Chromosome 6 Page 2

  “Perhaps I should tell them you are not available,” the waiter suggested.

  “No, I’ll take the cordless,” Raymond said. He couldn’t imagine who could be calling him on an emergency basis. Raymond had not been practicing medicine since he’d lost his medical license after having been convicted of a major Medicare scam he’d been carrying on for a dozen years.

  “Hello?” Raymond said with a degree of trepidation.

  “This is Taylor Cabot. There’s a problem.”

  Raymond visibly stiffened and his brow furrowed.

  Taylor quickly summarized the Carlo Franconi situation and his call to Kevin Marshall.

  “This operation is your baby,” Taylor concluded irritably. “And let me warn you: it is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. If there is trouble, I’ll scrap the entire enterprise. I don’t want bad publicity, so handle it.”

  “But what can I do?” Raymond blurted out.

  “Frankly, I don’t know,” Taylor said. “But you’d better think of something, and you’d better do it fast.”

  “Things couldn’t be going any better from my end,” Raymond interjected. “Just today I made positive contact with a physician in L.A. who treats a lot of movie stars and wealthy West Coast businessmen. She’s interested in setting up a branch in California.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Taylor said. “There isn’t going to be a branch anyplace if this Franconi problem isn’t resolved. So you’d better get busy. I’d say you have about twelve hours.”

  The resounding click of the disconnection made Raymond’s head jerk. He looked at the phone as if it had been responsible for the precipitate termination of the conversation. The waiter, who’d retreated to an appropriate distance, stepped forward to retrieve the phone before disappearing.

  “Trouble?” Darlene questioned.

  “Oh, God!” Raymond voiced. Nervously he chewed the quick of his thumb. It was more than trouble. It was potential disaster. With his attempts at retrieving his medical license tied up in the quagmire of the judicial system, his current work situation was all he had, and things had only recently been clicking. It had taken him five years to get where he was. He couldn’t let it all go down the drain.

  “What is it?” Darlene asked. She reached out and pulled Raymond’s hand away from his mouth.

  Raymond quickly explained about the upcoming autopsy on Carlo Franconi and repeated Taylor Cabot’s threat to scrap the entire enterprise.

  “But it’s finally making big money,” Darlene said. “He won’t scrap it.”

  Raymond gave a short, mirthless laugh. “It isn’t big money to someone like Taylor Cabot and GenSys,” he said. “He’d scrap it for certain. Hell, it was difficult to talk him into it in the first place.”

  “Then you have to tell them not to do the autopsy,” Darlene said.

  Raymond stared at his companion. He knew she meant well, and he’d never been attracted to her for her brain power. So he resisted lashing out. But his reply was sarcastic: “You think I can just call up the medical examiner’s office and tell them not to do an autopsy on such a case? Give me a break!”

  “But you know a lot of important people,” Darlene persisted. “Ask them to call.”

  “Please, dear . . .” Raymond said condescendingly, but then he paused. He began to think that unwittingly Darlene had a point. An idea began to germinate.

  “What about Dr. Levitz?” Darlene said. “He was Mr. Franconi’s doctor. Maybe he could help.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Raymond said. Dr. Daniel Levitz was a Park Avenue physician with a big office, high overhead, and a dwindling patient base, thanks to managed care. He’d been easy to recruit and had been one of the first doctors to join the venture. On top of that, he’d brought in many clients, some of them in the same business as Carlo Franconi.

  Raymond stood up, extracted his wallet, and plopped three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills on the table. He knew that was more than enough for the tab and a generous tip. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to make a house call.”

  “But I haven’t finished my entrée,” Darlene complained.

  Raymond didn’t respond. Instead he whisked Darlene’s chair out from the table, forcing her to her feet. The more he thought about Dr. Levitz, the more he thought the man could be the savior. As the personal physician of a number of competing New York crime families, Levitz knew people who could do the impossible.

  CHAPTER 1

  March 4, 1997

  7:25 A.M.

  New York City

  Jack Stapleton bent over and put more muscle into his pedaling as he sprinted the last block heading east along Thirtieth Street. About fifty yards from First Avenue he sat up and coasted no-hands before beginning to brake. The upcoming traffic light was not in his favor, and even Jack wasn’t crazy enough to sail out into the mix of cars, buses, and trucks racing uptown.

  The weather had warmed considerably and the five inches of slush that had fallen two days previously was gone save for a few dirty piles between parked cars. Jack was pleased the roads were clear since he’d not been able to commute on his bike for several days. The bike was only three weeks old. It was a replacement for one that had been stolen a year previously.

  Originally, Jack had planned on replacing the bike immediately. But he’d changed his mind after a terrifyingly close encounter with death made him temporarily conservative about risk. The episode had nothing to do with bike riding in the city, but nonetheless it scared him enough to acknowledge that his riding style had been deliberately reckless.

  But time dimmed Jack’s fears. The final prod came when he lost his watch and wallet in a subway mugging. A day later, Jack bought himself a new Cannondale mountain bike, and as far as his friends were concerned, he was up to his old tricks. In reality, he was no longer tempting fate by squeezing between speeding delivery vans and parked cars; he no longer slalomed down Second Avenue; and for the most part he stayed out of Central Park after dark.

  Jack came to a stop at the corner to wait for the light, and as his foot touched down on the pavement he surveyed the scene. Almost at once he became aware of a bevy of TV vans with extended antennae parked on the east side of First Avenue in front of his destination: the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York, or what some people called simply, the morgue.

  Jack was an associate medical examiner, and he’d been in that position for almost a year and a half so he’d seen such journalistic congestion on numerous occasions. Generally it meant that there had been a death of a celebrity, or at least someone made momentarily famous by the media. If it wasn’t a single death, then it was a mass disaster like an airplane crash or a train wreck. For reasons both personal and public Jack hoped it was the former.

  With a green light, Jack pedaled across First Avenue and entered the morgue through the receiving dock on Thirtieth Street. He parked his bike in his usual location near the Hart Island coffins used for the unclaimed dead and took the elevator up to the first floor.

  It was immediately apparent to Jack that the place was in a minor uproar. Several of the day secretaries were busily manning the phones in the communications room: they normally didn’t arrive until eight. Their consoles were awash with blinking red lights. Even Sergeant Murphy’s cubicle was open and the overhead light was on, and his usual modus operandi was to arrive sometime after nine.

  With curiosity mounting, Jack entered the ID room and headed directly for the coffeepot. Vinnie Amendola, one of the mortuary techs, was hiding behind his newspaper as per usual. But that was the only normal circumstance for that time of the morning. Generally Jack was the first pathologist to arrive, but on this particular day the deputy chief, Dr. Calvin Washington, Dr. Laurie Montgomery, and Dr. Chet McGovern were already there. The three were involved in a deep discussion along with Sergeant Murphy and, to Jack’s surprise, Detective Lieutenant Lou Soldano from homicide. Lou was a frequent visitor to the morgue, but certainly not at
seven-thirty in the morning. On top of that, he looked like he’d never been to bed, or if he had, he’d slept in his clothes.

  Jack helped himself to coffee. No one acknowledged his arrival. After adding a dollop of half-and-half as well as a cube of sugar to his cup, Jack wandered to the door to the lobby. He glanced out, and as he’d expected the area was filled to overflowing with media people talking among themselves and drinking take-out coffee. What he didn’t expect was that many were also smoking cigarettes. Since smoking was strictly taboo, Jack told Vinnie to go out there and inform them.

  “You’re closer,” Vinnie said, without looking up from his newspaper.

  Jack rolled his eyes at Vinnie’s lack of respect but had to admit Vinnie was right. So Jack walked over to the locked glass door and opened it. Before he could call out his no smoking pronouncement, he was literally mobbed.

  Jack had to push the microphones away that were thrust into his face. The simultaneous questions precluded any real comprehension of what the questions were other than about an anticipated autopsy.

  Jack shouted at the top of his lungs that there was no smoking, then had to literally peel hands off his arm before he was able to get the door closed. On the other side the reporters surged forward, pressing colleagues roughly against the glass like tomatoes in a jar of preserves.

  Disgusted, Jack returned to the ID room.

  “Will someone clue me in to what’s going on?” he called out.

  Everyone turned in Jack’s direction, but Laurie was the first to respond. “You haven’t heard?”

  “Now, would I be asking if I’d heard?” Jack said.

  “It’s been all over the TV for crissake,” Calvin snapped.

  “Jack doesn’t own a TV,” Laurie said. “His neighborhood won’t allow it.”

  “Where do you live, son?” Sergeant Murphy asked. “I’ve never heard of neighbors not allowing each other to have a television.” The aging, red-faced, Irish policeman had a pronounced paternal streak. He’d been assigned to the medical examiner’s office for more years than he was willing to admit and thought of all the employees as family.

  “He lives in Harlem,” Chet said. “Actually his neighbors would love him to get a set so they could permanently borrow it.”

  “Enough, you guys,” Jack said. “Fill me in on the excitement.”

  “A Mafia don was gunned down yesterday late afternoon,” Calvin’s booming voice announced. “It’s stirred up a hornet’s nest of trouble since he’d agreed to cooperate with the DA’s office and was under police protection.”

  “He was no Mafia don,” Lou Soldano said. “He was nothing but a midlevel functionary of the Vaccarro crime family.”

  “Whatever,” Calvin said with a wave of his hand. “The key point is that he was whacked while literally boxed in by a number of New York’s finest, which doesn’t say much about their ability to protect someone in their charge.”

  “He was warned not to go to that restaurant,” Lou protested. “I know that for a fact. And it’s almost impossible to protect someone if the individual refuses to follow suggestions.”

  “Any chance he could have been killed by the police?” Jack asked. One of the roles of a medical examiner was to think of all angles, especially when situations of custody were concerned.

  “He wasn’t under arrest,” Lou said, guessing what was going through Jack’s mind. “He’d been arrested and indicted, but he was out on bail.”

  “So what’s the big deal?” Jack asked.

  “The big deal is that the mayor, the district attorney, and the police commissioner are all under a lot of heat,” Calvin said.

  “Amen,” Lou said. “Particularly the police commissioner. That’s why I’m here. It’s turning into one of those public-relations nightmares that the media loves to blow way out of proportion. We’ve got to apprehend the perpetrator or perpetrators ASAP, otherwise heads are going to roll.”

  “And not to discourage future potential witnesses,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, that too,” Lou said.

  “I don’t know, Laurie,” Calvin said, getting back to the discussion they’d been having before Jack’s interruption. “I appreciate you coming in early and offering to do this autopsy, but maybe Bingham might want to do it himself.”

  “But why?” Laurie complained. “Look, it’s a straightforward case, and I’ve recently done a lot of gunshot wounds. Besides, with Dr. Bingham’s budget meeting this morning at City Hall, he can’t be here until almost noon. By then I can have the autopsy done and whatever information I come up with will be in the hands of the police. With their time constraint, it makes the most sense.”

  Calvin looked at Lou. “Do you think five or six hours will make a difference with the investigation?”

  “It could,” Lou admitted. “Hell, the sooner the autopsy is done the better. I mean, just knowing if we’re looking for one or two people will be a big help.”

  Calvin sighed. “I hate this kind of decision.” He shifted his massive two-hundred-and-fifty-pound muscular bulk from one foot to the other. “Trouble is, half the time I can’t anticipate Bingham’s reaction. But what the hell! Go for it, Laurie. The case is yours.”

  “Thanks, Calvin,” Laurie said gleefully. She snatched up the folder from the table. “Is it okay if Lou observes?”

  “By all means,” Calvin said.

  “Come on, Lou!” Laurie said. She rescued her coat from a chair and started for the door. “Let’s head downstairs, do a quick external exam, and have the body X-rayed. In the confusion last night it apparently wasn’t done.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Lou said.

  Jack hesitated for a moment then hurried after them. He was mystified why Laurie was so interested in doing the autopsy. From his perspective she would have done better to stay clear. Such politically charged cases were always hot potatoes. You couldn’t win.

  Laurie was moving quickly, and Jack didn’t catch up to her and Lou until they were beyond communications. Laurie stopped abruptly to lean into Janice Jaeger’s office. Janice was one of the forensic investigators, also called physicians’ assistants or PAs. Janice ran the graveyard shift and took her job very seriously. She always stayed late.

  “Will you be seeing Bart Arnold before you leave?” Laurie asked Janice. Bart Arnold was the chief of the PAs.

  “I usually do,” Janice said. She was a tiny, dark-haired woman with prominent circles under her eyes.

  “Do me a favor,” Laurie said. “Ask him to call CNN and get a copy of the video of Carlo Franconi’s assassination. I’d like to have it as soon as possible.”

  “Will do,” Janice said cheerfully.

  Laurie and Lou continued on their way.

  “Hey, slow down, you two,” Jack said. He had to run a couple of steps to catch up to them.

  “We’ve got work to do,” Laurie said without breaking stride.

  “I’ve never seen you so eager to do an autopsy,” Jack said. He and Lou flanked her as she hurried to the autopsy room. “What’s the attraction?”

  “A lot of things,” Laurie said. She reached the elevator and pressed the button.

  “Give me an example,” Jack said. “I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but this is a politically sensitive case. No matter what you do or say, you’ll be irritating someone. I think Calvin was right. This one ought to be done by the chief.”

  “You’re entitled to your opinion,” Laurie said. She hit the button again. The back elevator was inordinately slow. “But I feel differently. With the work I’ve been doing on the forensics of gunshot wounds, I’m fascinated to have a case where there is a video of the event to corroborate my reconstruction of what happened. I was planning on writing a paper on gunshot wounds, and this could be the crowning case.”

  “Oh, dear,” Jack moaned, raising his eyes heavenward. “And her motivations were so noble.” Then looking back at Laurie he said: “I think you should reconsider! My intuition tells me you’re only going to get yourself i
nto a bureaucratic headache. And there’s still time to avoid it. All you have to do is turn around and go back and tell Calvin you’ve changed your mind. I’m warning you, you’re taking a risk.”

  Laurie laughed. “You are the last person to advise me about risk.” She reached out and touched Jack on the end of his nose with her index finger. “Everyone who knows you, me included, pleaded with you not to get that new bike. You’re risking your life, not a headache.”

  The elevator arrived, and Laurie and Lou boarded. Jack hesitated but then squeezed through the doors just before they closed.

  “You are not going to talk me out of this,” Laurie said. “So save your breath.”

  “Okay,” Jack said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “I promise: no more advice. Now, I’m just interested in watching this story unfold. It’s a paper day for me today, so if you don’t mind, I’ll watch.”

  “You can do more than that if you want,” Laurie said. “You can help.”

  “I’m sensitive about horning in on Lou.” His double entendre was intended.

  Lou laughed, Laurie blushed, but the comment went unacknowledged.

  “You implied there were other reasons for your interest in this case,” Jack said. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are they?”

  Laurie cast a quick glance at Lou that Jack saw but couldn’t interpret.

  “Hmmm,” Jack said. “I’m getting the feeling there’s something going on here that isn’t any of my business.”

  “Nothing like that,” Lou volunteered. “It’s just an unusual connection. The victim, Carlo Franconi, had taken the place of a midlevel crime hoodlum named Pauli Cerino. Cerino’s position had become vacant after Cerino was thrown in the slammer, mostly due to Laurie’s persistence and hard work.”

  “And yours, too,” Laurie added as the elevator jerked to a stop and the doors opened.

  “Yeah, but mostly yours,” Lou said.

  The three got off on the basement level and headed in the direction of the mortuary office.