“Where you want to go?”
“Make it easy on you. Someplace close to the hospital. Maybe that sushi bar on Second Avenue.”
“You want to take a forensic pathologist to a sushi bar? You’re a sick puppy, Harry.”
I laughed. “Okay, that restaurant across the street from you. What is it this week, Thai or Korean?”
“Korean, I think.”
“Great. How about noon?”
She exhaled deeply into the phone. “I’ll probably regret this, but okay. Noon it is.”
I’d never seen Marsha Helms outside work before, but I knew her well enough not to be surprised when she pulled into the parking lot in a black Porsche 911 Turbo Carrera convertible with a vanity plate that read DED FLKS. All I could do was put my head down on the table for a moment and think: great, I’m having lunch with a woman who thinks autopsies are cute.
I looked up just in time to see her bend over to lock the car door. Bizarre sense of humor aside, Marsha was attractive and growing more so by the day. Unlike some very tall women I’d seen in my life, she didn’t try to hide her height. She wore clothes that looked as if a tailoring genius had designed them just for her. She tended toward dark colors, but they were bold and vivid, not muted. The Addams Family came back to me again. I couldn’t help it; I wanted to be Gomez to her Morticia: Marsh, you spoke French.…
She walked into the restaurant carrying herself high, a zest to her footsteps that belied her grim work. Maybe dealing with death makes you appreciate life all that much more. Come to think of it, since this business with Conrad started, I’d found my senses sharper, keener. Images were more distinct, voices were clearer, more piercing, flavors more intense. As grim as this whole business was, for the first time since I entered this line of work, I was enjoying myself. I’ve always tended to go from one obsession to another, which helped make me a pretty decent reporter. Maybe the skills were beginning to transfer. Maybe someday, I’d be able to make a living at it.
And maybe I was flattering myself. After all, I was no closer to figuring out who killed Conrad than I was the night he was murdered. I just had a sense of how many people might have wanted to. No matter how hard I tried, though, I couldn’t stop racking my brains. So many questions remained, not the least of which was the big one: why would Conrad lie there without a struggle and let somebody jam a syringe into his leg?
My seemingly endless mental monologue was interrupted by the elderly restaurant owner accompanying Marsha to the table. I stood, smiled at her appreciatively, and found myself strangely tongue-tied as she took her seat.
We exchanged pleasantries as she unfolded a cloth napkin and spread it across her lap. We were seated at a large window overlooking Hermitage Avenue, the noontime traffic passing in an endless stream. The morning cloud cover had burned off; the sky was a bright blue. It was turning into a gorgeous day.
“Funny,” I said. “I’m a little nervous.”
“Me, too. I’ve never seen you outside-”
“Yeah. Say, love your car.”
She grinned sheepishly. “I’ll let you drive it sometime.”
The waiter came. We ordered a couple of glasses of an Australian chardonnay, an unusual indulgence for both of us, and a couple of Korean dishes I’d never heard of. Lunch is seldom an adventure for me, but I was delighted to have it turn into one. We made small talk and swapped stories, just as people do when they’re on what amounts to a first date. I swear; I’m nearly forty years old, married and divorced, and a decorated veteran of the relationship wars, but I still get nervous when something starts feeling like it’s about to happen.
On the other hand, I’m also old enough to enjoy the nervousness, to celebrate that someone can still give me butterflies, even if just for lunch. And maybe I was seeing something that wasn’t there. But, hey, she seemed to be having a good time.
“By the way,” I asked, as we were finishing our coffee, “whatever happened to the tox report on Fletcher?”
She looked over the top of her cup, her eyes darkening. “Well, I was wondering when you would get around to it.”
“Now wait a minute, Marsh. That’s not why I invited you to lunch.”
“Oh, it isn’t?” She put the cup down hard. This little voice in my head muttered an obscenity, and I figured she really was steamed at me.
“No. Listen, I’m interested, and yes, I need to know. But you got to believe me. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while.”
She softened a bit. The wine, along with a sinfully good meal, had taken the rough edges off both of us.
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll believe you if I give you the poop and then we wind up doing this again.”
“If that’s the deal, I’ll take it.”
“That’s the deal.” She smiled and leaned across the table, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “The report came in last night. I was right. Protocurarine. I forget the blood concentration, but he was packed to the gills. Whoever did it wasn’t taking any chances. Bombed him good.”
“Where would it come from?”
“Well, Sam Spade, since he got whacked in a hospital, I’d say that’s an excellent place to start.”
“Would the stuff be locked up?”
She thought for a second. “I don’t know. Probably. It’s certainly a narcotic. But it’d be held with the other anesthetics. Outside of putting somebody way under, I don’t know of any other medical use. It certainly wouldn’t be routinely kept in a drug locker.”
“Has the report been released to the cops?”
“Oh, yeah. First thing this morning. Homicide’s holding a press conference late this afternoon. They figured they’d wait until after the funeral as a sign of respect to the family.”
“Damned decent of them,” I said. “They’d probably like to keep it under their hats altogether.”
“It’d never work. Too big a story. The media’d bust their chops.”
I looked down at my watch. Conrad’s funeral was in less than an hour. I pulled out my credit card, the one least likely to be maxxed out, and laid it on top of the check. Then, on impulse, I leaned across the table and kissed her. Nothing heavy, no slobbering passion at lunchtime, but a kiss. A forreal, unmistakable, not-just-a- friendly-peck-on-the-cheek kiss.
“Thanks,” I said.
She smiled at me. “Anytime.”
18
Conrad Fletcher picked a beautiful day to be buried.
The silver hearse and two black limousines were already parked on the side of the funeral home, with rent-a-cop security cars on either side of the parking lot. The television stations were there as well. Conrad’s murder was considered particularly intriguing and juicy by the media vultures, and they didn’t even know the whole story yet.
The back lot was filling up fast. I parked the Ford between two larger cars and sat there, discreetly watching the proceedings. I recognized several doctors, some other people who looked vaguely familiar from the hospital, and groups of younger people who were probably Conrad’s students. I wondered what the proportion of mourners to rejoicers might be, then decided that kind of speculation was not called for.
Inside the funeral home, the crowd resembled spectators at a dull trade show or convention rather than a group of souls lost in sadness. People milled about, gossiped, made the idiotic small talk that’s been the grease of human interaction since humans gave up grunting and shaking sticks at one another. Occasionally, a too loud voice would break forth in laughter, then just as quickly hush. I wandered around the outside fringes of the throng, then
