“A Monsignor from the Metuchen diocese in New Jersey is the one you should meet. He suggested next Wednesday afternoon. As it happens, I didn’t make any appointments for you after eleven o’clock that day.”
“Then so be it,” Monica acquiesced. “Call him back and set it up. Are you ready to go? I’ll ring for the elevator.”
“Right behind you. I love what you just said.”
“That I’ll ring for the elevator?”
“No, of course not. I mean you just said ‘so be it.’ ”
“So?”
“As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, ‘so be it’ is the translation for ‘amen.’ Kind of fitting in this case, don’t you think, Doctor?”
3
It was not an assignment he relished. The disappearance of a young woman doctor in New York was stuff for the tabloids and they would be sure to wring it dry. The money was good, but Sammy Barber’s instinct was to turn it down. Sammy had been arrested only once, then acquitted at trial because he was a very careful man and never came close enough to his victims to leave DNA evidence.
Sammy’s shrewd hazel eyes were the dominant feature in a narrow face that seemed out of place on his short, thick neck. Forty-two years old, with muscles that bulged through the arms of his sports jacket, his official job was as a bouncer at a Greenwich Village night club.
A cup of coffee in front of him, he was seated across the table from his would-be employer’s representative in a diner in Queens. Scrupulously aware of small details, Sammy had already sized him up. Well dressed. In his fifties. Classy. Very good-looking. Silver cuff-links with initials D.L. He had been told there was no need for him to know the man’s name, that the phone number would be sufficient for contact.
“Sammy, you’re hardly in a position to refuse,” Douglas Langdon said mildly. “From what I understand, you’re not exactly living high on the hog from your lousy job. Furthermore, I have to remind you that if my cousin had not reached several of the jurors, you would be in prison right now.”