Manhattan Serenade: A Novel - Joseph Sinopoli Steven

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looking, with brown hair… I think.”

      Moran sat on the edge of Rose’s desk. “Let’s move on. So you think Lacy was AC-DC?”

      Rose shrugged lightly. “Who knows? She sure was pretty enough to attract both sexes.”

      “When was the last time you saw this lady?”

      Rose scratched her chin with the tips of her fingers and looked up at Moran. “The night before they found Lacy dead.”

      “Was Lacy supposed to work the night she was killed?”

      “That was her night off.”

      Moran said. “So tell me about Paul Myer.”

      Rose gave Moran a disinterested glance. “I already gave a statement to the cops.”

      “Now you get a chance to tell me.”

      Rose gave Moran a bored look and reached for another Marlboro. “The answer then and the answer now, is that I only saw him three or four times.” She lit the cigarette and puffed out a trail of smoke from one corner of her ruby lips. “He always sat at the end of the bar, nursing one beer for hours. Seemed uncomfortable in the place.”

      Moran gazed at her and smiled inwardly. She may have been running a sleazy strip club but he admired her gutsy, take-no-prisoners attitude. Rose wheeled herself around the desk, grabbed the Marlboro pack, plucked one out and again offered it to Moran. When he shook his head, she stuck the cigarette inside his topcoat’s side pocket.

      “In case things get tough,” she said and winked.

      Moran moved toward the door. “I think that’s all for now. I may be back.”

      “I’m counting on it,” Rose purred.

      As Moran walked to his car his mind replayed Rose’s words:

      ‘… always flashing her latest piece of jewelry…’ Something was wrong with that. Except for a few pieces of cheap bling-blings, there had been no jewelry among Lacy Wooden’s personal effects.

       Where the hell was the jewelry?

      The Haifa Diamond Exchange receipt suddenly flashed in his mind.

      A preoccupied Moran walked to his car, and when he jammed his hands into his coat’s pockets to get the car key, he felt Rose’s cigarette. He took it out, studied it for a moment, then crushed it and tossed it into the gutter. It felt like stepping away from the precipice.

      The cell phone vibrated against Moran’s waist. He brought it out and looked at the screen—Sandra.

      “A utologous stem cell transplant?” Moran said. Sandra, seated next to him, gave the doctor a quizzical look. Dr. Kruger’s youthful face, complete with rosy cheeks, bright blue eyes and a tuft of limp blond hair that fell persistently over his right eyebrow, belied his forty-five years. Despite this, Kruger was a highly respected specialist in the field of advanced leukemia. He rested his forearms on top of his desk and laced his fingers.

      “Autologous means that the donor and recipient of the transplant is the same person,” Dr. Kruger said with a mild Midwest accent. “Stem cells are immature blood cells that are removed from the blood or bone marrow of the patient. My specialty is peripheral blood stem cell harvesting, which is why rather than wait for a bone marrow donor, Dr. Cook referred you to me. It’s also less invasive.” He gazed at Sandra. “I’ve added Prednisone, Cyclophosphamide and Cytoxan to your high-dose chemotherapy treatment. Then at the appropriate time—”

      Sandra looked up quickly. “Appropriate time, what exactly… I mean—” She stopped when she heard the catch in her own voice.

      “We need to destroy as much of the cancer in the bone marrow as possible before we can begin to harvest. I’ve increased the chemo dosage as much as your body can tolerate in order to shorten the treatment period to three to six months… maybe shorter.”

      Sandra cupped her husband’s hand and squeezed hard. It meant returning to the bouts of nausea and loss of her newly regrown hair along, with the loss of appetite that made her sick just to look at food.

      “What’s involved in this harvesting?” Moran asked.

      Kruger cast Moran a tolerant smile—the kind teachers give impertinent students.

      “Stem cells are collected through a small catheter inserted into the patient’s vein. The number of circulating stem cells is increased in patients whose bone marrow is recovering from chemotherapy. Then by injecting Cytokines, or blood cell growth factors, we stimulate the production of immature and mature bone marrow stem cells as much as one hundredfold.”

      Moran grimaced. “Have you had much success?”

      Dr. Kruger gave another smile. “This procedure has been successful in forty percent of the cases it’s been used.”

      “What happened to the—” Moran stopped when he realized what the answer would be.

      Sandra let go of her husband’s hand and stretched forward in her chair. “What exactly are my chances?”

      The doctor cleared his throat. “In order to have any shot at success we need to infuse over five million cells per kilogram of your weight over a period of nine to ten days.”

      Sandra’s eyes widened.

      “Since we don’t know what the minimum amount is, I like to go for the gusto.” The doctor spoke with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader. “As my son says, the whole enchilada!”

      When he saw no one else shared his zeal, Dr. Kruger continued. “The great advantage of this procedure is that you will experience a faster recovery of your bone marrow compared to having undergone a traditional transplant.”

      Sandra frowned. “What if you can’t collect enough stem cells?”

      “Then we try again until we have enough of them. In the meantime, we freeze the ones we’ve collected. I’m not giving up, Mrs. Moran—and neither are you.”

      It may have been the middle of November when Moran and Sandra walked out of Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital, but it felt like spring. The city was under a canvas of a cloudless blue sky and the temperature felt in the seventies; it matched their renewed hope and optimism.

       Maybe Kruger was capable of hitting one over the centerfield wall.

      The brass nameplate on the tooled mahogany desk identified the woman seated behind it as, “Linda Garcia, Manager.” She looked exactly like who she was supposed to be, the manager of the largest branch of the Banco de Mejico. She was attractive, mid-thirties, flawless white skin, strong chin, a small, straight nose, high cheekbones, and bright steady dark brown eyes. Her chestnut hair was closely cropped, and she was decked out in a tailored navy blue pantsuit that covered a fuchsia silk blouse.

      Linda Garcia rose and greeted Hernandez. “Please sit down,” she said in a perfect English —the accent neutral. She gestured to the large stuffed chair in front of her orderly desk. Like the desk, the rest of the office was impeccably neat, decorated with colorful lithographs of Mexican landscapes.

      Hernandez sat and watched while Garcia poured herself with liquid grace into a soft leather chair.

      “I went over the Miramar account and made copies for you,” she said and pushed some Xeroxed documents to the edge of the desk.

      Hernandez grasped the set of five pages of deposits, withdrawals, interest, and other miscellany. He pulled out the last page and studied it. “This only confirms what we already know, that ten million dollars was transferred from various accounts at Morrison Savings

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