don’t want to tell the cops. If I’m David I know the area, probably better than the guys in the van do. I know how long it might take them to drive down from the top of Summit Avenue.
I probably know this trolley route too. Maybe I’ve taken it to work before, or to class when I was still in school. Maybe I run for it and jump on, blending in with the other passengers, hoping to attain some kind of invisibility. The rear doors had been tantalizingly close.
I ducked between cars and crossed to the trolley platform. It was seven-thirty. Roughly the same time he might have come two weeks ago. Nothing to lose by asking. I lined up behind other commuters and waited for the next car to come rolling along.
The driver was a man of about fifty, a solid gut resting on his thighs, rheumy blue eyes and a few busted veins in his nose.
I paid the two-dollar cash fare, took out one of my photos of David Fine and asked the driver if he had seen him board the car on a Thursday evening two weeks ago.
“You kiddin’ me?” he said. “You know how many people get on and off this route? I don’t even look at faces half the time. I’m checkin’ they’re payin’ their fare.”
“Just have a look at it, please.”
The driver sighed. “What time was this?”
“Around seven-thirty.”
“Probably would have been the car before this one.”
“Any way to find out who that was?”
“Yeah,” the driver said. “Stay on until we get to the end of the run at Cleveland Circle. If you’re lucky, you might catch him before he heads back east.”
I elbowed my way to the doorway so I could be first off, then sprinted to the bay where the eastbound car was boarding. I waited until everyone had paid their fare and found seats before approaching the driver, a black man with a touch of grey at his temples and in his goatee. I showed him David’s photo and asked if he remembered him boarding two Thursdays ago. “He would have boarded at Summit Path,” I said. “And he might have been out of breath like he’d been running.”
“A lot of people run to catch the train,” he said. “Else they have to wait for the next one.”
“He was wearing a skullcap.”
“Muslim or Hebrew?”
“Hebrew. Clipped to his hair.”
A light came into his eyes when I said that. “You know what? Two Thursdays ago-yeah, a young guy, not too big, maybe thirty? I remember him now and you know why? He came in the rear door, just as I was about to pull out. Huffing and puffing like you said. Which ain’t so unusual, I told you. So he gets on all out of breath, walks up to the front and pays his fare and-why I remember it-he gets off at the very next stop. See, we got a problem with fare jumpers on this line. It’s the only one you can get on at the rear and we’re supposed to keep an eye on them, make sure they pay. So I eyeballed him in the mirror when he got on back there, made sure he paid, which he did, but only rode one stop. This is an honest guy. He could have hung around the back door and just stepped off. Plus I wondered, why run like that to catch a train when you’re getting off one stop later.”
“You sure it was him?”
“Pretty sure. He had a briefcase too, I remember that now. Clutching it to his chest.”
“He say anything?”
“Nope. Just paid his two bucks, stood there till we got to Washington Street and got off.”
“You see which way he went?”
“Man, you want your money’s worth.”
“He’s been missing since that night. I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”
“Missing, huh? From here? No shit. I mean, I’m only surprised ’cause Brookline’s not a bad area, compared to some. Where I’m from, Mattapan? You could fill a whole lot of milk cartons with everyone goes missing from there.”
“You were gone a while,” Jenn said. “I was getting a little antsy.”
“You could have called me.”
“I did. Your phone was off.”
“Oops.”
“You need to stay in touch.”
“Don’t worry so much. I have a mother for that.”
“Consider me her stand-in. So what happened? Find anyone who saw him?”
I filled her in on my talks with the cyclist and the trolley driver. When she had taken in all the details, she said, “So, someone really tried to grab David that night.”
“Yes.”
“But he got away.”
“For the moment,” I said. “They could have tried again and succeeded.”
“Or he found a good hiding place and doesn’t want to come out.”
“Not even to call his parents? He’d know they’d be worried sick.”
“I know. I’ve got a couple of things on my end,” she said. “I called the New England Organ Bank and spoke to a woman named Wendy Carroll who confirms what Stayner told you. There’s no way a doctor can manipulate the waiting list for a transplant. When an organ becomes available, the bank evaluates the candidates on the list as far as their health, their readiness for surgery, the severity of their illness, etcetera, and they contact the hospital. It doesn’t work the other way around.”
“So David didn’t get that money for influence peddling.”
“No. Have you signed your donor card, by the way?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Me too. ’Cause I’ll tell you, the numbers are scary. There’s over five thousand people in Massachusetts alone waiting for organs, mostly kidneys, and maybe one in five will get one. Cadavers are hard to come by.”
“Not in Mattapan, I hear.”
“Next,” she said. “Carol-Ann Meacham.”
“The one who called David all those times.”
“And vice versa. But when I asked her about it, she couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. And I don’t think it was just a matter of being busy. These are all busy people. I just mentioned David’s name and boom, she shut down. Said she couldn’t help me. Pretty much hung up on me.”
“You get the feeling they were dating?”
“I’d like to ask, if we can get some face time with her.”
“What does she do again?”
“According to the hospital website, she coordinates a gene study there.” She called up the web page on her laptop, then swivelled it so I could see the screen.
It was a year-old news release announcing that Sinai Hospital would be asking all patients seeking treatment to provide a blood sample for genetic testing, with the results to be used to build a massive genome database.
According to the release, the research team hoped to collect samples from a hundred thousand patients, even those seeking routine care, and follow them over time to see how their genetic makeup, lifestyle and environment affected their health.
At the bottom was a contact number for media relations. I called it, got voice mail and left a message saying I wanted to interview Carol-Ann Meacham about the gene study as soon as possible. Then Jenn and I went over other options for the next day.
“With luck,” I said, “Karl will get David’s computer open and we can find out more from his email and browser. I also want to talk to Gianelli again, tell him about the attempted grab.”
“The alleged grab, he’ll say.”
“The problem is all the different police forces at work here. The fact that Mr. Patel is missing too, that would normally stir some interest, but one’s in Brookline, the other’s in Somerville. Can you imagine Toronto working this way?”
“I’m just trying to imagine Toronto working,” she said.
