"Suppose you start thinking that if there's any truth to what you're saying, I'm gonna be able to figure it out myself. It's what they pay me the big bucks to do." Parisi had given us all the time he was going to waste, so he turned on his heel and headed for the door.

"Tony, you know what to look for, right? You'll recognize all the players? Charlotte Voight, Skip Lockhart, Sylvia Foote, Free-land Jennings, the Blackwells project…"

Chapman was calling up every name he had heard in the past eight days, aware that none of them would ring a bell with the New Jersey detective. There was no reason for Parisi to have known them, but it worked perfectly to nag at his insecurity. His footsteps slowed.

"Twenty minutes, Tony. Just you and me. Blondie waits in the car."

My opportunity to participate in the search had just been sacrificed to the greater cause: male bonding.

"I must have a death wish. I'll meet you over at the office. Park a block away and leave her there." Parisi dismissed me with a heaving sigh and a look back over his shoulder. "Give me a ten-minute lead and I'll let you in the back door. Deal's off if any of the lawyers are in there working."

Mike checked his watch. "Saturday afternoon at three o'clock when it's eighteen degrees outside and we're in the middle of the holiday weekend? In Battaglia's office, even the cockroaches wouldn't be behind their desks."

He nudged me out of the waiting area. I walked to the nurses' station to inquire again about Bart Frankel's condition. A new face behind the desk asked me if I was family and I shook my head in the negative. "There's nothing I can tell you." Her grim expression spoke volumes.

We made the short drive to the prosecutor's office and this time, instead of using the rear parking lot, Mike stopped in front of the pizza shop at the far corner. He left the ignition on so that I could have the benefits of the heat and the radio.

"You mind?"

"I always knew I'd be the first thing to go. Come back with something good and I'll forgive you."

It was close to half an hour later when Mike returned to the car. The wind blew in with him as he opened the door and got back into the driver's seat. "I wouldn't say we hit the jackpot, but we got a few things to work with. This stuff would have sat in Sinnelesi's drawer till you started sprouting gray hair underneath that peroxide before anybody would have told us about it.

"First of all, Bart Frankel was-as a tribute to modern medicine, I'll say is-up to his ass in debt. Left his private practice, which wasn't exactly a thriving one, to come back to public service when the Fat Man called him. Paying a huge amount of alimony 'cause his ex has a serious medical problem. Three kids, two in college and one getting ready to go. And a slight penchant for the horses. The Meadowlands was his second home. Gambling debts running close to a quarter of a million."

Hard to do on a prosecutor's salary.

"What do you know about penny stocks, Coop? I mean the kinds that are bad schemes."

"The basics, why?"

"Explain 'em to me. I Xeroxed a file that was on top of Bart's desk, but I don't know anything about that business."

"They're generally really cheap stocks in small, sometimes dubious companies. A lot of them have involved investment scams. There are salesmen who make cold calls by telephone, just reading from a script. The guys behind the scam pump up the shares by fake trades and false publicity. When the stock soars, the promoters generally cash in and leave the other investors holding worthless shares."

"Ever hear of"-Mike looked down at the tab on the manila folder-"Jersey First Securities?"

"No."

"Seems like Sinnelesi's been investigating the company. The two partners behind the business are about to declare bankruptcy, and it looks like the note on the file quotes the feds as saying this was a 'continuing massive fraud.' And one of the penny-meisters is-"

"Ivan Kralovic, of course."

"So it would seem. And who lost lots of nickels and dimes betting on Ivan's pot?"

"Bart?"

"So when Vinny gets back from the sunny south, maybe he can explain to you why he'd let Bart anywhere near this investigation. Hold on to the file. Now, exhibit number two. Here's a photocopy of a little envelope," Mike said, holding up an image of a tiny white packet that looked no longer than three inches. "You recognize the penmanship?"

I did. It was Dakota's.

"Can't say I'm as familiar with it as you are, but when I saw the little Post-it attached with the initials L.D., I took a wild guess."

I looked at the single word printed on the front by Lola: "Blackwells."

"I lifted the flap and guess what slipped into my hand?"

I shook my head at Mike, puzzled.

"A little gold key. No markings, no numbers."

"Was there anything else with this?"

"Nope. It was buried under a few personal notes in his top drawer. Now all we have to do is find out what it fits into. Get one of your clones started on a warrant."

He revved up the engine and made a U-turn on the quiet street. "And last but not least, we're going to meet Dr. Claude Lavery."

"Now? Is he back? Why-"

"Because that's who Bart Frankel was on his way to see this morning when he was so rudely interrupted."

"Tony Parisi told you about Lavery?"

"No, he called over to Bart's house. I almost had him convinced after a once-over of Bart's office that he should walk me through his home to see if we could find anything. You know that if Bart's life was as screwed up as it sounds, he's probably got stuff there that we should be looking at. Anyway, one of his kids had taken a break from the hospital vigil and answered the phone, which put the kibosh on that idea for the moment."

I couldn't imagine what this was like for Bart's three children.

"But when Tony asked the daughter why her dad had left the house so early this morning, she said that a man had called him last night and Bart had told her that he had to go into the city to see him. There was a pad next to the telephone that had Lavery's name and number written on it."

"Not bad for a quick sweep through the office."

"Hey, easier than if I had to search your place for anything of value. You got four extra pairs of shoes under the desk, different-height heels for every occasion. Drawers filled with panty hose, nail polish, perfume, and Extra-Strength Tylenol. Somebody bumps you off and the first thing Battaglia has to do is run a tag sale to get rid of your beauty supplies."

Mike was enthused now. He had new directions in which to proceed and pieces of the puzzle to try to fit into place. "How do you even begin to figure out the significance of a key? And how do you know what door it fits?"

"Start with the fact that it's labeled 'Blackwells.'"

"Yeah, but there aren't a lot of buildings still standing on the island from those days. And the remnants that are there don't have doors."

"So it's something connected to the project, probably."

"I think even two hours' exposure to New Jersey has damaged your brain. No kidding, Coop. Like I needed your help to figure that one out."

"Were any of the things taken from Lola's office, after Lily gave Sinnelesi permission, listed and inventoried so we have a record of them?"

"Nope. Would it surprise you to learn that Bart Frankel picked two of his squad cops, drove over himself, and just sort of packed up the whole bundle to be sorted out at his convenience? In the privacy of his office. Somehow that stinks as bad as the rest of what he was doing."

"Where is the stuff now?"

"Parisi doesn't know. He'll have to find the guys who went with Bart and see what closet they dumped everything into."

"Sooner rather than later. We've got to see what he found."

"Give me credit for something, Coop. I do believe I've lit that fire under Parisi's ass."