Flipping Out (29 page)

'If he's holed
up, we'll never find him,' I said, if immigration has him, we'll be choking on
red tape. There's only one morgue in LA. Let's start with dead.'

The morgue was
not only the smartest place to start, it was on Mission, only ten minutes away from
Paco's. Twenty- five minutes with traffic. We parked in the rear and entered
through the loading dock.

Anne Jordan, the
senior tech, was sitting at the admissions desk. She looked surprised to see
us.

'Do we have one
of yours on ice?' she said. 'I didn't see your names on my dance card.'

'We're not here
to commune with the dead,' I said. 'We're hoping to talk to a short, wiry,
Jewish pathologist, who thinks he's funnier than my partner.'

'Eli is up to
his elbows in body parts.' She looked at her watch. 'He should be done by two
thirty. About twenty minutes.'

'We'll wait. In
the meantime, can you check your database over the past two months to see if
you admitted a male Hispanic, Esteban Benitez?'

It took her less
than a minute to come up empty- handed. 'Nobody by that name. Are we talking
homicide?'

I shrugged.
'We're not even sure the guy is dead.'

She peered at me
over the rim of her half glasses. 'Honey, dead is one of our main criteria. We
don't let them check in unless they've checked out. Let me go tell Eli you're
waiting for him.'

A half hour
later Eli Hand emerged from an autopsy room. His scrubs were bloodied. He
tossed his gloves and mask in a bio-waste bin. 'Sorry to keep you waiting,
boys. I have one more vital organ to deal with. Can you give me a few more
minutes?'

'Cut to your
heart's content,' Terry said.

'This particular
organ was cut when I was eight days old,' Eli said. 'Sit tight. I've just gotta
take a leak.'

Anne Jordan
laughed out loud. 'He is funnier than your partner.'

Five minutes
later we were in Eli's office, is this about Marisol Dominguez?' he asked.

'No.'

'I released the
body yesterday. They're flying her down to Mexico to be buried with her parents
and a brother.'

'Any surprises?'
I asked.

'Just the one,'
he said.

'Which one?' I
asked.

'The one I wrote
up in my report. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you the guys who left the
autopsy early on Monday and said you'd read about the gory details in my
report?'

'Sorry. We
didn't get to it yet. These dead people keep piling up and cramp our reading
time. What did you find?'

'The murder was
cut and dried,' Eli said. 'Bullet to the head. But what fascinated me about
Dominguez were her lungs. Black as a coal mine at midnight. The woman would
have smoked herself to death in less than ten years.'

'What does that
have to do with the case?' I said.

'Why does
everything have to be about the case?' Hand said. 'I'm trying to tell a story
here.'

'Once a rabbi,
always a rabbi, eh, Eli?' Terry said. 'Let's hear it.'

'You know that Scared
Straight program the morgue has for teenage drunk drivers? Last night I had a
group I was lecturing to, so I figured, as long as I'm at it, I'll show them
that it's not only alcohol that kills. I took a picture of Marisol's black
lungs, and I put it side by side with a shot of a nice pair of healthy pink
lungs. I wanted to show these kids the damage cigarettes can do.'

'Sounds
convincing,' I said.

'You would
think,' he said. 'But no. One kid looks at the pictures and he says, 'What did
the poor bastard with the healthy lungs die from?' Damn punk kids. They've got
all the answers. So what can I do for you'

'We're looking
for a John Doe.'

'We get half a
dozen a week,' he said.

'This one would
be easy to remember. He had a snake tattoo on his right arm, and he was
probably the victim of a botched kidney surgery.'

Hand smiled. 'I
don't have a John Doe,' he said. 'But I definitely remember a Juan Doe. A
Mexican kid. And I think it's more than botched surgery when the deceased has
two fresh scars and zero kidneys.'

'Both kidneys
were removed?' Terry said. 'Are you sure?'

'I'm pretty
sure,' Hand said, i looked around in all the usual places where people keep
their kidneys, then I backtracked to the loading dock to make sure none of the
technicians dropped any organs along the way. Of course I'm sure, you putz. But
don't take my word for it. Sit tight, while I get the file.'

He left the room
and was back in a few minutes with a folder.

'This is the
autopsy on the guy you're looking for,' he said. He opened it and flipped to a
Polaroid of the dead man.

'That's Esteban
Benitez,' Terry said.

Eli pounced.
'Are you sure?' He gave Terry a gotcha grin.

'So the cause of
death is kidney failure,' I asked.

'It's not that
simple,' Hand said. 'The decedent was a young guy, in his twenties, but the
autopsy showed that he had an obvious heart problem. A leaky valve. He wouldn't
have survived another six months without a heart transplant, and I seriously
doubt he was a candidate. He was probably always short of breath, got tired
easily, but he might not even have known how sick he was. But even with all
that, it wasn't his heart that killed him. Somebody removed both kidneys. The
poor kid had a bad heart, and they never even cracked open his chest.'

'Why bother?' I
said. 'Without his kidneys, wouldn't he die of renal failure?'

'No,' Hand said.
'He still could have survived on dialysis, but once they harvested his organs,
I doubt if he ever woke up from the surgery. Whoever administered the
anaesthesia probably just dialled down the oxygen.'

'Oh, I'm
familiar with that medical technique,' Terry said. 'You take an unsuspecting
guy with a bad heart and two healthy kidneys, you help yourself to the good
parts, and you throw away the rest. It's called murder.'

'According to
the file,' Hand said, 'his body turned up in downtown LA. Two detectives from
Central were handling the case. But there were no leads, so I doubt if they
invested a hell of a lot of man hours in it. You ID'd the body, which is more
than they could do. Do you know who cut him up?'

'No,' I said.
'But we have a pretty good idea of who brought him to the table.'

There was a lot
more that Terry and I needed to talk about. But not at the morgue. Not in front
of Eli. We waited till we were back in the car.

'I guess Marisol
was wrong,' I said. 'Tony wasn't cheating on her.'

'Not in the
slightest,' Terry said. 'Unless one of their marriage vows was 'I promise never
to harvest the vital organs of another human being,' he was being completely faithful.'

'Tony wasn't in
this alone,' I said. 'He was in charge of recruiting illegals and bringing them
in for blood tests so the doc could find a match. But once you find a donor,
what else do you need?'

'Donees,' Terry
said. 'People who are in desperate need of a working kidney and don't want to
wait a couple of years to get one through legal channels. People who have the
money to go to the front of the line.'

'Or create their
own line,' I said. 'And those kind of people don't travel in Tony Dominguez's
circles. If you're looking for someone who can afford a couple of hundred
thousand dollars to buy a kidney, where do you go?'

'Craigslist?'

'Dr Ford
Jameson, psychiatrist to the Rich and Famous.'

Terry shook his
head. 'Darn, that was my second guess.'

'The connection
is right there on the video,' I said. 'Tony picked up Esteban from Raoul, a
well-documented coyote. Then he delivers him to Jameson's car. And then Jameson
takes him where?'

'A back-alley
operating room,' Terry said.

'I'm betting
just the opposite,' I said, if Jameson's car is picking up a donor, then odds
are the recipients are Jameson's wealthy patients, or their friends or
relatives. And since I doubt that any of them are back-alley types, most likely
he takes them to a state-of-the-art, totally sterile operating room.'

'Who does the
surgery?'

'Some Mexican
doctor that Tony recruited to round out the team. Remember what Paco said - the
doc spoke "real
Espanol,
not
gringo
Spanish.'"

My cell phone
rang. It was Anna DeRoy.

'Hey, Mike,
remember when you told me I'm one of the few people in the DA's office who has
balls?'

'I remember it
as if it were yesterday.'

'Thanks. It
was
yesterday,
wiseass. Here's the problem,' she said. 'I may have them, but they are
currently being squeezed. My boss wants these murders wrapped up, and I'll be
honest with you - the case against Martin Sorensen is tight. The fact that one
of the victims' husbands is inheriting money and another one was being tailed
by his wife can't keep it open. Did any of those loose ends you were following
lead you anywhere?'

'Yeah, but not
where we expected,' I said. 'Our hero cop looks like he's dirty, but it's got
nothing to do with what you're working on.'

'Then take it to
Internal Affairs. Unless you can tell me you're going to substantially rewrite
your report, I'm ready to close the case.'

'Close it,' I
said. 'We're on to the next one. We've got a victim and two principals
connected to the murder. There's only one small problem.'

'Let me guess,'
Anna said. 'You don't have that damn proof thing that our system of justice is
so finicky about.'

'Proof is highly
overrated,' I said. 'Did you ever think about looking the jury in the eye and
saying, "Trust Detective Lomax. Would a cop lie to you?'"

'First you'd
have to convince me that cops don't lie,' she said.

'Some of us
don't, but I can't vouch for Tony Dominguez.'

'Mike, if he
really is connected to something dirty, you not only have to call IA, you need
to warn the mayor's office before they embarrass themselves with a public
display of affection for the guy.'

'Thanks, Anna,'
I said. 'I'll add that to my things-to-do list.
Prevent mayor's office from embarrassing themselves.
I'll
put it right next to
end global
warming.'

I hung up and
turned to Terry. 'Anna's closing the case. She said if we have anything on Tony
we should go to IA.'

'It's a little
late for that,' Terry said, if we tell them we investigated another cop without
involving them or our boss, they'd just slap us with a Complaint 1.28. Even if
IA was willing to listen, what can we say? We've got this really suspicious
home movie of Tony paying for an CD with an envelope, then escorting a border
jumper to a friend's car? They'd sit down and question Tony, he'd get all
unglued, raise holy hell, and we'd be crucified.
You're going after a hero cop who was shot in the line of
duty? What the hell are you thinking?
Tony would get
the Medal of Valour, and we'd get a Conduct Unbecoming or a Neglect of Duty.'

'So what do we
do?' I asked.

'Find a way to
connect him to the surgery that killed Esteban,' Terry said. 'Anything less
than that, and our asses are in more trouble than his.'

We got home to
Sherman Oaks by four thirty.

'I love taking
these personal days,' Terry said, it's good to get some time off from being a
cop.'

I called Wendy Burns
at the office to see if we were missed.

'Not as much as
you'd like to think,' she said.