time code here, sir.”
“Oh my God, that’s this morning.”
“Yes. Sean Daggett had him killed. As with JFK, sir, you’ll note most of his head and neck are gone. The crime scene is probably just wrapping up. The investigation’s only now kicking into gear. So my question for you is, How do you want to be included?”
“Included?” He looked around and saw his wife, who was breaking off from her receiving line and beckoning him to join her. He gave her the one-minute sign.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Daggett has my partner and he’s going to kill her if I don’t find her first.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“What time is the surgery supposed to happen?”
His wife called again and he turned to her. He pasted on a smile and said, “One sec, hon,” then turned back to me and took out a leather case from his inside pocket. He slid out a card and a small pen and scrawled something on the back of the card and handed it to me. It had his home address in Louisburg Square. “Present that to the driver of my car, Mr. Steinauer, outside the house at twelve-thirty,” he said.
“While you’re in church, pray for my partner,” I said. “And that you can find a way to help get her back.”
CHAPTER 28
According to media reports, the McConnell home-or more rightly the Austin-Smith home, since Lesley had paid for it-was worth around seven million. The room I was in must have accounted for a good chunk of it. It was a parlour, I suppose, on the ground floor with a generous bay window into which cushioned seats had been built to face the morning sun. The furniture was comfortable, despite being expensive, in muted burgundy colours with spindly wooden legs. The art was pastoral, also muted.
I was alone with the congressman. Once he’d gone into the church, Shana had hailed a cab and said a curt goodbye without a look back.
“I usually have a whiskey after church,” McConnell said. “Lesley needs to rest afterward, and all that public pressing and greeting is harder on me than you think.”
“Was that an offer to join you?”
“I’m sorry, yes it was. I have some single malts, some Irish.”
“Black Bush?”
“Of course.”
“Just enough to cover one ice cube, please.”
He made my drink, using tongs to take the ice out of a bucket. His own was a single malt neat. He threw one back in one shot, then poured a second, which he sipped slowly as he arranged his long frame into a leather recliner the colour of a dark forest undisturbed.
“I have a deal to propose,” he said.
I knew he would. It was what he did for a living.
“My wife is scheduled to get a new kidney tomorrow night, as you know. If I help you, even if things don’t turn out your way, you let the operation go through. It’s a willing donor who needs the money.”
“David was murdered. The woman who found your donor through the genetic testing program has been murdered.”
“That can’t be true.”
“Check the news. Carol-Ann Meacham. Daggett was paying her to find superior donor matches for people on his list. But things have gone bad since David threatened to expose it and now Daggett is killing people who know too much.”
“He’s not killing Lesley. He’s saving her life.”
“At the cost of how many others? Work that into your deal.”
McConnell set his drink down and walked over to his desk. There was a framed photo there with its back to me. He picked it up and brought it over.
Two teenagers, both tall and gangly, their arms around each other, both wearing T-shirts and shorts and flip-flops, leaning against a split-rail fence. Marc and Lesley, summer camp sweethearts. Only Lesley had an oxygen tank trailing her on wheels, and tubes in her cute little nose.
“I’ve loved her since we were fifteen,” he said. “I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. It didn’t matter how sick she was. And she got even sicker while she waited for her lung transplant. She watched her sister die. She went down to eighty-six pounds herself, and they wouldn’t operate until she got back to ninety. She gorged herself on shakes and preparations to put on weight to keep her spot on the list. But she made it through, Mr. Geller. She made it through. Got her transplant, followed by years of reasonably good health. She’d develop more infections than most people, outbreaks of thrush and things like that. No kids, but hey. It doesn’t happen for everyone. And then watching her get sick again … you can’t begin to understand how that felt.”
“Are you telling me you couldn’t grease the system, with everything you and your wife have?”
“Trust this to be the one institution that still works in America. The organ bank people couldn’t be persuaded. I don’t mean individual bribes, of course, but I offered to sponsor a major education campaign if they could just move her up the list. They refused every overture.”
“What about China?”
“Don’t think I didn’t look into it. As bad as that sounds for someone like me. I interviewed a physician who had toured their top transplant centre and he said the conditions were awful. Completely unsterile. Lesley never would have survived an ordeal like that. She needed top-quality care close to home.”
“Then you heard about Daggett.”
“Yes.”
“From Rabbi Ed Lerner?”
McConnell’s eyes widened. “You continue to surprise me, Mr. Geller.”
“When did he call you?” I asked. “Two weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“On the Friday.”
“Yes.”
“He told you Dr. Stayner had been performing illegal operations and you could approach him about Lesley. What did he want in return?”
“A clear zoning path for his Beacon Hill synagogue. He also wanted a contribution to the capital campaign.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“What does Daggett get?”
“Half a million.”
“And the donor?”
McConnell stood up and made himself a third drink. “I never asked.”
“Nobody does, I bet. You should hope he survives the procedure. Not all of them do.”
“What does that mean?”
“One recent donor died on the table. An allergy problem they overlooked because they were rushed.”
“That won’t happen tomorrow. Lesley’s doctor has checked this donor out thoroughly and we’ve been assured he is in excellent health.”
“How great for him. The dead man’s name was Patel, thanks for asking.”
“I didn’t mean to sound uncaring. I’m very sorry for his family. Now will you take the deal?”
“You haven’t given me anything yet. What time are you supposed to arrive tomorrow night?”
“Nine o’clock sharp. They’ll prep the donor and Lesley at the same time. They told us they’ll probably start around ten-thirty and be done by one a.m.”
“Did they show you where it would be done?”
