had to have come in the back door, she raced there only to find it wide
open and splintered. She forced it closed as best she could.
Back in the kitchen she took the phone off the hook with trembling
hands. Her first response was to call the police, but then she
hesitated, hearing Franco’s voice in the back of her mind warning her
how vulnerable she was. She also could see Angelo’s horrid face and the
intensity of his eyes.
Recognizing she was in shock and fighting tears, Laurie replaced the
receiver. She thought she’d call Jack, but she knew he wouldn’t be home
yet. So, instead of calling anyone for the moment, she tenderly packed
her pet in a Styrofoam box with several trays of ice cubes. Then she
went into the bathroom to check out her own wounds.
Jack’s bike ride from the morgue home was not the ordeal he expected. In
fact, once he got under way, he felt better than he had for most of the
day. He even allowed himself to cut through Central Park. It had been
the first time he’d been in the park after dark for a year. Although he
was uneasy, it was also exhilarating to sprint along the dark, winding
paths.
For most of the trip, he’d pondered about GenSys and Equatorial Guinea.
He wondered what it was really like in that part of Africa. He’d joked
earlier with Lou that it was buggy, hot, and wet, but he didn’t know for
sure.
He also thought about Ted Lynch and wondered what Ted would be able to
do the following day. Before Jack had left the morgue, he’d called him
at home to outline the unlikely possibility of a xenograft. Ted said
that he thought he’d be able to tell by checking an area on the DNA that
specified ribosomal proteins. He’d explained that the area differed
considerably from species to species and that the information to make a
species identification was available on a CD-ROM.
Jack turned onto his street with the idea of going to the local
bookstore to see if there was any material on Equatorial Guinea. But as
he approached the playground with its daily late afternoon and evening
game of basketball under way, he had another idea. It occurred to him
that there might be expatriate Equatoguineans in New York. After all,
the city harbored people from every country in the world.
Turning his bike into the playground, Jack dismounted and leaned it up
against the chain-link fence. He didn’t bother to lock it, though most
people would have thought the neighborhood a risky place to leave a
thousand-dollar bike. In reality, the playground was the only place in
New York Jack felt he didn’t have to lock up.
Jack walked over to the sidelines and nodded to Spit and Flash, who were
part of the crowd waiting to play. The game in progress swept up and
down the court as the ball changed hands or baskets were made. As usual,
Warren was dominating the play. Before each of his shots he’d say
‘money,’ which was aggravating to the opponents because ninety percent
of the time, the ball would sail through the basket.
A quarter hour later the game was decided by one of Warren’s ‘money’
shots, and the losers slunk off the court. Warren caught sight of Jack
and strutted over.
‘Hey, man, you going to run or what?’ Warren asked.
‘I’m thinking about it,’ Jack said. ‘But I’ve got a couple of questions.
First of all, how about you and Natalie getting together with Laurie and
me this weekend?’
‘Hell, yes,’ Warren said. ‘Anything to shut my shortie up. She’s been
ragging on me fierce about you and Laurie.’
‘Secondly, do you know any brothers from a tiny African country called
Equatorial Guinea?’
‘Man, I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth,’ Warren
complained. ‘Let me think.’
‘It’s on the west coast of Africa,’ Jack said. ‘Between Cameroon and
Gabon.’
‘I know where it is,’ Warren said indignantly. ‘It was supposedly
discovered by the Portuguese and colonized by the Spanish. Actually, it
was discovered a long time earlier by black people.’