Blood Debt

her that still remembered the person she'd been wondered where such casual justice had been all the years she'd tried to get that kind of scum off the streets. He was sitting in his condo writing romance novels. Never mind. Sorry I asked. "Did he tell you anything?"
    "Only that someone's paying lots of money for special people."
    "Special as in the same blood type as the buyer of the kidney?"
    "Perhaps. But how would they find out?"
    Vicki waited until a truck roared past, then nodded toward the clinic. "Access records."
    "What? Through Hackers for Hire?"
    "If you can buy a kidney, Henry, you can certainly afford to buy someone with that kind of rudimentary hacking ability." She told him about her conversation with the old woman in the alley. "Sounds like they've bought some muscle with mean cow eyes."
    "Bull."
    "Bull?" Her tone advised a quick explanation.
    "It was a joke, Vicki. A man would have bull eyes."

    "I think I liked it better when we were trying to kill each other.
    What now?"
    Henry stopped by the car, his hand on the driver's door. "We go back to the apartment and see if Celluci's returned."
    "He hasn't." Ducking her head, she nodded a greeting at Tony. "If he got back and none of us were around, he'd call on the cell phone."
    Which rang.
    "Speak of the devil," Henry murmured, reaching in through the open window.
    Tony mouthed a silent warning as he handed over the shrilly chirping piece of plastic. If it's Celluci, be polite.
    Brows raised in an exaggerated, Who me? Henry flipped open the mouthpiece. "Fitzroy."
    "This is Dr. Eve Seto, from the East Hastings Clinic. I was speaking with a Ms. Nelson a few moments ago; she gave me this number, and…"
    "Just a minute, Doctor." Smiling, he offered the phone to Vicki. "It's for you." His smile faded when he discovered it was almost impossible to let go, to hand over to another a possession of his. Snarling, he shoved it back into the car. "Tony, give her the phone."
    Resisting the urge to crush something scented so strongly by another predator under her heel, Vicki raised it to her face. "Hello?"
    "Ms. Nelson?"
    "I ran into Mr. Fitzroy by accident, Doctor," Vicki answered the unspoken question. "He was driving by as I came out onto East Hastings."
    "Oh." Her tone suggested it was an accident she didn't quite believe in. "It's just that I remembered something that happened after lunch.
    It was a minor thing but I thought you might want to know."
    "After lunch?"
    The two men exchanged speculative glances.
    "What's she got against lunch?" Tony whispered.
    Henry shrugged. He could hear six separate heartbeats pounding up out of the basement apartment across from the clinic, but electronics interfered with eavesdropping.
    "Yes. On our way back to the clinic, we saw Patricia Chou outside the Cultural Center and…"
    "The cable television reporter."
    "That's right. The detective mentioned that he'd seen her interview with Ronald Swanson and…"
    "Ronald Swanson, the real estate guy?"
    "He's more than just real estate, Ms. Nelson." Her tone was sharp, possibly in defense of Ronald Swanson, more probably in response to the interruptions. "He's donated money to a thousand causes all over the city. He donated our computer system here at the clinic and was pretty much one hundred percent responsible for Project Hope."
    "Which is?"
    "It's a hospice on the edge of North Vancouver where transplant patients wait for kidneys to become available. It's sort of a shrine to his dead wife. A lovely place, quiet, tranquil."
    "Dead wife?"
    "Yes, she died of renal failure before they found a donor for her."
    Vicki blinked, a little overwhelmed. "Did you tell this to Celluci?"
    "No, but we did discuss kidney transplants although only in light of me actually performing them."
    "Do you perform transplants, Doctor?"
    "This is a street-front clinic, Ms. Nelson, what do you think?" She continued before Vicki could tell her. "Funny thing, though, the detective asked me that as well. I may be completely out of line here, but does your investigation have to do with the handless body they found in the harbor, the one missing the kidney?"
    "I'm not at liberty to discuss that."
    "Very well. But I'm telling you now, if you're investigating Ronald Swanson, you're dead wrong. The man is continually giving his money away. Around this area, he's practically considered a saint."
    "Not many saints make millions in real estate," Vicki noted dryly.
    "I have no intention of arguing with you about this,