“By doing what?” Louie questioned.
“He could tell you the status on the case, like if the cause of death has been signed out as natural. Vinnie loves his job, God knows why. He knows everything that goes on in the medical examiner’s office.”
Louie took a moment to look back at the visitors’ desk. He was afraid they would soon be asking him to leave, yet he wanted to hear the rest of Paulie’s suggestions. As Louie had envisioned, Paulie had some good ideas. When no one waved at him from the desk, Louie turned his attention back to Paulie.
“You waiting for someone?” Paulie asked.
“No. I’m afraid they’re going to kick me out. So you think it’s worth it to take the time to go to the morgue?”
“I definitely think you should go for one very important piece of information.”
“Are you going to tell me or what?” Louie questioned. It seemed Paulie was stalling on purpose with time running out.
“The most important thing I want you to ask Vinnie Amendola is the name of the medical examiner on the case.”
Louie knotted his brow in surprise. “Are you serious? What the hell for? Why does it matter?”
“If it’s Laurie Montgomery, we are in trouble.”
“Who the hell is Laurie Montgomery?”
“She’s one of the MEs,” Paulie said. “If I had to pick the single person most responsible for my being here in prison, it would be Laurie Montgomery. She’s the smartest one at the morgue, and certainly the most dogged. She figured out stuff from the bodies I was responsible for sending in there in ways that still mystify me. We even tried to whack her and couldn’t. We even had her nailed in a coffin at one time — you know, one of those simple pine boxes they use for the unidentified dead. She’s like a cat with nine lives. Even Vinnie Dominick tried to kill her without luck.”
“You must hate her guts.”
“No, I’ve forgiven her, since she’s also responsible for me finding God.”
Louie didn’t respond for a moment, instead staring into Paulie’s scarred face again, trying to figure out if Paulie was seriously religious or seriously into character for the parole board’s benefit. Paulie remained placid, a smile at the corners of his distorted lips.
“My point is,” Paulie continued, “if you find Laurie Montgomery involved with your subway platform victim, you must, and I emphasize must, do something about it. Somehow she will figure out it was homicide. I’m telling you. From there she will figure out that it was an organized-crime event involving the Yakuza and you guys. You have to get her off the case if she’s on it.”
“What would I do, have her killed?”
“No. Absolutely not. I tried. Dominick tried. And merely by trying you will unleash from the police just what you are trying to avoid: probably a decade of harassment, because she’s connected in high places in the police department. She used to date Lou Soldano. And when they stopped dating, the relationship didn’t change. In fact, it got better.”
A piercing whistle got Louie’s attention. Checking the desk, he saw the guard waving at him. Time was up. Louie looked back at Paulie. “If she’s on the case, how do I get her off?”
“Can’t help you there. You gotta figure that one out yourself. Ask Vinnie Amendola. He might have a suggestion.”
Another whistle penetrated the general background hum of voices filling the room.
“See ya,” Louie said, standing up.
“You know where to find me,” Paulie said as they hung up their phones in unison.
10
March 25, 2010
Thursday, 2:30 p.m.
Laurie took off her coat and hung it on the back of her office door, then pushed the door closed. At least for a while she wanted to be out of contact with the rest of the world. She’d just returned from a rather rowdy lunch in her honor at a nearby restaurant called the Waterfront Ale House. Feeling as she did, she would have preferred not to have gone, but she couldn’t refuse, since the lunch was celebrating her return to work, and Jack had been the organizer. Most of the MEs had shown up, filled with good cheer and laughter. For Laurie it had been exhausting to act as happy as everyone else. The day was not going nearly as well as she’d hoped, with only one case with no identity and no cause or manner of death. And she couldn’t stop thinking about JJ and Leticia. Laurie had stopped calling when Leticia asked, saying Laurie was interfering with her ability to pay adequate attention to JJ. “If there’s the slightest problem, I’ll call you,” Leticia had insisted earlier. “Please relax and do your work. Everything is going to be fine.”
Laurie sat down at her spotlessly clean desk. She stared at the phone for a moment. “Screw it!” she said abruptly, then angrily punched in Leticia’s number. “Nobody’s going to tell me I can’t call about my child!”
The phone rang more times than Laurie expected and caused instant alarm, compounded by Leticia being out of breath when she finally answered. “Sorry,” Leticia said. “I was pushing JJ up a steep hill when the phone began to ring. I wanted to make it to the top.”
“Sounds like you two are in the park,” Laurie said with a combination of guilt and relief.
“You got that right. He loves it, and it couldn’t be a nicer day.”
“Sorry to be a bother,” Laurie said.
Leticia didn’t respond.
“Everything okay?”
“Everything is just fine,” Leticia answered.
“Did he have his lunch?”
“No, I’m denying him food and water,” Leticia said, then laughed. “Just kidding. He ate a big lunch and now he’s sleeping. He couldn’t be better. Now get back to work.”
“Aye, aye, madam,” Laurie said.
After a few more parting comments, Laurie hung up the handset.
Then she looked at her desk and noted again the lack of reminders about pending cases. All there was was the single case file of her unidentified patient. She pondered how little she knew of the man and how sad it was that he was all alone in the cooler downstairs. She wondered where his wife was, and if she missed him. Laurie chewed her cheek and tried to think if there was some way to learn anything more, anything at all about her lonely, unidentified corpse.
Suddenly she snatched up the case folder and dumped out its contents to find Cheryl’s note. What she was suddenly interested in was the time of the 911 call. After she found it, five-thirty-seven p.m., she turned on her monitor and searched through her address book for the 911 call center out in Brooklyn. With a mind-set of excitement, which she tried to suppress, she dialed and asked to be connected to her old contact, Cynthia Bellows.
When she got Cynthia’s voicemail, she left a message, then gave Detective Ron Steadman another try. If he was still resistant, she’d go to Lou Soldano. She imagined that Lou, having recently made captain, could certainly light a fire under the man.
To Laurie’s surprise, he answered after a couple of rings and sounded like a different man — maybe not much friendlier but significantly more awake. Laurie reintroduced herself and asked if he remembered her from her call that morning.
“Vaguely,” Ron said. “What was it about?”
“An unidentified Asian corpse from the Fifty-ninth Street station that came in last evening.”
“Now I remember! You were giving me a hard time about not rushing out and single-handedly solving the identity crisis. What’s up? Did someone suddenly show up and make the ID?”
“I wish,” Laurie said. “No ID yet, so I thought I’d view the tapes from the subway platform cameras.”