The only way to save him is with a heart transplant.”
In the silence that followed, Levy opened a file he’d been balancing on his lap. Clovis suspected that consulting what-ever was in there was pure theater, that the doctor was only doing it to avoid their eyes.
“That having been said,” Levy went on, “the rest of my news isn’t bad. There are no other complications. It’s just the heart itself. The five-year survival rate for transplant patients is over 75 percent. It’s true he’d have a lifelong dependency on certain drugs, but if he had a transplant-”
“What do you mean, if?” Clovis interrupted. “Didn’t you just say there’s only one option? Of course, he has to have a transplant. No ifs about it.”
Dr. Levy raised his eyes and looked at Clovis.
“It’s not that simple. Finding a heart is. .” He sought for a suitable word and finally settled on “difficult.”
“Difficult?”
Dr. Levy nodded.
“He needs a heart from a healthy baby. They’re very rare. Raul will have to go on a waiting list, first come, first served. It takes. . time.”
Time.
Dr. Levy paused to let the word sink in.
Time was running short for Raul; he’d as much as told them that.
“We’ll take him abroad,” Ana Carmen said, speaking quickly, her voice sliding up the scale toward hysteria.
Dr. Levy shook his head.
“The shortage is universal. All countries give preference to their own citizens.”
“Are you telling me,” Ana Carmen said, “that, with all the infants who die in this country, every single day, my son could still lose his life because there are no available hearts? Are you telling me those hearts are just cast away, disposed of as if they were garbage?”
There were still tears on her cheeks, but she wasn’t crying anymore. Now, she was angry.
Her husband reached out and put his hand on her fore-arm. She pulled it away and sat glaring at the doctor.
Clovis intervened. “And there’s no way we could obtain preference? No way we could move him to the top of the list?”
Dr. Levy shook his head.
Clovis looked at his wife.
Ana Carmen was staring at the wall, her shoulders slumped, her anger suddenly dissipated.
The doctor studied her, ran a hand through his thinning hair, and then used the same hand to rub his chin. Then he nodded, as if he’d made a decision. He put a hand into the pocket of his green medical scrubs and took out a single slip of paper.
“This. .”-he swallowed and began again-“This will put you in contact with a man who might be able to help.”
Clovis studied the paper: eight digits in black ballpoint; typed not written, no city code; a Sao Paulo telephone num-ber. He opened his mouth to say something, but Levy held up a hand to silence him.
“I had a patient once,” he said, “a friend of my mother’s. Like your son’s condition, hers was critical. Unlike him, she was too old, and too sick with other maladies, to get an organ through conventional means. She was also a very wealthy woman.”
“What are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you that she couldn’t possibly have survived for more than six months with her heart in the condition it was. But then she went away for a while, and when she came back, she was. . much healthier. She stopped consulting with me after that. We’d had an excellent relationship, but I couldn’t get her to come in for an examination. It made me curious. She lived on for almost five years, and when she died it was cancer that killed her, not heart failure. I went to her funeral. I spoke to her son.”
“I don’t understand-”
“That’s all I’m going to tell you, except for this: the man whose telephone number is on that piece of paper runs a pri-vate clinic. As a doctor, it would be unethical of me if I were to suggest that you explore. . other sources. But, if Raul were my son, I’d call that man. His name is Bittler, Dr. Horst Bittler.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“Remember that couple, the Portellas?” Hector asked.
The telephone connection was, for once, a good one. Silva could even hear the rumble of traffic on the street in front of Hector’s office.
“The ones who turned in that complaint about a missing family,” he said. “You bet I do.”
“We got a call from a lady by the name of Alcione Camargo. Clarice Portella cleans for her on Tuesdays.”
“And?”
“And Clarice is on her way back from Pernambuco.”
“Wasn’t she supposed to stay two weeks?”
“She was. But no more. According to what she told Dona Alcione by telephone, there’s a family feud going on up there. It seems that Ernesto, that’s Clarice’s husband, fancies himself a member of the oppressed masses. His brother-in-law, the guy they were staying with, owns a shop and has a couple of employees. The two of them, Ernesto and the brother-in-law, downed a bottle of cachaca the night before last. The brother-in-law was opening another one when Ernesto accused him of being one of the oppressors. The brother-in-law told Ernesto that if he felt that way he could buy his own damned cachaca. By that time it was well past midnight and all the shops and bars in town were closed, so Ernesto made a grab for the bottle. It isn’t clear who hit whom first, but Clarice and her sister had to break it up. And now the Portellas can’t stay there anymore, and none of their other relatives have any room for them, and they can’t afford a hotel, so they’re coming back.”
“And Dona Alcione told you all this?”
“No. She told Babyface.”
“Babyface, huh? And he managed to extract all this infor-mation in a simple telephone call?”
“He did. His charm continues to amaze.”
“Why would Clarice go into the ugly details with some-one she works for?”
“Babyface says Dona Alcione and Clarice have one of those relationships where they bitch to each other about their husbands.”
“Dona Alcione told him that, too?”
“Uh-huh. Babyface ought to be wearing a warning label. He’s a danger to women, that’s what he is. They pour their hearts out to him. If he wasn’t working for us, we’d have to consider arresting him.”
“You sound jealous.”
“I am.”
“When are the Portellas due back?”
“The day after tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon. Babyface will be waiting. He’ll bring them here.”
“Don’t start questioning them without me. I’ll be there by four.”
“Understood. Heard anything from Arnaldo?”
“Not a word.”
“Merda. Did he bring a gun?”
“No. Only a telephone. I had the service provider check. It’s switched off. I’m beginning to get a bad feeling. He’s been out of touch too long.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Check out that travel agency on the Rua Sete de Abril. See what other information you can dig up. Make sure they’re doing business as usual.”
“Will do. How are things in Brasilia? Have you dug up any dirt on that fellow Pluma?”
