The Organ Broker Page 8

  Pause.

  W: I’m Wallace.

  Jack: Do you represent more than one person looking for a kidney?

  W: From time to time.

  Jack: Maybe we can help each other.

  W: Maybe we can, Jack.

  ◆

  That’s how things start sometimes.

  CHAPTER TWELVE:

  THE MAN FROM DALLAS

  Hermann Coburn is an eccentric older guy from Texas. In recent years, he’s become known in my industry as The Man from Dallas. Unlike the rest of us, he does not keep a low profile. In fact, he’s a bit of a publicity hound. He’s often quoted in articles about the black market for organs. The Man from Dallas is a true “travel agent.” He arranges trips for desperate, wealthy Americans in renal failure to one of two foreign facilities known to be far more concerned with the bottom line than the Hippocratic Oath. He has skirted the law by claiming that he is merely arranging travel accommodations; the fact that these trips all happen to be to foreign transplant centers is not against any US law, and not his problem. Most of his clients live for many years, whereas twenty other people suffering with renal failure in the US will die today.

  ◆

  For the most part, Coburn’s a buyer’s agent like Wallace. However, where Wallace takes too many chances, The Man from Dallas takes all chances. Wallace finds buyers. He sources them; he gets referrals; he trolls organmatchmaker.com looking for leads. He follows subtle tips from doctors and hedge fund managers and lawyers. And when he finds them, he usually brings them to me—his supplier. But he does so without using his real name. He hides behind his rotating Florida cell phone numbers (a technique he copied from me) and the security of ever-changing email addresses. The Man from Dallas does not. Hermann Coburn is a crusader, and men with a cause don’t hide—they seek out trouble. They wear arm bands and badges. It’s remarkable that The Man from Dallas hasn’t spent more than a short stint in prison. It’s even a little surprising that he’s still alive.

  ◆

  The Internet made the business infinitely easier, and meeting Wallace made me realize that the marketing challenge of finding enough buyers might no longer be a problem if I outsourced the buy side of the transactions to professional partners. I had already built a network of suppliers around the world, and realized I could simply provide the parts, representing only the sellers. After Wallace and I got acquainted, we did a couple of kidney deals together in 2000. I cautiously sought out more brokers to whose clients I could provide merchandise. A few quick Yahoo and Alta Vista searches on “transplant tourism,” and “buying a kidney,” led to the public contact information for Coburn. I decided to go and meet him late in the summer of 2000. It was over a hundred degrees in the shade for ten days running when I landed at DFW.

  ◆

  I arrived at his house in the early afternoon. The street was fairly empty but I parked about a half a block past it, on the opposite side. He lived in a modest suburban home on a small lot. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen hundred square feet, and there were similar houses crowding in on both sides, only a few feet away. Somehow I had expected something more rural and more grandiose—a structure tucked back away from the road on a sprawling Texas-sized piece of wooded land.

  In the front yard was a garden of sorts, which looked at first like it might have been growing wild, but upon closer examination, it simply looked messy due to overcrowding. There were countless seedlings and guide-sticks jutting out of the ground, with no formal rows or sections, all mashed together in a small space surrounded by a short concrete border. What looked like wild tomato plants—or possibly ivy—extended over the concrete in spots like the tentacles of a mutated octopus climbing onto a dock in a scene from a bad science fiction movie.

  Behind a screen door, the foyer looked black from where I stood in the bright sunlight outside. I walked up the path that split the front garden, and before I reached the door I heard a man’s soft and pleasant voice say, “Jack? Welcome to Dallas.”

  ◆

  The Man from Dallas made iced tea, and we sipped it while sitting at a small, wooden kitchen table. The chairs were rickety on the hardwood floor and made soft creaking noises, like a playground swing, as we spoke. “Tell me about your wife,” he said. I maintained a pained expression, but inwardly I was probably laughing a bit—flippant prick that I was back then. The Man from Dallas. I had anticipated a man far less likeable, perhaps more like Wallace.

  I told him all about Susan, my imaginary wife. I related the details of her condition, her deterioration, the fistular in her upper arm, the losses, the pain, the hopelessness, and how I had stumbled upon him on the Internet. I told him my name was Campbell, but that he should call me Jack. I called him Herm, at his request. He smiled and nodded reassuringly. He understood. He knew. He would help us. He was sincere and it made me feel regretful.

  ◆

  When he talked about the business, the pace of his speech quickened. “They’ll pay fifty grand a year for dialysis but they won’t pay for Susan to get a kidney transplant. And why? Because of the insurance companies, the HMOs. Who do you think owns Congress anyway?” he said quietly, but emphatically. I nodded, and I got a little sermon in Hermann Coburn’s kitchen: “It’s the military industrial complex. Don’t you see, that’s the chokepoint. That’s where the government is able to control it… . Why do we need the government to regulate our own bodies? … This brave new world … Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Life, Jack! That’s the very thing.” He was nearly whispering. When he finally went silent and the nodding motion of his head had slowed, I said, “So … how much would it cost?”

  “About seventy thousand dollars,” he said without hesitation and then did not add another word. He was also a better salesman than I had expected.

  “Why so much?” I asked, pretending to be naïve.

  “Pays for all the travel, accommodations, the expense of surgery, aftercare, all incidentals, and my fee, which is ten thousand dollars.”

  That was eleven years ago, but eighty grand was still well below market. Ten thousand dollars, I thought. That explains the shitty house and the octopus display where the front lawn should be. He had not even mentioned the part—the kidney.

  “How much is it for the kidney?”

  He peered at me intently and suddenly had a more focused and intelligent look in his eyes. After a moment he said, “Nothing.” I waited. “Are you a cop, Jack?” he asked, still smiling.

  “No. Oh … no,” I replied, also smiling, and calmly added, “I am not a cop. Sorry if that came out wrong …”

  “Are you affiliated with any law enforcement agency?” he asked, still smiling casually.

  “No.”

  “The organ is donated, Jack. I don’t deal in organs. I just make arrangements for your wife to go to an excellent transplant center in a foreign country where the government doesn’t have its hands around the throats of sick people. Think of me like a travel agent. What you do while you’re on this particular trip, at that particular facility—once you get there—is your business. But I can tell you this: she’ll get what she needs, and two weeks after that surgery, she’ll feel better than she has in years.”

  The hospitals must be paying local finders, I surmised. The price of the organ must come out of the overall fee for the surgery. “And you get ten thousand?” I asked him.

  “Jack, I need to make a living too. And to pay for my research, and—”

  “Herm,” I interrupted him, “I wasn’t complaining. It seems too low.”

  ◆

  He was taking ten grand per kidney. Back then, I was probably getting at least triple that, and that was only the sell-side commission on the transaction. “So if you don’t get involved with getting the actual kidney, who does? How do we know it’s the right, you know, match, and that she’ll be healthy?” I asked.

  “Good questions, Jack. The hospital handles all of that. Before you and Susan make the trip—I assume you’d be going
with her? …” I nodded. “Before you go, I’ll be in contact with the medical team at the hospital, send them her chart. They’ll secure a kidney from a living donor that’s a good match. You’re paying me for my contacts and experience. I have worked with these people for years. I know where your wife will get the right care. And I know where she would not get the right care.”

  “And these people just donate kidneys? They don’t get paid? Why would they do that?” I asked him, feigning the genuine concern of any intelligent, but uninitiated, man.

  “Does it matter?”

  I paused for what I thought was an appropriate amount of time, then said, “I suppose not.” Then I added, “Herm, it doesn’t sound like you make all that much. Your house, you’re not living extravagantly … do you mind my asking …”

  “Why I do this?” he asked with a fatherly smile.

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t go to medical school, Jack. I’m not a doctor. But I get to save people’s lives. These people who come to me, many of them would die. With my help, they will live, maybe just as long as you or me. And without me, they’d wait through four years of dialysis treatments while the US government played God with their lives.” He paused. “I do this,” he said sincerely, “for love.”

  ◆

  There was no air-conditioning, but he had ceiling fans spinning in all of the rooms. They pushed the hot air around but did little to cool the house. It was cooler than it was outside in the sun, but probably still well into the mid-eighties. Insects from the garden buzzed about outside of the screened windows. My shirt was sticking to my chest.

  “So no one bothers you because technically you’re not selling organs or anything …” In my head, the word “love” was reverberating in his voice, like an itch or a headache.

  “Now you got it, Jack. I’m just a travel agent.”

  “Herm, what’s the deal with those stories about guys losing kidneys in Vegas? Waking up in bathtubs full of ice with a note that says to get to the hospital or they’ll die? … Is any of that real?”

  “Kidney thieves?” he said with a bit of a smile. “Forget that. That stuff doesn’t really happen. At least not here in the states. You need an operating room. Two. A sterile environment, and anesthesia and nurses and … it’s mostly just urban myths.”

  “All that stuff about hookers luring drunk businessmen to hotel rooms … I read something about some guy, ‘The Siren’ they call him. ‘The Siren?’ Runs a ring of kidney thieves. That’s not real?”

  He snorted a short laugh. “The Siren is not real,” he said, shaking his head. “But I won’t say this business isn’t without danger for guys like me.”

  He calmly got up from the table, turned, reached toward a kitchen drawer behind him and removed a handgun. Maybe a .38. He looked into my eyes as he placed it on the table between us and sat back down. The gun made a solid “tap” sound as it came to rest on the wooden surface of the table, muzzle pointed straight toward me. Coburn reached over and turned it slightly, so it was pointing toward the wall. “I gotta be careful,” he said.

  I smiled, yawned a bit, and said, “Why? Why do you have to be careful? Who cares?”

  “I told you. The government. The healthcare industry. FBI. The FBI is always watching me. They’re tapping my phones right now. They drive by the house now and then. Like I don’t know why a white Buick is coming by. Or a green Oldsmobile. Like I don’t know which cars they use… .”

  “But if the FBI wanted to catch you, you’d be caught already,” I said. “You’re not hard to find. It took me five minutes on the Internet.”

  “Not catch me, Jack. Just keeping tabs on me. And my work. I am close to some big discoveries in cryogenics. I could show you. Downstairs. I have been working with spider venom, and human growth hormone. Injecting myself. I’m close now. I may have it solved soon …”

  “Solved? What?” “Eternal life. When a part wears out, you replace it. Like a kidney. But there’s more …”

  “I see.”

  “They can’t have that.”

  “Who?”

  “The government. I told you. The FBI. The pharmaceutical companies need sick people for customers… . But they don’t bother me because they need me. That’s how I stay a step ahead. Smarter than them,” he added with a grin, pointing at his temple.

  “They need you?” I asked.

  “Every time those Keystone cops get a lead on a black-market organ ring, who do you think they call for advice?”

  This was eleven years ago. I knew little then about the way things are balanced in the business and the legal system, but his words quickly sunk in. “And do you advise them?” I asked casually.

  “Of course.”

  ◆

  When I left his house I went to the car and opened the trunk. I got my bag and changed my shirt right there on the street, removing my sweat-soaked button down and replacing it with a clean, dry t-shirt. I got in the car, cranked the air conditioner, and drove away. I never spoke to Hermann Coburn again. When I got to the hotel, I burned every single one of my email addresses and cell-phone numbers. I knew I would have to contact all of my associates and provide them with new ones once I got back to New York. It was worth it. I wanted no connection whatsoever to The Man from Dallas. Now, when his name comes up, I pretend to have never spoken with him, but I can tell you this: I secretly root for him. I wish him well, and I’m glad he helps people. I pray that he’s right, and that what I do helps people too. I hope he gets it right and finishes his “research” in time—before his heart gets too old or the FBI changes their minds about him. But I don’t want to be in his Rolodex on the day that either one of those things happens.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN:

  WILL YOU CALL ME AFTERWARD?

  In the late nineties and into the beginning of the twenty-first century, the organ rush was on and blossoming. I built a network of foreign transplant centers and local finders through which I could find sellers and source parts. I co-brokered more and more deals with buyer’s agents like Wallace, making the risks associated with tracking down rich, sick, desperate, and open-minded Americans and Europeans less and less of my concern. I met fewer buyers and spoke to none of them after their wires hit my Bermuda or Cayman accounts. Until I called Connie Laughlin.

  In December of 2004 I was on my balcony in New York late one night focusing my telescope into the cold, clear black of the winter sky without purpose and for some reason I thought of Connie Laughlin. She was one of mine. I had sourced her myself off a website and negotiated the details with her and her husband, growing unintentionally fond of them. I remembered her more clearly than most because she wasn’t just a kidney. Actually, I remember them all, but Connie a bit more. Connie needed a kidney and a liver and the Laughlins exhausted their savings and also took a second mortgage to come up with the fee. Only a month or two after her procedure she called one of my cellphones and invited me to dinner. She really did. I declined of course, but I was touched, and felt guilty. Perhaps that’s why I thought of her around holiday time a few years later and why I made that very first follow-up call.

  Connie and her husband were always on the phone together each time we spoke, one always yelling to the other saying, “It’s Jack! Pick up downstairs!” The Laughlins had been very focused on getting Connie better in time for their daughter’s wedding. They were Irish and made a point of their heritage and I couldn’t help but disclose that I too was partly Irish. Connie started referring to me, for some reason, as Jack St. Peter, which I suppose is better than many of the things I’ve been called.

  “Kentucky Fried Chicken!” she answered the phone cheerfully in 2004. It had been a couple of years since we had spoken but I knew it was Connie right away.

  “Connie, it’s Jack.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m making chicken tonight and the kids are all here. Who’s this?”

  “Jack. Jack St. Peter.”

  “Jack! Oh my god, Jackie St. Peter! Jack. Hello. Hello there. How are
you, Jack? Is everything all right now?”

  “Oh yes. Connie, I was just calling to make sure everything’s all right with you. We haven’t talked in a long time. I don’t want to intrude but I do like to check in sometimes and make sure my clients are doing well.”

  “Oh, Jack! Jack St. Peter, my hero, Jack. How sweet of you, Jack.”

  “Do you want me to hold on while Michael picks up too?”

  “Hold on a minute,” she said, and there was some silence. After a moment she returned and said, “He can’t, Jack. He’s working with the boys. Making drawings with Annie’s little ones. The twins are here. It’s a madhouse.”

  “I understand. How are you?”

  “Thank God,” she said more calmly, “thank God, Jack. Thanks to you, too. Jack, hey, Jack, do you live in New York?”

  “Why do you ask?” I replied casually, guard going up.

  “Just that I’m making a load of chicken, Jack. You practically saved my life, you know. And I have a ton of chicken here. We’re in Brooklyn, in Red Hook, the part with all the Italians. West of where the blacks mostly live. Come right now and have some dinner with us, Jack. We always—hold on a minute, please …”

  Even with her hand held over the phone, I could tell she was speaking very loudly, yelling maybe. She came back on and said, “That was just Michael. He says not to bother you and you’re probably with your own family. But surely we’d love you to come.”

  “Connie, how are you? How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Good days and bad days, Jack. Good and bad. Are you sure about dinner?” She paused. “It’s practically Christmas Eve.”

  “I’d love to,” I said, “but I’m in Chicago. I just wanted to say hello and make sure you’re okay.” I was in Manhattan, of course.

  “What’s that?” she asked. She had her hand over the phone again and this time she was certainly yelling at her husband who I could hear in the background garbling something or other about “no goods” which I assumed might have referred to me.

  “I just said I’m in Chicago but that I called, I called to say hello, Connie. To make sure you are okay, and you are, and I’m glad for that. That’s all really.”