Buried Strangers (14 page)
“No idea.”
“One hundred and forty-seven. I’m not talking about the city of São Paulo, Gilda, or even the state. I’m talking nationally. One hundred forty-seven hearts donated in the whole damned country. You know how many people are on the waiting list as of this morning? Three thousand two hun-dred and twelve.”
“Most of those people are going to die?”
“Yes.”
“Because they can’t get a heart?”
“Yes. So that brings me back to your question. There
have
to be
other kinds of clinics. Personally, I don’t know of any, but I know this country. I know you can pay to have some-one killed. It happens all the time. And, if you can buy death . . .”
“What if a clinic was doing both the implants and the . . . harvesting?”
“Killing people to get at their hearts? It wouldn’t surprise me at all. Someone could earn a bundle of money. Someone probably is. Hey, are you going to eat your fish?”
“ABOUT TIME,” SILVA SAID. “Where are you?”
Arnaldo mumbled something. Silva stuck a finger in the ear that wasn’t covered by his cell phone.
“Speak up. I can hardly hear you.”
“I said God knows where I am.” Arnaldo raised his voice only a little. “Can you hear me now?”
“Yes,” Silva said. “Go ahead.”
“The Argentinian handed me over to some guy with a van. He made me sit in the back on the floor. No windows. After about an hour, the van stops and we’re in a garage. The driver takes me to a bedroom. No, not a bedroom, more like a dormitory. It’s full of other people. They assign me a mat-tress on the floor. I sit around for a while making small talk with my fellow emigrants, or maybe it’s immigrants, I always get those two words mixed up. And then the driver comes back. He wants a blood sample.”
“A
blood
sample?”
“Claims it’s for the Mexican visa. All the other guys nod. He’s done it to them, too, so I decide not to make a fuss.”
“It’s crap. The Mexicans don’t ask for a blood samples.”
“You know that, and I know that, but the other guys don’t. They’re simple people by and large, laborers mostly. When the driver leaves, I ask if anybody tried to make any calls, and they look at me like I’m some kind of nut. They all paid five thousand American dollars to get into the States, and that’s a fortune for them. They’re gonna follow the rules. They’d finger me in an instant if I pulled this cell phone out of my sock and started to use it. You see why I didn’t call?”
“Who’s that talking in the background?”
“Television set. I turned it on to cover the sound of my voice.”
“How come you can get away with calling now? What happened to the others?”
“The driver came back this morning and picked them up. They’re on their way.”
“How come you’re not?”
“They said there wasn’t time to get the visa.”
“You believe it?”
“Why not? I can’t think of any other reason to send them on and keep me here. One other thing: remember that post-card of South Beach? The one you showed me? The one Maria de Lourdes got from her son?”
“I remember.”
“That guy from the agency was here, the Argentinian. He gave me one just like it.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah, uh-oh, is right. He told me it was part of the service.”
“Part of the service?”
“He said that family members tend to get worried, and that they’d come up with this system to put their minds at rest. I could fill it out as if I’d already arrived, address it to anyone I liked. They Fedex all the cards to Miami, mail them as soon as they get word their customers are safely across the border.”
“I don’t like the sound of this at all.”
“Me neither. Still, you told me the card Maria de Lourdes got was mailed from Miami, right?”
“Right.”
“So maybe he told the truth. Maybe it is part of the service.”
“How many other people got cards?”
“I don’t know. By the time they gave me mine, everybody else had been cleared out of here.”
“And you have no idea where you are?”
“None.”
“No windows in that room?”
“Boarded up. Same thing goes for the bathroom down the hall. There’s a space between the boards and I looked out, but all I can see is a row of houses on the other side of the street. Looks like we might be in Vila Madelena or some-place like that, but there’s no way I can say for sure.”
“You locked in?”
“No. But I’m supposed to confine myself to the dormitory, the bathroom, and the hall. They told me I can back out any time, but if I did, I wouldn’t get my five thousand back.”
“How about we triangulate the location of your phone?”
“Why bother? If I discover anything, it’s not gonna be here; it’s gonna be further down the road. Might as well leave it off and conserve the battery. Gotta go. Footsteps in the hall.”
ARNALDO BARELY had time to get the telephone back into his sock before the door opened.
“Your visa came through after all,” the driver said. “Get your stuff together. You’re gonna be able to go with the group.
I fly out tonight?”
“I don’t know that. It’s not my department. What I do know is that your guide called from the Mexican consulate. He’s on his way over here to pick you up.”
“Guide?”
“Your guide goes along on the trip to Mexico, makes sure you guys don’t get into trouble along the way.”
“And then?”
“He puts you in touch with the coyote
.
The coyote brings everybody across the border.”
“This guide, he’s a Mexican?”
The driver shook his head. “A carioca.”
ARNALDO HAD the back of the van all to himself, win-dowless like the first one. The carioca handed him a bag of sandwiches and a thermos of lemonade.
“Better eat now,” he said. “It’s all you’re gonna get until much later. And you don’t want the bread to get soggy.”
Once the doors were closed and the vehicle was rolling, Arnaldo took the cell phone out of his sock, turned it on, and punched the speed dial. Silva picked up on the second ring.
“I’m on my way,” Arnaldo said.
“Tell me.”
Arnaldo did, finishing with a description of the carioca: “Big as I am, but fat.”
“Fatter than you? Man must be a hippo.”
“I think you must have me confused with someone else. Maybe you’re thinking of that lardass Silva. He’s a federal cop, too.”
“No, I know Silva. Nobody would ever confuse you with him. Silva is smart.”
“Enough of this badinage, this carioca—”
“Badinage?”
“Badinage. Look it up. This carioca has the accent of oth-ers of his ilk—”
“Ilk?”
“You want a description or not?”
“I want.”
“Like I said, about my height, one meter ninety or there-abouts; maybe a hundred twenty, a hundred thirty kilos; dark complexion; oily, black hair; dark-brown eyes; big, bushy mustache like a Mexican bandit. No tattoos that I could see, no scars. But he’s wearing a gold chain with a big, fucking medallion from Flamengo.”
“Flamengo? Did you remind the asshole where he was?”
“I didn’t have to. I did a double take on it and he just smiled. I think he likes to fight. Probably pretty good at it, too.”
“You got a name for this character?”
“I got one, but I don’t know whether it’s his or not. He introduced himself as Roberto Ribeiro.”
ROBERTO RIBEIRO watched Arnaldo stuff the cell phone back into his sock. Then he fished his own phone out of his pocket and called Claudia.
“Filho da puta has a cell phone with him,” he said, “one of those ultrathin numbers. He’s carrying it in his sock.”
“Has he used it?”
“Just now.”
“Where the hell did he get a phone?” she said, sounding particularly bitchy, like it was his fault that the guy had a phone.
“How the fuck should I know?” he said, irritated. “I just picked him up.”
“Who did he call?”
“What am I, psychic? I couldn’t hear a word he said. There’s no microphone back there, just the TV camera.”
“Why didn’t you take it away from him?”
“No place to stop. I can only get in there through the rear doors.”
“I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. God knows who he was talking to. As soon as you get back here, give that Argentinian at the travel agency a call and tell him to lie low for a while.”
“Hey, I think you’re overreacting. This guy—”
“I don’t give a damn what you think. Just do what you’re told. What’s he doing now?”
Ribeiro looked down at the little black-and-white moni-tor suspended under the dashboard.
“Eating the sandwiches. And, yup, there he goes, pouring himself a drink of the lemonade. He’s a big one. Gonna be a lot of dead weight. I’m gonna need help to unload him.”
THE WAITER ARRIVED WITH two little glasses of sambuca, the surface burning with a blue flame, coffee beans floating on the top.
“Courtesy of the house,” he said.
When he was gone, Hector picked up Gilda’s glass by the stem and blew out the flame, and then did the same to his. He’d chosen the Due Cuochi Cucina, debatably the best Italian restaurant in São Paulo; he’d splurged on a ten-year-old bottle of Barolo; and here they were, talking about mur-der rather than whispering sweet nothings to each other. The evening was definitely going down as one of his most unusual dates.
“Of course, I could be wrong,” Gilda said, as she finished explaining her organ theft theory. “I wasn’t always a suspi-cious person, but I seem to be getting that way as I get older. Sylvie says I spend too much of my time with cops.”
“And she’s an expert?”
“She claims she doesn’t know any cops. But I know Sylvie. She’s looking.”
“I meant on transplants. Is she an expert on transplants?
Yes, she is.”
“I’ve seen experts proven wrong before. Tell me more about this whole transplant business. I recall reading about the guy who performed the first one—but he died awhile back.”
“Christiaan Barnard? The South African?”
“Yeah, him.”
“Barnard didn’t perform the first transplant. He performed the first
heart
transplant. And his patient died within a month. The first
successful
transplant was years before that, in Boston. The surgeon was Joseph Murray. Barnard didn’t come along until the late sixties.”
“So how come Barnard is famous and Murray isn’t?”
“Because Murray’s work didn’t capture the public’s imagi-nation the way Barnard’s did. Murray was working with iden-tical twins. What he transplanted was a kidney. Both brothers lived on for years, but what Murray did was only applicable to twins, so the procedure didn’t have much personal or emo-tional significance for the great majority of the population. Barnard, now, he did something entirely different. He took a heart, matched it for compatibility—blood type and so on— and got it to work in another human being totally unrelated to the donor. And it wasn’t heart failure that ultimately killed the recipient. It was something else, a lung infection as I recall. Am I talking too much?”
“Not at all. I’m fascinated. Go on.”
Gilda took a sip of her sambuca.
“Delicious,” she said. “Okay, it’s like this: the body’s im-mune system normally attacks foreign organisms, which is mostly good, as in the case of a virus or a bacterial infection. But in the case of an organ transplant, it’s a problem. The body wants to reject a new organ, tries to kill it.”
Hector picked up his own glass of sambuca and cautiously touched his lips to the rim. It was cool enough to sip, and he did, the liqueur sweet on his tongue.
“So to make a transplant work,” he said, “they had to find a way to get around the body’s natural response.”
“Uh-huh. And they did. They invented drugs that sup-press the immune system. The first was cyclosporine. It was a breakthrough.”
“But if you suppress the immune system—”
“You leave the body open to infection. Yes, that’s true. It’s a tricky thing, has to be carefully controlled. But when you consider the alternative . . .”
“I take your point. Alright, so now we’ve got . . . what did you call it?”
“Cyclosporine.”
“Cyclosporine—and transplants are possible. But does it always have to be a human organ? What about other sources, other animals?”
“That’s called xenotransplantation. Xeno from the Greek, meaning foreign.”
“Got it. Like xenophobia.”
“Exactly. Well, the name exists, but the procedure isn’t feasible yet and probably won’t be for decades, if ever. The same is true for genetically manufactured organs.”
Gilda took another sip and ran her tongue around her lips licking off the sticky sugar. Hector watched the tip of her tongue and felt a tingling in his groin.
“So what you’re saying,” he went on hurriedly, “is that the only source of human organs is other humans.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
Hector put down his glass and drummed his fingers on the linen tablecloth.
“Alright, let’s suppose for a moment that you’re right. Suppose somebody is killing people to steal their organs. It seems to me that people who’d be doing what you suggest would have two principal problems.”
“Yes,” she said, and counted them off on her index and mid-dle fingers. “Sourcing victims and disposing of their bodies.”
Hector raised an eyebrow. “You’ve thought this through, haven’t you?”
“If I was looking for people who I could make disappear without causing a stir,” she said, “I’d probably look in the favelas.”
Hector immediately thought of the Lisboas and their friends, the Portellas.
“Why the favelas?” he asked.
“No offense, but most of the cops I know, and I know a lot of them, don’t even want to stick their noses into such places, much less investigate complaints.”
“With good reason. The city administration doesn’t run the favelas, the drug gangs run the favelas. And drug gangs kill cops.”
“And drug gangs kill cops,” she agreed. “I know. Who do you think gets their bodies for autopsy? But that’s exactly my point, you see. Life in the favelas is cheap. Drug gangs kill cops, cops kill dealers, and lots of perfectly innocent people get caught in the crossfire. People die and disappear all the time. Favelas would be perfect hunting grounds for organ thieves.”
“Okay, suppose you’re right, suppose that’s what those graves were about. That brings up another question.”
“Which is?”
“You’ve established that none of the corpses were recently deceased. So why are the people who were killing them then not killing them now? Why should they kill thirty-seven men, women, and children and then simply stop?”
“Maybe they didn’t.”
“Stop you mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You think we should be combing the Serra da Cantareira for more burial grounds?”
“Maybe. But even if there aren’t any, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the killer or killers suspended activities. They could simply be destroying the evidence.”
“Burning the corpses?”
“Dissolving them in acid might work, but it would be a long and messy process.”
“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
“I know. Bizarre, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Burning the corpses. You know what? I’m
warming
to the idea.”
“Oh,
please.
Was that meant to be a joke?”
“Not funny, huh?”
She shook her head.
“If they’re medical people,” he said, “and they’re burning the corpses, would they use a crematory oven?”
“I doubt it. Have you ever seen one of those things?”
“No.”
“They’re called retorts and they burn at a little over eleven hundred degrees Celsius, which means they have to be heavily insulated and need a substantial chimney. They’re huge, costly to buy and install.”
“How do you happen to know all of that?”
“I had a
namorado
who used to install those things.”
“I don’t think I want to hear about it.”
“About what? The retorts or the boyfriend?”
“The boyfriend.”
“Good. I don’t like talking about him. He was a creep. They also have to be licensed, retorts that is, not boyfriends, although come to think of it, that might have been a good idea in his case.”
“A namorado’s license?”
“Uh-huh. To get the license you’d have to pass a test. There’d be sections on sensitivity, reliability, honesty, and all that kind of stuff. You’d have to show a girl your license before you asked her out. My ex would have failed on all counts, particularly the fidelity part, the
canalha.
”
“These retort things,” he said, as if the conversation hadn’t taken a detour, “if they didn’t have one, how would they go about cremating a body?”
“There are other devices, ovens designed for the disposal of medical waste. They don’t burn as hot as retorts, so the process would take a lot longer, but they’d do the job. The advantages would be that they’re much smaller, cheaper, and more common. They wouldn’t attract attention if they were installed in a clinic, and although they require licenses, the licensing procedure is much simpler. The downside is that adult bodies wouldn’t fit inside. They’d have to be dismem-bered before cremation, and once the burning is complete, the bones would still have to be reduced to powder. That’s not a problem. There’s a machine that crematories use for grinding bone. It’s commercially available and quite small.”
Hector sat back in his chair and looked at her.
“What a mind,” he said. “We could make a good team. Professionally, I mean.”
“Sure,” she said, “professionally.”
“And, professionally, would you suggest I start checking out all the clinics that have ovens for the disposal of medical waste?”
“No, I wouldn’t. You might get lucky, but I doubt it. Unless you catch them in the act, all you’re going to do is to put them on their guard.”
“Hmm. You have another suggestion about where we go from here?”
“Let’s just get together and see how it plays out.”
“It’s a deal. Tomorrow night?”
“Eight o’clock. My place. Do you cook?”
“Not well.”
“Okay. It will be spaghetti with a meat sauce and salad. You buy the wine.”
“Chilean? A Carmeniere?”
“Too heavy.”
“A Cabernet Sauvignon?”
“Fine.”
“Getting back to the case . . .”
“How about this: transplants, legal or illegal, are the last stop, the end of the line. They’re what you do when the diagnosis is certain, when there’s no other way to save a patient’s life.”
“So?”
“So you go back to the beginning. The path leading to a transplant begins with someone getting sick, going to a doc-tor, and having tests or treatment done. When it’s a heart problem, there’s going to be a cardiocath, or a radioactive stress test, probably both.The gear to do that kind of stuff is expensive. Only major hospitals have it.”
“So we find people whose tests—”
“And/or treatments.”
“—and/or treatments indicate they wouldn’t survive with-out a heart transplant.”
“Yes. And you cross-reference to the waiting lists for heart recipients. Anybody who didn’t put themselves on the list must have had access to an alternative source. Anybody who did, and is no longer there, has gotten a legal organ, or died or—”
“Has gotten one illegally?”
“You catch on fast,” she said.
