The Dismantling Read Online Free Page B

emboldened him, or maybe landing a lucrative liver job was incentive enough to bend his own rules. “The guy’s an alcoholic. There’s no hiding it. Forget six months. It probably hasn’t even been six hours since his last drink.”
    â€œWhat did I say? I’ll get him in there. Those regulations are too conservative anyway, you know they’re just there to protect the hospital’s ass. Just make sure he tells Klein he’s been clean four or five months and I’ll do the rest.”
    â€œWhat about the piss test?”
    â€œI said I’ll fix it. Worry about your own job.”
    And so a week after his excursion to Long Island, Simon sat in the office, scrolling through a batch of applicant e-mails. Crewes had called Simon the day before to inform him that Lenny was going forward with the transplant. He was doing it, Crewes had said somewhat melodramatically, for his children’s sake, not his own. Crewes and Cheryl, Lenny’s estranged wife, had returned to Lenny’s house the day after Simon’s visit, and they’d sat with him in the kitchen, turning the screws and refusing to leave until he deigned to allow them to help save his life. It was now the morning of Lenny’s physical exam at Cabrera; Lenny and Crewes were due at the office any minute. Lenny was scheduled to undergo a battery of laboratory tests—liver function, electrolyte levels, blood typing, coagulation—as well as radiographic studies of his liver and an EKG. The point was to determine his general fitness for surgery, as well as what sort of characteristics Simon would need to look for in his donor. Simon hoped DaSilva hadn’t exaggerated his ability to massage these test results, or at least to place them into some kind of more favorable context (which most likely meant emphasizing Lenny’s financial solvency by proxy), since Simon was fairly sure the machines would paint an internal picture of widespread alcoholic waste and ruin.
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    T he two men buzzed from street level. Simon let them into the building and waited in the hallway. They exited the elevator, Lenny stuffed into a pinstriped suit like a parody of Mob muscle, Crewes wearing black slacks and a fitted purple sweater, and it was as though the hallway had suddenly shrunk, squeezing in around them. They carried a presence beyond their height and weight, a
largeness
that must have been a residue from their playing days. It wasn’t arrogance or swagger. It was almost the opposite: a carefulness as they made their way down the hall, a delicacy of motion, as though they were afraid of damaging anything with which they might come into contact. As Simon shook Crewes’s hand, he thought of Alvin Plummer’s body, lying broken on the turf, and was immediately ashamed of the thought.
    He ushered them into the office and sat them on the two chairs facing his desk. He explained the tests, and then asked if the hospital had been in touch regarding the day’s schedule. Lenny said that the transplant coordinator, “a guy named DaSilva,” had called a few days earlier to introduce himself. “He said he’d meet me in the lobby and escort me through the procedures.”
    Simon nodded. “You’ll be in good hands.” He wrote the name and address of a diner on a slip of paper and slid it across the desk. “When everything’s finished, Howard and I will meet you here for lunch. It’s just a few blocks from the hospital.”
    Lenny looked at him very seriously throughout this conversation. Beads of sweat puckered on his upper lip; he slipped a gold wedding band on and off his finger. Under the suit jacket, his white shirt was stippled with moisture. Was he nervous? Maybe, but Simon didn’t think that was it, or at least not all of it. Then he realized Lenny probably hadn’t taken a drink yet that day, or maybe for the last few days, as though he