“Tell her that you made a mistake trusting Cerino,” Franco suggested.
Vinnie stopped in his tracks. “It’s true,” he snarled. “I thought Cerino was a civilized man. But now I know otherwise.”
“And there’s more,” Franco said. “Cerino’s men have been busy whacking all sorts of people besides Jimmy Lanso. Last night they hit two in Kew Gardens and two in Forest Hills.”
“I saw that on the news.” Vinnie was astounded. “That was Cerino’s people?”
“Yup,” Franco said.
“Why?” Vinnie asked. “I didn’t recognize any of the names.”
“Nobody knows.” Franco shrugged his shoulders.
“There must be some reason.”
“For sure,” Franco said. “I just don’t know what it is.”
“Well, find out!” Vinnie ordered. “It’s one thing putting up with Cerino and his bums as business rivals, but it’s quite another to sit around watching them ruin things for everyone.”
“There are cops crawling all over Queens,” Franco agreed.
“That’s just what we don’t need,” Vinnie said. “With the authorities up in arms, we’ll have to suspend a significant part of our operations. You have to find out what Cerino is up to. Franco, I’m depending on you.”
Franco nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“You’re not eating much,” Jordan said.
Laurie looked up from her plate. They were dining at a restaurant called Palio. Although the food was Italian, the décor was a relaxing meld of oriental and modern. Before her was a delicious seafood risotto. Her wineglass was filled with a crisp Pinot Grigio. But Jordan was right; she wasn’t eating much. Although she hadn’t eaten much that day, she just wasn’t hungry.
“You don’t like the food?” Jordan asked. “I thought you said you liked Italian.” His dress was as casually elegant as ever; he had on a black velvet blazer with a silk shirt open at the neck. He was not wearing a tie.
The logistics had worked much better this evening. As Jordan had promised, he’d called just before nine when he was leaving surgery, saying that Thomas was on his way to pick her up while he went back to his apartment to change. By the time Thomas and Laurie got back to the Trump Tower, Jordan was waiting curbside. From there it had been a short ride over to West Fifty-first Street.
“I love the food,” Laurie said. “I guess I’m just not that hungry. It’s been a long day.”
“I’ve been avoiding talking about the day,” Jordan admitted. “I thought it better to get a bit of wine under our belts. As I mentioned on the phone, my day was atrocious. That’s the only word for it, starting from your phone call about poor Marsha Schulman. Every time I think about her, I get this sick feeling. I even feel guilty about being so angry with her for not showing up to work, and here she was a headless corpse floating in the East River. Oh, God!” Jordan couldn’t continue. He buried his face in his hands and shook his head slowly. Laurie reached across the table and put a hand on Jordan’s arm. She felt for him but was also relieved to see this display of emotion. Up until this moment she’d felt he’d been incapable of such demonstrativeness and rather dispassionate about his secretary’s murder. He suddenly seemed a lot more human.
Jordan pulled himself together. “And there’s more,” he said sadly. “I lost a patient today. Part of the reason I went into ophthalmology was because I knew I’d have a hard time dealing with death, yet I still wanted to do surgery. Ophthalmology seemed an ideal compromise, until today. I lost a preop by the name of Mary O’Connor.”
“I’m sorry,” Laurie said. “I understand how you feel. Dealing with dying patients was hard for me too. I suppose it’s one of the reasons I went into pathology, especially forensics. My patients are already dead.”
Jordan smiled weakly. “Mary was a wonderful woman and such an appreciative patient,” he said. “I’d already operated on one eye and was about to do the other this afternoon. She was a healthy lady with no known heart trouble, yet she was found dead in her bed. She’d died watching television.”