entrance to shake hands with well-dressed men and women who looked like they represented the museum. Someone’s aide grouped them together for a photo. McConnell wore a navy blazer and tan slacks, as opposed to the dark suit in his website photo. I guess a day at the museum, especially a contemporary art museum, called for something less formal.
His wife was a dark-haired woman, about five-foot-five and slim, with a pretty face that had more makeup than a woman of forty needed, wearing a trench coat over a dark pantsuit and white top cut just low enough for a string of pearls to sit against her skin. Very toned down and classic. Jenn would have been disappointed.
On McConnell’s other side was a young man carrying a BlackBerry in one hand and a black leather briefcase in the other. This, I guessed, was Tim Fitzpatrick, McConnell’s advisor. He wore a light grey suit, shirt and tie, perhaps having failed to get the memo about the casual dress code. The little bit of hair he had was shaved down to stubble; the top of his head gleamed in the overhead lights. He consulted the BlackBerry, thumbed out some text, then slipped it into his pocket and opened the briefcase. He passed McConnell a sheet of typing-an agenda or speaking notes-which the congressman scanned, then folded and slipped into his breast pocket.
If I approached McConnell after his remarks, he could brush me off more easily than if I could get to him now, when he couldn’t just walk out on his public. I started making my way across the lobby. Fitzpatrick was introducing McConnell to one of the journalists, who began asking questions, holding up a mini-recorder. I held back while he spoke. He seemed at ease, as if he were talking to a good friend in a place he visited often. When she was done, she switched off the recorder and took a photo of him and his wife, his arm around her waist. When she slipped her arm around him, the sleeve of her trench coat rose and I saw two lumps like golf balls under the skin of her forearm.
Fistulas, they were called.
The original plan had been for Jenn and me to go to the museum together, mingle, ask his assistant for a word after, question him about David and gauge his response. But seeing his wife up close, realizing what the fistulas and the heavy makeup meant, sent me reeling like a top bouncing off baseboards. I needed to think it through before I confronted him. I left the museum and made the short drive to the airport talking it out to myself, like there was someone else in the car or at the other end of a line. McConnell’s wife was in need of an organ, presumably a kidney. Yes, the fistulas were related to dialysis. Long-term use of anti-rejection drugs could cause cancer, and possibly infertility. Why not kidney failure?
Christ, I wished Jenn were with me. She’d probably have looked this up already.
One thing we knew about Lesley, she had the money to jump the line. Half a million for a kidney? She could probably find that much under the pillows of Daddy’s couch.
Then another thought came to me: Marc McConnell knows Rabbi Ed Lerner. The rabbi knows David. McConnell’s wife needs an organ. Did Lerner try to help David out of this? Or did he help rope him into it in the first place?
I dialled the rabbi’s home number. It went to voice mail. Of course it would: he wouldn’t answer it on the Sabbath. I left a message explaining what had happened and that if there was anything, anything at all either of them knew that they hadn’t told before, now was the time to call, day or night. I stressed the life-or-death nature of it and I didn’t need to embellish it in any way. It came from the deepest part of me that feared for Jenn’s life.
Not long after I hung up, I heard Dante Ryan say, “Hey,” and turned around. He let his suitcase fall and grabbed me and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll get her back. And we’ll sort out the guy who took her.”
A passenger making his way around Ryan’s luggage glared at him and paled at the response he got. He turned away and hustled off, banging his rolling case against his heels. Ryan hadn’t even said anything to the man, just let his killer’s face out.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. ‘Your hotel far?”
“Maybe twenty minutes.”
“Then let me grab a smoke before we get in the car.”
We stood outside, the sun overhead and the day growing warmer. Pleasant on the outside.
“I made some calls before takeoff,” he said after he’d lit up and had his first two hits of nicotine. “I have a supplier here lined up can fix me up with equipment.”
“Fix me up too,” I said.
Ryan almost dropped his cigarette. “For real?”
“Yes.”
He took a few more deep draws, then ground the butt under his heel and said, “Okay. Hotel first. Drop off this shit. Maybe grab a quick bite and a drink. Then we go pick up what we need. Meanwhile you fill me in on everything that’s happened so far. From what got you down here to when Jenn got grabbed.”
CHAPTER 21
By the time we got to the hotel, parked, installed Ryan in Jenn’s room and had lunch, he was pretty caught up on the David Fine case, from my visit to Ron Fine’s house Wednesday morning to Sean Daggett’s cruel exit with Jenn’s hair wrapped roughly around his hand.
“This dickhead hurts her,” he said, “he’s a dead man.”
I didn’t argue with that. “Your supplier ready to receive us?”
“Yeah. Listen, I had some U.S. hundreds stashed away at home, in case you need any.”
“That’s great. I can only get five hundred a day out of the machine.”
“So I got to say something about this organ thing: do you honestly think there’s anything to it? ’Cause it sounds like one of these urban myths, you know, the bum or the business traveller who wakes up in a bathtub full of ice with a scar he can’t explain. Christ,
“These aren’t bums or businessmen,” I said. “They’re people who gave blood samples at Sinai Hospital and were specifically recruited because they matched people on a list. The better the match, the fewer drugs the person has to take after. The better the outcome. Jenn looked all of this up before she-fuck.”
“It’s all right. I mean, it’s not all right now, but it will be. Soon. We’ll get her back unharmed, I promise that, okay? So what’s our next move?”
“We go see a thin mousy chick who looks like a lab rat. Jenn and I interviewed her once already and she was jumping at her own shadow.”
“If she was scared of you,” Ryan said, “she’s going to love me.”
Back on the road to meet his gun dealer, Ryan said, “How’s your head these days?”
“Why? Did I miss an exit? You said South Boston, right?”
“No, no, you’re good. I meant in general, because …”
“Because why?”
“Last time I spoke to you-before today, I mean, you remember the last time we spoke?”
I said, “Yes,” mainly to buy time while I fired up the memory and searched backwards to think of when that might have been. It hadn’t been in the last two months. It was back in the foggy time around Christmas, when I was at my worst. Had we wished each other well for the holidays?
“You don’t remember.”
“I-”
“It was December 31, late afternoon,” Ryan said. “I know it ain’t your people’s new year but I was in the restaurant getting ready for the big night, Cara and Carlo were home alone, and I was feeling a little blue so I called to wish you a happy one and you didn’t exactly sound razor sharp.”
“That’s nice you thought of calling me.”
“But you don’t remember it?”
“It was two months ago, Ryan, I’m better now. My doctor cleared me and everything.”
“For gunplay?”
“I can watch my own back. And yours.”
“Great.”
“That wasn’t convincing.”
