Chromosome 6

CHAPTER 12

MARCH 5, 1997

6:45 P.M.

NEW YORK CITY

“THIS is the damndest thing,” Jack said. He was peering into his microscope at one particular slide and had been doing so intently for the previous half hour. Chet had tried to talk with him but had given up. When Jack was concentrating, it was impossible to get his attention.

“I’m glad you are enjoying yourself,” Chet said. He’d just stood up in preparation to leave and was about to heft his briefcase.

Jack leaned back and shook his head. “Everything about this case is screwy.” He looked up at Chet and was surprised to see he had his coat on. “Oh, are you leaving? ”

“Yeah, and I’ve been trying to say goodbye for the last fifteen minutes.”

“Take a look at this before you go,” Jack said. He motioned toward his microscope as he pushed away from the desk to give Chet room.

Chet debated. He checked his watch. He was due at his gym for a seven o’clock aerobics class. He’d had his eye on one of the girls who was a regular. In an effort to build up the courage to approach her, he’d been taking the class himself. The problem was that she was in far better shape than he, so that at the end of the class he was always too winded to talk.

“Come on, sport,” Jack said. “Give me your golden opinion.”

Chet let go of his briefcase, leaned over, and peered into the eyepieces of Jack’s microscope. With no explanation from Jack, he first had to figure out what the tissue was. “So, you’re still looking at this frozen section of liver,” he said.

“It’s been entertaining me all afternoon,” Jack said.

“Why not wait for the regular fixed sections?” Chet said. “These frozen sections are so limiting.”

“I’ve asked Maureen to get them out as soon as she can,” Jack said. “But meanwhile this is all I have. What do you think of the area under the pointer?”

Chet played with the focus. One of the many problems with frozen sections was they were often thick and the cellular architecture appeared fuzzy.

“I’d say it looks like a granuloma,” Chet said. A granuloma was the cellular sign of chronic, cell-mediated inflammation.

“That was my thought as well,” Jack said. “Now move the field over to the right. It will show a part of the liver surface. What do you see there?”

Chet did as he was told, while worrying that if he was late to the gym, there wouldn’t be a spot in the aerobics class. The instructor was one of the most popular.

“I see what looks like a large, scarred cyst,” Chet said.

“Does it look at all familiar?” Jack asked.

“Can’t say it does,” Chet said. “In fact, I’d have to say it looks a little weird.”

“Well said,” Jack remarked. “Now, let me ask you a question.”

Chet raised his head and looked at his office mate. Jack’s domed forehead was wrinkled with confusion.

“Does this look like a liver that you’d expect to see in a relatively recent transplant?”

“Hell, no!” Chet said. “I’d expect some acute inflammation but certainly not a granuloma. Especially if the process could be seen grossly as suggested by the collapsed surface cyst.”

Jack sighed. “Thank you! I was beginning to question my judgment. It’s reassuring to hear you’ve come to the same conclusion.”

“Knock, knock!” a voice called out.

Jack and Chet looked up to see Ted Lynch, the director of the DNA lab, standing in the doorway. He was a big man, almost in Calvin Washington’s league. He’d been an all-American tackle for Princeton before going on to graduate school.

“I got some results for you, Jack,” Ted said. “But I’m afraid it’s not what you want to hear, so I thought I’d come down and tell you in person. I know you’ve been thinking you’ve got a liver transplant here, but the DQ alpha was a perfect match, suggesting it was the patient’s own liver.”

Jack threw up his hands. “I give up,” he said.

“Now there was still a chance it was a transplant,” Ted said. “There are twenty-one possible genotypes of the DQ alpha sequence, and the test fails to discriminate about seven percent of the time. But I went ahead and ran the ABO blood groups on chromosome nine, and it was a perfect match as well. Combining the two results, the chances are mighty slim it’s not the patient’s own liver.”

“I’m crushed,” Jack said. With his fingers intertwined, he let his hands fall onto the top of his head. “I even called a surgeon friend of mine and asked if there would be any other reason to find sutures in the vena cava, the hepatic artery, and the biliary system. He said no: that it had to be a transplant.”

“What can I say?” Ted commented. “Of course, for you I’d be happy to fudge the results.” He laughed, and Jack pretended to take a swipe at him with his hand.

Jack’s phone jangled insistently. Jack motioned for Ted to stay, while he picked up the receiver. “What?” he said rudely.

“I’m out of here,” Chet said. He waved to Jack and pushed past Ted.

Jack listened intently. Slowly, his expression changed from exasperation to interest. He nodded a few times as he glanced up at Ted. For Ted’s benefit he held up a finger and mouthed, “One minute.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jack said into the phone. “If UNOS suggests we try Europe, give it a try.” He glanced at his watch. “Of course it’s the middle of the night over there, but do what you can!”

Jack hung up the phone. “That was Bart Arnold,” he said. “I’ve had the entire forensics department searching for a missing recent liver transplant.”

“What’s UNOS?” Ted asked.

“United National Organ Sharing,” Jack said.

“Any luck?” Ted asked.

“Nope,” Jack said. “It’s baffling. Bart’s even checked with all the major centers doing liver transplants.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a transplant,” Ted said. “I’m telling you, the probability of my two tests matching by chance is very small indeed.”

“I’m convinced it was a transplant,” Jack said. “There’s no rhyme or reason to take out a person’s liver and then put it back.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Jack said.

“You seem committed to this case,” Ted commented.

Jack gave a short derisive laugh. “I’ve decided that I’m going to unravel this mystery come hell or high water,” he said. “If I can’t, I’ll lose respect for myself. There just aren’t that many liver transplants. I mean, if I can’t solve this one, I might as well hang it up.”

“All right,” Ted said. “I’ll tell you what I can do. I can run a polymarker which compares areas on chromosome four, six, seven, nine, eleven, and nineteen. A chance match will be in the billions to one. And for my own peace of mind, I’ll even sequence the DQ alpha on both the liver sample and the patient to try to figure out how they could have matched.”

“I’ll be appreciative whatever you can do,” Jack said.

“I’ll even go up and start tonight,” Ted said. “That way I can have the results tomorrow.”

“What a sport!” Jack said. He put out his hand and Ted slapped it.

After Ted left, Jack switched off the light under his microscope. He felt as if the slide had been mocking him with its puzzling details. He’d been looking at it for so long his eyes hurt.

For a few minutes, Jack sat at his desk and gazed at the clutter of unfinished cases. Folders were stacked in uneven piles. Even his own conservative estimate had the figure somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. That was more than usual. Paperwork had never been Jack’s forte, and it got worse when he became enmeshed in a particular case.

Cursing under his breath from frustration at his own ineptitude, Jack pushed back from his desk and grabbed his bomber jacket from the hook on the back of his office door. He’d had as much sitting and thinking as he was capable of. He needed some mindless, hard exercise, and his neighborhood basketball court was beckoning.

The view of the New York City skyline from the George Washington Bridge was breathtaking. Franco Ponti tried to turn his head to appreciate it, but it was difficult because of the rush-hour traffic. Franco was behind the wheel of a stolen Ford sedan on the way to Englewood, New Jersey. Angelo Facciolo was sitting in the front passenger seat, staring out the windshield. Both men were wearing gloves.

“Get a load of the view to the left,” Franco said. “Look at all those lights. You can see the whole freakin’ island, even the Statue of Liberty.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it already,” Angelo said moodily.

“What’s the matter with you?” Franco asked. “You’re acting like you’re on the rag.”

“I don’t like this kind of job,” Angelo said. “It reminds me of when Cerino went berserk and sent me and Tony Ruggerio all over the goddamn city doing the same kind of shit. We should stick to our usual work, dealing with the usual people.”

“Vinnie Dominick is not Pauli Cerino,” Franco said. “And what’s so bad about picking up some easy extra cash?”

“The cash is fine,” Angelo agreed. “It’s the risk I don’t like.”

“What do you mean?” Franco questioned. “There’s no risk. We’re professionals. We don’t take risks.”

“There’s always the unexpected,” Angelo said. “And as far as I’m concerned, the unexpected has already occurred.”

Franco glanced over at Angelo’s scarred face silhouetted in the half light of the car’s interior. He could tell that Angelo was dead serious. “What are you talking about?” he questioned.

“The fact that this Laurie Montgomery is involved,” Angelo said. “She gives me nightmares. Tony and I tried to whack her, but we couldn’t. It was like God was protecting her.”

Franco laughed in spite of Angelo’s seriousness. “This Laurie Montgomery would be flattered that someone with your reputation has nightmares about her. That’s hilarious.”

“I don’t find it funny at all,” Angelo said.

“Don’t get sore at me,” Franco said. “Besides, she’s hardly involved in what we’re doing here.”

“It’s related,” Angelo said. “And she told Vinnie Amendola that she’s going to make it her personal business to find out how we managed to get Franconi’s body out of the morgue.”

“But how is she going to do that?” Franco said. “And worse comes to worse we sent Freddie Capuso and Richie Herns to do the actual dirty work. I think you’re jumping to conclusions here.”

“Oh yeah?” Angelo questioned. “You don’t know this woman. She’s one persistent bitch.”

“All right!” Franco said with resignation. “You want to be bummed out, fine by me.”

As they reached the New Jersey side of the bridge, Franco bore right onto the Palisades Interstate Parkway. With Angelo insisting on sulking, he reached over and turned on the radio. After pushing a few buttons he found a station that played “oldies but goodies.” Turning up the volume up he sang “Sweet Caroline” along with Neil Diamond.

By the second refrain, Angelo leaned forward and turned off the radio. “You win,” he said. “I’ll cheer up if you promise not to sing.”

“You don’t like that song?” Franco questioned as if he were hurt. “It’s got such sweet memories for me.” He smacked his lips as if he were tasting. “It reminds me of making out with Maria Provolone.”

“I’m not going to touch that one,” Angelo said, laughing despite himself. He appreciated working with Franco Ponti. Franco was a professional. He also had a sense of humor, which Angelo knew he himself lacked.

Franco exited the parkway onto Palisades Avenue, passed Route 9W, and headed west down a long hill into Englewood, New Jersey. The environment quickly changed from franchise fast-food restaurants and service stations to upper-class suburban.

“You got the map and the address handy?” Franco asked.

“I got it right here,” Angelo said. He reached up and turned on the map light. “We’re looking for Overlook Place,” he said. “It will be on the left.”

Overlook Place was easy to find, and five minutes later, they were cruising along a winding, tree-lined street. The lawns that stretched up to the widely spaced houses were so expansive they looked like fairways on a golf course.

“Can you imagine living in a place like this?” Franco commented, his head swinging from side to side. “Hell, I’d get lost trying to find the street from my front door.”

“I don’t like this,” Angelo said. “It’s too peaceful. We’re going to stick out like a sore thumb.”

“Now don’t get yourself all bent out of shape,” Franco said. “At this point, all we’re doing is reconnoitering. What number are we looking for?”

Angelo consulted the piece of paper in his hand. “Number Eight Overlook Place.”

“That means it’s going to be on our left,” Franco said. They were just passing number twelve.

A few moments later Franco slowed and pulled over to the right side of the road. He and Angelo stared up a serpentine driveway lined with carriage lamps to a massive Tudor-style house set against a backdrop of soaring pine trees. Most of the multipaned windows were aglow with light. The property was the size of a football field.

“Looks like a goddamn castle,” Angelo complained.

“I must say, it’s not what I was hoping for,” Franco said.

“Well, what are we going to do?” Angelo asked. “We can’t just sit here. We haven’t seen a car since we pulled off the main drag back there.”

Franco put the car in gear. He knew Angelo was right. They couldn’t wait there. Someone would undoubtedly spot them, become suspicious, and call the police. They’d already passed one of those stupid neighborhood watch signs with the silhouette of a guy wearing a bandana.

“Let’s find out more about this sixteen-year-old chick,” Angelo said. “Like, where she goes to school, what she likes to do, and who are her friends. We can’t risk going up to the house. No way.”

Franco grunted in agreement. Just as he was about to press on the accelerator, he saw a tiny figure come out the front of the house. From such a distance he couldn’t tell if it was male or female. “Somebody just came out,” he said.

“I noticed,” Angelo said.

The two men watched in silence as the figure descended a few stone stairs and then started down the driveway.

“Whoever it is, is kind of fat,” Franco said.

“And they got a dog,” Angelo said.

“Holy Madonna,” Franco said after a few moments. “It’s the girl.”

“I don’t believe this,” Angelo said. “Do you think it really is Cindy Carlson? I’m not used to things happening this easy.”

Astounded, the two men watched as the girl continued down the driveway as if she were coming directly to greet them. Ahead of her walked a tiny, caramel-colored toy poodle with its little pompom tail sticking straight up.

“What should we do?” Franco questioned. He didn’t expect an answer; he was thinking out loud.

“How about the police act?” Angelo suggested. “It always worked for Tony and me.”

“Sounds good,” Franco said. He turned to Angelo and stuck out his hand. “Let me use your Ozone Park police badge.”

Angelo reached into the vest pocket of his Brioni suit and handed over the walletlike badge cover.

“You stay put for the moment,” Franco said. “No reason to scare her right off the bat with that face of yours.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” Angelo said sourly. Angelo cared about his appearance and dressed to the nines in a vain attempt to compensate for his face, which was severely scarred from a combination of chicken pox as a child, severe acne as a teenager, and third-degree burns from an explosion five years previously. Ironically, the explosion had been ignited thanks to Laurie Montgomery.

“Ah, don’t be so touchy,” Franco teased. He cuffed Angelo on the back of the head. “You know we love you, even though you look like you should be in a horror movie.”

Angelo fended off Franco’s hand. There were only two people he allowed even to make reference to his facial problem: Franco and his boss, Vinnie Dominick. Still, he didn’t appreciate it.

The girl was now nearing the street. She was dressed in a pink down-filled ski parka, which only made her look heavier. Her facial features indented a puffy face with mild acne. Her hair was straight and parted down the middle.

“She look anything like Maria Provolone?” Angelo questioned, to get in a dig at Franco.

“Very funny,” Franco said. He reached for the door handle and got out of the car.

“Excuse me!” Franco called out as sweetly as possible. Having smoked heavily from age eight, he had a voice that normally had a harsh, raspy quality. “Could you, by any chance, be the popular Cindy Carlson?”

“Maybe,” the teenager said. “Who wants to know?” She’d stopped at the foot of the driveway. The dog lifted his leg against the gate post.

“We’re police officers,” Franco said. He held up the badge so that the light from the streetlamp glinted off its polished surface. “We’re investigating several of the boys in town and we were told you might be able to help us.”

“Really?” Cindy questioned.

“Absolutely,” Franco said. “Please come over here so my colleague can talk to you.”

Cindy glanced up and down the street, even though not a car had passed in the last five minutes. She crossed the street, pulling her dog who’d been intently sniffing the base of an elm tree.

Franco moved out of the way so that Cindy Carlson could bend over to look into the front seat of the car at Angelo. Before a word was spoken, Franco pushed her into the car headfirst.

Cindy let out a squeal but it was quickly smothered by Angelo who wrestled her into the car.

Franco swiftly yanked the leash out of Cindy’s hand and shooed the dog away. Then he squeezed into the front seat, crushing Cindy against Angelo. He put the car in gear and drove away.

Laurie had surprised herself. After the delivery of the Franconi videotape, she’d been able to redirect her attention to her paperwork. She’d worked efficiently and made significant progress. There was now a gratifying stack of completed folders on the corner of her desk.

Taking the remaining tray of histology slides, she started on the final case, which could be completed with the material and reports she had. As she peered into her microscope to examine the first slide, she heard a knock on her open door. It was Lou Soldano.

“What are you doing here so late?” Lou asked. He sat down heavily in the chair next to Laurie’s desk. He made no effort to take off his coat or hat, which was tipped way back on his head.

Laurie glanced at her watch. “My gosh!” she remarked. “I had no idea of the time.”

“I tried to call you at home as I was coming across the Queensborough Bridge,” Lou said. “When I didn’t get you, I decided to stop here. I had a sneaking suspicion you’d still be at it. You know, you work too hard!”

“You should talk!” Laurie said with playful sarcasm. “Look at you! When was the last time you got any sleep? And I’m not talking about a catnap at your desk.”

“Let’s talk about more pleasant things,” Lou suggested. “How about grabbing a bite to eat? I’ve got to run down to headquarters to do about an hour’s worth of dictating, then I’d love to go out someplace. The kids are with their aunt, God love her. What do you say to some pasta?”

“Are you sure you’re up for going out?” Laurie questioned. The circles under Lou’s dark eyes were touching his smile creases. His stubble was more than a five o’clock shadow. Laurie guessed it was at least two days’ worth.

“I gotta eat,” Lou said. “Are you planning on working much longer?”

“I’m on my last case,” Laurie said. “Maybe another half hour.”

“You gotta eat, too,” Lou said.

“Have you made any progress in the Franconi case?” Laurie asked.

Lou let out an exasperated puff of air. “I wish,” he said. “And the trouble is with these mob hits, if you don’t score quickly, the trail cools mighty fast. We haven’t gotten the break I’ve been hoping for.”

“I’m sorry,” Laurie said.

“Thanks,” Lou said. “How about you? Any more of an idea how Franconi’s body got out of here?”

“That trail is about equally as cool,” Laurie said. “Calvin even gave me a reaming out for interrogating the night mortuary tech. All I did was talk to the man. I’m afraid administration just wants the episode to fade.”

“So Jack was right about telling you to lay off,” Lou said.

“I suppose,” Laurie reluctantly agreed. “But don’t tell him that.”

“I wish the commissioner would let it fade,” Lou said. “Hell, I might get demoted over this thing.”

“I did have one thought,” Laurie said. “One of the funeral homes that picked up a body the night Franconi disappeared is called Spoletto. It’s in Ozone Park. Somehow the name was familiar to me. Then I remembered that one of the more grisly murders of a young mobster took place there back during the Cerino case. Do you think that it’s just a coincidence they happened to be making a pickup here the night Franconi disappeared?”

“Yeah,” Lou said. “And I’ll tell you why. I’m familiar with that funeral home from my years in Queens fighting organized crime. There is a loose and innocent connection by marriage with the Spoletto Funeral Home and the New York crime establishment. But it’s with the wrong family. It’s with the Lucia people, not with the Vaccarros who killed Franconi.”

“Oh, well,” Laurie said. “It was just a thought.”

“Hey, I’m not knocking your questioning it,” Lou said. “Your recall always impresses me. I’m not sure I would have made the association. Anyway, what about some dinner?”

“As tired as you look, how about just coming over to my apartment for some spaghetti?” Laurie suggested. Lou and Laurie had become best of friends over the years. After being thrust together on the Cerino case five years previously, they’d flirted with a romantic relationship. But it hadn’t worked out. Becoming friends had been a mutual decision. In the years since, they made it a point to have dinner together every couple of weeks.

“You wouldn’t mind?” Lou asked. The idea of kicking back on Laurie’s couch sounded like heaven.

“Not at all,” Laurie said. “In fact, I’d prefer it. I’ve got some sauce in the freezer and plenty of salad makings.”

“Great!” Lou said. “I’ll grab some Chianti on my way downtown. I’ll give you a call when I’m leaving headquarters.”

“Perfect,” Laurie said.

After Lou had left, Laurie went back to her slide. But Lou’s visit had broken her concentration by reawakening the Franconi business. Besides, she was tired of looking through the microscope. Leaning back, she rubbed her eyes.

“Damn it all!” she murmured. She sighed and gazed up a at the cob-webbed ceiling. Every time she questioned how Franconi’s body could have gotten out of the morgue, she agonized anew. She also felt guilty that she couldn’t provide even a modicum of help to Lou.

Laurie got up and got her coat, snapped shut her briefcase, and walked out of her office. But she didn’t leave the morgue. Instead, she went down for another visit to the mortuary office. There was a question that was nagging her and which she’d forgotten to ask Marvin Fletcher, the evening mortuary tech, the previous late afternoon.

She found Marvin at his desk busily filling out the required forms for the scheduled pickups for that evening. Marvin was one of Laurie’s favorite coworkers. He’d been on the day shift before Bruce Pomowski’s tragic murder during the Cerino affair. After that event, Marvin had been switched to evenings. It had been a promotion because the evening mortuary tech had a lot of responsibility.

“Hey, Laurie! What’s happening?” Marvin said the moment he caught sight of her. Marvin was a handsome African-American, with the most flawless skin Laurie had ever seen. It seemed to glow as if lit internally.

Laurie chatted with Marvin for a few minutes, catching him up on the intraoffice gossip of the day before getting down to business. “Marvin, I’ve got to ask you something, but I don’t want you to feel defensive.” Laurie couldn’t help remembering Mike Passano’s reaction to her questioning, and she certainly didn’t want Marvin complaining to Calvin.

“About what?” Marvin asked.

“Franconi,” Laurie said. “I wanted to ask why you didn’t X-ray the body.”

“What are you talking about?” Marvin questioned.

“Just what I said,” Laurie remarked. “There was no X-ray slip in the autopsy folder and there were no films down here with others when I looked prior to finding out that the body had disappeared.”

“I took X rays,” Marvin said. He acted hurt that Laurie would suggest that he hadn’t. “I always take X rays when a body comes in unless one of the doctors tells me otherwise.”

“Then where’s the slip and where are the films?” Laurie asked.

“Hey, I don’t know what happened to the slip,” Marvin said. “But the films: They went with Doctor Bingham.”

“Bingham took them?” Laurie questioned. Even that was odd, yet she recognized that Bingham probably was planning on doing the post the following morning.

“He told me he was taking them up to his office,” Marvin said. “What am I supposed to do, tell the boss he can’t take the X rays. No way! Not this dude.”

“Right, of course,” Laurie said vaguely. She was preoccupied. Here was a new surprise. X rays existed of Franconi’s body! Of course, it didn’t matter much without the body itself, but she wondered why she’d not been told. Then again she’d not seen Bingham until after it was known that Franconi’s body had been stolen.

“Well, I’m glad I spoke to you,” Laurie said, coming out of her musing. “And I apologize for suggesting that you’d forgotten to take the films.”

“Hey, it’s cool,” Marvin said.

Laurie was about to leave when she thought about the Spoletto Funeral Home. On a whim, she asked Marvin about it.

Marvin shrugged. “What do you want to know?” he asked. “I don’t know much. I’ve never been there, you know what I’m saying.”

“What are the people like who come here from the home?” Laurie asked.

“Normal,” Marvin said with another shrug. “I’ve probably only seen them a couple of times. I mean, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Laurie nodded. “It was a silly question. I don’t know why I asked.”

Laurie left the mortuary office and exited the morgue through the loading area onto Thirtieth Street. It seemed to her that nothing about the Franconi case was routine.

As Laurie commenced walking south along First Avenue another whim hit her. Suddenly, the idea of visiting the Spoletto Funeral Home seemed very appealing. She hesitated for a second while considering the idea and then stepped out into the street to hail a cab.

“Where to, lady?” the driver asked. Laurie could see from his hackney license that his name was Michael Neuman.

“Do you know where Ozone Park is?” Laurie asked.

“Sure, it’s over in Queens,” Michael said. He was an older man who, Laurie guessed, was in his late sixties. He was sitting on a foam rubber-stuffed pillow with a lot of foam rubber visible. His backrest was constructed of wooden beads.

“How long would it take to get there?” Laurie asked. If it was going to take hours, she wouldn’t do it.

Michael made a questioning expression by compressing his lips while thinking. “Not long,” he said vaguely. “Traffic’s light. In fact, I was just out at Kennedy Airport, and it was a breeze.”

“Let’s go,” Laurie said.

As Michael promised, the trip took only a short time, especially once they got on the Van Wyck Expressway. While they were traveling, Laurie found out that Michael had been driving a cab for over thirty years. He was a loquacious and opinionated man who also exuded a paternal charm.

“Would you know where Gold Road is in Ozone Park?” Laurie asked. She felt privileged to have found an experienced taxi driver. She’d remembered the address of the Spoletto Funeral Home from the Rolodex in the mortuary office. The street name had stuck in her mind as making a metaphorical statement about the undertaking business.

“Gold Road,” Michael said. “No problem. It’s a continuation of Eighty-ninth Street. You looking for a house or what?”

“I’m looking for the Spoletto Funeral Home,” Laurie said.

“I’ll have you there in no time,” Michael said.

Laurie sat back with a contented feeling, only half listening to Michael’s nonstop chatter. For the moment luck seemed to be on her side. The reason she’d decided to visit the Spoletto Funeral Home was because Jack had been wrong about it. The home did have a mob connection, and even though it was with the wrong family according to Lou, the fact that it was associated at all was suspicious to Laurie.

True to his promise, within a surprisingly short time Michael pulled up to a three-storied white clapboard house wedged between several brick tenements. It had Greek-style columns holding up the roof of a wide front porch. A glazed, internally lit sign in the middle of a postage stamp-sized lawn read: “Spoletto Funeral Home, a family business, two generations of caring.”

The establishment was in full operation. Lights were on in all the windows. A few cigarette smokers were on the porch. Other people were visible through the ground-floor windows.

Michael was about to terminate the meter when Laurie spoke up: “Would you mind waiting for me?” she asked. “I’m certain I’ll only be a few minutes, and I imagine it would be hard catching a cab from here.”

“Sure, Lady,” Michael said. “No problem.”

“Would you mind if I left my briefcase?” Laurie asked. “There’s absolutely nothing of value in it.”

“It will be safe just the same,” Michael said.

Laurie got out and started up the front walk, feeling unnerved. She could remember as if it were yesterday the case Dr. Dick Katzenburg had presented at the Thursday afternoon conference five years earlier. A man in his twenties had been essentially embalmed alive in the Spoletto Funeral Home after having been involved in throwing battery acid in Pauli Cerino’s face.

Laurie shuddered but forced herself up the front steps. She was never going to be completely free from the Cerino affair.

The people smoking cigarettes ignored her. Soft organ music could be heard through the closed front door. Laurie tried the door. It was unlocked, and she walked in.

Save for the music there was little sound. The floors were heavily carpeted. Small groups of people were standing around the entrance hall but they conversed in hushed whispers.

To Laurie’s left was a room full of elaborate coffins and urns on display. To the right was a viewing room with people seated in folding chairs. At the far end of the room was a coffin resting on a bed of flowers.

“May I help you?” a soft voice enquired.

A thin man about Laurie’s age with an ascetic face and sad features had come up to her. He was dressed in black except for his white shirt. He was obviously part of the staff. To Laurie, he looked like her image of a puritan preacher.

“Are you here to pay respects to Jonathan Dibartolo?” the man asked.

“No,” Laurie said. “Frank Gleason.”

“Excuse me?” the man enquired.

Laurie repeated the name. There was a pause.

“And your name is?” the man asked.

“Dr. Laurie Montgomery.”

“Just one moment if you will,” the man said as he literally ducked away.

Laurie looked around at the mourners. This was a side of death that she’d experienced only once. It was when her brother had died from an overdose when he was nineteen and Laurie was fifteen. It had been a traumatic experience for her in all regards, but especially since she’d been the one who had found him.

“Dr. Montgomery,” a soft, unctuous voice intoned. “I’m Anthony Spoletto. I understand you are here to pay respects to Mr. Frank Gleason.”

“That’s correct,” Laurie said. She turned to face a man also dressed in a black suit. He was obese and as oily as his voice. His forehead glistened in the soft incandescent light.

“I’m afraid that will be impossible,” Mr. Spoletto said.

“I called this afternoon and was told he was on view,” Laurie said.

“Yes, of course,” Mr. Spoletto said. “But that was this afternoon. At the family’s request this afternoon’s four p.m. to six p.m. viewing was to be the last.”

“I see,” Laurie said nonplussed. She’d not had any particular plan in mind concerning her visit and had intended on viewing the body as a kind of jumping-off place. Now that the body was not available, she didn’t know what to do.

“Perhaps I could just sign the register book anyway,” Laurie said.

“I’m afraid that, too, is impossible,” Mr. Spoletto said. “The family has already taken it.”

“Well, I guess that’s it,” Laurie said with a limp gesture of her arms.

“Unfortunately,” returned Mr. Spoletto.

“Would you know when the burial is planned?” Laurie asked.

“Not at the moment,” Mr. Spoletto said.

“Thank you,” Laurie said.

“Not at all,” Mr. Spoletto said. He opened the door for Laurie.

Laurie walked out and got into the cab.

“Now where?” Michael asked.

Laurie gave her address on Nineteenth Street and leaned forward to look out at the Spoletto Funeral Home as the taxi pulled away. It had been a wasted trip. Or had it? After she’d been talking with Mr. Spoletto for a moment, she’d realized that his forehead wasn’t oily. The man had been perspiring despite the temperature inside the funeral parlor being decidedly on the cool side. Laurie scratched her head, wondering if that meant anything or if it were just another example of her grabbing at straws.

“Was it a friend?” Michael asked.

“Was who a friend?”

“The deceased,” Michael said.

Laurie let out a little mirthless laugh. “Hardly,” she said.

“I know what you mean,” Michael said, looking at Laurie in the rearview mirror. “Relationships today are very complicated. And I’ll tell you why it is…”

Laurie smiled as she settled back to listen. She loved philosophical taxi drivers, and Michael was a regular Plato of his profession.

When the cab pulled up outside Laurie’s building, Laurie saw a familiar figure in the foyer. It was Lou Soldano slouched over against the mailboxes, clutching a bottle of wine in a straw basket. Laurie paid Michael the fare along with a generous tip, then hurried inside.

“I’m sorry,” Laurie offered. “I thought you were going to call before you came over.”

Lou blinked as if he’d been asleep. “I did,” he said, after a brief coughing spree. “I got your answering machine. So I left the message that I was on my way.”

Laurie glanced at her watch as she unlocked the inner door. She’d only been gone for a little over an hour, which was what she’d expected.

“I thought you were only going to work for another half hour,” Lou said.

“I wasn’t working,” Laurie said, as she called for the elevator. “I took a trip out to the Spoletto Funeral Home.”

Lou frowned.

“Now don’t give me extra grief,” Laurie said as they boarded the elevator.

“So what did you find? Franconi lying in state?” Lou asked sarcastically.

“I’m not going to tell you a thing if you’re going to act that way,” Laurie complained.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Lou said.

“I didn’t find anything,” Laurie admitted. “The body I went to see was no longer on view. The family had cut it off at six p.m.”

The elevator opened. While Laurie struggled with her locks, Lou curtsied for Debra Engler, whose door opened against its chain as usual.

“But the director acted a little suspicious,” Laurie said. “At least I think he did.”

“How so?” Lou asked as they entered Laurie’s apartment. Tom came running out of the bedroom to purr and rub against Laurie’s leg.

Laurie put her briefcase on the small half moon-shaped hall console table in order to bend down to scratch Tom vigorously behind his ear.

“He was perspiring while I was talking with him,” Laurie said.

Lou paused with his coat half off. “Is that all?” he asked. “The man was perspiring?”

“Yes, that’s it,” Laurie said. She knew what Lou was thinking; it was written all over his face.

“Did he start perspiring after you asked him difficult and incriminating questions about Franconi’s body?” Lou asked. “Or was he perspiring before you began talking with him?”

“Before,” Laurie admitted.

Lou rolled his eyes. “Whoa! Another Sherlock Holmes incarnate,” he said. “Maybe you should take over my job. I don’t have your powers of intuition and inductive reasoning!”

“You promised not to give me grief,” Laurie said.

“I never promised,” Lou said.

“All right, it was a wasted trip,” Laurie said. “Let’s get some food. I’m starved.”

Lou switched the bottle of wine from one hand to the other, allowing him to swing his arm out of his trench coat. When he did, he clumsily knocked Laurie’s briefcase to the floor. The impact caused it to spring open and scatter the contents. The crash terrified the cat, who disappeared back into the bedroom after a desperate struggle to gain traction on the highly polished wood floor.

“What a klutz,” Lou said. “I’m sorry!” He bent down to retrieve the papers, pens, microscope slides, and other paraphernalia and bumped into Laurie in the process.

“Maybe it’s best you just sit down,” Laurie suggested with a laugh.

“No, I insist,” Lou said.

After they’d gotten most of the contents back into the briefcase, Lou picked up the videotape. “What’s this, your favorite X-rated feature?”

“Hardly,” Laurie commented.

Lou turned it over to read the label. “The Franconi shooting?” he questioned. “CNN sent you this out-of-the-blue?”

Laurie straightened up. “No, I requested it. I was going to use the tape to corroborate the findings when I did the autopsy. I thought it could make an interesting paper to show how reliable forensics can be.”

“Mind if I look at it?” Lou asked.

“Of course not,” Laurie said. “Didn’t you see it on TV?”

“Along with everyone else,” Lou said. “But it would still be interesting to see the tape.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have a copy at police headquarters,” Laurie said.

“Hey, maybe we do,” Lou said. “I just haven’t seen it.”

“Man, this ain’t your night,” Warren teased Jack. “You must be getting too old.”

Jack had decided when he’d gotten to the playground late and had had to wait to get into the game, that he was going to win no matter whom he was teamed up with. But it didn’t happen. In fact, Jack lost every game he played in because Warren and Spit had gotten on the same team and neither could miss. Their team had won every game including the last, which had just been capped off with a sweet “give and go” that gave Spit an easy final lay-up.

Jack walked over to the sidelines on rubbery legs. He’d played his heart out and was perspiring profusely. He pulled a towel from where he’d jammed it into the chain-link fence and wiped his face. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

“Come on, man!” Warren teased from the edge of the court, where he was dribbling a basketball back and forth between his legs. “One more run. We’ll let you win this time.”

“Yeah, sure!” Jack called back. “You never let nobody win nothing.” Jack made it a point to adapt his syntax for the environment. “I’m out’a here.”

Warren sauntered over and hooked one of his ringers through the fence and leaned against it. “What’s up with your shortie?” he asked. “Natalie’s been driving me up the wall asking questions about her since we haven’t seen nothing of you guys, you know what I’m saying?”

Jack looked at Warren’s sculpted face. To add insult to injury, as far as Jack was concerned, Warren wasn’t even perspiring, nor was he breathing particularly heavily. And to make matters worse, he’d been playing before Jack had arrived. The only evidence of exertion was a tiny triangle of sweat down the front of his cut-off sweatshirt.

“Reassure Natalie that Laurie’s fine,” Jack said. “She and I were just taking a little vacation from each other. It was mostly my fault. I just wanted to cool things down a bit.”

“I hear you,” Warren said.

“I was with her last night,” Jack added. “And things are looking up. She was asking me about you and Natalie, so you weren’t alone.”

Warren nodded. “You sure you’re finished or do you want to run one more?”

“I’m finished,” Jack said.

“Take care, man,” Warren said as he pushed off the fence. Then he yelled out to the others: “Let’s run, you bad asses.”

Jack shook his head in dismay as he watched Warren amble away. He was envious of the man’s stamina. Warren truly wasn’t tired.

Jack pulled on his sweatshirt and started for home. He’d not won a single game, and although during the play the inability to win had seemed overwhelmingly frustrating, now it didn’t matter. The exercise had cleared his mind, and for the hour and a half he’d played, he hadn’t thought about work.

But Jack wasn’t even all the way across 106th Street when the tantalizing mystery of his floater began troubling him again. As he climbed his refuse-strewn stairs, he wondered if there was a chance that Ted had made a mistake with the DNA analysis. As far as Jack was concerned the victim had had a transplant.

Jack was rounding the third-floor landing when he heard the telltale sound of his phone. He knew it was his because Denise, the single mother of two who lived on his floor, didn’t have a phone.

With some effort, Jack encouraged his tired quadriceps to propel him up the final flight. Clumsily, he fumbled with his keys at his door. The moment he got it open, he heard his answering machine pick up with a voice that Jack refused to believe was his own.

He got to the phone and snatched it up, cutting himself off in mid-sentence.

“Hello,” he gasped. After an hour and a half of full-court, all-out basketball, the dash up the final flight of stairs had put him close to collapse.

“Don’t tell me you’re just coming in from your basketball,” Laurie said. “It’s going on nine o’clock. That’s way off your schedule.”

“I didn’t get home until after seven-thirty,” Jack explained between breaths. He wiped his face to keep his perspiration from dripping on the floor.

“That means you haven’t eaten yet,” Laurie said.

“You got that right,” Jack said.

“Lou is over here, and we were going to have salad and spaghetti,” Laurie said. “Why don’t you join us?”

“I wouldn’t want to break up the party,” Jack said jokingly. At the same time he felt a mild stab of jealousy. He knew about Laurie’s and Lou’s brief romantic involvement and half wondered if the two friends were starting something up.

Jack knew he had no right to such feelings, considering the ambivalence he had about becoming involved with any woman. After the loss of his family, he’d been unsure if he ever wanted to make himself vulnerable to such pain again. At the same time, he’d come to admit both his loneliness and how much he enjoyed Laurie’s company.

“You won’t be breaking up any party,” Laurie assured him. “It’s going to be a very, very casual dinner. But we have something we want to show you. Something that is going to surprise you and maybe even make you want to give yourself a boot in the rear end. As you can probably tell, we’re pretty excited.”

“Oh?” Jack questioned. His mouth had gone dry. Hearing Lou laughing in the background, and putting two and two together, Jack knew what they wanted to show him; it had to be a ring! Lou must have proposed!

“Are you coming?” Laurie asked.

“It’s kind of late,” Jack said. “I’ve got to shower.”

“Hey, you old sawbones,” Lou said. He’d snatched the phone from Laurie. “Get your ass over here. Laurie and I are dying to share this with you.”

“Okay,” Jack said with resignation. “I’ll jump in the shower and be there in forty minutes.”

“See ya, dude,” Lou said.

Jack hung up the phone. “Dude?” he mumbled. That didn’t sound like Lou. Jack mused that the detective must be on cloud nine.

“I wish I knew what I could do to cheer you up,” Darlene said. She’d made the effort to put on a slinky silk teddy from Victoria’s Secret, but Raymond hadn’t even noticed.

Raymond was stretched out on the sofa with an ice pack on his head and his eyes closed.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?” Darlene asked. She was a tall woman over five feet ten, with bleached blond hair and a curvaceous body. She was twenty-six years old, and as she and Raymond joked, halfway to his fifty-two. She’d been a fashion model before Raymond had met her in a cosy East Side bar called the Auction House.

Raymond slowly took his ice pack off and glared at Darlene. Her bubbly vivaciousness was only an irritation.

“My stomach is in a knot,” he said deliberately. “I’m not hungry. Is that so difficult to understand?”

“Well, I don’t know why you are so upset,” Darlene persisted. “You just got a call from the doctor in Los Angeles, and she’s decided to come on board. That means we’ll soon have some movie stars as clients. I think we should celebrate.”

Raymond replaced the ice pack and closed his eyes. “The problems haven’t been about the business side. That’s all been going like clockwork. It’s these unexpected snafus, like Franconi and now Kevin Marshall.” Raymond was loath to explain about Cindy Carlson. In fact, he’d been trying to avoid even thinking about the girl himself.

“Why are you still worried about Franconi?” Darlene asked. “That problem has been taken care of.”

“Listen,” Raymond said, trying to be patient, “maybe it would be best if you go watch some TV and let me suffer in peace.”

“How about some toast or a little cereal?” Darlene asked.

“Leave me alone!” Raymond shouted. He’d sat up suddenly and was clutching his ice pack in his hand. His eyes were bulging and his face was flushed.

“Okay, I can tell when I’m not wanted,” Darlene pouted. As she was leaving the room, the phone rang. She looked back at Raymond. “Want me to get it?” she asked.

Raymond nodded and told her to take the call in the study. He also said that if the call was for him, she should be vague about where he was, since he wasn’t up to talking with anyone.

Darlene reversed her direction and disappeared into the study. Raymond breathed a sigh of relief and put the ice pack back on his head. Lying back, he tried to relax. He was just getting comfortable when Darlene returned.

“It’s the intercom, not the phone,” she said. “There’s a man downstairs who wants to see you. His name is Franco Ponti, and he said it was important. I told him that I’d see if you were here. What do you want me to say?”

Raymond sat back up with a new jolt of anxiety. For a moment, he couldn’t place the name, but he didn’t like the sound of it. Then it hit him. It was one of Vinnie Dominick’s men who’d accompanied the mobster to the apartment the previous morning.

“Well?” Darlene questioned.

Raymond swallowed loudly. “I’ll talk to him.” Raymond reached behind the couch and picked up the telephone extension. He tried to sound authoritative when he said hello.

“Howdy, Doc,” Franco said. “I was going to be disappointed if you hadn’t been at home.”

“I’m about to go to bed,” Raymond said. “It’s rather late for you to be calling.”

“My apologies for the hour,” Franco said. “But Angelo Facciolo and I have something we’d like to show you.”

“Why don’t we do this tomorrow?” Raymond said. “Say between nine and ten.”

“It can’t wait,” Franco said. “Come on, Doc! Don’t give us a hard time. It’s Vinnie Dominick’s express wish that you become intimately acquainted with our services.”

Raymond struggled to come up with an excuse to avoid going downstairs. But given his headache, nothing came to mind.

“Two minutes,” Franco said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

“I’m awfully tired,” Raymond said. “I’m afraid…”

“Hold on, Doc,” Franco said. “Listen, I have to insist you come down here or you’re going to be very sorry. I hope I’m making myself clear.”

“All right,” Raymond said, recognizing the inevitable. He was not naive enough to believe that Vinnie Dominick and his people made idle threats. “I’ll be right down.”

Raymond went to the hall closet and got his coat.

Darlene was amazed. “You’re going out?”

“It appears that I don’t have a lot of choice,” Raymond said. “I suppose I should be happy they’re not demanding to come inside.”

As Raymond descended in the elevator, he tried to calm himself, but it was difficult since his headache had only gotten worse. This unexpected, unwanted visit was just the kind of turn that was making his life miserable. He had no idea what these people wanted to show him, although he guessed it had something to do with how they were going to deal with Cindy Carlson.

“Good evening, Doc,” Franco said as Raymond appeared. “Sorry to trouble you.”

“Let’s just make this short,” Raymond said, sounding more confident than he felt.

“It will be short and sweet, trust me,” Franco said. “If you don’t mind.” He pointed up the street where the Ford sedan had been pulled to the curb next to a fire hydrant. Angelo was half-sitting, half-leaning against the trunk, smoking a cigarette.

Raymond followed Franco to the car. Angelo responded by straightening up and stepping to the side.

“We just want you to take a quick look in the trunk,” Franco said. He reached the car and keyed the luggage compartment. “Come right over here so you can see. The light’s not so good.”

Raymond stepped between the Ford and the car behind it, literally inches away from the trunk’s lid as Franco raised it.

In the next second, Raymond thought his heart had stopped. The instant he glimpsed the ghoulish sight of Cindy Carlson’s dead body crammed into the trunk, there was a flash of light.

Raymond staggered back. He felt sick with the image of the obese girl’s porcelain face imprinted in his brain and dizzy from the flash of light which he quickly realized was from a Polaroid camera.

Franco closed the trunk and wiped his hands. “How’d the picture come out?” he asked Angelo.

“Gotta wait a minute,” Angelo said. He was holding the edges of the photo as it was developing.

“Just a second longer,” Franco said to Raymond.

Raymond involuntarily moaned under his breath, while his eyes scanned the immediate area. He was terrified anybody else had seen the corpse.

“Looks good,” Angelo said. He handed the picture to Franco who agreed.

Franco reached out with the photo so Raymond could see it.

“I’d say that’s your best side,” Franco said.

Raymond swallowed. The picture accurately depicted his shocked terror as well as the awful image of the dead girl.

Franco pocketed the picture. “There, that’s it, Doc,” he said. “I told you we wouldn’t need a lot of your time.”

“Why did you do this?” Raymond croaked.

“It was Vinnie’s idea,” Franco said. “He thought it best to have a record of the favor he’d done for you just in case.”

“In case of what?” Raymond asked.

Franco spread his hands. “In case of whatever.”

Franco and Angelo got into the car. Raymond stepped up onto the sidewalk. He watched until the Ford had gone to the corner and disappeared.

“Good Lord!” Raymond murmured. He turned and headed back to his door on unsteady legs. Every time he solved one problem another emerged.

The shower had revived Jack. Since Laurie had not included any injunction about riding his bike this time, Jack decided to ride. He cruised south at a good clip. Given the bad experiences he’d had in the park the previous year, he stayed on Central Park West all the way to Columbus Circle.

From Columbus Circle, Jack shot across Fifty-ninth Street to Park Avenue. At that time of the evening, Park Avenue was a dream, and he took it all the way to Laurie’s street. He secured his bike with his collection of locks and went to Laurie’s door. Before ringing her bell, he took a moment to compose himself, determining how best to act and what to say.

Laurie met him at the door, with a wide grin on her face. Before he could even say a word, she threw her free arm around his neck to give him a hug. In her other hand, she was balancing a glass of wine.

“Uh-oh,” she said, stepping back. She eyed the wild state of his close-cropped hair. “I forgot about the bike issue. Don’t tell me you rode down here.”

Jack shrugged guiltily.

“Well, at least you made it,” Laurie said. She unzipped his leather jacket and peeled it off his back.

Jack could see Lou sitting on the sofa, with a grin that rivaled the Cheshire cat’s.

Laurie took Jack’s arm and pulled him into the living room. “Do you want the surprise first or do you want to eat first?” she asked.

“Let’s have the surprise,” Jack said.

“Good,” Lou said. He bounded off the couch and went to the TV.

Laurie guided Jack to the spot Lou had just vacated. “Do you want a glass of wine?”

Jack nodded. He was confused. He hadn’t seen any ring, and Lou was intently studying the VCR remote. Laurie disappeared into the kitchen but was soon back with Jack’s wine.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Lou complained. “At home, my daughter runs the VCR.”

Laurie took the remote, then told Lou that he had to turn on the TV first.

Jack took a sip of the wine. It wasn’t much better than what he’d brought the previous night.

Laurie and Lou joined Jack on the couch. Jack looked from one to the other, but they were ignoring him. They were intently watching the TV screen.

“What’s this surprise?” Jack asked.

“Just watch,” Laurie said, pointing toward the electronic snow on the TV.

More confused than ever, Jack looked at the screen. All of a sudden, there was music and the CNN logo followed by the image of a moderately obese man coming out of a Manhattan restaurant Jack recognized as Positano. The man was surrounded by a group of people.

“Should I put on the sound?” Laurie asked.

“Nah, it’s not necessary,” Lou said.

Jack watched the sequence. When it was over he looked at Laurie and Lou. Both had huge smiles.

“What is going on here?” Jack questioned. “How much wine have you two been drinking?”

“Do you recognize what you’ve just seen?” Laurie asked.

“I’d say it was somebody getting shot,” Jack said.

“It’s Carlo Franconi,” Laurie said. “After watching it, does it remind you of anything?”

“Sort of reminds me of those old tapes of Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot,” Jack said.

“Show it to him again,” Lou suggested.

Jack watched the sequence for the second time. He divided his attention between the screen and watching Laurie and Lou. They were captivated.

After the second run-through, Laurie again turned to Jack and said: “Well?”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Let me run certain sections in slow motion,” Laurie said. She used the remote to isolate the sequence to where Franconi was about to climb into the limo. She ran it in slow motion, and then stopped it exactly at the moment he was shot. She walked up to the screen and pointed at the base of the man’s neck. “There’s the entry point,” she said.

Using the remote again, she advanced to the moment of the next impact when the victim was falling to his right.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Jack remarked with astonishment. “My floater might be Carlo Franconi!”

Laurie spun around from facing the TV. Her eyes were blazing. “Exactly!” she said triumphantly. “Obviously, we haven’t proved it yet but with the entrance wounds and the paths of the bullets in the floater, I’d be willing to bet five dollars.”

“Whoa!” Jack commented. “I’ll take you up on a five-dollar wager, but I want to remind you that’s a hundred percent higher than any bet you’ve ever made in my presence.”

“I’m that sure,” Laurie said.

“Laurie is so fast at making associations,” said Lou. “She picked up on the similarities right away. She always makes me feel stupid.”

“Get out of here!” Laurie said, giving Lou a friendly shove.

“Is this the surprise you guys wanted to tell me about?” Jack asked cautiously. He didn’t want to get his hopes up.

“Yes,” Laurie said. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you as excited as we are?”

Jack laughed with relief. “Oh, I’m just tickled pink!”

“I can never tell when you are serious,” Laurie said. She detected a certain amount of Jack’s typical sarcasm in his reply.

“It’s the best news I’ve heard in days,” Jack added. “Maybe weeks.”

“All right, let’s not overdo it,” Laurie said. She turned off the TV and the VCR. “Enough of the surprise, let’s eat.”

Over dinner the conversation turned to why no one even considered that the floater might be Franconi.

“For me it was the shotgun wound,” Laurie said. “Which I knew Franconi didn’t have. Also I was thrown off by the body’s being found way out off Coney Island. Now, if it had been fished out of the East River, it might have been a different story.”

“I suppose I was thrown off for the same reasons,” Jack said. “And then, when I realized the shotgun wound was postmortem, I was already engrossed in the issue about the liver. By the way, Lou, did Franconi have a liver transplant?”

“Not that I know of,” Lou said. “He’d been sick for a number of years, but I never knew the diagnosis. I hadn’t heard anything about a liver transplant.”

“If he didn’t have a liver transplant, then the floater isn’t Franconi,” Jack said. “Even though the DNA lab is having a hard time confirming it, I’m personally convinced the floater has a donated liver.”

“What else can you people do to confirm that the floater and Franconi are the same person?” Lou asked.

“We can request a blood sample from the mother,” Laurie said. “Comparing the mitochondrial DNA which all of us inherit only from our mothers, we could tell right away if the floater is Franconi. I’m sure the mother will be agreeable, since she’d been the one to come to identify the body initially.”

“Too bad an X ray wasn’t taken when Franconi came in,” Jack said. “That would have done it.”

“But there was an X ray!” Laurie said with excitement. “I just found out this evening. Marvin had taken one.”

“Where the hell did it go?” Jack asked.

“Marvin said that Bingham took it,” Laurie said. “It must be in his office.”

“Then I suggest we make a little foray to the morgue,” Jack said. “I’d like to settle this issue.”

“Bingham’s office will be locked,” Laurie said.

“I think this situation calls for some creative action,” Jack said.

“Amen,” Lou said. “This might be that break I’ve been hoping for.”

As soon as they had finished eating and cleaning up the kitchen, which Jack and Lou had insisted on doing, the three took a cab down to the morgue. They entered through the receiving dock and went directly into the mortuary office.

“My God!” Marvin commented when he saw both Jack and Laurie. It was rare for two medical examiners to show up at the same time during the evening. “Has there been a natural disaster?”

“Where are the janitors?” Jack asked.

“In the pit last time I looked,” Marvin asked. “Seriously, what’s up?”

“An identity crisis,” Jack quipped.

Jack led the others to the autopsy room and cracked the door. Marvin had been right. Both janitors were busy mopping the expansive terrazzo floor.

“I assume you guys have keys to the chiefs office,” Jack said.

“Yeah, sure,” Daryl Foster said. Daryl had been working for the medical examiner’s office for almost thirty years. His partner, Jim O’Donnel, was a relatively new employee.

“We’ve got to get in there,” Jack said. “Would you mind opening it?”

Daryl hesitated. “The chiefs kind’a sensitive about people being in his office,” he said.

“I’ll take responsibility,” Jack said. “This is an emergency. Besides we have Lieutenant Detective Soldano with us from the police department, who will keep our thievery to a minimum.”

“I don’t know,” Daryl said. He was obviously uncomfortable, as well as unimpressed, with Jack’s humor.

“Then give me the key,” Jack said. He stuck out his hand. “That way you won’t be involved.”

With obvious reluctance, Daryl removed two keys from his key chain and handed them to Jack. “One’s for the outer office, and one is for Dr. Bingham’s inner office.”

“I’ll have them back for you in five minutes,” Jack said.

Daryl didn’t respond.

“I think the poor guy was intimidated,” Lou commented as the three rose up to the first floor in the elevator.

“Once Jack is on a mission, look out!” Laurie said.

“Bureaucracy irks me,” Jack said. “There’s no excuse for the X ray to be squirreled away in the chiefs office in the first place.”

Jack opened the front office’s outer door and then Dr. Bingham’s inner door. He turned on the lights.

The office was large, with a big desk beneath high windows to the left and a large library table to the right. Teaching paraphernalia, including a blackboard and an X-ray view box, were at the head of the table.

“Where should we look?” Laurie asked.

“I was hoping they’d just be on that view box,” Jack said. “But I don’t see them. I tell you what, I’ll take the desk and the file cabinet, you look around the view box.”

“Fine,” Laurie said.

“What do you want me to do?” Lou asked.

“You just stand there and make sure we don’t steal anything,” Jack scoffed.

Jack pulled out several of the file drawers, but closed them quickly. The full-body X rays that were taken by the morgue came in large folders. It wasn’t something easily hidden.

“This looks promising,” Laurie called out. She’d found a stash of X rays in the cabinet directly under the view box. Lifting the folders out onto the library table, she scanned the names. She found Franconi’s and pulled them free of the others.

Returning to the basement level, Jack got the X rays of the floater and took both folders back to the autopsy room. He gave Bingham’s office keys to Daryl and thanked him. Daryl merely nodded.

“Okay, everybody!” Jack said walking over to the view box. “The critical moment has arrived.” First he slipped up Franconi’s X rays and then the headless floater’s.

“What do you know,” Jack said after only a second’s inspection. “I owe Laurie five dollars!”

Laurie gave a cry of triumph, as Jack gave her the money. Lou scratched his head and leaned closer to the light box to stare at the films. “How can you guys tell so quickly?” he asked.

Jack pointed out the lumpy shadows of the bullets almost obscured by the mass of shotgun pellets in the floater’s X rays and showed how they corresponded to the bullets on the Franconi films. Then he pointed to identical healed clavicular fractures that appeared on the X rays of the two bodies.

“This is great,” Lou said, rubbing his hands together with enthusiasm that almost matched Laurie’s. “Now that we have a corpus delicti, we might be able to make some headway in this case.”

“And I’ll be able to figure out what the hell’s going on concerning this guy’s liver,” Jack said.

“And maybe I’ll go on a shopping spree with my money,” Laurie said, giving the five-dollar bill a kiss. “But not until I figure out the how and the why this body left here in the first place.”

Unable to sleep despite having taken two sleeping pills, Raymond slipped out of bed so as not to disturb Darlene. Not that he was terribly worried. Darlene was such a sound sleeper that the ceiling could fall in without her so much as moving.

Raymond padded into the kitchen and turned on the light. He wasn’t hungry but he thought that perhaps a little warm milk might help to settle his roiling stomach. Ever since the shock of having been forced to view the terrible sight in the trunk of the Ford, he’d been suffering with heartburn. He’d tried Maalox, Pepcid AC, and finally Pepto-Bismol. Nothing had helped.

Raymond was not handy in the kitchen, mainly because he didn’t know where anything was located. Consequently, it took him some time to heat the milk and find an appropriate glass. When it was ready, he carried it into his study and sat at his desk.

After taking a few sips, he noticed that it was three-fifteen in the morning. Despite the fuzziness in his brain from the sleeping pills, he was able to figure out that at the Zone it was after nine, a good time to call Siegfried Spallek.

The connection was almost instantaneous. At that hour, phone traffic with North America was at a minimum. Aurielo answered promptly and put Raymond through to the director.

“You are up early,” Siegfried commented. “I was going to call you in four or five hours.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Raymond said. “What’s going on over there? What’s the problem with Kevin Marshall?”

“I believe the problem is over,” Siegfried said. Siegfried summarized what had happened and gave credit to Bertram Edwards for alerting him about Kevin so that he could be followed. He said that Kevin and his friends had been given such a scare that they wouldn’t dare go near the island again.

“What do you mean ‘friends’?” Raymond asked. “Kevin has always been such a loner.”

“He was with the reproductive technologist and one of the surgical nurses,” Siegfried said. “Frankly, even that surprised us since he’s always been such a schlemiel, or what do you Americans call such a socially inept person?”

“A nerd,” Raymond said.

“That’s it,” Siegfried said.

“And presumably the stimulus for this attempted visit to the island was the smoke that’s been bothering him?”

“That’s what Bertram Edwards says,” Siegfried said. “And Bertram had a good idea. We’re going to tell Kevin that we’ve had a work crew our there building a bridge over the stream that divides the island in two.”

“But you haven’t,” Raymond said.

“Of course not,” Siegfried said. “The last work crew we had out there was when we built the landing for the extension bridge to the mainland. Of course, Bertram had some people there when he moved those hundred cages out there.”

“I don’t know anything about cages on the island,” Raymond said. “What are you talking about?”

“Bertram has been lobbying lately to give up on the island isolation idea,” Siegfried said. “He thinks that the bonobos should be brought to the animal center and somehow hidden.”

“I want them to stay on the island,” Raymond said emphatically. “That was the agreement I worked out with GenSys. They could shut the program down if we bring the animals in. They’re paranoid about publicity.”

“I know,” Siegfried said. “That’s exactly what I told Bertram. He understands but wants to leave the cages there just in case. I don’t see any harm in that. In fact, it is good to be prepared for unexpected contingencies.”

Raymond ran a nervous hand through his hair. He didn’t want to hear about any “unexpected contingencies.”

“I was going to ask you how you wanted us to handle Kevin and the women,” Siegfried said. “But with this explanation about the smoke and having given them a good scare, I think the situation is under control.”

“They didn’t get onto the island, did they?” Raymond asked.

“No, they were only at the staging area,” Siegfried said.

“I don’t even like people nosing around there,” Raymond said.

“I understand,” Siegfried said. “I don’t think Kevin will go back for the reasons I’ve given. But just to be on the safe side, I’m leaving a Moroccan guard and a contingent of the Equatoguinean soldiers out there for a few days, provided you think it’s a good idea.”

“That’s fine,” Raymond said. “But tell me, what’s your feeling about smoke coming out of the island, assuming that Kevin is right about it?”

“Me?” Siegfried questioned. “I couldn’t care less what those animals do out there. As long as they stay there and stay healthy. Does it bother you?”

“Not in the slightest,” Raymond said.

“Maybe we should send over a bunch of soccer balls,” Siegfried said. “That might keep them entertained.” He laughed heartily.

“I hardly think this is a laughing matter,” Raymond said irritably. Raymond was not fond of Siegfried, although he appreciated his disciplined managerial style. Raymond could picture the director at his desk, surrounded by his stuffed menagerie and those skulls dotting his desk.

“When are you coming for the patient?” Siegfried asked. “I’ve been told he’s doing fantastically well and ready to go.”

“So I’ve heard,” Raymond said. “I put in a call to Cambridge, and as soon as the GenSys plane is available, I’ll be over. It should be in a day or so.”

“Let me know,” Siegfried said. “I’ll have a car waiting for you in Bata.”

Raymond replaced the receiver and breathed a small sigh of relief. He was glad he’d called Africa, since part of his current anxiety had stemmed from Siegfried’s disturbing message about there being a problem with Kevin. It was good to know the crisis had been taken care of. In fact, Raymond thought that if he could just get the image of that snapshot of him hovering over Cindy Carlson’s body out of his mind, he’d feel almost like himself again.