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About the Book
Prior to departing for a medical symposium in London, trauma surgeon Dr. Kyle Chandler is contacted by Ian Griffin, who runs a private investigation firm. Because of Dr. Chandler’s involvement in a previous antiques investigation case, Ian asks him to look into a new case while in London. In addition, Dr. Chandler is asked a favor by a friend to inquire about bulk wine shipments from Europe to the United States while he’s in London. The busy surgeon reluctantly agrees to both requests.
During his time in England, Dr. Chandler stumbles on a mysterious system of product smuggling to the United States. As Dr .Chandler continues his investigation in New York, then back in Kansas City, he realizes that he faces a powerful, complex network involving organized crime.
Meanwhile, Dr. Chandler tries to determine where he stands with his girlfriend, Caroline Martinelli, an attractive and successful antiques dealer whose intelligence and quick wit fuel his interest in her. As he pursues this web of illegal product distribution, escalating threats to him (and the beautiful Caroline) reveal the truth – and the truth nearly costs him his life.
In a climactic ending, Kyle’s inquiry leads him to a showdown with the organized crime don. Using his persistence to expose the smuggling scheme while protecting himself and his girlfriend, will the proverbial David overcome Goliath in this thriller?
The Excerpt
1
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Hurry up and wait—the ever present, yet often the raw reality of my job.
Being a trauma surgeon by profession, I guess you could say I chose this life as well as the headaches and back pain that went with it. Over the years, I somehow got used to being pulled in all directions at once and tried to deal as calmly as I could with the situation at hand. But then again, easier said than done.
It was a routine Tuesday evening in early October in the midwestern utopia of Kansas City, my adopted hometown. As expected of any larger US city, Kansas City had its own local chapters of the Nighttime Knife & Gun Club as well as the Drunk Drivers’ Bumper Car Club. They practiced their expertise on a regular basis.
Kansas City possessed a unique dichotomy. The city, divided between Missouri’s liberal liquor laws, and Kansas’s liquor laws likely handed down from the Puritans, with the trauma center right down the middle on Stateline Boulevard.
I moved here after finishing my surgical training in Boston in the fall of 1988. Seven years zoomed by with me spending late hours usually two nights a week at St. Jude Hospital putting automobile accident and gunshot wound victims back together. Over time, I thought I had seen just about everything crazy people try.
I mean, most people think that folks are usually home by 11:00 p.m., maybe even midnight during the week. After all, they need to get up the next morning and go to work. Right?
Wrong.
Seems that one of the veteran members of the Knife & Gun Club decided to exercise his joint membership rights with the Drunk Drivers’ Bumper Car Club that very Tuesday evening. According to the triage nurse who called me sometime after 10:15 p.m., a particular gentleman, after multiple cocktails at a local lounge, got into a heated argument with another patron at the bar. That led to each man pulling a 22-caliber handgun and the “Shootout at the OK Corral” ensued.
The prospective duel club member then fled the scene on foot and by chance encountered a fire truck backing into its station after a routine outing for a false alarm. I must admit that this guy was pretty resourceful. He brandished his handgun at the fire truck driver, got all the firemen to back away, and then took off wounded, while driving an almost forty-foot-long ladder fire truck at a high rate of speed. He made it ten blocks before crashing into the corner of a brick warehouse. Duel club membership accomplished.
After his arrival at our trauma institution, proper evaluation was completed in Trauma Room #1. What we had was a twenty-eight-year-old male, BP of 90/50, pulse 132 with obvious multiple gunshot wounds of the abdomen, closed spiral fracture of the right humerus, multiple abrasions and superficial lacerations of the face and chest, and possible laceration of the left lobe of the liver by CT Scan. Just another Tuesday night.
“Dr. Kyle Chandler,” one of the trauma nurses I worked with regularly, Bill, said as he arrived in the trauma room at shift change. “Imagine that, you here on what is usually a slow Tuesday night.”
“Just the luck of the draw,” I said cautiously.
“Anything special you need?” he asked.
“The work up is about done here,” I said. “Let’s make sure the CT scan hard copies get to the OR. Call the blood bank and have them get those two units here ASAP. And tell ’em to make sure four more units of packed cells are typed and crossed so they’re available for later.”
“Roger that El Grande Jefe,” he said quickly.
After stabilizing the patient with the two initial units of packed red blood cells, this was followed by a lengthy conversation with two anxious members of the KC Police Department to convince them that this nice gentleman was not going anywhere on his own, not with the extent of his injuries. All the necessary arrangements were then made with the OR to proceed to surgery for exploration of this gentleman’s abdomen. Finally, I slogged up to the surgeon’s lounge to get changed into surgical scrubs.
While I was waiting to get this dog-and-pony-show on the road at this late hour, my cell phone buzzed on my hip. Looking down at the caller’s number brought a smile to my face.
“Kyle, my boy, how’s life treating you?” the voice on the line blurted out his question in a thick Scottish accent.
I immediately recognized the voice as Ian Griffin, the head of a private investigation firm in Kansas City. I had worked with him on a case for the first time earlier in the year. He was a friend of Sydney Alfred, my deceased wife’s uncle who took me under his wing when I moved to Kansas City seven years ago.
It was Sydney who forced me to do something other than work all the time by getting me interested in, of all things, French period antiques. I gained knowledge over time by going to auctions, occasionally buying a few pieces. I would have them touched up by my special refinishing guy Dan, and then auction them off again for a small, but still worthwhile profit. It was Ian who got me involved in a stolen antiques for an illegal stock acquisition case with my employer Columbus HealthCare System last April. This event led me to start a new on-the-side venture of private investigation. Well, it turned out to be more than that, but whatever.
“I’m hanging in there Ian. How about you?”
“So, I guess I haven’t convinced you to give up the all-night repair shop putting car crash victims back together then, have I?”
“No Ian, not yet. What can I do for you at this lovely time of the evening?” I said sarcastically. Considering the hour, it seemed to me that Ian probably never slept.
“I’ve got a situation I want to discuss with you. This morning I received a call from a gentleman in London. It seems this gentleman, a Mr. Clanton Rogers, is some type of wealthy investor and prides himself in discovering rare finds of antique furniture. .He was referred to me by Nigel Whittenberg, the antiques dealer in the West End of London who had originally called me in April about the stolen antiques case that you broke open. You know—the one that led to the downfall of your beloved Columbus Healthcare System management team.”
My caution antennae started to rise.
“Yes, Ian, I haven’t forgotten the case. The one where I almost got permanently sidelined after being beaten to a pulp if not for a heroic ex-Marine who saved my skin from those CHS goons,” I said, staring at the ceiling and shaking my head. As if I could forget that fiasco.
“Anyway,” he said, avoiding the obvious. “This Mr. Rogers told me that some notable French antique furniture from a private estate in New York was set to be sold by Sotheby’s at auction in London. All the pieces from this particular lot were thought to be French originals from the late 1700s. Sotheby’s completed the two standard independent appraiser evaluations prior to the auction to certify their authenticity. Mr. Rogers insisted on his own third-party appraiser to evaluate a certain piece of interest to him. His appraiser found the piece to be a reproduction just before it was set to go up for auction. He said his appraiser mentioned it was an incredible copy, too. Sotheby’s was terribly embarrassed to say the least. They have their legal department looking into it, but the authenticity of the whole lot has now come into question prior to the scheduled sale.”
“Yeah… So, what does that have to do with you calling me?”
“Mr. Rogers wants my firm to look into the matter. He’s an American chap and is close friends with the family in New York who put up those pieces for auction in London. Sotheby’s won’t give him any information about their investigation, but it’s looking like they’ll be shifting the blame of furniture authenticity to the family in New York who put it up for auction.”
“Is that possible?”.
“Kyle, you know more about antiques than I do. As you know, in the world of fine art and antiques, anything is possible.”
“So, what are you trying to find out here?”.
“The family in New York has quietly told Mr. Rogers that they would put out a reward of quite a substantial sum to finding out if the original antiques had been switched for some ultra-premium quality reproductions somewhere in transit from New York to London.”
“And you are calling me because…?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, Sydney called me this week and said that you were going to a trauma surgery symposium in London next week as part of your work. Something utterly perplexing; something about abdominal tapping?” He sounded unsure of himself.
“My dubious employer CHS is sending me to a conference over there as a reward for exposing their crooked CEO a few months back. It’s a symposium about studying better ways to diagnose abdominal and chest trauma, but that’s neither here nor there,” I said. “What does my trip to London have to do with anything with this?”
“Well, I believe my Scottish frugality has gotten the best of me in this case. While you are in London, could you by chance meet with this gentleman briefly to see what the particulars of the case are? And then could you meet with someone from the Port of London Authority about the possible switching of the original pieces for some highly crafted reproductions?” His tentative words hung in the air.
“Whoa there, partner.” I jerked to my feet. “I just got through this last episode of investigation drama where I got the bejesus beat out of me when I tried to find out the truth about missing stock certificates. And now you want me to jump right back into the ring and go straight to another twelve-round bout?” I knew my voice grew louder with each word, but…
“I understand you might be a tad gun shy after some of the rough stuff on the previous case. But not only did everything turn out fine, you’ll have to admit that you were very good at it. I might go as far to say that you actually enjoyed it.”
I refused to respond. Especially since he was for the most part right on the mark.
For some reason, I didn’t want to admit that the private investigation work I did for Ian last April was really stimulating to me. I tried to convince myself that I already did my own type of investigation work on finding out what needed to be fixed on the trauma victims I encountered every day at my occupation. But the work that I did for Ian was completely different. It grabbed my attention, and I had been thinking about it off and on since April.
Still, I was hesitant to say yes to Ian because I did get smacked around by some goons on the last case. That situation could have turned out bad for me. It left me with some lower back pain that showed up with long surgical cases in the OR. Or at least I attributed that to the source of the pain.
“It’ll be just a couple of short meetings. Just a routine fact-finding mission. Send me a copy of your schedule in London, and I’ll work around it to make all the necessary arrangements.”
“And no gorillas at my front door trying to turn me into Silly Putty like last time?”
“No reason to worry at all.”
I couldn’t come up with a reason to say no. And there was that deep-seeded notion of curiosity that would not go away.
“Okay, you win. I’ll have my secretary fax you a copy of where I’m staying and the schedule of the symposium. See if they are available to meet in the late afternoons when I can break away.”
“Splendid. I’ll fax you the info about both meetings. Report back to me as soon as you have a chance when you get home. Same billing as before, and you’ll get a cut from the reward the family is offering if you find out anything. Gotta run. Have a good trip.”.
As I punched off my cell phone, I tried to reason with myself. It’ll be just a couple of innocent meetings. What could be dangerous about that? Yeah, but then again, I didn’t know any gypsies who could look into their crystal ball to tell me the truth of what was really going to happen.
After the phone call, the surgery front desk called me over the intercom to head on to OR #7. After insuring everything was in place to get started and that the patient was stable, I spent the next three and one-half hours trying to put Humpty Dumpty’s abdomen back together again. Even though Hollywood likes to portray that every trauma case is a matter of immediate life and death, that’s not usually the case. Just because the patient is not on the edge of life or death, that doesn’t make fixing everything in surgery any easier. The truth is that it’s a lot of plain, hard work.
No pain, no gain.
After finally finishing the surgery, I headed to the ER waiting area to speak with this gentleman’s family about what I found. Not a soul in sight. That definitely lodged a disappointing rating on my “appreciate the doctor” scale. Not to mention the aching back I felt right about now. With the long evening coming to a close, I changed into my street clothes and trudged home to catch some much-needed shuteye. Maybe better luck next time in the gratitude department.
#
I awoke Wednesday morning somewhat disoriented. No surprise there. Six hours sleep after getting home at 4:00 a.m. puts the meter for mental sharpness at about a two on a scale of ten. Wednesday was the day that I usually made rounds at the hospital, and then if it was the first or third Wednesday of the month, I met my deceased wife’s uncle Sydney Alfred at his sacred golf club. He had kind of taken a liking to me since I moved here seven years ago. Probably because he had been so fond of his niece Molly. Investments and golf were his passions, and I really learned to cherish our Wednesday get-togethers. We would play golf in the afternoon and then have an early dinner in the board members’ private dining room. Today was a third Wednesday of the month, so I decided to touch base with Sydney and tell him that golf and dinner wasn’t likely after getting pounded on call last night.
I dialed Sydney’s office phone number, getting his ever-efficient secretary on the line on the second ring.
“Good morning, Alfred Investments. How may I help you?’
“Hi, Beverly. This is Kyle Chandler. May I speak with Sydney, please?”
“Oh, hello, Dr. Chandler, so good to hear from you again,” she said in a much slower and now more personally attentive tone.
Beverly was one of Sydney’s office assistants. Tall, attractive, divorced, late-thirties. Lots of cleavage. And big-time aggressive.
When I first started playing golf with Sydney seven years ago, she was somewhat standoffish when I called. But when she found out I was single and worked as a physician as my day job, it was like someone blew the horn for the foxhunt. And for her, the chase was on.
From then on, she went out of her way to be nice to me and did her best to suggest that we should get together sometime. Sometime meant just us two alone. Thing about it, she just wasn’t my type. I always managed to be polite to her, all the while keeping the foxhound at bay.
“How have you been Beverly?”
“Busy. And yourself?”
“I’ve been busy also,” I said, not knowing what else to say without adding fuel to the fire.
“Well, you know what they say Dr. Chandler,” she said as she kept pulling the conversation to her advantage. “All work and no play will make you a dull boy. You wouldn’t like that, would you Dr. Chandler?”
I felt like I was on the end of a fishing line slowly being reeled in by Mae West.
“No, I guess not Beverly. Uh, can I speak with Sydney please?”
“I’ll get him on the line for you. Come by and see me when you get a chance.”
I purposefully didn’t say another word for fear she’d take it as a definite yes.
“Hello, this is Sydney Alfred.”
His formality always amused me. A real proper gentleman in all regards.
“Hi, Sydney. It’s me, Kyle.”
“Kyle, my boy. How are you today? Are you ready to take a beating on the links with me this afternoon?”
“That’s why I called you, Sydney. I spent last night on trauma call, and it got the best of me. I don’t think I could swing the clubs very well today. I’m running on fumes right now. I do look forward to our twice a month golf outings, but I have to pass on today’s round.”
“Kyle, are you sure about that? I just read a golf article about how to increase the swing speed of your driver and get the same distance as John Daly got at the British Open this year. I’m all set to spring it on you today.”
“Maybe so Sydney. To be honest, I’d rather putt like Ben Crenshaw did at the Masters than swing as hard as John Daly. Anyway, I hope to see your big driver swing the next time we play.”
“If you’re sure you can’t make it, then so be it,” he said, sounding slightly dejected.
“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that Ian Griffin called me last night. I haven’t heard from him since back in April. He told me that you had spoken to him about me heading to that trauma symposium in London next week.”
“Oh yes. Ian said he needed you to look into a matter for him while you were over there in England. I thought it would be a marvelous idea to kill two birds with one stone while you were in London.”
“Sydney, I gotta admit that I’m more than a little gun-shy about the investigation thing because of last time.”
“You’ll be fine. Ian assured me that it will just be a couple of innocent meetings and that’s all.”
“Well, if you say so. I’ll be gone all next week, so I might have to work extra the week I get back. It might bump our golf outing that week.”
“I doubt it. You’ll find a way to make it work. You always do.”
“Gotta go, Sydney. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Safe travels. Goodbye now,” he said as he rang off as proper as ever.
After showering, followed by the requisite amount of necessary caffeine, I decided to call my on-again-off-again-on-again girlfriend Caroline Martinelli. Unfortunately, she currently had me totally perplexed.
Caroline was an unbelievable woman who ran one of the premier antique stores down in the Plaza District. A one-of-a-kind. We met in April when I got involved in the case of stolen French antiques. She saved my backside in a big way at the conclusion of the case during the annual CHS shareholders’ meeting.
Since then, we started seeing more and more of each other. We met for dinner a couple of times a week and that led to doing new things together on weekends. I was starting to get to know this dynamic, witty woman better and better, and I really felt like she enjoyed getting to know me. As the weeks went by, I thought things were beginning to sail smoothly between us.
Towards the end of June, the nights I was on trauma call got longer and longer. It was beginning to be summer and that meant more trauma victims. In addition, we were temporarily one man short on the on-call schedule, so that made it harder on all of the trauma surgeons employed by St. Jude Hospital. That meant me being more tired after work and with less time to spend with Caroline.
About that time things got busy for me at work, she had to travel more for her business. A couple of weeks went by and before you know it, we totally resented each other’s schedule. Previously, we had gotten to where we were in touch with each other several times a day. Now it was just a passing call here and there during the week. I decided to see if I could break the impasse.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said loudly after the loud beep of her phone message machine. “I gotta talk to you soon, so give me a call.”
Less than ten seconds after I hung up, she called me back. “Sorry, I was just finishing another call. What’s up?” she asked, her tone slightly perplexed.
“Well, as I told you last week, CHS in their continued confusion is trying to make everything kosher with me over the case with the missing stock certificates earlier this year. I leave for the trauma symposium in London this Sunday. I was wondering if we could spend some time together before I leave.”
“Well, uh, sure.”
“Look Caroline, I know you are kinda weirded out with me right now. Especially since that Friday night a couple of weeks ago where I came to your place for dinner, and we ended up spending the weekend together.”
Still a silent pause.
“I don’t blame you for feeling that way, really,” I said. “It’s not like something we planned on happening. It just…happened. But you’ll have to admit, it was very special. I know it was for me.”
Saying that out loud was kind of big for me. I was not good at expressing my feelings, especially to a member of the opposite sex. Part of that must have been the whole surgeon tough-guy mentality. I do think that I had opened up to her emotionally more before we both got busy, but there was a definite wall of tension that had somehow come between us. I was still interested in extending our relationship together, but I had to find a way to break down that barrier so we could operate on the same page.
After another short pause she blurted, “That’s the problem. I thought it was very special. And it scared the living daylights out of me. I already told you that years ago I found out my previous fiancé had been fooling around behind my back right before we were to be married. And I know you’re not him. But since then, I’ve had a big problem completely trusting anyone of the opposite gender on anything more than a superficial level. And that was ten years ago.” Her voice rose ten decibels, and I pulled the phone away from my ear.
“Back then, I compensated by throwing myself full steam ahead into my training in antiques in London,” she continued. “Then it was the opening of my initial antiques shop here in town. After that, it was moving to my larger store down in the Plaza. All of the sudden you pop into my life and getting to know you caught me by total surprise. We were getting to know each other, share more, slowly, and I really enjoyed that. And then, getting intimate with you…it has me reeling as to where to go from here. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed being with you. I think about it all the time. I don’t know what to do. And there’s your insane schedule and my hectic schedule, and I just don’t know anything about anything now.”
“Caroline, it’s okay to be confused. I’m confused. But as Sydney once told me when I moved here, ‘you got take whatever pitches they throw at you and keep on swinging.’ You are never going to get a hit unless you swing. So, let’s try to keep on swinging at the pitches…together. Who knows if it’ll work out between us, but we got to give it a fair chance, and that takes time. Fair enough?” I asked.
Another pause.
“You’re probably right. And be sure you understand that I stress the word probably. Just give me some time to figure out how I feel about all this. What time do you leave Sunday?”
“Sort of early.”
“Well, I’m headed to New York tomorrow to meet with potential clients and won’t be back until Saturday afternoon. Looks like our schedule conflicts win out again.”
“Well, maybe just this time. We’ll see,” I said. “One other thing I need to tell you. Ian Griffin rang me last night and wants me to look into a small matter in London while I’m there. Some kind of switch of valuable antiques for high priced replications. Do you still have any contacts in the antique world? I need to talk to someone that has the inside scoop.”
“Kyle, didn’t we talk about this after your case just a few months ago? You were beaten up quite badly, don’t you remember? Did you forget telling me how they could have mangled both of your hands and put you out of your real profession for good?”
“Well, I might have said that, but this is going to be just a couple harmless meetings in London. What’s wrong with that?”
“I believe that’s exactly how it started off last time. Why the sudden amnesia?”
“Look Caroline, I told Ian that I would try to help him as long as it didn’t involve any rough stuff. And it’s just a couple of meetings. Do you still have any contacts in London who may help me on this one?”
“Well, Dr. Chandler sir, I do speak with my former mentor Sebastian Clarke at Christie’s every couple of months. He’s still head of Appraisals & Evaluations there and is much in the know of what goes on in that market. If you want, I’ll reach out to see if he can meet with you if he’s in London next week.”
“See if he’s available in the late afternoons since I’ll be at the symposium in the mornings and after lunch.”
“You’ll probably have to take whenever he’s free. He maintains an unbelievably busy schedule. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Yes, oh gracious kind soul.”
“And don’t you forget it.” She gave a small snicker.
“Call me before your flight leaves from New York? Maybe I can pick you up at the airport if it doesn’t get in too late.”
“Roger that, Captain. Talk to you then,” she said and hung up.
Well, not a perfect resolution. Not great, but it was a start.
About the Author
Marshall Craig, M.D. draws upon his knowledge of medicine gained from over 30 years as a trauma, plastic, and reconstructive surgeon to continue the story of hard-working hero Dr. Kyle Chandler. Craig’s series of medical suspense thrillers are inspired by some of his wildest stories and most colorful characters from his previous medical career. He now enjoys his second career as a winemaker and vineyard manager for a small boutique winery. He lives with his wife in the mountains of western North Carolina. The first book in the Dr. Kyle Chandler series is Cut to the Chase (White Bird Publications).
Find D. Marshall Craig online at:
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