“Let’s get out of here,” Angelo said. He felt a little green. “Wipe off any prints from that machine.”
Five minutes later they retraced their steps and climbed back out the window. They’d considered using the door but decided against it in case it was wired.
Once in the car, Angelo began to relax. Cerino had been right. Dominick hadn’t been lying. It hadn’t been a setup. As he pulled away from the curb, Angelo felt a sense of accomplishment. “Well, that’s the end of the acid boys,” he said. “Now we have to get back to real work.”
“Did you show the second list to Cerino?” Tony asked.
“Yeah, but we’ll still start from the first list,” Angelo said. “The second list will be easier.”
“Makes no difference to me,” Tony said. “But what do you say we eat first? Sitting around the Vesuvio made me hungry. How about another pizza?”
“I think we’d better get one job done first,” Angelo said. He wanted to put a little distance between the grisly scene at the Spoletto Funeral Home and his next meal.
Embroiled again in the recurrent nightmare about her brother sinking into the bottomless black mud, Laurie was thankful for her alarm’s jangle that pulled her from her deep sleep. Barely awake she reached over to the alarm and turned it off. Before she could retract her arm back into the warm covers, the alarm went off again. That was when Laurie realized it wasn’t the alarm. It was the telephone.
“Dr. Montgomery, this is Dr. Ted Ackerman,” the caller said. “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but I’m the tour doctor on call and I got a message that I should call you if a certain kind of case came in.”
Laurie was too bewildered to respond. Glancing down at the clock she saw it was only two-thirty in the morning. No wonder she was having a tough time getting her bearings.
“I just got a call,” Ted continued. “It sounds like the demographics you had mentioned. It also sounds like cocaine. The deceased is a banker, aged thirty-one. The name is Stuart Morgan.”
“Where?” Laurie asked.
“Nine-seventy Fifth Avenue,” Ted said. “Do you want to take the call or shall I just go? I don’t mind either way.”
“I’ll go,” Laurie said. “Thanks.” She hung up the phone and stood up. She felt miserable. Tom, on the other hand, seemed pleased to be awake. Purring contentedly, he rubbed against her legs.
Laurie threw on some clothes and grabbed a camera and several pairs of rubber gloves. She left her apartment still buttoning her coat and dreaming of returning home to climb back in bed.
Outside, Laurie found her street deserted, but First Avenue had traffic. In five minutes she was in the back of a taxi with an Afghani freedom fighter for a driver. Fifteen minutes later she got out of the cab at 970 Fifth. An NYPD car and a city ambulance were pulled up on the sidewalk. Both vehicles had their emergency lights blinking impatiently.
Inside, Laurie flashed her medical examiner’s badge and was directed to Penthouse B.
“You the medical examiner?” a uniformed policeman asked with obvious amazement when Laurie entered the apartment and again showed her badge. His name tag read “Ron Moore.” He was a muscular, heavyset fellow in his late thirties.
Laurie nodded, feeling little tolerance or reserve for what was coming.
“Hell,” Ron said, “you don’t look like any of the medical examiners I’ve ever seen.”
“Nonetheless I am,” Laurie said without humor.
“Hey, Pete!” Moore yelled. “Get a load of what just walked in. A medical examiner who looks more like a Playboy Bunny!”
Another uniformed but younger-appearing policeman poked his head from around a doorway. His eyebrows went up when he saw Laurie. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
He had a handful of correspondence in both hands.
“Who is in charge here?” Laurie questioned.
“I am, honey,” Ron said.
“My name is Dr. Montgomery,” Laurie said. “Not honey.”
“Sure, Doc,” Ron answered.
“Who can give me a tour of the scene?” Laurie asked.
“Might as well be me,” Ron said. “This here’s the living room, obviously. Notice the drug paraphernalia on the coffee table. The victim apparently injected himself there, then went into the kitchen. That’s where the body is. You get to the kitchen through the den.”