Still feeling slightly tense from her strange reaction to the cooler door closing, Laurie was ill prepared to deal with what awaited her in her office. As she rounded the corner of the doorway, preoccupied with her thoughts, a figure shouted and leaped at her.
Laurie screamed from someplace deep down in her being. It was a purely reflex response, and of a power that caused the sound to reverberate up and down the cinderblocked hallway like some charged subatomic particle in an accelerator. She’d had no control. Simultaneous with the scream her heart leaped in her chest.
But the attack that Laurie feared did not occur. Instead her brain frantically changed the message and told her that the terrifying figure had cried “Boo!”-hardly what a mad rapist or some supernatural demon would yell. At the same time her brain identified the face as belonging to Lou Soldano.
All this had happened in the blink of an eye, and by the time Laurie was capable of responding, her fear had changed to anger.
“Lou!” she cried. “Why did you do that?”
“Did I scare you?” Lou asked sheepishly. He could see that her face had turned to ivory. His ears were still ringing from her scream.
“Scare me?” she yelled. “You terrified me, and I hate to be scared like that. Don’t ever do that again.”
“I’m sorry,” Lou said contritely. “I suppose it was juvenile. But this place has been scaring me; I thought I could get you back a little.”
“I could bop you in the nose,” Laurie said, shaking a clenched fist in front of his face. Her anger had already subsided, especially with his apology and apparent remorse. She walked around her desk and fell into her chair. “What on earth are you doing here at this hour anyway?” she asked.
“I was literally driving by,” Lou said. “I wanted to talk with you, so I pulled into the morgue loading dock on the chance that you’d be here. I really didn’t expect you to be, but the fellow downstairs said you’d just been in his office.”
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Your boyfriend, Jordan,” Lou said.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Laurie snapped. “You’re really going to irritate me if you persist in calling him that.”
“What’s the problem?” Lou asked. “It seems to me to be a relatively accurate term. After all, you go out with him every night.”
“My social life is no one’s business but mine,” Laurie said. “But for your information, I do not “go out’ with him every night. I’m obviously not going out tonight.”
“Well, three out of four ain’t bad,” Lou said. “But look, down to business: I wanted to let you know that I talked with Jordan about his patients being professionally bumped off.”
“What did he have to say?” Laurie asked.
“Not a lot,” Lou said. “He refused to talk about any of his patients specifically.”
“Good for him.”
“But more important than what he said was how he acted. He was really nervous the whole time I was there. I don’t know what to make of that.”
“You don’t think he was involved with these murders in any way, do you?”
“No,” Lou said. “Robbing his patients blind-no pun intended-yes, shooting them, no. He’d be killing the golden goose. But he was definitely nervous. Something’s on his mind. I think he knows something.”
“I think he has plenty of reason to be nervous,” Laurie said. “Did he tell you that Cerino threatened him?”
“No, he didn’t,” Lou said. “How did he threaten him?”
“Jordan wouldn’t say,” Laurie said. “But if Cerino is the kind of person you say he is, then you can just imagine.”
Lou nodded. “I wonder why Jordan didn’t tell me.”
“Probably he doesn’t think you could protect him. Could you?”
“Probably not,” Lou said. “Certainly not forever. Not someone as high profile as Jordan Scheffield.”
“Did you learn anything helpful talking with him?” Laurie asked.
“I did learn that the murder victims did not have the same diagnosis,” Lou said. “At least according to him. That was one harebrained idea I had. And I learned that they are not related in any other obvious way vis-á-vis Jordan Scheffield other than being his patients. I asked about every way I could imagine. So, unfortunately, I didn’t learn much.”
“What are you going to do now?” Laurie asked.
“Hope!” Lou said. “Plus I’ll have my investigative teams find out the individual diagnoses. Maybe that will tell us something. There has to be some aspect I’m missing in all this.”
“That’s the way I feel about my overdose cases,” Laurie said.
“By the way,” Lou said. “What are you doing here so late?”
“I was hoping to get some work done. But with my pulse still racing thanks to you, I’ll probably take the paperwork home and tackle it there.”
“What about dinner?” Lou asked. “How about coming with me down to Little Italy. You like pasta?”
“I love pasta.”
“How about it then?” Lou asked. “You already told me you aren’t going out with the good doctor, and that’s your favorite excuse.”
“You are persistent.”
“Hey, I’m Italian.”
Fifteen minutes later Laurie found herself in Lou’s Caprice heading downtown. She did not know if it was a good idea to have dinner with the man, but she really hadn’t been able to think of a reason not to go. And although he’d been somewhat rude on previous occasions, now he seemed nothing but charming as he regaled her with stories of growing up in Queens.
Although Laurie had grown up in Manhattan, she’d never been to Little Italy. As they drove up Mulberry Street she was delighted by the ambience. There was a multitude of restaurants and throngs of people strolling the streets. Just like Italy itself, the place seemed to be throbbing with life.
“It’s definitely Italian,” Laurie said.
“It looks it, doesn’t it?” Lou said. “But I’ll tell you a little secret. Most of the real estate here is owned by Chinese.”
“That’s strange,” Laurie said, a bit disappointed although she didn’t know why.
“Used to be an Italian neighborhood,” Lou said, “but the Italians for the most part moved out to the suburbs, like Queens. And the Chinese with a nose for business came in and bought up the properties.”
They pulled into a restricted parking zone. Laurie pointed to the sign.
“Please!” Lou said. He positioned a little card on the dash by the steering wheel. “Once in a while I’m entitled to take advantage of being one of New York’s finest.”
Lou led her down a narrow street to one of the less obvious restaurants.
“It doesn’t have a name,” Laurie said as they entered.
“It doesn’t need one.”
The interior was a kitschy blend of red and white checked tablecloths and trellis interlaced with artificial ivy and plastic grapes. A candle stuck in a jug with wax drippings coating the sides served as each table’s light fixture. A few black velvet paintings of Venice hung on the walls. There were about thirty tables packed tightly in the narrow room; all seemed to be occupied. Harried waiters dashed about attending to the customers. Everyone seemed to know each other by their first names. Over the whole scene hung a babble of voices and a rich, savory, herbed aroma of spicy food.
Laurie suddenly realized how hungry she was. “Looks like we should have made a reservation,” she said.
Lou motioned for her to be patient. In a few minutes a very large and very Italian woman appeared and gave Lou an enveloping hug. She was introduced to Laurie. Her name was Marie.
As if by magic, an available table materialized and Marie seated Laurie and Lou.
“I have a feeling you’re pretty well known here,” Laurie said.
“With as many times as I’ve eaten here I’d better be. I’ve put one of their kids through college.”