Jack nodded. He was confused. He hadn’t seen any ring, and Lou was intently studying the VCR remote. Laurie disappeared into the kitchen but was soon back with Jack’s wine.

“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 have a liver transplant?”

“Not that I know of,” Lou said. “He’d been sick for a number of years, but I never knew the diagnosis. I hadn’t heard anything about a liver transplant.”

“If he didn’t have a liver transplant, then the floater isn’t Franconi,” Jack said. “Even though the DNA lab is having a hard time confirming it, I’m personally convinced the floater has a donated liver.”

“What else can you people do to confirm that the floater and Franconi are the same person?” Lou asked.

“We can request a blood sample from the mother,” Laurie said. “Comparing the mitochondrial DNA which all of us inherit only from our mothers, we could tell right away if the floater is Franconi. I’m sure the mother will be agreeable, since she’d been the one to come to identify the body initially.”

“Too bad an X ray wasn’t taken when Franconi came in,” Jack said. “That would have done it.”

“But there was an X ray!” Laurie said with excitement. “I just found out this evening. Marvin had taken one.”

“Where the hell did it go?” Jack asked.

“Marvin said that Bingham took it,” Laurie said. “It must be in his office.”

“Then I suggest we make a little foray to the morgue,” Jack said. “I’d like to settle this issue.”

“Bingham’s office will be locked,” Laurie said.

“I think this situation calls for some creative action,” Jack said.

“Amen,” Lou said. “This might be that break I’ve been hoping for.”

As soon as they had finished eating and cleaning up the kitchen, which Jack and Lou had insisted on doing, the three took a cab down to the morgue. They entered through the receiving dock and went directly into the mortuary office.

“My God!” Marvin commented when he saw both Jack and Laurie. It was rare for two medical examiners to show up at the same time during the evening. “Has there been a natural disaster?”

“Where are the janitors?” Jack asked.

“In the pit last time I looked,” Marvin asked. “Seriously, what’s up?”

“An identity crisis,” Jack quipped.

Jack led the others to the autopsy room and cracked the door. Marvin had been right. Both janitors were busy mopping the expansive terrazzo floor.

“I assume you guys have keys to the chiefs office,” Jack said.

“Yeah, sure,” Daryl Foster said. Daryl had been working for the medical examiner’s office for almost thirty years. His partner, Jim O’Donnel, was a relatively new employee.

“We’ve got to get in there,” Jack said. “Would you mind opening it?”

Daryl hesitated. “The chiefs kind’a sensitive about people being in his office,” he said.

“I’ll take responsibility,” Jack said. “This is an emergency. Besides we have Lieutenant Detective Soldano with us from the police department, who will keep our thievery to a minimum.”

“I don’t know,” Daryl said. He was obviously uncomfortable, as well as unimpressed, with Jack’s humor.

“Then give me the key,” Jack said. He stuck out his hand. “That way you won’t be involved.”

With obvious reluctance, Daryl removed two keys from his key chain and handed them to Jack. “One’s for the outer office, and one is for Dr. Bingham’s inner office.”

“I’ll have them back for you in five minutes,” Jack said.

Daryl didn’t respond.

“I think the poor guy was intimidated,” Lou commented as the three rose up to the first floor in the elevator.

“Once Jack is on a mission, look out!” Laurie said.

“Bureaucracy irks me,” Jack said. “There’s no excuse for the X ray to be squirreled away in the chiefs office in the first place.”

Jack opened the front office’s outer door and then Dr. Bingham’s inner door. He turned on the lights.