Chromosome 6

by Robin Cook

  The girl was now nearing the street. She was dressed in a pink down-filled ski parka, which only made her look heavier. Her facial features indented a puffy face with mild acne. Her hair was straight and parted down the middle.

  “She look anything like Maria Provolone?” Angelo questioned, to get in a dig at Franco.

  “Very funny,” Franco said. He reached for the door handle and got out of the car.

  “Excuse me!” Franco called out as sweetly as possible. Having smoked heavily from age eight, he had a voice that normally had a harsh, raspy quality. “Could you, by any chance, be the popular Cindy Carlson?”

  “Maybe,” the teenager said. “Who wants to know?” She’d stopped at the foot of the driveway. The dog lifted his leg against the gate post.

  “We’re police officers,” Franco said. He held up the badge so that the light from the streetlamp glinted off its polished surface. “We’re investigating several of the boys in town and we were told you might be able to help us.”

  “Really?” Cindy questioned.

  “Absolutely,” Franco said. “Please come over here so my colleague can talk to you.”

  Cindy glanced up and down the street, even though not a car had passed in the last five minutes. She crossed the street, pulling her dog who’d been intently sniffing the base of an elm tree.

  Franco moved out of the way so that Cindy Carlson could bend over to look into the front seat of the car at Angelo. Before a word was spoken, Franco pushed her into the car headfirst.

  Cindy let out a squeal but it was quickly smothered by Angelo who wrestled her into the car.

  Franco swiftly yanked the leash out of Cindy’s hand and shooed the dog away. Then he squeezed into the front seat, crushing Cindy against Angelo. He put the car in gear and drove away.

  Laurie had surprised herself. After the delivery of the Franconi videotape, she’d been able to redirect her attention to her paperwork. She’d worked efficiently and made significant progress. There was now a gratifying stack of completed folders on the corner of her desk.

  Taking the remaining tray of histology slides, she started on the final case, which could be completed with the material and reports she had. As she peered into her microscope to examine the first slide, she heard a knock on her open door. It was Lou Soldano.

  “What are you doing here so late?” Lou asked. He sat down heavily in the chair next to Laurie’s desk. He made no effort to take off his coat or hat, which was tipped way back on his head.

  Laurie glanced at her watch. “My gosh!” she remarked. “I had no idea of the time.”

  “I tried to call you at home as I was coming across the Queensboro Bridge,” Lou said. “When I didn’t get you, I decided to stop here. I had a sneaking suspicion you’d still be at it. You know, you work too hard!”

  “You should talk!” Laurie said with playful sarcasm. “Look at you! When was the last time you got any sleep? And I’m not talking about a catnap at your desk.”

  “Let’s talk about more pleasant things,” Lou suggested. “How about grabbing a bite to eat? I’ve got to run down to headquarters to do about an hour’s worth of dictating, then I’d love to go out someplace. The kids are with their aunt, God love her. What do you say to some pasta?”

  “Are you sure you’re up for going out?” Laurie questioned. The circles under Lou’s dark eyes were touching his smile creases. His stubble was more than a five o’clock shadow. Laurie guessed it was at least two days’ worth.

  “I gotta eat,” Lou said. “Are you planning on working much longer?”

  “I’m on my last case,” Laurie said. “Maybe another half hour.”

  “You gotta eat, too,” Lou said.

  “Have you made any progress in the Franconi case?” Laurie asked.

  Lou let out an exasperated puff of air. “I wish,” he said. “And the trouble is with these mob hits, if you don’t score quickly, the trail cools mighty fast. We haven’t gotten the break I’ve been hoping for.”

  “I’m sorry,” Laurie said.

  “Thanks,” Lou said. “How about you? Any more of an idea how Franconi’s body got out of here?”

  “That trail is about equally as cool,” Laurie said. “Calvin even gave me a reaming out for interrogating the night mortuary tech. All I did was talk to the man. I’m afraid administration just wants the episode to fade.”

  “So Jack was right about telling you to lay off,” Lou said.

  “I suppose,” Laurie reluctantly agreed. “But don’t tell him that.”

  “I wish the commissioner would let it fade,” Lou said. “Hell, I might get demoted over this thing.”

  “I did have one thought,” Laurie said. “One of the funeral homes that picked up a body the night Franconi disappeared is called Spoletto. It’s in Ozone Park. Somehow the name was familiar to me. Then I remembered that one of the more grisly murders of a young mobster took place there back during the Cerino case. Do you think that it’s just a coincidence they happened to be making a pickup here the night Franconi disappeared?”

  “Yeah,” Lou said. “And I’ll tell you why. I’m familiar with that funeral home from my years in Queens fighting organized crime. There is a loose and innocent connection by marriage with the Spoletto Funeral Home and the New York crime establishment. But it’s with the wrong family. It’s with the Lucia people, not with the Vaccarros, who killed Franconi.”

  “Oh, well,” Laurie said. “It was just a thought.”

  “Hey, I’m not knocking your questioning it,” Lou said. “Your recall always impresses me. I’m not sure I would have made the association. Anyway, what about some dinner?”

  “As tired as you look, how about just coming over to my apartment for some spaghetti?” Laurie suggested. Lou and Laurie had become best of friends over the years. After being thrust together on the Cerino case five years previously, they’d flirted with a romantic relationship. But it hadn’t worked out. Becoming friends had been a mutual decision. In the years since, they made it a point to have dinner together every couple of weeks.

  “You wouldn’t mind?” Lou asked. The idea of kicking back on Laurie’s couch sounded like heaven.

  “Not at all,” Laurie said. “In fact, I’d prefer it. I’ve got some sauce in the freezer and plenty of salad makings.”

  “Great!” Lou said. “I’ll grab some Chianti on my way downtown. I’ll give you a call when I’m leaving headquarters.”

  “Perfect,” Laurie said.

  After Lou had left, Laurie went back to her slide. But Lou’s visit had broken her concentration by reawakening the Franconi business. Besides, she was tired of looking through the microscope. Leaning back, she rubbed her eyes.

  “Damn it all!” she murmured. She sighed and gazed up at the cobwebbed ceiling. Every time she questioned how Franconi’s body could have gotten out of the morgue, she agonized anew. She also felt guilty that she couldn’t provide even a modicum of help to Lou.

  Laurie got up and got her coat, snapped shut her briefcase, and walked out of her office. But she didn’t leave the morgue. Instead, she went down for another visit to the mortuary office. There was a question that was nagging her and which she’d forgotten to ask Marvin Fletcher, the evening mortuary tech, the previous late afternoon.

  She found Marvin at his desk busily filling out the required forms for the scheduled pickups for that evening. Marvin was one of Laurie’s favorite coworkers. He’d been on the day shift before Bruce Pomowski’s tragic murder during the Cerino affair. After that event, Marvin had been switched to evenings. It had been a promotion because the evening mortuary tech had a lot of responsibility.

  “Hey, Laurie! What’s happening?” Marvin said the moment he caught sight of her. Marvin was a handsome African-American, with the most flawless skin Laurie had ever seen. It seemed to glow as if lit internally.

  Laurie chatted with Marvin for a few minutes, catching him up on the intraoffice gossip of the day before getting down to business. “Marvin, I’ve got t
o ask you something, but I don’t want you to feel defensive.” Laurie couldn’t help remembering Mike Passano’s reaction to her questioning, and she certainly didn’t want Marvin complaining to Calvin.

  “About what?” Marvin asked.

  “Franconi,” Laurie said. “I wanted to ask why you didn’t X-ray the body.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marvin questioned.

  “Just what I said,” Laurie remarked. “There was no X-ray slip in the autopsy folder and there were no films down here with others when I looked prior to finding out that the body had disappeared.”

  “I took X rays,” Marvin said. He acted hurt that Laurie would suggest that he hadn’t. “I always take X rays when a body comes in unless one of the doctors tells me otherwise.”

  “Then where’s the slip and where are the films?” Laurie asked.

  “Hey, I don’t know what happened to the slip,” Marvin said. “But the films: They went with Doctor Bingham.”

  “Bingham took them?” Laurie questioned. Even that was odd, yet she recognized that Bingham probably was planning on doing the post the following morning.

  “He told me he was taking them up to his office,” Marvin said. “What am I supposed to do, tell the boss he can’t take the X rays. No way! Not this dude.”

  “Right, of course,” Laurie said vaguely. She was preoccupied. Here was a new surprise. X rays existed of Franconi’s body! Of course, it didn’t matter much without the body itself, but she wondered why she’d not been told. Then again she’d not seen Bingham until after it was known that Franconi’s body had been stolen.

  “Well, I’m glad I spoke to you,” Laurie said, coming out of her musing. “And I apologize for suggesting that you’d forgotten to take the films.”

  “Hey, it’s cool,” Marvin said.

  Laurie was about to leave when she thought about the Spoletto Funeral Home. On a whim, she asked Marvin about it.

  Marvin shrugged. “What do you want to know?” he asked. “I don’t know much. I’ve never been there, you know what I’m saying.”

  “What are the people like who come here from the home?” Laurie asked.

  “Normal,” Marvin said with another shrug. “I’ve probably only seen them a couple of times. I mean, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  Laurie nodded. “It was a silly question. I don’t know why I asked.”

  Laurie left the mortuary office and exited the morgue through the loading area onto Thirtieth Street. It seemed to her that nothing about the Franconi case was routine.

  As Laurie commenced walking south along First Avenue another whim hit her. Suddenly, the idea of visiting the Spoletto Funeral Home seemed very appealing. She hesitated for a second while considering the idea and then stepped out into the street to hail a cab.

  “Where to, lady?” the driver asked. Laurie could see from his hackney license that his name was Michael Neu-man.

  “Do you know where Ozone Park is?” Laurie asked.

  “Sure, it’s over in Queens,” Michael said. He was an older man who, Laurie guessed, was in his late sixties. He was sitting on a foam rubber–stuffed pillow with a lot of foam rubber visible. His backrest was constructed of wooden beads.

  “How long would it take to get there?” Laurie asked. If it was going to take hours, she wouldn’t do it.

  Michael made a questioning expression by compressing his lips while thinking. “Not long,” he said vaguely. “Traffic’s light. In fact, I was just out at Kennedy Airport, and it was a breeze.”

  “Let’s go,” Laurie said.

  As Michael promised, the trip took only a short time, especially once they got on the Van Wyck Expressway. While they were traveling, Laurie found out that Michael had been driving a cab for over thirty years. He was a loquacious and opinionated man who also exuded a paternal charm.

  “Would you know where Gold Road is in Ozone Park?” Laurie asked. She felt privileged to have found an experienced taxi driver. She’d remembered the address of the Spoletto Funeral Home from the Rolodex in the mortuary office. The street name had stuck in her mind as making a metaphorical statement about the undertaking business.

  “Gold Road,” Michael said. “No problem. It’s a continuation of Eighty-ninth Street. You looking for a house or what?”

  “I’m looking for the Spoletto Funeral Home,” Laurie said.

  “I’ll have you there in no time,” Michael said.

  Laurie sat back with a contented feeling, only half listening to Michael’s nonstop chatter. For the moment luck seemed to be on her side. The reason she’d decided to visit the Spoletto Funeral Home was because Jack had been wrong about it. The home did have a mob connection, and even though it was with the wrong family according to Lou, the fact that it was associated at all was suspicious to Laurie.

  True to his promise, within a surprisingly short time Michael pulled up to a three-storied white clapboard house wedged between several brick tenements. It had Greek-style columns holding up the roof of a wide front porch. A glazed, internally lit sign in the middle of a postage stamp–sized lawn read: “Spoletto Funeral Home, a family business, two generations of caring.”

  The establishment was in full operation. Lights were on in all the windows. A few cigarette smokers were on the porch. Other people were visible through the ground-floor windows.

  Michael was about to terminate the meter when Laurie spoke up: “Would you mind waiting for me?” she asked. “I’m certain I’ll only be a few minutes, and I imagine it would be hard catching a cab from here.”

  “Sure, lady,” Michael said. “No problem.”

  “Would you mind if I left my briefcase?” Laurie asked. “There’s absolutely nothing of value in it.”

  “It will be safe just the same,” Michael said.

  Laurie got out and started up the front walk, feeling unnerved. She could remember as if it were yesterday the case Dr. Dick Katzenburg had presented at the Thursday afternoon conference five years earlier. A man in his twenties had been essentially embalmed alive in the Spoletto Funeral Home after having been involved in throwing battery acid in Pauli Cerino’s face.

  Laurie shuddered but forced herself up the front steps. She was never going to be completely free from the Cerino affair.

  The people smoking cigarettes ignored her. Soft organ music could be heard through the closed front door. Laurie tried the door. It was unlocked, and she walked in.

  Save for the music there was little sound. The floors were heavily carpeted. Small groups of people were standing around the entrance hall but they conversed in hushed whispers.

  To Laurie’s left was a room full of elaborate coffins and urns on display. To the right was a viewing room with people seated in folding chairs. At the far end of the room was a coffin resting on a bed of flowers.

  “May I help you?” a soft voice enquired.

  A thin man about Laurie’s age with an ascetic face and sad features had come up to her. He was dressed in black except for his white shirt. He was obviously part of the staff. To Laurie, he looked like her image of a puritan preacher.

  “Are you here to pay respects to Jonathan Dibartolo?” the man asked.

  “No,” Laurie said. “Frank Gleason.”

  “Excuse me?” the man enquired.

  Laurie repeated the name. There was a pause.

  “And your name is?” the man asked.

  “Dr. Laurie Montgomery.”

  “Just one moment if you will,” the man said as he literally ducked away.

  Laurie looked around at the mourners. This was a side of death that she’d experienced only once. It was when her brother had died from an overdose when he was nineteen and Laurie was fifteen. It had been a traumatic experience for her in all regards, but especially since she’d been the one who had found him.

  “Dr. Montgomery,” a soft, unctuous voice intoned. “I’m Anthony Spoletto. I understand you are here to pay respects to Mr. Frank Gleason.”

  “That’s correct,” Lauri
e said. She turned to face a man also dressed in a black suit. He was obese and as oily as his voice. His forehead glistened in the soft incandescent light.

  “I’m afraid that will be impossible,” Mr. Spoletto said.

  “I called this afternoon and was told he was on view,” Laurie said.

  “Yes, of course,” Mr. Spoletto said. “But that was this afternoon. At the family’s request this afternoon’s four P.M. to six P.M. viewing was to be the last.”

  “I see,” Laurie said, nonplussed. She’d not had any particular plan in mind concerning her visit and had intended on viewing the body as a kind of jumping-off place. Now that the body was not available, she didn’t know what to do.

  “Perhaps I could just sign the register book anyway,” Laurie said.

  “I’m afraid that, too, is impossible,” Mr. Spoletto said. “The family has already taken it.”

  “Well, I guess that’s it,” Laurie said with a limp gesture of her arms.

  “Unfortunately,” returned Mr. Spoletto.

  “Would you know when the burial is planned?” Laurie asked.

  “Not at the moment,” Mr. Spoletto said.

  “Thank you,” Laurie said.

  “Not at all,” Mr. Spoletto said. He opened the door for Laurie.

  Laurie walked out and got into the cab.

  “Now where?” Michael asked.

  Laurie gave her address on Nineteenth Street and leaned forward to look out at the Spoletto Funeral Home as the taxi pulled away. It had been a wasted trip. Or had it? After she’d been talking with Mr. Spoletto for a moment, she’d realized that his forehead wasn’t oily. The man had been perspiring despite the temperature inside the funeral parlor being decidedly on the cool side. Laurie scratched her head, wondering if that meant anything or if it were just another example of her grabbing at straws.

  “Was it a friend?” Michael asked.

  “Was who a friend?”

  “The deceased,” Michael said.

  Laurie let out a little mirthless laugh. “Hardly,” she said.

  “I know what you mean,” Michael said, looking at Laurie in the rearview mirror. “Relationships today are very complicated. And I’ll tell you why it is . . .”