"Two to the heart," he said. "Both bull's-eyes, and not a bad title for a movie."

"I think there was one," Hawes said.

"Bull's-Eyes?"

"No, no... "You're thinking of One-Eyed Jacks."

"No, Two to the Heart, something like that."

"Two for the Road, you're thinking of," Blaney said.

"No, that was a song," Hawes said.

"That was, "One for the Road." "

"This was a movie. Two from the Heart, maybe."

"Cause Two for the Road was very definitely a movie."

Carella was looking at them both.

"This had the word 'heart' in the title," Hawes said. Carella was still looking at them. Everywhere around them were bodies or body parts on tables and countertops. Everywhere around them was the stink of death.

"Heart, heart," Blaney said, thinking out loud. "Heart of Darkness?

Because that became a movie, but it was called Apocalypse Now.""

"No, but I think you're close."

"Is it Coppola?"

"Carella," Carella said, wondering why Blaney,

'whom he had known for at least a quarter of a century,

was getting his name wrong.

"Something Coppola directed?" Blaney asked, ignoring him.

"I don't know," Hawes said. "Who's Coppola?"

"He directed the Godfather movies."

Which reminded Carella of the two hoods in the hotel bar. Which further reminded him of Svetlana's

granddaughter. Which brought him full circle to why they were here.

"The autopsy," he reminded Blaney.

"Two to the heart," Blaney said. "Both of them in a space the size of a half-dollar. Which didn't take much of a marksman because the killer was standing quite close."

"How close'

"I'd say no more than three, four feet. All the guy did was point and fire. Period."

"Was she drunk?" Carella asked.

"No. Percentage of alcohol in the brain was point-oh-two, well within the normal range. Urine and blood percentages were similarly normal."

"Can you give us a PMI?"

"Around eleven, eleven-thirty last night. Ballpark." No postmortem interval was entirely accurate. They all knew that. But Blaney's educated guess coincided with the time the man down the hall had heard shots. "Anything else we should know?" Hawes asked. "Examination of the skull revealed a schwannoma arising from the vestibular nerve, near the porus acusticus, extending into both the internal auditory meatus.

"In English, please," Carella said. "An acoustic neuro ma "Come on, Paul."

"In short, a tumor on the auditory nerve. Quite large and cystic, probably causing hearing loss, headache, vertigo, disturbed sense of balance, unsteadiness of gait, and tinnitus."

"Tinnitus?"

"Ringing of the ears."

"oh."

"Liquid chromatography of the coagulated blood disclosed a drug called diclofenac, in concentrations indicating therapeutic doses. But the loose correlation between dosage and concentration is a semi quantitative process at best. All I can say for certain is that she was taking the drug, not why she was taking it. "Why do you think she was taking it?"

"Well, we don't normally examine joints in a post, and I haven't here.

But a superficial look at her fingers suggest what I'm sure a vertebral slice would reveal." "And what's that?"

"Lipping on the anterior visible portion." "What'slipping

"Knobby, bumpy, small excrescences of bone. In short, smooth, asymmetric swellings on the body of the vertebrae."

"Indicating what?"

"Arthritis?"

"Are you asking?"

"Do you know whether or not she was arthritic?" "She was."

"Well, there," Blaney said.

Hawes was still trying to remember the title of that movie. He asked Sam Grossman if he remembered seeing it.

"I don't go to movies," Grossman said.

He was wearing a white lab coat, and standing before a counter covered with test tubes, graduated cylinders, beakers, spatulas, pipettes and flasks, all of