Blindsight (15 page)

"Out of the question," Bingham said. "I'm not about to gamble the integrity of this office on a supposition
based on three cases. Aren't you coming to me a little prematurely? Why don't you wait and see what John comes up with? Besides, making that kind of statement would require names, and the Andrews organization would have the mayor at my throat in an instant." "Well, it was just a suggestion," Laurie said. "Thank you, Doctor," Bingham said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm late as it is." Laurie was chagrined Bingham didn't give her suggestion more credence, but without more conclusive proof she could hardly force the issue. She only wished there was something she could do before more of the same kind of overdoses showed up on her schedule. It was then she had a thought. Her training in forensics in Miami had involved direct on-the-scene investigation. Maybe if she toured any future scenes, some critical clue might present itself. Laurie went to the forensic medical investigative department, where she found Bart Arnold, chief of the investigators, sitting at his desk. Between two of his innumerable telephone conversations, she told him that she wanted to be notified if any more overdoses were called in that were similar to the three that she had had. She was very explicit. Bart assured her that he'd let the others know, including the tour doctors who took calls at night.
Laurie was about to return to her office when she remembered that she should also request that the autopsies of any similar overdoses be assigned to her. That meant seeing Calvin. "It always worries me when one of the troops wants to see me," Calvin said when Laurie poked her head in his office. "What is it, Dr. Montgomery? It better not be about scheduling your vacation. With the current case load, we've decided to cancel all this year's vacations." "Vacation! I wish!" Laurie said with a smile. Despite his gruff manner, she had a genuine fondness and respect for Calvin. "I wanted to thank you for assigning me those two overdose cases this morning." Calvin raised an eyebrow. "Well, this is a first. No one ever thanked me for assigning him a case. Why do I have the feeling there's more to this visit?" "Because you are naturally suspicious," Laurie teased. "I truly have found the cases interesting. More than interesting. In fact I'd like to request that any other similar case that comes in be assigned to me." "A grunt looking for work!" Calvin said. "It's enough to make a poor administrator's heart glow. Sure. You can have all you want. Just so I don't make any mistakes, what do you mean by similar? If you took all our overdoses you'd be here 'round the clock." "Upscale overdose or toxicity cases," Laurie said. "Just like the two you gave me this morning. People in their twenties or thirties, well educated, and in good physical condition." "I'll personally see that you get them all," Calvin said cheerfully. "But I have to warn you now. If you put in for overtime, I'm not paying."
"I'm hoping there will be no overtime," Laurie said.

After saying goodbye to Calvin, Laurie returned to her office and sat down to work. The positive
meeting with Calvin had compensated for the meeting with Bingham, and with a modicum of peace of mind, Laurie was able to concentrate. She was able to accomplish more work than she'd expected and signed out a number of cases including most of the weekend's autopsies. She even had time to counsel a devastated family about the "crib death" of their infant. Laurie was able to assure them they were not at fault.
The only problem that intruded during the early afternoon was a call from Cheryl Myers. She told Laurie that she'd been unable to find any medical conditions in Duncan Andrews' past. His only brush with a hospital had occurred nearly fifteen years ago when he broke his arm during a high school football game. "You want me to keep looking?" Cheryl asked after a pause. "Yes," Laurie said. "It can't hurt. Try to go back to his childhood." Laurie knew that she was hoping for nothing less than a miracle, yet she wanted to be complete. Then she could turn the whole problem over to Calvin Washington. She decided Lou had been right: if the powers-that-be wanted to distort the record for political expediency, they should do it themselves. By late afternoon Laurie's thoughts drifted back to the drug cases. On a whim she decided to check out where Evans and Overstreet lived. She caught a cab on First Avenue and asked to go to Central Park South. Evans' address was near Columbus Circle. When the cab arrived at the destination, Laurie asked him to wait. She hopped out of the cab to get a good look at the building. She tried to remember who else lived around there. It was some movie star, she was sure. Probably dozens of stars lived nearby. With a view of the park and its proximity to Fifth Avenue, Central Park South was prime real estate. In Manhattan it didn't get much better than that. Standing there, Laurie tried to picture Robert Evans striding confidently down the street and turning into his building, briefcase in hand, excited about the prospects of a social evening in New York. It was hard to jibe such an image with so untimely and profligate a demise. Getting back in the cab, Laurie directed the driver to Marion Overstreet's: a cozy brownstone on West Sixty-seventh Street a block from Central Park. This time she didn't even get out of the car. She merely gazed at the handsome residence and again tried to imagine the young editor in life. Satisfied, she asked the confused driver to take her back to the medical examiner's office. After the confrontation with Bingham that morning over her visit to Duncan Andrews' apartment, Laurie had not intended going inside either victim's building. She'd merely wanted to see them from the outside. She didn't know why she'd had the compulsion to do so, and when she got back to the medical examiner's, she wondered if it had been a bad idea. The excursion had saddened her since it made the victims and their tragedies more real.
Back in her office, Laurie ran into her office-mate, Riva. Riva complimented Laurie on the beauty of her roses. Laurie thanked her and stared at the flowers. In her current state of mind, they had changed their ambience. Although they had suggested celebration that morning, now they seemed more the symbol of grief, almost funereal in their appearance.

Lou Soldano was still irritated as he drove over the Queensboro Bridge from Manhattan to Queens. He felt like such a fool having set himself up so conveniently for rejection. What had he been thinking, anyway? She was a doctor, for Chrissake, who'd grown up on the East Side of Manhattan. What would

they have talked about? The Mets? The Giants? Hardly. Lou was the first to admit that he wasn't the
most educated guy in the city, and except for law enforcement and sports, he didn't know much about most other things.
"Do you ever see your kids?" Lou said out loud, doing a mockingly crude imitation of Laurie's much higher voice. With a short little yell, Lou pounded the steering wheel and mistakenly honked the horn of his Chevrolet Caprice. The driver in front of him turned around and threw him a finger. "Yeah, to you too," Lou said. He felt like reaching down and putting his emergency light on the dashboard and pulling the guy over. But he didn't. Lou didn't do things like that. He didn't abuse his authority, although he did it in his fantasy on a regular basis. "I should have taken the Triborough Bridge," he mumbled as the traffic bogged down on the Queensboro. From the last third of the bridge all the way to the juncture with Northern Boulevard it was stop and go, and mostly stop. It gave Lou time to think about the last time he had seen Paul Cerino. It had been about three years previously when Lou had just made detective sergeant. He was still assigned to Organized Crime at the time and had been pursuing Cerino for a good four years. So it was a surprise when the operator at the station had said that a Mr. Paul Cerino was on the line. Confused as to why the man he was after was calling him, Lou had picked up the phone with great curiosity. "Hey, how you doing?" Paul had said as if they were the best of friends. "I have a favor to ask of you. Would you mind stopping at the house this afternoon when you leave work?" Having been invited to a gangster's house had been such a weird occurrence that Lou had been reluctant to tell anybody about it. But finally he'd told his partner, Brian O'Shea, who'd thought he'd gone crazy for accepting.
"What if he's planning on doing you in?" Brian asked. "Please!" Lou had said. "He wouldn't call me up here at the station if he was going to bump me off. Besides, even if he decided to do it, he wouldn't get anywhere near it himself. It's something else. Maybe he wants to deal. Maybe he wants to finger somebody else. Whatever it is, I'm going. This could be something big."
So Lou went with great expectations of some major breakthrough that he thought might even have resulted in a commendation by the chief. Of course the visit was against Brian's better judgment, and Brian insisted on going with him but waiting in the car. The deal had been that if Lou didn't come out in a half hour, Brian was going to call in a SWAT team. It was with a lot of anxiety that Lou had mounted the front steps of Cerino's modest house on Clintonville Street in Whitestone. Even the house's appearance added to Lou's unease. There was something wrong about it. With the huge amount of money the man had to be making from all his illegal activities plus his only legal endeavor, the American Fresh Fruit Company, it was a mystery to Lou why he lived in such a small, unpretentious house. With a final glance back at Brian, whose concerns had only served to fan Lou's anxiety to a fevered pitch and with a final check to make sure his Smith and Wesson Detective Special was in its holster, Lou rang the front bell. Mrs. Cerino had opened the door. Taking a deep breath, Lou had entered. Lou laughed heartily, bringing tears to his eyes. The experience was still capable of doing that after three

years. While still laughing, Lou glanced into the car immediately to his left. The driver was looking at him
as if he were crazy, laughing as he was in such abominable traffic. But the traffic notwithstanding, Lou could still laugh at the shock he had had when he'd stepped into Cerino's house that day expecting the worst. What he had unexpectedly walked into was a surprise party for himself in celebration of his having been promoted to detective sergeant! At the time Lou had been recently separated from his wife, so the promotion had gone unnoticed except at the station. Somehow Cerino had heard about this and had decided to give him a party. It had been Mr. and Mrs. Cerino and their two sons, Gregory and Steven. There'd been cake and soda. Lou had even gone out to get Brian.
The irony of the whole thing had been that Lou and Paul had been enemies for so long they had almost become friends. After all, they knew so much about each other. It took Lou almost an hour to get out to Paul's, and by the time he mounted the front steps, it was just about the same time of day as when Paul had thrown the surprise party. Lou could remember it as if it had been yesterday.
Looking through the front windows, Lou could see that the living room lights were on. Outside it was getting dark even though it was only five-thirty. Winter was on its way. Lou pressed the front doorbell and heard the muted chimes. The door was opened by Gregory, the older boy. He was about ten. He recognized Lou, greeted him in a friendly fashion, and invited him inside. Gregory was a well-mannered boy. "Is your dad home?" Lou asked.
No sooner had he asked than Paul appeared from the living room in his stocking feet clutching a red-tipped cane. A radio was on in the background. "Who is it?" he asked Gregory.
"It's Detective Soldano," Gregory said. "Lou!" Paul said, coming directly toward Lou and extending a hand. Lou shook hands with Paul and tried to see his eyes behind a pair of reflective sunglasses. Paul was a big man, moderately overweight, so that his small facial features were sunk into his fleshy face. He had dark hair cut short, and large, heavily lobed ears. On both cheeks were red patches of recently healed skin. Lou guessed it had been from the acid. "How about some coffee?" Paul said. "Or a little wine?" Without waiting for a response, Paul yelled for Gloria. Gregory reappeared with Steven, the younger Cerino. He was eight. "Come in," Paul said. "Sit down. Tell me what's been happening. You married yet?" Lou followed Paul back into the living room. He could tell that Paul had adapted well to his reduced visual acuity, at least in his own home. He didn't use the cane to navigate to the radio to turn it off. Nor did he use it to find his favorite chair, into which he sank with a sigh.

"Sorry to hear about your eye problem," Lou said, sitting opposite Paul.
"These things happen," Paul said philosophically. Gloria appeared and greeted Lou. Like Paul, she was overweight--a buxom woman with a kind, gentle face. If she knew what her husband did for a living, she never let on. She acted like the typical, lower-middle-class suburban housewife who had to scrimp to get along on a budget. Lou wondered what Paul did with all the money he had to be accumulating. Responding to Lou's positive reply regarding coffee, Gloria disappeared into the kitchen. "I heard about your accident just today," Lou said. "I haven't told all my friends," Paul said with a smile. "Did this involve the Lucia people?" Lou asked. "Was it Vinnie Dominick?" "Oh no!" Paul said. "This was an accident. I was trying to jump-start the car and the battery blew up. Got a bunch of acid in my face."
"Come on, Paul," Lou said. "I came all the way out here to commiserate with you. The least you can do is tell me the truth. I already know that the acid was thrown into your face. It's just a matter of who was responsible."
"How do you know this?" Cerino asked.
"I was specifically told by someone who knows," Lou said. "In fact it ultimately came from a totally reliable source. You!"
"Me?" Paul questioned with genuine surprise. Gloria returned with an espresso for Lou. He helped himself to sugar. Gloria then retreated from the room. So did the boys.
"You have awakened my curiosity," Paul said. "Explain to me how I was the source of this rumor about my eyes."
"You told your doctor, Jordan Scheffield," Lou said. "He told one of the medical examiners by the name of Laurie Montgomery, and the medical examiner told me. And the reason I happened to be talking to the medical examiner was because I went over there to watch a couple of autopsies on homicide victims. The names might be familiar to you: Frankie DePasquale and Bruno Marchese." "Never heard of them," Paul said.
"They are Lucia people," Lou said. "And one of them, curiously enough, had acid burns in one of his eyes."
"Terrible," Cerino said. "They certainly don't make batteries the way they used to." "So you're still telling me that you got battery acid in your eyes?" Lou asked.