Blood Debt (Vicki Nelson #5)

Blood Debt (Vicki Nelson #5) Page 8

"4:09." Celluci shifted his barely focused gaze from the clock to Vicki. "Cutting it a little close, aren't you?"

She'd stayed in the shower longer than she'd in?tended, stayed until the approaching dawn drove her out from under the pounding water. And then, wrapped in borrowed towels, she'd hesitated by the side of the bed, unwilling to wake him, afraid that he'd see...  See what? The blood had swirled around her feet and down the drain. Nothing else showed. At least, she didn't think it showed.

"Vicki?" When her head jerked up, he sighed and propped himself against the headboard, the gray suede soft and yielding against his back. Her diet may have changed, but her mannerisms hadn't, and right now she intended to hide something from him. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

Frowning slightly at her tone, he reached out and folded his hand around hers. To his surprise, it was almost warm. "Are you all right?"

"If you mean, have I been injured, I'm fine." No one had touched her. Except for Henry. "We haven't got much time... " The sun waited just beyond the crest of the mountains. "... so I'll cut right to the chase. If someone's harvesting organs, it isn't orga-nized crime. The people Henry and I spoke to knew nothing about it. They weren't doing it, and they hadn't heard rumors of anyone else doing it."

"You sure they were telling the truth?"

Slowly lifting her head, she stared directly at him. "I'm sure."

She was sitting just beyond the limited light of the reading lamp that stood on the bedside table. A pair of silver sparks appeared within the shadowed oval of her face then disappeared again before Celluci felt their pull.

"Okay. You're sure." He didn't know what the limi?tations were on this whole Prince-of-Darkness thing- though he suspected it wasn't as all-powerful as both Vicki and Henry wanted him to believe-but Vicki'd interviewed enough perps over the years that he had to trust her ability to know when one was lying. "Lets just hope you didn't give them any ideas," he added dryly.

"Not about organ-legging."

Her voice lifted the hair on the back of his neck and made asking what ideas she had given them un?necessary. "If organized crime isn't involved, then we lose our best support for selling organs as a motive. Henry's ghost could've been killed for any number of reasons."

"Granted. But as he's still missing a kidney, let's follow this hypothesis for a while. Maybe your Patricia Chou's right about Ronald Swanson."

"She's not my anything, and Swanson has a com?pletely spotless life as far as the law is concerned."

"So, he has to start somewhere."

"Killing people for their kidneys seems a little far up the ladder to me." She shrugged noncommittally, but it was clear she wasn't going to let it go. Cops got that way occasionally, clinging to a theory based on nothing better than a hunch, often in the face of oppo?sition. When it turned out they were right, they were said to have intuitive abilities beyond the norm. When it turned out they were wrong, as was more often the case, they were said to be pigheaded, self-absorbed, and unwilling to do the grunt work needed to break the case. That Vicki had been right more often than she was wrong made her no less pigheaded. "Now what?"

"I think we should stop working on who and take a look at where." Impossible now to ignore the sun. Her shoulders hunched up as though expecting a blow from behind. "Mike, I've got to go."

He lifted a hand to touch his cheek where a strand of wet hair had brushed against him. That, the linger?ing pressure of her mouth, and the faint taste of tooth?paste, were all that remained to show she'd ever been in the room. The clock read 4:15. Sixty seconds to sunrise.

Lying on her back in the pink bedroom, a hastily folded towel under her head to keep the pillow dry, Vicki wondered why she felt no guilt at all for the...  for the...  She frowned, realizing she had no clear idea of how many men she'd actually killed in the warehouse. The number had been washed away in blood.

It didn't matter. Because they didn't matter. Not to her. Not their lives. Not their deaths.

But Henry...

"So the violence is fine, but the sex is a problem." She sighed and swiped at a drop of water dribbling from temple to ear. "Well, doesn't that just sum up the ni... "

4:16.

Sunrise.

Celluci stretched out an arm and switched off the lamp. He'd be glad when midsummer arrived and the nights started getting longer. Not that more time would make Vicki more forthcoming, but it would give him more opportunity to get the truth out of her.

"Good morning, Dr. Mui. You're here early."

She glanced at her watch. "It is almost 6:45. Not exactly early. Did that blood work come back from the lab?"

The night nurse passed over a manila envelope. "Everyone had a quiet night."

"I didn't ask." Envelope tucked under one arm, the doctor stepped into the lounge and let the door to the nurse's office swing shut behind her.

Bitch. But none of the sentiment showed through her smile just in case Dr. Mui glanced back through the open blinds on the windows that were the top half of the office walls-the clinic's attempt to simultane?ously create both a feeling of security in its patients and to prevent the place from looking too much like a hospital. In a time of drastic health care cutbacks, the job paid too well to jeopardize. For what they were paying her, faking friendly with the dragon lady was the least of what she'd be willing to do.

Averting her gaze from the ferns and Laura Ashley prints that adorned the lounge, Dr. Mui crossed to the closer of the two consultation offices, pulling the lab work out of the envelope as she walked. By the time she reached the desk, she was distinctly unhappy.

"Stupid, stupid boy. How could he be such a stu?pid boy?"

She sank into the chair and let the paper fall to the desktop. This changed everything.

The phone rang just as he was pouring the tea. Al?though he drank coffee at the office, he drank tea at the house because Rebecca had always preferred tea to coffee-except when they were traveling in the States. "Where," she'd remarked, "they started out making it in Boston Harbor with cold salt water and hadn't ever quite gotten the hang of doing it differently."

He pulled the receiver out of its base, tucked it under his ear, and barked a terse "Hello" while he went to the refrigerator for milk.

"It's Dr. Mui. We have a problem with the donor. The blood test I had run last night shows him as HIV positive."

"I thought he was clean?"

"He was. I expect that when he heard the good news, he went out and celebrated."

"This is going to be very awkward." He took the milk from the fridge and quickly closed the door. It would only cost a few pennies to leave it open, but he hadn't made a fortune by giving money to BC Hydro. "The recipient and his father will be getting on a plane in less than two hours."

"It would be a lot more awkward if we infect him."

They both considered the consequences for a moment.

"All right." He took a swallow of the tea and then set the cup down on the table beside the bowl of fresh flowers Rebecca had always insisted on having in the kitchen. "I'll call. As long as he's not actually on the plane, I can get through to his father's cell phone. And the donor?"

"We don't want him to talk... "

"No. Of course not. All right, no difference between him and the others, then. Just get him out of the clinic as soon as possible."

When the doctor had hung up and the milk had been returned to the fridge, he pressed the power but?ton and dialed the buyer's number from memory. The conversation was, as he had anticipated, very awk?ward. However, in order to make a sizable fortune in real estate-even in the fast-selling Vancouver mar?ket-it was necessary to be a damned good salesman.

Although he hadn't personally sold a property for some time, the old skills were still sharp, and it cer?tainly didn't hurt that he was still the son's best chance.

By the time he returned to his tea, it was cold. He drank it anyway. Rebecca had never minded cold tea and had often shared it with the cat. The cat had died for no apparent reason three months after Rebecca. The vet had shrugged and implied it might have been due to a broken heart.

He envied the cat; its mourning had ended.

"And in city news, violence connected with orga?nized crime hit a new high last night with death tolls up into double digits."

Fork full of scrambled eggs halfway to his mouth, Celluci stared at the radio.

"Eleven men, including crime boss David Eng, were found dead in a Richmond floor-covering warehouse when employees of the warehouse arrived for work this morning. Some had been shot, but some appeared to have been savaged by an animal. As a number of the men are known to belong to the organization run by Adan Dyshino, police are assuming that negotia?tions of some sort erupted into violence. They are not yet certain that the death of Sebastien Carl in East Vancouver is connected and are now attempting to find his wife. Anyone with information about these or other crimes is invited to contact Crime Stoppers or your local police."

"Yeah. Right." He snorted and continued eating. No one ever came forward with information about gang violence; the thing about organized crime was that it was organized. Witnesses were efficiently dealt with.

So Vicki was safe.

And then it hit him. Eleven men. Maybe twelve.

Maybe more; unreported, made to look like accidents or like natural causes.

All at once, he wasn't hungry. He stared down at the eggs, searching for answers in the pattern the salsa made against the yellow. Eleven men. Maybe twelve. All members of a criminal organization and, the odds were good, probably all killers. All men the world was a lot better off without.

But still...

The law had to apply to everyone, or it applied to no one. Whoever killed these men, no matter how much removing them might have improved things, had broken the law. Probably several laws. If it was Vicki ...

"You're jumping to conclusions," he snarled, shov?ing his chair away from the table. "Henry was out there, too. It wasn't necessarily Vicki."

If it was Henry, did that make it any better?

It didn't have to be either of them. "Two gangs together in an enclosed space, that sort of stuff hap?pens. Probably had dogs with them." Opening and closing the kitchen cupboards, trying not to slam them lest he smash the etched glass set into the doors, he found three complete sets of dishes but no garbage bags. Vague memories of a laundry room sent him down the hall. It was behind the second door he opened and had obviously been used that morning.

The washing machine was a European model. It loaded from the front like some of the big commercial machines and was supposed to use half the water. They were still incredibly expensive in North America and Celluci, who'd had to listen to one of his aunts extolling their virtues, wondered what happened in five years when the seal went and they flooded the laundry room. Vicki's clothes-jeans, shirt, sweater, underwear, sock, high tops; everything she'd worn the night before-were lying in a damp heap, cradled in the bottom curve.

Eleven men. Maybe twelve.

Maybe mud. Maybe a hundred other things.

He put the clothes in the dryer, grabbed a garbage bag from the utility closet in the corner and was on his way back to the kitchen when he heard a quiet tap at the apartment door.

The woman standing in the hall looked as if she were about to cry. "I'm sorry," she declared, waving one hand in the general direction of the open door as she dug in her purse for a tissue with the other. "It's just coming here has brought it all back."

"Mrs. Munro?" Celluci hazarded.

Mrs. Munro blew her nose and nodded. "That's right. I'm sorry to be such a watering pot, but it just sort of hit me looking in the door like this, that Miss Evans is really gone."

Celluci knew he should move out of the way. That there wasn't any good reason now for her not to come in. I've got a vampire asleep in here, so could you come back after sunset just didn't cut it.

"I've just come by for a few things I forgot to take with me the night Miss Evans passed on." She looked up at him expectantly. "I won't take long, my daugh?ter's waiting in the car."

There didn't seem to be anything else he could do so he stepped aside.

"So you're a friend of Mr. Fitzroy's." Sighing deeply, she walked purposefully through the entrance hall, her gaze darting from side to side like she was afraid to let it rest for long on any one object. "Miss Evans thought the world of Mr. Fitzroy. He flirted with her, you know, and that made her feel young. I don't mind letting friends of his stay here. And you're a police detective, aren't you? Just like on television. Are you and your lady friend having a nice visit to Vancouver?"

Wondering exactly what Henry had told her, Celluci said they were and then, as she headed straight for the pink bedroom, lengthened his stride to get ahead of her, hurriedly adding in a voice calculated to disarm middle-aged women, "Uh, Mrs. Munro, we have a bit of a problem."

She paused, her hand actually cupping the door?knob, and frowned slightly. "A problem, Detective?"

"My, uh, lady friend is asleep in there."

"Still?" Her watch had large black numbers on a plain white face. "It's almost ten. She isn't sick, is she?"

"No, she's not sick." And then, because there was nothing like the truth for that ring of sincerity: "She has an eating disorder."

"Oh, dear."

"And she had a bad night." He met her gaze and smiled hopefully down at her, an expression that had caused innumerable witnesses to suddenly remember a wealth of detail. "I was hoping she could get a cou?ple more hours' sleep."

"Well ..."

"If you leave a list, we could have Henry bring any?thing you need to your daughter's this evening."

"No, no, there's no need to disturb Mr. Fitzroy. He's already been more than generous, and, well..." Her pupils dilated as she remembered the unexpected visit. "... he asked me not to come by while you're here."

Celluci's heart started beating again when she let her hand drop and turned from the door. My persua?sions were, for the most part, monetary, he heard Henry say. For the most part.

"I didn't need anything important. I wouldn't have even come by except that we were in the neighborhood and my daughter-in-law can be most persuasive."

More than you have any idea. If her daughter-in-law had been able to overwhelm one of Fitzroy's re?quests, even momentarily, formidable would not be too strong a word to use when describing her. There were other words, but Vicki'd pretty much forced him to stop using them. "We're very grateful that you're allowing us the use of your home."

Her face grew still as she glanced around the living room. "Yes. I suppose it is my home now. Miss Evans left it to me, you know."

"No, I didn't know."

"Yes, but I expect I'll sell it." She picked up a small brass sculpture, stared at it as though she'd never seen it before, and slowly put it down again. "This is all too grand for me. I like things a little cozier."

Cozy was not a word Celluci would've used to de?scribe the pink bedroom. In fact the only word that came to mind was overwhelming. He trailed silently behind her as she crossed back to the apartment door.

"I'm sorry to have bothered you, Detective. If you could ask Mr. Fitzroy to call me at my son's when you leave."

"If we're an inconvenience, Mrs. Munro... "

"No, not at all." She smiled at him reassuringly, then stopped, forehead creasing in sudden puzzlement. "I'd have thought you'd be using the master bedroom."

"Actually, I'm using the master bedroom."

"Oh, of course." Her tone suggested this explained everything. "You're a friend of Mr. Fitzroy's!"

By the time Celluci realized what that meant, Mrs. Munro was gone-which was just as well because his reaction was succinct and profane.

Breakfast had been pretty good for hospital food. There hadn't been enough of it, but at least it hadn't come out of a dumpster. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, he smoked a cigarette and wished they'd bring him back his clothes. Or just his boots. He'd had to panhandle tourists for almost a week last summer to get them, and if he didn't get them back, the shit was going to hit the fan, big time. Sure he had enough money now to buy anything he wanted, but that wasn't the point. Those boots were his.

He ground the butt into a pitted metal ashtray and lit another. It was kind of weird they let him keep his cigs but since they weren't using his lungs he guessed it didn't matter.

When the door opened, he blew a cloud of smoke toward it, just to show he didn't care; that he wasn't freaked by what he'd agreed to do.

Her lips pressed into a thin line, Dr. Mui stopped short of entering the thin, gray fog and stared at him with distaste. "It's time for your shot."

He couldn't help it, he giggled. It was too much like something out of a bad horror movie. "Eet's time for your shot," he repeated in a thick, German accent. "And then you steal my brain and stick it in some robot, right?"

"No." The single syllable left no room for a dif?fering opinion.

"Fuck, man, chill. It was a joke." Shaking his head, he went to pinch out the cigarette, but the doctor raised her hand.

"You may finish."

"Thanks, I'm sure." But he couldn't, not with her watching. He took two long drags and pinched the end, tucking the still warm butt back into the pack for later. "Okay." His chin lifted and he gave her his best I don't give a fuck about anything glare. "Do it."

"Lie down."

He snorted but did as he was told, muttering, "Man, I hope you've got a better bedside manner with the paying customers."

Her fingers were cool against his skin as she pushed up the sleeve of his pajama top, and he watched the ceiling as she swabbed his elbow with alcohol.

"Hey? You gonna take more blood?"

"No."

Something in her voice dropped his gaze from the ceiling to her face, but her eyes were locked on the liquid rising in the syringe. When she was satisfied, she pulled it from the small brown bottle cradled in her left hand, put the bottle back in her lab coat pocket, and looked down at him.

The hair lifted off the back of his neck. All at once, he didn't want that shot.

"I've changed my mind."

"You weren't given that choice."

"Tough shit." As he spoke, he shot out of the bed and as far away from her as he could get and still be in the room; his back was pressed hard against the outside wall, fists held waist-high.

Dr. Mui looked pointedly at the gym bag tucked up behind the pillow. "You took the money," she re?minded him. "Do I take it back?"

"No!" He stepped forward, stopped, and stared at the gym bag. Money enough to get out. He didn't know where to, but he was intimately familiar with where from and he never wanted to go back. After a moment, he said "No" again, more quietly. What the hell was he afraid of anyway? They weren't going to do anything to him. They needed him healthy. The floor was cold under his bare feet as he walked back to the bed. He shivered and slid under the covers.

"Is this it?" he asked, refusing to flinch as the nee?dle pierced his skin.

"Yes." With one efficient motion, she depressed the plunger. "This is it."

She left the room while the sedative did its work.

"We don't want a repeat of what happened the last time," she said to the orderly waiting in the hall, her tone intimating that what she did or did not want was all he should be concerned with. His expression sug?gested he agreed. "I don't care how he dies, but he is to be properly disposed of. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Good." She stepped away from the door.  "Go ahead." He moved forward like a dog let off his leash.

Suppressing the urge to remain in the apartment in case Mrs. Munro returned while he was gone, Celluci locked up and headed for the elevator. The sooner they solved this thing, the sooner they could go home and get on with their lives.

Their theory about those responsible for Henry's ghost had been off base. Unfortunately, now that they knew organized crime wasn't involved, that left only a couple million potential suspects. Maybe a few less if the gangs were growing as fast as the media reported.

Of course, it also left Ronald Swanson. Multimil?lionaire philanthropist, bereaved husband, and all around nice guy.

The elevator arrived almost instantly.

Vicki insisted they continue to assume organ-legging. Since the police hadn't yet identified the corpse, it seemed obvious he hadn't lost that kidney through conventional surgery. Since they knew he'd lost it locally, organ-legging was beginning to make more sense. And the motive for removing the organ? That was the only easy answer. Profit.

So maybe we should look for a Ferengi, he snorted as he pushed the button for the parking garage.

The ghost's garage band T-shirt said he'd lived, and died, in the immediate area. Since he hadn't yet been identified, he was obviously someone who wouldn't be missed. Unfortunately, the immediate area offered a wide choice of potential donors. As Tony'd pointed out, a West Coast winter beat freezing to death in Toronto or Edmonton.

Since the transplant centers weren't involved, a pri?vate clinic had to be-those willing to buy organs would, no doubt, draw the line at having body parts hacked out in someone's basement. There were a page and a half of clinics listed in the Vancouver Yellow Pages, but sixteen of them could be immediately disre?garded as he very much doubted there was a holistic way to remove a kidney. The Vancouver Vein Clinic had been intriguing but not as much as a quarter-page ad promising live blood cell analysis. An accompa?nying photo showed a smiling woman with long dark hair, obviously someone very happy with her blood. He couldn't decide whether he should mention it to Vicki or leave well enough alone.

A balding man in a golf shirt and white pants got on at the third floor. Celluci nodded, noted the Rolex and the expensive aftershave, then assumed elevator position-his gaze locked on nothing about halfway up the doors.

The list of buyers with the right combination of need, cash, and willingness to keep their mouths shut would necessarily be finite. It would, therefore, be in?efficient to pick up a random drifter and hope for a match. They'd need some kind of medical information.

Stepping out into the parking garage, he walked toward the imposing bulk of the van, listening to the echoes as he tossed his keys from hand to hand.

There was a street clinic in East Vancouver that seemed to serve a less-than-upscale neighborhood and offered, according to their ad, HIV testing.

It was a place to start.

He closed the van door and adjusted the mirror, trying not to think of a load of wet laundry and how well the dark seats would hide stains.

Had he stopped to think about it, he would've taken a taxi. The clinic was on the corner of East Hastings and Main, tucked between the faux historical Gastown and the bustling stores of Chinatown in one of the oldest parts of the city. The streets were narrow, the traffic chaotic, and parking spaces at a premium.

Reaching Fender at Carrall Street, Celluci glowered at the One Way/No Entry that blocked his progress.

Habit noted the license plate numbers of the two cars ahead of him which turned left after the light went from yellow to red, then he sat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for a break in the steady stream of pedestrians that would allow him to make his right. While he waited, he watched the people heading toward the Chinese Cultural Center and hoped that the trio of middle-aged women, draped with cameras and loudly calling everything, including the bilingual street signs, cute, were American tourists.

When the light changed, he moved out into the in?tersection only to be blocked by pedestrians crossing Fender. Halfway through the green, he took advan?tage of a group of teenagers agile enough to get out of the way and finally got around the corner. As traffic inched past a delivery truck, not exactly double-parked, he sucked in an appreciative lungful of warm air. Fresh fish, ginger, garlic, and car exhaust; familiar and comforting. Before her change, Vicki had lived on the edge of Toronto's Chinatown and this air, trapped between the buildings out of reach of all but the most persistent ocean breezes, evoked memories of a less complicated life.

By the time he reached Columbia Street, one short block away, he'd had enough nostalgia. When a park?ing spot miraculously appeared, he cranked the van into it, rolled up the windows, locked the doors, checked to see that the man lying against the base of the Shing Li'ung Trading Company was breathing, and still managed to beat the car that had been behind him to the corner.

The East Hastings Clinic wasn't quite a block away, but even such a short distance was enough to leave the prosperity of Chinatown behind.

The dimensions of the windows-now filled with wire-reinforced glass-suggested that the building had once held a storefront. Standing on the sidewalk, Celluci peered inside and swept his gaze over three elderly Asian men sitting on the ubiquitous orange vinyl chairs and the profiles of a scowling teenager arguing with a harried-looking woman behind a waist-high counter. While he watched, the woman pointed at an empty chair, gave the teenager an unmistakable com?mand to sit, and disappeared into the back.

Still scowling, the boy stared after her for a moment then, shoving aside a cardboard rack of government pamphlets, snatched up a small package from behind the counter and raced for the door.

Celluci grabbed him before he cleared the threshold.

"Fuck off, man! Let me go!"

"I don't think so." Maneuvering his struggling cap?tive back into the clinic, he kept himself between the teenager and the door.

"This is assault, asshole! Let go of me before I call a cop!"

"Would you like to see my shield?" Celluci asked quietly, releasing his grip on the thin shirt.

The boy jerked away, whirled around to stand back against the counter, and looked up. Quite a way up. "Oh, fuck," he sighed philosophically when he real?ized it hadn't been a rhetorical question.

"What is going on out here?"

Celluci opened his mouth to answer and left it open as he stared down at the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

"You're wastin' your time, man." Grinning broadly, the boy turned and held out his hand. Balanced on the palm was a rectangular box of condoms. "I de?cided not to wait for the safe sex lecture, Doc. This guy nabbed me on the way out."

The doctor lifted onyx eyes to Celluci's face. "And you are?" she asked.

"Um, Celluci." He shook his head and managed to regain control of his brain. "Detective-Sergeant Mi?chael Celluci, Metropolitan Toronto Police."

The teenager glared at him in disbelief. "Toronto? Get fucking real, man."

"Aren't you a little out of your jurisdiction, Detec?tive?" Blue-black highlights danced across a silk cur?tain of ebony hair as she tilted her head.

His explanation of how he'd noticed the boy reach behind the counter left out the fact that the clinic had been his destination. When he finished, the doctor switched her gaze to the boy. "You steal from this clinic, and you steal from your friends."

"Hey! You were gonna give them to me!"

"Not the whole box." She opened it, removed six plastic squares, and handed them over. "Now sit. The rules say these come with a lecture and you're hearing it before you leave."

Hands shoved into the pockets of baggy jeans, he sat.

The doctor put the box back behind the counter and glanced back up at Celluci, her lashes throwing fringed shadows against the porcelain curve of her cheek. "You've done me a favor, Detective. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Join me for lunch?" His eyes widened as he real?ized it was his voice he heard issuing the invitation. The doctor looked to be more than a full foot shorter than he was. He'd always found short women intim?idating. His grandmother barely topped five feet. Lunch? What was I thinking?

One of the old men muttered something in Chinese. The other two snickered.

The perfect curve of the doctor's chin rose to a defiant angle. "Why not."

The Jade Garden Palace was a dim sum restaurant that had not been "discovered" by tourists. Those who stumbled onto the rundown, residential side street by accident, if not discouraged by the green insul-brick siding, took one look at the tile missing from the floor just inside the door and the scratched formica table-tops and usually decided to try some place a little less colorful. Although the doctor and the detective ar?rived at what should have been the height of the lunch rush, the only other patrons were an old man in terry cloth slippers and a harried mother with two children under three. The baby was gumming a steamed dump?ling. So was the old man.

"I usually have three wartips, deep-fried tofu with shrimp, and a spring roll," the doctor said as she sat down.

"Sounds good." Celluci exchanged his chair for one with four functional legs and lowered himself gingerly onto the mottled gray seat. The place smelled signifi?cantly better than it looked. "But double it for me."

"They have a couple of brands of Chinese beer, if you're interested."

"I don't drink."

"Isn't that unusual for a police officer? I'd always heard you were a hard drinking bunch."

"Some of us are." The waiter set down a stainless-steel pot of green tea. "Some of us have other ways to take the edge off."

He watched, mesmerized as her brows lifted, like the wings of a slender, black bird. "And your way, Detective?"

"I fight with a friend."

She blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"I have screaming fights with a friend."

"Who screams back?"

He grinned, beginning to relax. "Oh, yeah. It's very cathartic." Removing the paper sleeve from his chop?sticks, he broke them apart. "It just occurred to me, you haven't told me your name."

Her cheeks darkened. "Oh. I'm so sorry. Eve Seto."

"No need to be embarrassed. After all, you only came to lunch with me because the old men in the clinic said you wouldn't."

"Was it that obvious?"

Celluci waited until the waiter set down the plate of spring rolls and a shallow dish of black bean sauce, then he shrugged. "I'm the only male in my generation and I have a ninety-three-year-old grandmother. Trust me. I know the power of age."

Dr. Seto stared at him for a moment, then she cov?ered her mouth with her hand and laughed.

Spring roll halfway to the sauce, Celluci suddenly found it difficult to breathe. It wasn't a sexual re?sponse, exactly, it was more that her beauty elicited one hundred percent of his attention, leaving no room for such mundane concerns as inhaling and exhaling. After a moment, he forced himself to dunk, chew, and swallow, finding a certain equilibrium in the familiar food.

As far as gathering information went, lunch was a total disaster. Dr. Seto seemed both surprised and re?lieved by the distinctly light tone of the conversation.

Walking back to the clinic, out of inanities to dis?cuss, Celluci turned gratefully as the doctor shaded her eyes with one hand, gestured across the street with the other, and murmured, "I wonder what's going on over there?"

Over there, at the Chinese Cultural Center, a bright yellow cable van had pulled up onto the broad walk?way and was in the process of disgorging piles of elec?trical equipment.

"It's like watching clowns get out of that little car at the circus," Celluci said as another stack of indistin?guishable black boxes was balanced precariously on top of the pile. Dropping his armload of cables, a tall thin man with a ponytail straightened the stack at the last possible instant and began a spirited argument with someone still in the van-an argument that got cut off before it really began when Patricia Chou stormed out of the building.

Seconds later, cables were once again being laid and equipment continued to be unloaded. Dr. Seto looked intrigued. "I wonder what she said."

"You know Ms. Chou?" Something in her voice suggested she did.

The doctor nodded. "She did a story on my clinic, two, maybe three, months ago. Overall, a favorable story but a little like being operated on without anes?thetic." Her tone grew speculative as they moved away from the Center. "I'm surprised you know her, though. Didn't you tell me you've only been in Van?couver for a couple of days?"

"I don't exactly know her. I did see her interview with Ronald Swanson ..."

"Would that be the Ronald Swanson who's in real estate?"

All at once, Celluci remembered why he'd gone to the clinic in the first place. Why he'd invited Dr. Seto out for lunch. "That's the one. Do you know him?"

"He's not a friend, if that's what you mean, but we've met. His company donated the computers we use in the clinic, and there're a number of volunteer organizations around the city that depend on his gen?erosity. He works tirelessly for the transplant society."

"So I gathered from the interview." Then, before she could change the subject, he added, "I find the whole thing amazing-that you could take an organ out of one person, sew it into another, and save a life."

"It's not quite that easy, I'm afraid." She pressed the walk button and they waited while the light changed. Then they waited a moment longer as a mid-seventies orange truck ran the yellow.

"Is it something you've done?" Celluci prodded, stepping off the curb.

"Detective, think about it. If I were a transplant surgeon, would I be practicing street-front medicine?"

"No. I suppose not."

"You can be certain of it."

"I'd heard that kidney transplants weren't that difficult."

"For transplants. Afterward, they carry the same risk of rejection or infection as any other transplant, and infection kills." She half turned to look up at him from under a fall of silken hair. "Do you know what the greatest advancement in medicine was in the nine?teenth century?"

"Convincing doctors to wash their hands." He couldn't help preening a little at her sudden smile. "Hey, I'm not as stupid as I look."

Vicki would have taken advantage of a line like that. Dr. Seto looked so aghast that he might possibly think she believed he was, Celluci found himself apol?ogizing and going out of his way to be charming for the rest of the walk.

Back at the clinic, the doctor readily agreed to con?duct a quick tour. "As long as it's very quick." The same three old men, at least Celluci thought they were the same three, watched their every move.

Unless there was a hidden operating theater in the basement, kidneys were not being transplanted on the premises. However, many of the clinic's patients were the sort of people who could disappear without ques?tions being raised. A number of them had.

"They just never come back." Dr. Seto sighed as she slipped back into her lab coat. "It gets discouraging."

"Do you have any idea where they might have gone?"

"Back East, maybe. Hopefully, home." Her eyes fo?cused on faces he couldn't see. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid that too many of them have ended up as police statistics of one kind or another."

When he pulled out the creased photocopy of the autopsy photo, she shook her head. "No. Not one of mine."

Celluci'd seen liars just as sincere and almost as beautiful, but he believed her.

A clearly stoned woman staggered in, doubled over in pain, and howling for a doctor. Celluci murmured a good-bye he doubted anyone heard, and left. Walk?ing back to the car, he fought a rising melancholy. He and Vicki used to go for dim sum about once a month. They were often the only two Caucasians in the second-floor restaurant and they both towered over the rest of the clientele. The elderly women serving the food would occasionally walk right on by, shaking their heads and muttering, "You don't want."

It was something they'd never be able to do again.

A twenty-dollar parking ticket didn't help his mood.

Traffic didn't ease until he was almost at the library.

Back when he'd been in uniform, an old staff ser?geant at 14 Division had been fond of saying, "You get someone talked about three times during an inves?tigation, and you go for a conviction 'cause that's the son of a bitch that did the crime."

Ronald Swanson's name had come up twice now.

A little digging unearthed the name of the clinic Patricia Chou had mentioned, "... a private clinic where people in the last stages of renal failure can wait for a kidney.... " According to old issues of the weekly newspaper, Business in Vancouver, Ronald Swanson had been responsible for its development, was on the board of directors, and contributed a large portion of its financial support.

Project Hope wasn't listed among the clinics in the phone book, but that was hardly surprising as it proba?bly took a doctor's recommendation to get in.

Rubbing his eyes, Celluci left the microfiche carrel, dug out his phone card, and called the clinic from the library lobby. Without identifying himself, he asked if they had a transplant surgeon on staff. Coolly profes?sional, the duty nurse admitted they did. Celluci thanked her and hung up.

Motive. Swanson's wife had died of kidney failure waiting for a transplant. Swanson could want revenge against the system that failed him. Or maybe her death had pointed out a market waiting to be exploited.

Means. Swanson had access to facilities and the fi?nances to buy any talent he wanted.

Opportunity. Suppose Dr. Seto didn't know she was supplying the donors? Swanson's company had do?nated her computers. Could he access them again for the information he needed? According to Patricia Chou, skilled hackers were a dime a dozen, and past experience proved that one in twelve law-abiding citi?zens could be bought.

"With enough money you have the opportunity to do anything."

A hard point to argue with, but he had nothing that could be called evidence by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing he could give to the police that would justify an arrest and keep Henry Fitzroy from taking the law into his own hands.

But the link, however circumstantial, between Ron?ald Swanson and Henry's ghost was strong enough to make a quick trip out to Project Hope worthwhile.

As he got back into the van, Celluci wondered where the transplant society's computers had come from. In Toronto, where his badge meant something, he'd have grounds enough to make inquiries. Were Vicki and Henry not involved, he'd check out the bar where Vancouver's finest hung out and find out just where their investigation was heading.

Except, of course, that I wouldn't be involved had that undead royal bastard of a romance-writing vam?pire, Henry Fitzroy, not gotten Vicki involved.

"You didn't need to come along," the little voice in his head reminded him.

"Yeah. Right." He snorted as he pulled out into traffic. "Like she'd be accomplishing anything on her own." He deliberately chose not to think about what she may or may not have accomplished between sun?set and sunrise the night before.

Unfortunately, he wasn't in Toronto, vampires were involved, and he couldn't think of a plausible reason why anyone should tell him anything.

Project Hope occupied a fairly large parcel of land on the eastern edge of North Vancouver. Celluci parked the van on the side of Mt. Seymour Road, spread out a map over the steering wheel, and culti?vated a confused expression in case those passing by wondered what he was doing. From where he sat, some five hundred feet beyond the long driveway on a slight rise, he could see a one-story building designed so deliberately to look noninstitutional it couldn't look anything but, a half-filled parking lot, a dumpster, and a number of empty benches scattered about pleasantly landscaped grounds. The orientation of the building allowed him to see one side and part of the back. The distance from the road meant that he could see bugger all in the way of details.

Sighing, he pulled a set of folding, miniature binocu?lars out of the glove compartment. In one of her more whimsical moments, Vicki had ordered a pair of them from a magazine ad that insisted they were exactly like those used by the KGB. Celluci questioned the KGB connection, but he had to admit-although not to Vicki-that, for their size, they weren't bad.

A closer inspection told him only that the windows all had Venetian blinds and that Dailow Waste Re?moval emptied the dumpster twice a week.

"So how long do I sit here?" he asked his reflection in the rearview mirror. Stakeouts away from masking crowds were always a pain in the butt, and the lost tourist routine wouldn't be plausible for long. "Maybe I should go in and ask for directions. See if they could lend me a hand...  Hello."

A large man in pale jeans and a red T-shirt crossed the parking lot and got into one of the trendy sport/utility hybrids that every second person on the Coast seemed to drive. He had to have come from inside. Through the binoculars, Celluci watched him back the truck toward the clinic. When it stopped, the angle of the building blocked everything but a bit of the front right bumper.

"Why do you back up to a building? Because you're loading something into the trunk." Squinting didn't help. The clinic remained in the way. "And what are you loading? That's the question, isn't it?"

It could be anything.

The odds of it being a body with only one kidney were astronomical.

"But life's a crap shoot, and sometimes you get lucky." He tracked the truck as it moved down the drive, tossed the binoculars onto the passenger seat, and put the van into gear. Still apparently studying the map, he let the man in the red T-shirt drive by, then pulled out to follow a safe distance behind. Their route led directly into Mt. Seymour Provincial Park.

When his quarry turned onto a logging road, Celluci went on by. Even he couldn't be expected to blend into traffic when there was no traffic to blend into. An illegal u-turn later, he parked as far over on the shoulder as seemed safe, hoping the bushes would hide the van should the car suddenly reemerge.

It wasn't exactly sudden. An hour and ten minutes later, the truck nosed back out onto Mt. Seymour and headed toward the city.

"All right, wherever he went, it's no more than thirty-five minutes in."

Fourteen minutes in, Celluci began to realize that, for all they were so close to a major metropolitan area, there was a whole lot of nothing out here. He didn't do well with nothing. Concrete and glass he understood, but trees were a mystery to him.

Sixteen minutes in, another logging road angled into the first. There were definite tire tracks in the ruts, obviously laid since the last rain. He flipped a mental coin and went up the new road; the tracks had to be recent, the last rain had fallen over lunch, the skies opening, emptying, and clearing between ordering the food and eating it.

Eight minutes in, he stopped at what seemed to be an abandoned logging camp.

"Jesus H. Christ, you could bury an army in this mess." Bodies buried in the wilderness were usually found because the area had been disturbed. This par?ticular area couldn't get more disturbed-the men who'd hacked their living space out of this piece of forest had not been gentle. Tire tracks, old and new, crisscrossed the artificial clearing, and the boot marks told him nothing. "Great. Where's the ident crew when you need them-I want some plaster molds of those treads, and I want this whole place dusted for prints."

He snorted and shook his head. He could dig up every patch of fresh dirt he found, or he could ...

"You lookin' for me?"

Grinning broadly, Celluci turned. "I'm looking for anyone who can get me unlost." The man in the red shirt was a little bigger than he was. That didn't hap?pen often. And doesn't it just figure that it's happening now. He had the familiar proportions of men who spent their time in prison lifting weights-an impres?sively muscular upper body on regular guy type legs. Big brown eyes seemed out of place in the midst of his belligerent expression although the nine millimeter semiautomatic pistol he held, almost engulfed by one huge fist, matched perfectly. Still hoping he could talk his way out of whatever he'd gotten into, Celluci stared in astonishment. "Hey! What's with the gun?"

"You were parked watching the clinic. You fol?lowed me here. You tell me."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just a guy from Ontario who got lost looking for the park lodge."

"Toss me your wallet."

"Oh. Oh, I see. I'm in the middle of fucking no?where and I'm being mugged." Celluci jerked his wal?let out of his back pocket and threw it on the ground at the other man's feet. The leather folder holding his police ID was still in his pocket. He had a chance. "You want the keys to the van, too? It gets lousy gas mileage, so be my guest."

"Shut up." Mild eyes never leaving Celluci's face, the gunman squatted and scooped up the billfold. He flipped through the compartments, peered at all the credit cards, never quite distracted enough for Celluci to make a move.

Then he stopped and shoved one finger deep into an inner recess and hooked out a photograph. His lips rearranged themselves into a triumphant sneer, and something glittered deep in the puppy-dog eyes. "This your granny standing next to you, Officer Celluci?"