Michael Baden - Skeleton justice

Jake made an effort to look suitably appalled. "Thank you for telling me this, Annabelle. You've been very helpful."

"Really? Surely this general is not the Vampire? He was old and fat."

"No, he's not the Vampire. I think Cintron may be someone the Vampire despises even more than you do."

"How did it go?" Manny eyed Kenneth, who was balancing his own eye-popping sequined and velveteen man bag on his left arm against Mycroft's initialed white Goyard carrier on his right.

"Great! That new vet is adorable. What gorgeous brown eyes."

"You're looking for the scientific type now?"

"Just thought I might ask him to the club to hear me-Kenneth Medianos Boyd-performing as Princess K. Calypso."

"Forget it. He's married."

Kenneth adjusted his pose, put his hands on his hips, and gave his hips a wiggle. "Like that matters? Think Jim McGreevey and Rock Hudson." Kenneth's eyebrows were knowingly raised. "I even heard a delicious rumor the other day that Cary Grant was bi."

Manny declined to make eye contact, for fear of setting Kenneth off on one of his favorite discourses-that every man on the planet was in the closet, just waiting for the right guy to open his door. "I'm not going there with you. How is Mycroft? Is his wound healed?"

"Oh, yeah-he's fine. Aren't you, punkin?" Kenneth bent over and released Mycroft from his carrier. The little dog bounded across the office and leaped into Manny's lap. "The doctor seemed disappointed that you didn't bring him to his appointment. I told you, the wife's irrelevant."

"He must think I'm a terrible mother." Manny stroked Mycroft's curly head and scratched behind his ears. "I totally forgot the first appointment, and I would've missed this one, too, if I hadn't been able to send you." Manny looked at the pile of file folders on her desk. "I'm just swamped. I can't leave my desk until I finish answering these three hundred burdensome interrogatories that asshole law firm sent over on the Greenfield case. Just like a large law firm. They get paid thousands of dollars by the letter. Try to bury justice in paperwork."

"I'm sure Dr. Costello understands. He asked how you were doing, said to tell you not to work too hard." Kenneth picked up a stack of paper. "Is this complaint on the Conceicao employment discrimination case ready to go?"

"Yes," Manny said. "But you're going to have to scan the appendix into a portable file format so that we can electronically file the matter with the clerk of the federal court."

"You wanna check out the sale at that new shoe boutique on Madison?" Kenneth asked.

"Casa Bene del Sole? That's cruel! Don't tempt me when you know I can't possibly go."

Kenneth reached over and popped up the to-do list Manny had minimized on her computer toolbar. "Oh, come on. What if I take care of a few more things on this list?"

"I appreciate it, Kenneth, but I don't think-"

Kenneth interrupted her with a thrust of his right hand, looking for all the world like Diana Ross doing "Stop! In the Name of Love." "Delegation is the soul of good management. What about this number four-talk to InTerVex? I'm great at talking."

"Well, maybe you could do that," Manny admitted. "It's the pharmaceutical company where one of the Vampire's victims, Raymond Fortes, worked."

Kenneth wrinkled his nose. "The rat-bite guy?"

"Yes. Jake and I want to know if Dr. Fortes had any connection with Argentina. Apparently, he was a lonely workaholic, so his business seems the best place to start looking."

"No problem. I can do that." Kenneth headed out to his desk.

"But, Kenneth, remember, don't just come right out and ask-"

Kenneth pivoted, the ends of his metallic silver scarf fluttering, his Vamp fingernails adorned by crystal faux diamonds flashing. "Come on, Manny-give me a little credit. No one's better than me at being subtle."

Manny went back to answering interrogatory 221: "Describe how the alleged actions of the defendant in failing to treat the prostate interfered with the future income stream of the plaintiff." Some days Manny felt that she wanted to represent a stream of urologists, just so they could all pee together on the justice system.

She jumped, startled from her concentration by Kenneth tapping his size-twelve Manolos. "Grab your bag. We're going to Casa Bene del Sole. Have to hurry to get there before it closes."

"Already? Did you-"

"Dr. Raymond Fortes graduated from the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina's second-oldest medical school. He worked as a doctor in Cordoba for fifteen years before moving to New York in 1990 to work for InTerVex. He's a naturalized citizen."

"Great work, Kenneth. I don't suppose you found out what kind of drugs Dr. Fortes was developing at InTerVex?"

Kenneth tossed his scarf over his shoulder. "Of course I did. Fertility drugs. Fortes was an OB-GYN in Argentina at the Hospital Universitario de Maternidad y Neonatologia."

"Google him," Jake commanded.

Manny and Jake sat hunched over Jake's office computer. Two half-eaten calzones leached tomato sauce onto the papers strewn across his desk. Manny, lightning fast on the keyboard, was at the controls.

"Twenty-four thousand hits on General Rafael Cintron," Manny reported. "It would be nice to have some idea of what it is about him that's of interest to us."

"Start reading," Jake said through a mouthful of meatballs and dough. "We'll know it when we see it."

Manny doubled-clicked. "Here's his official biography. You read. My eyes are burning."

Jake scanned the screen. "He's sixty-three years old. Been in the army since he was eighteen. Worked his way up through the ranks. Seems to have successfully weathered several regime changes. That says a lot about him."

"If you're looking for something controversial, we need to go to some of the news reports about him," Manny advised. She scrolled through the top entries brought up by the search engine. "These four are all in Spanish. I'll use Google to translate them.

"'General Announces Plans for New Training Procedures,'" Manny read. "Snore. Here, this looks more promising."

"'Grandmothers Protest General's Link to Dirty War.'" Jake read the headline aloud, then moved over to give Manny a chance to read the rest of the article silently with him.

"Sounds like these grandmothers claim General Cintron was implicated in the disappearances of their adult children during the military dictatorship of the late seventies, early eighties," Jake said. "Los Desaparecidos-the disappeared ones-that's what they call the victims. The grandmothers are still protesting, all these years later."

"But Argentina is a democracy now," Manny said. "What's Cintron still doing in their army?"

"I'm no expert on Argentine history, but I think there's been a lot of controversy over amnesty for those who participated in the junta. They weren't all arrested and imprisoned. A lot of them are still actively part of Argentine society. I guess Cintron must be one of those clever survivors who plays on whatever team is at bat."

"I was still only a babe in arms when all this was going on," Manny said, "but doesn't this tie in with our Nixon lecture? Wouldn't Nixon have been a supporter of that regime?"

Jake sighed. Reminders of Manny's youth always depressed him. "Yes, my little peep, you must have been paying attention in college history class. The junta was rabidly anti-Communist, which automatically made them allies of Nixon and Kissinger. Nixon was out of office by then, of course, but this was the period when he was casting himself as elder statesman and foreign policy guru. Hence the lecture at the Scanlon Center on the necessity of supporting a regime that he knew committed atrocities against its own people."

Manny bit off a chunk of calzone and chewed thoughtfully. "I don't get it, Jake. Why would the Vampire be killing people in New York because of something that happened in Argentina decades ago?"