Blood Debt

for a moment. "The woman is Patricia Chou. She's really intense. One of my night school teachers says she does kamikaze reporting and thinks she's trying for a big enough story to get her a network job. At least half of City Council is terrified of her, and I heard she was willing to go to jail once to protect a source. I don't know who the old guy is."
    "The old guy," Celluci snarled, "probably has no more than ten years on me."
    Tony prudently withdrew.
    On screen, Patricia Chou frowned slightly and said, "So what you're saying, Mr. Swanson, is that the fears people have about organ donations are completely unfounded?"
    "Fear," her guest declared, "is often based on lack on information."
    It was a good response; Celluci tossed the remote onto the glass-topped coffee table—Fitzroy had a distinct fondness for breakable furniture—and settled back to watch.
    Mr. Swanson settled back much the same way and looked into the camera with the ease of a man often interviewed. "Let's take those fears one at a time.
    People with influence or money do not have a better chance of getting a transplant. Computers suggest the best possible match for each available organ based on bipod type, size, illness of patient, and time on the waiting list."
    Patricia Chou leaned forward, a slender finger extended to emphasize her point. "But what about the recent media coverage of famous people getting transplants?"
    "I think you'll find that media coverage is the point to that question, Ms. Chou. They're getting the coverage because they're famous, not because they've had a transplant. Hundreds of people have transplants and never make the news. I assure you, my wife would still be alive today if I could have bought her a transplant."
    "Your wife, Rebecca, died of chronic kidney failure?"
    "That's right." He had to swallow before he could go on, and Celluci, who over the years had seen grief in every possible form, was willing to bet it was no act. "Three years on dialysis, three years waiting for a match, three years dying. And my wife wasn't alone; approximately one third of all patients awaiting transplants die. Which is why I'm an active supporter of the British Columbia Transplant Society."
    "But in this time of cutbacks, surely the cost of transplants…"
    "Cost?" His gaze swung around and locked on her face. "Ms. Chou, did you know that if all the patients waiting at the end of last year had been able to receive kidneys, health care savings would exceed one billion dollars?"
    Ms. Chou did not know, nor, from a certain tightening around her eyes, was she pleased at being interrupted. "To return to the public's fears, Mr. Swanson, what about the possibility of organ-legging?" Her emphasis made the last word hang in the air for a moment or two after she finished speaking.
    "That sort of thing is an impossibility, at least in any first world nation. You'd have to have doctors willing to work outside the law, expensive facilities, you'd have to contravene a computer system with massive safeguards—I'm not saying it couldn't be done, merely that costs would be so prohibitive there'd be no point."
    Good answer, Celluci allowed. Although slightly less than spontaneous. Swanson had obviously been expecting a variation on the question.
    "So from a purely marketing standpoint, there'd be no profit in it?"
    "Exactly. You'd have to hire thugs to procure unwilling donors and I imagine that a reliable thug, provided you could find such a creature, doesn't come cheap."
    She ignored his attempt to lighten the interview, "So the body found floating in the harbor, a body that had a kidney surgically removed, had nothing to do with organ-legging?"
    That, Celluci realized, was where she'd been heading all along.
    Mr. Swanson spread his hands, manicured nails gleaming in the studio lights. "There are a number of reasons you can have a kidney surgically removed, Ms. Chou. The human body only needs one."
    "And you don't believe that someone needed one of his?"
    "I believe that this kind of yellow journalism is why there's a critical shortage of donated organs and people like my wife are dying."
    "But wouldn't someone be willing to pay…"
    The screen returned to black, and Henry put the remote back on the coffee table.
    Celluci, who hadn't even been aware he was in the room until he'd crossed directly into his line of sight, attempted to relax a number of muscles jerked into knots by Fitzroy's sudden appearance. "Did you have to do that?" he