Sitting down at her desk, Laurie started with the first folder. She didn’t get far. The moment she opened it there was a knock on her door. “Come in,” she said.

The door opened slowly and Lou Soldano poked his face in. “Hope I’m not bothering you too much,” he said. “I’m sure you didn’t expect to see me.”

He looked as though he’d never gone to bed the previous night. He was wearing the same baggy, unpressed suit and he still hadn’t managed to shave.

“You’re not bothering me,” Laurie said. “Come in!”

“So how are you today?” he asked once he’d come in and sat down. He put his hat in his lap.

“Except for a little run-in with the boss, I guess I’m fine.”

“Wasn’t about my being here yesterday, was it?” Lou asked.

“No,” Laurie said. “Something I did yesterday afternoon which I suppose I shouldn’t have. But it’s always easy to say that after the fact.”

“I hope you don’t mind my coming back today, but I understand you have a couple more cases like poor Frankie’s. They were found almost in the same spot by the same night security guard. So I was back out at the South Street Sea Port at five in the morning. Wow!” he said, suddenly spotting Laurie’s flask. “Fancy flowers. They weren’t here yesterday.”

“You like them?” she asked.

“Pretty impressive,” Lou said. “They from an admirer?”

Laurie wasn’t sure how to answer. “I guess you’d call him that.”

“Well, that’s nice,” Lou said. He looked down at his hat and straightened the brim. “Anyway, Dr. Washington said he assigned the cases to you, so here I am. Do you mind if I tag along again?”

“Not at all,” Laurie said. “If you think you can take several more autopsies, I’m glad to have you.”

“I’m pretty sure at least one of the deaths is related to Frankie’s,” Lou said, moving forward in his chair. “The name is Bruno Marchese. Same age as Frankie and about the same position in the organization. The reason we know so much so quickly is that his wallet was found on his body, just as Frankie’s was. Obviously whoever killed him wanted the fact of his death to be immediately known, like an advertisement. When it happened with Frankie we thought it had been a lucky accident. When it happens twice, we know it’s deliberate. And it has us worried: something big might be about to happen, like an all-out war between the two organizations. If that’s the case, we’ve got to stop it. A lot of innocent people get killed in any war.”

“Was he killed the same way?” Laurie asked as she went through the folders until she came across Bruno’s.

“Same way,” Lou said. “Gangland-style execution. Shot in the back of the head from close range.”

“And with a small-caliber bullet,” Laurie added as she finished with Bruno’s folder and picked up the phone. She dialed the morgue. When someone answered, she asked for Vinnie.

“Are we together again today?” Laurie asked.

“You’re stuck with me all week,” Vinnie said.

“We got two floaters,” Laurie said. “Bruno Marchese and…” Laurie looked over at Lou. “What’s the name of the other one.”

“We don’t know,” Lou said. “There’s been no ID.”

“No wallet?” Laurie asked.

“Worse than that,” Lou said. “Both the head and the hands are missing. This one they didn’t want us to identify at all.”

“Lovely!” Laurie said sarcastically. “The post will be of limited value without the head.” To Vinnie she said, “I want to be sure Bruno Marchese and the headless man get X-rayed.”

“We’re already working on it,” Vinnie said. “But it’s going to be a while. They’re in line. Busy down here today. There was some kind of gang war up in Harlem last night, so we’re knee deep in gunshot wounds. And by the way, the headless corpse is a woman, not a man. When will you be down here?”

“Shortly,” Laurie said. “Make sure we have a rape-kit for the female.” She hung up and looked over at Lou. “You didn’t tell me one of the floaters was a woman.”

“I didn’t have a chance,” Lou said.

“Well, no matter,” Laurie said. “Unfortunately, the cases you are interested in won’t be first. I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” Lou said. “I like to watch you work.”

Laurie scanned the material in the folder on the headless woman. Then she perused one of the overdose folders. She’d only got as far as the investigator’s report before she reached for the last folder and scanned its investigator’s report. “This is amazing,” she said. She looked up at Lou. “Dr. Washington said these cases were the same as Duncan Andrews. I had no idea he was speaking so literally. What a coincidence.”

“Are they cocaine overdoses?” Lou asked.

“Yes,” Laurie said. “But that’s not what makes them such a coincidence. One’s a banker, the other an editor.”

“What’s so amazing about that?” Lou asked.

“It’s the demographics,” Laurie said. “All three were successful professionals, actively employed, young single people. Hardly the usual overdose we’re accustomed to seeing around here.”

“Like I said: what’s so amazing about that? Aren’t these people the kind of yuppies who made coke popular? What’s the big surprise?”

“The fact that they took cocaine is not the surprising aspect,” Laurie began slowly. “I’m not naive. Behind the veneer of material success can lie some pretty serious addictions. But as I told you the overdose cases we get in here are usually the truly down and out. With crack you see a lot of very impoverished, lower-class people. We do see more prosperous people from time to time, but usually by the time the drugs kill them, they’ve already lost everything else: job, family, money. These recent cases just don’t strike me as typical overdoses. It makes me wonder if there wasn’t some kind of poison in the drug. Now where did I put that article from the American Journal of Medicine?” she said, talking more to herself. “Ah, here it is.”

Laurie pulled out a reprint of an article and handed it to Lou. “Street cocaine is always cut with something, usually sugars or common stimulants, but sometimes with weird stuff. That article is about a series of poisonings resulting from a kilo of cocaine cut with strychnine.”

“Wow,” Lou said as he scanned the article. “That would be quite a trip.”

“It’d be a quick trip in here to the morgue,” Laurie agreed. “Seeing three rather atypical OD cases with such strikingly similar demographics in two days makes me wonder if they each got the cocaine from the same contaminated source.”

“I think it’s a long shot,” Lou said. “Especially with only three cases. And quite frankly, even if your hunch is right, I’m not that interested.”

“Not interested?” Laurie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“With all the problems this city has, with all the violence and street crime going down, it’s hard for me to muster much sympathy for a trio of fancy pants who have nothing better to do with their leisure time than do illegal drugs. Frankly I’m much more concerned about poor slobs like that headless female floater we got downstairs.”

Laurie was stunned, but before she could launch into a rebuttal, her phone rang. She was surprised to hear Jordan Scheffield on the other end when she picked up.

“I finished my first case,” he said. “Went perfectly. I’m sure the Baron will be pleased.”

“Glad to hear it,” Laurie said, glancing self-consciously at Lou.

“Did you get the flowers?” Jordan asked.

“Yes,” Laurie said. “I’m looking at them this very minute. Thank you. They were just what the doctor ordered.”

“Very clever,” Jordan laughed. “I thought it would be an appropriate way to let you know that I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight.”

“The gesture might fall into the same category as your limo,” Laurie said. “A bit on the extravagant side. But I appreciate your thinking of me.”

“Well, I just wanted to check in. I’ve got to get back to surgery,” Jordan said. “See you at eight.”

“I’m sorry,” Lou said once Laurie had hung up. “You could have told me it was a personal call. I would have stepped out into the hall.”