Jack looked over at the building, then back at Warren. “Do you know them well enough to introduce me?” Jack asked. “I’ve developed a sudden interest in Equatorial Guinea.”
“Yeah, sure,” Warren said. “The father’s name is Esteban. He owns the Mercado market over on Columbus. That’s his son over there with the orange kicks.”
Jack followed Warren’s pointing finger until he spotted the orange sneakers. He recognized the boy as one of the basketball regulars. He was a quiet kid and an intense player.
“Why don’t you come down and run a few games?” Warren suggested. “Then I’ll take you over and introduce you to Esteban. He’s a friendly dude.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said. After being revived by the bicycle ride, he was looking for an excuse to play basketball. The events of the day had him in knots.
Jack went back and got his bike. Hurrying over to his building, he carried the bicycle up the stairs. He unlocked his door without even taking it off his shoulder. Once inside, he made a beeline for his bedroom and his basketball gear.
Within five minutes, Jack was already on his way out when his phone rang. For a moment, he debated answering it, but thinking it might be Ted calling back with a bit of arcane DNA trivia, Jack picked it up. It was Laurie, and she was beside herself.
Jack crammed enough bills through the Plexiglas partition in the taxi to more than cover the fare and jumped out. He was in front of Laurie’s apartment building, where he’d been less than an hour earlier. Dressed in his basketball gear he raced to the front door and was buzzed in. Laurie met him in the elevator foyer on her floor.
“My god!” Jack wailed. “Look at your lip.”
“That will heal,” Laurie said stoically. Then she caught Debra Engler’s eye peering through the crack in her door. Laurie lunged at the woman and shouted for her to mind her own business. The door snapped shut.
Jack put his arm around Laurie to calm her and led her into her apartment.
“All right,” Jack said, after getting Laurie seated on the couch. “Tell me what happened.”
“They killed Tom,” Laurie whimpered. After the initial shock, Laurie had cried for her pet, but her tears had dried until Jack’s question.
“Who?” Jack demanded.
Laurie waited until she had her emotions under control. “There were two of them, but I only knew one,” she said. “And he’s the one who struck me and killed Tom. His name is Angelo. He’s the person I’ve had nightmares about. I had a terrible run-in with him during the Cerino affair. I thought he was still in prison. I can’t imagine how or why he is out. He’s horrid to look at. His face is terribly scarred from burns, and I’m sure he blames me.”
“So this visit was for revenge?” Jack asked.
“No,” Laurie said. “This was a warning for me. In their words I’m to ‘leave the Franconi thing alone.’ ”
“I don’t believe this,” Jack said. “I’m the one investigating the case, not you.”
“You warned me. I’ve obviously irritated the wrong people by trying to find out how Franconi’s body was lifted from the morgue,” Laurie said. “For all I know it was my visit to the Spoletto Funeral Home that set them off.”
“I’m not going to take any credit for foreseeing this,” Jack said. “I thought you would get in trouble with Bingham, not mobsters.”
“Angelo’s warning was presented in the guise of a favor for a favor,” Laurie said. “His favor was to tell me who killed Franconi. In fact, he wrote the name down.” Laurie lifted the piece of paper from the coffee table and handed it to Jack.
“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.”