“We can’t let that happen,” the person on the other end of the line said matter-of-factly. “You’ve got to make sure it doesn’t. Why didn’t you give her something? With her medical condition, no one would question her death.”
“Believe it or not, it isn’t that simple to kill someone. And suppose she manages to leave the proof before I can stop her?”
“In that case we take out double insurance. Sad to say, a fatal attack on an attractive young woman in Manhattan is hardly an extraordinary event these days. I’ll take care of it immediately.”
2
Dr. Monica Farrell shivered as she posed for a picture with Tony and Rosalie Garcia on the steps of Greenwich Village Hospital. Tony was holding Carlos, their two-year-old son, who had just been declared free of the leukemia that had almost claimed his life.
Monica remembered the day when, as she was about to leave her office, Rosalie phoned in a panic. “Doctor, the baby has spots on his stomach.” Carlos was then six weeks old. Even before she saw him, Monica had the terrible hunch that what she was going to find was the onset of juvenile leukemia. Diagnostic tests confirmed that suspicion, and Carlos’s chances were calculated to be at best fifty-fifty. Monica had promised his weeping young parents that as far as she was concerned, those were good enough odds and Carlos was already too tough a little guy not to win the fight.
“Now one with you holding Carlos, Dr. Monica,” Tony ordered as he took the camera from the passerby who had volunteered to become the acting photographer.