The Organ Broker

  Copyright © 2015 by Stu Strumwasser

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Strumwasser, Stu.

  The organ broker : a novel / Stu Strumwasser.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-62872-523-0 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-62872-551-3 (ebook) 1. Sale of organs, tissues, etc.--Fiction. 2. Black market--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.T788O85 2015

  813’.6--dc23

  2015004256

  Cover design by Georgia Morrissey

  Cover photo credit Thinkstock

  Print ISBN: 978-1-62872-523-0

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62872-551-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Owen and River, for giving me purpose and frequent reminders that there is still plenty of good in this world. And to Jen, for making me see that they were possible.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  I. Last Year

  Chapter One: Account Management

  Chapter Two: The Funeral

  Chapter Three: Due Diligence

  Chapter Four: Lesedi

  II. The Eighties

  Chapter Five: Jackie Trayner

  Chapter Six: Intro to Sales

  Chapter Seven: Carrie

  Chapter Eight: Billy Kimball

  Chapter Nine: Jack Tuckman

  III. New York Jack

  Chapter Ten: The Addressable Market Opportunity

  Chapter Eleven: Risk/Reward

  Chapter Twelve: The Man from Dallas

  Chapter Thirteen: Will You Call Me Afterward?

  Chapter Fourteen: Christmases

  IV. How Things Start Sometimes

  Chapter Fifteen: Mark

  Chapter Sixteen: Mark and Philip

  Chapter Seventeen: Recruiting

  Chapter Eighteen: The Dinner Party

  Chapter Nineteen: Starfish

  Chapter Twenty: Retirement Planning

  Chapter Twenty-one: Ghosts

  Chapter Twenty-two: A Heart Too Big

  Chapter Twenty-three: Michelle

  Chapter Twenty-four: Carrie Tomorrow

  V. The Replacement Heart

  Chapter Twenty-five: My Dinner with Carrie

  Chapter Twenty-six: Jack and Michelle

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Lost Time

  Chapter Twenty-eight: The Beach

  Chapter Twenty-nine: The Lesser of Two Evils

  Chapter Thirty: Who Talks to Whom

  Chapter Thirty-one: Time is Limited

  VI. Mark and Michelle

  Chapter Thirty-two: Time

  Chapter Thirty-three: Confessions

  Chapter Thirty-four: Love and Last Chances

  Chapter Thirty-five: Choices and Apologies

  Chapter Thirty-six: The Waiting Room, Today, November 5, 2011

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Burning Down Royston and Another Jack

  Afterword

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It took me several years to write this book, but several decades to truly become a writer. I’ll begin in the beginning: thanks to my sister, born Robin Strumwasser, for taking me—and my songs—seriously, when no one else did. Immeasurable thanks to my friend Mike Hanna for listening to me, and my ideas, throughout our entire lives and for not letting go of the rope. My gratitude also goes to: Mr. Davenport, my tenth grade English teacher (whose first name escapes me) for encouraging me to take my writing seriously; and of course to Emerson, Thoreau, Kerouac, and Ginsberg; Professors Phil McConkey (who told me stories about his colleague Nabokav) and Phyllis Janowitz and Dan McCall (who taught me about “little blue vases” and for being a prick when perhaps I needed it) for teaching me how to write, and for being true and weird artists in the otherwise uninspiring ranks of educators at Cornell; my first agent, Chris Byrne, wherever he is these days, who told me in a letter that 1995 was going to be my year—he was twenty years early, but I cannot thank him enough; Jenny Bent who, as a young reader for another agent read my first book and took the time to call me and tell me that she thought my book was special and not to give up; Matt Tonken, Dean Beaver, and Mika Larson for being the most talented and supportive band a songwriter could have ever asked for; Sandy Ross, for coming out of retirement to give our band a real shot and for always entertaining and loving us; Kevin French, one of the better musicians I know who does not play an instrument; Jeff Baum for being a brother; Woody, always an amazing and loyal friend, who found it interesting enough to film; Sven Jacobson, for sharing insights on his home city of Johannesburg as well as the township called Alexandria; Frank Dombrowski, for telling me that my songs mattered; Frank Sica, for being the most supportive investor and unintended mentor; Nick Baily for being awesome; Frank Sposato for being super cool; Sioux Nesi, a gifted and generous photographer; Dave O’Conner, Marina “Hot Doc” Kurian, and Dan O’Conner; Scott Kelly for hosting my first reading at his restaurant; Chris Pavone, for being a gifted editor—before he became a great novelist; Howard Mittlemark for being a brilliant freelance editor; Tom LeClaire for being great at ping pong; Blake Zeff, Peter Finocchiaro, and the people at Salon.com for running my article; my business partner, Ted Werth, for putting up with me and suggesting that I change the title; my agent and new good luck charm, Jim Fitzgerald, and his entire incredible staff at the James Fitzgerald Agency (forgive me for not remembering all of your names); and finally, and most enthusiastically, thank you to my wonderful editor, Julie Ganz, my fellow-drummer publicist Sam Caggiula, and everyone else at Arcade and Skyhorse Publishing for taking a chance on a strange, dark story, and making me feel a bit better. I can never thank you enough, but please accept the attempt.

  The idea of a novel about a black market organ broker had been in the back of my mind for many years before I ever attempted to write it. It wasn’t the black market that attracted my fascination but rather, the man himself, the broker. Why in the world would an American become an international broker of illegal organs, and what circumstances could possibly put a man in such a position? In March of 2008 I had just gotten divorced and I traveled with Woody to attend the small, private wedding of another of our closest friends, Bob Pearl, on the beach in Costa Rica. I was drunk, exhausted, and alone when I went back to my hut at three a.m. and had the idea about the format within which to write this book. So, thanks Bob, and thanks to the bridesmaid who blew me off at two a.m. or I might not have bothered to start writing the story on the back of the motel menu. Thank you, also, to Bob’s brother Steve, a filmmaker who took a great interest in my manuscript a few years later, and provided me with further motivation to make it better and not give up. Lastly, thanks to Bob’s dad, Mel: it is a terrible burden for a parent to be cooler than his children, but he has shouldered it well.

  Finally, great thanks are due to the many people who helped educate me about the black market, organ transplantation in general, or the plight of transplant recipients. Out of respect for their privacy I wi
ll omit some of their names, but I want to extend my great appreciation and respect for: the first organ transplant recipient whom I interviewed, in the days when I was just beginning to write the first draft of this book… . She is a double-lung and heart recipient, incredibly inspiring—as well as sweet—living a life her parents were told she could never have; the organ broker who is boldly public about being a transplant tourism travel agent, for sharing great detail about his experiences over a bad Mexican lunch; Dr. Jeff Kahn, a bioethicist and professor at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at John Hopkins; Scott Carney, author of The Red Market, a shocking and beautifully written tome about the international market for body parts of all kinds; Debbie, John, Moe, Ted, and several others for sharing their intimate, painful and inspiring stories of overcoming broken parts after receiving transplants; and to Karen Headley and everyone at Donate Life America, as well as Organize.org, who may indeed affect real change and help bring about an end to the crisis of the organ shortage.

  To the now more than 120,000 patients in America on waiting lists for life-saving organs, and the hundreds of thousands of additional patients on dialysis but not on a list, I extend my heartfelt sympathies, and my most ardent encouragement: do not give up. Do something. Find a donor who is not a match and then see if you might be eligible to participate in a domino transplant where you and others in need of kidneys essentially trade donors. Write a letter to your Congressperson and tell him or her to pay some attention to this issue, and to stop fundraising long enough to do some work for a change. This country needs some modern legislation regarding the disposition of organs, and getting it could save tens of thousands of lives immediately, and millions in the years to come. The organ shortage—and the resulting twenty Americans who die every day while waiting for a kidney—is a governmental failure, not a medical one, and it is entirely fixable. Please visit www.theorganbroker.com to learn more.

  PART I: LAST YEAR

  CHAPTER ONE:

  ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

  I’ve had many last names over the years, but my first name has always been Jack. That makes it easier to remember who I’m supposed to be. I’ve been selling organs—mostly kidneys—on the black market for about eighteen years. Most of the business takes place overseas so the industry has come to be known as “Transplant Tourism”—and I’m the cruise director.

  Last December I was making follow-up calls to some of my former clients like I’ve done every holiday season for the last six or seven years. It was comforting to check in with some of them around the holidays and learn that many were flourishing. Making those calls was the one accommodation I allowed myself despite my relentless efforts at security. I called them to convince myself that it was justified, that I was somehow absolved. I wasn’t just doing it for the money … I was saving lives.

  I called Marlene Brown’s house last year anticipating a routine update. A woman picked up and said, “Hello?” It was quiet in the background.

  “Hi,” I said cheerfully. “Is Marlene in?” Marlene was a pretty typical kidney case. She had been on dialysis a long time and had a slew of other health problems by the time her family got desperate enough to find Wallace on the Internet. Wallace is a buyer’s agent and we sometimes work together. Marlene was a standard transplant tourism trip to Royston, one of my best facilities, in South Africa. She was probably gone for no more than ten days and should have done fine. It had been less than a year since then.

  “Uhh, who’s calling?”

  “Jack. It’s Jack Martinelli. Is she around?”

  “Jack, Marlene’s my mom. Are you a friend of hers?”

  Yellow alert. “Yes.” Nothing more.

  “Jack, I’m really sorry to tell you this,” she said quietly.

  Shit, I thought. Marlene’s dead.

  “My mom died on Thursday.”

  “This … this Thursday? Just now?”

  “Yes,” Marlene’s daughter replied. “I’m Kim, her daughter. The funeral for Mom is the day after tomorrow. Near their place in New Hope. Do you know where that is?”

  “New Hope, Pennsylvania?”

  “Yes. If you grab a pen I’ll give you directions.”

  “Oh. Okay. About two hours from New York, right?”

  “Yes. Do you have a pen?”

  I took down the directions, but I had no intention of going. She wasn’t my friend. I had no personal connection to Marlene Brown. She wasn’t the first client of mine to end up dead soon after a procedure, but somehow it felt different. She’d hung on for years on dialysis, outlasted renal failure, and managed to get a replacement part. A year later she went and gave up just in time to complicate Christmas.

  I felt rattled when I hung up the phone. Maybe it was the coincidental timing of my call. There was a clump of sadness hanging in my throat that I couldn’t seem to swallow.

  ◆

  Only a half hour after I had gotten off the phone with Kim Brown I called Wallace and had what constituted, for me, a minor fit. When you’re playing with amateurs, you can miss a putt or two, but not with a pro like Wallace. Calling him was foolish.

  “Hello?”

  “Wallace, Jack,” I said.

  “Hey, New York,” or something like that, from him. Not too excited or glad but always friendly enough. Wallace claimed to live in Connecticut.

  “How are you?”

  “Good. Happy holidays,” he said cheerfully.

  “You too.”

  “Glad you called,” Wallace said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Maybe I wouldn’t mention it, I thought. Maybe it’s not a thing to mention.

  “I wanted to touch base and check your availability over the next month or two. Things always seem to get busier after the New Year and I have a few things I’m probably going to want your help with,” Wallace said.

  “Sure. I’m good,” I told him. “The more lead time you give me, the easier—”

  “I know that,” he replied.

  “I’m just saying, sometimes sourcing things can be difficult. If it’s something hard to find.”

  “I’ll give you as much time as I can. That’s all I can do,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Thanks,” I replied. “Hey, Wallace, Marlene Brown. That was one of yours, right?”

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “It’s just me,” I said. “It’s just that she’s gone and I thought you might want to know that.”

  “Why would you say that to me?” Wallace asked abruptly. “That’s not a thing to say.”

  “It’s Jack,” I said and forced a small chuckle. “I’m just saying, I thought you might want to know. They were a nice old couple, she and her husband. That’s all I meant.”

  “I don’t care if they were nice or who is gone or not gone. Neither should you.”

  “Fine. Forget it. All I really meant to say is that I happen to know that a woman named Marlene Brown called it quits and I thought that would be of interest to you. You talk to these people. I don’t. I just thought you’d be interested. That’s all. Don’t overreact, Wallace.”

  “Well, it concerns me that you would have that information, and I don’t know why you’d be telling it to me. I don’t even know anyone by that name, Jack.”

  There was a pregnant silence. “Okay,” I said. “Have a good holiday.”

  He didn’t say anything right away and there was another pause, and I could almost feel him thinking through how to handle the uncomfortable tension I’d created.

  “Jack,” he began quietly, “I need to know that we’re okay.”

  “Of course.”

  “You are my biggest supplier now. I come to you first on a lot of things now. I have to be certain that we’re okay. That you’re steady.”

  “Steady, Wallace. You’re right. It was the wrong thing to say. We’re all good. Just call me after the holidays when you know what you need.”

  “Umm-hmm,” he said, and cleared his throat softly. “Okay,” he added and then hung up.

  I shoul
d have never disclosed to him that I had talked to Marlene’s daughter. He probably began looking into it right away. That’s what I would have done. I’ve done it in the past. There are things I know about Wallace that he’s not aware of. I’ve kept the information tucked away, available to me if necessary someday in the future. If Wallace uncovered other follow-up calls, he might not necessarily have cared, but it could have cost me business or it could have created even greater risks for me. It was an obvious and uncharacteristic mistake on my part.

  I got off the phone that day struck by the thought that maybe it was time to leave the industry, and maybe this time it was really, finally true. After all of those years, despite the way my business had grown and the ease with which we were doing standard kidney deals, perhaps the whole thing had run its course—like an illness. I hadn’t thought it through in a long time, hadn’t considered what it was I actually did. I hadn’t been in a shantytown in years. I hadn’t worried much about getting caught either. I laughed a little when I recognized for the first time that I had gotten a little sloppy. I had apparently also forgotten that I was one of the bad guys.

  CHAPTER TWO:

  THE FUNERAL

  Despite that awkward conversation with Wallace about having spoken to Marlene Brown’s family, two days later I found myself heading south on I-95. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was morbid curiosity. Maybe voyeurism. Guilt? I had the melancholy sense of making a trip back to my grandfather’s village in Ireland.

  At the cemetery, I waded through patches of snow in shoes I was ruining. I eventually came upon a small gathering in the middle of an endless parade of headstones all pointing up out of the ground at imperfect angles, resembling long rows of crooked teeth in the mouth of a shark lying dead on a dock. I stayed on the perimeter and a priest was talking and then a line formed and they threw shovelfuls of dirt down on the coffin that contained Marlene Brown. All the men wore black overcoats. Does every man but me own a black overcoat? I hadn’t attended a funeral since my father’s almost twenty years earlier.

  I remembered Marlene being a large woman, obese even. That had probably inflamed her diabetes and made things a lot harder. I never got close enough to get a look at the coffin. It’s probably big, I thought. I wondered if they charge more if they need extra wood. The priest made a remark about how she had gotten a kidney transplant and how it had enabled her to spend a few more precious months with Joe and her eight grandchildren. I smiled inwardly, warmed by my own secret beneficence.