Mad Mickey had been dumb enough or strong enough to believe in the Charlestown code and went to prison rather than deal with the feds. The feds got pissed enough to send him to Milan, Michigan, a rathole if ever there was one, a snake pit like Bedlam, only Bedlam wasn’t eighty per cent black. Mickey kept his mouth shut from the time he was swept up, never said a word in any interrogation room, courtroom or pretrial cell. Kept his idea of honour and did his time like an all-star, wouldn’t back down from a Panzer division, until he got into a fight where he brought fists and the brother had a knife, stabbed him deep through his ribs into the lungs, and the life whistled out of the slick bubbling hole in minutes. His father had stuck to the Town code and it got rubbed in his face like road rash. So excuse Sean if he didn’t feel sentimental about Charlestown. He got a kick out of seeing it from his balcony and never having to live there again. Once a square mile of mayhem and thievery and now a pocket of real estate deals.
Whitey’s treachery, his hypocrisy, his shattering of so many hearts had decimated the Irish Mob. It had never quite recovered. When Sean came out of prison last year, a lot of people thought he might make a move-he had the genes and savage temper for it-but he had stayed quiet. Not because he lacked anything for balls. His were big as Mickey’s and no less brass. It was because he was going to bust in the back door when he was good and ready.
Sean had a secret. One that meant he could stay clear of his old ways, anything that could take him back to Cedar Junction. His four-year bit there had cured him of any desire to get strip-searched and hosed down again. To miss his family and the other things that mattered. Now clear of probation, he was building something so new, so far under anyone’s radar, that not one of the many agencies that had pursued him over the years had a clue he was back in business. All because of Michael. A gift brought to his doorstep by his own beloved boy. His opening was coming. Out of the ashes of Whitey’s great deception, he was rebuilding. Gathering steam fast, with loads of cash coming in, untraceable. Soon he’d have enough to make his mark on the town. To carry a big enough stick that he could speak softly as a prayer.
CHAPTER 8
If there was anywhere in America you had to fall sick, you would want it to be on Francis Street. Every building fronting on either side was a hospital, specialist centre or office building housing doctors. So was every other building for eight blocks. This was the place to be if your heart seized up, your legs gave out, an organ failed or a stroke left you needing a bedpan and a bib for meals. Or a woman with a barbell gave your head a whack.
I walked past a group of smokers all facing south so the wind was at their backs, pursing their cheeks as they sucked the last gasp of smoke they were going to have until their appointments or visits were over. I ducked between idling taxis waiting for people to ease out of wheelchairs and into back seats. Once I was inside Sinai Hospital, the first smell that hit me was not the usual mix of disinfectant, body fluids and anesthetics, the anxious odours and stale breath of the sick-it was coffee. Fresh coffee. Sold out of a cafeteria in a bright two-floor atrium. I lined up for a cup of dark roast and took it with me as I went in search of the east-wing elevators. I went down a hallway where both walls were lined with portraits of prominent Bostonians who had contributed to medicine through science, medical practice, philanthropy and other means. Near the end on the left was a beatific shot of the very man I was going to see, E. Charles Stayner, fingers steepled under his backlit chin as he gazed out at something only a man of his vision and talent could see.
On the sixth floor, I passed through a set of glass doors and found the Transplant Clinic on the left. Gave my name to the receptionist inside. “Right,” she said, “I spoke to your assistant. You’re here about poor David.”
My assistant. I hoped she hadn’t called Jenn that on the phone. We’d have to add phone repair to our hotel bill.
“Dr. Stayner had to take a call but it shouldn’t be too long. Just have a seat and I’ll call you.”
There were eight other people in the waiting room. Two were clearly on their own and neither looked healthy. Their skin was the colour of lard, their eyes a waxy yellow. The other six were in pairs: a sick one accompanied by a well one. Two older couples and a woman with what had to be her grown daughter. Some stared at a flat-screen monitor that had CNN with the sound off, which is the best way to watch CNN. Others read newspapers or did Sudoku or crosswords. Everyone spoke quietly if they spoke at all, leaning in close to murmur to each other.
There were three padded chairs in a nook by a window. I sat on the far left, where there was a table stacked with the hospital newsletter. I sipped my coffee and scanned stories about Sinai’s recent accomplishments and initiatives, and there were plenty, of course. New research findings, breakthroughs in clinical practice, expansions of service, acquisitions of clinics and smaller hospitals.
A burly man in his sixties filled the doorway, a Lee J. Cobb type who must have been powerful in his day. He paused there, panting a little, one hand on the jamb, then boomed out, “What is this, a waiting room or a morgue? Good morning, everybody.”
He stood there looking around until everyone muttered, “Good morning, Al,” or some variation back at him. He took in the three-seater I was in, ambled over and sank into the cushion on my right with a great exhalation. He looked at me, nodded, then looked over the magazines on the table in front of us and picked up a
“They don’t hurt,” he said in a deep voice that sounded like it had rumbled through a lot of late, smoky nights.
He had caught me staring. “Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it. They look painful but the doctors actually grow them on purpose, to make dialysis easier. Everything flows a little faster and you don’t get so many infections. They’re called fistulas.”
“I see.”
“You here with one of your parents?”
“No. Just visiting Dr. Stayner.”
“But not for yourself. You’re way too healthy to be one of us. Trust me, by the time you see Stayner, you look like shit. Like me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just smiled at him.
“I don’t suppose you’re a donor,” he said. His grin showed he kept his teeth nicely whitened.
“Me?”
“You can live on one kidney, you know. Why we have two is a mystery, I’m told. And a healthy donor bounces back in two, three weeks. Everything’s done laparoscopically. You can wear a bathing suit in a month. You swim?”
“Not much.”
“Too bad. You know I’m just pulling your leg here. Mostly. But the average wait for a donor in this state is five years. Now ask me how long the average patient lasts on dialysis.”
“Okay.”
“Four years. Ba dum-bum. And I’ve been on two years plus already, so my meter’s running. However you do the math, it’s depressing. Now if you have money, then you have options.”
“Like what?”
He leaned in close, like we were co-conspirators, and muttered, “China. They execute a lot of prisoners there, and every single organ is harvested. I even heard they execute people in that sect, what are they called-”
“Falun Gong.”
“Yeah. But it’s a few hundred grand I don’t have. I don’t suppose you’re rich. If you won’t give me a kidney, maybe you’ll lend me three hundred Gs? You make that kind of money?”
“Every five years,” I said.
There were fifteen diplomas on the wall of Dr. E. Charles Stayner’s office, none of them from matchbooks. Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Harvard again. According to his online biography, he was head of transplant medicine, a distinguished professor at Harvard Medical School and chair of Sinai’s bioethics committee. His CV ran fifty-four
