“Vido Delbario,” Jack read. He looked back at Laurie’s battered face. Both her nose and lip were swollen, and she was developing a black eye. “This case has been bizarre from the start, now it’s getting out of hand. I think you’d better tell me everything that happened.”
Laurie related to Jack the details from the moment she’d walked in the door until she’d called him on the phone. She even told him why she’d hesitated calling 911.
Jack nodded. “I understand,” he said. “There’s little the local precinct could do at this point.”
“What am I going to do?” Laurie asked rhetorically. She didn’t expect an answer.
“Let me look at the back door,” Jack said.
Laurie led him through the kitchen and into the pantry.
“Whoa!” Jack said. Because of the multiple dead bolts the entire edge split when the door had been forced. “I’ll tell you one thing, you’re not staying here tonight.”
“I suppose I could go home to my parents,” Laurie said.
“You’re coming home with me,” Jack said. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Laurie looked into the depths of Jack’s eyes. She couldn’t help but wonder if there were more to this sudden invitation than the issue of her safety.
“Get your things,” Jack said. “And pack for a few days. It will take that long to replace this door.”
“I hate to bring this up,” Laurie said. “But I have to do something with poor Tom.”
Jack scratched the back of his head. “Do you have access to a shovel?”
“I have a gardening trowel,” Laurie said. “What are you thinking?”
“We could bury him in the backyard,” Jack said.
Laurie smiled. “You are a softie, aren’t you?”
“I just know what it’s like to lose things you love,” Jack said. His voice caught. For a painful moment he recalled the phone call that had informed him of his wife and daughter’s death in a commuter plane crash.
While Laurie packed her things, Jack paced her bedroom. He forced his mind to concentrate on current concerns. “We’re going to have to tell Lou about this,” Jack said, “and give him Vido Delbario’s name.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Laurie said from the depths of her walk-in closet. “Do you think we should do it tonight?”
“I think we should,” Jack said. “Then he can decide when he wants to act on it. We’ll call from my house. Do you have his home number?”
“I do,” Laurie said.
“You know, this episode is disturbing for more reasons than just your safety,” Jack said. “It adds to my worry that organized crime is somehow involved in liver transplantation. Maybe there is some kind of black-market operation going on.”
Laurie came out of her closet with a hangup bag. “But how can it be transplantation when Franconi wasn’t on immunosuppressant drugs? And don’t forget the strange results Ted got with his DNA testing.”
Jack sighed. “You’re right,” he admitted. “It doesn’t fit together.”
“Maybe Lou can make sense of it all,” Laurie said.
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Jack said. “Meanwhile, this episode makes the idea of going to Africa a lot more appealing.”
Laurie stopped short on her way into the bathroom. “What on earth are you talking about?” she demanded.
“I haven’t had any personal experience with organized crime,” Jack said. “But I have with street gangs, and I believe there’s a similarity that I learned the hard way. If either of these groups gets it in their mind to get rid of you, the police can’t protect you unless they are committed to guarding you twenty-four hours a day. The problem is, they don’t have the manpower. Maybe it would be good for both of us to get out of town for a while. It could give Lou a chance to sort this out.”
“I’d go, too?” Laurie asked. Suddenly the idea of going to Africa had a very different connotation. She’d never been to Africa, and it could be interesting. In fact, it might even be fun.
“We’d consider it a forced vacation,” Jack said. “Of course, Equatorial Guinea might not be a prime destination, but it would be… different. And perhaps, in the process, we’ll be able to figure out exactly what GenSys is doing there and why Franconi made the trip.”
“Hmmm,” Laurie said. “I’m starting to warm to the idea.”
After Laurie had her things ready, she and Jack took Tom’s Styrofoam casket into the backyard. In the far corner of the garden where there was loose loam, they dug a deep hole. The chance discovery of a rusted spade made the job easy, and Tom was put to rest.
“My word!” Jack complained as he hauled Laurie’s suitcase out the front door. “What did you put in here?”
“You told me to pack for several days,” Laurie said defensively.
“But you didn’t have to bring your bowling ball,” Jack quipped.
“It’s the cosmetics,” Laurie said. “They are not travel size.”
They caught a cab on First Avenue. En route to Jack’s they stopped at a bookstore on Fifth Avenue. While Jack waited in the taxi, Laurie dashed inside to get a book on Equatorial Guinea. Unfortunately, there weren’t any, and she had to settle for a guidebook for all of Central Africa.
“The clerk laughed at me when I asked for a book on Equatorial Guinea,” Laurie said, when she got back in the cab.
“That’s one more hint it’s not a top vacation destination,” Jack said.
Laurie laughed. She reached over and gave Jack’s arm a squeeze. “I haven’t thanked you yet for coming over,” she said. “I really appreciated it, and I’m feeling much better.”
“I’m glad,” Jack said.
Once in Jack’s building, Jack had to struggle with Laurie’s suitcase up the cluttered stairs. After a series of exaggerated grunts and groans, Laurie asked him if he wanted her to carry it. Jack told her that her punishment for packing such a heavy bag was to listen to him complain.
Eventually, he got it outside his door. He fumbled for his key, got it into the cylinder and turned. He heard the dead bolt snap back.
“Hmmm,” he commented. “I don’t remember double-locking the door.” He turned the key again to release the latch bolt and pushed open the door. Because of the darkness, he preceded Laurie into the apartment to flip on the light. Laurie followed and collided with him because he’d stopped suddenly.
“Go ahead, turn it on,” a voice said.
Jack complied. The silhouettes he’d glimpsed a moment before were now men dressed in long, dark coats. They were seated on Jack’s sofa, facing into the room.
“Oh my god!” Laurie said. “It’s them!”
Franco and Angelo had made themselves at home, just as they had at Laurie’s. They’d even helped themselves to beers. The half-empty bottles were on the coffee table, along with a handgun and its attached silencer. A straight-backed chair had been brought into the center of the room to face the couch.
“I assume you are Dr. Jack Stapleton,” Franco said.
Jack nodded, as his mind began to go over ways of handling the situation. He knew the front door behind him was still ajar. He berated himself for not being more suspicious to have found it double-locked. The problem was he’d gone out so quickly, he couldn’t remember which locks he’d secured.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” Franco admonished as if reading Jack’s mind. “We won’t be staying long. And if we’d known that Dr. Montgomery was going to be here, we could have saved ourselves a trip to her place, not to mention the effort of going over the same message twice.”
“What is it you people are afraid we might learn that makes you want to come and threaten us?” Jack asked.
Franco smiled and looked at Angelo. “Can you believe this guy? He thinks we made all this effort to get in here to answer questions.”
“No respect,” Angelo said.