Miracle Cure

“With one noticeable difference,” Max said almost under his breath. “And don’t call him that, Willie. The press will dive all over it.”

“They’re gonna dive anyway.”

“They ignored the first two victims,” Max noted.

“They won’t ignore this one.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Do you know who this is?”

Bernstein looked down at the disfigured face and then up at Willie. “His mother wouldn’t recognize him.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I never do.”

“According to his wallet, his name is Bradley Jenkins. I checked him out. His father is—”

“A U.S. Senator, I know.” Max closed his eyes and turned away. He stroked his mustache.

“Right. Bradley lives on Twelfth Street. His father and mother have a house in the Hamptons. Weird, huh? Senator from Arkansas who vacations on Long Island?”

“Senator Jenkins has been living in the Northeast since he began going to school here as a boy,” Max explained. “I doubt the guy has spent five straight days in Arkansas, except during election campaigns.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

Max’s hand ran through his thick, dark curly hair several times. “First of all, he’s the Senate minority leader. Second, I read a newspaper now and again.”

“And third?”

“Bradley is a good friend of Sara Lowell’s. I met him once.”

“Oh,” Willie said. “That’s too bad. Think Sara will handle the story? It’d be nice to have a member of the press on our side for this one.”

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah, she won’t waste her time with us anymore. She’s big-time now. You see her on TV last night?”

Max nodded, pacing rapidly back and forth but traveling no more than five feet in any direction. “You got today’s Herald in your car?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Get it. I want to show you something.”

Willie fetched the paper and handed it to Bernstein. Bernstein grabbed it and thumbed through the pages quickly, ripping several as he went along.

“Whoa, Twitch, slow down a minute.”

“It’s right here…”

“What’s right here?” Willie asked.

Bernstein continued to riffle through the paper, the pencil still in his mouth. “Did you read the society pages today?”

“Shit, no, I don’t read that crap. But I did check out the box scores.”

“That should be a big help,” Max said. He turned a few more pages, his right foot tapping the pavement impatiently. “Bingo,” he said at last. “Take a look at this.”

Willie looked over Max’s shoulder. A page of photographs showed the well-dressed people who had attended Dr. John Lowell’s charity ball the previous evening. Max pointed to the picture in the upper right-hand corner. “There.”

“Shit on a stick,” Willie whispered.

The caption read: The luminous Sara Lowell enjoys the festivities after her triumphant NewsFlash debut with (right) her handsome hubby and Knicks superstar, Michael Silverman, and (left) Senator Stephen Jenkins’ dashing son, Bradley.

“It’s him,” Willie exclaimed, pointing to the photograph. “It’s Bradley Jenkins.”

“Correct.”

“Not much resemblance now. Maybe a little around the ears.”

“Very funny.”

“God, I hate these big cases,” Willie said. “Mayor’ll be calling all the time. Everybody wanting answers.”

“We might as well get started, then. I want you to check the neighborhood. See if anybody saw anything.”

“Sure thing. Someone must have heard something — screams or a struggle or something.”

Bernstein shook his head. “I don’t think the murder took place here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take a look at the corpse,” he continued. “Bradley Jenkins has been dead since last night, right?”

“Looks like it.”

“But at night this alley is packed with patrons of the Black Magic.”

“Patrons. Is that what they call them now?”

Bernstein greeted the remark with a hint of a smile. Oh, Willie, if you only knew… “Someone would have seen the murder if it happened back here last night. And there’s blood only on the body — none in the area. If he had been stabbed a zillion times back here, the alley would have been sprayed with blood. No, I think Jenkins was killed somewhere else and his body was dumped here. That’s where the M.O. is different. The body was moved this time.”

Willie followed his young lieutenant’s pacing, his head shifting back and forth as if he were watching a tennis match. “Makes no sense, Twitch. There’s a lot of places less risky to get rid of a body. Why here?”

“Don’t know.”

“You want me to find out if Bradley was gay?”

Max felt a powerful headache coming on and began to massage his temples with his fingertips. The son of a prominent, conservative senator found with multiple knife wounds behind a gay bar — Tylenol wouldn’t put a dent in this one. “No need,” Bernstein said. “I’ll get the personal info from Sara.”

“Send my condolences.”

“Will do. I want the lab over every inch of this alley and I want this neighborhood canvassed. Ask if they saw anything out of the ordinary last night or this morning.”

“Gotcha. Oh, one more thing.”

“What?”

“Good luck with the press, those bastards. Next thing you know we’ll have every loony tune in the area confessing or copycatting the son of a bitch.”

Max nodded and clenched his teeth. The pencil in his mouth snapped into two jagged pieces, nearly cutting his gums.

It was going to be a bad week.

6

“How are you feeling?” Sara asked Michael for the twentieth time.

“Fine,” he replied. “Ask again and I’m going to scream.”

“I’m just concerned.”

“Then do something constructive,” Michael said.

“Like?”

“Like lock the door and get naked.”

“I stepped into that one, didn’t I?”

Michael nodded.

A woman’s voice from behind them said, “Hello, Sara.”

They both looked toward the entranceway where Dr. Carol Simpson now stood. Chopin’s Concerto in D minor played from the small CD player beside Michael’s bed. Reece, of all people, had fetched it from the Knicks’ locker room at Madison Square Garden and brought it to the hospital, claiming, “This shit makes me sick, but it might be