She'd maintained that weight through four years of med school and three years of residency. Pasta Panzella was gone.

Well, almost gone. The ghost of Pasta still haunted her, and every so often she'd propel Gin to the chocolate section of a candy store, and Gin would give in and let Pasta have a Snickers. But only once in a while, and only one.

And now Gerry Canney was asking her out. Strange how things come full circle.

She frowned. Hadn't she heard somewhere along the line that Gerry was married? She wanted to get to know Gerry, she certainly hadn't known him well in high school, but she wasn't into games.

Pasta Panzella had been a vulnerable adolescent.

Gin Panzella, MD, was anything but.

'"Sorry I'm late, " Gerry said as he burst into Marvin Ketter's cramped officer on the EYE Street side of the Bureau building. He was puffing a little and he'd broken a sweat on the rush up from the parking garage.

"Took me a little longer than I planned.

Which was true. It had taken Pasta, no. . . Gina, a long time to finish her business in the Hart Building. And all the way back here his mind had been on her instead of Senator Schulz. God, she was beautiful now.

The metamorphosis from Pasta to Gin fascinated him. Reminded him of the time as a kid he'd left a caterpillar in a dry aquarium and returned after a weekend away to find a graceful butterfly fluttering against the glass. He'd let it fly around his room, watching it in awe for hours before opening the screen to let it glide out the window.

"Well, you've had all mornin' to scratch, ' Ketter said. "Find any worms? " Marvin Ketter had ten years on Gerry. His dark curly hair was just starting to gray at the temples and he wore it very very short. His eyebrows were his outstanding feature, enormous, bushy, Groucho-league tangles that were longer and thicker than the hair on his head. Give him a wide black mustache and a cigar and he could join Harpo and Chico without a hitch. Until he opened his mouth. Groucho didn't have a Georgia accent.

Ketter was SSA, supervising special agent. One notch above Gerry.

Gerry wanted his job. He didn't want to kick him out or make him look bad, he liked Ketter, but when Ketter moved up, Gerry wanted to move into his chair. Not simply as a career move or because he'd been a field agent long enough, there were other, more important reasons.

"Found a few goodies, but I don't know if they mean anything. And the more I learn about our boy, the less I like him. I mean, there didn't seem to be anything too small for this guy to steal."

"Plenty like him down here."

"So I'm beginning to see. Hell, I used to think I had few illusions about what really goes on up there on the Hill, but I'm beginning to think I've been a Pollyanna." He'd learned more than he wanted to know about Washington's honoraria industry.

Years ago the Senate had voted to cap the amount of honoraria each member could collect in a year. This did not deter senators from accepting "speaking engagements, " however. They continued to be flown to plush resorts, put up in lavish suites, wined and dined for days before and after their 'speech", usually a few after-dinner remarks to the corporate sales conference attendees, and then flown back to Washington loaded down with gifts. The thousand-dollar honorarium for speaking? That was donated, very visibly, to a charity.

The all-expense-paid vacation and gifts were enough of a haul for most of the legislators, but not enough for Senator Schulz. He accepted every speaking invitation that came along, demanded high honoraria, but graciously donated every dime to a church in his hometown where his uncle was minister. Gerry's investigation had uncovered evidence that the minister was keeping only a quarter of the donations for the church and funneling the rest back to Schulz.

But then Gerry had come across a connection between Schultz and Representative Hugo Lane. Both were cozy with one of the Japanese auto lobbies. A Japanese auto corporation had bought an $800, 000 condo in Palm Beach. It was registered in the company's name, but its use was reserved exclusively for Schulz and Lane. Whenever they wanted some fun in the Florida sun, it was theirs. They simply had to work it out between themselves so they wouldn't arrive at the same time

Congressman Lane had died in a car crash, ran it into a deep ravine in Rock Creek Park, two weeks before Schulz's death.

A connection? Maybe. Gerry was looking into that. So far he'd come up with zilch, but he was still looking.

"One interesting note, " he said to Ketter. "I came across a fat canceled check for plastic surgery."

"Let me guess, drawn on his reelection campaign funds. ' Of course.

"So what's the point? " "Well, seems to me people who've looking to end it all don't drop a bundle on cosmetic surgery. Sounds more like someone who's looking toward the future.

'"Possibly. Or someone who's unhappy with himself, tries plastic surgery to improve his looks, finds out it doesn't make him feel the least bit better, so he dives for the dirt."

"Spoilsport, " Gerry muttered.

"Leave the second-guessing to the shrinks. Got anything concrete? " "Yes. An odd little correlation popped out of the database. What if I told you that both Lane and Schulz had plastic surgery this summer? " Ketter shrugged. So? ' '"And what if I told you they both used the same surgeon? " "Same response. These Old Boys go to the same dentist, the same chiropractor, eat at the same restaurants, have the same personal trainer, sometimes the same mistresses. So why not use the same plastic surgeon? Who's the doc? " "Duncan Lathram." Ketter stared at him a moment. "Well now, " he drawled. "Seems I've heard that name before. And I do believe I heard it from you. Or am I wrong? " "No, you're right."

"Seems to me you had yourself a bit of a hard-on for this Doc Lathram a while back." '"We had a disagreement. That's all. ' More than a disagreement, actually.

Duncan Lathram had flat out refused to operate on Gerry's face after the car accident. It had been a very bad time for Gerry. The worst.

And Lathram's brush-off had almost put him over the edge. He still smarted from the sting of that rejection.

"You seemed pretty heated up at the time, if I remember." '"Look.

The computer spit out the correlation on its own. I didn't go looking for it. But you've got to admit it seems a little strange that a congressman and a senator both die a month or so after plastic surgery performed by the same doctor."

"One in a car accident, the other in a fall. I don't exactly see a trend here."

"Neither do I. Just mentioning it as a curiosity. ' "Fine. So basically we've got no evidence of foul play in the Schulz death. ' "None."

"Okay. Then let's fold up that tent and move on without muddying the water with plastic surgeons."

"Will do." . .

But Gerry's interest was piqued. It might be nothing, doubtless was nothing, but he'd keep an eye out for any other Lathram patients who wound up in the morgue.

Just for the sheer hell of it.

SURGERY DR. PANZELLA? " Gin sat before a computer terminal, completing a pre-op physical, summarizing her evaluation of a patient's cardiopulmonary status and suitability for surgery. At least that was what she was supposed to be doing. Actually she was staring at the screen ruminating about yesterday's disaster at Marsden's office and that officious little, Don't think about it.

She looked up. A young black woman, dressed in surgical scrubs and cap, had poked her head and upper body through the door of the record room and was looking at her expectantly.

'"He's ready to scrub, " said Joanna, the surgicenter's OR nurse.

"Be right there, " Gin said.

She hit F10 to save the H and P, jotted down the file name so she could finish it later, and headed upstairs for the operating suite. Even on a V.I.P morning, with only one very important patient, Duncan Lathram did not like to be kept waiting. She hustled.