“You are in luck,” Mark said. “The fellow I’m acquainted with who knows people in the Central Flow Management organization in Europe happened to be on the job when I called him. In fact, he’s in your neck of the woods. He’s out at Kennedy Airport, helping direct air traffic across the north Atlantic. He talks to these Central Flow Management people all the time, so he slipped in a query about N69SU on January twenty-ninth. Apparently, it popped right up on the screen. N69SU flew into Lyon from Bata, Equatorial Guinea.”
“Whoa!” Lou said. “Where’s that?”
“Beats me,” Mark said. “Without looking at a map, I’d guess West Africa.”
“Curious.” Lou said.
“It’s also curious that as soon as the plane touched down in Lyon, France, it radioed to obtain a slot time to depart for Teterboro, New Jersey,” Mark said. “Near as I can figure, it just sat on the runway until it got clearance.”
“Maybe it refueled,” Lou offered.
“Could be,” Mark said. “Even so, I would have expected them to have filed a through-flight plan with a stop in Lyon, rather than two separate flight plans. I mean, they could have gotten hung up in Lyon for hours. It was taking a chance.”
“Maybe they just changed their minds,” Lou said.
“It’s possible,” Mark agreed.
“Or maybe they didn’t want anyone knowing they were coming from Equatorial Guinea,” Lou suggested.
“Now, that’s an idea that wouldn’t have crossed my mind,” Mark admitted. “I suppose that’s why you’re an engaging detective, and I’m a boring FAA bureaucrat.”
Lou laughed. “Engaging I’m not. On the contrary, I’m afraid this job has made me cynical and suspicious.”
“It’s better than being boring,” Mark said.
Lou thanked his friend for his help, and after they exchanged the usual well-meaning promises to get together, they hung up.
For a few minutes, Lou sat and marveled at why a twenty-million-dollar airplane was carrying a midlevel crime boss from Queens, New York, from some African country Lou had never heard of. Such a third-world backwater certainly wasn’t a medical mecca where a person would go to have sophisticated surgery like a liver transplant.
After entering Frank Gleason’s accession number into the computer, Laurie sat pondering the apparent discrepancy for some time. She’d tried to imagine what the information meant in terms of the Franconi body disappearance. Slowly, an idea took root.
Suddenly pushing back from her desk, Laurie headed to the morgue level to look for Marvin. He wasn’t in the mortuary office. She found him by stepping into the walk-in cooler. He was busy moving the gurneys around to prepare for body pickups.
The moment Laurie entered the cooler, she flashed on the horrid experience she’d had during the Cerino affair inside the walk-in unit. The memory made her distinctly uncomfortable, and she decided against attempting to have a conversation with Marvin while inside. Instead, she asked him to meet her back in the mortuary office when he was finished.
Five minutes later, Marvin appeared. He plopped a sheaf of papers on the desk and then went to a sink in the corner to wash his hands.
“Everything in order?” Laurie asked, just to make conversation.
“I think so,” Marvin said. He came to the desk and sat down. He began arranging the documents in the order that the bodies were to be picked up.
“After talking with you earlier, I learned something quite surprising,” Laurie said, getting to the point of her visit.
“Like what?” Marvin said. He finished arranging the papers and sat back.
“I entered Frank Gleason’s accession number into the computer,” Laurie said. “And I found out that his body had come into the morgue over two weeks ago. There was no name associated with it. It was an unidentified corpse!”
“No shit!” Marvin exclaimed. Then realizing what he’d said, he added: “I mean, I’m surprised.”
“So was I,” Laurie said. “I tried to call Dr. Besserman, who’d done the original autopsy. I wanted to ask if the body had been recently identified as Frank Gleason, but he’s out of the office. Do you think it was surprising that Mike Passano didn’t know the body was still labeled in the computer as an unidentified corpse?”
“Not really,” Marvin said. “I’m not sure I would have, either. I mean, you enter the accession number just to find out if the body is released. You don’t really worry too much about the name.”
“That was the impression you gave me earlier,” Laurie said. “There was also something else you said that I’ve been mulling over. You said that sometimes you don’t get the body yourself but rather one of the funeral home people does.”
“Sometimes,” Marvin said. “But it only happens if two people come and if they’ve been here lots of times so they know the process. It’s just a way of speeding things up. One of them goes to the cooler to get the body while me and the other guy finish the documents.”
“How well do you know Mike Passano?” Laurie asked.
“As well as I know most of the other techs,” Marvin said.
“You and I have known each other for six years,” Laurie said. “I think of us as friends.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” Marvin said warily.
“I’d like you to do something for me as a friend,” Laurie said. “But only if it doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable.”
“Like what?” Marvin said.
“I’d like you to call Mike Passano and tell him that I found out that one of the bodies that he sent out the night Franconi disappeared was an unidentified corpse.”
“That’s strange, man!” Marvin said. “Why would I be calling him rather than just waiting for him to come on duty?”
“You can act like you just heard it, which is the case,” Laurie said. “And you can say that you thought he should know right away since he was on duty that night.”
“I don’t know, man,” Marvin said unconvinced.
“The key thing is that coming from you, it won’t be confrontational,” Laurie said. “If I call, he’ll think I’m accusing him, and I’m interested to hear his reaction without his feeling defensive. But more important, I’d like you to ask him if there were two people from Spoletto Funeral Home that night, and if there were two, whether he can remember who actually went to get the body.”
“That’s like setting him up, man,” Marvin complained.
“I don’t see it that way,” Laurie said. “If anything, it gives him a chance to clear himself. You see, I think the Spoletto people took Franconi.”
“I don’t feel comfortable calling him,” Marvin said. “He’s going to know something is up. Why don’t you call him yourself, you know what I’m saying?”
“I already told you, I think he’ll be too defensive,” Laurie said. “Last time he was defensive when I asked him purely vague questions. But okay, if you feel uncomfortable, I don’t want you to do it. Instead, I want you to go on a little hunt with me.”
“Now what?” Marvin asked. His patience was wearing thin.
“Can you produce a list of all the refrigerator compartments that are occupied at the moment?” Laurie asked.
“Sure, that’s easy,” Marvin said.
“Please,” Laurie said, while gesturing towards Marvin’s computer terminal. “While you’re at it, make two copies.”
Marvin shrugged and sat down. Using a relatively rapid hunt-and-peck style, he directed the computer to produce the list Laurie wanted. He handed the two sheets to her the moment they came out of the printer.
“Excellent,” Laurie said, glancing at the sheets. “Come on!” As she left the mortuary office, she waved over her shoulder. Marvin followed at her heels.
They walked down the stained cement corridor to the giant island that dominated the morgue. On opposite sides were the banks of refrigerated compartments used to store the bodies before autopsy.