The DeadHouse

23

"If we got three choices, the only one I can rule out is suicide. Pretty hard to count on killing yourself by letting the car behind you run you off the road. Ain't always a sure thing."

It was early Saturday afternoon and the detective from Sinnelesi's office, Tony Parisi, was talking to us in the visitors' lounge at the hospital.

"Between an accident and a homicide attempt, what's your guess?"

"Tough to prove it's anything but an accident. Old shitcan of a car moving along on Route Seventeen, and a trucker comes barreling down behind it at one of those treacherous curves in the road. The driver gets distracted, hits a patch of ice, and slams on the brakes too late. Schmuck behind him just whacks him off the road into a row of trees. Splinter pie, man.

"And let me tell you, Bart was really distracted. When the news got out after that bail application yesterday and Kralovic was released, Bart was ready to crawl into a hole. If the old will to live has anything to do with getting him off the life-support machine, he ain't gonna make it. He's toast."

"What do you know about the truck?"

"Not even sure that's what it was. Hit-and-run is all we know. Somebody wanted him out of that lane real bad and then didn't even stop to see what happened. Shit, if Vinny Sinnelesi was in town, I'd put my money on him. He'll be royally pissed if Bart blew the Kralovic case for him."

"Don't you think he'll live?" I asked tentatively.

"Not a prayer. Just hooked him up so his kids could say goodbye to a warm body. They're in with him now. His lawyer claims he did one of those living wills. 'Don't crank me up again once the pump shuts off.' I'd say, you want to make sure it's curtains for Bart? You two grim reapers walk in the room and hand him one of your bona fide New York County subpoenas. Finito."

At least I didn't have to be paranoid that Pat McKinney was the only person who blamed me for Bart Frankel's condition. Mike ran his fingers through his dark hair, clearly troubled. He started to speak. "What-?"

"Don't even ask what you think you can do for him, Chapman. We'll be taking care of this one all on our own. You know we got real cops here in Jersey, too?"

"Yeah, but you haven't solved a friggin' case since the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped."

"Bart's one of ours, whether you liked him or not. Poor slob was thinking with his penis instead of his brain. Gettin' in bed with that Dakota dame was a stupid thing to do, but you got a long way to go to convince me he'd whack a broad or throw a case."

"Tony, I appreciate your feelings for Bart. And I understand why you're unhappy with us. But there was information he had that we needed." I was trying to dance around the fact that the prosecutor had not told us the truth. This detective had no cause to know it, and I did not want to broadcast the fact, given Bart's medical condition.

While it was possible to believe he had dropped Lola off at her building's entrance as he had claimed, it seemed hard to deny that he had then gone on to her office at King's College. He may even have taken something of significance from her desk. Something, I had hoped, that would lead us to the reason for her murder.

"Look, you got no jurisdiction here, Miss Cooper. And besides that, I don't think nobody that knew Bart even wants you on this end of the tunnel."

"Alex is being polite, pal. She isn't telling you the half of it. Executive Assistant District Attorney Bart Frankel looked the two of us in the eye and lied to us."

Parisi was unmoved.

"He fibbed about things that happened the very afternoon that Lola was killed. Not just the fact that he was sleeping with her. Where he was at the moment she died, what he was doing. He even held back for an entire week the name of the guy she walked into the building with."

Parisi bit his lip, not wanting to trust Chapman. "What do you want from me?"

"I want the chance to go to his office, the way he went through Lo-"

"Are you nuts or what? Don't even finish that sentence. I'm gonna take you two over to Sinnelesi's office while his main man is sucking on an air tube in a hospital bed, sneak you inside, maybe get my balls cut off in the process if anybody catches me, just 'cause you think you're gonna find something you can use to sink Bart in this even worse? Not happening, baby."

"We'll be fast. You can stay with us the whole time."

"And who's gonna hire a gone-to-seed former investigator for Vinny Sinnelesi when I get thrown out on my ass? Chapman, you've pulled a lot of crap in your day, but you ain't calling the shots on this one."

"Just for once, why don't you do something useful for society?"

"Screw you. I recycle."

"Tony, when we were up at Lily's house-Lola's sister-she told us that she had signed a power of attorney so that Vinny could go into Lola's office and remove her belongings. All of them. Who actually went and did that? Was it Bart?"

Parisi fidgeted.

"You're looking at this with blinders on. Buy into my facts for a minute. Bart went to the campus the day Lola was killed, maybe already knowing she was dead. He was searching for something. Alex and I can prove that. If he found what he wanted that day, or if he went back for it with legal authority to do so a few days later, maybe he got what he was after.

"And just suppose, for one minute, that what he discovered in Lola's office is what got him followed this morning. Got him killed."

"Suppose you start thinking that if there's any truth to what you're saying, I'm gonna be able to figure it out myself. It's what they pay me the big bucks to do." Parisi had given us all the time he was going to waste, so he turned on his heel and headed for the door.

"Tony, you know what to look for, right? You'll recognize all the players? Charlotte Voight, Skip Lockhart, Sylvia Foote, Free-land Jennings, the Blackwells project…"

Chapman was calling up every name he had heard in the past eight days, aware that none of them would ring a bell with the New Jersey detective. There was no reason for Parisi to have known them, but it worked perfectly to nag at his insecurity. His footsteps slowed.

"Twenty minutes, Tony. Just you and me. Blondie waits in the car."

My opportunity to participate in the search had just been sacrificed to the greater cause: male bonding.

"I must have a death wish. I'll meet you over at the office. Park a block away and leave her there." Parisi dismissed me with a heaving sigh and a look back over his shoulder. "Give me a ten-minute lead and I'll let you in the back door. Deal's off if any of the lawyers are in there working."

Mike checked his watch. "Saturday afternoon at three o'clock when it's eighteen degrees outside and we're in the middle of the holiday weekend? In Battaglia's office, even the cockroaches wouldn't be behind their desks."

He nudged me out of the waiting area. I walked to the nurses' station to inquire again about Bart Frankel's condition. A new face behind the desk asked me if I was family and I shook my head in the negative. "There's nothing I can tell you." Her grim expression spoke volumes.

We made the short drive to the prosecutor's office and this time, instead of using the rear parking lot, Mike stopped in front of the pizza shop at the far corner. He left the ignition on so that I could have the benefits of the heat and the radio.

"You mind?"

"I always knew I'd be the first thing to go. Come back with something good and I'll forgive you."

It was close to half an hour later when Mike returned to the car. The wind blew in with him as he opened the door and got back into the driver's seat. "I wouldn't say we hit the jackpot, but we got a few things to work with. This stuff would have sat in Sinnelesi's drawer till you started sprouting gray hair underneath that peroxide before anybody would have told us about it.

"First of all, Bart Frankel was-as a tribute to modern medicine, I'll say is-up to his ass in debt. Left his private practice, which wasn't exactly a thriving one, to come back to public service when the Fat Man called him. Paying a huge amount of alimony 'cause his ex has a serious medical problem. Three kids, two in college and one getting ready to go. And a slight penchant for the horses. The Meadowlands was his second home. Gambling debts running close to a quarter of a million."

Hard to do on a prosecutor's salary.

"What do you know about penny stocks, Coop? I mean the kinds that are bad schemes."

"The basics, why?"

"Explain 'em to me. I Xeroxed a file that was on top of Bart's desk, but I don't know anything about that business."

"They're generally really cheap stocks in small, sometimes dubious companies. A lot of them have involved investment scams. There are salesmen who make cold calls by telephone, just reading from a script. The guys behind the scam pump up the shares by fake trades and false publicity. When the stock soars, the promoters generally cash in and leave the other investors holding worthless shares."

"Ever hear of"-Mike looked down at the tab on the manila folder-"Jersey First Securities?"

"No."

"Seems like Sinnelesi's been investigating the company. The two partners behind the business are about to declare bankruptcy, and it looks like the note on the file quotes the feds as saying this was a 'continuing massive fraud.' And one of the penny-meisters is-"

"Ivan Kralovic, of course."

"So it would seem. And who lost lots of nickels and dimes betting on Ivan's pot?"

"Bart?"

"So when Vinny gets back from the sunny south, maybe he can explain to you why he'd let Bart anywhere near this investigation. Hold on to the file. Now, exhibit number two. Here's a photocopy of a little envelope," Mike said, holding up an image of a tiny white packet that looked no longer than three inches. "You recognize the penmanship?"

I did. It was Dakota's.

"Can't say I'm as familiar with it as you are, but when I saw the little Post-it attached with the initials L.D., I took a wild guess."

I looked at the single word printed on the front by Lola: "Blackwells."

"I lifted the flap and guess what slipped into my hand?"

I shook my head at Mike, puzzled.

"A little gold key. No markings, no numbers."

"Was there anything else with this?"

"Nope. It was buried under a few personal notes in his top drawer. Now all we have to do is find out what it fits into. Get one of your clones started on a warrant."

He revved up the engine and made a U-turn on the quiet street. "And last but not least, we're going to meet Dr. Claude Lavery."

"Now? Is he back? Why-"

"Because that's who Bart Frankel was on his way to see this morning when he was so rudely interrupted."

"Tony Parisi told you about Lavery?"

"No, he called over to Bart's house. I almost had him convinced after a once-over of Bart's office that he should walk me through his home to see if we could find anything. You know that if Bart's life was as screwed up as it sounds, he's probably got stuff there that we should be looking at. Anyway, one of his kids had taken a break from the hospital vigil and answered the phone, which put the kibosh on that idea for the moment."

I couldn't imagine what this was like for Bart's three children.

"But when Tony asked the daughter why her dad had left the house so early this morning, she said that a man had called him last night and Bart had told her that he had to go into the city to see him. There was a pad next to the telephone that had Lavery's name and number written on it."

"Not bad for a quick sweep through the office."

"Hey, easier than if I had to search your place for anything of value. You got four extra pairs of shoes under the desk, different-height heels for every occasion. Drawers filled with panty hose, nail polish, perfume, and Extra-Strength Tylenol. Somebody bumps you off and the first thing Battaglia has to do is run a tag sale to get rid of your beauty supplies."

Mike was enthused now. He had new directions in which to proceed and pieces of the puzzle to try to fit into place. "How do you even begin to figure out the significance of a key? And how do you know what door it fits?"

"Start with the fact that it's labeled 'Blackwells.'"

"Yeah, but there aren't a lot of buildings still standing on the island from those days. And the remnants that are there don't have doors."

"So it's something connected to the project, probably."

"I think even two hours' exposure to New Jersey has damaged your brain. No kidding, Coop. Like I needed your help to figure that one out."

"Were any of the things taken from Lola's office, after Lily gave Sinnelesi permission, listed and inventoried so we have a record of them?"

"Nope. Would it surprise you to learn that Bart Frankel picked two of his squad cops, drove over himself, and just sort of packed up the whole bundle to be sorted out at his convenience? In the privacy of his office. Somehow that stinks as bad as the rest of what he was doing."

"Where is the stuff now?"

"Parisi doesn't know. He'll have to find the guys who went with Bart and see what closet they dumped everything into."

"Sooner rather than later. We've got to see what he found."

"Give me credit for something, Coop. I do believe I've lit that fire under Parisi's ass."

"You think Lola knew, when she got into bed with Bart, that he had lost all his money in one of Ivan's deals?"

"Hard to imagine that it wouldn't have come up in conversation. Gave them both a reason to hate the guy. And it gave Bart an extra incentive to go after Ivan."

I thought for several minutes. "That's one way to look at it. But there's a darker side to that. Suppose Ivan's about to get jammed up by Sinnelesi's office. The number two man is up to his ears in debt, and Ivan knows why. What if he tried to buy his way out of the whole thing-two cases at the same time? I mean, how could Bart have screwed up Lola's undercover sting so badly? Bad enough that Ivan's back on the street. You'd have to try awfully hard to step on yourself that way."

Mike was with me. "So you go as far as having Bart getting paid off by Ivan. Bart maybe even delivering Lola right into the killer's hands. Dropping her off at her front door. Ciao, baby, see you later. Then he drives off into the sunset, stopping by the campus to pick up the key-the key to…? That's sort of where the plan gets parked with me."

"I'm not saying that's what I think happened. I just know I'm praying for Bart's recovery for all the wrong reasons. I'd love him to answer some questions for us."

On the ride back to the city we thought aloud about all the possible links among Ivan's fraud investigation, the domestic violence complaints, and Lola's death.

The scene in front of 417 Riverside Drive was a much calmer one than the one the night of the murder. Mike rang the bell in the vestibule next to Lavery's name and within a minute, through the intercom, a voice said, "Yes?"

Mike muffled his mouth with his hand and spoke a single word: "Bart." "Bart" was a few hours late, but still welcome enough for Lavery to buzz us into the lobby. We entered together and walked to the elevator.

When we reached the sixteenth floor, the door to Lavery's apartment was ajar. I could hear someone speaking on the telephone, so I pushed it wider and Mike came inside behind me. The man whom we assumed to be Lavery was standing with his back to us. His conversation was ending, and he thanked his caller before he hung up and turned around, startled to see us.

"I'm Mike Chapman. NYPD Homicide," Mike said, flipping his gold shield out of its case. "This is Alexandra Cooper. Manhattan DA's Office. We've been-"

"Not exactly who I was expecting when I let you in, Detective." Lavery walked to the doorway behind us and stuck his head out in the hallway. "Is Bart coming along, too?"

I could sense that if Lavery did not yet know about Bart's accident, Mike wasn't going to tell him. "He's had a rough day. I doubt he's gonna make it."

Lavery was clearly puzzled. He walked to the CD player on the bookshelf along the far wall and lowered the volume. If Chapman had been expecting Bob Marley and the Wailers, with Lavery smoking weed through a wooden pipe, he must have been disappointed. A Beethoven adagio provided the soft background to our conversation. Lavery had apparently been sitting at a desk in front of his park-view window, working longhand on some piece of writing. He was dressed in African garb and still had his hair done in dreadlocks.

"Bart's been a friend of ours for a long time. He decided, after you two spoke on the phone, that he really didn't want to meet with you alone. He thinks it would be better if you say what you want to say to the two of us."

Lavery's expression gave nothing away, but he seemed too smart to trust the situation. Or the cop who was giving him the once-over.

He folded his arms across his chest and looked at me. "Aren't you the woman handling the investigation into Lola Dakota's death? I recognize your name from the news stories." His voice was a deep baritone, and he spoke in a measured cadence. "Yes, we're both working on that case."

"Lola was a dear friend of mine. And a great supporter, in what have been some difficult days for me." He turned away to walk to a living area, motioning us to follow. "I suppose you've heard about that?" He asked it in the form of a question, not quite sure what to think.

"Yeah, we know a bit about it."

"Lola has stood by me from the outset. Taken my part with the administration. I shall miss her friendship terribly."

"Actually, that's what we'd like to talk to you about. We've been trying to reach you-"

"Would you mind if I called Bart, Detective? I'd prefer to-" "Bart's out of the picture, Mr. Lavery. For the time-" "Doctor. It's Doctor Lavery." He lowered himself into an armchair and we sat opposite him.

"You got a stethoscope, a prescription pad, and a license to practice medicine, then I'll call you 'doctor.' Every other 'ologist' who writes a dissertation on some useless theoretical load of crap is just plain old 'mister' to me."

"Professor…" I tried to start anew. "Ah, the diplomat on the team."

"Yeah, the Madeleine Albright of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. She wants to know the same thing I do. Bart was kind of surprised when you called. He didn't know you were back in New York."

"I arrived home last evening. Around eleven o'clock." "We've been trying to interview all of Ms. Dakota's associates and friends. I hope you don't mind if we ask a few questions?" I tried smiling at him. "They're quite routine."

"If it will assist you in finding the beast who did this, I’m pleased to help."

"When did you leave town, Professor? I mean, where were you coming from last evening?"

"I flew to visit friends during Christmas week. Went to St. Thomas, in the Caribbean."

"When did you leave town exactly?"

"On December twenty-first. I've still got the ticket right here. I can show it to you, if that's necessary."

"That's two days after Lola was killed. Last Saturday, am I right?"

"I guess it was. I debated about staying for her funeral in New Jersey on Monday, but my friends were expecting me and I didn't think there was anything I could do to be useful. Many of our colleagues didn't share Lola's feelings about my work."

"The guys from my squad canvassed the building on Friday. Miss Cooper and I have read those reports. I understand you were here in the apartment on the afternoon of the murder."

"Yes, I talked to the police. Of course, I have no idea what time it was when all this happened to Lola."

"Don't worry about that. Why don't you just tell us what you were doing that day?"

"Thursday the nineteenth… let me think a moment. Most days, I work from my home instead of the office over at King's. As you must be aware, I've been suspended from the college while they examine this glitch with my grant."

A several-hundred-thousand-dollar glitch, I thought to myself.

"I seem to recall going out in the morning to pick up some things I needed for the trip. The drugstore, the bank, the film shop. That sort of thing. It was snowing, and I remember coming home to work on a study that I've had to write up for the government. Never went outside again. I sat right at this table and kept looking across as the snow covered the bare limbs of the trees in Riverside Park, thinking over and over again that I'd be swimming in turquoise waters in a matter of days.

"Frivolous thoughts, really, when I heard later what had been going on down below. With Lola, I mean. I didn't hear the slightest bit of disturbance. I think that's what will always torment me."

Lavery seemed to be sincerely troubled.

"No loud voices arguing? No screams? No sounds of a struggle?"

"Exactly what does a struggle sound like, Detective?"

Mike was stumped. There had been no furniture overturned in Lola's apartment, no bruising to suggest a prolonged attack by her assailant. Just a wool scarf that had been pulled too tight for too long around her neck. It had caused her to be unable to breathe, and perhaps unable to scream as well.

"I have this tendency, you see, to sit here at my writing table, absorbed in my work no matter what kind of commotion is going on around me or outside on the street. It's a trait that has served me quite well in my career. And when I'm here at home, I've always got music playing. Sometimes a bit too loud, but then these old buildings were really built solid. They absorb the noise pretty well. Every now and then," Lavery said with a slight grin "after a particularly booming crescendo, my friend Lola would bang on the pipes that ran up through her living room into mine.

"But the day she died," he said, somber again, "I can't say I heard anything at all."

"How well did you know Ms. Dakota?"

"Quite well, both professionally and socially. We were in different disciplines, of course, but she was a bit of a maverick, as I am and she was interested in my approach to the urban drug problem Away from the school, we spent some time together, too."

"Did you ever date?"

"Nothing like that. But we could sit up till the middle of the night, arguing about solutions for the homeless or the mentally ill. There was no off switch to Lola. She was always thinking and working and doing."

"Had you seen much of her in the days before her death?"

He took a long time to answer. "I have become so engulfed in my own legal entanglements, unfortunately, that I've tended to push most of my friends out of the way. I'm trying to recall the last time Lola and I had a good, long go-at-it together."

"How about a short one? How about a sighting?"

"I know I saw her the week of Thanksgiving. I remember coming in with a lot of groceries and stopping by to talk with her for a while on my way upstairs. Have a drink. Then she was off to her sister's home, and-I simply can't summon up any other time that I saw her."

Was he lying to us, or had Bart Frankel been mistaken when he told us he had left Lola at the door because she saw Lavery going into the building?

Chapman had nothing to lose at this point. "The day she died, like half an hour before she was killed, did you happen to run into her, right at the front door of the building?"

Lavery was biting the inside of his cheek, looking perplexed. "I may have gone down to the lobby once in the afternoon to get the mail, but after I came back from my errand that morning I'm absolutely certain I never went back outside. Where would you have heard something like that?"

"How do you know Bart Frankel?"

"He was in charge of her case, Ms. Cooper. He had come to the apartment once or twice to bring Lola papers to sign. I think that's what she told me. And to help prepare her for their plan to build the case against her husband, Mr. Kerlovic."

"Kralovic."

"I didn't know the man. I'm not really sure what his name was. One time, I ran into Lola with Bart Frankel at a restaurant in the neighborhood. I guess she had come to rely on him in these last difficult weeks."

"How come you called Bart last night and asked him to meet with you?"

Now he was growing more wary. "Well, Detective, either Bart told you the answer to that question when he asked you to come here, or you've pulled one over on me." He walked to his desk and picked up the receiver, looking at a number on the piece of paper next to the phone. "Shall I just call him and clear this up?"

Mike stood up, too. "No, but Bart did tell us he saw you walk into this building, holding the door open for Lola, about half an hour before she was killed."

"And I'm telling you that statement is not true, Mr. Chapman." Lavery started to dial.

"We'll have to resolve this some other way, Mr. Lavery. All you're gonna get is a machine. Or maybe one of Bart's kids. He's in the hospital. His car ran off the road this morning on his way here to see you."

Lavery replaced the receiver. "Was he hurt badly?"

"Probably won't make it."

The professor winced and sat down at his desk.

"You wanna explain to us why you called him to come talk to you? Tell us what you were planning on telling him?"

He looked up at Chapman to answer. "I didn't have anything to say to him."

"But you called him. Even his daughter can confirm that."

"I got back from my trip last night and among the messages on my answering machine was one to call Bart Frankel. He reminded me what his connection to Lola had been, and he left his home phone number in New Jersey."

By the end of next week, telephone records might again resolve the issue for us, but at the moment I did not know whether to believe him.

"Did he say what he wanted?"

I sensed that Lavery thought he had regained the upper hand His tone was cool once more, and almost arrogant as he talked to us. "Not at all. Just that he needed to see me. I assumed it was about Lola's case."

"He was taken off that investigation. He's-"

"And I've been out of the country, Detective. Staying at a beach house in the islands with no television and with newspapers that arrived about three days after they hit the stands in Miami. So I don't have the faintest idea what's been going on up here. Why was he taken off the case? Would you like to bring me up-to-date?"

Mike ignored his question. "Did Lola talk to you about the Blackwells project?"

"Of course she did. It had consumed her these past few months. We're a relatively small faculty, Detective, compared to those at large universities like Harvard and Yale. I'd had my enemies when I first came over to King's, but we've generally tried to work it out among ourselves. When I was hired, the head of the anthropology department didn't want me working under his watch."

"Winston Shreve?"

"Precisely. But then Lola went to work on Shreve, on my behalf. I wouldn't say he's my close friend, but he accepted me within his division and has been rather kind to me lately, with all the troubles I've had. And Grenier, he's in charge of the biology division. He was a bit more anxious to have me.

"Now, if you're spending any time with those three-Dakota, Shreve, and Grenier-you can be sure the subject of Blackwells will come up," he said. "That's what they've spent most of their time working on for the better part of the year. And Lockhart. I'd say he's their fourth Musketeer."

"Have you had anything to do with the project yourself?"

"I live in the present, Ms. Cooper. Oh, they talk to me about what they're doing, and they ask me plenty of questions about it."

"Like what?"

"I think when Lola first found out about the drug trade in the old penitentiary, three-quarters of a century ago, she was amazed at the scale of the problem. But it was quite a famous scandal, and of course, I'm familiar with the history of the drug culture in this city. So I was able to explain to her what the drugs of choice were in those days and how widespread the narcotics business was- even inside American penal institutions."

"And Grenier, what was his relationship with Lola?"

"I bet you've had a hard time getting him to come to the table, haven't you?" Lavery wasn't wrong. I was hoping that by Monday _We would have word from Sylvia Foote that the biology professor was back and available to us.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because Thomas Grenier is a selfish son of a bitch and it would be quite out of character if he was any use in a matter like this."

"We've been told that Grenier was actually willing to bring you into his department, when Shreve and the others weren't all that interested in having you in anthropology."

"That's true, Detective. But not because he had any belief in what I was doing. He saw it as a business proposition. It put dollar signs in front of his eyes, not mortarboards."

Both Mike and I were lost. "I never knew that money was so much of an issue in academia," I said.

"Then I would guess that you've never met Thomas Grenier. And you have no idea what the Internet has done to the college campus. Not in the classroom alone, but as universities have tried to cash in on the commercial market."

"Would you mind telling us what you mean?"

"It used to be, Ms. Cooper, that the idea of an academic making money from his research was not acceptable at any university. I'm not talking about my situation, if that's what you're thinking. There has always been a perception that we scholars are outside the marketplace, and we've long benefited from that. We've been giving away our knowledge for generations. Now many of the large institutions are looking to get a fair return on their intellectual capital. Turn it into financial capital, like the rest of the world."

"And the Internet?"

"It's a gold mine. It provides a much larger payback, and a much faster one, too. There's a lot of competition in the dot-com community, and administrators everywhere are trying to foster various opportunities to let faculty members increase their income-through the expanded use of their research-and let the universities themselves share in the bounty. That's the big score. I'm surprised you haven't read about this. Front page of The Times a short while ago. Grenier was a key player."

"I just do the sports page, comics, horoscope, and 'Dear Abby.' Tell me about it."

"Columbia University has sort of led the field in this business. The vice provost there has promoted the efforts of some of his professors to joint-venture with Internet start-ups. They've partnered with an on-line company to do a human nutrition study. And made money by mating with that junk-bond character, Michael Milken, in a curriculum of serious college courses. They've already made millions from that."

"What's the flap?"

"Well, under the old rules, Mr. Chapman, we professors owned the rights to any books and articles that were published. The institution itself owned the patents from our research, and we were lucky to get a quarter of the revenue. Columbia started a new policy last year. It allows the university to retain rights to Internet projects that are supported by Columbia's funds or make substantial use of its labor, but professors can get a greater share in the revenue."

"And Grenier's role?"

"A lot of these Internet companies with a significant amount of venture capital have been sniffing around the campuses. Biology is one of the fields in which they figure they can buy a lot of research rather cheaply. And turn it into gold. Grenier was sort of pushed out of the department at Columbia. Couldn't get along with some of the favorites there. A bit too heavy-handed. He came here and is trying to get the same kind of interest revved up on the King's College campus.

"These biotech companies are all looking for major drug studies. Think of the return on an investment when you have some brilliant graduate student, not costing you a dime in salary, toiling over his laboratory test tubes all day. Guided by a professor whose income is just a fraction of what the corporate executives make."

"What's the problem?"

"A major conflict with the new president here, Paolo Recantati. He'd like to have firmer control over decisions on what type of research the college should support. He's a purist. He thinks there can be terrible fallout when the faculty or the college has a stake in the financial result of its work."

"Did Lola and Thomas Grenier get along?"

"Until she found out that he was trying to use me. That he had not been very candid about why he was interested in me. It turned out not to be for the reasons he expressed to the administration."

Long-term studies of health problems connected to substance abuse, if I remembered what Sylvia Foote had told us. Lavery chuckled. "Lola turned on Grenier like a rattlesnake on its prey. Ready to strike in a flash. If he said something was black, Lola said it was white. You know what I mean, I'm sure."

"When was that?"

"Early this fall, a few months back."

"What is it he really wanted from you?"

Lavery laughed more heartily. "What do you know about Viagra, Detective?"

"Not enough."

"Viagra's main ingredient comes from the poppy. The same seedpod that brings you opium and heroin. It works by increasing the blood flow directly to the penis. But it's had some disastrous side effects, as you're probably aware. It doesn't mix well with other medications.

"So a lot of pharmaceutical companies have been searching for a better fix, a healthier solution to an age-old problem. And nobody on the faculty knows the poppy as well as I do, in the professional sense. Grenier had made a deal with one of the large drug companies to lead the research team. He simply neglected to cut me in on any of the potential profit."

"Did you two have a falling-out?"

"We didn't come to blows with each other, but it hasn't been pretty. I don't like being taken advantage of."

"Where did Lola stand in this?"

"With me, Detective. I can't say she has any personal regard for Grenier."

"But they still worked together on the Blackwells business?"

"I'm not sure the sandbox was big enough for both of them, but she tried to make do."

"Did you know about the legend of Freeland Jennings's diamonds?"

Lavery pushed away from the desk and laughed again. "Of course I did. That's one of the things Lola and I used to argue about late into the night. Do this dig for whatever historical purposes interest you, I used to tell her. There's a lot of sorry history of this city on that island-a storehouse of human misery. But don't be wasting your energy on some far-fetched tale that may not even have been true."

"Is that what kept Thomas Grenier and Lola Dakota together?"

"Don't be ridiculous. The man is a scientist. He thought that Lola was foolish to have believed the diamonds were still in the ground. His interest in the island is strictly scientific."

"What's in it for him?"

"Grenier again expects to profit from the work the students will be doing when they study the Smallpox Hospital. There's enormous debate in the field of medical ethics about whether or not the smallpox virus should be completely eradicated when the disease is conquered worldwide. Since you need the actual virus to make the vaccine, does one save a small amount of it against the day that some form of the pox reappears in the world? And who is the keeper of the deadly virus? Whom do we trust not to engage in germ warfare?"

"And obviously, some biotech company would support this project, hoping that a study of all the plagues treated on Black-wells Island a century ago would be useful to scientists making determinations about the future," I reasoned.

"Exactly. It's hard to think of any other finite stretch of land, isolated from the population, which institutionalized, treated, and buried so many of society's untouchables. That's why Grenier loves it there."

"Does this venture of his have a name?"

Lavery paused for a few moments and then shook his head. "I should know it, but it's not coming to me right now. You'll have to ask him yourself. Some fairly gruesome pox-related thing. Lola used to joke and call it deadhouse dot com."

"Deadhouse?"

"That's how Lola referred to the island."

"Do you know why?" It appeared that the phrase was not as mysterious as it had seemed when we first encountered the word on a piece of paper in her apartment.

"You know that a lot of the interns who worked on the project refused to be involved with the plans at that old smallpox hospital? They're enthralled with the insane asylum and the penitentiary, but that abandoned hospital spooks the best of them. Many of those who aren't science majors believe that they might dig up things that are still germ infested, that contagion lurks even now in some of the objects that were buried a century ago. They simply don't want anything to do with all that deadly history."

"Did you ever go with her to Blackwells-I mean, to Roosevelt Island?"

"Only three or four times. She walked me through the area they call the Octagon, with that magnificent staircase. And of course we had to see the remains of the hospital. I'd always wondered what it was, from this side of the water."

"Would you mind, Professor, if I asked you about the accusations concerning the misappropriation of the grant money?" It seemed unusual that Lola would be such an advocate for Lavery, under the circumstances that Sylvia Foote had described.

His mood changed again and he stiffened. "I have an attorney, Ms. Cooper, and I've been instructed not to discuss this matter with anyone out of his presence."

Chapman veered off in another direction. "You know anything about this kid Julian Gariano? The one who hanged himself last weekend?"

It was hard to discern whether Lavery had a good poker face or truly had never crossed paths with the campus drug dealer. "Gariano? The name doesn't sound familiar to me. Was he a King's student? It must have happened after I left for the Caribbean."

"One more thing, Professor. There's a young woman who was a junior at the college last year. I don't believe she was in any of your classes, but I understand she had a problem with drugs, and I thought perhaps you might have heard something about her disappearance. Her name is Voight. Charlotte Voight."

"I had heard that she had dropped out, although I didn't know her either. The administration always circulates a notice to the faculty if something unusual happens or if a student withdraws from classes without an official leave. These kids are often going through a tough time, and one of us might be a lifeline to them. Dropping out is nothing new for college students, is it?"

Lavery stopped speaking for a moment, then looked up at me. "But Charlotte Voight is back around, isn't she?"

Perhaps Lavery had information we didn't. "That's news to us. Any clue where she is?"

"No, I have no idea. But the last time I talked to Lola, that's what she told me. That she knew where the Voight girl was, and that she was going to see her."