“That’s all news to me,” Lou said.
“Want to see what my eyes look like?” Paul asked.
“I’m not sure,” Lou said.
Paul took off his reflective sunglasses.
“Ugh,” Lou said. “Put your glasses back on. I’m sorry for you, Paul. It looks terrible. It looks like you have a couple of white marbles in your eyes.”
Paul chuckled as he put his glasses back on. “I would have thought a hardened cop like you would have felt satisfaction that his old enemy took a fall.”
“Hell no!” Lou said. “I don’t want you handicapped. I want you in jail.”
Paul laughed. “Still at it, huh?”
“Putting you away is still one of my ultimate goals in life,” Lou said agreeably. “And finding that acid burn in Frankie DePasquale’s eye gives me some hope. At this point it looks mighty suspicious that you were behind the kid’s murder.”
“Aw, Lou,” Paul said. “It hurts my feelings that you’d think something nasty about me after all these years.”
6
* * *
8:45 p.m., Wednesday
Manhattan
At first Laurie thought the experience was unique enough to be tolerable, but as the time approached eight forty-five she began to get irritated. Thomas, Jordan’s driver, had shown up exactly at the agreed-upon time, eight o’clock, and had rung Laurie’s bell. But when Laurie got down to the car, she learned that Jordan was not there. He was still in surgery doing an emergency operation.
“I’m supposed to take you to the restaurant,” Thomas had said. “Dr. Scheffield will be meeting you there.”
Taken by surprise with this situation, Laurie had agreed. She’d felt strange entering the fancy restaurant by herself, but she was quickly put at ease by the maitre d’, who had been expecting her. She’d been discreetly ushered to a waiting table wedged among others near to the window. Next to the table stood a wine stand icing down a bottle of Meursault.
The sommelier had appeared instantly and had shown Laurie the label of the wine. After she’d nodded, he’d opened it, poured her a dollop, waited for her OK, then filled her glass. All this had been accomplished without words.
Finally at five minutes before nine, Jordan arrived.
He came into the room with a flourish, and although he waved a greeting at Laurie, he didn’t join her immediately. Instead he weaved his way through the crowded room, stopping at several tables to say hello. Each group of diners greeted him with gusto; animated conversation and smiles followed in his wake.
“Sorry,” he said, finally sitting down. “I was in surgery, but I guess Thomas told you as much.”
“He did,” Laurie said. “What kind of emergency surgery was it?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly an emergency,” Jordan said, nervously rearranging his place setting. “My surgery has picked up recently, so I have to squeeze standby cases in whenever the operating room can give me a slot. How’s the wine?”
The wine steward had reappeared and gave Jordan a taste of the wine.
“The wine is fine,” Laurie said. “Seems that you know a lot of people here.”
Jordan took a sip of his wine and for a moment he looked pensive while he swished it around inside his mouth. He nodded with satisfaction after he swallowed, motioned for his glass to be filled, then looked at Laurie. “I usually run into a few of my patients here,” he said. “How was your day? I hope it was better than mine.”
“Some sort of trouble?” Laurie asked.
“Plenty of trouble,” Jordan said. “First, my secretary, who’s been with me for almost ten years, didn’t show up in the morning. She’s never not shown up without calling. We tried calling her but there was no answer. So scheduling got all fouled up by the time I came in from the hospital. Then, to make matters worse, we discovered that someone had broken into the office the night before and had stolen our petty cash as well as all the Percodans we kept on hand.”
“How awful,” Laurie said. She remembered how it had felt to be robbed. Her room at college had been ransacked one day. “Any vandalism?” she asked. Whoever had broken into her room had smashed what they couldn’t carry away.