“Work, work, work. That’s all you two do. That’s all young people do these days. At least now that you are not in residency, you have off the weekends. You will see him tomorrow.”

“Maybe.”

Mom’s eyebrows lifted. “Saturday he is working too?”

“Not him. Me.”

Now her eyes fairly bulged. “You? This company is paying you by the hour?”

“No. It’s salaried. But there’s a project—”

“If they not pay you for going in on Saturday you should not go. See, if you were working as a real doctor with real patients instead of this research silliness you would make extra for doing extra.”

“I will. I get a bonus if I complete the project before a certain date.”

Mom shrugged. “A bonus? A big bonus?”

Nadia didn’t want to tell her the million-dollar figure. She didn’t want Mom working herself up with anticipation.

“Very big.”

“A big-enough-to-be-working-on-Saturday bonus? Big enough so that after you get it you will quit this company and become a real doctor with real live patients?”

Nadia laughed. “Ooooh, yes.”

“Then I think,” Mom said, smiling, “that you should go to work tomorrow.”

8

Sal Vituolo huddled on an East Hampton dune and wondered what the hell he was doing. Freakin’ long ride to get here, and the sand being damp and chilly wasn’t helping matters much. He hoped this was going to be worth all the trouble.

And expense. This Repairman Jack guy didn’t come cheap. Sal had tried to pay him in car parts but it was cash—and lots of it—or nothing. He hadn’t particularly featured handing over that much dough with no receipt, no guarantee. Guy could be a scammer and just take off, but sometimes you just had to put aside everything you’d learned in the school of hard knocks and go with your gut. Sal’s gut said this Jack was a stand-up guy.

But maybe not wrapped too tight. Tires? What did he want with a freakin’ truckload of old tires?

The guy had shown up this afternoon to pick up the rubber and his money. Then he told Sal to go out and rent a videocam, a professional model with the best zoom lens and low-light capabilities, and haul it out here to where he could see Dragovic’s house. Keep your distance but get as close as you can without being spotted, he’d said. Sal wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but here he was.

He glanced around uneasily, hoping no one was watching him—especially no one from Dragovic’s crew. No telling what would happen to him if he got caught spying on the party.

He checked his watch. Ten o’clock. Jack had said start taping at ten, so Sal flicked on the power and settled into the eyepiece. He’d been practicing with the videocam since he got here and had the workings down pretty good. At maximum zoom, the telephoto night lens magnified the light and the house to the point where Sal felt like he was looking at the place from twenty feet away.