Jack helped himself to coffee. No one acknowledged his arrival. After adding a dollop of half-and-half as well as a cube of sugar to his cup, Jack wandered to the door to the lobby. He glanced out, and as he’d expected the area was filled to overflowing with media people talking among themselves and drinking take-out coffee. What he didn’t expect was that many were also smoking cigarettes. Since smoking was strictly taboo, Jack told Vinnie to go out there and inform them.

“You’re closer,” Vinnie said, without looking up from his newspaper.

Jack rolled his eyes at Vinnie’s lack of respect but had to admit Vinnie was right. So Jack walked over to the locked glass door and opened it. Before he could call out his no smoking pronouncement, he was literally mobbed.

Jack had to push the microphones away that were thrust into his face. The simultaneous questions precluded any real comprehension of what the questions were other than about an anticipated autopsy.

Jack shouted at the top of his lungs that there was no smoking, then had to literally peel hands off his arm before he was able to get the door closed. On the other side the reporters surged forward, pressing colleagues roughly against the glass like tomatoes in a jar of preserves.

Disgusted, Jack returned to the ID room.

“Will someone clue me in to what’s going on?” he called out.

Everyone turned in Jack’s direction, but Laurie was the first to respond. “You haven’t heard?”

“Now, would I be asking if I’d heard?” Jack said.

“It’s been all over the TV for crissake,” Calvin snapped.

“Jack doesn’t own a TV,” Laurie said. “His neighborhood won’t allow it.”

“Where do you live, son?” Sergeant Murphy asked. “I’ve never heard of neighbors not allowing each other to have a television.” The aging, red-faced, Irish policeman had a pronounced paternal streak. He’d been assigned to the medical examiner’s office for more years than he was willing to admit and thought of all the employees as family.

“He lives in Harlem,” Chet said. “Actually his neighbors would love him to get a set so they could permanently borrow it.”

“Enough, you guys,” Jack said. “Fill me in on the excitement.”

“A Mafia don was gunned down yesterday late afternoon,” Calvin’s booming voice announced. “It’s stirred up a hornet’s nest of trouble since he’d agreed to cooperate with the DA’s office and was under police protection.”

“He was no Mafia don,” Lou Soldano said. “He was nothing but a midlevel functionary of the Vaccarro crime family.”

“Whatever,” Calvin said with a wave of his hand. “The key point is that he was whacked while literally boxed in by a number of New York’s finest, which doesn’t say much about their ability to protect someone in their charge.”

“He was warned not to go to that restaurant,” Lou protested. “I know that for a fact. And it’s almost impossible to protect someone if the individual refuses to follow suggestions.”

“Any chance he could have been killed by the police?” Jack asked. One of the roles of a medical examiner was to think of all angles, especially when situations of custody were concerned.