met. But I tell ya, even though she pulled down good money here, in order to maintain her lifestyle she had to be gettin’ extra bread somewhere else.”
“You know this producer’s name?”
Rose Chiu looked off for a brief moment and then returned her gaze to the cop. “Eh… no, she never mentioned him by name. After a while it got so no one believed her.”
Moran didn’t recall reading any of this in Lacy Wooden’s file or diary.
“Did you tell this to the police after Paul Myer was arrested?”
“I did, but they didn’t seem interested. Didn’t even bother to take it down. Only wanted to know about Myer.”
Moran nodded. “So you think Lacy had a sugar-daddy?”
“Or sugar-momma.”
“You’re saying she was—” Moran began.
Rose turned the palms of her hands up. “I’m not sayin’ anything. But there was this woman, slender, attractive, always in a pants suit and dark glasses. She came in twice a week around closing time, sat alone in one of the booths in the back, ordered a couple of apple martinis and at the end of the night left with Lacy. And, it wasn’t her mother.”
“Got a name?”
Rose snorted. “I gotta business to run. Long as the customers behave and pay their bill, I mind my own business. See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil, that’s my motto.”
Moran stepped in closer and glared at the club owner. “C’mon, Rose, you must know what she looked like.”
“Gimme a break, lieutenant. It was almost a year ago. A lot of bodies have come and gone through these doors since then. All I know is that she was attractive, not what you’d call beautiful, but nice looking, with brown hair… I think.”
Moran sat on the edge of Rose’s desk. “Let’s move on. So you think Lacy was AC-DC?”
Rose shrugged lightly. “Who knows? She sure was pretty enough to attract both sexes.”
“When was the last time you saw this lady?”
Rose scratched her chin with the tips of her fingers and looked up at Moran. “The night before they found Lacy dead.”
“Was Lacy supposed to work the night she was killed?”
“That was her night off.”
Moran said. “So tell me about Paul Myer.”
Rose gave Moran a disinterested glance. “I already gave a statement to the cops.”
“Now you get a chance to tell me.”
Rose gave Moran a bored look and reached for another Marlboro. “The answer then and the answer now, is that I only saw him three or four times.” She lit the cigarette and puffed out a trail of smoke from one corner of her ruby lips. “He always sat at the end of the bar, nursing one beer for hours. Seemed uncomfortable in the place.”
Moran gazed at her and smiled inwardly. She may have been running a sleazy strip club but he admired her gutsy, take-no-prisoners attitude. Rose wheeled herself around the desk, grabbed the Marlboro pack, plucked one out and again offered it to Moran. When he shook his head, she stuck the cigarette inside his topcoat’s side pocket.
“In case things get tough,” she said and winked.
Moran moved toward the door. “I think that’s all for now. I may be back.”
“I’m counting on it,” Rose purred.
As Moran walked to his car his mind replayed Rose’s words:
‘… always flashing her latest piece of jewelry…’ Something was wrong with that. Except for a few pieces of cheap bling-blings, there had been no jewelry among Lacy Wooden’s personal effects.
Where the hell was the jewelry?
The Haifa Diamond Exchange receipt suddenly flashed in his mind.
A preoccupied Moran walked to his car, and when he jammed his hands into his coat’s pockets to get the car key, he felt Rose’s cigarette. He took it out, studied it for a moment, then crushed it and tossed it into the gutter. It felt like stepping away from the precipice.
The cell phone vibrated against Moran’s waist. He brought it out and looked at the screen—Sandra.
“A utologous stem cell transplant?” Moran said. Sandra, seated next to him, gave the doctor a quizzical look. Dr. Kruger’s youthful face, complete with rosy cheeks, bright blue eyes and a tuft of limp blond hair that fell persistently over his right eyebrow, belied his forty-five years. Despite this, Kruger was a highly respected specialist in the field of advanced leukemia. He rested his forearms on top of his desk and laced his fingers.
“Autologous means that the donor and recipient of the transplant is the same person,” Dr. Kruger said with a mild Midwest accent. “Stem cells are immature blood cells that are removed from the blood or bone marrow of the patient. My specialty is peripheral blood stem cell harvesting, which is why rather than wait for a bone marrow donor, Dr. Cook referred you to me. It’s also less invasive.” He gazed at Sandra. “I’ve added Prednisone, Cyclophosphamide and Cytoxan to your high-dose chemotherapy treatment. Then at the appropriate time—”
Sandra looked up quickly. “Appropriate time, what exactly… I mean—” She stopped when she heard the catch in her own voice.
“We need to destroy as much of the cancer in the bone marrow as possible before we can begin to harvest. I’ve increased the chemo dosage as much as your body can tolerate in order to shorten the treatment period to three to six months… maybe shorter.”
Sandra cupped her husband’s hand and squeezed hard. It meant returning to the bouts of nausea and loss of her newly regrown hair along, with the loss of appetite that made her sick just to look at food.
“What’s involved in this harvesting?” Moran asked.
Kruger cast Moran a tolerant smile—the kind teachers give impertinent students.
“Stem cells are collected through a small catheter inserted into the patient’s vein. The number of circulating stem cells is increased in patients whose bone marrow is recovering from chemotherapy. Then by injecting Cytokines, or blood cell growth factors, we stimulate the production of immature and mature bone marrow stem cells as much as one hundredfold.”
Moran grimaced. “Have you had much success?”
Dr. Kruger gave another smile. “This procedure has been successful in forty percent of the cases it’s been used.”
“What happened to the—” Moran stopped when he realized what the answer would be.
Sandra let go of her husband’s hand and stretched forward in her chair. “What exactly are
