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Payne looked at him but said nothing.

“The nature of which we really don’t know,” Savarese continued. “Except that, whatever it was, it was quite severe. She is currently hospitalized at University Hospital. Her family physician had her admitted, and arranged for her to be attended by Dr. Aaron Stein.”

“Stein is a fine . . .”—Payne stopped himself just in time from saying “psychiatrist”—“physician.”

“So I understand,” Savarese said. “He has recommended that my granddaughter be seen by Dr. Payne.”

“Stein and my daughter are friends,” Payne offered. “That’s how I came to meet him.”

They are friends, Payne thought. But that’s now. It used to be Humble Student sitting at the feet of the Master.

Stein was as old as he was. Amy had originally gone to University Hospital thrilled at the chance to work with him, to learn from him. They had—surprising the psychiatric fraternity; Stein had a reputation for holding most fellow psychiatrists as fools—become friends and ultimately colleagues, and Payne knew that Stein had even proposed a joint private practice to Amy, which she had declined, for reasons Payne had not understood.

“So he told my daughter,” Savarese said. “But apparently, that friendship hasn’t been enough to convince Dr. Payne to see my granddaughter.”

Stein sends Amy a patient and she turns her—which means Dr. Stein, her guru—down? That sounds a bit odd.

“I don’t really see, Mr. Savarese, what this has to do with me,” Payne said.

I know damned well what it has to do with me. He wants me to go to Amy, who certainly had her reasons to refuse to see the granddaughter, and ask her to reconsider.

It’s absolutely none of my business. Amy would first be amazed, and then, justifiably, more than a little annoyed that I was putting my nose into her practice. Particularly in a case like this.

Or is it my fault? Amelia Payne, M.D., Fellow of the American College of Psychiatry, is also Amy Payne, loving daughter of Brewster C. Payne, and has heard, time and time again, his opinions of organized crime and its practitioners. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that Amy turned down this girl either because of me, or because she doesn’t want to get involved with anyone involved with the mob.

“My granddaughter is very ill, Mr. Payne,” Savarese said. “Otherwise, I would not involve myself in this. Neither Dr. Seaburg, her family physician, nor Dr. Stein, is aware of our relationship. But I love her, and my daughter, and so, as one father to another, I am willing to beg for help for her.”

“You want me to speak to my daughter, is that it?”

“I am begging you to do so,” Savarese said simply.

Where are we? Amy has declined to see this girl for reasons that have nothing to do with me—he let me off the hook on that, when he said neither the family physician nor Dr. Stein knows he’s the girl’s grandfather—or with Savarese.

And the girl, obviously, should not be punished for the sins of the grandfather in any event. And in this case, he is the grandfather, not the Mafia don.

“Will you excuse me for a moment, please?” Payne said, and walked out of his office, past Mrs. Craig’s desk, across the corridor and into Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson’s office.

“I need the Colonel’s office a moment, Janet,” he said to Mawson’s secretary.

He went into Mawson’s office, sat on his red leather couch, and pulled the telephone to him.

It took him nearly five minutes to get Amy on the line, and when she came on the line, there was worry and concern in her voice.

“Daddy? They said it was important?”

“Indulge me for a moment, Amy,” he said.

“I’m always afraid you’re calling to tell me Matt got himself shot again,” she said, her relief evident in her voice.

“As far as I know, the only danger Matt faces at the moment is from the understandably irate father of the girl he took from Chad Nesbitt’s birthday party and who has not called home since,” Payne said.

There was a short chuckle, and then—now with a tone of impatience in her voice—she asked: “What’s important, then, Daddy? I’m really up to my ass in work.”

“Did Dr. Stein send you a patient, a young woman, by the name of Longwood?”

“Aaron sends me a lot of patients, or tries to, but that name doesn’t ring a bell. Why do you ask?”

“Aaron”? It wasn’t that long ago when she reverentially called him “Doctor Stein.”