“How about we all head over to Little Italy for a quick dinner?” Lou suggested. “It’s right around the corner.”

“Not me,” Jack said. “I’ve got a bike ride ahead of me. At this point, a meal would do me in.”

“Nor I,” Laurie said. “I’m looking forward to getting home and taking a shower. It’s been two late nights for me in a row, and I’m frazzled.”

Lou admitted to having another half hour of work to do, so Laurie and Jack said goodbye and descended to the first floor. They returned their temporary-visitor badges and left police headquarters. In the shadow of City Hall, they caught a cab.

“Feel better?” Jack asked Laurie, as they headed north up the Bowery. A kaleidoscope of light played across their faces.

“Much,” Laurie admitted. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to dump it all in Lou’s capable lap. I’m sorry I got myself so worked up.”

“No need to apologize,” Jack said. “It’s unsettling, to say the least, there’s a potential spy in our midst and that organized crime has an interest in liver transplants.”

“And how are you bearing up?” Laurie asked. “You’re getting a lot of bizarre input on the Franconi case.”

“It’s bizarre, but it’s also intriguing,” Jack said. “Especially this association with a biotech giant like GenSys. The scary part about these corporations is that their research is all behind closed doors. Cold-war style secrecy is their modus operandi. No one knows what they are doing in their quest for return on investment. It’s a big difference from ten or twenty years ago when the NIH funded most biomedical research in a kind of open forum. In those days, there was oversight in the form of peer review, but not today.”

“Too bad there’s no one like Lou that you can turn the case over to,” Laurie said with a chuckle.

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Jack said.

“What’s your next step?” Laurie asked.

Jack sighed. “I’m running out of options. The only thing that’s scheduled is for a veterinary pathologist to review the liver section.”

“So, you already thought about a xenograft?” Laurie asked with surprise.

“No, I didn’t,” Jack admitted. “The suggestion to have a veterinary pathologist look at the slide wasn’t my idea. It came from a parasitologist over at the hospital who thought the granuloma was due to a parasite, but one he didn’t recognize.”

“Maybe you should mention the possibility of a xenograft to Ted Lynch,” Laurie suggested. “As a DNA expert he might have something in his bag of tricks that could say yes or no definitively.”

“Excellent idea!” Jack said with admiration. “How can you come up with such a great suggestion when you’re so beat? You amaze me! My mind has already shut down for the night.”

“Compliments are always welcome,” Laurie teased. “Especially in the dark, so you can’t see me blush.”

“I’m starting to think that the only option that might be open to me if I really want to solve this case is a quick trip to Equatorial Guinea.”