek. I faked surprise as Beth informed me of the increase in patient referrals.
“We had five just this morning! Five!”
“Oh really? Who’s referring them?” I asked while signing a few forms.
“Mainly local primary care physicians. Dr. Langston referred two of the five.”
“Huh.” I put the papers back in the files. I would come to find out that there were several physicians within the area that were also working directly with the Bear. Dr. Langston was one of them.
Beth continued to voice her concern for having to book months out in advance.
“Patients are angry. We’re trying our best to move patients around and squeeze them in, but it’s becoming near impossible. I can’t work these new referrals in as quickly as these PCP’s want me to. You should really consider hiring another physician.”
I knew that wasn’t possible. At the moment, the office was closed half a day on Friday, so I suggested the idea of working later on Friday’s in order to fit in the new referrals.
“At least temporarily, just to see these new patients,” I cooed in a sweet voice trying to convince her.
She didn’t seem fond of the idea.
As the month went on, I started to increase the doses on patients. I even went the extra step and changed a few details in the charts. Before long I was signing scripts left and right, handing out handfuls of pills in the clinic rooms, surprising Hope with jewelry and canvases and a new car, lunches for Beth and Marty, dinner parties for neighbors and friends. I was Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, living the luxurious, American dream life as Johnson City’s leading opiate distributor.
I was careful though, or as careful as I could be. I had six months to fulfill the Bear’s order, which was plenty of time, again, if I was careful.
I methodically planned more drug rep visitations. At the end of July, I called Allyn to schedule our next meeting for more pills and ask him a question that I had toyed with for weeks. The only question that made me uneasy.
“Hey, one last thing, Allyn.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m making good money. As of right now, I’m making about five thousand dollars a week, and that’s great and all, but what I’m afraid of is how I’m going to explain that money. I’ve been spending cash at the moment, but I’d like to invest some of it in the stock market and I don’t know how to justify all the money I’ll be depositing.”
I heard him breathe hard into the phone, as if he’d been expecting this conversation. I had planned to ask the Bear his method if Allyn couldn’t come up with an idea.
“I see.” I could hear the gears turning in his head. “We need to launder it. Look, I know you have a patient waiting. Let me give a buddy of mine who is doing quite well a ring, ask him how he’s staying under cover. Can I call you later?”
“Yeah, that works. Really, that’s my only concern at the moment. I like making the money, but only if I can use it.”
“I completely understand. Look, I’ll figure it out. Again, I want you taken care of. My customers are my biggest priority. I’ll call you around noon.”
I took in a large breath of air and slowly let it out to steady my pulse. I hung up the phone right as Marty knocked on my door.
“Hello, Mr. Ryan. How’s it going today?”
“Been better.”
“I think we’ve all been better. Growing old is about as hard as staying young.”
He gave me a blank stare. Mr. Ryan was a bitter man. He had been let go from his job on an oilrig and had battled an addiction to cocaine and pain medication. He was tall and thin with a tattoo of the Virgin Mary that ran down the length of his left arm, covering bulging veins that had suffered years of arduous work.
When I looked at a pain patient, I really couldn’t tell that they were suffering from physical pain. I could, however, see that they wer
e battling an emotional pain. Most of my patients had this characteristic weary look. And not a “weary” high. I think their look of tiredness was because they were living life at a very slow pace. While everyone in the world was going forward, they were going in reverse.
Looking back, maybe the difference between my pain and theirs was that theirs was one deep in the bones. An ache that interfered with their movements to go forward, a pain that just would not go away unless they took more pills, snorted more cocaine, drank more, whereas my pain was deep in the heart. It was a pain that interfered with my ability to go forwards, a pain that would not go away unless I forgot my past. But, with these differences, there was also a major similarity. I think we were all prisoners, trying to escape the pressures of the world and, because of this, we all were turning to some false cure.
Despite the bitterness, I looked at the man sitting in front of me and couldn’t help but sell him a handful of pills.
At noon, I returned to my chair and looked out the window, waiting for Allyn to call me back. I pulled out the dirty wad of cash from my coat pocket, and slid it into the back of my desk drawer.
The phone rang.
“Hey, John, so I figured it out.”
“All right, I’m listening.” I pressed the phone harder into my ear.
“He said he’s been laundering it through a side business. He didn’t want to go into too much detail, but basically he said he was in your same situation. Said he was saving all this money and wasn’t actually using it. He started putting it into this side business, someone in his family, I’m assuming his wife. He was anonymously buying from the person, and the money was going back into their bank account as profit from the business. Does that make sense?”
“I see.”
“Does Hope have a business?” I could hear him breathing harder than he had that morning. I imagined him wiping his sweaty bald head.
“Not really. I mean, she sells her artwork in auctions or to hospitals. Sometimes she puts ads in the paper.”
“How much is she selling her artwork for?”
“It varies. Starting bids are anywhere from one thousand to eight thousand dollars, though the latter is a rarity.”
“That’s perfect! All you have to do is start buying her artwork anonymously, and the money that she receives and puts in your account is really just coming from her business.”
“And how do I buy the paintings without her knowing that I’m buying them?”
“Is there an auction soon?”
I pulled my lips to the side then it dawned on me. “Yeah, actually the Montgomery Family Auction is in October. It’s a big event in Johnson City. The wealthiest people in town go every year. A percentage of money goes to local children hospitals, the remaining portion is money in the artists’ pockets.”
“That sounds promising,” Allyn said, smacking his gum on the other end of the phone. “You seem to be making a lot of money.” He paused and I thought for a moment he might know I was working with someone else. He continued, “But yeah, I think that auction is your chance to launder your money for the year. How does the auction work? Will there be active bidding?”
“No. If I remember correctly, you bid privately at long tables in the back of the showroom.”
“Okay. So that’s what you do. Use my name, bid on her artwork and pay cash. No traces on my end and all the money will go back into your pocket. I don’t mind pretending to be a reputable art collector in Oxford. Actually, I could use some art on my walls.” I pictured him swiveling in his chair looking around his office.
“And you think this will work?”
“Yes, I’m certain. Have I been wrong yet? Don’t worry, John. It’ll be fine.”
“Let’s sure hope so, Allyn.”
I hung up the phone and continued staring out my office window. Everything had been so easy up to that point. I guess I hadn’t really considered the financial side of things fully, and even though Allyn had a decent plan, it was the fact that I had been so careless that frightened me. The fact that I hadn’t fully thought the situation through made me worry that there could be other subtle problems or loopholes I wouldn’t see coming.
But there was some validity to his plan. Hope hadn’t been doing well selling her paintings and had even considered working at a local museum. The idea of buying her artwork and making her feel special was enough to make me continue on with my business with Allyn and the Bear. The only issue with Allyn’s plan was that Hope’s artwork didn’t usually sell for much and I had almost $40,000 I needed to invest.
But for the moment, I had patients waiting. Allyn was onto something. I decided to push it aside for the time and readdress it later.
Shortly after my call with Allyn, I met with Rick, though Beth and Marty didn’t know it was him. He was dressed as a different patient thanks to the Bear’s employee that was capable of creating identities. The first time it took me by surprise, but I soon became accustomed to the abnormal and could spot him from the moment I walked into a room.
I knocked on the clinic door that afternoon. Our relationship had completely changed overnight, and now our encounters were strictly business. I had even stopped asking him about his cancer.
“Hi, John,” he greeted me as I shut the door behind me. He had on a wig, fake teeth. He looked like a completely different person.
“What did he send you in for today? He’d mentioned you would be stopping by.”
“Here are the people.” He handed me a piece of paper with neatly typed names of three individuals. “He wants you to write prescriptions for these guys. Well, me. Today I’m the first guy on the list, Harry or somethin’ like that. Some of em’ sound stupid, if I say so myself. I’ll be in as the other people on that list in the next week.”
“And the pharmacy has no idea these are completely fabricated names, that you’re completely made up?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Nope. Some guy that knows the Mayor and the Bear works in government and can do it. Don’t worry about it, Doc. All you gotta do is sign em’.”
I eyed him suspiciously before I scribbled oxycodone followed by my name on the prescriptions.
I handed him the slips.
“Thanks.” He stuffed them into his jean pocket and then pulled out a wad of cash for the scripts. I took it from him and slid it into my white coat.
“Is that it?”
“Yep.” He started for the door.
“Uh, wait, Rick. I do have a few questions before you leave.”
“Yeah?”
“How long have you… have you and the Bear been working together?”
“For about a year. Really ever since I was diagnosed with cancer and started seeing you.”
“How long has the Bear been doing this, you know, working with the Mayor?”
“I don’t really know. I don’t ask too many questions, but I would guess about a year and a half. Once he met me, the business really took off.”
“How did you two meet?”
“Well”—Rick repositioned himself on the table—“I was actually sellin’ pain pills long before I was diagnosed with cancer. My ex-wife at the time was havin’ migraines, real bad ones, and was prescribed the pills by her doctor. We would usually have some leftover and she’d ask me to try them, and to be quite honest with ya, I didn’t like the way they made me feel. So when a neighbor asked me if I knew where he could get some hydros, I told him I did, sold him my wife’s pills, and that’s how my dealin’ began. That was about three years ago. About two years later, I was diagnosed with cancer and started seeing you. My wife and I had divorced, and I had started dating Kathy, the ex-girlfriend I told you about.”
I shook my head. I had heard plenty about Kathy.
“Well, she robbed me and ran off with some dude. She took all my pills, all my money, everything. But, then I started seein’ you. When I began comin’ here, I took those pills and jumped right back into the business. I had no idea I’d be even better off this time around. Cancer act
ually helped me, which is kinda funny.
“Anyway, I was meetin’ with a buyer one night, the chef of Johnson City Diner, when I stumbled into a real nice black Mercedes. I had bumped into it on the street as I was walkin’ up to the chef. The windows were tinted, makin’ it hard to see if anyone was in the car. I figured there wasn’t, sold my pills, then walked back to my car. I was about to get in my car and leave when the Mercedes window rolled down. There was man in a real nice suit smokin’ a cigar. He stopped me and said, ‘‘Are you Rick?’’
“‘Yeah. Do I know you?’
“‘You sell narcotics for a living, don’t you?’
And this kinda scared me. I thought he was an undercover cop or something so I started to jump in my car and flee but he yelled for me to wait. He got out of the Mercedes and walked over to my window.
“‘Here. Take this. It’s my card. Call me when you get a chance.’ I looked at him like he was crazy, but I did as he said and gave him a call a few days later. He told me everything, how he had been workin’ this business for a few years and how he was rich because of it. His success was contagious and I wanted a piece of it. That’s basically how it all started.”
“I see. You just sold whatever pills you could get to him? And you’ve been doing that for about a year?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know anything else about him? I saw pictures of his family in his house. He told me he was Mayor Ringgold’s financial advisor, but that was about it.”
“Look, Doc, it’s not my job to be goin’ around tellin’ you stuff about the Bear. He pays me to get pills and that’s it. The Bear’s a smart man, and he’s been real good to me. The little I can tell you, though”—he leaned in close to my face—“he can have a dark side, a real temper. I wouldn’t take anything he says lightly. The man has more power than you think. Play by the rules, do your job, and you’re good. Don’t play by the rules, don’t do your job, and well, it ain’t good. Just be thankful you’re workin’ for him and don’t ask any questions.”