Chapter 8

   3:00 p.m., Thursday
   Manhattan
   After getting a cup of coffee from the ID office that looked more like sludge than coffee by that time of the day, Laurie pushed her way into the Thursday afternoon conference which was held in the conference room connected to Bingham’s office. This was the one opportunity for all the city’s medical examiners to get together and share cases and discuss diagnostic problems. Although the office of the chief medical examiner handled deaths in the Bronx as well as Manhattan, the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island had their own offices. Thursday was the day they all got together. Coming to the conference was not an option. As far as Bingham was concerned, it was a command performance.
   As usual, Laurie took a seat near to the door. When the discussions became too administrative or political for her taste, she liked to slip away.
   The most interesting part of these weekly conferences usually occurred before the meeting was called to order. It was in these casual conversations beforehand that Laurie was able to pick up interesting tidbits and details of particularly baffling or gruesome cases. In that respect, this Thursday’s meeting proved no different.
   “I’d thought I’d seen it all,” Dick Katzenburg told Paul Plodgett and Kevin Southgate. Dick was a senior medical examiner assigned to the Queens office. Laurie’s ears perked up.
   “It was the weirdest homicide I’d seen,” Dick continued. “And God knows I’ve seen some strange ones.”
   “Are you going to tell us or do we have to beg?” Kevin asked, obviously as eager for the story. Medical examiners loved to swap “war stories” that were either intellectually stimulating or grotesquely bizarre.
   “It was a young guy,” Dick said. “Done in a funeral home with the aspirator that they use for embalming.”
   “He was bludgeoned to death?” Kevin asked. So far he was unimpressed.
   “No!” Dick said. “With the trocar. The aspirator was running. It was as if the kid was embalmed alive.”
   “Ugh,” Paul said, obviously impressed. “That is weird. It reminds me of the case—”
   “Dr. Montgomery,” a voice called.
   Laurie turned. Dr. Bingham stood before her. “I’m afraid there is something else I have to discuss with you,” he said.
   Laurie felt queasy. She wondered what she’d done now.
   “Dr. DeVries came to see me,” Bingham said. “He complained that you have been coming in his lab bothering him about some test results. Now I know that you are eager for those results, but you’re not the only one waiting. Dr. DeVries is swamped right now. I don’t think I have to tell you. But don’t expect special treatment. You’re going to have to wait like everyone else. I’ll thank you not to harass Dr. DeVries any further. Do I make myself clear?”
   Laurie was tempted to say something like DeVries had a hell of a way of going after more funding, but Bingham turned away. Before Laurie had a chance to dwell on this, her third reprimand in four days, Bingham called the meeting to order.
   Bingham began the conference, as usual, by summarizing the statistics for the previous week. Then he gave a short report on the status of the Central Park murder case since it had been so much in the news. He again rebutted the media’s charges of mismanagement of the case on the part of the medical examiner’s office. He concluded by advising everyone not to offer any personal opinions.
   Laurie was certain that last remark was directed at her. Who else had been offering opinions from within the medical examiner’s ranks?
   Following Bingham’s talk, Calvin spoke about administrative issues, particularly concerning how reduced city funding was affecting operations. Every other week one service or supply was being curtailed or eliminated.
   Following Calvin’s talk, each of the deputy medical examiners from the other borough offices gave summaries. Some of the people present yawned, others nodded off.
   When the borough chiefs were finished, the floor was opened up for general discussion. Dick Katzenburg described a few cases, including the rather grisly one at the Queens funeral home.
   Once he was through, Laurie cleared her throat and began to address the group. She presented her six overdose cases as succinctly as possible, careful to delineate the demographic differences that set them apart from usual overdoses. Laurie described the deceased as single yuppies whose drug use came as a surprise to friends and family. She explained the cocaine was mainlined although not mixed with heroin.
   “My concern,” Laurie said, avoiding looking at Bingham, “is that we are seeing the beginning of a series of unusual overdose deaths. I suspect a contaminant in the drug is to blame, but so far none has been found. What I’d like to request is that if anybody sees any cases similar to the ones I’ve described, please send them to me.”
   “I’ve seen four myself over the last several weeks,” Dick said once Laurie was through. “Since we see so many overdose/toxicity cases I didn’t give the demographics much thought. But now that you mention it, all four seemed like overachievers. In fact, two were professionals. And three of the four took the cocaine intravenously, the fourth orally.”
   “Orally?” someone echoed with surprise. “An oral cocaine overdose? That’s pretty uncommon. You usually only see that in drug-smuggling “mules’ coming from South America whose condoms break.”
   “I’m never surprised what druggies do,” Dick said. “One of the cases that I had was found wedged in the refrigerator. Apparently he got so hot, he had to crawl into the ice box for relief.”
   “One of mine climbed into a refrigerator, too,” Laurie said.
   “I had one also,” Jim Bennett said. He was the chief at the Brooklyn office. “And now that I think about it, I had another who ran out into the street stark naked before he had a terminal seizure. He’d taken the drug orally but only after attempting to take it IV.”
   “Did these two cases have the same unlikely demographics for a drug overdose?” Laurie asked Jim.
   “Sure did,” Jim said. “The man who ran out in the street was a successful lawyer. And the families in both cases swore up and down that the deceased didn’t do drugs.”
   Laurie looked to Margaret Hauptman, who headed the Staten Island office. “Have you seen any similar cases?” she asked.
   Margaret shook her head.
   Laurie asked Dick and Jim if they would mind faxing over the records on the cases they’d described. They immediately said that they would.
   “One thing I have to mention,” Dick said. “In three out of four I’ve had a lot of pressure from the involved families to sign the case out as natural.”
   “That’s a point I want to underline,” Bingham said, speaking for the first time since the beginning of the discussion. “With upscale overdose deaths like these the families will certainly want to keep the whole episode low profile. I think we should cooperate in this regard. Politically we cannot afford to alienate this constituency.”
   “I don’t know what to make of this refrigerator aspect,” Laurie said. “Although it brings me back to the contaminant idea. Perhaps there is some chemical that has a synergistic effect with cocaine vis-б-vis causing hyperpyrexia. At any rate I’m concerned that all these deaths are coming from the same source of the drug. Now that we have this many cases we ought to be able to prove it by comparing the percentages of its natural hydrolysates. Of course we will need the lab to cooperate.”
   Laurie looked nervously at Bingham to see if his expression changed with her reference to the lab. It didn’t.
   “I don’t think a contaminant is a given,” Dick said. “Cocaine is fully capable of causing these deaths all by itself. On the four cases I’ve seen, the serum level was high. Very high. These people took big doses. Maybe the cocaine wasn’t cut with anything; maybe it was one-hundred-percent pure. We’ve all seen that kind of death with heroin.”
   “I still think a contaminant is involved,” Laurie said. “With the general intelligence of this group of victims, it’s hard for me to believe that so many would mess up if it were purely dose related.”
   Dick shrugged. “You may be right,” he admitted. “All I’m saying is let’s not jump to hasty conclusions.”
   Leaving the conference, Laurie felt a strange and disturbing mixture of excitement, yet a renewed frustration and anxiety. Within a couple of hours her “series” had doubled from six cases to twelve. That was ominous. Her intuition about the number of cases increasing was already coming to pass, and at an alarming rate.
   Now, even more than before, Laurie felt that the public had to be warned, especially this group of yuppie types. The problem was how to do it. Certainly she dared not go back to Bingham. But she had to do something.
   Suddenly she thought of Lou. The police had a whole division devoted to drugs and vice. Perhaps that division had a way of putting out the word that a certain drug was particularly dangerous. With growing resolve, she went to her office and dialed Lou immediately. When he answered, she felt relieved.
   “I’m so glad you’re still there,” she said with a sigh.
   “You are?” Lou asked.
   “I want to come right down and talk to you,” Laurie said.
   “You do?”
   “Will you wait for me?” Laurie demanded.
   “Sure,” Lou said. He was puzzled and elated at the same time. “Come on down.”
   Laurie hung up the phone, grabbed her briefcase, opened it, threw in some half-finished records, snapped it shut, snatched her coat, and literally ran down to the elevator.
   A slight rain was falling as she stepped out onto First Avenue. She despaired of catching a cab, but as luck would have it, one pulled up to the curb and let off a passenger right in front of her. Laurie got in before the passenger had a chance to close the door.
   Never having been to New York City police headquarters, Laurie was surprised to find it a relatively modern brick structure. Entering the front entrance, she had to sign in while a security person called up to Lou to make sure she was expected. Then they went through her briefcase. Armed with a visitor’s pass and directions, she found his office. Like the entire building, it reeked of cigarette smoke.
   “Can I take your coat?” Lou asked as she stepped inside. Lou took the coat and hung it on a coatrack. While he was doing so he caught Harvey Lawson giving him a dirty look from across the hall. Lou closed his office door.
   “You sounded excited on the phone,” Lou commented as he went around behind his desk. Laurie had taken one of the two straight-backed chairs. Her briefcase was on the floor next to her.
   “I need your help,” Laurie said. She was intense and obviously nervous, clutching her hands in her lap.
   “Oh, really?” Lou commented. “I was hoping this excitement had something to do with dinner tonight, like you had changed your mind.” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice. He was obviously disappointed.
   “My “series’ has doubled,” Laurie said. “There are now twelve cases, not six.”
   “That’s interesting,” Lou said flatly.
   “I was hoping that you might know some way we can warn the public,” Laurie said. “I think we’re about to see a flood of these cases unless something is done, and done soon.”
   “What would you have me do?” Lou asked. “Have an ad posted in The Wall Street Journal: “Yuppies, Just Say No’?”
   “Lou, I’m serious,” Laurie said. “I’m truly worried about this.”
   Lou sighed. He took out a cigarette and lit up.
   “Must you smoke?” Laurie asked him. “I’ll only be here a few moments.”
   “Jesus Christ,” Lou snapped. “It’s my office.”
   “Then try to blow the smoke away, please,” Laurie said.
   “I’ll ask you again,” Lou said. “What do you want me to do? You must have had something in mind if you bothered coming all the way down here.”
   “No, nothing specific,” Laurie admitted. “I just thought the police narcotics squad might have some way of warning the public. Couldn’t they make some kind of announcement to the press?”
   “Why doesn’t the medical examiner’s office do it?” Lou asked. “The police are around to arrest people with drugs, not help them.”
   “The chief refuses to take a public stand so far. I’m sure he’ll come around, but in the meantime lives are being lost.”
   Lou took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke over his shoulder. “What about the other medical examiners? Are they as convinced as you about this thing exploding into a glut of dead yuppies?”
   “I haven’t polled them,” Laurie said.
   “Don’t you think you might be a little overly sensitive about these deaths because of your brother?” Lou offered.
   Laurie became enraged. “I didn’t come down here for you to play amateur psychologist. But while we’re on the subject, sure, I’m sensitive. I know how it feels to lose a loved one to drugs. But I would say that kind of empathy is a boon to my work. Maybe if a few more jaded policemen like yourself had a little more empathy, we civil servants would be in the business of saving lives instead of picking corpses’ pockets.”
   Lou held his temper. “Frankly, Dr. Montgomery, I’d love to be in the lifesaving business. In fact, I already consider myself to be in the lifesaving business. But unless you furnish me with more proof as to this grand contaminant theory of yours, I’m afraid Narcotics won’t do anything more than laugh me back to Homicide.”
   “Isn’t there anything you can do?”
   “Me? A detective lieutenant in Homicide?” Lou was exasperated but he knew Laurie was genuinely concerned. “Can’t you go to the media?”
   “I can’t,” Laurie said. “If I go to the media behind Dr. Bingham’s back, I’ll be looking for work. That much I know. We already had a run-in about that. How about you?”
   “Me?” Lou questioned with surprise. “A homicide lieutenant suddenly involved with drug overdoses! They’d want names and where I got them, and I’d have to say I got them from you. Besides my bosses would wonder why I was worried about druggies and not solving the problem with the gangland slayings. No, I can’t go either. If I went to the media I’d probably be out looking for work as well.”
   “Won’t you try talking with the narcotics division?” Laurie asked.
   “I got an idea,” Lou said. “What about your boyfriend, the doctor. It’s sorta natural that a doctor would be interested in this kind of problem. Besides he seems to be pretty high profile with a limo and that posh office.”
   “Jordan is not my boyfriend,” Laurie said. “He’s a male acquaintance. And how do you know about his office?”
   “I went to see him this afternoon,” Lou said.
   “Why?” Laurie asked.
   “You want the truth or what I told myself?” Lou said.
   “How about both,” Laurie said.
   “I wanted to ask him about his patient Paul Cerino,” Lou said. “And also about his secretary now that she is a homicide victim. But I was also curious to meet the guy. And if you want my opinion, he’s a creep.”
   “I don’t want your opinion,” Laurie snapped.
   “What I don’t understand,” Lou persisted, “is why you’d be interested in such a fake, pompous, ostentatious bum. I’ve never seen such an office for a doctor. And a limo . . . please! The guy must be robbing his patients blind. Excuse the pun! What is it that attracts you? His money?”
   “No!” Laurie said indignantly. “And as long as you are bringing up money, I called your Internal Affairs department—”
   “So I heard,” Lou interrupted. “Well, I hope you sleep better now that you’ve probably gotten some poor patrolman in hot water while he’s trying to send his kids to college. Bravo for your strict morality. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go out to Forest Hills and try to solve some real crime.” Lou stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet.
   “So you won’t talk to your drug division?” Laurie asked, trying one more time.
   Lou leaned over his desk. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I believe I’ll just let you rich people look after yourselves.”
   Having reined in her anger over the last few minutes, Laurie now gave in to it. “Thanks for nothing, Lieutenant,” she said superciliously. Getting up, she got her coat, picked up her briefcase, and stalked out of Lou’s office. Downstairs she threw her visitors pass on the Security table and walked out.
   Catching a cab was easy as they came in from the Brooklyn Bridge. With just about a straight shot up First Avenue, she was home in no time. Getting off the elevator on her floor, she glared at Debra Engler, then slammed her door.
   “And at one point you thought he was charming,” she said out loud, ridiculing herself as she stripped down and got into the shower. She couldn’t believe that she had allowed herself to sit for as long as she had in Lou Soldano’s office absorbing all that abuse in the futile hopes that he might deign to help her. It had been a degrading experience.
   Ensconced in a white terry robe, Laurie went to her answering machine and listened to her messages while a hungry Tom rubbed across her legs and purred. One was from her mother and the other was from Jordan. Both asked her to call when she got home.
   Jordan had left a number different from his home number with an extension.
   When she called Jordan at the number he’d left, she was told that he was in surgery but that she should hold on.
   “Sorry,” said Jordan once he picked up a few minutes later. “I’m still in surgery. But I insisted on being told when you called.”
   “You’re in the middle of an operation right now?” Laurie couldn’t believe it.
   “It doesn’t matter,” Jordan said. “I can break scrub for a few minutes. I wanted to ask if we could make dinner tonight a bit later. I don’t want to keep you waiting again, but I have another case to go.”
   “Maybe it would be just as well if we took a raincheck.”
   “No, please!” Jordan said. “It’s been a hell of a day and I’ve been looking forward to seeing you. Remember, you took a raincheck last night.”
   “Won’t you be tired? Especially if you have another case.”
   Laurie herself felt exhausted. The idea of going straight to bed sounded wonderful to her.
   “I’ll get a second wind,” Jordan said. “We can make it an early evening.”
   “What time can you meet for dinner?”
   “Nine o’clock,” Jordan said. “I’ll send Thomas around then.”
   Reluctantly, Laurie agreed. After she hung up, she called Calvin Washington at home.
   “What is it, Montgomery?” Calvin demanded once his wife called him to the phone. He sounded grumpy.
   “Sorry to bother you at home,” Laurie said. “But now that I have twelve cases in my series, I’d like to ask that I be assigned any more that might come in tomorrow.”
   “You’re not on autopsy tomorrow. It’s a paper day for you.”
   “I know. That’s why I’m calling. I’m not on call this weekend so I can catch up with my paperwork then.”
   “Montgomery, I think you ought to cool it. You’re getting much too carried away with all this. You’re too emotionally involved; you’re losing your objectivity. I’m sorry, but tomorrow is a paper day for you no matter what comes through the door feetfirst.”
   Laurie hung up the phone. She felt depressed. At the same time she knew there was a certain amount of truth in what Calvin had said. She was emotionally involved in the issue.
   Sitting by the phone, Laurie thought about returning her mother’s call. The last thing she wanted to go through was the third degree about her budding relationship with Jordan Scheffield. Besides, she hadn’t quite decided what she thought of him herself. She decided to wait on calling back her mother.

   As Lou drove through the Midtown Tunnel and out the Long Island Expressway, he wondered why he insisted on continually bashing his head up against a brick wall.
   There was no way a woman like Laurie Montgomery would look at someone like himself other than as a city servant. Why did he keep entertaining delusions of grandeur in which Laurie would suddenly say: “Oh, Lou, I’ve always wanted to meet a police detective who’s gone to a community college”?
   Lou slapped the steering wheel in embarrassed anger. When Laurie had suddenly called and insisted on coming down to his office, he’d believed she’d wanted to see him for personal reasons, not some harebrained idea of using him to publicize a yuppie cocaine epidemic.
   Lou exited the Long Island Expressway and got onto Woodhaven Boulevard, heading to Forest Hills. Feeling the need to do something rather than play with paper clips at his desk, he’d decided to go out and do a little gumshoeing on his own by visiting the surviving spouses. It was also better than going back to his miserable apartment on Prince Street in SoHo and watching TV.
   Pulling up the Vivonettos’ long, curved driveway, Lou couldn’t help but be awed. The house was a mansion with white columns. Right away, lights went off in Lou’s head. This kind of opulence suggested serious money. And Lou had a hard time believing a simple restaurateur could make that kind of dough unless he had organized-crime connections.
   Lou parked the car by the front door. He’d called ahead so Mrs. Vivonetto was expecting him. When he rang the bell, a woman wearing a ton of makeup came to the door. She was wearing a white, off-the-shoulder wool dress. There was not much suggestion of aggrieved mourning.
   “You must be Lieutenant Soldano,” she said. “Do come in. My name is Gloria Vivonetto. Can I offer you a drink?”
   Lou said that just water would be fine for him. “You know, on duty,” he muttered by way of explanation. Gloria poured him a glass at the bar in the living room. She fixed herself a vodka gimlet.
   “I’m sorry about your husband,” Lou said. It was his standard intro for occasions like this.
   “It was just like him,” Gloria said. “I’d told him time and time again he shouldn’t stay up and watch television. And now he goes and gets himself shot. I don’t know anything about running a business. I’m sure people are going to rob me blind.”
   “Was there anyone that you know of who would have wanted your husband dead?” Lou asked. It was the first question in the standard protocol.
   “I’ve been all over this with the other detectives. Do we have to go through it again?”
   “Perhaps not,” Lou said. “Let me be frank with you, Mrs. Vivonetto. The way your husband was killed suggests an organized-crime involvement. Do you know what I’m saying?”
   “You mean Mafia?”
   “Well, there’s more to organized crime than the Mafia,” Lou said. “But that’s the general idea. Is there any reason that you can think of why people like the Mafia would want your husband killed?”
   “Ha!” Gloria laughed. “My husband was never involved with anything as colorful as the Mafia.”
   “What about his business?” Lou persisted. “Did Pasta Pronto have any connection whatsoever with organized crime?”
   “No,” Gloria said.

  “Are you sure?” Lou questioned.
   “Well, no, I guess I’m not sure,” Gloria answered. “I wasn’t involved with the business. But I can’t imagine he ever had anything to do with the Mafia. And anyway, my husband was not a well man. He wasn’t going to be around much longer anyway. If someone wanted him out of the way they could have waited for him to keel over naturally.”
   “How was your husband sick?” Lou asked.
   “In what ways wasn’t he sick?” Gloria shot back. “Everything was falling apart. He had bad heart problems and had had two bypass operations. His kidneys weren’t great. He was supposed to have his gallbladder removed but they kept putting it off, saying his heart wouldn’t take it. He was going to have an eye operation. And his prostate was messed up. I’m not sure what was wrong with that, but his whole lower half didn’t work anymore. Hadn’t for years.”
   “I’m sorry,” Lou said, unsure of what else to say. “I suppose he suffered a lot.”
   Gloria shrugged her shoulders. “He never took care of himself. He was overweight, drank a ton, and he smoked like a chimney. The doctors told me he might not last a year unless he changed his ways, which wasn’t something he was about to do.”
   Lou decided there wasn’t much more he’d learn from the not-so-aggrieved widow. “Well,” he said, standing up, “thank you for your time, Mrs. Vivonetto. If you think of anything else that might seem important, please give me a call.” He handed her one of his business cards.
   Next Lou headed for the Singleton residence. The place was a simple, two-story, brick row house with two pink flamingos stuck in the front lawn. The street reminded him of his old neighborhood only a half dozen blocks away in Rego Park. He felt a stab of nostalgia for the evenings in the alleyway, playing stickball.
   Mr. Chester Singleton opened the door. He was a big man, middle-aged and quite balding. He had a hounddog look thanks to his beefy jowls. His eyes were red and streaked. The instant Lou saw him he knew he was in the presence of true grief.
   “Detective Soldano?”
   Lou nodded and was immediately invited inside.
   Inside, the furniture was plain but solid. A crocheted comforter was folded over the back of a plaid, well-worn couch. Dozens of framed photos lined the walls, most of them black and white.
   “I’m very sorry about your wife,” Lou said.
   Chester nodded, took a deep breath, and bit his lower lip.
   “I know that other people have been by,” Lou continued. He decided to go right to the heart of the matter. “I wanted to ask you flat-out why a professional gunman would come into your home to shoot your wife.”
   “I don’t know,” Chester said. His voice quavered with emotion.
   “Your restaurant-supply business supplied some restaurants with organized-crime connections. Do any of the restaurants you supply have any complaints with your service?”
   “Never,” Chester said. “And I don’t know anything about any organized crime. Sure, I heard rumors. But I never met anyone or saw anyone I would call a mobster type.”
   “What about Pasta Pronto?” Lou asked. “I understand you had new business there.”
   “I recently got some of their business, that’s true. But only a piece of it. I think they were just trying me out. I hoped to get more of their business eventually.”
   “Did you know Steven Vivonetto?” Lou asked.
   “Yes, but not well. He was a wealthy man.”
   “You know he got shot last night as well?” Lou said.
   “I know. I read about it in the paper.”
   “Had you received any threats lately?” Lou asked. “Any attempts at extortion? Any kind of protection racket knocking on your door?”
   Chester shook his head.
   “Can you think of any reason your wife and Steven Vivonetto should have been killed during the same night, possibly by the same person?”
   “No,” Chester said. “I can’t think of any reason why anyone would have wanted to kill Janice. Everyone loved Janice. She was the warmest, nicest person in the world. And on top of that, she was ill.”
   “What was wrong with her?” Lou asked.
   “Cancer. Unfortunately it had spread before they found it. She never liked to go to the doctor. If only she’d gone sooner, they might have been able to do more. As it was, she only had chemotherapy. She seemed okay for a while, but then she got this awful rash on her face. Herpes zoster they call it. It even got into one of her eyes and blinded it so that she needed to have an operation.”
   “Did the doctors hold out much hope for her?” Lou asked.
   “I’m afraid not,” Chester said. “They told me that they couldn’t say for sure, but they thought that it might be only a year or so, and shorter if the cancer came back quicker.”
   “I’m so sorry to hear all this,” Lou said.
   “Well, maybe what happened was just as well. Maybe it saved her a lot of suffering. But I miss her so. We were married for thirty-one years.”
   After offering additional condolences and his business card, Lou bade farewell to Mr. Singleton. Driving back to Manhattan, he reviewed what little he’d learned. The organized-crime connection to either case was at best tenuous. He’d been surprised to learn that both victims were terminally ill. He wondered if their killers had known.
   By reflex he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a cigarette. He pushed in the lighter. Then he thought about Laurie. Rolling down the window, he tossed the unlit cigarette into the street just as the lighter popped out. He sighed, wondering where that pompous Jordan Scheffield was taking her for dinner.

   Vinnie Dominick came into the locker room at St. Mary’s and sat wearily on the bench. He was perspiring heavily. He was bleeding slightly from a small scratch on his cheek.
   “You’re bleeding, boss,” Freddie Capuso said.
   “Get out of my face,” Vinnie snapped. “I know I’m bleeding. But you know what bugs me? That bum Jeff Young said he never touched me and whined for ten minutes when I called a foul.”
   Vinnie had just finished an hour’s worth of pickup three-on-three basketball. His team had lost and he was in a foul mood. His mood got even worse when his most trusted lieutenant, Franco Ponti, came in with a long face.
   “Don’t tell me it’s true?” Vinnie asked.
   Franco came over to the bench. He put one foot on it and leaned on his knee. His nickname since high school had been “falcon,” mostly because of his face. With a narrow hooked nose, thin lips, and beady eyes he resembled a bird of prey.
   “It’s true,” Franco said. He spoke in a monotone. “Jimmy Lanso got whacked last night in his cousin’s funeral home.”
   Vinnie bolted off the bench and hammered one of the metal lockers. The crashing noise reverberated around the small locker room like a clap of thunder. Everyone winced except Franco.
   “Christ!” Vinnie cried. He began pacing. Freddie Capuso got out of his way.
   “What am I going to tell my wife?” Vinnie cried. “What am I going to tell my wife?” he repeated, raising his voice. “I promised her I’d take care of it.” He pounded one of the lockers again. Perspiration flew off his face.
   “Tell her that you made a mistake trusting Cerino,” Franco suggested.
   Vinnie stopped in his tracks. “It’s true,” he snarled. “I thought Cerino was a civilized man. But now I know otherwise.”
   “And there’s more,” Franco said. “Cerino’s men have been busy whacking all sorts of people besides Jimmy Lanso. Last night they hit two in Kew Gardens and two in Forest Hills.”
   “I saw that on the news.” Vinnie was astounded. “That was Cerino’s people?”
   “Yup,” Franco said.
   “Why?” Vinnie asked. “I didn’t recognize any of the names.”
   “Nobody knows.” Franco shrugged his shoulders.
   “There must be some reason.”
   “For sure,” Franco said. “I just don’t know what it is.”
   “Well, find out!” Vinnie ordered. “It’s one thing putting up with Cerino and his bums as business rivals, but it’s quite another to sit around watching them ruin things for everyone.”
   “There are cops crawling all over Queens,” Franco agreed.
   “That’s just what we don’t need,” Vinnie said. “With the authorities up in arms, we’ll have to suspend a significant part of our operations. You have to find out what Cerino is up to. Franco, I’m depending on you.”
   Franco nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
   “You’re not eating much,” Jordan said.
   Laurie looked up from her plate. They were dining at a restaurant called Palio. Although the food was Italian, the dйcor was a relaxing meld of oriental and modern. Before her was a delicious seafood risotto. Her wineglass was filled with a crisp Pinot Grigio. But Jordan was right; she wasn’t eating much. Although she hadn’t eaten much that day, she just wasn’t hungry.
   “You don’t like the food?” Jordan asked. “I thought you said you liked Italian.” His dress was as casually elegant as ever; he had on a black velvet blazer with a silk shirt open at the neck. He was not wearing a tie.
   The logistics had worked much better this evening. As Jordan had promised, he’d called just before nine when he was leaving surgery, saying that Thomas was on his way to pick her up while he went back to his apartment to change. By the time Thomas and Laurie got back to the Trump Tower, Jordan was waiting curbside. From there it had been a short ride over to West Fifty-first Street.
   “I love the food,” Laurie said. “I guess I’m just not that hungry. It’s been a long day.”
   “I’ve been avoiding talking about the day,” Jordan admitted. “I thought it better to get a bit of wine under our belts. As I mentioned on the phone, my day was atrocious. That’s the only word for it, starting from your phone call about poor Marsha Schulman. Every time I think about her, I get this sick feeling. I even feel guilty about being so angry with her for not showing up to work, and here she was a headless corpse floating in the East River. Oh, God!” Jordan couldn’t continue. He buried his face in his hands and shook his head slowly. Laurie reached across the table and put a hand on Jordan’s arm. She felt for him but was also relieved to see this display of emotion. Up until this moment she’d felt he’d been incapable of such demonstrativeness and rather dispassionate about his secretary’s murder. He suddenly seemed a lot more human.
   Jordan pulled himself together. “And there’s more,” he said sadly. “I lost a patient today. Part of the reason I went into ophthalmology was because I knew I’d have a hard time dealing with death, yet I still wanted to do surgery. Ophthalmology seemed an ideal compromise, until today. I lost a preop by the name of Mary O’Connor.”
   “I’m sorry,” Laurie said. “I understand how you feel. Dealing with dying patients was hard for me too. I suppose it’s one of the reasons I went into pathology, especially forensics. My patients are already dead.”
   Jordan smiled weakly. “Mary was a wonderful woman and such an appreciative patient,” he said. “I’d already operated on one eye and was about to do the other this afternoon. She was a healthy lady with no known heart trouble, yet she was found dead in her bed. She’d died watching television.”
   “What a terrible experience for you,” Laurie sympathized. “But you have to remember that occult medical problems are always found in such cases. I imagine we’ll be seeing Mrs. O’Connor tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to let you know what it was. Sometimes knowing the pathology makes it easier to deal with the death.”
   “I’d appreciate that,” Jordan said.
   “I suppose my day wasn’t as bad as yours,” Laurie said. “But I’m beginning to understand how Cassandra felt when Apollo made sure that she was not to be heeded.”
   Laurie told Jordan all about her overdose series and that she was sure there would be more cases if no appropriate warnings were issued. She told him how upsetting it had been that she’d been unable to convince the chief medical examiner to go public with the story. Then she told him she’d gone to the police, and even they refused to help.
   “Sounds frustrating,” Jordan said. “There was one good thing about my day,” he said, changing the subject. “I did a lot of surgery, and that makes me and my accountant very happy. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing double my normal number of cases.”
   “I’m glad,” Laurie said. She couldn’t help but notice Jordan’s propensity for turning the conversation to himself.
   “I just hope it keeps up,” he said. “There are always fluctuations. I can accept that. But I’m getting spoiled at the current rate.”
   Once they had finished their meal and their places were cleared, the waiter rolled a tempting dessert trolley to their table. Jordan selected a chocolate cake. Laurie chose berries. Jordan had an espresso, Laurie a decaf. As she stirred her coffee, she discreetly glanced at her watch.
   “I saw that,” Jordan said. “I know it’s getting late. I also know it’s a “school night.’ I’ll get you home in a half hour if we can make the same deal we made last night. Let’s have dinner again tomorrow night.”
   “Again?” Laurie asked. “Jordan, you’re sure to get sick of me.”
   “Nonsense,” Jordan said. “I’m enjoying every minute. I just wish it weren’t so rushed, and tomorrow is Friday. It’s the weekend. Maybe you’ll even have some news about Mary O’Connor. Please, Laurie.”
   Laurie couldn’t believe she was being asked to dinner for a third night in a row. It was certainly flattering. “All right,” she said at last. “You have yourself a date.”
   “Wonderful,” Jordan said. “Have any suggestions for a restaurant?”
   “I think you have a lot more experience,” Laurie said. “You pick.”
   “Okay, I will. Shall we say nine o’clock again?”
   Laurie nodded as she sipped her decaf. Looking into Jordan’s clear eyes, she thought of Lou’s negative description of the man. For a second Laurie was tempted to ask how the meeting with the detective lieutenant had gone, but decided against it. Some things were better left unsaid.

Chapter 9

   11:50 p.m., Thursday
   Manhattan
   “Not bad,” Tony said. He and Angelo were just leaving an all-night pizza joint on Forty-second Street near Times Square. “I was surprised. The place looked like such a dump.”
   Angelo didn’t answer. His mind was already on the job that lay ahead.
   When they arrived at the parking garage, Angelo nodded toward his Town Car. The garage owner, Lenny Helman, paid money to Cerino. Since Angelo usually collected it, he parked for free.
   “Better not have scratched the car,” Angelo said after the attendant drove the car up to the curb. Once he was satisfied there wasn’t a mark on its highly polished surface, Angelo got in. Tony did the same. They pulled out onto Forty-second Street.
   “What’s next?” Tony asked, sitting sideways so he could look directly at Angelo. The light from the glittering neon marquees of the neighborhood movie theaters played over Angelo’s gaunt face, making him look like an unraveled mummy in a museum.
   “We’re going to switch to the “demand’ list,” Angelo told him.
   “Great,” Tony said with enthusiasm. “I’m getting tired of the other. Where to?”
   “Eighty-sixth,” Angelo said. “Near the Metropolitan Museum.”
   “Good neighborhood,” Tony said. “I’ll bet there’ll be souvenirs for the taking.”
   “I don’t feel good about it,” Angelo said. “Wealthy neighborhood means fancy alarms.”
   “You handle all that stuff like a breeze,” Tony said.
   “Things have been going a little too well,” Angelo said. “I’m starting to get concerned.”
   “You worry too much,” Tony said with a laugh. “The reason things have been going so well is because we know what we’re doing. And the more we do it, the better we get. It’s the same thing with everything.”
   “Screw-ups happen,” Angelo said. “No matter how much you prepare. We have to expect it. And be able to handle it when it does.”
   “Ah, you’re just a pessimist,” Tony said.
   Engrossed in their banter, neither Tony nor Angelo took note of a black Cadillac cruising two cars behind them. At the wheel, a relaxed Franco Ponti was enjoying a tape of Aida. Thanks to a tip from a contact in the Times Square area, Franco had been tailing Angelo and Tony since their stop at the pizza place.
   “Which one are we doing?” Tony asked.
   “The woman,” Angelo said.
   “Whose turn?” Tony asked. He knew Angelo was due but hoped he might have forgotten.
   “I don’t give a damn,” Angelo said. “You can do her. I’ll watch the man.”
   Angelo drove by the brownstone several times before parking. It was five stories tall with a double door at the top of a short flight of granite steps. Beneath the stoop at the ground level was another door.
   “The service entrance is probably the way to go,” Angelo said. “We’ll be a little shielded by the stoop. I can see there’s an alarm, but if it’s the kind I think it is, it won’t be a problem.”
   “You’re the boss,” Tony said. He took his gun out and attached the silencer.
   They parked almost a block away and walked back. Angelo carried a small flight bag full of tools. When they got to the house, Angelo told Tony to wait on the sidewalk and let him know if anyone was coming. Angelo descended the few steps to the service entrance door.
   Tony kept an eye out, but the street was quiet. No one was in sight. What Tony didn’t see was Franco Ponti parked only a few doors down, blocking a driveway.
   “All right,” Angelo whispered from the shadows of the service entrance. “Come on.”
   They entered a long hallway, moving quickly to the stairs. There was an elevator but they knew better than to use it. Taking two steps at a time, they climbed to the first floor and listened. Save for a large antique clock ticking loudly in the dark, the house was quiet.
   “Can you imagine living in a place like this?” Tony whispered. “It’s like a palace.”
   “Shut up,” Angelo snapped.
   They continued upstairs, climbing a curving, double staircase that circled a chandelier Tony guessed was six feet across. On the second floor they peered into a series of sitting rooms, a library, and a den. On the third floor they hit pay dirt: the master bedroom.
   Angelo stood to one side of the double doors that no doubt led to the master suite. Tony took the other side. Both men had their guns drawn. Their silencers were attached.
   Angelo slowly turned the door handle and pushed the door in. The room was larger than any bedroom either of them had ever seen. On the far wall—which seemed very far to Angelo—stood a massive canopied bed.
   Angelo stepped into the room, motioning for Tony to follow. He went to the right side of the bed, where the man was sleeping. Tony went to the other side. Angelo nodded. Tony extended his gun while Angelo did the same.
   Tony’s gun went off with its familiar hissing thump and the woman recoiled. The man must have been a light sleeper. No sooner had the shot gone off than he sat bolt upright, eyes wide. Angelo shot him before he had a chance to say a word. He toppled over toward his wife.
   “Oh, no!” Angelo said out loud.
   “What’s the matter?” Tony questioned.
   Using the tip of the silencer, Angelo reached over and separated the fingers of the dying man. Clutched in his hand was a small plastic device with a button.
   “He had a goddamn alarm,” Angelo said.
   “What does that mean?” Tony asked.
   “It means we have to get the hell out of here,” Angelo said. “Come on.”
   Moving as quickly as they could in the semidarkness, they ran down the stairs. Rounding the bend onto the first floor, they practically ran into a housekeeper who was on her way up.
   The housekeeper screamed, turned, and fled back down the way she’d come. Tony fired his Bantam, but at distances greater than six feet, his gun wasn’t accurate. The slug missed the housekeeper, shattering a large gold-framed mirror instead.
   “We have to get her,” Angelo said, knowing that the woman had gotten a good look at them. He threw himself down the stairs, the flight bag bouncing its shoulder straps.
   Reaching the bottom, he skidded on the marble strewn with shards of mirror. Regaining his footing, he hurled himself down the first-floor hallway toward the back of the house. Ahead he could see the woman struggling to open a pair of French doors leading to the backyard.
   Before he could catch her, she was out the door, pulling it closed behind her. Angelo got there just seconds behind her. Tony was right behind him. They ran out after her only to trip on a pair of garden chairs they couldn’t see in the dark.
   Angelo peered into the darkness. The backyard could have passed for a public park. There was a rectangular reflecting pool in the center of the space. To the right was an ivy-covered gazebo that was lost in shadow. A thick oak had a swing hanging from a broad branch. Nowhere could Angelo spot the woman.
   “Where did she go?” Tony whispered.
   “If I knew would I be standing here?” Angelo said. “You go that way and I’ll go this way.” He pointed to either side of the pool.
   The two men groped their way around the garden. They strained to look into the dark recesses of the ferns and shrubbery.
   “There she is!” Tony said, pointing back at the house.
   Angelo fired two shots at the fleeing woman. The first bullet shattered the glass of the French doors. After the second, he saw the woman stumble and fall.
   “You got her!” Tony cried.
   “Let’s get out of here,” Angelo said. He could hear sirens in the distance. It was hard to be sure, but they seemed to be approaching.
   Not wanting to risk coming out of the front of the house, Angelo turned to the back wall of the garden. Spotting a door on the far side of the pond, he yelled, “Come on!” to Tony. Angelo reached the door first. He unbolted the dead bolt securing the door and rushed into a debris-strewn alleyway. They made their way down the darkened path, trying each garden door they passed. Tony finally found one with nearly rotten planking and broke through.
   The garden they found themselves in seemed as neglected as the door.
   “Now what?” Tony said.
   “That way,” Angelo said. He pointed to a dark passageway leading toward the front of the house. At the end of the passageway they came to a bolted door, but it was bolted from the inside. Passing through it, they found themselves on Eighty-fifth Street.
   Angelo brushed off his clothes. Tony followed his example. “Okay,” said Angelo. “Now be cool, confident, relaxed.”
   The pair walked slowly down the street and around the corner as if they called the neighborhood home. Slowly they made their way to Angelo’s car. The sirens had indeed been heading for the brownstone they’d just left. Ahead they could see three squad cars with emergency lights flashing, blocking the street in front of the house where they’d made the hit.
   Angelo unlocked his car doors with a remote control and the two men climbed in.
   “That was awesome!” Tony said excitedly once they were a half dozen blocks away. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”
   Angelo scowled at him. “It was a disaster,” he said.
   “What do you mean?” Tony questioned. “We got away. No problem. And you got the housekeeper. You dropped her right in her tracks.”
   “But we didn’t check her,” Angelo said. “How do I know if I really got her or just winged her? We should have checked her. She looked directly at both of us.”
   “She dropped quickly,” Tony said. “I think you hit her real good.”
   “This is what I mean: screw-ups happen. How would we have guessed the guy would sleep holding a panic-button alarm?” Angelo was glad he had the wheel to grip; his hands were shaking.
   “Okay, so we got the “bad luck’ hit out of the way,” Tony said. “Now you can’t say that things are going too well. What’s next?”
   “I’m not sure,” Angelo said. “Maybe we should call it a night.”
   “What for?” Tony questioned. “The night is young. Come on! Let’s at least do one more. We can’t pass up this kind of money.”
   Angelo thought for a minute. Intuition told him to call it a night, but Tony was right. The money was good. Besides, hits were like riding horses: you fall off, you get back on. Otherwise you may never ride again.
   “All right,” he said finally. “We’ll do one more.”
   “That’s what I like to hear,” Tony said. “Where to?”
   “Down in the Village. Another town house.”
   Angelo took the Ninety-seventh Street transverse across Central Park and got on the Henry Hudson Parkway.
   For a while they didn’t talk. Each was recovering from the opposite ends of the emotional spectrum: Angelo from fear and anxiety and Tony from pure exhilaration. Neither noticed the black Cadillac in the distance.
   “It will be up here on the left,” Angelo said once they turned onto Bleecker Street. He pointed to a three-story town house with a lion’s head knocker on the front door. Tony nodded as they drove past.
   Angelo felt his pulse start quickening. “It’s the man this time,” he said. “Same plan as before. You do him, I’ll cover the wife.”
   “Got it,” Tony said, thrilled to have yet another turn.
   This time Angelo parked farther away than usual. They walked back in silence except for the occasional clank of tools in Angelo’s flight bag. They passed a few pedestrians.
   The streets weren’t empty as they had been uptown; the Village was always livelier than the Upper East Side.
   The alarm at the targeted house was child’s play for Angelo. Within minutes he and Tony were tiptoeing up the creaking stairs.
   Conveniently, there was a small night-light plugged into a socket in the upstairs hall. The rosy glow it cast was just enough to see by.
   The first door Angelo tried proved to be an empty guest room. Since there was only one other door on the floor, he assumed it was to the master suite.
   Once again the two men positioned themselves on either side of the door, holding their guns alongside their heads. Angelo turned the knob and briskly pushed open the door.
   Angelo managed one step into the room when a snarling dog sprang at him in the half-light. The beast’s paws hit him in the chest, knocking him back through the door to the opposite wall of the hall. The dog snapped at him, biting through his jacket, shirt, and even a bit of his skin. Angelo wasn’t sure, but he thought it was a Doberman. It was too long and lean for a pit bull, although it certainly had the temperament. Whatever it was, it had Angelo terrorized and effectively pinned.
   Tony moved quickly. He stepped to the side and shot the dog from point-blank range in the chest. He was sure he’d hit his mark, but the dog didn’t flinch. With a snarl he ripped another large patch of cloth out of Angelo’s jacket and spit it out. Then he lunged for another bite.
   Tony waited until he had a clear shot before pulling the trigger again. This time he hit the dog in the head, and the animal went instantly limp, hitting the floor with a solid thud.
   A woman’s scream sent new chills down Angelo’s spine. The woman of the house had awakened just in time to see her dog slaughtered. She was standing a few feet from the foot of her bed, her face contorted in horror.
   Tony raised his gun, and again there was a hissing thump. The woman’s scream was cut short. Her hand went to her chest. Pulling her hand away, she looked at the spot of blood. Her facial expression was one of bewilderment, as if she could not believe she’d been shot.
   Tony stepped over the threshold into the bedroom. Raising his gun again, he shot her at point-blank range in the center of her forehead. Like the dog, she collapsed instantly in a heap on the floor.
   Angelo started to speak, but before he could say anything, there was a frightful yell from the first floor as the husband charged up the stairs with a double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun. He held the gun in both hands at waist height.
   Sensing what was about to happen, Angelo threw himself onto the floor just as the shotgun discharged with a powerful concussion. In the confined area the sound was horrendous, making Angelo’s ears ring. The concentrated buckshot blew a hole twelve inches in diameter in the wall where Angelo had been standing.
   Even Tony had to react by reflex, throwing himself to the side to avoid the open bedroom doorway. The second blast of the shotgun traveled the length of the bedroom and blew out one of the rear windows.
   From his position on the floor, Angelo fired his Walther twice in rapid succession, hitting the husband in the chest and the chin. The force of the bullets stopped the man’s forward momentum. Then, in a kind of slow motion he tipped backward. With a terrible racket he fell down the stairs and ended up on the floor below.
   Tony reappeared from the bedroom and ran down the stairs to put an additional bullet into the fallen man’s head. Angelo picked himself and his flight bag off the floor. He was shaking. He’d never come so close to death. Rushing down the stairs on shaky legs, he told Tony that they had to get the hell out of there.
   When they got to the front door, Angelo stood on his tiptoes to look out. What he saw he didn’t like. There was a handful of people gathered in front of the building, gazing up at its facade. No doubt they’d heard glass smash when the bedroom window was blown out. Maybe they’d heard both shotgun blasts.
   “Out the back!” Angelo said. He knew they couldn’t risk a confrontation with this crowd. They easily scaled the chain-link fence in the backyard. There wasn’t even any barbed wire at the top to worry about. Once they made it over, they went through a neighboring backyard and through to another street. Angelo was glad he’d parked as far away as he had. They made it to his car without incident. Sirens started in the distance just as they were pulling away.
   “What the hell kind of dog was that?” Tony asked as they cruised up Sixth Avenue.
   “I think it was a Doberman,” Angelo said. “It scared the life out of me.”
   “You and me both,” Tony agreed. “And that shotgun. That was close.”
   “Too close. We should have called it quits after the first job.” Angelo shook his head in disgust. “Maybe I’m getting too old for this stuff.”
   “No way,” Tony said. “You’re the best.”
   “I used to think so,” Angelo said. He glanced down at his tattered Brioni jacket in despair. By force of habit he glanced in the rearview mirror, but nothing he saw worried him. Of course, he was looking for cop cars, not Franco Ponti’s sedan, which was pursuing them at a discreet distance.

Chapter 10

   6:45 a.m., Friday
   Manhattan
   Ordinarily Laurie would be pleased to have slept through the night. Although no one from the medical examiner’s office had called her to report any more upscale overdose cases for her series, she wondered if that meant there had been no such overdoses or, as her intuition suggested, there had been and she had simply not been called. She dressed as quickly as she could and didn’t even bother with coffee, so eager was she to get to work and find out.
   The moment she stepped inside the medical examiner’s office, she could tell that something out of the ordinary had happened. Once again there was a group of reporters huddled in the reception area. Laurie felt the knot in her stomach tighten as she wondered what their restless presence could mean.
   Going directly to the ID office, she helped herself to a cup of coffee before doing anything else. Vinnie, as usual, had his nose in the sports page. Apparently none of the other associate medical examiners had yet arrived. Laurie picked up the sheet at the scheduling desk to check the cases to be posted that day.
   As her eyes ran down the list, she saw four drug overdoses. Two were scheduled for Riva and two were scheduled for George Fontworth, a fellow who’d been with the office for four years. Laurie flipped through the folders intended for Riva and glanced at the investigator’s report sheet. Judging by the Harlem addresses, Laurie figured they were the common crack-house deaths. Relieved, Laurie put the folder down. Then she picked up the two for George. Reading the first investigator’s report, her pulse quickened. The deceased was Wendell Morrison, aged thirty-six, a medical doctor!
   With a shaky hand, Laurie opened the last folder: Julia Myerholtz, aged twenty-nine, art historian!
   Laurie breathed out. She hadn’t been aware that she’d been holding her breath. Her intuition had been correct: there’d been two more cocaine overdose cases with similar demographics as the others. She felt a mixture of emotions including anger about not having been called as she’d requested and confirmation that her fears had come to pass. At the same time she felt sorry there had been two more potentially preventable deaths.
   Laurie went straight to the forensic investigator’s office and found Bart Arnold. She knocked loudly on his door and walked in before he had a chance to invite her.
   “Why wasn’t I called? I spoke to you specifically about this. I told you I wanted to be called on cocaine overdoses that fall within certain demographic parameters. Last night there were two. I wasn’t called. Why?”
   “I was told you were not to be called,” Bart said.
   “Why not?” Laurie questioned.
   “I wasn’t given a reason,” Bart said. “But I passed the word on to the tour doctors when they came on duty.”
   “Who told you this?” Laurie asked.
   “Dr. Washington,” Bart said. “I’m sorry, Laurie. I would have told you myself, but you had already gone for the day.”
   Laurie abruptly turned and walked out of Bart’s office. She was more angry than hurt. Her worst fears had been confirmed: she hadn’t been overlooked accidentally, there was a deliberate effort going on to keep her out of the way. Just outside the police liaison office she saw Lou Soldano.
   “Can I talk to you for a minute?” Lou asked.
   Laurie stared at him. Didn’t the guy ever get any sleep? Once again he looked as if he’d been up all night. He hadn’t shaved and his eyes were red-rimmed. His close-cropped hair was matted down on his forehead.
   “I’m quite busy, Lieutenant,” Laurie said.
   “Just a moment of your time,” Lou repeated. “Please.”
   “All right,” Laurie relented. “What is it?”
   “I had a little time to think last night,” Lou said. “I wanted to apologize for being such a boob yesterday afternoon. I came on a little stronger than I should have. So, I’m sorry.”
   The last thing she’d expected from Lou was an apology. Now that it was being offered, she was gratified to hear it.
   “As kind of an explanation,” Lou continued, “I’m under a lot of pressure from the commissioner about these gangland-style murders. He thinks that since I’d spent time on organized crime, I should be the one to solve them. Unfortunately he’s not a patient man.”
   “I guess we’re both pretty stressed,” Laurie said. “But your apology is accepted.”
   “Thank you,” Lou said. “At least that’s one hurdle out of the way.”
   “So what brings you here this morning?”
   “You haven’t heard about the homicides?”
   “What homicides?” Laurie asked. “We get homicides every day.”
   “Not like these,” Lou said. “More gangland stuff. Professional hits. Two couples here in Manhattan.”
   “Floating in the river?” Laurie asked.
   “Nope,” Lou said. “Shot in their homes. Both of the couples were well-to-do, one in particular. And the wealthier one is also politically connected.”
   “Uh-oh,” Laurie said. “More pressure.”
   “You’d better believe it,” Lou said. “The mayor is livid. He’s already chewed out the commissioner, and guess who the commissioner has decided to target: yours truly.”
   “Do you have any ideas?” Laurie asked.
   “I wish I could tell you I did,” Lou said. “Something big time is going on, but for the life of me I don’t have a clue as to what it is. The night before last there were three similar hits in Queens. Now these two in Manhattan. And there doesn’t seem to be any organized-crime connection. Certainly not with the two last night. But the m.o. of the killers is definitely gangland style.”
   “So you’re here for the autopsies?” Laurie asked.
   “Yeah,” Lou said. “Maybe I can get a job here after I’m fired from the police department. I’m spending as much time here as in my office.”
   “Who’s doing the cases?” Laurie asked.
   “Dr. Southgate and Dr. Besserman,” Lou said. “How are they, all right?”
   “They’re excellent. Both are very experienced.”
   “I’d kinda hoped you’d be doing them,” Lou said. “I was beginning to think we worked well together.”
   “Well, you’re in good hands with Southgate and Besserman,” she assured him.
   “I’ll let you know what we find,” Lou said. He fumbled with his hat.
   “Please do,” Laurie answered. All of a sudden she had that same feeling that she’d gotten on previous days. Lou seemed to become painfully self-conscious, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t.
   “Well . . . I’m glad I ran into you,” Lou said, avoiding Laurie’s eyes. “Well . . . I’ll see you. ’Bye.” Lou turned and started back toward the police liaison office.
   For a second Laurie watched Lou’s lumbering gait and again was impressed by a sense of the man’s loneliness. She wondered if he had intended asking her out once again.
   For a minute after Lou disappeared from view, Laurie forgot where she’d been headed. But her anger returned the minute she remembered Calvin’s attempt to get her off her overdose series. With a renewed sense of purpose, she marched to Calvin’s office and knocked on the open door. She was inside facing him before he had a chance to say a word.
   She found Calvin seated behind a mountain of paperwork. He looked up over the tops of his wire-rimmed reading glasses that were dwarfed by his broad face. He didn’t seem happy to see her. “What is it, Montgomery?”
   “There were two more overdoses last night similar to the kind that I am interested in,” Laurie began.
   “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” Calvin said.
   “I know this is scheduled as a paper day for me, but I would appreciate it if you would let me do the autopsies. Something tells me these cases are related. By my doing them all, maybe I’ll make some connections.”
   “We went over this on the phone,” Calvin said. “I told you I think you are getting carried away. You’ve become less than objective.”
   “Please, Dr. Washington,” Laurie pleaded. She hated to beg.
   “No! Goddamn it!” Calvin exploded. He slammed an open palm on his desk, sending some of his papers flying. He stood up. “George Fontworth is doing the overdoses, and I want you to stick to your own work. You’re behind in signing out some of your cases as it is. I don’t think I need to tell you. Now, I don’t need this kind of aggravation. Not with the pressure this office is under.”
   Laurie nodded, then walked out of the office. If she weren’t so enraged, she would probably have been in tears. Leaving Calvin’s office, she went directly to Bingham’s.
   This time Laurie waited to be asked in. Bingham was on the phone, but he waved her in.
   Laurie got the impression Bingham was speaking to someone at city hall, since his side of the conversation reminded her of speaking with her mother. Bingham was saying “yes,” “certainly,” and “of course” over and over.
   When he finally hung up and peered at Laurie she could tell he was already exasperated. It was not an opportune time for her visit. But since she was already there, and there was no one else to whom she could appeal, Laurie pressed on.
   “I’m being deliberately prevented from further involvement with these upscale overdose cases,” she said. She tried to sound firm but her voice was filled with emotion. “Dr. Washington will not let me perform the relevant autopsies that have come in today. He made sure I wasn’t called to any of the scenes last night. I don’t think barring me from these cases is in the best interests of the department.”
   Bingham put his face in his hands and rubbed, particularly his eyes. When he looked up again at Laurie his eyes were red. “We’re dealing with a lot of bad press about possibly mishandling a Central Park murder case; we’ve got a rash of brutal, professional homicides that are on top of the usual nighttime New York mayhem; and on top of that, you’re in here causing trouble. I don’t believe it, Laurie. Truly I don’t.”
   “I want to be allowed to pursue these cases,” Laurie said evenly. “Now there are at least fourteen. Someone has to be looking at the whole picture. I think I’m the person to do it. I’m convinced we’re on the brink of a widespread disaster. If there is a contaminant, and I’m convinced there is, we must issue a public warning!”
   Bingham was incredulous. Gazing up at the ceiling and throwing his hands up in the air, he muttered to himself: “She’s been on the staff for about five months and she’s telling me how to run the department.” He shook his head. Then he turned his attention back to Laurie. This time he sounded a lot fiercer.
   “Calvin is an able administrator. In fact, he is more than able. He’s excellent. What he says goes. You hear me?! That’s it; the issue is closed.” With that, he turned his attention to the pile of letters stacked in his in-box.
   Laurie headed straight for the lab. She decided it was better to keep moving. If she paused to think about these last two interviews, she might do something rash she’d later regret.
   She was looking for Peter Letterman but ran into John DeVries instead. “Thanks for putting in a good word for me with the chief,” she said sarcastically. As angry as she was, she couldn’t contain herself.
   “I don’t like to be pestered,” John said. “I warned you.”
   “I wasn’t pestering,” Laurie snapped. “I was merely asking you to do your job. Have you found a contaminant?”
   “No,” John said. He pushed past her without giving her the courtesy of a more detailed reply.
   Laurie shook her head. She wondered if her days at the New York Medical Examiner’s Office were numbered.
   She found Peter over in the corner of the lab, working on the largest and newest of the gas chromatographs.
   “I think you should try to avoid John,” he said. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”
   “Believe me, I wasn’t looking for him,” Laurie answered.
   “I haven’t found any contaminant, either,” Peter said. “But I’ve been running samples on this gas chromatograph. It has what they call a “trap.’ If we’re going to pick something up, this is the apparatus that will do it.”
   “Keep at it,” Laurie said. “We’re up to fourteen cases now.”
   “I did learn something,” Peter said. “As you know, cocaine naturally hydrolyzes to benzoylecgonine, ecgonine methyl ester, and ecgonine.”
   “Yes,” Laurie said. “Go on.”
   “Each batch of cocaine that is made has a unique percentage of these hydrolysates,” Peter said. “So by analyzing the concentrations, you can make a pretty educated guess as to the origin of the samples.”
   “And?” Laurie asked.
   “All the samples that I’ve recovered from the syringes have the same percentages,” Peter said. “That means the cocaine has all come from the same batch.”
   “Meaning the same source,” Laurie added.
   “Exactly,” Peter said.
   “That’s what I suspected,” Laurie said. “It’s nice to have it documented.”
   “I’ll let you know if I find any contaminant with this machine.”
   “Please do,” Laurie said. “If I had proof of a contaminant I think Dr. Bingham would make a statement.” But as she returned to her office, Laurie wondered if she could be sure of anything.

   “Don’t hold my arm!” Cerino shouted. Angelo had been trying to guide him through the entrance to Jordan Scheffield’s office. “I can see more than you think I can.” Cerino was carrying his red-tipped cane but wasn’t using it. Tony came in last and pulled the door shut.
   One of Jordan’s nurses guided the group down the corridor, making sure that Cerino was comfortably seated in one of the examination chairs.
   When Cerino came to Jordan’s office, he did not use the usual entrance, and he bypassed the waiting room altogether. That was the customary modus operandi for all of Jordan’s VIP patients.
   “Oh dear!” the nurse said as she eyed Tony’s face. There was a deep scratch that extended down from in front of his left ear to the corner of his mouth. “That’s a nasty cut on your cheek. How’d you get it?”
   “A cat,” Tony said, self-consciously putting a hand to his face.
   “I hope you got a tetanus shot,” the nurse said. “Would you like us to wash it out?”
   “Nah,” Tony said, embarrassed at the attention in front of Cerino.
   “Let me know if you change your mind,” the nurse said, heading for the door.
   “Gimme a light,” Paul said as soon as the nurse had left the room. Angelo hastily lit Paul’s cigarette, then pulled one out for himself.
   Tony found a chair off to the side and sat down. Angelo remained standing a little to Cerino’s left and a little behind. Both he and Tony were exhausted, having been roused out of bed for Cerino’s unexpected doctor’s visit. Both were also still suffering the late effects of the experiences at the last two hits, particularly Angelo.
   “Here we are in Disneyland again,” Paul said.
   The room stopped and the wall lifted. Jordan was poised at the edge of his office with Cerino’s record in hand. As he stepped forward he immediately smelled the cigarettes.
   “Excuse me,” he said. “There is no smoking in here.”
   Angelo nervously looked around for someplace to deposit his smoldering cigarette. Cerino grabbed his arm and motioned for him not to move.
   “If we want to smoke, we’re going to smoke,” Paul said. “Like I told you when you called me on the phone, Doc, I’m a bit disappointed in you and I don’t mind telling you again.”
   “But the instruments,” Jordan said, pointing toward the slit lamp. “Smoke is detrimental to them.”
   “Screw the instruments, Doc,” Paul said. “Let’s talk about you blabbing all over town about my condition.”
   “What are you talking about?” Jordan asked. He’d known Cerino was angry about something from their phone call. He’d figured it had something to do with the wait for a suitable cornea transplant. But Cerino’s true complaint came as a complete surprise to him.
   “I’m talking about a detective by the name of Lou Soldano,” Paul said. “And a broad by the name of Dr. Laurie Montgomery. You talked to the broad, the broad talked to the detective, and the detective came to me. And I’ll tell you something, Doc. It pisses me off. I was trying to keep the details of my little accident a secret. For business purposes, you understand.”
   “We doctors sometimes discuss cases,” Jordan said. He suddenly felt very warm.
   “Give me a break, Doc,” Paul said derisively. “I hear this supposed colleague is a medical examiner. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not dead yet. And if you two had been consulting for some strange reason, she wouldn’t have blabbed to a homicide detective. You’ll have to give me a better explanation than that.”
   Jordan was at a loss. He couldn’t think of any plausible excuse.
   “The bottom line, Doctor, is that you haven’t respected my confidentiality. Isn’t that the fancy word you doctors use? The way I understand it, I could go to a lawyer and slap a malpractice suit on you, couldn’t I?”
   “I’m not sure . . .” Jordan couldn’t even complete a phrase. He was instantly aware of his legal vulnerability.
   “Now I don’t want to hear any of your double-talk,” Paul told him. “I probably won’t go to a lawyer. You know why? I have lots of friends who are cheaper than lawyers and a hell of a lot more effective. You know, Doc, my friends are kind of like you: specialists for kneecaps, leg bones, and knuckles. I can just imagine what it would do to your practice if you happened to have your hand crushed by a car door.”
   “Mr. Cerino . . .” Jordan said in a conciliatory tone, but Paul cut him off.
   “I think I’ve made myself clear, Doc. I’m counting on you not to go blabbing anymore. Am I right?”
   Jordan nodded. His hands were trembling.
   “Now, Doc, I don’t mean to make you nervous. I want you in nothing but good shape. ’Cause that’s what you’re going to put me in: good shape. I was very pleased when your nurse called this morning to say I could come in for my operation.”
   “I’m glad, too,” Jordan said, trying to regain some of his professionalism and composure. “You’re lucky your chance came up so quickly. The waiting period has been much shorter than usual.”
   “Not short enough for me,” Paul said. “In my line of work you have to have all your senses and then some. There are any number of sharks who’d love to put me out to pasture or worse. So let’s get it over with.”
   “Fine by me,” Jordan said nervously. He laid Cerino’s record on the lens stand. Straddling a small wheeled stool, he pushed up to Cerino’s ophthalmic examination chair. Swinging around the slit lamp, he motioned for Cerino to put his chin on the chin rest.
   Reaching below with a trembling hand, Jordan switched on the slit lamp. As he did so he got a whiff of garlic from Cerino’s breath.
   “I understand you’ve been doing more surgery than usual lately,” Paul said.
   “That’s true,” Jordan replied.
   “As a businessman myself I would imagine you’d like to do as much surgery as possible,” Cerino said. “I imagine that’s where the big bucks are.”
   “That’s also true,” Jordan said. He moved the slit lamp’s beam so that it fell across Cerino’s badly scarred cornea.
   “I have some ideas about keeping your surgery up,” Cerino said. “Would that interest you?”
   “Of course,” Jordan said.
   “Fix me up first, Doc,” Cerino said. “If you do, we’ll remain friends. Then who knows? Maybe we can do some business.”
   Jordan wasn’t certain he wanted to be friends with this guy, but he certainly didn’t want to be enemies. He had a feeling Paul Cerino’s enemies didn’t last too long. He was determined to do his best by Cerino. And he’d already made up his mind: he wouldn’t be sending the man a bill.

  Laurie put down her pen and leaned back in her desk chair. She’d been struggling to keep her mind on her paperwork, but she wasn’t making much headway. Her thoughts kept drifting back to those drug overdoses. She couldn’t believe she wasn’t down in the autopsy room working on the two cases that had come in overnight.
   She’d resisted the temptation to sneak down and watch as Fontworth went about his business. Calvin would have exploded if he’d seen her.
   Laurie looked at her watch. She decided it was late enough to slip downstairs to see if Fontworth had turned up anything. No sooner had she stood up than Lou walked in.
   “On your way out?” he asked.
   Laurie sat back down. “It’s probably better if I don’t.”
   “Yeah?” said Lou.
   She could tell he wasn’t sure what she was talking about.
   “It’s a long story,” Laurie said. “How are you doing? You look exhausted.”
   “I am,” Lou admitted. “I’ve been up since three. And doing autopsies with people other than you is just plain work.”
   “Are they finished?” Laurie asked.
   “Hell, no,” Lou said. “I’m the one who’s finished. I couldn’t stand up any longer. But it will probably take the two doctors all day to finish the four cases plus the dog.”
   “The dog?”
   “Clipper,” Lou said. “At one of the homes the killer shot the dog as well as the man and the woman. But I’m only kidding. They’re not autopsying the dog.”
   “Find out anything useful?” Laurie asked.
   “I don’t know. The caliber of the bullets looks similar to the cases in Queens, but we’ll have to wait to hear what Ballistics says before we’re certain they’re from the same guns. And of course Ballistics is weeks behind.”
   “No ideas yet?” Laurie asked.
   Lou shook his head. “Afraid not. The Queens cases suggested a restaurant connection, but the two cases downstairs have nothing to do with the business. One guy was a big-shot banker who’d contributed heavily to the mayor’s campaign. The other is an executive for one of the big auction houses.”
   “Still no organized-crime association?” Laurie asked.
   “Nope,” Lou said. “But we’re still working on it. There’s no question that these were professional hits. I’ve got two more investigative teams on these two Manhattan cases.
   Between the three teams in Queens and these two new ones, I’m running out of manpower. The only positive break so far is that the housekeeper at one of the homes is still alive. If she makes it, we’ll have our first witness.”
   “I’d like to get a break with my series,” Laurie said. “If only one of these overdoses wouldn’t die. I wish I had some manpower to try to find the source of the coke that’s killing all these people.”
   “You think it’s from a single source?”
   “I know so,” Laurie said. She explained how Peter had determined it scientifically.
   Just then Lou’s beeper sounded. Lou checked the number. “Speaking of manpower,” he said, “that’s one of my boys. May I use your phone?”
   Laurie nodded.
   “What is it, Norman?” Lou asked once he got through. Laurie was flattered that Lou put the call on speakerphone so she could hear.
   “Probably nothing,” Norman said. “But I thought I’d tell you anyway. I’ve found one note of commonality in these three cases: a doctor.”
   “Really?” Lou said. He rolled his eyes at Laurie. This wasn’t exactly the break he had been looking for. “That’s not the sort of association that’s going to be much help in this kind of murder case, Norman.”
   “I know,” Norman said. “But it’s the only thing that’s turned up. Remember you told me that Steven Vivonetto and Janice Singleton were both terminal?”
   “Yeah,” Lou said. “Was one of the Kaufmans terminally ill too?”
   “No, but Henriette Kaufman had a medical condition she was being treated for. And she was seeing the same doctor that Steven Vivonetto and Janice Singleton were seeing.
   Of course, Steven and Janice were seeing about a dozen doctors. But there was one doctor who was seeing all three.”
   “What kind of a doctor?” Lou asked.
   “An eye doctor,” Norman said. “His name is Jordan Scheffield.”
   Lou blinked. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. He glanced at Laurie. Her eyes registered equal surprise.
   “How did you find this out?” Lou asked.
   “Just by accident,” Norman replied. “After you told me about Steven and Janice being terminal, I looked into everybody’s health. I didn’t even realize the connection until I got back to my office and started going over all the material that had been coming in. Do you think it’s important?”
   “I don’t know,” Lou said. “It’s certainly weird.”
   “You want me to follow up on it in any way?”
   “I wouldn’t even know how to follow up. Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you. Meanwhile keep the investigation going.”
   Lou hung up the phone. “Well, it’s a real small world. Either that or that boyfriend of yours really gets around.”
   “He’s not my boyfriend,” Laurie said irritably.
   “I’m sorry,” Lou said. “I forgot. Your male acquaintance who happens to be a friend.”
   “You know, the night that Marsha Schulman disappeared, Jordan told me that his office had been broken into. Someone had gone through his records.”
   “Some had been stolen?” Lou asked.
   “No,” Laurie said. “Apparently some had been copied. I had him check Cerino’s record; it was one of the ones that had been disturbed.”
   “No kidding!” Lou said. He sat in bemused silence for a few minutes.
   Laurie was quiet, too.
   “It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Lou said at last. “Could the Lucia family have gotten involved because Cerino is seeing Scheffield? I’m trying to fit Cerino’s rival, Vinnie Dominick, into the picture, but I can’t make any sense of it.”
   “One thing we could do is check the gangland-style homicides that came in today. See if any of them are Jordan’s patients.”
   Lou’s face brightened. “You know, that’s a good idea. Glad I thought of it.” His smile told Laurie he was kidding.
   In mock anger Laurie threw a paper clip at him.
   Five minutes later, dressed in scrubs, Laurie and Lou entered the autopsy room. Luckily Calvin was nowhere in sight.
   Both Southgate and Besserman were on their second cases. Southgate was almost finished; the Kaufmans were fairly straightforward cases, given their simple head wounds. Besserman’s cases were more difficult. First he had Dwight Sorenson, who had three bullet paths to trace. The work had been laborious and time-consuming, so Besserman was just starting on Amy Sorenson when Lou and Laurie got there.
   With the permission of the respective doctors, Laurie and Lou glanced through the folders on each case. Unfortunately, the medical histories were meager.
   “I’ve got a better idea,” Laurie said. She went to the phone and called Cheryl Myers.
   “Cheryl, I’ve got a favor to ask,” Laurie said.
   “What is it?” Cheryl asked cheerfully.
   “You know the four Manhattan homicides we got today?” Laurie said. “The ones that everybody’s up in arms about? I want to know if any of them have ever seen an ophthalmologist by the name of Jordan Scheffield.”
   “Will do,” Cheryl said. “I’ll call you back in a few minutes. Where are you?”
   “I’m down in the pit,” Laurie said.
   Laurie told Lou they’d hear back soon. Then Laurie went over to George Fontworth. He was just finishing up the second of his two overdose cases: Julia Myerholtz.
   “Calvin said I wasn’t supposed to talk with you today,” George told her. “I don’t want to cross him.”
   “Just answer me this. Was the cocaine mainlined?”
   “Yeah,” George said. His eyes darted around the room as if he expected Calvin to come thundering by.
   “Were the autopsies normal except for signs of the overdose and toxicity?” Laurie asked.
   “Yes,” George said. “Come on, Laurie, don’t put me in this situation.”
   “One last question,” Laurie said. “Were there any surprises?”
   “Just one,” George said. “But you know about that. I’d just not heard it was standard policy on this kind of case. I think it should have been brought up at Thursday conference.”
   “What are you talking about?” Laurie asked.
   “Please,” George said. “Don’t act dumb. Calvin told me it was your doing.”
   “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Laurie said.
   “Oh, God!” George said. “Here comes Calvin. ’Bye, Laurie.”
   Laurie turned in time to see Calvin’s hulking figure enter through the swinging door. Even dressed in his scrubs and protective gloves, there was no mistaking that body.
   Laurie quickly stepped away from George’s table, making a beeline for the master sheet of the day’s autopsies. She wanted to have a cover in case Calvin asked why she was there. Quickly, she searched for Mary O’Connor’s name. Finding it, she noted that Paul Plodgett had been scheduled for the autopsy. He was at the far table near the wall. Laurie joined him.
   “I’ve found a lot of stuff,” Paul said when Laurie asked how the autopsy was going.
   Laurie glanced over her shoulder. Calvin had gone directly to Besserman’s table.
   “What’s your feeling about the cause of death?” Laurie asked. She was relieved that Calvin hadn’t seen her, or if he had, he didn’t seem concerned about her presence.
   “Undoubtedly cardiovascular,” Paul said, gazing down at Mary O’Connor’s body. The woman was considerably overweight. The face and head were a deep blue, almost purple.
   “A lot of pathology?” Laurie asked.
   “Enough,” Paul said. “Moderate coronary disease for starters. Also the mitral valve was in pretty bad shape. The heart itself seemed awfully flabby. So there are a lot of candidates for the final culprit.”
   Laurie thought Jordan would appreciate the news.
   “She’s awfully purple,” Laurie commented.
   “True,” Paul said. “Quite a bit of congestion in the head and the lungs. Must have been a lot of terminal, agonal effort. She didn’t want to die, poor lady. She apparently even bit her lip.”
   “Really?” Laurie asked. “Do you think she had some kind of seizure?”
   “Could have,” Paul said. “But it’s more like an abrasion, like she was chewing her lip.”
   “Let’s see.”
   Paul reached over and drew back Mary O’Connor’s upper lip.
   “You’re right,” Laurie said. “What about the tongue?”
   “Normal,” Paul said. “That’s why I doubt there was a seizure. Maybe she had a lot of terminal pain. Well, perhaps the microscopic of the heart will show something pathognomonic, but I bet this case will fall into that category of an unknown coup de grace, at least specifically. In general I know it was cardiovascular.”
   Laurie nodded but looked at Mary O’Connor. Something bothered her about the case. It was triggering a memory she couldn’t quite put a finger on.
   “What about these petechiae on her face?” Laurie asked.
   “It’s consistent with terminal heart disease,” Paul said.
   “This much?”
   “As I said, there must have been a lot of agonal effort.”
   “Would you mind letting me know what you find on microscopic?” she asked. “She was a friend’s patient. I know he’ll be interested in what you find.”
   “Will do,” Paul said.
   Laurie saw that Calvin had moved from Besserman to Fontworth. Lou had wandered back to Southgate’s table. Laurie headed over to him.
   “Sorry,” she said to Lou as she came alongside.
   “No problem,” Lou said. “I’m starting to feel right at home here.”
   “Hey, Laurie, the phone’s for you,” a voice yelled out over the general background noise of the busy autopsy room. Laurie walked to the phone, cringing that her presence had been so blatantly broadcasted. She didn’t dare look in Calvin’s direction. She picked up the receiver: it was Cheryl.
   “I wish all your requests were so easy,” Cheryl said. “I called over to Dr. Scheffield’s office and the secretary couldn’t have been more helpful. Henriette Kaufman and Dwight Sorenson were both patients. Does that help you?”
   “I’m not sure,” Laurie said. “But it is interesting indeed. Thanks.”
   Laurie went back to Lou and told him what she had learned.
   “Wow!” he said. “That takes it out of the realm of coincidence. At least I think it does.”
   “Five for five,” Laurie said. “The possibility of that happening by chance is extremely small.”
   “But what does it mean?” Lou asked. “It seems like an awfully strange way to get at Cerino, if that’s what it’s about. It doesn’t make any sense.”
   “I agree,” Laurie said.
   “One way or the other,” Lou said, “I’ve got to look into it immediately. I’ll be in touch.” He was gone before Laurie could say so much as goodbye.
   Laurie hazarded one last glance at Calvin. He was still talking with George and didn’t seem the least perturbed by her presence.
   Back in her office, Laurie called Jordan. As usual he was in surgery. Laurie left a message for him to please call back.
   Trying to go back to work, Laurie wasn’t much more successful than she’d been earlier. Her mind was in a turmoil concerning her precarious job situation from having alienated so many people, her overdose series, and the odd coincidence that Jordan was treating a string of five gangland-style murder victims.
   Laurie’s thoughts drifted back to Mary O’Connor. She suddenly remembered what she’d been trying to think of earlier. The abrasions on the lip, the florid petechiae, and the face’s deep purple discoloration suggested “burking,” the suffocation by compressing the chest while occluding the mouth.
   With that thought in mind, Laurie phoned down to the autopsy room and asked for Paul.
   “I’ve had a thought,” Laurie said once he was on the line.
   “Shoot,” Paul said.
   “What do you think about burking as a possible cause of death in the O’Connor case?”
   Her suggestion was met with silence.
   “Well?” Laurie questioned.
   “The victim was in Manhattan General,” Paul said. “She was in a private room in the Goldblatt wing.”
   “Try to forget where she was,” Laurie said. “Just look at the facts.”
   “But as forensic pathologists we’re supposed to take the scene into consideration. If we didn’t, we’d misdiagnose tons of cases.”
   “I understand that,” Laurie said. “But sometimes the scene can be misleading. What about homicides set up to look like suicides?”
   “That’s different,” Paul said.
   “Is it?” Laurie questioned. “Anyway I just wanted you to give burking some thought. Think about the lip abrasion, the petechiae, and the amount of congestion of the face and the head.”
   As soon as Laurie put down the receiver, the phone rang. It was Jordan.
   “I’m glad you called,” Jordan said. “I was about to call you. I’m up in surgery and I only have a second. I’ve got a number of cases, including, you’ll be glad to hear, Mr. Paul Cerino.”
   “I am glad—” Laurie said.
   “And I have a favor to ask,” Jordan said, cutting Laurie short. “In order to get Cerino on the schedule, I’ve had to do some juggling. So I’m going to be stuck here until late.
   Could we take a raincheck on our dinner plans? How about tomorrow night?”
   “I suppose,” Laurie said. “But Jordan, I have some things I have to talk to you about now.”
   “Make it fast,” Jordan said. “My next patient is already in the operating room.”
   “First, about Mary O’Connor,” Laurie said. “She had heart disease.”
   “That’s reassuring,” Jordan said.
   “Do you know anything about her personal life?”
   “Not much.”
   “What would you say if I told you she’d been murdered?”
   “Murdered!” Jordan sputtered. “Are you serious?”
   “I don’t know,” Laurie admitted. “But if you told me she had twenty million dollars and was about to cut her wicked grandson out of her will, the possibility of murder might enter into my thinking.”
   “She was well-off but not wealthy,” Jordan said. “And do I have to remind you that you were supposed to make me feel better about her death, not more uneasy?”
   “The doctor who did her autopsy is convinced that she died from heart disease,” Laurie said.
   “That’s better,” Jordan said. “Where did this murder question originate?”
   “My fertile imagination,” Laurie said. “Plus some other rather startling news. Are you sitting down?”
   “Please, Laurie, no games. I was due in the OR ten minutes ago.”
   “Do the names Henriette Kaufman and Dwight Sorenson mean anything to you?” Laurie questioned.
   “They’re two of my patients. Why?”
   “They were your patients,” Laurie said. “They were both killed last night along with their spouses. Their autopsies are going on as we speak.”
   “My God!” Jordan said.
   “And that’s not all,” Laurie said. “The night before last three other patients of yours were murdered. All of them were shot in a manner that suggests an organized-crime connection. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”
   “Oh, my God,” Jordan said. “And Paul Cerino was in my office threatening me just this morning. This is a nightmare.”
   “How did he threaten you?” Laurie asked.
   “I don’t even want to discuss it,” Jordan said. “But he’s quite angry with me and I’m afraid I have you to thank.”
   “Me?”
   “I wasn’t going to bring this up until we got together,” Jordan said, “but now that we’re on the subject—”
   “What?”
   “Why did you tell a detective Soldano about my treating Cerino?”
   “I didn’t think it was a secret,” Laurie said. “After all, you talked about it at my parents’ dinner party.”
   “I suppose you’re right,” Jordan said. “But how did you happen to tell a homicide detective of all people?”
   “He was here observing autopsies,” Laurie said. “Cerino’s name came up in relation to some homicides: several gangland-style execution victims pulled out of the East River.”
   “Oh, boy,” Jordan said.
   “I’m sorry to be the Greek messenger with all this bad news.”
   “It’s not your fault,” Jordan said. “And I guess I’m better off knowing. Thankfully I’ll be doing Cerino this evening. At this point the sooner I get rid of him the better.”
   “Just be careful,” Laurie said. “Something strange is going on. I’m just not sure what.”

   Jordan didn’t need Laurie to remind him to be careful, not after Cerino’s threat to crush his hands. And now this news that five of his patients had been murdered and another one dead, possibly also murdered. It was too much.
   Preoccupied with this bizarre yet terrifying set of circumstances, Jordan got up from the chair in the surgical lounge of the Manhattan General Hospital and traipsed into the OR. He wondered if he should go to the police and tell them about Cerino’s threat. Yet if he did go to the police, what would they do? Probably nothing. What would Cerino do? Probably what he threatened. Jordan shivered with fear at the thought and wished that Cerino had never walked through his door.
   As he scrubbed his hands, Jordan tried to think of why five and possibly six of his patients would be killed. And what about Marsha? But try as he might, he couldn’t think of a reason. Holding his hands in the air, he pushed into the operating room.
   Surgery for Jordan was a cathartic experience. He was relieved to be able to lose himself in the exacting procedure of a corneal transplant. For the next few hours he completely forgot about threats, mob hits, Marsha Schulman, and unsolved homicides.
   “Wonderful job,” the junior resident commented after Jordan had finished.
   “Thank you,” Jordan said. He beamed. Then, to the nursing staff, he added: “I’ll be in the surgical lounge. Let’s turn the room around as soon as possible. The next case is one of my VIPs.”
   “Yes, your Highness,” the scrub nurse teased.
   Walking back to the surgical lounge, Jordan was glad that Cerino was next. He just wished it was already over. Although complications were rare for Jordan, they did occur. He shivered to think of the consequence of a postoperative infection: not for Cerino, for himself.
   Gripped by his scary thoughts, Jordan was oblivious of his surroundings. And when he sank into one of the armchairs in the lounge and closed his eyes he hadn’t noticed the man sitting directly across from him.
   “Good afternoon, Doctor!”
   Jordan opened his eyes. It was Lou Soldano.
   “Your secretary told me you were up here,” Lou said. “I told her it was important that I talk with you. I hope you don’t mind.”
   Jordan sat bolt upright and his eyes nervously darted around the room. He knew Cerino had to be close, probably in the holding area at that moment. And that meant that the tall gaunt fellow would be around someplace. Cerino had insisted on it, and the administration had agreed. Jordan did not relish the idea of Cerino’s man seeing him with Lou Soldano. He didn’t want to be forced to explain it to Cerino.
   “Certain facts have come up,” Lou continued. “I’m hoping you might have some explanations.”
   “I have another operation,” Jordan said. He started to get up.
   “Sit down, Doctor,” Lou said. “I only want a minute of your time. At least at the moment. We’ve been puzzling over five recent homicides which we have reason to believe were done by the same person or persons, and the only way we have been able to associate them so far, other than the manner in which they were killed, is that they were your patients. Naturally we’d like to ask you if you have any idea why this has happened.”
   “I’d just been informed about it an hour ago,” Jordan said nervously. “I haven’t the slightest idea why. But I can tell you there is no way that it could involve me.”
   “So we can assume they have all paid their bills?” Lou asked.
   “Under the circumstances, Lieutenant,” Jordan snapped, “I don’t think that is a very funny comment.”
   “Excuse my black humor,” Lou said. “But guessing how much that office of yours had to cost and knowing you have a limo—”
   “I don’t have to talk with you if I don’t want to,” Jordan said, interrupting Lou and again motioning to get up.
   “You don’t have to talk with me now,” Lou said. “That’s true. But you’d have to talk with me eventually, so you might as well try to cooperate. After all, this is one hell of a serious situation.”
   Jordan sat back. “What do you want from me? I don’t have anything to add to what you already know. I’m sure you know much more than I.”
   “Tell me about Martha Goldburg, Steven Vivonetto, Janice Singleton, Henriette Kaufman, and Dwight Sorenson.”
   “They were patients of mine,” Jordan said.
   “What were their diagnoses?” Lou asked. He took out his pad and pencil.
   “I can’t tell you that,” Jordan said. “That’s privileged information. And don’t cite my mentioning the Cerino case to Dr. Montgomery as a precedent. I made a mistake talking about him.”
   “I’ll be able to get the information from the families,” Lou said. “Why don’t you just make it easy for me?”
   “It’s up to the families to tell you if they so choose,” Jordan said. “I am not at liberty to divulge that information.”
   “OK,” Lou said. “Then let’s talk generalities. Did all these people have the same diagnosis?”
   “No,” Jordan said.
   “They didn’t?” Lou questioned. He visibly sagged. “Are you sure?”
   “Of course I’m sure,” Jordan said.
   Lou looked down at his blank pad and thought for a moment. Raising his eyes he asked: “Were these patients related in some unlikely way? For example, were they customarily seen on the same day, anything like that?”
   “No,” Jordan said.
   “Could their records have been kept together for some reason?”
   “No, my records are alphabetical.”
   “Could any of these patients have been seen on the same day as Cerino?”
   “That I can’t say,” Jordan admitted. “But I can tell you this. When Mr. Cerino came to see me, he never saw any other patient nor did any other patient see him.”
   “Are you sure of that?” Lou asked.
   “Positive,” Jordan said.
   The intercom connecting the surgical lounge to the OR crackled to life. One of the OR nurses told Jordan that his patient was in the room waiting for him.
   Jordan got to his feet. Lou did the same.
   “I’ve got surgery,” Jordan said.
   “OK,” Lou said. “I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”
   Lou put on his hat and walked out of the surgical lounge.
   Jordan followed him to the door and watched as Lou continued down the long hallway to the main hospital elevators. He watched as Lou pushed the button, waited, then boarded and disappeared from view.
   Jordan’s eyes swept the hallway for Cerino’s man. Stepping across the hall, he peered into the surgical waiting room. He was encouraged when he didn’t see the gaunt man anyplace.
   Turning back into the surgical lounge, Jordan sighed. He was relieved that Lou had left. The meeting with him had left Jordan feeling more rattled than ever, and it wasn’t only because of the fear that Cerino’s man would see them talking. Jordan sensed the detective didn’t like him much, and that could mean trouble. Jordan was afraid he’d have to put up with the man’s annoying presence in the future.
   Stepping into the men’s locker room, Jordan splashed his face with cold water. He needed to pull himself together to try to relax a moment before going into the OR and doing Cerino. But it wasn’t easy. So much was happening. His mind was in a turmoil.
   One of the thoughts that was particularly disturbing was that he’d realized there was one way that the five homicides were related, including Mary O’Connor. He’d realized it while Lou Soldano had been talking with him, but Jordan had chosen not to say anything about it. And the fact that he had so chosen confused him. He didn’t know if the reason he’d not mentioned it was because he wasn’t sure of its significance or because it scared him. Jordan certainly did not want to become a victim himself.
   Walking down toward the operating room where Paul Cerino was waiting, Jordan decided that the safest course of action for him was to do nothing. After all, he was in the middle.
   Suddenly Jordan stopped. He’d realized something else. Despite all these problems, he was doing more surgery than ever. There had to be another part to it all. As he started walking again, it all began to make a kind of grotesque, malicious sense. He picked up his pace. Definitely playing dumb was the way he should handle it. It was the safest by far. And he liked to do surgery.
   Pushing into the operating room, he went up to Cerino, who was significantly sedated.
   “We’ll have you done in no time,” Jordan said. “Just relax.”
   After giving Cerino a pat on the shoulder, Jordan turned and headed out to scrub. As he passed one of the orderlies in scrubs, he realized it wasn’t one of the orderlies. Jordan had recognized the eyes. It was the gaunt one.

Chapter 11

   4:30 p.m., Friday
   Manhattan
   Laurie was hesitant to visit the lab again. She didn’t want to risk another run-in with John DeVries. But attempting any more paperwork just then was ridiculous. She was far too distracted. She decided to find Peter. Surely he had to have more results by then.
   “I know you promised to call if you found anything,” Laurie said once she’d found him, “but I couldn’t help but stop by just to check how you were doing.”
   “I haven’t found a contaminant yet,” Peter said. “But I did learn something that might be significant. Cocaine is metabolized in the body in a variety of different ways producing a variety of metabolites. One of the metabolites is called benzoylecgonine. When I calculated the ratio of cocaine and benzoylecgonine in the blood, urine, and brain of your victims, I can estimate the amount of time from injection to death.”
   “And what did you find?” Laurie asked.
   “I found it was pretty consistent,” Peter said. “Roughly an hour in thirteen of the fourteen. But in one of the cases it was different. For some reason Robert Evans had practically no benzoylecgonine at all.”
   “Meaning?” Laurie questioned.
   “Meaning that Robert Evans died very quickly,” Peter said. “Maybe within minutes. Maybe even less, I really can’t say.”
   “What do you think the significance is?” Laurie questioned.
   “I don’t know,” Peter said. “You’re the medical detective, not me.”
   “I suppose he could have suffered an instantaneous cardiac arrhythmia.”
   Peter shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. “And I haven’t given up on a contaminant. But if I find something, it’s going to be in nanomoles.”
   Leaving the toxicology department, Laurie felt discouraged. Despite all her efforts she didn’t feel any further along in her investigation of these unlikely overdoses than she had been at the start. Intending to talk again with George Fontworth and have him explain what had surprised him on the autopsies, Laurie descended to the basement level and poked her head into the autopsy room. She didn’t see George, but she saw Vinnie and asked about George.
   “He left about an hour ago,” Vinnie said.
   Laurie went upstairs to George’s office. The door was open but he wasn’t there. Since his room was adjacent to one of the serology labs, Laurie went in and asked if anyone had seen George.
   “He had a dentist’s appointment,” one of the techs said. “He mentioned he’d be back later, but he didn’t know when.”
   Laurie nodded.
   Stepping out of the lab, she paused outside George’s office. From where she was standing she could see the autopsy folders from the two overdose cases he’d handled that day.
   Looking over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, Laurie stepped into the office and opened the top folder. It was Julia Myerholtz’s file. That was the case George had been working on when Laurie had gone over to his table. She hastily read through George’s autopsy notes. Immediately she understood what he had meant by the “surprise.” Obviously he’d responded the same way Laurie had with Duncan Andrews.
   Looking at the forensic investigator’s report, Laurie noticed that the victim had been identified at the scene by “Robert Nussman, boyfriend.”
   Taking a piece of scratch paper from a pad on George’s desk, Laurie jotted down Julia’s address.
   Laurie was just about to open the second file when she heard someone coming down the hall. Sheepishly, she closed the folder, pocketed the piece of scrap paper, and stepped back out into the hall. She nodded and smiled guiltily as one of the histology techs passed by.
   Although Bingham had chastised Laurie for visiting Duncan Andrews’ apartment, she decided she would go to Julia Myerholtz’s place. Hailing a cab, she convinced herself that Bingham’s anger had more to do with the unique fact that the case was such a political hot potato. He hadn’t objected to examination of the scene per se—or so Laurie rationalized.
   Julia’s apartment was in a large posh building on East Seventy-fifth Street. Laurie was quite surprised when the doorman came to the curb to open her door for her as she paid the cab fare. It amazed her to experience the kind of style some people enjoyed in the city. The ambience was certainly a far cry from her own in Kips Bay.
   “May I help you, madame?” the doorman asked. He had a thick Irish brogue.
   Laurie showed her medical examiner’s badge and asked to see the superintendent. A few minutes later the man appeared in the foyer.
   “I’d like to view Julia Myerholtz’s apartment,” Laurie told him. “But before I go up, I want to make certain that no one is there just now.”
   The superintendent asked the doorman if the apartment was empty.
   “It is indeed,” the doorman said. “Her parents aren’t due in until tomorrow. You want the key?”
   The superintendent nodded. The doorman opened a small cabinet, took out a key, and handed it to Laurie.
   “Just give it back to Patrick here when you leave,” the superintendent said.
   “I’d prefer if you came along.”
   “I have a hot water leak in the basement,” the superintendent explained. “You’ll be okay—9C. It’s to the right when you get off the elevator.”
   The elevator stopped on 9, and Laurie got out. Just to be sure, she rang the bell of 9C several times and even pounded on the door before going in. She didn’t want to run into any of the deceased’s loved ones this time around.
   The first thing Laurie noticed were the shards of a plaster cast statue scattered over the floor of the foyer. Judging by the larger pieces, Laurie guessed the piece had been a replica of Michelangelo’s David.
   The roomy apartment was decorated in a comfortable, country style. Not sure of what she was looking for, Laurie simply roamed from room to room, surveying the scene.
   In the kitchen Laurie opened the refrigerator. It was well stocked with health food: yogurt, bean sprouts, fresh vegetables, and skim milk.
   In the living room the coffee table was loaded with art books and magazines: American Health, Runner’s World, Triathlon, and Prevention. The room was lined with bookshelves filled with more art books. On the mantel, Laurie noticed a small plaque. She went closer to read the inscription: “Central Park Triathlon, Third Place, 3034.”
   In the bedroom Laurie discovered an exercise bike and lots of framed photographs. Most of the photos featured an attractive woman and a handsome young man in various outdoor settings: on bikes in a mountain setting, camping in a forest, finishing a race.
   As she wandered back into the living room, Laurie tried to imagine why an amateur athlete like Julia Myerholtz was apparently taking drugs. It just didn’t make any sense. The health food, the magazines, and the accomplishments just didn’t jibe with cocaine.
   Laurie’s musings were abruptly cut short when she heard a key in the door. For a second of absolute panic she contemplated trying to hide, as if she expected Bingham to come through the door.
   When the door opened, the young man who entered seemed as surprised as Laurie to meet someone in the apartment. Laurie recognized him as the man in many of the bedroom photos.
   “Dr. Laurie Montgomery,” Laurie said, flipping open her badge. “I’m from the medical examiner’s office, investigating Miss Myerholtz’s death.”
   “I’m Robert Nussman. I was Julia’s boyfriend.”
   “I don’t mean to be a bother,” Laurie said, moving to leave. “I can come back at another time.” She did not want Bingham to get wind of this.
   “No, it’s all right,” Robert said, holding up a hand. “Please stay. I’ll only be here a moment.”
   “Terrible tragedy,” Laurie said. She felt the need to say something.
   “Tell me about it,” Robert said. He suddenly looked very sad. He also acted as if he needed to talk.
   “Did you know she took drugs?” Laurie asked.
   “She didn’t,” he said. “I know that’s what you people say,” he added as his face flushed, “but I’m telling you, Julia never did drugs. It just wasn’t in her nature. She was totally into health. She got me into running.” He smiled at the memory. “Last spring she had me do my first triathlon. I just can’t figure it. My God, she didn’t even drink.”
   “I’m sorry,” Laurie said.
   “She was so gifted,” Robert said wistfully. “So strong-willed, so committed. She cared about people. She was religious: not overly, but enough. And she was involved in everything, like pro choice, the homeless, AIDS, you name it.”
   “I understand you identified her here at the scene,” Laurie said. “Were you the one who found her?”
   “Yes,” Robert managed. He looked away, struggling with tears.
   “It must have been awful,” Laurie said. Memories of finding her brother crowded in with graphic intensity. She did her best to dismiss them. “Where was she when you came in?”
   Robert pointed toward the bedroom.
   “Was she still alive at that point?” Laurie asked gently.
   “Sort of,” Robert said. “She was breathing off and on. I gave her CPR until the ambulance got here.”
   “How did you happen to come by?” Laurie asked.
   “She’d called me earlier,” Robert said. “She said to be sure to come over later on.”
   “Was that customary?” Laurie asked.
   Robert looked puzzled. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess.”
   “Did she sound normal?” Laurie asked. “Could you tell if she’d taken any drugs yet?”
   “I don’t think she’d taken anything,” Robert said. “She didn’t sound high. But I guess she didn’t seem normal either. She sounded tense. In fact, I was a little afraid she was planning on telling me something bad, like she wanted to break up or something.”
   “Was there some problem in your relationship?” Laurie asked.
   “No,” Robert said. “Things were great. I mean, I thought they were great. It’s just that she sounded a little funny.”
   “What about that broken statue by the front door?”
   “I saw that the second I came through the door last night,” Robert said. “It was her favorite possession. It was a couple of hundred years old. When I saw it was broken, I knew something bad was going on.”
   Laurie glanced over at the shattered statue and wondered if Julia could have broken it while in the throes of a seizure. If so, how did she get from the foyer to the bedroom?
   “Thank you for your help,” Laurie said. “I hope I haven’t upset you with my questions.”
   “No,” Robert said. “But why are you going to all this trouble? I thought medical examiners just did autopsies and only got involved with murders, like Quincy.”
   “We try to help the living,” Laurie said. “That’s our job. What I’d really like to do is prevent future tragedies like Julia’s. The more I learn, the more I may be able to do that.”
   “If you have any more questions, call me,” Robert said. He handed Laurie his card. “And if it somehow turns out that it wasn’t drugs, please let me know. It would be important because . . .” Suddenly overcome with emotion, he wasn’t able to continue.
   Laurie nodded. She gave Robert her own business card after scribbling her home phone number on the back. “If you have any questions for me or if you think of anything I should know, please give me a call. You can call anytime.”
   Leaving Robert to grieve in private, Laurie left the apartment and boarded the elevator. As she was riding down, she recalled that Sara Wetherbee had said that Duncan had invited her over the night he’d overdosed. Laurie thought both Duncan’s and Julia’s invitations to their significant others were odd. If both were doing such a good job hiding their drug abuse, why invite someone over the very night they were indulging?
   Laurie returned the key to Patrick the doorman and thanked him on her way out. She was a half dozen steps from the door when she turned around and went back.
   “Were you on duty last night?” Laurie asked him.
   “Indeed I was,” Patrick said. “Three to eleven. That’s my shift.”
   “Did you happen to see Julia Myerholtz yesterday evening?” Laurie asked.
   “I did,” Patrick said. “I’d see her most every evening.”
   “I suppose you’ve heard what happened to her,” Laurie said. She didn’t want to offer any information the doorman might not be privy to.
   “I have,” Patrick said. “She took drugs like a lot of young people. It’s a shame.”
   “Did she seem depressed when she came in last night?” Laurie asked.
   “I wouldn’t say depressed,” Patrick said. “But she didn’t act normal.”
   “In what way?” Laurie asked.
   “She didn’t say hello,” Patrick said. “She always said hello except for last night. But maybe that was because she wasn’t alone.”
   “Do you remember who was with her?” Laurie questioned with interest.
   “I do,” Patrick said. “Normally I can’t remember things like that since we have a lot of traffic going in and out. But since Ms. Myerholtz hadn’t said hello, I looked at her companions.”
   “Did you recognize them?” Laurie said. “Had they been here before?”
   “I didn’t know who they were,” Patrick said. “And I don’t think I’d ever seen them. One was tall, thin, and well dressed. The other was muscular and on the short side. No one said anything when they came in.”
   “Did you see them when they went out?” Laurie asked.
   “No, I didn’t,” Patrick said. “They must have left during my break.”
   “What time did they come in?” Laurie asked.
   “Early evening,” Patrick said. “Something like seven o’clock.”
   Laurie thanked Patrick yet again and hailed a cab to return to her office. It was almost dusk. The skyscrapers were already lit and people were hurrying home from work. As the cab headed downtown in the heavy traffic, she thought about her conversations with the boyfriend and the doorman. She wondered about the two men Patrick had described. Although they were probably co-workers or friends of Julia’s, the fact that they had visited the same night that Julia overdosed made them important. Laurie wished there was some way she could find out their identities so she could talk with them. The thought even went through her mind that they could have been drug dealers. Could Julia Myerholtz have had a secret life her boyfriend wasn’t privy to?
   Back at the medical examiner’s building, Laurie went first to George’s office to see if he’d returned from the dentist. Obviously he had come and gone; his office was dark.
   Disappointed, Laurie tried the door, but it was locked. Not being able to talk with George, she’d had the sudden idea to get the address of the other overdose, Wendell Morrison.
   Leaving her coat in her room and picking up some rubber gloves, Laurie went down to the morgue. She found the evening mortuary tech, Bruce Pomowski, in the mortuary office.
   “Any idea of the dispensation of the Myerholtz remains?” Laurie asked. “Have they been picked up?”
   “Was she one of today’s cases?” Bruce asked.
   “Yes,” Laurie said.
   Bruce opened a thick ledger and ran a finger down the day’s entries. When he got to Myerholtz, his finger ran across the page. “Hasn’t been picked up yet,” he said. “We’re waiting on a call from an out-of-town funeral home.”
   “Is she in the walk-in?” Laurie asked.
   “Yup,” Bruce said. “Should be on a gurney near the front.”
   Laurie thanked him and walked down the corridor toward the walk-in refrigerator. In the evenings the environment of the morgue changed considerably. During the day it was full of frantic activity. But now as Laurie walked she could hear the heels of her shoes echo through the deserted and mostly dark, blue-tiled corridors. All at once she remembered Lou’s response when they’d come down Tuesday morning. He’d called it a grisly scene.
   Laurie stopped and looked down at the stained cement floor that Lou had pointed out. Then she raised her eyes to the stacks of pine coffins destined for Potter’s Field with unclaimed, unidentified remains. She started walking again. It was amazing how her normal mental state shielded the ghastly side of the morgue from her consciousness. It took a stranger like Lou and a time when the morgue was empty of the living for her to appreciate it.
   Reaching the large, cumbersome stainless-steel door of the walk-in, Laurie put on her gloves and pressed the thick handle to release the latch. With a hefty yank she pulled the heavy door open. A cold, clammy mist swirled out around her feet. Reaching in, she turned on the light.
   Reacting to her mind-set of only moments earlier, Laurie viewed the interior of the walk-in cooler from the perspective of a nonprofessional person, not the forensic pathologist she was. It was definitely horrifying. Bare wooden shelves lined the walls. On the shelves was a ghoulish collection of cold, dead bodies and body parts that having been autopsied and examined were waiting to be claimed. Most were nude, although a few were covered with sheets stained with blood and other body fluids. It was like an earthly view of hell.
   The center of the room was crowded with old gurneys, each bearing a separate body. Again, some were covered, others naked and blankly staring up at the ceiling like some sort of macabre dormitory.
   Feeling uncharacteristically squeamish, Laurie stepped over the threshold, her eyes nervously darting around the gurneys to locate Julia Myerholtz. Behind her the heavy door slammed shut with a loud click.
   Irrationally, Laurie spun around and rushed back to the door, fearful that she’d been locked into the cooler. But the latch responded to her push and the door swung open on its bulky hinges.

   Embarrassed at her own imagination, Laurie turned back into the refrigerator and began methodically going through the bodies on the gurneys. For identification purposes each body had a manila name tag tied around the right big toe. She found Julia not far from the doorway. Her body was one of those that had been covered.
   Stepping up to the head, Laurie drew down the sheet. She gazed at the woman’s pallid skin and her delicate features. Judging by her appearance alone, if she hadn’t been so pale, she could have been sleeping. But the rude, Y-shaped autopsy incision dispelled any hope that she might still be alive.
   Looking more closely, Laurie saw multiple bruised areas on Julia’s head, an indication of her probable seizure activity. In her mind’s eye Laurie could see the woman bumping up against her statue of David and knocking it to the floor. Opening up Julia’s mouth, Laurie looked at the tongue, which had not been removed. She could see that it had been bitten severely: more evidence of seizure activity.
   Next Laurie looked for the IV site where Julia had injected herself. She found it as easily as she had the others. She also noticed that Julia had scratched her arms the way Duncan Andrews had done. She had probably experienced similar hallucinations. But Laurie noticed Julia’s scratches were deeper, almost as if they had been done with knives.
   Looking at Julia’s carefully manicured nails, Laurie could see why the scratches were so deep. Julia’s nails were long and immaculately polished. While she was admiring the woman’s nails, Laurie noted a bit of tissue wedged beneath the nail of the right middle finger.
   After finding no other tissue under any of the other nails, Laurie went to the autopsy room for two specimen jars and a scalpel. Returning to Julia’s side, she teased a bit of tissue free and put it into one of the specimen jars. Using the scalpel, she sliced a small sliver of skin from the margin of the autopsy wound and slipped it into the other specimen jar.
   After covering Julia’s body with the sheet, Laurie took the two samples up to the DNA lab, where she labeled them and signed them in. On the request form she asked for a match. Even though it was fairly obvious the woman had scratched herself, Laurie thought it was worth checking. Just because the M.E.’s office was overworked was no reason not to be thorough. Still, she was relieved that it was evening and the lab was empty. She wouldn’t have wanted to explain the need for this test.
   Laurie walked back to her office. With everyone else gone, she thought she might take advantage of the quiet and turn her attention to some of that paperwork she’d been so studiously neglecting.
   Still feeling slightly tense from her strange reaction to the cooler door closing, Laurie was ill prepared to deal with what awaited her in her office. As she rounded the corner of the doorway, preoccupied with her thoughts, a figure shouted and leaped at her.
   Laurie screamed from someplace deep down in her being. It was a purely reflex response, and of a power that caused the sound to reverberate up and down the cinderblocked hallway like some charged subatomic particle in an accelerator. She’d had no control. Simultaneous with the scream her heart leaped in her chest.
   But the attack that Laurie feared did not occur. Instead her brain frantically changed the message and told her that the terrifying figure had cried “Boo!”—hardly what a mad rapist or some supernatural demon would yell. At the same time her brain identified the face as belonging to Lou Soldano.
   All this had happened in the blink of an eye, and by the time Laurie was capable of responding, her fear had changed to anger.
   “Lou!” she cried. “Why did you do that?”
   “Did I scare you?” Lou asked sheepishly. He could see that her face had turned to ivory. His ears were still ringing from her scream.
   “Scare me?” she yelled. “You terrified me, and I hate to be scared like that. Don’t ever do that again.”
   “I’m sorry,” Lou said contritely. “I suppose it was juvenile. But this place has been scaring me; I thought I could get you back a little.”
   “I could bop you in the nose,” Laurie said, shaking a clenched fist in front of his face. Her anger had already subsided, especially with his apology and apparent remorse. She walked around her desk and fell into her chair. “What on earth are you doing here at this hour anyway?” she asked.
   “I was literally driving by,” Lou said. “I wanted to talk with you, so I pulled into the morgue loading dock on the chance that you’d be here. I really didn’t expect you to be, but the fellow downstairs said you’d just been in his office.”
   “What did you want to talk to me about?”
   “Your boyfriend, Jordan,” Lou said.
   “He’s not my boyfriend,” Laurie snapped. “You’re really going to irritate me if you persist in calling him that.”
   “What’s the problem?” Lou asked. “It seems to me to be a relatively accurate term. After all, you go out with him every night.”
   “My social life is no one’s business but mine,” Laurie said. “But for your information, I do not “go out’ with him every night. I’m obviously not going out tonight.”
   “Well, three out of four ain’t bad,” Lou said. “But look, down to business: I wanted to let you know that I talked with Jordan about his patients being professionally bumped off.”
   “What did he have to say?” Laurie asked.
   “Not a lot,” Lou said. “He refused to talk about any of his patients specifically.”
   “Good for him.”
   “But more important than what he said was how he acted. He was really nervous the whole time I was there. I don’t know what to make of that.”
   “You don’t think he was involved with these murders in any way, do you?”
   “No,” Lou said. “Robbing his patients blind—no pun intended—yes, shooting them, no. He’d be killing the golden goose. But he was definitely nervous. Something’s on his mind. I think he knows something.”
   “I think he has plenty of reason to be nervous,” Laurie said. “Did he tell you that Cerino threatened him?”
   “No, he didn’t,” Lou said. “How did he threaten him?”
   “Jordan wouldn’t say,” Laurie said. “But if Cerino is the kind of person you say he is, then you can just imagine.”
   Lou nodded. “I wonder why Jordan didn’t tell me.”
   “Probably he doesn’t think you could protect him. Could you?”
   “Probably not,” Lou said. “Certainly not forever. Not someone as high profile as Jordan Scheffield.”
   “Did you learn anything helpful talking with him?” Laurie asked.
   “I did learn that the murder victims did not have the same diagnosis,” Lou said. “At least according to him. That was one harebrained idea I had. And I learned that they are not related in any other obvious way vis-б-vis Jordan Scheffield other than being his patients. I asked about every way I could imagine. So, unfortunately, I didn’t learn much.”
   “What are you going to do now?” Laurie asked.
   “Hope!” Lou said. “Plus I’ll have my investigative teams find out the individual diagnoses. Maybe that will tell us something. There has to be some aspect I’m missing in all this.”
   “That’s the way I feel about my overdose cases,” Laurie said.
   “By the way,” Lou said. “What are you doing here so late?”
   “I was hoping to get some work done. But with my pulse still racing thanks to you, I’ll probably take the paperwork home and tackle it there.”
   “What about dinner?” Lou asked. “How about coming with me down to Little Italy. You like pasta?”
   “I love pasta.”
   “How about it then?” Lou asked. “You already told me you aren’t going out with the good doctor, and that’s your favorite excuse.”
   “You are persistent.”
   “Hey, I’m Italian.”
   Fifteen minutes later Laurie found herself in Lou’s Caprice heading downtown. She did not know if it was a good idea to have dinner with the man, but she really hadn’t been able to think of a reason not to go. And although he’d been somewhat rude on previous occasions, now he seemed nothing but charming as he regaled her with stories of growing up in Queens.
   Although Laurie had grown up in Manhattan, she’d never been to Little Italy. As they drove up Mulberry Street she was delighted by the ambience. There was a multitude of restaurants and throngs of people strolling the streets. Just like Italy itself, the place seemed to be throbbing with life.
   “It’s definitely Italian,” Laurie said.
   “It looks it, doesn’t it?” Lou said. “But I’ll tell you a little secret. Most of the real estate here is owned by Chinese.”
   “That’s strange,” Laurie said, a bit disappointed although she didn’t know why.
   “Used to be an Italian neighborhood,” Lou said, “but the Italians for the most part moved out to the suburbs, like Queens. And the Chinese with a nose for business came in and bought up the properties.”
   They pulled into a restricted parking zone. Laurie pointed to the sign.
   “Please!” Lou said. He positioned a little card on the dash by the steering wheel. “Once in a while I’m entitled to take advantage of being one of New York’s finest.”
   Lou led her down a narrow street to one of the less obvious restaurants.
   “It doesn’t have a name,” Laurie said as they entered.
   “It doesn’t need one.”
   The interior was a kitschy blend of red and white checked tablecloths and trellis interlaced with artificial ivy and plastic grapes. A candle stuck in a jug with wax drippings coating the sides served as each table’s light fixture. A few black velvet paintings of Venice hung on the walls. There were about thirty tables packed tightly in the narrow room; all seemed to be occupied. Harried waiters dashed about attending to the customers. Everyone seemed to know each other by their first names. Over the whole scene hung a babble of voices and a rich, savory, herbed aroma of spicy food.
   Laurie suddenly realized how hungry she was. “Looks like we should have made a reservation,” she said.
   Lou motioned for her to be patient. In a few minutes a very large and very Italian woman appeared and gave Lou an enveloping hug. She was introduced to Laurie. Her name was Marie.
   As if by magic, an available table materialized and Marie seated Laurie and Lou.
   “I have a feeling you’re pretty well known here,” Laurie said.
   “With as many times as I’ve eaten here I’d better be. I’ve put one of their kids through college.”
   To Laurie’s chagrin there were no menus. She had to listen to the choices as they were recited by a waiter with a heavy Italian accent. But no sooner had he finished his impressive litany than Lou leaned over and encouraged her to choose the ravioli or the manicotti. Laurie quickly settled on the ravioli.
   With dinner ordered and a bottle of white wine on the table, Lou disappointed Laurie by lighting a cigarette.
   “Maybe we could compromise,” Laurie said. “How about you having only one.”
   “Fine by me.”
   After a glass of wine, Laurie began to revel in the chaotic atmosphere. When their entrйes arrived, Giuseppe, the owner-chef, appeared to pay his respects.
   Laurie thought the dinner was wonderful. After the last few nights in such formal settings, this lively spot was a welcome relief. Everyone seemed to know—and love—Lou. He received much good-natured kidding for having brought Laurie along. Apparently he usually dined solo.
   For dessert Lou insisted they take a walk up the street to an Italian-style coffee bar that served decaf espresso and gelato.
   With their espressos and ice creams before them, Laurie looked up at Lou. “Lou,” she said, “there’s something I want to ask you.”
   “Uh-oh,” Lou said. “I was hoping we could avoid any potentially troublesome subjects. Please don’t ask me to go to the narc boys again.”
   “I only want your opinion,” Laurie said.
   “OK,” Lou said. “That’s not so scary. Shoot.”
   “I don’t want you to laugh at me, OK,” Laurie said.
   “This is starting to sound interesting,” Lou said.
   “I have no definitive reason why I’ve been thinking this,” Laurie said. “Just some little facts that bother me.”
   “It’s going to take you all night to get this out at this rate,” Lou said.
   “It’s about my overdose series,” Laurie said. “I want to know what your opinion would be if I suggested that they were homicides, not accidental overdoses.”
   “Keep talking,” Lou said. Absently he took out a cigarette and lit it.
   “A case came in where a woman died suddenly in the hospital,” Laurie said. “She has lots of cardiac disease. But when you looked at her and you examined her carefully, you couldn’t help but think that she could have been smothered. The case is being signed out as “natural’ mainly because of the other details—where she was, the fact that she was overweight, and had a history of heart disease. But if the lady had been found someplace else, it might have been considered a homicide.”
   “How does this relate to your overdoses?” Lou asked. He leaned forward, the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. His eyes were squinting from the smoke.
   “I started thinking about my overdoses in the same light. Take away the fact that these people were found alone in their apartments with syringes by their sides. It’s hard not to view murders in context. But what if the cocaine wasn’t self-administered?”
   “Wow—that would be a twist,” Lou said. He sat back and took the cigarette from his mouth. “It’s true; homicides have been committed with drugs. There’s no doubt about that. But the motive is usually more apparent: robbery, sex, retribution, inheritance. A lot of small-time pushers get killed by their disgruntled clients that way. The cases in your series don’t fit that mold. I thought the whole reason these cases are so striking is the fact that in each case the deceased was apparently such a solid citizen with no history of drug abuse or run-ins with the law.”
   “That’s true,” Laurie admitted.
   “Do you mean to say you think these yuppies were forcibly administered the cocaine? Laurie, get real. With users willing to pay big bucks for the stuff, why would anyone go on a personal crusade to rid the city of some of its best and brightest? What would they have to gain? Isn’t it likelier that these people were really into drugs on the sly, maybe even dealing?”
   “I don’t think so,” Laurie said.
   “Besides,” Lou said, “didn’t you say that these people were shooting the coke rather than sniffing it?”
   “That’s right,” Laurie said.
   “Well, how is someone going to stick a needle in someone who isn’t cooperating? I mean, don’t nurses in hospitals have a hard enough time sticking patients? Now you’re telling me some struggling victim who’s trying to just say no can get shot up against his will? Give me a break.”
   Laurie closed her eyes. Lou had stumbled upon the weakest point of her homicide theory.
   “If these people were being injected against their will, there would be signs of struggle. Have there been any?”
   “No,” Laurie admitted. “At least I don’t think so.” She suddenly recalled the shattered statue in Julia’s apartment.
   “The only other way I could conceive of this happening is if the victims had been drugged to beat the band with some kind of knockout cocktail beforehand. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you people at the M.E. office would have found a drug like that if there’d been one. Am I right?”
   “You’re right,” Laurie conceded.
   “Well, there you go,” Lou said. “I’m not going to fault you for considering homicide, but I think it’s a mighty remote possibility.”
   “There are a few other facts I’ve discovered that have made me suspicious,” Laurie persisted. “I visited the apartment of one of the more recent overdose cases today, and the doorman said that on the evening the woman died, she’d come home with two men he’d never seen before.”
   “Laurie, you can’t mean to tell me that the fact a woman comes home with two men the doorman doesn’t recognize has spawned this huge conspiracy theory. Is that it?”
   “OK! OK!” Laurie said. “Go easy on me. Do you mind that I bring this stuff up? The problem is that these things are bothering me. It’s like a mental toothache.”
   “What else?” Lou said patiently. “Out with it.”
   “On two of the cases the respective girlfriend or boyfriend was called by the victim an hour or so before and asked to come over.”
   “And?” said Lou.
   “And nothing,” said Laurie. “That’s it. I just thought it was curious that these people who were allegedly hiding their drug abuse invited their non-druggie significant others over if they were planning a night of coked-out debauchery.”
   “These two could have called for a million different reasons. I don’t think either had any idea this trip was going to turn out the way it did. If anything, it’s more support for self-administration. They probably believed in the popular myth of cocaine’s aphrodisiac powers and wanted their playmates to be available at the height of their turn-on.”
   “You must think I’m nuts,” Laurie said.
   “Not at all,” Lou insisted. “It’s good to be suspicious, particularly in your line of work.”
   “Thank you for the consult. I appreciate your patience.”
   “My pleasure,” Lou said. “Any time you want to run something by me, don’t hesitate.”
   “I enjoyed dinner very much,” Laurie said. “But I think I’d better be thinking of getting home. I still have to make good on my plans to get some work done.”
   “If you liked this restaurant,” Lou said, “I’d love to take you to one in Queens. It’s out in the middle of a real Italian neighborhood. Authentic Northern Italian cuisine. How about tomorrow night?”
   “Thank you for asking,” Laurie said, “but I do have plans.”
   “Of course,” Lou said sarcastically. “How could I forget Dr. Limo.”
   “Lou, please!” Laurie said.
   “Come on,” Lou said, pushing back his chair. “I’ll take you home. If you can stand my humble, stripped-down Caprice.”
   Laurie rolled her eyes.

 
   Franco Ponti pulled his black Cadillac up in front of the Neapolitan Restaurant on Corona Avenue up the street from the Vesuvio and got out. The valet recognized him and rushed over to assure him that good care would be taken of his car. Franco gave the valet a ten-dollar bill and walked through the door.
   At that hour on a Friday night, the restaurant was in full swing. An accordion player went from table to table serenading the customers. Between the laughter and din, an air of conviviality marked the evening. Franco paused for a moment, just inside the red velvet curtain separating the foyer from the dining area. He easily spotted Vinnie Dominick, Freddie Capuso, and Richie Herns at one of the upholstered booths along with a pair of buxom, miniskirted bimbos.
   Franco walked directly to the table. When Vinnie saw him, he patted the girls and told them to go powder their noses. As soon as they left, Ponti sat down.
   “You want something to drink?” Vinnie asked.
   “A glass of wine would be fine,” Franco said.
   Vinnie snapped his fingers. A waiter instantly appeared for instructions. Just as quickly, he reappeared with the requested glass. Vinnie poured Franco some wine from the bottle standing on the table.
   “You got something for me?” Vinnie asked.
   Franco took a drink and twisted the bottle around to look at the label.
   “Angelo Facciolo and Tony Ruggerio are with Cerino tonight. So they’re idle. But last night they were out hustling. I don’t know what they did early in the evening because I’d lost them. But after some midnight pizza I picked them up again, and they were busy. You read about those murders in Manhattan last night?”
   “You mean that big-shot banker and the auction house guy?” Vinnie asked.
   “Those are the ones,” Franco said. “Angelo and Tony did both those jobs. And they were messy. They almost got nabbed both times. In fact, I had to be careful not to get picked up for questioning, especially on the banker job. I was parked out front when the cops came.”
   “What the hell did they whack them for?” Vinnie said. His face had gotten quite red and his eyes started to bulge.
   “I still don’t know,” Franco said.
   “Every day the cops are more agitated!” Vinnie bellowed. “And the more of an uproar they’re in, the worse it gets for business. We’ve had to shut most of our gambling clubs down temporarily.” He glared at Franco. “You got to find out what’s going on.”
   “I’ve put out some feelers,” Franco said. “I’ll be asking around as well as tailing Angelo and Tony. Somebody’s got to know.”
   “I have to do something,” Vinnie said. “I can’t sit around forever while they ruin everything.”
   “Give me a couple more days,” Franco said. “If I can’t figure it out, I can get rid of Angelo and Tony.”
   “But that would mean a war,” Vinnie said. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that either. That’s even worse for business.”

   “You know something, Doc?” Cerino said. “That wasn’t so bad at all. I really was worried but I didn’t feel a thing when you operated. How’d it go?”
   “Like a dream,” Jordan said. He was holding a small penlight and shining it in the eye on which he’d just performed surgery. “And it looks fine now. The cornea’s as clear as a bell and the chamber’s deep.”
   “If you’re happy,” Cerino said, “I’m happy.”
   Cerino was in one of the private rooms of the Goldblatt wing of Manhattan General Hospital. Jordan was making late postoperative rounds since he’d finished his last corneal transplant only half an hour earlier. He’d done four in that day alone. In the background Angelo was leaning against the wall. In an armchair next to the door to the bathroom, Tony was fast asleep.
   “What we’ll do is give this eye a few days,” Jordan said, straightening up. “Then if all goes well, which I’m sure it will,” he hastily added, “we’ll do the other eye. Then you’ll be as good as new.”
   “You mean I have to wait for the other operation, too?” Cerino demanded. “You didn’t tell me about that. When we started you just said I had to wait for the first operation.”
   “Relax!” Jordan urged. “Don’t get your blood pressure up. It’s good to put a little time between operations so that your eye has a chance to recover before I work on the other one. And at the rate we’ve been going today, you shouldn’t have long to wait.”
   “I don’t like surprises from doctors,” Cerino warned. “I don’t understand this second waiting period. Are you sure this eye you operated on is doing OK?”
   “It’s doing beautifully,” Jordan assured him. “No one could have done better, believe me.”
   “If I didn’t believe you I wouldn’t be laying here,” Cerino said. “But if I’m doing this good and if I got to wait for a few days what am I doing in this depressing room. I want to go home.”
   “It’s better that you stay. You need medication in your eye. And should any infection set in—”
   “Anybody can put a couple of drops in my eyes,” Paul said. “With all that’s happened, my wife Gloria has gotten pretty good at it. I want out of here!”
   “If you are determined to go, I can’t keep you,” Jordan said nervously. “But at least be sure to rest and stay quiet.”
   Three quarters of an hour later an orderly pushed Cerino to Angelo’s car in a wheelchair. Tony had already moved the Town Car to the curb in front of the hospital’s entrance. He had the engine idling.
   Cerino had paid his hospital bill in cash, a feat that had stunned the cashier who was on duty. After a snap of his boss’s fingers, Angelo had peeled hundred-dollar bills off a big roll he had in his pocket until he’d surpassed the total.
   “Hands off,” Cerino said when Angelo tried to help him out of the wheelchair when it reached the side of the car and the orderly had activated the wheel brakes. “I can do it myself. What do you think I am, handicapped?” Cerino pushed himself into a standing position and swayed for a moment getting his considerable bulk directly over his legs.
   He was dressed in his street clothes. Over his operated eye he had a metal shield with multiple tiny holes.
   Slowly he eased himself into the front passenger seat. He allowed Angelo to close the door for him. Angelo got in the backseat. Tony started driving, but as he reached the street he misjudged the curb. The car bounced.
   “Jesus Christ!” Cerino yelled.
   Tony cowered over the steering wheel.
   They drove through the Midtown Tunnel and out the Long Island Expressway. Cerino became expansive.
   “You know something, boys,” Cerino beamed, “I feel great! After all that worry and planning, it finally happened. And as I told the doc, it wasn’t half bad. Of course I felt that first needle stick.”
   Angelo cringed in the backseat. He’d been squeamish about going into the operating room from the start. When he’d seen Jordan direct that huge needle into Cerino’s face, just below the eye, Angelo had almost passed out. Angelo hated needles.
   “But after the needle,” Cerino continued, “I didn’t feel a thing. I even fell asleep. Can you believe that? Can you, Tony?”
   “No, I can’t,” Tony said nervously.
   “When I woke up it was done,” Cerino said. “Jordan might be an ass, but he’s one hell of a surgeon. And you know something? I think he’s smart. I know he’s practical. We might very well go into business, he and I. What do you say about that, Angelo?”
   “An interesting idea,” Angelo said without enthusiasm.

Chapter 12

   7:45 a.m., Saturday
   Manhattan
   Since it was Saturday, Laurie did not set her alarm. But she woke up before eight anyway, again troubled by her nightmare about Shelly. Vaguely she wondered if it would help if she were to see someone professional.
   Despite not being on call, Laurie had decided to go into the office. Her intentions notwithstanding, she’d not been productive with her work the previous evening after Lou had dropped her off. Wine and work did not mix well with Laurie.
   Emerging from her building, Laurie was pleasantly surprised to find a crisp fall day. The sun had already taken on its weak winter look, but the sky was clear and the temperature moderate. Being a Saturday, the traffic and its resultant exhaust was minimal on First Avenue, and Laurie enjoyed the walk up to Thirtieth Street.
   As soon as she arrived, Laurie went straight to the ID office to check on that day’s cases. She was relieved to see there were no new candidates for her overdose series. The schedule was filled with the usual Friday-night homicides and accident cases reflecting a normal night of murder and mayhem in the Big Apple.
   Next Laurie headed for the toxicology lab. She was relieved she wouldn’t have to dodge John DeVries. He certainly wouldn’t be in on a Saturday. She was pleased to find hardworking Peter at his usual spot in front of the newest gas chromatograph.
   “Nothing yet along the lines of a contaminant,” Peter told her, “but with that huge new sample I got yesterday, we might be in luck.”
   “What kind of sample?” Laurie asked. “Blood?”
   “No,” Peter said, “pure cocaine taken from the gut.”
   “Whose gut?” Laurie asked.
   Peter checked the specimen tag before him. “Wendell Morrison. One of Fontworth’s cases from yesterday.”
   “But how did he get a sample from the gut?”
   “I can’t help you there,” Peter said. “I have no idea how he got it, but by giving me as much as he did, it makes my job considerably easier.”
   “I’m glad,” Laurie said, puzzled by this unexpected bit of news. “Let me know what you find.”
   Laurie left the toxicology lab and went to her office. After finding his number in the office directory, she called George Fontworth at home. He answered on the second ring; Laurie was relieved not to have awakened him.
   “Don’t tell me you’re in the office,” he said when he heard who it was.
   “What can I say?” Laurie said.
   “You’re not even on call,” George said. “Don’t work so hard. You’ll make the rest of us look bad.”
   “Sure,” Laurie laughed. “I’m not impressing anyone around here. You know what Calvin told you: you weren’t even supposed to talk with me yesterday.”
   “That was kinda stupid,” George agreed. “What’s on your mind?”
   “I’m curious about the first case you did yesterday,” Laurie said. “Wendell Morrison.”
   “What do you want to know?” George asked.
   “Toxicology told me that you had given them a cocaine sample from the deceased’s gut. How did you come by that?”
   “Dr. Morrison took the drug orally,” George said.
   “I thought you told me both your cases mainlined it,” Laurie said.
   “Only the second case,” George said. “When you asked me the route of administration, I thought you were only referring to that one.”
   “All of my cases took the drug IV, but one of Dick Katzenburg’s took it orally only after trying to take it IV.”
   “Same with Dr. Morrison,” George said. “His antecubital fossae looked like pincushions. The guy was overweight and his veins were deep, but you’d think a doctor would have been a bit better at venipuncture.”
   “There was still a lot of cocaine in the gut?” Laurie asked.
   “A ton,” George said. “I can’t imagine how much the guy ate. Part of the gut was infarcted where the cocaine had closed down the blood supply. It was just like one of those cocaine “mule’ cases where the condoms break in transit.”
   “Was there anything else of note?”
   “Yes,” George said. “He had a CVA from a small aneurysm. It probably burst during a seizure.”
   Before Laurie hung up she told George about the little bit of tissue she’d taken from beneath Julia Myerholtz’s fingernail and sent up to the lab.
   “I hope you don’t mind my butting in on your case,” Laurie said.
   “Hell no,” George said. “I’m just embarrassed I missed it. With the way she had excoriated herself, I should have looked under her nails.”
   After wishing George a good weekend, Laurie finally settled down to her paperwork. But as she experienced lately, she couldn’t take her mind off the troubling aspects of her overdose series. Despite her conversation with Lou, some of the details of the Myerholtz case continued to bother her.
   Laurie pulled out the folders on the three cases she’d posted on Thursday: Stuart Morgan, Randall Thatcher, and Valerie Abrams. Using a scratch pad, she jotted down each of the three’s address.
   In another minute, Laurie was out the door. She caught a cab and visited each of the three scenes. At each residence, Laurie talked with the doorman. After explaining who she was, she obtained the names and telephone numbers of the doormen who had been on duty Wednesday evening.
   Back at the office, Laurie began her calls. The first she put through was to Julio Chavez. “Did you know Valerie Abrams?” Laurie asked after explaining who she was.
   “Yes, of course,” Julio said.
   “Did you see her Wednesday night?” Laurie asked.
   “No, I didn’t,” Julio said. “At least I don’t remember.”
   Lou was probably right, Laurie told herself after she’d thanked the man and hung up. She was probably wasting her time. Still, she couldn’t resist dialing the next name on the list: Angel Mendez, the evening doorman at Stuart Morgan’s apartment.
   Laurie introduced herself as she had before, then asked Angel if he knew Stuart Morgan, and the answer was the same: “Of course!”
   “Did you see Mr. Morgan Wednesday night?” Laurie asked.
   “Of course,” Angel said. “I saw Mr. Morgan every night I worked. He jogged after work every day.”
   “Did he jog on Wednesday night?” Laurie asked.
   “Just like every other night,” Angel told her.
   Again Laurie wondered about the inconsistency of a guy who thought enough of himself to run every night taking drugs. It didn’t make a lot of sense.
   “Did he seem normal?” Laurie asked. “Did he seem depressed?”
   “He seemed fine when he went out,” Angel said. “But he didn’t jog as far as usual. At least he came back very soon. He wasn’t even sweaty. I remember because I told him he’d not worked up a sweat.”
   “What did he say in return?” Laurie asked.
   “Nothing,” Angel said.
   “Was it usual for him not to say anything?” Laurie asked.
   “Only when he was with other people,” Angel said.
   “Was Mr. Morgan with other people when he came back from jogging?” she asked.
   “Yes,” Angel said. “He was with two strangers.”
   Laurie sat up. “Can you describe these strangers?” she asked.
   Angel laughed. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I see so many people in a day. I just remembered he was with strangers because he didn’t say hello.”
   Laurie thanked the man and hung up. Now this was something. She could still hear Lou’s admonition warning her not to play detective, but this striking similarity to the Myerholtz case could be the beginning of a big break.
   Finally, Laurie called the last name on her list: David Wong. Unfortunately David couldn’t remember seeing Randall Thatcher on Wednesday night. Laurie thanked him and hung up.
   Laurie decided to turn her attention to one more case before returning to her paperwork. She went to Histology and asked for the slides of Mary O’Connor. Back in her office, she scanned the heart slides under her microscope to study the extent of atherosclerosis. It was moderate on microscopic just as Paul had said it had been on gross. She also didn’t notice any cardiac myopathy.
   With that out of the way, Laurie couldn’t think of another reason to avoid her work. Pushing her microscope to the side, she pulled out her uncompleted cases and forced herself to begin.

   “So this is it?” Lou asked. He waved a typed sheet of paper in the air.
   “That’s what we’ve been able to come up with,” Norman told him.
   “This is a bunch of doctor gobbledygook. What the hell is “keratoconus’? Or here’s a gem: “pseudophakic bullous keratopathy.’ What is this crap? Will you please tell me?”
   “You wanted the diagnoses of the victims who were seeing Dr. Jordan Scheffield,” Norman said. “That’s what the teams came up with.”
   Lou read the page again. Martha Goldburg, pseudophakic bullous keratopathy; Steven Vivonetto, interstitial keratitis; Janice Singleton, herpes zoster; Henriette Kaufman, Fuchs endothelial dystrophy; Dwight Sorenson, keratoconus.
   “I was hoping they would all have the same condition,” muttered Lou. “I’d hoped to catch twinkle-toes Scheffield in a lie.”
   Norman shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I can get someone to translate those terms to regular English—if there’s any English to cover it.”
   Lou settled back in his chair. “So what do you think?” he asked.
   “I don’t have any bright ideas,” Norman said. “When I first saw the doctor’s name pop out of the data, I thought maybe we had something. But now it doesn’t look that way.”
   “Any of the patients unhappy with their care?” Lou asked.
   “Only positive in that arena is the Goldburgs,” Norman said. “Harry Goldburg had initiated a malpractice suit against Dr. Scheffield after the doctor took out his wife’s cataract. Apparently there was some complication and she wasn’t seeing much through that eye.”
   “What’s all this other stuff?” Lou asked, grasping at a fat file folder filled with typed pages.
   “That’s the rest of the material that has been gathered by the investigative teams,” Norman said.
   “Jesus Christ,” Lou said. “There must be five hundred pages in here.”
   “More like four hundred,” Norman said. “Nothing’s jumped out at me yet, but I thought you’d better go through it, too. And you might as well get started: there’ll be more coming as we interview more people.”
   “What about Ballistics?” Lou asked.
   “They haven’t gotten to us yet,” Norman said. “They’re still on last month’s homicides. But preliminary opinion is that there were only two guns involved: a twenty-two and a twenty-five caliber.”
   “What about the housekeeper?” Lou asked.
   “She’s still alive but has yet to regain consciousness,” Norman said. “She was shot in the head and she’s in a coma.”
   “Do you have her protected?” Lou asked.
   “Absolutely,” Norman said. “Around the clock.”

   Having finally made some progress on her paperwork, Laurie made a neat stack of her completed cases. With them out of the way, she pulled out the records of the overdose cases. Sorting through, she set aside the three she wanted: Duncan Andrews, Robert Evans, and Marion Overstreet. These were the cases she had autopsied on Tuesday and Wednesday. She copied the addresses and packed up.
   Laurie made the same kind of tour she’d made that morning. Only this time she found that the doormen she wanted to question were on duty again.
   She was disappointed with the results at the Evans and Overstreet residences. Neither doorman could tell her very much about the evenings in question. But it was a different story at Duncan Andrews’.
   When the cab pulled up to the building, Laurie recognized the blue, scalloped canvas awning and the wrought-iron door from her previous visit. As she got out of the cab, she even recognized the doorman. He’d been the same one on duty on her last ill-fated visit. But recognizing the doorman did not deter her. Although she thought there was an outside chance that her visit might get back to Bingham, she was willing to risk it.
   “Can I help you?” the doorman asked.
   Laurie looked for signs of recognition on the doorman’s part. She didn’t see any.
   “I’m from the medical examiner’s office,” Laurie said. “My name is Dr. Montgomery. Do you remember my coming here Tuesday?”
   “I believe I do,” the doorman said. “My name is Oliver. Is there something I can do for you? Are you here to go back up to the Andrews apartment?”
   “No, I don’t want to disturb anyone,” Laurie said. “I just want to speak with you. Were you working Sunday night?”
   “Yes I was,” Oliver said. “My days off are Monday and Thursday.”
   “Do you remember seeing Mr. Andrews the night he died?”
   “I think I do,” he said after thinking about it. “I used to see him most every night.”
   “Do you remember if he was alone?” Laurie asked.
   “That I can’t tell you,” Oliver said. “With as many people who go in and out of here, I wouldn’t be likely to remember a thing like that, especially almost a week later. Maybe if it was the same day or if something happened out of the ordinary. Wait a minute!” he suddenly cried. “Maybe I do remember. There was one night that Mr. Andrews came in with some people. I remember now because he called me by the wrong name. He used the superintendent’s name.”
   “Did he know your name?” Laurie asked.
   “For sure,” Oliver said. “I’ve been working here since before he moved in. That was five years ago.”
   “How many men were with him?” Laurie asked.
   “Two, I think. Maybe three.”
   “But you’re not positive which night?” Laurie asked.
   “I can’t be sure,” Oliver agreed. “But I remember he called me Juan and it confused me. I mean, he knew my name was Oliver.”
   Laurie thanked Oliver and headed home. What to make of this odd streak of similarities? Who were these two men, and were they the same pair in each case? And what did it mean that a young, intelligent, dynamic man would mix up the names of his doorman and his superintendent? Probably nothing. After all, Duncan could have been thinking about calling Juan for a problem in his apartment just as he was arriving home.
   Entering her own tenement, Laurie cast an appraising glance around the interior as she walked to the elevator. She noted the cracked and chipped tiles on the floor and the peeling paint on the walls. Comparing it to the residences she’d been visiting, it was a slum. The depressing thing was that all the overdose victims had been about Laurie’s age or younger, and obviously had been doing a lot better than she was financially. Laurie was already paying more rent than she thought she could afford on her salary, and she was living in a comparative dump. It was depressing.
   Tom lightened Laurie’s mood the moment she entered her apartment. Having been sleeping all day as well as through the previous night, the cat-kitten was a ball of energy. With truly awesome leaping ability he caromed off walls and furniture in a fantastic display of exuberance that made Laurie laugh to the point of tears.
   Unaccustomed to the luxury of free time to splurge on herself, Laurie took full advantage of the next several hours by taking a nap as well as a bath. Since there had been no message from Jordan to the contrary, she assumed their dinner plans had not changed from the prearranged nine p.m.
   After taking a half hour to decide what to wear, which encompassed trying on three different outfits, Laurie was ready by five of nine. Contrary to the previous two outings, Jordan himself showed up on time at nine sharp.
   “You’re really going to get my neighbors talking now,” Laurie told him. “I’m sure they’re thinking I’ve been seeing Thomas.”
   Jordan had made reservations for them at the Four Seasons. As with the other restaurants he favored, Laurie had never dined there. Although the food was excellent, the service impeccable, and the wine delightful, Laurie couldn’t help but compare it unfavorably to the nameless restaurant Lou had taken her to the night before. There was something so winning about that chaotic, bustling little place. The Four Seasons, on the other hand, was so quiet it was distracting. With the only sounds being the tinkle of ice against the waterglasses or the clink of the sans-serif flatware against the china, she felt she had to whisper. And the dйcor was so purposefully daunting with its stark geometry, she felt intimidated. Laurie choked on her water when a pesky thought occurred to her: What if it wasn’t the restaurant she preferred so much as the company?
   Jordan was relaxed and expansive, going on about his office. “Things couldn’t be better,” he said. “I got a replacement for Marsha who is ten times better than Marsha ever was. I don’t know why I was so worried about replacing her. And my surgery is going fine. I’ve never done so much surgery in such a short period of time. I just hope it keeps up. My accountant called me yesterday and told me this is going to be a record month.”
   “I’m glad for you,” Laurie said. She was tempted to mention her day’s revelations but Jordan didn’t give her a chance.
   “I’m toying with the idea of adding an additional exam room,” he said. “Maybe even taking in a junior partner who would see all the junk patients.”
   “What are junk patients?” Laurie asked.
   “Nonsurgical ones,” Jordan said. He spotted a waiter and called him over to order a second bottle of wine.
   “I looked at Mary O’Connor’s slides today,” Laurie said.
   “I’d prefer to keep the conversation on happier subjects,” Jordan said.
   “You don’t want to know what I found?” Laurie asked.
   “Not particularly,” Jordan said. “Unless it was something astonishing. I can’t dwell on her. I have to move on. After all, her general medical condition was not my responsibility but rather her internist’s. It’s not as if she died during surgery.”
   “What about your other patients who were killed?” Laurie asked. “Would you like to talk about them?”
   “Not really,” Jordan said. “I mean, what’s the point? It’s not as if we can do anything for them.”
   “I just thought you’d have a need to discuss it,” Laurie said. “If I were in your shoes, I’m sure I would.”
   “It depresses me,” Jordan admitted. “But it doesn’t help to talk about it. I’d rather concentrate on the positive things in my life.”
   Laurie studied Jordan’s face. Lou had said he’d seemed nervous when questioned about his patients’ deaths. Laurie didn’t see any nervousness now. All she saw was a deliberate denial: he’d just rather not think about any unpleasantness.
   “Positive things like the fact that you operated on Paul Cerino yesterday?” Laurie asked.
   If Jordan caught the facetiousness in her tone, he didn’t let on. “That’s the ticket,” he said, responding eagerly to a change in the subject. “I can’t wait to do the second eye and see the last of him.”
   “When will that be?” Laurie asked.
   “Within a week or so,” Jordan said. “I just want to make sure his first eye goes well. I shudder every time I think about the possibility of complications. Not that I expect any. His case went perfectly well. But he refused to stay in the hospital overnight so I can’t be a hundred percent sure he’s getting the medication he needs.”
   “Well, if he didn’t, it wouldn’t be your fault,” Laurie said.
   “I’m not sure Cerino would see it that way,” Jordan said.
   After dessert and coffee, Laurie agreed to go back to see Jordan’s apartment in the Trump Tower. She was impressed the moment she went through the door. Directly in front of her, almost at the same height as Jordan’s apartment, was the illuminated top of the Crown Building. Walking into the living room, Laurie could see south down Fifth Avenue to the Empire State Building and to the World Trade Center beyond. Looking north she could see a wedge of Central Park with its serpentine pathways fully illuminated.
   “It’s gorgeous,” Laurie said. She was transfixed by the view of the New York skyline. As her eyes swept the horizon, she realized that Jordan was standing directly behind her.
   “Laurie,” he said softly.
   Turning around, Laurie found herself enveloped by Jordan’s muscular arms. His angular face was illuminated by reflected light streaming in through the windows from the golden apex of the Crown Building. With his lips slightly parted, he leaned forward intending to kiss her.
   “Hey,” she said, disengaging herself. “How about an after-dinner drink?”
   “Your wish is my command,” Jordan said with a rueful smile.
   Laurie was a little surprised at herself. Surely she was not so naive to believe Jordan’s gesture wasn’t expected. After all, she’d gone out with the man nearly three nights in a row, and she did find him attractive. Yet for some reason she was beginning to have serious second thoughts.

   “Well?” Tony mumbled as Angelo came back to the table from the phone outside the men’s room. Tony’s mouth was full. He’d just finished shoveling in a huge bite of tortellini con panna. Lifting up his napkin, he wiped off the ring of cream and cheese from his lips.
   Angelo and Tony were in a small all-night restaurantsub shop in Astoria. It was Tony’s idea to stop, but Angelo didn’t mind since he had to call Cerino anyway.
   “Well?” Tony repeated after he’d swallowed the tortellini in his mouth. He washed it down with mineral water.
   “I wish you wouldn’t talk with food in your mouth,” Angelo said as he sat down. “It makes me sick.”
   “I’m sorry,” Tony said. He was already busy stabbing tortellini with his fork in preparation for the next bite.
   “He wants us to go out again tonight,” Angel said.
   Tony shoveled the forkful of tortellini into his mouth, then said, “Great!” It sounded more like “rate.”
   Having had yet another disgusting look at the mash of pasta in Tony’s mouth, Angelo reached over and picked Tony’s bowl from the table and crammed it upside down on Tony’s place mat.
   Tony flinched at the sudden movement and stared at his upturned bowl with shocked surprise. “Why did you do that?” he whined.
   “I told you not to eat with your mouth open,” Angelo snapped. “I’m trying to talk with you and you keep eating.”
   “I’m sorry, all right?”
   “Besides it pisses me off about Cerino sending us out,” Angelo said. “I thought we were finally finished with all this crap.”
   “At least the money is good,” Tony said. “What are we supposed to do?”
   “We’re supposed to stick to the supply side,” Angelo said. “We might be finished with the demand side, which is fine by me. That’s where we got into trouble.”
   “When?” Tony asked.
   “As soon as you get your ass out into the car,” Angelo said.
   Fifteen minutes later, as they were approaching the Queensboro Bridge, Angelo spoke up: “There’s another thing that bothers me about this. I don’t like the timing. Late Saturday night is not a good time. We may have to change things around and be creative.”
   “Why don’t we just use the phone?” Tony said. “We can make sure things are copacetic before we do anything else.”
   Angelo shot a glance in Tony’s direction. Sometimes the kid surprised him. He wasn’t dumb all the time.