The philosopher king said, "Everything stinks sometimes. Some of it can't be explained."

Barely audible: "I know."

"But in this case there is an explanation," I told him. "I intend to find it."

He peered over at me glumly. He said, "Good luck." He lifted a glass of something festively colored and consumed a third of it.

"Where were you last night, Tad? Were you here till closing?"

With a nervous giggle, he said, "Where else?" This was so easy to check on that anybody with half a mind wouldn't have said it if it hadn't been true. I'd check

anyway.

I said, "You work for Albany Med. Who would I talk to over there if I wanted very discreetly to find out if any body parts were missing? From a lab, or morgue, or whatever."

With a look of mock disgust, he said, "God, you are weird."

"Like a finger, for instance. I've got to find out where a certain finger came from."

"Why? J'catch something from it?" His remark amused him hugely and he glanced around to see if anyone nearby had been fortunate enough to overhear it. Artur segued into the theme from A Letter to Three Wives.

"It's possible the finger came from somewhere else," I said. "A lab or college or one of the other area hospitals. But Albany Med is the biggest local repository I can think of for odds and ends of human body parts, so that's where I'm starting. Who would know about such things?"

"Newell Bankhead's in charge of the pathology lab," Purcell said with a shrug. "He'd be the one to talk to about blood and gore, I guess."

"Would he be on tonight? Or will I have to track him down at home or somewhere?"

Purcell giggled again. "Newell works weekdays. But he's not at home, I can tell you that for a certainty."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because," Purcell said with a drunk's sly I've-seen-it-all-and-nothing-surprises-me-anymore grin, "Newell's right over there. He's the pianist."

I looked off to my right and saw Artur's right hand swoop through the air at the completion of a crashing arpeggio. He caught my eye and winked.

Newell Bankhead, a tall, gaunt, bright-eyed man of a certain age (mine), said he thought we would find fewer distractions if we chatted at his apartment around the corner

on Partridge Street. Newell managed to provide a somewhat unnerving distraction of his own, but when I walked out of his apartment an hour and a half later I had what I wanted, so what the hell.

The list I carried had on it a hundred and six names. Most were employees of Albany Medical Center, though Newell had made a few phone calls and was able to add names from Memorial, St. Peter's, and three other area hospitals.

It would be very difficult, Newell had told me, to account for every detached finger that came and went at Albany Med or any other large hospital. None had been reported missing, that he knew of. Often, he said, in cases of severe mutilation, as occurred in certain unusually brutal car accident fatalities, the assorted remains of the deceased were promptly hauled off to a funeral director for whatever cosmetic reconstruction was possible, or were sent in plastic bags for a closed casket service. Occasional odds and ends of body parts, however, were sometimes kept in the pathology lab for study. Or they were simply disposed of: wrapped, sealed, and incinerated.

The names on Newell's list were of men and women who would have had easy access to these body parts at one time or another. There were pathology department workers in various capacities, and a large number of emergency-room doctors, nurses, and aides who carried out a variety of functions. At the end of the list was the maintenance worker at Albany Med who ran the incinerator.

Newell pointed out that the list was not at all complete, so he starred the names of gay friends and acquaintances of his who, if I needed them, could provide additional names for the list. When I counted the stars— there were 27 out of 106—it looked as though Fenton McWhirter was right. During a gay national strike, it

would not be wise to have an accident or become ill in the United States of America.

Bankhead also told me he had heard from a co-worker friend on weekend duty that two police detectives had visited the hospital that afternoon seeking the same kind of information. My opinion of Bowman's professional abilities went up, though I was afraid it would take Bowman's bureau three days to interview and, where necessary, investigate everyone on the list. I doubted we had that much time if we were going to save Fenton McWhirter.

I knew what I had to do. It was going to take five or six hours of drudgery, but there was no other way. I was going to make 106 phone calls, and I was going to listen for a hard, tense, distinctive voice that I would recognize.

I drove down Central to my office. I wrenched open the window above the burnt-out air conditioner, reached around and removed a loose brick from the face of the building, and used it to prop the window open. Then I sat at my desk, spread out Newell's list, opened the phone book, and began to dial.

"Good evening, I'm Biff McGuirk, calling from his honor the mayor's office. Are you Mr. Lawrence Banff?"

"Yes, speaking."

"Mr. Banff, the mayor is surveying the Albany citizenry to learn if there are ways city government can improve its services to the beautiful people of this extremely interesting town we all cohabit. May I ask if. . ."

After a grueling half-hour of this, I'd had enough. Too much. I had completed only three calls and had listened to a large number of moderately affecting stories having to do with potholes, water rates, potholes, property taxes, potholes, mad dogs, and the humidity on Ten Broeck Street. I had not heard the voice of the kidnapper.

I stared at the phone. It all seemed futile, a very chancy long shot at best. The kind of approach you took

when you had the time to pick up the thousand loose ends you invariably came away with. I couldn't even be certain that the owner of the voice of the kidnapper I'd heard was even on my list. Or on any hypothetical list of hospital employees. Maybe it was the accomplice who'd stolen the finger from some lab or emergency room, the accomplice whose voice I had never heard and would not recognize at all.

I thought about it some more and came up with one semi-bright idea. Bowman, I figured, could get quick voice prints of all the area ER and pathology lab personnel—this could be accomplished within twenty-four hours—and then match them against a print of the voice on the tape. I calculated the odds at about fifty-fifty that our man was a hospital employee, and if so, this would be a way of zeroing in on him fast.

I phoned Bowman's office, was told that he was still out at the Fisher farm, and was patched through to his radio car.

The man himself came on the line thirty seconds later. "Better get your ass out here, Strachey, if you don't want to miss the excitement. Your mysterious voice called up. Mrs. Fisher is going to deliver the cash."

"Dot is?"

"That's who they asked for. She says she's gonna do it."

"Crap. Oh, crap."

20

The call from the kidnappers had

come at nine-twenty-two. Bowman had a copy of the tape and played it for me.

dot fisher: Yes, hello.

voice: You want the other one to live?

dot: Yes. Yes—

voice: Then you listen to what I say—

dot: All right. Believe me, whoever you are—

voice: Now, listen, missus. Get it straight. Put the hundred thousand in a small picnic basket with a handle on top. At twelve o'clock midnight take the basket to the pay phone at the Westway Diner on Western Avenue near route one-fifty-five. You understand?