Animals: Chapters Twenty-One, Twenty-Two & Twenty-Three

WHEN SURGEONS OPERATE ON PEOPLE WHO DON’T NEED IT, HOW FAR WILL THEY GO TO PROTECT THE SECRET AND KEEP THE MONEY COMING IN?

Chapter Twenty-One

Sam Burstein called Gula on a Tuesday morning to arrange the first debriefing sessions, proposing the end of that week. Tom Egan and Kelly Moran were on the line too, the three of them in Sam’s office on a conference call with the slightly compressed quality of people who have a lot to do and would like to begin doing it.

Gula let them finish before he answered.

“This week is impossible,” he said. “I’ve been traveling for two weeks and we’re going into finals. Papers due, office hours, a faculty committee meeting that’s been rescheduled twice already.” A pause. “I can give you Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Starting at two in the afternoon. But you’ll need to come to me.”

There was a silence on the line.

“Bethlehem,” Sam said.

“Bethlehem,” Gula confirmed. “Some of what you’re looking for is boxed. Physical files. It’s easier to go through them in context than to ship them. And frankly it may be better for everyone that way.” He said it without apology, the tone of someone who has already worked through the logistics and arrived at the correct answer.

Tom and Kelly exchanged a look Sam couldn’t see but could hear in the silence.

“It’s not that far,” Gula said.

It was, in fact, about ninety minutes from lower Manhattan, which was not far in the sense that federal prosecutors routinely traveled further for less. They booked rooms at the Hampton Inn on Gateway Drive and told their assistants they’d be back Thursday.