A Filthy Business [Kindle in Motion] Read online

  “Any ideas?”

  “Drugs, I suppose. Something hallucinogenic, maybe. Acid, mushrooms. You can probably buy what you need at the local middle school. Recovery from the procedure will take a good few days. She’ll need to be out and cared for during that time.”

  “Is it risky?”

  “Not if no one sees my face.”

  “It’s nice you have a sense of humor.”

  “Tell me something, could that dancer be more bored?”

  Even as she swayed in those long leather boots, her face was bland and unfocused, as if she was doing something no more interesting than watching cable news. Nothing in the bar concerned her, certainly not the men who were stuffing the tip jar.

  “Why do I have the innate urge,” said the doctor, “to screw the indifference right out of her?”

  “It’s genetic. We don’t like to be ignored. So what is it? Did you buy too much house? Do you have two kids in college? Did you for some deranged reason buy a boat?”

  He sat hunched over his drink for a long moment and then said, “I have a mistress.”

  “Is she worth it?”

  “She was. Now it’s like having two wives, who each insist on telling me about their days.”

  “You should have bought the boat.”

  He downed the rest of his drink. “Do you believe in God, Kubiak?”

  “I don’t believe in anything,” I said.

  “That must help.”

  And then he burst into tears. He didn’t make anything of it, didn’t wave his arms or create a scene. His face just collapsed and his nose reddened and the tears flowed unabated. He was a middle-aged man crying over a glass of rye; what could be more common on this good green earth? Maybe the bartender had built his drink with Old Overholt.

  As the doctor wiped his eyes with a sleeve of his trench coat, I signaled for another round.

  14. The Radiograph

  I checked myself in the mirror. My white jacket was clean, but not too clean—I was modest enough to put a DO after the name in red thread—my tie was just slightly askew, the stethoscope was slung rakishly about my neck. I mussed my hair a bit, settled my glasses, sucked my teeth. I entered the room with a professional brusqueness, as if there were forty more rooms to visit before the end of my shift.

  “Ms. Lieu, I’m Dr. Triplett,” I said to the woman on the hospital bed. She was pretty, early twenties, slim limbed, wide eyed, wearing a hospital gown with a bland pattern. Machines set up in the room winked and chirped. An IV dripped into her slender arm. “I’ll be the HMO internist during your stay. How long have you been with Medina Brothers?”

  “Two weeks,” she said, her voice soft and high, like a young bird.

  I smiled. “Lucky you. I’ve worked with their employees a number of years. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know everything here is covered.”

  “Where is here?”

  “You’re in a small surgical center supported by the HMO. While you were out, and because of the potential emergency, we took the liberty of taking some X-rays. Why don’t you tell me about your symptoms?”

  Her name was Cindy Lieu. A child of immigrants living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, she now worked as a bookkeeper-slash-receptionist for a small construction company called Medina Brothers in Memphis. She had moved to Memphis to be close to her boyfriend and had been working for another firm in the city, but the online records for some of the business accounts under her control showed strange fluctuations and certain unexplained withdrawals that concerned her employer. There wasn’t any evidence of wrongdoing, but the firm had decided to outsource her work and so they let her go. To top it all off, her boyfriend had suddenly and mysteriously broken up with her. And so there she was, living alone in Memphis, away from family, without a job or any network of friends.

  As luck would have it, shortly thereafter Medina Brothers flooded the Internet with a help-wanted ad that seemed to perfectly fit her background, even down to the request for some art history experience, which just happened to be her minor at UT. The ad flowed directly to her through a friend on Facebook, and the pay, well, the pay was quite high. There were of course many applicants—there was a line out the door on the day of her interview—and she expected that her previous work issues might ruin any chance, but after two meetings with Mr. Medina, a large man with a kind smile, she was hired. The office was quiet, usually just her and Mr. Medina, and the workload was light, but the pay was rich, and the benefits, yes, the benefits were wonderful. And Mr. Medina warned that her workload would increase once a few of the RFPs they had submitted were accepted, which she looked forward to.

  But then, in the middle of a workday, just after lunch, a pain seemed to explode in her stomach, accompanied by violent cramping and intense nausea. She collapsed in a faint, and when she awoke she was in this hospital room, tended by the pretty red-haired nurse, waiting for the doctor.

  “If you’ll let me, I’d like to do a quick examination,” I said. I put down my clipboard, rubbed my hands to warm them, and then placed them gently on her belly. As I pressed, she winced. I tapped a bit with my palms, I played a bit with the stethoscope. “Nurse Fletcher took your vitals already, and everything is in line with what we’ve discovered from the radiograph. Care to see?”

  From a large envelope I extracted a piece of X-ray film with Cindy Lieu’s name and the current date in the corner. I snapped it onto the viewer. “Could you turn on the light, please?” I said to an orderly.

  Kief flipped the switch and the piece of X-ray film lit. Ribs, heart, viscera, the usual, except for one oblong thing on the right side glowing like it was radioactive.

  “This is your appendix,” I said, pointing to the ominous glow. “It’s a vestigial organ, useless really, but every once in a while it gets infected. If it’s not caught in time, it bursts like an overripe melon and spews the infection all through your body. The results can be catastrophic. Fortunately, the surgery is quite simple. A quick snip and it’s gone, with absolutely no ill effect. There will be a slight scar, but we can make that below the bikini line. We do, however, need to move very quickly.”

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  “Quite sure.” I sat down on the side of her bed, put my hand on hers. “I don’t think we should wait a minute. Of course, you’re welcome to get a second opinion. Doing so would be out of network, so the cost would accrue to you. Normally I would say such a move might be prudent, but I’m worried about a delay here. I advise we move quickly before this bad boy bursts.”

  She tried to sit up again, but it all hit her, the pain, the nausea, and she lapsed down in weariness.

  “What is that after your name on the jacket, that DO?” she said.

  “I’m a doctor of osteopathic medicine.”

  “Is that real?”

  “Oh yes, real as rain. But I won’t be doing the surgery. The HMO has one of the finest surgeons in western Tennessee on call. Dr. Heigenmeister. He’s an MD and he’s on his way now. Afterward, we’ll all be here to take care of you during recovery. But if you want a second opinion, that’s your right. I’ll call Dr. Heigenmeister and tell him to turn around.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not in a condition to drive. Do you have someone you could call to take you to another facility?”

  “My mother is in Murfreesboro.”

  “No friends? No boyfriend?”

  “We just broke up.”

  “I’m sorry.” I adjusted my glasses, let a slight intimation of interest slip onto my lips.

  “Some old girlfriend started up with him on Facebook out of nowhere. He said he owed it to us both to figure it out.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re well rid of him. If you’d like, we could call you a cab. And as I said, the choice of getting a second opinion is up to you.”

  “How much is this going to cost me?”

  “With us it’s all covered,” I said. “That’s the way our HMO works. After the surgery, you’ll be good as new, bet
ter than new, because that pesky appendix will be gone. It will knock a pound or so off your weight in addition.”

  “Doctor,” said Cassandra, in her nurse’s uniform with breasts starched and jutting, standing by the heart monitor, “her pulse is rising.”

  “Add a sedative to the IV, please,” I said. “We need your decision now, Cindy.”

  Cindy Lieu looked at me, then at Cassandra, who slowly inserted a needle into the line that dived into her arm, and then back at me.

  “I thought DOs only worked with bad backs?” she said, slowly now, dreamily.

  “That’s chiropractors. They’re not really doctors.”

  Her eyes closed for a moment. “At least you’re not a podiatrist.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Cindy, Cindy, open your eyes, please.”

  “Okay.” Her eyes fluttered open. “You have a nice smile.”

  “We need a decision.”

  “Do you like bears?”

  “Little ones,” I said. “Preferably stuffed.”

  “Me too.”

  “Should we go ahead with the surgery, Cindy?”

  “If you think I should.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay. Yes. If you say so.”

  “That’s good to hear, you’ve made the right decision.” I pulled up the clipboard. “You’ll have to sign a consent form and then we’re good to go.”

  I put the pen in her hand, drew it to the line at the bottom of the form I had drafted, and let her place the signature. The C for Cindy was clear enough, and the L for Lieu, but by the end of her surname the track of her pen trailed until it fell off the page.

  This time Mrs. Wister made me wait.

  Before the job they wait for you. Before the job you are one of them, a member of the tribe, you are as precious as family, and the paintings stare at you benignly as you walk down the hall. Before the job their needs tremble in their throats and you are their savior and no expense is to be spared. But afterward they make you wait while they crumble scones into their tea. Or disregard your presence as they carve out slivers of their grapefruit while in their robes. Afterward you are less valuable than the servant who dusts their vases. Afterward the paintings in the center hall don’t even deign to look your way. And afterward the expenses are squawked over as if by a pack of chickens in need of frying.

  “I have concerns about some of the costs,” she said after the butler with the white gloves finally wheeled her into the drawing room, before backing out, closing the door, and leaving us alone. This time she stayed in the chair, this time her chin was raised, this time I wasn’t bade to sit in the frouffy French chair across from her. “They seem excessive.”

  “How is your grandson doing?”

  “Better, thank you. The yellow has left his eyes, but he still is not permitted to swim with the water polo team.”

  “We should have charged extra for keeping him out of the pool.”

  “The expenses, Mr. Kubiak. They seem inordinate. Intolerable, even. I don’t understand these ridiculous costs.”

  I wondered for a moment what she would have thought if she knew the kidney that saved her grandson had come from a second-generation Asian immigrant from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Would she be horrified at the race mingling? Just then I doubted it. She would have instead been gratified, I believed, to know that the kidney had been pilfered from the class whose purpose was to serve. To her, the wave of humanity that stretched like a great field of wheat across the whole of the American continent had only one raison d’être: to satisfy the whims and needs of her and her kind. And of course, I, too, was a stalk of that crop waiting to be reaped. If she felt the need to drain all my blood just to give a drop to her precious grandson, I had no doubt but that she would stick the knife in my neck without a second’s hesitation. I supposed we had that in common.

  “Your doctor gave me conditions to follow,” I said. “Expensive conditions. We followed them to the letter. If you have a problem, talk to him.”

  “And what is this here?” she said slapping the page in her hand. “Seventy-five thousand dollars for what?”

  “Severance.”

  “For whom?”

  “Our donor. We told her it was in lieu of a possible workman’s compensation claim.”

  “Did she have such a claim?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t understand. Was it merely a gift? Or more pathetically, was it a salve to your overactive conscience?”

  “It was a prudent measure. At some point in her life, probably sooner rather than later, she’ll get another X-ray or a CAT scan. And when she does, she is going to learn that she is missing a kidney. What happens at that point is a risk. Our job was to minimize such risks, and we did. The severance was wired to her account from a Mexican bank. The severance is fully recorded and unwarranted from the facts of the short employment we created for her. If she goes to the authorities, we will make sure the information about the payment is disclosed, along with the consent that she signed detailing the donation of a kidney. The authorities will suspect she sold her organ willingly, which is against American law, and be less concerned with where it went. Consider the payment an inexpensive insurance policy.”

  “Inexpensive for you, maybe.”

  “If you’re short, sell a fucking vase.”

  “Excuse me, young man?”

  “You heard me.”

  Those overpainted lips twitched into a smile. “Maybe I underestimated you. But don’t underestimate me, dear. I have a vicious bite and I won’t be crossed.”

  “That’s not what we do,” I said. “What we do is serve. Would you like something more, madame? Another crumpet perhaps?”

  When I arrived at the Miami house fresh from Philadelphia, Gordon was sitting at the bar by the pool. There was a stack of money on the bar top and bourbon in Gordon’s glass. As he rested his head on his hand, he rolled a set of white dice with black dots. Bert, standing behind the small counter in his red vest, periodically pulled bills from the stack and placed them in his pocket. Gordon’s eyes were a bleary mess.

  “Is Bert taking your money?” I said.

  “Every damn cent, the thief.”

  “My bet is he’s spiking your drink.”

  “Doesn’t need to,” said Gordon before downing the bourbon and rattling the ice. “I’m spiking it on my own.”

  “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  “Too many dreams, man.”

  “Well, enjoy the celebration. I have a check in my briefcase.”

  “That’s good to know,” he said as Bert refilled the glass. “Wouldn’t have wanted to pull that off for nothing.”

  He picked up the dice, shook his huge hand, skittered the bones across the bar top. Bert put another bill into his pocket.

  I turned around and looked over to Kief, sitting in the sun, his pale skin bright and reddening. A cloud of smoke hovered over him; the tip of the reefer between his lips glowed bright. In the pool, Riley was swimming laps, slapping at the water, kicking wildly. Only Cassandra lay in a sea of calm, sunning herself, her top off, her skin covered with an oily sheen.

  She lifted her head, stared at me through oversize sunglasses. “Welcome home. Fun meeting?”

  “For once I’d like a simple thank-you instead of all the squawking about the bill.”

  “Go up to Boca and help the little old ladies cross the street. They know how to be grateful. You get it done?”

  “Yes, I got it done. Have you noticed anything strange about my team?”

  “Nothing strange,” she said, her head dropping back onto the chaise. “The usual crack-up after a tough job. It happens. No one lasts too long working for Mr. Maambong.”

  “Except you.”

  “I’m different. And so are you, handsome. Be happy. Today is payday.”

  “How did you leave our dear Mrs. Wister?” said Mr. Maambong after I climbed the stairs to his glass-enclosed office and handed over the sealed envelope with the check. “Any proble
ms we should know about?”

  “None.”

  “Excellent. Once the funds are secured, there will be a bonus for you and your entire team. You outdid yourself, Mr. Kubiak. The acquisition went forward without a hitch, and such acquisitions rarely do. The Principal is uncommonly pleased.”

  “The Principal?”

  “We are all cogs, Mr. Kubiak. I am your boss, the Principal is mine.”

  “I thought this was your show?”

  Mr. Maambong smiled as if I were a child who had just discovered Santa wasn’t real. “You’ll be gratified to know that the Principal has authorized us to pull you out of probationary status and to raise you to the rank of associate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means more money, first of all.”

  “Bravo for that.”

  “It also means you are on a partnership track. Gaining a partnership in the enterprise is uncommonly rewarding. It won’t be easy, we assure you, but the prizes will outstrip your dreams.”

  “I dream big.”

  “We hope so.”

  “When do I get to meet this Principal?”

  “Sooner than you might expect. There is a plane waiting for you at the airport. It is gassed and ready to go.”

  “Another job?”

  “No, something completely different. There is a house. On the west coast of Mexico. Overlooking the ocean. It is fully staffed, it is fully stocked. It is time, Mr. Kubiak, for you and your team to take a holiday.”

  15. Holiday

  The house sat white and wide and extravagant on a rise at the tip of the Baja. As we lay in a line on the wooden chaises with their thick white cushions, our sunglasses on, our skin bathed with lotion, tall orange drinks in our hands, it appeared that the water in the infinity pool reached straight out to the great stretch of sea beyond. We had begun seriously drinking on the plane ride west, had continued through the night, and were now collapsed, hungover, and drinking ever more, and not without reason.