For a brief, panic-filled second, Kurt debated what to do. But his training prevailed, and he quickly regained his customary composure. He finished with the phone by snapping its cover into place, then slipped it back to its original position behind the hydrochloric acid bottle. Then he lent his attention to the jeweler’s tools, the monitoring device, and the loupe. As silently as possible, he got them into a drawer and pushed it closed with his hip. Stephanie D’Agostino was now a mere twenty feet away and closing in rapidly. Backing away, Kurt intended to keep the lab bench and its overhead shelving between him and the researcher. It was not much cover, and she would surely see him, but there were no other options.
In truth, Tony was mostly pissed that he had to forsake a nice lunch, which was one of the high points of his day, while he made yet another visit to the freaking Castigliano brothers’ crummy plumbing supply store. The rotten-egg smell of the salt marsh didn’t help matters either, although with the temperature in the twenties, it was less of a problem than it had been on his last visit a week and a half earlier. At least it was easier visiting the stinkhole in the middle of the day rather than at night, since he didn’t have to worry about tripping over any of the crap littered around the front of the place. The good part was that he had reason to believe this would be the last visit, at least concerning the problem with CURE.
Tony went through the entrance door and headed for the rear office. Gaetano looked up from dealing with a couple customers at the front counter and nodded a greeting. Tony ignored him. If Gaetano had done his job right, Tony would not be walking at that moment between dusty plumbing-supply shelves, with the smell of rotten eggs lingering in his nose. Instead, he’d be sitting at his favorite table at his Blue Grotto restaurant on Hanover Street, sipping a glass of ’97 Chianti while trying to decide which pasta to have. When underlings screwed up, it irked him to death, since it never failed to mess up his life. As he’d grown older, he’d become a progressively firmer believer in the old saying, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
Tony opened the door to the rear office, stepped in, and pulled the door shut with a bang. Lou and Sal were at their respective desks, eating pizza. A fleeting shiver of nausea went down Tony’s spine. He hated the smell of anchovies, especially combined with the residual aroma of rotten eggs.
“You people have a problem,” Tony announced, pressing his lips together in a wry expression of disgust and bobbing his head like one of the dog figures some folks put in the rear windows of their cars. But to ensure that he wasn’t implying any disrespect to the twins, he approached each of them for a quick, slapping handshake before retreating to the couch and plopping down. He unbuttoned his coat but left it on. He only intended to stay for a couple minutes. There was nothing complicated about what he had to say.
“What’s wrong?” Lou asked through a mouthful of pizza.
“Gaetano screwed up. Whatever the hell he did down in Nassau had no effect at all. Zero!”
“You’re joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Tony wrinkled his forehead and spread his hands widely.
“You’re telling us that the professor and your sister didn’t come back?”
“It’s more than that,” Tony said scornfully. “Not only didn’t they come back, Gaetano’s shenanigans, whatever they were, didn’t even warrant a single word from my sister to my mother, and they talk almost every day.”
“Wait a second!” Sal questioned. “You’re saying that your sister didn’t say they had a little problem or anything like her boyfriend got hurt? Anything at all?”
“Absolutely nothing! Zilch! All I hear is everything’s going honky-dory in paradise.”
“That doesn’t jibe with what Gaetano said,” Lou said, “which I find hard to believe, since he usually overdoes the physical stuff.”
“Well, in this instance, he surely didn’t overdo anything,” Tony said. “The lovebirds are still down there, frolicking in the sun and insisting, according to my mother, that they are going to stay the three weeks or month or whatever they’d originally planned. Meanwhile, my accountant says nothing’s changed with their company’s downward spiral. He insists in a month they will be broke, so goodbye to our two hundred K.”
Sal and Lou exchanged glances of disbelief, confusion, and escalating irritation.
“What did Gaetano say he did?” Tony asked. “Slap the professor’s wrists and tell him he was being bad? Or did he not even go to Nassau and say he did?” Tony crossed his arms and legs and sat back.
“Something’s screwy in all this!” Lou declared. “None of it adds up.” He put his slice of anchovy-and-Italian-sausage pizza down, ran his tongue around the inside of his lips to loosen the debris on his teeth, swallowed, and leaned forward to press a button protruding on the surface of his desk. A muffled buzz sounded through the door connecting the office to the store proper.
“Gaetano went to Nassau!” Sal said. “We know that for damn sure.”
Tony nodded, a grimace of disbelief on his face.
He knew he was pushing the twins’ buttons, since they liked to believe they ran a tight ship. The idea was to inflame their passions, and it worked. By the time Gaetano poked his head through the door, the twins were ready to take it off.
“Get the hell in here and shut the door,” Sal snapped.
“I got customers out at the counter,” Gaetano complained. He motioned over his shoulder.
“I don’t care if you have the President of the United States out there, you moron,” Sal yelled. “Get your ass in here!” To make his point, Sal pulled out the center drawer of his desk, grabbed a snub-nosed thirty-eight revolver, and tossed it onto his blotter.
Gaetano’s broad brow knotted as he did as he was told. He’d seen the gun on a number of occasions and wasn’t worried because getting it out was one of Sal’s quirks. At the same time, he knew Sal was pissed about something, and Lou didn’t look much happier. Gaetano eyed the sofa but, with Tony occupying the middle, he decided to remain standing. “What’s up?” he asked.
“We want to know exactly what the hell you did down in Nassau!” Sal barked.
“I told you,” Gaetano said. “I did exactly what you asked me to do. I even managed to do it in one day, which was a ball-breaker, to be honest.”
“Well, maybe you should have stayed an extra day,” Sal said contemptuously. “Apparently, the professor didn’t get the message we intended.”
“What exactly did you tell the dirtbag?” Lou demanded with equal venom.
“To get his ass back here and fix his company,” Gaetano said. “Hell, it wasn’t complicated. It’s not like I could have gotten it mixed up or something.”
“Did you push him around?” Sal questioned.
“I did a lot more than push him around. I clocked him with a good one to start, which turned him into a rag doll such that I had to pick him up off the floor. I might have broken his nose, but I don’t know for sure. I know I gave him a black eye. Then I walloped him the hell out of his chair at the end, after our little talk.”
“What about a warning?” Sal questioned. “Did you tell him you’d be back if he didn’t get his ass back here to Boston and get his company back on track?”
“Yeah! I said I’d hurt him bad if I had to come back, and there’s no doubt he got the message.”
Both Sal and Lou looked at Tony. They shrugged in unison.
“Gaetano doesn’t lie about this kind of thing,” Sal said. Lou nodded in agreement.
“Well, then it’s just another instance of this professor flipping us off,” Tony said. “He certainly didn’t take Gaetano seriously, and he obviously doesn’t give a damn about our two hundred K.”
For a few minutes, silence reigned in the room. The four men eyed one another. It was obvious everybody was thinking the same thing. Tony was waiting for someone else to bring it up, and Sal finally obliged: “It’s like he’s asking for it. I mean, we already decided if he didn’t straigh
ten up, we’d whack him and let Tony’s sister take the reins.”
“Gaetano,” Lou said. “It looks like you’re going back to the Bahamas.”
“When?” Gaetano asked. “Don’t forget, I’m supposed to push around that deadbeat eye doctor from Newton tomorrow night.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Lou said. He looked at his watch. “It’s only twelve-thirty. You can go this afternoon via Miami, get rid of the professor, and be back tomorrow.”
Gaetano rolled his eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Lou demanded mockingly. “You got other things to do?”
“Sometimes it’s not that easy to whack somebody,” Gaetano said. “Hell, I got to find the guy first.”
Lou looked at Tony. “Do you know where your sister and her boyfriend are staying these days?”
“Yeah, they’re in the same hotel,” Tony said, with a dismissive laugh. “That’s how serious they took Gaetano’s lame message.”
“I’m telling you,” Gaetano insisted. “It wasn’t lame. I clocked the guy good several times.”
“How do you know they’re at the same hotel?” Lou asked.
“From my mother,” Tony said. “She’s been mostly calling my sister’s cell phone, but she told me she’d also tried the hotel once when she couldn’t get through on the cell. The lovebirds are not only at the same hotel, but they’re still in the same room.”
“Well, there you go,” Lou said to Gaetano.
“Can I do the hit at the hotel?” Gaetano asked. “That will make it a hell of a lot easier.”
Lou looked at Sal. Sal looked at Tony.
“No reason why not,” Tony said with a shrug. “I mean, as long as my sister’s not involved, and as long as it’s done quietly, without a scene.”
“That goes without saying,” Gaetano remarked. He was warming to the idea. Heading all the way down to Nassau for an overnight might involve a lot of traveling, and it would be hardly a vacation in the sun, but it could be fun. “What about a gun? It’s got to have a silencer.”
“I’m sure our Colombian friends in Miami can arrange that,” Lou said. “With as much of their junk as we push for them up here in New England, they owe us.”
“How will I get it?” Gaetano asked.
“I imagine somebody will come to you when you land in Nassau,” Lou said. “I’ll work on it. As soon as you know the number of the flight you’re going to take over to the island, let me know.”
“What if there is a problem, and I don’t get a gun?” Gaetano questioned. “If you want me back here for tomorrow night, everything has to go smoothly.”
“If you arrive and no one approaches you, give me a call,” Lou said.
“Okay,” Gaetano said agreeably. “I’d better get my ass in gear.”
nineteen
12:11 P.M., Monday, March 11, 2002
The sign’s message was clear. It said: RESTRICTED ACCESS, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, PROHIBITION STRICTLY ENFORCED. Stephanie paused for a moment, gazing at the framed, glazed sign. It was attached to a door next to a freight elevator. It was from this door that Cindy Drexler routinely emerged, most interestingly, when she’d brought the oocytes for Stephanie and Daniel. Stephanie had seen the sign obliquely from a distance but had never gone over to read it. Now that she had, it gave her pause. She wondered what it meant for the prohibition to be strictly enforced, considering the Wingate principals’ tendency toward overkill in the security arena. But she had come this far and wasn’t about to turn around and give up because of a generic printed warning. She pushed against the door. It opened. Beyond was a stairway leading downward. The reassuring thought went through her mind that if they were so concerned about intruders in the egg room, they would have locked the stairwell door.
With a final rapid glance over her shoulder to make sure she was alone in the lab, Stephanie stepped through the door. It closed behind her. Immediately, she sensed a contrast from the dry coolness of the air-conditioned lab. Within the stairwell, the air was considerably warmer and moister. She started down the stairs, moving quickly, aided by her flat shoes.
Stephanie was rushing as best she could because she had planned to give herself a mere fifteen minutes—twenty, tops—to be away from Daniel. She checked her watch as she descended; five minutes had already been consumed just getting from the cafeteria to where she was at that moment. Her only minor detour had been to grab her cell phone. She didn’t want to forget and get back to the cafeteria without it, since it was her excuse for being away. Daniel had given her a strange look when she’d jumped up, saying she’d forgotten it, just after sitting down with her meal. She knew he’d be irritated if he knew what she was up to.
At the base of the stairs, Stephanie skidded to a stop. She found herself in a short, dimly lit corridor with access to the freight elevator along one wall and a shiny, stainless-steel door totally devoid of hardware at its end. There was no door handle or even lock. Stephanie approached the door and put her hand on it to push. It was warm to the touch but entirely immobile. She put her ear to it. She thought she could detect a slight whirring noise from beyond.
Stephanie leaned back and glanced around the blank door’s periphery. It sealed against a metal jamb with a machinist’s precision. Getting down on her hands and knees, she noted it was the same at the door’s base. The care with which the door was fashioned fanned her already considerable curiosity. She got back on her feet, and with the side of her fist, she thumped quietly against the door. She was trying to gauge its thickness, which she surmised was considerable, since it was rock-solid.
“Well, so much for my mini-investigation,” Stephanie whispered out loud. She shook her head in frustration while allowing her eyes to trace around the periphery once more. She was surprised there was no bell or intercom system, nor any obvious way to open the door or communicate with anyone within.
With a final sigh of exasperation accompanied by an expression of disgust, she turned back to the stairs, recognizing she’d have to conjure up another strategy if she intended to continue her clandestine sleuthing. But she only took a single step when her eye caught something she’d missed. Barely protruding from the wall opposite the freight elevator and quite inconspicuous in the dim light was a tiny, three-inch-long by three-quarters-of-an-inch-wide card swipe. Stephanie had not seen it earlier, because her attention had been overwhelmed by the gleaming door itself. Also, the swipe was the same neutral color as the wall and was more than six feet from the door.
Megan Finnigan had made sure Stephanie and Daniel had Wingate Clinic identification cards. Each had an ugly, mugshot-style Polaroid photo laminated on the face with magnetic strip on the back. Megan had said that the cards would be more important for security purposes when the clinic was up to strength personnel-wise, at which time they would be coded for the bearer’s individual needs. In the meantime, Megan told them the cards were necessary to get into the lab’s storeroom for basic supplies.
On the odd chance the ID card might work for the egg room at this early stage of the clinic’s existence, Stephanie gave it a try. She was immediately rewarded by the stainless-steel door retracting to the side with a muffled whoosh of compressed air. At the same time, Stephanie noticed that she was enveloped by a weird glow emanating from the room beyond, which she guessed was a mixture of incandescent and ultraviolet light. There was also an accompanying waft of moist, warm air, and the whirring noise she’d thought she’d heard earlier with her ear to the door was now a definite presence.
Pleased at this sudden but welcome reversal of fortune, Stephanie quickly stepped over the threshold and found herself in what appeared to be a giant incubator. With the temperature in the vicinity of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or body temperature, and the humidity close to one hundred percent, she felt perspiration break out all over her body. Although she was wearing a sleeveless blouse, she had a short, white laboratory coat over it. She now understood why Cindy wore a special lightweight cotton jumpsuit.
Racks similar
to bookshelves but containing tissue culture dishes formed a gridlike floor plan similar to the stacks of a library. Each was about ten feet long, constructed of aluminum with adjustable shelves and extended from the tile floor to the rather low tile ceiling. All the tissue culture dishes in Stephanie’s immediate view were empty. Ahead of her was a lengthy aisle, the shelving of which made it appear to be a study in perspective. It was so long that a dim, humid haze obscured its distant end. From the size of the facility, it was obvious the Wingate was preparing for significant production capacity.
Stephanie started forward at a rapid walk, glancing from side to side. Thirty paces into the room, she stopped when she found a rack that contained actively growing tissue cultures, as evidenced by fluid levels visible through the clear glass containers. She lifted one out. Written in grease pencil on its cover was OOGONIA CULTURE, accompanied by a recent date and an alphanumeric code.
Stephanie replaced the dish and checked others throughout the rack. They had different dates and different codes. Learning that the Wingate was seemingly successfully culturing primitive germ cells was both interesting and disturbing for a variety of reasons, but it was not her goal. What she was hoping to do was to ascertain the origin of the oogonia and the oocytes they were culturing and maturing. She thought she knew, but she wanted definitive proof that she could pass on to a Bahamian authority after Butler’s treatment and after she, Daniel, and Butler had returned to the mainland. She glanced at her watch. Eight minutes had now gone by, which was about half her allotted time.
With mounting anxiety, Stephanie pressed ahead, quickening her pace while peering down the side corridors as well as cursorily glancing at each rack of shelves she passed. The problem was that she didn’t know what she was looking for, and the room was enormous. To make matters worse, she began to notice a mild sensation of air hunger. It then dawned on her that the atmosphere in the egg room probably had an elevated level of carbon dioxide for the benefit of the tissue cultures.