“Did the doctors hold out much hope for her?” Lou asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Chester said. “They told me that they couldn’t say for sure, but they thought that it might be only a year or so, and shorter if the cancer came back quicker.”

“I’m so sorry to hear all this,” Lou said.

“Well, maybe what happened was just as well. Maybe it saved her a lot of suffering. But I miss her so. We were married for thirty-one years.”

After offering additional condolences and his business card, Lou bade farewell to Mr. Singleton. Driving back to Manhattan, he reviewed what little he’d learned. The organized-crime connection to either case was at best tenuous. He’d been surprised to learn that both victims were terminally ill. He wondered if their killers had known.

By reflex he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a cigarette. He pushed in the lighter. Then he thought about Laurie. Rolling down the window, he tossed the unlit cigarette into the street just as the lighter popped out. He sighed, wondering where that pompous Jordan Scheffield was taking her for dinner.

Vinnie Dominick came into the locker room at St. Mary’s and sat wearily on the bench. He was perspiring heavily. He was bleeding slightly from a small scratch on his cheek.

“You’re bleeding, boss,” Freddie Capuso said.

“Get out of my face,” Vinnie snapped. “I know I’m bleeding. But you know what bugs me? That bum Jeff Young said he never touched me and whined for ten minutes when I called a foul.”

Vinnie had just finished an hour’s worth of pickup three-on-three basketball. His team had lost and he was in a foul mood. His mood got even worse when his most trusted lieutenant, Franco Ponti, came in with a long face.

“Don’t tell me it’s true?” Vinnie asked.

Franco came over to the bench. He put one foot on it and leaned on his knee. His nickname since high school had been “falcon,” mostly because of his face. With a narrow hooked nose, thin lips, and beady eyes he resembled a bird of prey.

“It’s true,” Franco said. He spoke in a monotone. “Jimmy Lanso got whacked last night in his cousin’s funeral home.”

Vinnie bolted off the bench and hammered one of the metal lockers. The crashing noise reverberated around the small locker room like a clap of thunder. Everyone winced except Franco.

“Christ!” Vinnie cried. He began pacing. Freddie Capuso got out of his way.

“What am I going to tell my wife?” Vinnie cried. “What am I going to tell my wife?” he repeated, raising his voice. “I promised her I’d take care of it.” He pounded one of the lockers again. Perspiration flew off his face.

“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.”

“What a terrible experience for you,” Laurie sympathized. “But you have to remember that occult medical problems are always found in such cases. I imagine we’ll be seeing Mrs. O’Connor tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to let you know what it was. Sometimes knowing the pathology makes it easier to deal with the death.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Jordan said.

“I suppose my day wasn’t as bad as yours,” Laurie said. “But I’m beginning to understand how Cassandra felt when Apollo made sure that she was not to be heeded.”

Laurie told Jordan all about her overdose series and that she was sure there would be more cases if no appropriate warnings were issued. She told him how upsetting it had been that she’d been unable to convince the chief medical examiner to go public with the story. Then she told him she’d gone to the police, and even they refused to help.

“Sounds frustrating,” Jordan said. “There was one good thing about my day,” he said, changing the subject. “I did a lot of surgery, and that makes me and my accountant very happy. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing double my normal number of cases.”

“I’m glad,” Laurie said. She couldn’t help but notice Jordan’s propensity for turning the conversation to himself.