Stolen (3 page)

S
tanding at the base of the Wilhelm Genetics skyscraper, I tingled at the thought of riding up in the glass elevator. I was sure the view of the Boston skyline from the fortieth floor would be spectacular, but there were lots of spectacular views I could no longer stomach. I had only five minutes before my appointment with Vivian Sutcliffe, director of patient access for Wilhelm Genetics, to get my nerves on.

Train delays. Damn trains.

I did everything possible to get here early enough to take the stairs. Man plans. God laughs. Still, arranging this meeting was no simple task, and I wasn’t about to let a little thing like paralyzing acrophobia keep me from making the appointment on time.

My conversation with Leonard Tate, now two days in the past, deteriorated faster than a reality star’s career. Tate must have said, “I’m sorry, but that’s our policy,” at least a dozen times before I demanded to speak to a senior customer service representative from Atrium. Then, like tag team wrestlers, it was Carlotta Duncan’s turn to say, “I’m sorry, but that’s Atrium’s policy.”

I hung up the phone, leaving the Atrium reps with the highly ineffective parting salvo, “Thanks for nothing.” I couldn’t think of anything more clever to say. I was too floored, too angry, too dumbfounded to speak.

Rather than stay stuck in Atrium’s maddening constraints, I turned my attention to the Web, where I found a glimmer of hope in the form of Wilhelm Genetics Access Solutions program—a service for patients and their health-care providers to assist with coverage and reimbursement support. Hopefully, this trip on the insurance merry-go-round would yield me the brass ring.

Wilhelm Genetics newly constructed headquarters in Boston’s downtown financial district stood in stark contrast to the surrounding historic buildings that gave the city its unique architectural character. The towering skyscraper was a rectangular structure, ultramodern in design, which reflected Boston’s scenic harbor in its mirrored glass windows. I entered the foyer, shaking off a seasonally cool early April day in New England. If there was one bit of hope to be extracted from the building’s sleek interior, it was a feeling that this company could afford to be charitable. The burnished marble floors and walls appeared flecked with gold, while the majestic light fixtures descending from a thirty-foot-high ceiling would fit in just fine at the Museum of Fine Arts.

My footsteps echoed across the cavernous space on my way to the security desk, manned by two sentries well dressed in white oxford shirts, black ties, and official-looking badges. I signed the guest registry, noted the time on my iPhone—two minutes until my meeting with Sutcliffe—and then followed their directions to the elevator bank. Already I was shaking, and I hadn’t yet set foot inside what my brain considered a glass tomb.

My mind kept saying,
Don’t be late,
but my body spoke otherwise.

I wish I had listened to my body.

Acrophobia comes from the Greek
ákron,
meaning “peak, summit, edge,” and
phobos,
meaning “fear.” Fear of heights is not an irrational emotion, especially if there is no protection to safeguard one from a fall. But I’m a mountain climber, dammit. I once lived my life on the edge. Now, years after what I did to Brooks Hall, I can’t even get near an edge without getting the shakes. My shrink wasn’t too surprised by the sudden onset of the condition. Acrophobia has historically been attributed to a traumatic experience involving heights. Newer theories have evolved, casting some doubt on that supposition, but I’d be willing to bet none of those theorists ever cut a safety rope, knowing he’d kill the guy bound to the other end.

The elevator chimed, doors whooshed open, and four other people, close to my back and waiting for a ride up, basically pushed me inside. Buttons were pressed. Floor numbers illuminated. I was going to the highest floor. Figured. The doors closed with a
Star Trek
–like swoosh, and the elevator blasted skyward like a rocket ship. From behind me, I heard an ooooh and aaah from one of the passengers gazing in wonderment at the rapidly diminishing view of downtown Boston. Meanwhile, my throat closed and every pore in my body began to secrete something: salt, water, and fear.

I felt my face flush, heartbeat fluttering like a bird newly freed from its cage. I held my breath but could feel my knees start to go slack. The roomy elevator seemed to get smaller, as if the four people riding up with me were multiplying, engulfing every conceivable square inch of space.

I closed my eyes tight, balled my fists. Then I saw him.

Brooks wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, though. His eyes were nothing but two dark voids, wide and round like a doll’s, while his face had gone entirely black from frostbite. My hands involuntarily jerked upward, as though I’d been holding on to a taut rope that had been sliced in two. My mouth formed an O shape, allowing my silent scream to escape. I kept my eyes closed tight and felt fuel injected with panic.

I used to stand on the top of the world.

Just when the air inside the elevator seemed as thin as it did at twenty thousand feet, the voyage came to an abrupt stop. I opened my eyes and saw we were only on the twentieth floor. I jumped out of the elevator, pushing aside a woman who had planned to get off on that floor. She wasn’t bothered by my abruptness, it seemed. I suspected she’d seen my skin go pale as snow, eyes ringed with sweat, wide and alert. My chest kept heaving, as if I were breathing through half a straw.

“Are you all right?” the woman asked. She looked ready to call 911.

“I’m fine . . . fine . . . ,” I managed to wheeze out. “Think I’m going to take the stairs from here. Quick twenty-floor hike will do the heart some good.”

Her smile expressed great relief in not being called upon to perform CPR and equal degrees of gratitude to be free of my company.

I found the stairs and climbed the twenty floors at a brisk pace. I made it to the top, carrying with me a stark reminder that my condition hadn’t lessened with the years. If anything, it had only gotten worse.

I arrived at Sutcliffe’s office breathless, my face flushed, T-shirt soaked with sweat, and heart still hammering. I took a seat in the waiting room after giving my name to the receptionist. The demure woman seated behind a glass enclosure offered me a drink of water, along with a weary assessment of my condition. I drank in slow sips while waiting ten long minutes for Sutcliffe to show. I guess only one of us cared about being punctual.

Vivian Sutcliffe, a stocky woman dressed in a plaid skirt and black turtleneck sweater, with dark hair to match, emerged through a double set of glass doors. She gave me a congenial smile that somehow conveyed sympathy. It was certainly a practiced reaction on her part, assuming most visitors came to her under the cloud of troubled circumstance.

“Mr. Bodine,” Sutcliffe said, extending her hand. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Busy morning. I hope you had an easy time getting up here. Security can be pretty arduous these days.”

“It wasn’t a problem,” I said.

“Did you love the view coming up? I never tire of it.”

“I’m sure it was beautiful,” I said.

Sutcliffe paused, showed some confusion in her large brown eyes, but didn’t press for an explanation. I kept pace as she led me down a carpeted corridor with low ceilings, illuminated by the artificial unpleasantness of fluorescent lights. She opened the door to a conference room, motioning me to join her inside. The room itself was small, one round table and four chairs. Thankfully, no windows.

A glossy blue folder awaited me on the conference table. It was chock-full of papers and titled
Wilhelm Genetics Access Solutions
. A photograph of a well-dressed man, maybe in his early sixties, adorned the front cover. His silver hair, neatly trimmed, accentuated deep creases on his face, giving him the distinctive look of power. I thought it peculiar that Wilhelm Genetics’ marketing material didn’t advertise a beaming, happy family, saved by the generosity of the Access Solutions program.

It all became clear when I read the accompanying copy. The man whose face adorned the front flap of the Access Solutions folder was Manfred von Wilhelm, CEO of Wilhelm Genetics. His message to prospective consumers was simple: “Because everyone should get the medicine they need.”

Sutcliffe saw me studying Wilhelm’s face.

“Mr. von Wilhelm has personally donated several million dollars to our Access Solutions fund.”

“Seems like a charitable guy,” I said.

“Well, our job is to help families like yours get the medication you need. We know these are tough times. Millions are uninsured, and millions more are underinsured. My office is tasked with helping families get through the financial aid process as quickly and painlessly as possible.”

“To be honest, I was surprised you agreed to meet with me in person,” I said. “From what I read about these programs, a lot of it is done online.”

Sutcliffe seemed to take personal satisfaction from my observation. “Our office is unique in that regard. We believe, with Mr. von Wilhelm’s full support, that a personal touch during what is obviously a difficult time not only builds goodwill with our customers, but sets an example for the rest of the industry to follow.”

“Well, I think this industry is pretty messed up,” I said. “I’m paying a lot of premiums without getting much for my money.”

“Do you mind if I ask who you’re insured with?”

“Atrium,” I said.

Sutcliffe groaned. “Goodness, they’re difficult to deal with.”

I nodded my head vigorously and recounted my experience with Leonard Tate.

“So they wouldn’t make a generic shortage exception?” Sutcliffe said in a voice wavering with disgust.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Some insurance companies will cover the full cost of a brand-name drug if the generic isn’t available. I guess Atrium isn’t one of them.”

“Well, how much do you think Ruby and I will be able to get toward the cost?”

Sutcliffe already had my application. I’d sent it to her the day after I hung up on Tate. She knew how much money we made. She smiled, and I felt lighter already.

“It looks like you’ll be able to get the maximum coverage.”

I smiled back. My body tingled like it was full of helium.

“That’s great news,” I said, letting go a deep sigh. “That’s incredibly generous.”

“Twelve thousand dollars is the largest per patient donation of any major pharmaceutical company.”

I swallowed air.

“Twelve thousand?” I said. “Ruby’s course of treatment is well over three hundred thousand dollars.”

Sutcliffe appeared genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you don’t qualify for our full access program.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because you have some form of insurance. The full access program is only for the uninsured. It’s also given out by lottery. We couldn’t afford to give our medications out for free. I guess I should have been more clear on the phone.”

I was speechless. For a while, I just stared blankly at the floor. Thinking.

This wasn’t a question of going into debt. This was about not being able to get the drug at all. Twelve thousand dollars represented two weeks of treatment at most.

I buried my indignation. At least we had something—a start.

“My wife and I are truly grateful for your generosity,” I said.

Vivian Sutcliffe smiled, evidently pleased. “We’re glad we can help.”

“One thing,” I asked, my mind already racing. “If Atrium is so bad and inflexible, what are some insurance companies that would have covered us for the full course of treatment?”

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Sutcliffe said. “UniSol Health is the biggest and the best. They’d cover the full cost, even if the generic were available. I should know, because that’s who insures Wilhelm Genetics employees.”

“Thanks,” I said. I meant it, too. Because now I knew how I was going to fix our problem.

I
felt heartsick watching Ruby sleep. Was she thinner already? Had she become anemic? Her skin coloring matched the white of our bedsheets, and this was after taking Verbilifide for only two weeks. With credit cards we had enough money for another course of treatment, even though Ruby already didn’t want to take it.

It was hard for me to believe the drugs were better than the cancer. Ruby would sweat off pounds she didn’t have to spare while she slept. Pain would sometimes overtake her, leaving her breathless and doubled over, as though she’d been punched. Walking to the living room became a test of endurance. The drugs battling her disease kept calling up reinforcements from every vein in her body, marshaling the troops at the expense of her life spirit.

Ruby’s breathing, shallow and quick, matched the rhythm of my own beating heart, as though ours were two bodies entwined as one. I sat on the edge of the bed, stroking her hair, then brushed her skin with a cool, damp cloth to soak up the sweat. Her skin felt cool to the touch, slack where it should have been pliable. I wanted to suck up her sickness, like John Coffey from
The Green Mile,
and spit it out as a vile horde of black flies. Instead, I put on her latest favorite Pandora station—Adele and music that sounded just like Adele—and settled down at my desk to get to work.

The unfairness of it all didn’t matter. My wife ate organic, slept eight hours whenever she could, exercised, read up on all the supposedly dangerous products and chemicals to avoid. She embraced nature and natural living with enthusiasm, while nature kindly responded by spitting in her face. The why didn’t matter anymore: Ruby had cancer. Her life was now divided into two distinct epochs, Before Cancer (B.C.) and After Cancer (A.C.), and time would forever be measured against these markers. No, it wasn’t fair at all.

I held on to this thought while I configured my phone-spoofing application.

Before Ruby’s illness, I didn’t know much about phone-spoofing technology. I knew it worked through either PSTN or VoIP. Yeah, tech stuff and cancer share a common alphabet soup of indecipherable terminology. Voice over Internet Protocol—that’s longhand for VoIP—is a communication protocol for delivering voice and multimedia data over the Internet. Most of the phone-spoofing services I found relied on the VoIP protocol over PSTN because it was easier to use and a lot more flexible for breaking the law.

Web sites advertising this type of service tried to highlight legitimate reasons for their use. Say, for example, a business wanted to substitute the number they were calling from with a different call-back number. Well then, phone spoofing provided an excellent and reliable solution to that pretty nonexistent problem. Like I said, it was a stretch to find an application for this technology that even hinted at legitimacy. More often than not, phone spoofers were hackers, like I was about to become, and a hacker’s intention is anything but legit.

Over the years, IT experts have spent countless billions beefing up their computer security infrastructure. They’ve brought in meatier computers, state-of-the-art virus protection software, firewalls, and various tools of the trade to keep the hackers out. What they can’t upgrade are the people who work in their call centers. This weakness can’t be fixed with code or by upgrading to a smarter model. People will do what people will do. When a hacker gets a customer service representative on the telephone, that’s when the real magic happens; it’s the moment a dedicated employee becomes the unwitting accomplice of a crime.

The technique is called social engineering, the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. If social engineering is the getaway car of cybercrime, then the telephone is the gun. To commit my crime, I needed to disguise my phone number. I was about to make a bunch of calls to the customer service department at UniSol Health. Eventually, I’d rouse at least one rep’s suspicion if he saw the same number popping up time and time again on his call screen. None of this could be easily done through the good old-fashioned phone network. Thankfully, the Internet makes most everything possible, especially crime.

At first I thought about using SpoofPhone. The company’s tagline eliminated all doubt as to what service they provided: “The Global Leader in Caller ID Spoofing.” Then I looked at the price: ten cents per minute. I figured with the number of calls I needed to make, the cost would be prohibitive. Instead, I settled on a technology called Asterisk.

Asterisk required a spare computer, which I had, and a VoIP service, which I got from VoicePulse. It didn’t take much Linux knowledge to get the program installed and working. Of course, there were a few configuration files to tweak, but that was rudimentary work. Then I had to route my business phone to run through the Asterisk program. It took me three hours. Good thing I work quickly when motivated.

Before all this took place, I scanned through my database of registered
One World
game players, searching for men with a similar demographic to my own. One of these guys, unwittingly, was going to help save my wife’s life.

As a matter of protocol, I don’t store much customer information in my database, but I do require a credit card for buying specialty items and energy boosts for a better game-playing experience. That means I’ve got names and billing addresses on file. Lots of them. I also asked a bunch of voluntary questions on my registration form: phone numbers, sex, date of birth, that sort of thing. Gamers like to support the independent guy, so about half of my registered players filled out the entire form. It was enough information to get me started.

I tested out the installation by calling my cell phone from my business line. I picked a random phone number from our business card booklet, a bug exterminator in Cambridge. Mice weren’t the only creatures lurking about our apartment that Ginger liked to chase.

My cell phone rang. I checked the display. Sure enough, it looked as though Ace Exterminator was calling to fix our cockroach problem once and for all.

My phone call, however, appeared to have awoken Ruby. Ginger perked up as well, first a wide yawn, paw stretch, back stretch, and shake, then a leap off the bed. I wrapped Ruby in my arms and gave her a tender kiss hello. Ginger meowed, perhaps out of jealousy, prompting me to give her head a quick scratch.

“Who called?” Ruby asked. The torpor in her voice proved contagious as I stifled a yawn of my own.

“Nobody,” I said. “Wrong number.”

I’m sure I looked guilty of something, but Ruby didn’t seem to notice. It felt terrible to keep a secret, but then again, I knew Ruby would squash my plan during its inception stage. I was less certain how she’d react when it came time for the execution phase.

“Oh,” Ruby said, a touch of disappointment in her voice. “I thought it might have been my mother calling.”

A call to Ruby’s mother earlier in the week had netted us a five-hundred-dollar wire transfer with a promise to visit soon.

Ruby was right not to hold her breath.

Winifred Dawes—Winnie, to her drinking buddies—hadn’t left St. John once in the ten years since moving to the Caribbean retreat. Ruby had wanted to send her mother an e-mail, an impersonal update on her cancer treatment, but I insisted that we chat via Skype. Winnie talked to us from below deck. It was ten o’clock in the morning, but I knew her mug of coffee was really filled with wine. Five times in the course of our conversation, Winnie remarked on how great Ruby looked. This wasn’t meant to be encouraging. It was Winnie’s way of saying, “You don’t really need to see me just yet.” Guess the five hundred bucks bought Winnie several guilt-free weeks of getting sauced in the sun.

My mother, Pauline, a petite woman with curly gray hair and a face weathered by the weather, had flown in from Denver shortly after we gave her the news. She took a week off work from her job as a payroll clerk for Boulder, Colorado, the same city where I grew up. My mom didn’t have much money to lend, but contributed what she could. I could see the heartbreak in my mother’s eyes when it came time to leave. She gave Ruby a long embrace at Logan Airport, brushing aside tears as we departed. Ruby got from my mother what she never got from her own.

“I love you both,” Mom had said.

She left us with a promise to return soon, which I knew would be well before Winnie ever came.

A case worker from Dr. Adams’s office had been given the impossible task of finding us grants and other programs to help cover the cost of Verbilifide. The best option, Prescription Assistance, a nonprofit that helped the low income and uninsured obtain unaffordable medications, did not count Verbilifide among the two thousand-some odd drugs in their program.

Strike one.

We maxed out our credit cards in procuring Ruby’s next course of treatment. Strike two. Thankfully (that’s sarcasm), the medication’s side effects—lethargy, nausea, moodiness—were far more present and available than our limited funds. Ruby’s school friends managed to raise a thousand dollars from a walkathon, while her former employer pitched in another grand. The red tape of the Wilhelm Genetics Access Solutions program didn’t make life any easier. There was a rather lengthy time lag between being approved for the twelve-thousand-dollar grant and actually having the cash deposited in our bank account.

Strike three.

I kept a running tally in my head. Accounting for all funds raised, we were short a mere $270,000. Good thing I knew how to ameliorate our financial situation. The hard part would be convincing Ruby to go along with my plan.