What happens when a surgeon turns his eye from the operating room to crime fiction? In "Stone Hearts", Craig R. Smith, MD, cardiac surgeon and former Chair of the Department of Surgery, builds a medical caper rooted in transplant, intrigue, and the peculiar moral weather that hovers above and beyond the hospital.
Follow along each Friday as we release the novel one chapter at a time. You can also see more on Dr. Smith's Substack, Long Incision.
Spring, 1974
Elias awoke on Jean’s couch, purged of rumination over profit and loss, and pleased that he’d slept soundly for almost seven hours. After the buy they’d be coming back from Jersey early Sunday morning, so banking some sleep against the night approaching seemed fortunate. Elias was sitting at Jean’s cleaning, weighing, cutting, bagging, and dining table trying to finish an inorganic chemistry assignment when Jean got a call from his source changing the meet to an hour later, at a new location—a bar on Mulberry near Hester, in the beating heart of Little Italy. Jean didn’t seem concerned about the change. The Teaneck site had the advantage of proximity to major highways; Jean wondered aloud if the source had decided against crossing State lines. Elias wondered if the source had a reason to make cinematically clear who was on whose turf, but he kept that to himself.
With midnight approaching the brothers Bessette drove to the Taylor mansion in Jean’s canary yellow Pontiac GTO and parked next to the saucy, angle-parked Austin-Healey that had preempted two-thirds of a graveled rectangle large enough for three cars. Reggie greeted them in the front hall. Jean and Reggie were dressed as if they were answering casting calls for diametrically contrasting roles. Jean was a businessman, in a dark suit and tie, and well-shined black wingtips—what the boys who lived close to the tracks called “thousand-eyes.” Reggie was more physically imposing in a tight white tee shirt tucked into blue jeans, and black high-top sneakers. Elias was dressed as himself, in blue jeans, polo shirt, windbreaker, and penny loafers.
When recruited, Reggie hadn’t asked for anything except the thrill of the action. Jean appreciated the enthusiasm but placed two crisp new $50 bills in Reggie’s palm. “We’re not amateurs.” he added. “And to keep it all above-board, you should know that Elias gets a third of my sales and two-thirds of his own.” Elias added that he would comp Reggie some product from his share. Reggie paused to imagine the night ahead, then sprinted up the stairs to park the cash in his bedroom. When he came down Jean and Elias were already standing in the dim light of the driveway. Reggie locked the front door behind him. Turning the key reminded him of how many times he’d wished he was turning that key for the last time. No one in the Estate Area heard three doors slam on the GTO or heard the pea gravel crunching under tires in the driveway. They drove south along the Hudson towards Little Italy.
Jean managed to find a space on the street a few blocks away and they were right on time for the 01:00 rendezvous. The bar looked like most neighborhood bars in the city, identifiably Italian in the same way an Irish bar in Hell’s Kitchen was identifiably Irish. Inside, a silent juke box rested in a corner. All the tables, covered with red and white checkerboard tablecloths, sat empty. At the end of the long bar, near the door, were two men separated by empty stools, each in a contemplative stage of inebriation.
Jean told the bartender he was there to meet Mr. Soriano. The bartender responded only by turning to look at the swinging doors to the kitchen, which swung open as four men walked through in single file. Fourth in line was a middle-aged, balding man wearing a suit and tie, his jacket unbuttoned over an ample belly. By the time the fourth in line reached Jean, his three companions had taken up positions next to Elias and Reggie. The first three just stood, no words, no smiles, no handshakes. The fourth man smiled pleasantly at his three guests and announced that he was Mr. Soriano. He gestured for Jean to sit next to him at the bar. Everyone else stayed at attention.
“Tell me again the name of the friend we have in common,” Mr. Soriano said.
“Paul Vergilio, in the Bronx.”
“Remind me how you met him?”
“I’ve used his body shop, for fenders.”
Mr. Soriano looked satisfied. “We have products. You have cash?”
“I do. I’d like a taste from the bricks first, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course you do, no problem, but we don’t do business in here, where anyone could drop in. We’ll go for a ride. Your boys will stay here with my guys.” He gestured towards two bar stools with one hand. Elias wondered whether ‘boys’ versus ‘guys’ was a conscious choice of words.
With silky choreography one man took the lead walking out the front door ahead of Jean and Mr. Soriano. Watching them leave, Elias noticed two half-empty glasses where the two customers near the door had been. The other two hosts professionally frisked Elias and Reggie. They sat down on their appointed stools, then the two men took the adjacent stools on either end, flanking them. Either Jean hadn’t anticipated splitting his forces, or he hadn’t shared that part of the plan with his muscle. Elias and Reggie could intimidate most suburban tough guys cast from the high-school-football mold, but these tough guys were silent men who radiated menace. Some muscle we are! Elias thought. Should we have demanded to frisk them first? How quickly opportunity and momentum were lost, and they were blocked pawns.
The older man looked like he was in his forties. His graying hair was still hanging on around the dome. He was inches shorter than his captives, but looked wiry, strong, and formidable inside a loose short-sleeved shirt. The older man nodded to the bartender, who asked Elias and Reggie what they’d like to drink, “courtesy of your host.” They ordered drafts and sipped them delicately during a few minutes of silence. “Give them a shot of Maker’s with those,” said the older man. Elias and Reggie felt obliged to throw down the shots. Elias managed to utter his first words, “Thanks, man.” Reggie said nothing.
The beers had been nursed for the maximum time allowable, and had just been refilled when Mr. Soriano returned. It was a reach up for the shorter man to wrap an arm around Jean’s shoulders, as he guided Jean to the bar to rejoin his boys. Jean was wearing a rigid game face. Soriano said “I’m afraid there’s been some misunderstanding over what we were delivering, and what you came prepared to buy. To put it real simple, you didn’t bring enough money. Mr. Bessette, maybe you’d like to explain what’s next?”
In a flat, strained voice Elias had rarely heard, Jean explained. “My order was misleading, and I didn’t confirm it in time to correct the problem. Mr. Soriano has delivered twice the amounts I was expecting. But instead of voiding the order he’s agreed to give me a little time to come up with the extra cash.”
Elias couldn’t muster the nerve to ask why they couldn’t just pay for half and leave with half. It seemed reasonable to assume that Jean had already covered that ground. He managed to squeak, “How much time?”
Jean answered, freed from Soriano’s guiding arm but not from his proximity. “To closing time tomorrow, that’s four AM, so a little over 24 hours. Mr. Soriano wants a little collateral, so you and Reggie will stay here. As proof of our good will, until we complete the deal.”
It was time for Elias and Reggie to look stricken. Jean, trying to sound brave and confident, said “See you guys tomorrow!” and left, followed by Soriano and his driver. The two centurions escorted Elias and Reggie through the kitchen and out the back door, past trash cans and a dumpster to a metal door the older man unlocked with a key. The younger man started up a narrow stairwell as the older man locked the door from the inside. When he was four or five steps up, well beyond an arm’s reach, the older man told Elias to follow, but added “Keep the gap, don’t catch him up.” He directed Reggie to follow Elias, then he followed, several steps behind Reggie. At the first landing he reminded Elias to respect the gap. Harder to trip someone on the stairs, thought Elias. They’ve done this before. On the fourth floor they entered a hallway with several closed doors on either side. The older man caught up and unlocked the first door on the left.
Elias quickly scanned the one-room apartment. Four cots, a kitchenette, and a bathroom. The windows had exterior metal grills. A clock on the wall read 2:45. The senior guard said “You boys pick a cot and sleep as long as you can.” They lay down, fully clothed, and tried to sleep while their guards alternated between napping on a cot and flipping through old magazines at the table. So far nobody’s tied up, no weapons waved around, no violence…we might still survive this, Elias thought, and fell asleep for a few hours.
Elias was wakened by the bathroom door closing loudly, and saw the older man emerge. He turned to look at the wall clock—7:52. The younger man was sitting at the table, smoking, looking bored and irritable. Elias was increasingly wary of the younger man. In height he was in between the older man and their hostages. Elias guessed he was around thirty years old. His facial expressions ranged from sullen to unfriendly, framed by a dark black semi-pompadour suggesting fifties greaser. His upper body looked like it could comfortably lift cement blocks with feet in them. Reggie looked wide awake, sitting on his cot. “If you boys want to use the can, this is a good time,” said the older man. Elias and Reggie exchanged looks, Reggie rose and used the bathroom first.
The older man said “There’s a place two doors down that makes pretty good egg sandwiches. Want some? And coffee?”
Elias spoke for both. “Sounds good, thanks.”
“Got some cash?”
Elias pulled out his wallet and handed over a ten-dollar bill. The younger man returned fifteen minutes later with four identical breakfasts in four paper bags. He handed Elias $2.50 in change. Breakfast was finished and Elias was still nursing his coffee when sounds in the hallway foreshadowed the click of a key in the door. In came the fourth man from the night before, followed by Mr. Soriano. The two babysitters had tensed at the sounds but immediately relaxed.
“OK, I guess we’re done here!” exclaimed the young man, as he pushed back in his chair.
Soriano gave him a look that froze the young man in place. He shifted his gaze to Elias, then over to Reggie. He seemed to find looking at Reggie distasteful. Maybe it was the contrast between Reggie’s size and strength, his costume, and his passivity; only Elias knew that was out of character. Soriano shifted his gaze back to Elias. “I don’t know what’s up with your buddy over there but I’m gonna try to tell you how it is. You boys should have picked your friends better.” Elias snuck a glance at Reggie to see how he was reacting to Soriano’s disdain. He thought he saw a few embers of the other Reggie flicker across his face and die. Soriano continued “Here’s how this works. Normally the customer who was confused about his obligations has the resources to meet them, and you boys are home a few hours later, dividing up our product.” He shook his head with an air of expiring patience.
“We seemed to be on plan with Mr. Bessette when we left. He was saying ‘Don’t worry, I’m good for it!’ But when he’s hopping into that yellow slut he drives, he says ‘It will take me a little time to find it. But don’t worry, I will!’” Soriano paused and raised his arms toward the ceiling, pantomiming has reason forsaken us? He dropped his arms and looked straight at Elias. “You look like a smart kid who maybe understands doing business. Maybe I don’t need to explain the difference between ‘I’m good for it’ and ‘I’ll find it.’ We don’t risk laying out our products in the night air to do deals with a guy who has to launch a capital campaign to make good. To find ourselves in this situation says either we made a bad judgement, or we were misled. Which do you think is more likely? You get where I’m going here?”
Elias was afraid he knew exactly where Soriano was going. “Does it really matter? He took your word that he had 24 hours. I know Jean Bessette. You’re going to get your money.”
Mr. Soriano made a subtle come-over-here gesture with his hands and the two babysitters were immediately on their feet. The atmosphere in the room became a dangerous approaching weather system that can be felt and smelled but not yet heard or seen. Elias gripped his cot and tensed his thighs. Reggie looked frightened and unprepared for action. “You think I got nothing more productive to do with my two guys than have ‘em sit here all day? Like I said, I’m sorry you didn’t do a better job picking your friends.”
“He’s not my friend. He’s my brother. You’ll get your money.”
“Your brother?” Soriano was immobilized by that surprise. He stared straight at Elias, pursed his lips, shook his head slightly. Finally, he said “Now I see the resemblance. Okay, boys, against my better judgement, we’ll give Mr. Bessette his 24 hours. After that, it’s between the brothers.” He turned, the fourth man opened the door, and both left.
The lock clicked behind them. The young man looked angry. The older man looked resigned and sat down at the table. He looked at the young man with annoyance. “You heard him. That’s what we’re going to do, so take a nap.”
The day wore on in boredom. After a simple dinner catered by the younger man from somewhere on the street, supported by another cash donation from Elias’s wallet, the group became collectively impatient. At any given moment, at least one of them was staring at the clock. Seven became eight, eight became nine. Seven hours to go, and no sign of Jean.
The older man was still calm but was looking more serious. The younger man was getting irritable and twitchy. Between ten and eleven Reggie visited the bathroom twice. The second time he lingered conspicuously. The young man marched over and yanked the door open. Reggie was just sitting there, looking like a cornered animal. He recovered enough of himself to hold eye contact with the intruder while he pulled up his pants and took his time walking back to his cot. He had yet to speak a single word.
The younger man looked petulant—had he lost a staring contest with a mute? He disappeared out the door and down the stairs, then reappeared with a bottle of Stolichnaya, and pulled shot glasses out of a cupboard. “Might as well help kill some time,” he said. He waved the others over to seats at the table and filled four glasses.
Elias was feeling life-or-death tension but still seemed capable of focus and calculation. He had long since concluded that there was no misunderstanding. This was a pure shake-down of the naïve suburban poseurs. To Elias, that implied there was a good chance Soriano’s crew would be satisfied by taking whatever they could milk out of them and let everyone go. He had been more confident in that assessment before Soriano reappeared that morning, but it still seemed counterintuitive to snuff three suburban kids over a deal that had to be relatively small in the context of their overall business. What will they do if Jean doesn’t show…I’m not going down without a fight, but how do we coordinate? Why is a well-intentioned Ivy League premed freshman sitting in this place, making these calculations? Elias picked up his shot glass with an acknowledging nod to the young man and sipped it.
Reggie was taut as a violin string—feet tapping, hands shaking, head bobbing, darting eyes. Elias couldn’t remember encountering this version of Reggie in the past. In their hour of need, where was the ice-cold sadistic bully? Reggie sucked his glass dry, slapped it down empty, and for the first time stared assertively at the younger man, who did the same, then promptly refilled both glasses. The older man gave his partner a sharp look, and didn’t touch his glass. Reggie drained his again, but the younger man slowed down.
The bottle of vodka was half empty when Elias looked up to witness that moment each day when all three hands on the clock aligned…where are you, Jean? The older man, drumming his fingers on the table, looked straight at Elias for a few minutes. He stopped drumming. “I’m gonna make this real clear, ‘cause I know you’re thinking you might have to break out of here. Lemme just point out that you two girls would have to kill both of us with your bare hands to get the keys. You can go out the window right now, if you want, but even if you get through the bars it’s a long way to the ground.” He turned to address Reggie, appearing irritated by the sight of him. “Get a grip on yourself, tough guy, just sit still, and we’ll see how this sorts out when your friend comes back.”
Reggie and the younger man were about equally drunk. Reggie had left the table and was sitting on the edge of his cot. The younger man scraped his chair over in front of Reggie so that their knees almost touched. “What you lookin’ at, college boy?”
Reggie did not respond but held his opponent’s gaze.
“I’m lookin’ at that funny spot in your hair. You some kind of hairdresser?”
Still no reaction. Elias was surprised by Reggie’s self-control, if that’s what it was.
“You got all dressed up like that cuz you think I’m a queer, right?”
Reggie looked away.
“Look at me, college, you think I’m a queer? All dressed up in your tighty-whity tee shirt! Should we go down the hall to another room, see what you really wanta do, in private?”
The older man was staring hard at the back of his companion’s head. Elias was in uncharted territory with Reggie and could only guess what was ahead. Reggie spoke for the first time in 24 hours, almost inaudibly. “I don’t think anything, man, I’m just sitting here.”
The younger man leaned back, raising the front legs of his chair off the ground a few inches. “OK, cornhole, when your sissy boyfriend don’t show up with any money we’ll get to the truth of it, won’t we?”
Reggie hissed desperately, “I need to go the bathroom!”
“Oh, really? Do you want me to come in there with you?”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. The lock was turned, and in walked Mr. Soriano with the fourth man and Jean, who was smiling. The dawning of collective relief was interrupted by a foul smell.
“Motherfucker!” the younger man shouted, now on his feet, “this asshole just shit himself!” He yanked Reggie up to his feet, revealing a dark stain on the cot. He shoved Reggie ferociously, almost knocking him off his feet. “Get your candy ass in the bathroom, you piece of dogshit!” Reggie stumbled into the bathroom and closed the door. “I don’t fucking believe it,” the younger man raged on, “what a stinking mess!”
The older man stood suddenly and drove both hands into his partner’s chest. The younger man staggered back but didn’t fall.
“You had to have your fun, didn’t you? Now Mr. Soriano is back to talk business, so shut your sloppy drunk-ass mouth and start cleaning it up!”
Mr. Soriano allowed himself to look disgusted momentarily, shook his head, and told his driver to get some clean shot glasses from the cupboard. He poured Stoli into two glasses, handed one to Jean, and toasted. “All straightened out. You boys get home and catch some sleep. Maybe we do this again sometime. Especially with that LSD and some of the pills, it’s a college market. You might be helpful.”
The toilet flushed once, twice. Water was running. The door opened and Reggie emerged, with the blank stare of the dead. The older man unlocked the door and the three customers hurried out. The young man was on his knees, grudgingly penitent, cleaning Reggie’s cot. As the parolees followed the older man down the stairs they heard the younger man shouting after them, “This ain’t over, ya know, I won’t forget you flower girls!”
They walked the few blocks to the car as fast as they could. Elias said he was relieved the car was still there. Jean replied that Mr. Soriano had assigned some of his guys to keep an eye on it. Reggie slunk into the back seat, Elias took shotgun, and they were off. A double-parked black sedan nearby pulled away more slowly and disappeared.
Previous chapters:
Chapter 8: The Brothers Bessette
Related:
- A Conversation with Dr. Craig Smith on His Novel “Stone Hearts,” the Art of Writing, and the Surgeon’s Imagination
- Lessons Learned: Surgeon Craig Smith Reflects on Career in the OR
- Nobility in Small Things: A Look Back at The Leadership of Craig Smith, MD