Blood Debt (17 page)

Hands shoved into the pockets of baggy jeans, he sat.

The doctor put the box back behind the counter and glanced back up at Celluci, her lashes throwing fringed shadows against the porcelain curve of her cheek. “You've done me a favor, Detective. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Join me for lunch?” His eyes widened as he realized it was his voice he heard issuing the invitation. The doctor looked to be more than a full foot shorter than he was. He'd always found short women intimidating. His grandmother barely topped five feet.
Lunch? What was I thinking
?

One of the old men muttered something in Chinese. The other two snickered.

The perfect curve of the doctor's chin rose to a defiant angle. “Why not.”

The Jade Garden Palace was a dim sum restaurant that had not been “discovered” by tourists. Those who stumbled onto the rundown, residential side street by accident, if not discouraged by the green insul-brick siding, took one look at the tile missing from the floor just inside the door and the scratched formica table-tops and usually decided to try some place a little less colorful. Although the doctor and the detective arrived at what should have been the height of the lunch rush, the only other patrons were an old man in terry cloth slippers and a harried mother with two children under three. The baby was gumming a steamed dumpling. So was the old man.

“I usually have three wartips, deep-fried tofu with shrimp, and a spring roll,” the doctor said as she sat down.

“Sounds good.” Celluci exchanged his chair for one with four functional legs and lowered himself gingerly onto the mottled gray seat. The place smelled significantly better than it looked. “But double it for me.”

“They have a couple of brands of Chinese beer, if you're interested.”

“I don't drink.”

“Isn't that unusual for a police officer? I'd always heard you were a hard drinking bunch.”

“Some of us are.” The waiter set down a stainless-steel pot of green tea. “Some of us have other ways to take the edge off.”

He watched, mesmerized as her brows lifted, like the wings of a slender, black bird. “And your way, Detective?”

“I fight with a friend.”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“I have screaming fights with a friend.”

“Who screams back?”

He grinned, beginning to relax. “Oh, yeah. It's very cathartic.” Removing the paper sleeve from his chopsticks, he broke them apart. “It just occurred to me, you haven't told me your name.”

Her cheeks darkened. “Oh. I'm so sorry. Eve Seto.”

“No need to be embarrassed. After all, you only came to lunch with me because the old men in the clinic said you wouldn't.”

“Was it that obvious?”

Celluci waited until the waiter set down the plate of spring rolls and a shallow dish of black bean sauce, then he shrugged. “I'm the only male in my generation and I have a ninety-three-year-old grandmother. Trust me. I know the power of age.”

Dr. Seto stared at him for a moment, then she covered her mouth with her hand and laughed.

Spring roll halfway to the sauce, Celluci suddenly found it difficult to breathe. It wasn't a sexual response, exactly, it was more that her beauty elicited one hundred percent of his attention, leaving no room for such mundane concerns as inhaling and exhaling. After a moment, he forced himself to dunk, chew, and swallow, finding a certain equilibrium in the familiar food.

As far as gathering information went, lunch was a total disaster. Dr. Seto seemed both surprised and relieved by the distinctly light tone of the conversation.

Walking back to the clinic, out of inanities to discuss, Celluci turned gratefully as the doctor shaded her eyes with one hand, gestured across the street with the other, and murmured, “I wonder what's going on over there?”

Over there, at the Chinese Cultural Center, a bright yellow cable van had pulled up onto the broad walkway and was in the process of disgorging piles of electrical equipment.

“It's like watching clowns get out of that little car at the circus,” Celluci said as another stack of indistinguishable black boxes was balanced precariously on top of the pile. Dropping his armload of cables, a tall thin man with a ponytail straightened the stack at the last possible instant and began a spirited argument with someone still in the van—an argument that got cut off before it really began when Patricia Chou stormed out of the building.

Seconds later, cables were once again being laid and equipment continued to be unloaded. Dr. Seto looked intrigued. “I wonder what she said.”

“You know Ms. Chou?” Something in her voice suggested she did.

The doctor nodded. “She did a story on my clinic, two, maybe three, months ago. Overall, a favorable story but a little like being operated on without anesthetic.” Her tone grew speculative as they moved away from the Center. “I'm surprised you know her, though. Didn't you tell me you've only been in Vancouver for a couple of days?”

“I don't exactly know her. I did see her interview with Ronald Swanson . . .”

“Would that be the Ronald Swanson who's in real estate?”

All at once, Celluci remembered why he'd gone to the clinic in the first place. Why he'd invited Dr. Seto out for lunch. “That's the one. Do you know him?”

“He's not a friend, if that's what you mean, but we've met. His company donated the computers we use in the clinic, and there're a number of volunteer organizations around the city that depend on his generosity. He works tirelessly for the transplant society.”

“So I gathered from the interview.” Then, before she could change the subject, he added, “I find the whole thing amazing—that you could take an organ out of one person, sew it into another, and save a life.”

“It's not quite that easy, I'm afraid.” She pressed the walk button and they waited while the light changed. Then they waited a moment longer as a mid-seventies orange truck ran the yellow.

“Is it something you've done?” Celluci prodded, stepping off the curb.

“Detective, think about it. If I were a transplant surgeon, would I be practicing street-front medicine?”

“No. I suppose not.”

“You can be certain of it.”

“I'd heard that kidney transplants weren't that difficult.”

“For transplants. Afterward, they carry the same risk of rejection or infection as any other transplant, and infection kills.” She half turned to look up at him from under a fall of silken hair. “Do you know what the greatest advancement in medicine was in the nineteenth century?”

“Convincing doctors to wash their hands.” He couldn't help preening a little at her sudden smile. “Hey, I'm not as stupid as I look.”

Vicki would have taken advantage of a line like that. Dr. Seto looked so aghast that he might possibly think she believed he was, Celluci found himself apologizing and going out of his way to be charming for the rest of the walk.

Back at the clinic, the doctor readily agreed to conduct a quick tour. “As long as it's very quick.” The same three old men, at least Celluci thought they were the same three, watched their every move.

Unless there was a hidden operating theater in the basement, kidneys were not being transplanted on the premises. However, many of the clinic's patients were the sort of people who could disappear without questions being raised. A number of them had.

“They just never come back.” Dr. Seto sighed as she slipped back into her lab coat. “It gets discouraging.”

“Do you have any idea where they might have gone?”

“Back East, maybe. Hopefully, home.” Her eyes focused on faces he couldn't see. “Unfortunately, I'm afraid that too many of them have ended up as police statistics of one kind or another.”

When he pulled out the creased photocopy of the autopsy photo, she shook her head. “No. Not one of mine.”

Celluci'd seen liars just as sincere and almost as beautiful, but he believed her.

A clearly stoned woman staggered in, doubled over in pain, and howling for a doctor. Celluci murmured a good-bye he doubted anyone heard, and left. Walking back to the car, he fought a rising melancholy. He and Vicki used to go for dim sum about once a month. They were often the only two Caucasians in the second-floor restaurant and they both towered over the rest of the clientele. The elderly women serving the food would occasionally walk right on by, shaking their heads and muttering, “You don't want.”

It was something they'd never be able to do again.

A twenty-dollar parking ticket didn't help his mood.

Traffic didn't ease until he was almost at the library.

Back when he'd been in uniform, an old staff sergeant at 14 Division had been fond of saying, “You get someone talked about three times during an investigation, and you go for a conviction 'cause that's the son of a bitch that did the crime.”

Ronald Swanson's name had come up twice now.

A little digging unearthed the name of the clinic Patricia Chou had mentioned, “. . .
a private clinic where people in the last stages of renal failure can wait for a kidney. 
. . .” According to old issues of the weekly newspaper,
Business in Vancouver
, Ronald Swanson had been responsible for its development, was on the board of directors, and contributed a large portion of its financial support.

Project Hope wasn't listed among the clinics in the phone book, but that was hardly surprising as it probably took a doctor's recommendation to get in.

Rubbing his eyes, Celluci left the microfiche carrel, dug out his phone card, and called the clinic from the library lobby. Without identifying himself, he asked if they had a transplant surgeon on staff. Coolly professional, the duty nurse admitted they did. Celluci thanked her and hung up.

Motive. Swanson's wife had died of kidney failure waiting for a transplant. Swanson could want revenge against the system that failed him. Or maybe her death had pointed out a market waiting to be exploited.

Means. Swanson had access to facilities and the finances to buy any talent he wanted.

Opportunity. Suppose Dr. Seto didn't know she was supplying the donors? Swanson's company had donated her computers. Could he access them again for the information he needed? According to Patricia Chou, skilled hackers were a dime a dozen, and past experience proved that one in twelve law-abiding citizens could be bought.

“
With enough money you have the opportunity to do anything
.”

A hard point to argue with, but he had nothing that could be called evidence by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing he could give to the police that would justify an arrest and keep Henry Fitzroy from taking the law into his own hands.

But the link, however circumstantial, between Ronald Swanson and Henry's ghost was strong enough to make a quick trip out to Project Hope worthwhile.

As he got back into the van, Celluci wondered where the transplant society's computers had come from. In Toronto, where his badge meant something, he'd have grounds enough to make inquiries. Were Vicki and Henry not involved, he'd check out the bar where Vancouver's finest hung out and find out just where their investigation was heading.

Except, of course, that I wouldn't be involved had that undead royal bastard of a romance-writing vampire, Henry Fitzroy, not gotten Vicki involved
.

“
You didn't need to come along
,” the little voice in his head reminded him.

“Yeah. Right.” He snorted as he pulled out into traffic. “Like she'd be accomplishing anything on her own.” He deliberately chose not to think about what she may or may not have accomplished between sunset and sunrise the night before.

Unfortunately, he wasn't in Toronto, vampires were involved, and he couldn't think of a plausible reason why anyone should tell him anything.

Project Hope occupied a fairly large parcel of land on the eastern edge of North Vancouver. Celluci parked the van on the side of Mt. Seymour Road, spread out a map over the steering wheel, and cultivated a confused expression in case those passing by wondered what he was doing. From where he sat, some five hundred feet beyond the long driveway on a slight rise, he could see a one-story building designed so deliberately to look noninstitutional it couldn't look anything but, a half-filled parking lot, a dumpster, and a number of empty benches scattered about pleasantly landscaped grounds. The orientation of the building allowed him to see one side and part of the back. The distance from the road meant that he could see bugger all in the way of details.

Sighing, he pulled a set of folding, miniature binoculars out of the glove compartment. In one of her more whimsical moments, Vicki had ordered a pair of them from a magazine ad that insisted they were exactly like those used by the KGB. Celluci questioned the KGB connection, but he had to admit—although not to Vicki—that, for their size, they weren't bad.

A closer inspection told him only that the windows all had Venetian blinds and that Dailow Waste Removal emptied the dumpster twice a week.

“So how long do I sit here?” he asked his reflection in the rearview mirror. Stakeouts away from masking crowds were always a pain in the butt, and the lost tourist routine wouldn't be plausible for long. “Maybe I should go in and ask for directions. See if they could lend me a hand . . . Hello.”

A large man in pale jeans and a red T-shirt crossed the parking lot and got into one of the trendy sport/utility hybrids that every second person on the Coast seemed to drive. He had to have come from inside. Through the binoculars, Celluci watched him back the truck toward the clinic. When it stopped, the angle of the building blocked everything but a bit of the front right bumper.

“Why do you back up to a building? Because you're loading something into the trunk.” Squinting didn't help. The clinic remained in the way. “And what are you loading? That's the question, isn't it?”