The Dolomite Solution by Trevor Scott Page B

together again sometime, and then I said I had to go and I went into the bar like I was meeting someone there.”
    He ran what she said through his mind. Finally, he said, “He knows Allen was staying here.” Damn that efficient bastard. Now he’d have to really put the pressure on him. But for now he had her to fuck with. He pulled a stack of photos from the envelope and handed them to her.
    She flipped through them, stopping a few times for a closer look. Then she threw them back towards him. “That son of a bitch. When were these taken?”
    â€œThere was a date stamp on them from yesterday,” he said, his eyes piercing right through her. “I got them from his room. I told you he was fucking around on you.”
    She had a brooding expression on her face making her slightly less attractive. “Then I’m glad he’s dead. We were right, weren’t we?”
    He smiled now. “Of course we were. You never turn back from what you know is right.”

7
    Dr. James Winthrop was sitting in his study in his Cambridge home a few blocks from Harvard University, sipping his first cup of coffee and glancing languidly at a rough galley of the article. He had done the same thing periodically for the past few weeks, and the edges of the paper showed wear from his strong fingers crumpling them in anger.
    He was an average man in every respect but intellect. His head was larger and squarer than most, his eyes set far apart, accented by dark brows that furled up at the ends. For those who knew him well, which was not a large number, his continuous, knowing smirk was more of a distraction than a hindrance.
    Winthrop had gotten a call thirty minutes ago from his old friend Perry Greenfield, who said he had something important to discuss with him. Winthrop had known Perry since they were both five years old, where they had played in a sandbox in his back yard in Somerville. They had continued their friendship through high school, and as undergraduate students at Harvard University, where they had taken similar classes, and were members of the same fraternity. After they graduated in 1970, they had followed different tracks, but never lost contact, meeting at least once a week to discuss how each was doing and how they would change the world.
    James Winthrop had stayed on at Harvard Medical School, finished at the top of his class, and was now considered the finest cardio-vascular surgeon in Boston.
    After Harvard, Perry Greenfield had gone to MIT, where he earned his doctorate in biochemistry. He had worked for over fifteen years as a researcher in a Brookline biotechnology company where he studied the effects of amino acids on cardiovascular degeneration. For the past five years Greenfield had taken over as editor of the prestigious Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, the foremost authority on issues of the heart in the United States, perhaps even the world. Dr. Winthrop had been a featured writer in many of Greenfield’s issues.
    There was a light knock on the front door. Dr. Winthrop rose reluctantly, shoved the journal article into his top desk drawer, and answered the door, finding a wet and somewhat dejected-looking friend waiting for him to invite him inside.
    â€œWhat brings you by so early, Per?” the doctor asked, closing the door behind his friend and taking his wet coat and gently draping it over a wooden hanger in the foyer.
    It was six a.m. The two of them often met at a small cafe for breakfast, but not usually until seven or eight, depending on their schedules.
    Perry Greenfield was a tall, thin man who looked much older than his fifty years. It wasn’t so much the silver hair receding back from his forehead, but more the bloodshot eyes and the wrinkles in the corners of those eyes and at the sides of his mouth that had failed to preserve his youth. His bushy brows gave him the appearance of a dead Russian leader.
    Greenfield didn’t answer as he walked into the