Robert Lauden’s injuries were significant, but not life-threatening—his left  arm was smashed, his hip broken, three cracked ribs—so he was in a great deal of pain, but not enough to prevent him from calling Katie to thank her and ask her to visit him in the orthopedic wing of New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery (left), to which he was a consistent donor.
         David accompanied her to the hospital the day after the accident and found the billionaire sitting up in bed, heavily bandaged on his left side, with dark gray-blue-and-red bruises on the skin.  He looked drowsy.
         “How are you feeling?” asked Katie.
         “Ah, they’re doing wonders with pain killers these days!” said Louden. “You know, I never took recreational drugs, but these things do have their virtues.” He shook his head, crossed his eyes and waggled his tongue, then thanked Katie profusely for saving his life.
         “I’m glad to hear you’re in good spirits,” Katie said, then introduced David Greco as someone helping with her story.
         “You are a New York police officer?” asked Louden.
         “Retired, just helping Katie with her research,” said David.
         “So tell me what you know about this creep that hit me and drove away.”
         “Turns out he’s attached to the Chinese embassy,” (below) said David. “The police caught up with him within half an hour.”
         “The Chinese embassy? (right) And they have him in custody?”
         “Not yet. He and the embassy are claiming diplomatic immunity.”
         “Diplomatic immunity? The guy practically kills me, then leaves the scene. Diplomatic immunity covers that?”
         “I’m afraid it might, depending on the Chinese. The guy doesn’t seem to be high up; he’s not the ambassador but seems to be part of their delegation at the U.N.”
         “That’s unbelievable!” shouted Louden. “Who’s leading the investigation?”
         “NYPD. It’s their jurisdiction, but I suspect the feds will try to arrest this guy and have him tried, but it’s going to be tough.”
         “He can just get away with smashing into me and driving off?  I could have been killed.”
         David glanced at Katie and said, “It’s very possible. You can’t believe what these embassy people have gotten away with, and I’m not just talking about a few hundred parking tickets. Back in the eighties a Libyan embassy worker opened fire on a mob of anti-Gaddafi protesters outside the embassy. Killed a cop—I knew her—and wounded ten others.  After an eleven-day siege of the embassy by NYPD, the embassy shipped the guy back to Libya and he was never heard from again.
         “Another time a Burmese ambassador shot his wife for having an affair, then burned her body on a funeral pyre in his backyard.  He was never convicted and remained the Burmese ambassador.”
         “I can’t believe this,” said Louden, shaking his head. “You know, I’ve worked with a lot of powerful Chinese officials over the years. I’m going to call every goddamn one of them and make them do something.”
         Louden was well aware that the incident was a hit-and-run felony, but he had not considered it was an assassination attempt. He had not yet been interviewed by NYPD.
         “Mr. Louden,” asked Katie, “do you have any reason to suspect this was not an accident?”
         “You mean that the guy intended to kill me?  A guy from the Chinese embassy who couldn’t possibly get away?”
       “I know it sounds bizarre, and maybe the guy just panicked and drove away thinking his embassy would protect him.  But he didn’t even brake or stop at all when he hit you. He just hit you and kept driving. It seems difficult to believe anybody who accidentally hits a person on the sidewalk wouldn’t at least stop for even a split second to consider what he’d done, even if he panicked and drove off.”
         “I have to agree with Katie,” said David. “There’re only two kinds of hit-and-run incidents: an accident or an attempted murder. Now, like Katie said, maybe the guy thought if he got back to his embassy he’d get sanctuary there.  But from what Katie saw, it appeared he gunned his car, hit you and had every intention to keep on going.”
         “Just like that?” asked Louden. “Even if he intended to murder me, you think he was just waiting, parked on the street in case I come out of my house?  Gramercy Park’s security people are very suspect of any cars they don’t know.”
         “Yes, but he had diplomatic plates. With those, he can park anywhere he wants whenever he wants.  If he gets towed, his embassy just sends someone to pick up the car.  No fine, no penalty.”
         “And, as for his waiting for you to come out of your house,” added Katie, “you did tell me that you take a long walk in the park every day at eleven o’clock.”
         Louden’s face fell. “Oh, my God, you’re right. I do that every day.  He must have been tracking me in advance.”
         “So let me ask you again, Mr. Louden,” said David. “Is there anyone you know who would want to murder you?  Anyone at all?”
         “I’m not going to joke around about this. No, I can’t think of anyone—least of all a Chinese embassy delegate—who’d want me dead. Sure, I have people who hate my guts, largely for business reasons, but this connection to the Chinese makes no sense whatsoever.”
         At that moment there was a slight knock at the hospital room door, and two NYPD officers, one plainclothes, asked if they might come in. They saw David, and the plainclothes detective said, “Greco, what are you doing here?  I thought you were planting flowers up the Hudson.”
         “How’s it going, Jimmy? Long time no see. How’s Lynn and the kids?”
         The niceties were brief and the detective, Jimmy McCann, apologized to Louden, introduced himself and his partner and asked if he would agree to an interview. Louden looked at David, who nodded okay, and replied, “I guess so. Not too long, though. I may fall asleep on you, and I don’t want to miss the delicious lunch they serve me, the one I refuse to eat.”
         McCann told his partner, “Why don’t you get the preliminary info with Mr. Louden?  I want to speak to my old friend here.”
         David and Jimmy McCann had known each other for a decade and even worked on a few mob cases together.  McCann was a few years younger than David but close to retirement.
         “So, David, what are you doing here with a good-looking woman half your age?”
         “She’s not half my age, Jimmy, all right?  Anyway, she’s a reporter for McClure’s magazine . . .”
         “Oh, the Capone case!  Yeah, I read that. Didn’t believe everything in the story, but, hell, made you into a kinda hero. I expect you made some money, too.”
         “It was a good chunk of change.”
         “So, listen, David, what are you doing in this hospital room interviewing a injured gay billionaire?”
         “I’m helping Katie with another story. Louden is a big art collector and Katie was interviewing him at the time of the incident. Saw him get hit, copied down the license plate.”
         “What’s the story about?” asked McCann.
         “Not that you’d know anything about this, but there’s a big deal painting by a Dutch artist coming up for auction, and Louden is probably going to be one of the bidders.”
         “And you just came by with your girlfriend to chat with the guy?”
         David just shrugged. He was not about to tell McCann his theory about someone trying to put potential bidders on the Vermeer out of commission.  McCann’s job was to find out what happened yesterday and work with the authorities to get the Chinese delegate—whose name they’d already found out was Chin—out of the embassy and into interrogation.
      “Yeah, good luck with that,” said David.
         “I know, I know. I’m just here to get Louden’s statement and then it all gets handed over to the top brass, or probably the F.B.I.  Chin will walk; you know that. So, let’s you and me and Lynn and your girlfriend have dinner together sometime soon, eh?”
         “Love to,” said David, knowing that would probably never happen. Cops don’t care much to sit around and hear retired cops’ stories, and wives really hate it.
         McCann returned to Louden’s bedside, where the other officer was asking questions. David silently indicated to Katie they should leave, and when they turned to do so, Louden said, “Katie, come visit anytime.  And Katie, thank you, thank you, thank you again for saving my life.”
         David said to her outside, “Something tells me you’re going to get a nice present from Louden.”
         “Which I can’t accept, if it’s over $25.”
         “Well, then, you’re definitely not going to be able to accept it.”
       Having turned off their cell phones in the hospital, when Katie and David turned them on there were multiple messages.  Katie had a call from her editor Dobell; David had one from Kiley.
       Dobell was just calling to nudge Katie to give him enough news so as not to pull the leash back.
         “Gerald, you called?” asked David.
         “Yes, I got through to the medical examiner in Tokyo about the Saito autopsy.”
         “And?”
         “And it was inconclusive.”
         “Was it a forensic or a clinical.”
         “As far as I can tell—the guy spoke lousy English—clinical. They think Saito died of natural causes, heart failure maybe, although he seems to have gone into shock. They found he had heart disease—he was a big smoker—and had apparently contracted syphilis when he was a young man and apparently didn’t get treatment for that until he was much older.  Oh, they found some traces of arsenic in his blood, which was probably used to treat the syphilis. And that’s about it.”
         "They treat syphilis with arsenic?"
         “I guess in Japan they do. I’m not a forensic scientist.”
         “But there were just traces, they told you.”
         “As far as I could make out, the way the guy talked.”
         “Well, that’s something of interest.  But as far as it goes, Gerald, they found no evidence of foul play in his death?”
         “No, they closed the book on Mr. Saito. A lot of people apparently said good riddance.”
         “Okay, thanks a million for making the call. I owe you big time. Let’s keep in touch with what both of us find out.”
         Drawing back into his official voice, Kiley replied, “I’ll give you what I can.”
         “By the way, have you heard about the hit-and-run incident yesterday on Robert Lauden?  Turns out the driver is attached to the Chinese embassy.”
         “Jesus Christ! No, I hadn’t read that. This is getting weird, David.”
         “It sure is,” said David and he filled in all the details he had thus far and how the NYPD had tried to arrest the man named Chin, who was safely protected inside the embassy, over on Twelfth Avenue. 
         “Would Interpol get involved in something like getting him out of there?”
         “Again, if there’s a proven crime that relates in some way to an international scheme, maybe. Otherwise, that’s strictly the F.B.I.’s ballpark.  Hey, maybe you should call Frank English, see what he knows.”
         David groaned and said, “I hate asking Frank for any more favors.”
         “I’ll do it then and let you know what he says. He’ll probably ask about you.”
         “Give him my love.”