“Bingo!” Lou said cheerfully. “I got some good news for you.”

“I’m all ears,” Jack said. He slipped out of his bomber jacket and sat down.

“I put in a call to my friend in Immigration, and he just phoned me back,” Lou said. “When I asked him your question, he told me to hang on the line. I could even hear him entering the name into the computer. Two seconds later, he had the info. Carlo Franconi entered the country exactly thirty-seven days ago on January twenty-ninth at Teterboro in New Jersey.”

“I’ve never heard of Teterboro,” Jack said.

“It’s a private airport,” Lou said. “It’s for general aviation, but there’s lots of fancy corporate jets out there because of the field’s proximity to the city.”

“Was Carlo Franconi on a corporate jet?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” Lou said. “All I got is the plane’s call letters or numbers or whatever they call it. You know, the numbers and letters on the airplane’s tail. Let’s see, I got it right here. It was N69SU.”

“Was there any indication where the plane had come from?” Jack asked as he wrote down the alphanumeric characters and the date.

“Oh yeah,” Lou said. “That’s gotta be filed. The plane came from Lyon, France.”

“Nah, it couldn’t have,” Jack said.

“That’s what’s in the computer,” Lou said. “Why don’t you think it’s correct?”

“Because I talked with the French organ allocation organization early this morning,” Jack said. “They had no record of an American with the name of Franconi, and they categorically denied they’d be transplanting an American since they have a long waiting list for French citizens.”

“The information that Immigration has must correlate with the flight plan filed with both the FAA and the European equivalent,” Lou said. “At least that’s how I understand it.”

“Do you think your friend in Immigration has a contact in France?” Jack asked.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Lou said. “Those upper-echelon guys have to cooperate with each other. I can ask him. Why would you like to know?”

“If Franconi was in France I’d like to find out the day he arrived,” Jack said. “And I’d like to know any other information the French might have on where he went in the country. They keep close tabs on most non-European foreigners through their hotels.”

“Okay, let me see what I can do,” Lou said. “Let me call him, and I’ll call you back.”

“One other thing,” Jack said. “How can we find out who owns N69SU?”

“That’s easy,” Lou said. “All you have to do is call the FAA Control Aviation Center in Oklahoma City. Anybody can do it, but I’ve got a friend there, too.”

“Jeez, you have friends in all the convenient places,” Jack remarked.

“It comes with the territory,” Lou said. “We do favors for each other all the time. If you have to wait for everything to go through channels, nothing gets done.”

“It’s certainly convenient for me to take advantage of your web of contacts,” Jack said.