“This is my last thing. Then I’ll shut up. I want to give you what else we’re doing here in New York City. FYI, there are NYPD detectives and soon FBI agents at every hospital—every hospital—in every borough in New York. Lenox Hill. Beth Israel. Bellevue. This goes from Richmond Med Center on Staten Island to Montefiore in the Bronx, and everything in between. They’re assigned to walk-in clinics, to fancy-ass private cosmetic surgery places. Hell, the commissioner is so into this, I think he’d stick police guards at every doctor’s office in New York City if he could. On and on. He’s with us every inch of the way. There’s no need to go into everything else, but we have all the police labs open. We’ve interviewed anyone who might have seen something. The entrance and exit security was extremely tight. So it could have been an inside job.”

He pauses for a few seconds. He looks at the ceiling, then quickly around the room. Now when he starts to speak, he sounds somber and sad.

“Look. We just don’t know enough. I’ll be here for the next twenty-four hours. At least.”

He pauses again. Then, “Go about your business. Except for you two…” Blumenthal is looking directly at me and Dr. Sarkar. “I need to talk to you two. Everyone else, thank you. And, Dr. Katz, if you need a cigarette, go outside and smoke.”

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

“LISTEN, YOU TWO. I don’t have a helluva lot of time,” says Leon Blumenthal, “so you’ll have to forgive me if I put my nice-guy personality on ice.”

Sarkar, who looks like he could collapse from exhaustion at any moment, nods.

I say, “Sure,” and I try to remember a time in my short relationship with Blumenthal when I ever witnessed that “nice guy personality.”

We sit, and Blumenthal leans in toward us from the other side of the cafeteria table.

This is the closest I’ve been to him physically. His hazel eyes are rimmed with red. He needs a shave, and his haircut looks like one of those ten-dollar jobs you get out in my neighborhood.

He’s also—and I’m surprised and embarrassed to be thinking this—cute as hell…in that grumpy dad-bod way.

Blumenthal looks directly at Dr. Sarkar and speaks. “Is there anything, anything at all, anything you remember—any little thing that was slightly out of the usual during the surgical procedure on the victim, on Kovac?”

Without hesitation, Sarkar says, “No. Absolutely not. It was difficult. But I have dealt many times before with people who were assaulted—stabbings, domestic violence, slashings, vehicular accidents. This one was particularly brutal, and the fact that it was immediately postnatal didn’t make it easier. But I cannot supply you with any further information.”