Marker

  “When you looked into it, did you find anything at all?”

  “I didn’t. The patients have been on different floors, with different staff, and different doctors. But I haven’t given up.”

  “Good!” Laurie said. “I’m glad you are on top of it, and I’m glad to have had a chance to satisfy my conscience.” She stood up, but the second she did, she wished she hadn’t, yet she couldn’t sit back down for fear of embarrassing herself. The problem was Jack. In fact, lately it seemed that the problem was always Jack. She had enjoyed talking with this man and the feeling made her uncomfortable. “Well, thanks for listening to me,” she added, extending her hand toward Roger in an attempt to regain a modicum of control. “It has been nice meeting you. As I mentioned, I’ll be getting copies of the charts, and I have our best toxicologist working on it. I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Roger said, shaking her hand but then holding on to it. “Now, may I ask a few questions?”

  “Of course,” Laurie said.

  “Would you mind sitting back down?” Roger asked. He let go of Laurie’s hand and gestured toward the chair Laurie had just vacated. “I prefer you sitting, so I don’t have to worry you’ll flee out the door.”

  Somewhat confused by Roger’s last comment and why he might believe she’d want to flee, Laurie sat back down.

  “I have to confess that I have an ulterior motive in being uncharacteristically glib about answering personal questions. If you would indulge me, I’d like to ask you a few personal questions, since Sue made it a point to tell me that you were single and unattached. Is any or all of that correct?”

  Laurie immediately felt dampness in the palms of her hands. Was she unattached? Being put on the spot by an attractive, interesting man who was expecting an answer made her pulse race. She didn’t know what to say.

  Roger leaned forward and dipped his head to try to look Laurie in the eyes. Her eyes had lowered in response to her emotional confusion.

  “I apologize if I am upsetting you,” Roger said.

  Laurie straightened up, took a deep breath, and smiled wanly. “You’re not upsetting me,” she lied. “I just didn’t expect to be asked that kind of question, especially on this potentially kamikaze career-wise mission of mine over here to the Manhattan General.”

  “Then an answer would be nice,” Roger persisted.

  Laurie smiled again, mostly at herself. She was again acting like a teenager. “I am single and mostly unattached.”

  “ ‘Mostly’ is an interesting choice for an adverb, but I’ll accept it on face value, since we all live in a social web of sorts. Do you live in the city?”

  An embarrassing snapshot of her tiny apartment with its seedy entrance flashed through Laurie’s mind. “Yes, I have a flat downtown.” Then, to make it sound better than it was, she added, “Not too far from Gramercy Park.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “How about yourself?”

  “I’ve only been back for a little over three months, so I wasn’t sure where the best place was to live currently in the city. I took a year’s lease on an apartment on the Upper West Side—Seventieth Street, to be exact. I like it. It’s close to that new Sports L.A. club, the museum, and Lincoln Center, plus I have the park at my fingertips.”

  “Sounds good,” Laurie said. She and Jack had frequented restaurants in that area over the last several years.

  “My next question is whether you’d care to have dinner with me tonight.”

  Laurie smiled inwardly as the aphorism “Be careful what you wish for, since it may come true” occurred to her. Over the last number of years with Jack, she’d progressively come to realize how much she appreciated decisiveness in her significant other, something Jack lacked in his personal life. Roger, on the other hand, seemed to be the opposite. Even during this brief encounter, she sensed his personality embodied the term.

  “It doesn’t have to be a late night,” Roger added when Laurie hesitated. “It can be a restaurant of your choosing right around where you live.”

  “How about on the weekend?” Laurie suggested. “I happen to be free.”

  “That could be held out as a bonus if you enjoy yourself tonight,” Roger said zealously, taking Laurie’s suggestion as an auspicious response. “I’m afraid I must insist on tonight, provided, of course, you are free. That gives you an easy out, since you can always say you are busy. But I hope you don’t. I have to admit right up front I have not been bowled over by interesting, accomplished women in this town, and I have had my antennae fully extended.”

  Laurie was flattered with Roger’s insistence, especially compared to Jack’s indecisiveness, and having been introduced to him by Sue, Laurie felt there was no reason why she shouldn’t accept. She had been looking for a diversion, and this was the healthiest. “Okay,” she said. “We have a date!”

  “Great! Where? Or would you prefer I pick?”

  “How about a restaurant in SoHo called Fiamma,” Laurie suggested. She wanted to steer clear of any of the places she and Jack had frequented, even if there was a low probability of running into him. “I’ll call and make a reservation at seven.”

  “Sounds good. Should I pick you up at your apartment?”

  “Let’s meet at the restaurant,” Laurie said, as a sudden brief image of Mrs. Engler’s bloodshot eye peering out from behind her door popped into her head. She did not want to subject Roger to that. Not at this stage.

  Fifteen minutes later, Laurie walked out of the Manhattan General Hospital with a definite spring to her step. She was both surprised and thrilled at what felt like an adolescent infatuation. It was a type of excitement she’d not experienced since being in the ninth grade at the Langley School for Girls. She knew from experience that the feelings were premature and that they probably wouldn’t stand the test of time, but she didn’t care. She was going to enjoy the euphoria while it lasted. She deserved it.

  Standing at the curb, she looked at her watch. With time to spare and with the University Hospital in proximity, she decided to head over and pay a quick visit to her mother before returning to the OCME.

  eight

  5 WEEKS LATER

  JASMINE RAKOCZI WAS REASONABLY certain that there were at least two snipers positioned on the rooftop of the gutted building to her right. Directly ahead was an open space of no more than fifteen feet leading into a building taller than the sniper’s position. Her plan was simple: dash across the divide, dive into the building, and then head for the roof. At that point, she could dispatch the snipers and then move deeper into the ravaged city to accomplish her mission.

  Rubbing her hands together in anticipation of her bolt across the open space, she made herself as ready as possible. Her heart was racing and her breathing was rapid and shallow. Calling on her military basic training, she calmed herself, took a deep breath, and then made the move.

  Unfortunately, things didn’t go as she had planned. Halfway across the open space and just when she was fully exposed, she hesitated as something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. The result was predictable. She was shot, and having been shot, she certainly was not going to be promoted.

  Voicing a few choice swear words she had learned in the marines, Jazz sat back, took her hands from the keyboard, and vigorously rubbed her face. As a stand-in for a Russian conscript in the battle of Stalingrad, she had been concentrating intently for several hours while playing the computer game Call of Duty. She’d been doing fantastic until this current debacle, which meant she’d have to start over. The goal was to complete progressively more difficult missions and be promoted up through the ranks to reach the level of tank commander. Now it wasn’t going to happen. At least not tonight.

  Letting her hands drop down into her lap, she looked over to the side of her computer screen to see what had messed her up. It was a small, blinking, pop-up window she’d set to appear when she got an e-mail. Imagining that she was going to be even angrier when she
found some stupid porn solicitation or a Viagra advertisement, Jazz clicked on it. To her delight, it was a message from Mr. Bob!

  A shiver of excitement coursed down Jazz’s spine like a bolt of electricity. She’d not heard from Mr. Bob for over a month and was beginning to think Operation Winnow had been terminated. Over the last week, she’d become depressed enough to be tempted to use the emergency number Mr. Bob had given her, even though he had made it crystal clear that the number was only for emergencies from her end. As that was not technically the case, she’d resisted, but as the days had worn on and her discouragement mounted, she’d begun to warm to the idea. After all, she was getting to the point where she might have to move on from the Manhattan General Hospital, which was the hospital where Mr. Bob had specifically asked her to become employed.

  The reason Jazz was thinking of moving was because her relationship with the night-shift charge nurse, Susan Chapman, had deteriorated to the point of ridiculousness, as did her relationship with the rest of the shift’s nurses, for that matter. Jazz had come to believe the night shift was the place where nursing incompetents hid from the world. She had no idea how Susan had ever gotten to be in charge of anything, much less the surgical floor at the General. Not only was Susan a fat blob, but she knew crap and was always bossing Jazz around to do this or do that, and finding fault with everything Jazz did, which was easy, since the other nurses kept ragging on her about everything, especially when she’d duck into the back room to put her feet up for a few minutes and read a magazine.

  Worst of all, Susan always assigned the worst cases to Jazz, as though she was thumbing her nose at her every night, letting the other nurses have the easy ones. Susan even had the nerve to complain to Jazz about Jazz nosing around in the charts of the cases not assigned to her and to question why Jazz frequently went to the obstetrics floor when she was supposed to be at lunch. Susan said the obstetrics charge nurse had called to complain.

  Jazz had bit her tongue at the time and resisted the temptation to ream Susan out the way she deserved or, better yet, to follow her home and use the Glock to get rid of her once and for all. Instead, Jazz dreamed up an explanation involving her need for continuing education . . . blah, blah, blah. It was all bull, but it seemed to work, at least temporarily. The problem was that Jazz needed to go to obstetrics and neurosurgery most every night, since it was the only way she could keep up with what was happening in those specialties. Even though Jazz had not had any patients to sanction, she had kept up with reporting adverse outcomes, which were mostly in obstetrics, involving druggies giving birth to screwed-up babies. Unfortunately, such reporting was not that challenging or fun, and the money was piddling compared to the pay for sanctioning patients.

  Holding her breath, Jazz opened Mr. Bob’s e-mail. “Yes!” she shouted while she punched the air over her head with both hands like a professional cyclist winning a leg on a grand tour event. The e-mail was simply the name, Stephen Lewis, meaning Jazz had another mission! Suddenly, going to work was not going to be the grim experience it had become. Putting up with Susan Chapman and the rest of the schmucks wasn’t going to be any easier, but at least there was a reason.

  Beside herself with excitement, Jazz quickly accessed her offshore bank account. For a pleasurable moment, she just stared at the balance. It was thirty-eight thousand nine hundred and sixty-four dollars and some odd cents. The best part was that by tomorrow, it would be five thousand higher.

  For Jazz, the idea of having money in the bank meant power. Even if she didn’t do anything particular with it, she knew she could. Money gave her options. She had never had money in the bank, any money that came into her hands went right out for whatever she wanted at the moment, in a vain attempt to obscure the reality of her life. In middle school and high school, that meant drugs.

  As a child, Jazz had grown up in near-poverty conditions in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. Her father, Geza Rakoczi, the only son of a Hungarian freedom fighter who’d immigrated to the USA in 1957, had sired her at age fifteen. Her mother, Mariana, was the same age and from a large Puerto Rican family. For religious reasons, the youths were forced by their respective families to drop out of school and marry. Jasmine was born in 1972.

  Life for Jasmine was a struggle from the very beginning. Both parents shunned the Church, which they blamed for their plight. Both became alcoholics as well as drug abusers, and fought almost continually when they were sober enough. Her father worked intermittently at various manual occupations, disappeared on occasion for weeks at a time, and spent time in jail for various felonies and misdemeanors, including domestic violence. Her mother worked at a series of odd jobs but was constantly fired for absenteeism or poor performance secondary to drunkenness. Ultimately, she became remarkably obese, which limited what she could do.

  Jasmine’s life outside the home was no better than within. The neighborhood and the schools were caught in a web of gang-related violence and drugs that reached down into the grammar school. Even kindergarten teachers spent more time dealing with behavior problems than teaching.

  Forced into a precarious and dangerous world where the only consistency was constant change, Jasmine learned to cope by trial and error. Every time she came home from school she had no idea what to expect. A sibling boy born when she was eight and whom she thought would be her soul mate died of SIDS at age four months. It was the last time she cried.

  As Jazz gazed at her nearly forty-thousand-dollar offshore account balance, she remembered the only other time she had thought she had a lot of money. It was the year after baby Janos died, and it had snowed enough to actually accumulate. With an old coal shovel Jazz had found in the basement of their tenement, she’d walked around the neighborhood and shoveled walks. By five o’clock, she had amassed a fortune: thirteen dollars.

  Feeling proud, she’d returned home with the roll of singles clutched in her hand. In retrospect, she should have known better, but at the time, she couldn’t help but flaunt her newly acquired wealth as evidence of her worth. The result was predictable, as Jazz now knew. Geza had snatched the money away, saying it was about time she contributed to the family larder. Actually, he used the money to buy cigarettes.

  A slight smile played across Jazz’s face as she remembered her revenge. The only thing her father loved at the time was a yappy mutt the size of a rat, with long hair, which someone had given him where he was temporarily employed at the time. While Geza was drinking beer and watching the fights on TV, she’d taken the dog into the bathroom where the window was always open to help with the smell from the broken toilet. She could remember as if it were yesterday the expression on the dog’s face as she held it out the window by the scruff of its neck while it tried furiously to regain the sill. When she let go, it let out a little yelp before plunging four stories down to the concrete below.

  Later, Geza had rudely awakened her to demand if she knew anything about the dog’s demise. Jazz had denied it vehemently, but she still got knocked around, as did Mariana, who more truthfully denied knowing how the dog fell from the bathroom window. But Jazz had felt the beating was worth it, even though at the time she was terrified. Of course, she was always terrified when her father hit her, which was entirely too often until Jazz got big enough to hit back.

  Jazz closed her offshore account window and checked the time. It was too early to go to work, but there was not enough time to go to the gym. As far as starting another session with Call of Duty, she was too antsy to sit still. Instead, she decided to head down to the local Korean twenty-four-hour sundry store to get a few basics. She was out of milk, and she knew she’d want some the following morning when she got back from the hospital.

  Pulling on her coat, her hand instinctively went into her right pocket to fondle the Glock. She pulled it out with ease, despite its lengthy suppressor, and aimed at herself in the small mirror she had on the wall next to the door. The hole in the end of the barrel looked like a pupil of a one-eyed maniac. Jazz chuckled as she
lowered the gun and compulsively checked the clip. It was full, as it always was. She rammed it home with a reassuring click. Then she got her canvas bag that she used for shopping and slung it over her shoulder.

  Outside, it was fairly mild. March was like that in New York. One day, it could feel like spring, but the next could be like the depths of winter. Jazz walked with her hands thrust into her pockets, clutching the Glock on one side and her Blackberry on the other. Holding on to her possessions gave her a sense of comfort.

  Since it was just after eight-thirty in the evening, there was a fair number of pedestrians on the sidewalk as well as vehicular traffic on the side street as Jazz headed down toward Columbus Avenue. Passing her beloved Hummer, she stopped for a moment to admire its shimmering surface. She’d used the balmy weather that afternoon as an excuse to wash it. Continuing on, she marveled, as she often did, how lucky she had been to run into Mr. Bob.

  Columbus Avenue was even busier, with tons of people and lots of buses, taxis, and cars vying for space. The sounds of the diesel engines, the beeping horns, and the screeching tires could have been overwhelming if Jazz had stopped to listen, but she was accustomed to the general din. The canopy of sky seen between the buildings was a dull gray from the reflected city lights. Only a few of the brightest stars were visible.

  The store was open to the street with shelving filled with fruits, vegetables, cut flowers, and a wide assortment of other products. Like the avenue itself, the interior was crowded with a line of customers waiting at the only cash register. Jazz walked around and made her selections, which included bread, eggs, a few PowerBars, and bottled water in addition to the milk. Once she had what she wanted, and with a touch of exhilarating tenseness, she wandered out onto the sidewalk and pretended to examine the fruit. When she thought it was the most opportune time, with the owner engrossed at the register and his wife in the back getting something, Jazz merely turned and started for home. When she was far enough away to know that she wasn’t going to be accosted and forced to come up with some lame excuse for walking away, she laughed to herself what fools the proprietors were. With multiple entrances into the store, it was so easy to leave without paying. She wondered why anyone bothered. As for herself, she couldn’t remember the last time she had.