Invasion of Privacy

the day before, I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of fascination. “Mo—”
    “One of the computer Nazis got me some of the laws on this.” He picked up a densely printed Xerox. “It seems some doctor got the idea of buying organs from living donors, then selling them on the open market. That made Congress pass the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, which kind of regulated things. But,” picking up another Xerox, “every state in the Union passed this Uniform Anatomical Gift Act—which, I got to tell you, doesn’t seem all that ‘uniform’ to me. Anyway, under the state law, the families of people killed kind of ‘quickly and cleanly’ can donate the decedent’s organs. Only guess what, John?”
    “No organ-donor card, no organ donation.”
    “What?”
    “Without a card from the donor, the families can’t—”
    “Oh. Huh, never thought about that.” Shaking one Xerox like a rattle at the other, Mo said, “Have to read these over again, dammit. No, what I meant was, the families won’t receive a dime for the organs, but something called a ‘transplant agency’—that’s a nice touch, don’t you think? A transplant agency, like they’re selling insurance or real estate. Anyway, this agency gets something from the hospital, and the hospital gets fifteen, twenty thousand for each major organ, and so the old joke, it doesn’t hold up anymore.”
    I had to bite. “Which old joke?”
    This look was more disappointed than baleful. “Holy Cross would be—you went to the Cross, right?”
    “Right, Mo. ”
    “The good priests would be ashamed, your lack of chemistry culture.”
    “Chemistry?”
    “Yeah, The old joke, that every human body is worth only about a dollar forty-nine in chemicals. Well, I’ll tell you, John, if my computer Nazis are right,” reaching for a pencil and touching the sharpened tip to his tongue, “the price went up to around... let’s see... fifteen and change for a kidney, times two, plus twenty for the liver, times— no, just one per customer on—”
    “Mo, speaking of computers.”
    He looked up. “What?”
    “Speaking of the computers, could you loan me one of your people to do a little more research?”
    “Research? They already got all I can use on the organ market.”
    “I meant for me, on something else.”
    “Will it get you out of my hair?”
    “Cross my heart.”
    Waving at his Xeroxed statutes, Mo Katzen said, “That supposed to be funny?” and then reached for the telephone.

    The computer researcher who came to Mo’s door this time was a young African-American woman named Giselle with dreadlocked hair and a Lauren Hutton gap between her two front teeth. Giselle led me back through the rabbit warren of cubicles to her carrel, and she turned out to be much faster than the first helper had been.
    We ran “Steven Stepanian” through the search commands. Just a couple of isolated references to his being on the Plymouth Mills School Committee. Then Lana Stepanian. Nothing. We tried Lana Lopez. Nothing again.
    Next was Norman Elmendorf. A couple of photo credits on pictures he’d taken for his Brockton paper years ago that apparently the Herald had gotten permission to use as well. Nothing about his military service, despite the exhaustive media coverage the Gulf War had received. Giselle and I tried Kira Elmendorf too. No entries. Tángela Robinette. Three stories—one main, two much briefer follow-ups—on her husband being killed and her own previous federal service. Son Jamey was listed as another survivor in each article.
    For the hell of it, I asked Giselle to run Paul or Paulie Fogerty through. Zip, but that’s what I expected anyway.
    Giselle looked up, the gap somehow making her smile seem more helpful. “Anyone else?”
    “Yes,” even though it was really scraping rock bottom. “Try the names Yale Quentin and Plymouth Willows.”
    “That’s Y-A-L-E and Q-U-E-N-T-I-N?”
    “I think so.”
    “And Willows, like the tree?”
    “Yes.”
    “You want them linked?”
    “Linked?”
    “Yes. ‘Plymouth Willows’ within so many words of ‘Yale Quentin’ as the search command.”
    “No. Run his name on its own first.”
    The computer found a few articles from the early eighties about Quentin doing some smaller developments elsewhere on the South Shore . Later articles overlapped in discussing him and the Plymouth Willows project: the initial optimism, the unfolding difficulties, the eventual financial and personal