‘I don’t know how to do this,’ Lou complained. ‘At home, my daughter
runs the VCR.’
Laurie took the remote, then told Lou that he had to turn on the TV
first.
Jack took a sip of the wine. It wasn’t much better than what he’d
brought the previous night.
Laurie and Lou joined Jack on the couch. Jack looked from one to the
other, but they were ignoring him. They were intently watching the TV
screen.
‘What’s this surprise?’ Jack asked.
‘Just watch,’ Laurie said, pointing toward the electronic snow on the
TV.
More confused than ever, Jack looked at the screen. All of a sudden,
there was music and the CNN logo followed by the image of a moderately
obese man coming out of a Manhattan restaurant Jack recognized as
Positano. The man was surrounded by a group of people.
‘Should I put on the sound?’ Laurie asked.
‘Nah, it’s not necessary,’ Lou said.
Jack watched the sequence. When it was over he looked at Laurie and Lou.
Both had huge smiles.
‘What is going on here?’ Jack questioned. ‘How much wine have you two
been drinking?’
‘Do you recognize what you’ve just seen?’ Laurie asked.
‘I’d say it was somebody getting shot,’ Jack said.
‘It’s Carlo Franconi,’ Laurie said. ‘After watching it, does it remind
you of anything?’
‘Sort of reminds me of those old tapes of Lee Harvey Oswald getting
shot,’ Jack said.
‘Show it to him again,’ Lou suggested.
Jack watched the sequence for the second time. He divided his attention
between the screen and watching Laurie and Lou. They were captivated.
After the second run-through, Laurie again turned to Jack and said:
‘Well?’
Jack shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’
‘Let me run certain sections in slow motion,’ Laurie said. She used the
remote to isolate the sequence to where Franconi was about to climb into
the limo. She ran it in slow motion, and then stopped it exactly at the
moment he was shot. She walked up to the screen and pointed at the base
of the man’s neck. ‘There’s the entry point,’ she said.
Using the remote again, she advanced to the moment of the next impact
when the victim was falling to his right.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Jack remarked with astonishment. ‘My floater
might be Carlo Franconi!’
Laurie spun around from facing the TV. Her eyes were blazing. ‘Exactly!’
she said triumphantly. ‘Obviously, we haven’t proved it yet but with the
entrance wounds and the paths of the bullets in the floater, I’d be
willing to bet five dollars.’
‘Whoa!’ Jack commented. ‘I’ll take you up on a five-dollar wager, but I
want to remind you that’s a hundred percent higher than any bet you’ve
ever made in my presence.’
‘I’m that sure,’ Laurie said.
‘Laurie is so fast at making associations,’ said Lou. ‘She picked up on
the similarities right away. She always makes me feel stupid.’
‘Get out of here!’ Laurie said, giving Lou a friendly shove.
‘Is this the surprise you guys wanted to tell me about?’ Jack asked
cautiously. He didn’t want to get his hopes up.
‘Yes,’ Laurie said. ‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you as excited as we
are?’
Jack laughed with relief. ‘Oh, I’m just tickled pink!’
‘I can never tell when you are serious,’ Laurie said. She detected a
certain amount of Jack’s typical sarcasm in his reply.
‘It’s the best news I’ve heard in days,’ Jack added. ‘Maybe weeks.’
‘All right, let’s not overdo it,’ Laurie said. She turned off the TV and
the VCR. ‘Enough of the surprise, let’s eat.’
Over dinner the conversation turned to why no one even considered that
the floater might be Franconi.
‘For me it was the shotgun wound,’ Laurie said. ‘Which I knew Franconi
didn’t have. Also I was thrown off by the body’s being found way out off
Coney Island. Now, if it had been fished out of the East River, it might
have been a different story.’
‘I suppose I was thrown off for the same reasons,’ Jack said. ‘And then,
when I realized the shotgun wound was postmortem, I was already
engrossed in the issue about the liver. By the way, Lou, did Franconi