One night shortly thereafter Adam was in the animal laboratory when Kender came in for a cup of coffee.

“Do you remember a conversation we once had, about sustaining life in a patient with a terminal disease?” he asked.

“Yes, I remember it well,” Kender said.

“I want you to know I’ve changed my mind.”

Kender’s eyes gleamed with interest and he nodded, but he didn’t ask what had brought about the changed opinion. They sat and drank their coffee in companionable silence, Adam restraining himself from asking about the faculty job, which he now not only wanted desperately but needed as a means of staying where better men than he could fight for her with everything that came along.

18: Rafael Meomartino

18

Rafael Meomartino

Meomartino had the feeling that subtly and in ways he did not understand the atoms of his life were rearranging themselves into patterns over which he had little control. He met the private detective at a second-floor pizzeria on Washington Street and they conducted their business over salty linguini marinara and resinous wine.

Kittredge had observed Elizabeth Meomartino going repeatedly to an apartment building on Memorial Drive in Cambridge.

“But do you know that she met anybody?”

“I just followed her to the building,” Kittredge said. “Six times I waited outside, she went inside. A couple of times I rode the elevator with her, as if I lived there. It’s a very nice building, professional people, upper middle-income.”

“How long does she stay?”

“It varies.”

“Do you know the number of the apartment she visits?”

“I haven’t been able to learn yet. But she always gets off at the fourth floor.”

“Well, that should help,” Meomartino said.

“Not necessarily,” Kittredge said patiently. “She could walk up to five, say, or down to any other floor.”

“Does she know you’re following her?”

“No. I’m positive.”

“Well, let’s assume she goes to the fourth floor,” he said in disgust, beginning to despise the detective’s professionalism. “She doesn’t have the skills of an international spy.”

“All right,” Kittredge said. He took out his notebook. “Why don’t I read the names of the individuals who live on that floor and see if one of them means anything to you.”

Meomartino waited tensely.

“Harold Gilmartin.”

“No.”

“Peter D. Cohen. That’s Mr. and Mrs.”

“Keep going.”

“In the next apartment are two unmarried girls, Hilda Conway and Marcia Nieuhaus.”

He shook his head a bit indignantly.

“V. Stephen Samourian.”

“No.”

“That leaves only one. Ralph Baker.”

“No,” he said, depressed that he should be playing such a game.

Kittredge shrugged. He took a typewritten list from his pocket and handed it to Meomartino. “These are the names of every other tenant in the building.”

It was like reading a page in the telephone book of a strange city. “No,” Meomartino said.

“One of the men on the fourth floor, Samourian, is a doctor.”