I found Dr. Taylor sitting in his mop-closet office, talking on the phone. He glanced up at me and grimaced.

     "Our long lost Benjamin Candidi has just resurfaced . . . Here in my office," he said sarcastically into the transmitter. "I’ll call you back, Peter." He hung up.

     "Second-year graduate student Candidi reporting back for duty, sir," I said, with a mock salute.

     Taylor frowned.

     "After being two months AWOL?"

     "I told you I was taking some time to study medical pharmacology. I’ve also been working on some ideas for a dissertation project."

     He said nothing for a long time. The silly bastard just sat there, glaring at me. Finally he roared, "AND WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?"

     "What do you mean?"

     "You made yourself scarce when they needed you for the trial."

     "My radio went on the blink, and no one made sufficient effort to contact me."

     "For three days they searched for that boat of yours, all the way from here to Key West."

     "It wasn’t my fault they didn’t find me. So what did they want me for?"

     "They wanted to subpoena you for the trial. But they later decided that it was unnecessary."

     "So there! It didn’t make any difference. What else am I supposed to be blaming myself for?"

     Taylor’s face was red. He continued glaring at me.

     "You can blame yourself for initiating the prosecution of Dr. Ledbetter! You were involved in it early on. The tip-off came from you. You told certain things to the Medical Examiner." Taylor was twitching all over.

     "I don’t know what the Medical Examiner learned from me that he couldn’t have learned himself, or from two dozen people around here," I snapped back, indignantly.

     "The newspaper quoted Westley as saying that an important part of the solution to the case occurred to him while talking to you. The prosecution wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for you."

     He kept trying to stare me down.

     "Well, maybe you should not rely solely on the newspapers for your information. I heard from the medical students that the investigators got the information from the Sophomore Note Service! They told me that the prosecution even brought a medical student in to testify on the notes he published. Is that right?"

     "Yes, I believe so," he said cautiously.

     "So why aren’t you skinning him alive? Why are you blaming me?" I scowled.

     "Well — " he temporized, almost meekly. Blood drained from his face.

     "Well, the medical student isn’t to blame, and neither am I. It was just scientific information. I don’t remember you or your two assistants, Dr. Sturtz and Dr. Stampawicz, announcing any prohibition on telling people what’s said in lectures."

     My upper lip may have curled when I said "Stampawicz." I laid in a long pause, staring at Taylor. He didn’t look away for a long time. Then he started to blink. Then he looked past me, raised his eyebrows and smiled.

     I renewed my attack. "I didn’t tell anyone about the dog-and-cat fights that were going on here, because I didn’t know about them. But from what I’ve subsequently heard, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Ledbetter had killed Cooper with his bare hands. I guess it took a trial to bring that out."

     Taylor looked away, but I was in no mood to let him off the hook just yet.

     "If I were mentioned or quoted, or if they had my picture in the paper, well, I don’t give a damn! I got sick and tired of the whole affair when Dr. Moore hauled my butt down to the Dean’s Office. They grilled me like a toasted cheese sandwich. They treated me like a piece of shit. In fact, I was so god-damned pissed off that I seriously thought about giving up on this Department and transferring my credits to another graduate school."

     Dr. Taylor visibly shrank under the onslaught of my words.

     "Dr. Taylor, maybe you would be so good as to tell me whether you think Ledbetter is guilty."

     Taylor squirmed in his chair, and then slowly whined, "Well, I . . . I . . . It is a very complicated case and — "

     "Thank you, sir, for your expert opinion. Now, as the Director of the Graduate Program, do you have any more questions of me?"

     He slowly came to his senses. He looked past me, once more seeming to gather strength, and said, "So you studied pharmacology for two months, did you? Name me an alpha blocker!"

     "Yohimbine. Alpha two blocker. Works on presynaptic receptors to give enhanced release of Nor-Epi. Tips the balance towards adrenergic stimulation. Used for idiopathic orthostatic hypotension, and is abused in certain circles to abnormally prolong penile erection."

     "And some less exotic alpha blockers?"

     "Phentolamine, prazosine and phenoxybenzamine."

     "Well, enough. You shouldn’t have trouble with medical pharmacology next semester."

     "No. As a matter of a fact, I’m going to blow the top off of it. Just call off your dogs. And the next time I hear anything from any one of the Faculty on this Ledbetter thing, I’m transferring out. One more thing, I want to take the preliminary exam with the third-year students this fall."

     "But students are not generally allowed to do this before completion of the second year."

     "I’m ready for it now. I’ve also got a dissertation project thought out. I can finish up here in two more years."

     "Graduate in three years?"

     "Yes. I want to talk to Kozinski and McGregor about a project I thought up over the last two months."

     "By all means."

     I gave him a mock salute. This time he returned it, involuntarily.

     I turned on my heel, took one step and bumped into Dr. Peter Moore. He must have been standing there listening to us for a long time.

     "Fine performance, Mr. Candidi. Now we’ll give you a chance to repeat it before the Dean."

     "I’d like nothing better."

     I marched down there so fast they had trouble keeping up with me. After we’d penetrated the second layer of the Dean’s secretaries and were standing directly before the final door, Dr. Moore slipped ahead of me.

     "We’ll go in first. You can wait here," he said.

     The senior secretary gave Moore and Taylor a nod, and they opened the door and walked in.

     "He’s impenitent," Dr. Taylor announced as the door closed.

     During the wait, I borrowed the secretary’s Medical School telephone directory and looked up Alberto "Tire Iron" Alonso. The directory listed him as "Security Specialist 3," working directly under Mr. Joseph "Fat Ass" Klouski. I overheard the Dean instructing the secretary to get Assistant Counsel Blanco on the phone. The little light on the phone told me that the conversation lasted a full half hour.

     The light went out, and I waited still another quarter of an hour. Taylor, Moore and the Dean must have had a lot to discuss. Finally, the secretary told me to go in. The two pharmacologists looked exhausted. The Dean looked cool, but I guessed he was silently seething.

     "Mr. Candidi, I’m faced with a difficult call."

     I showed neither the expected diffidence nor fear. "If you’d like me to go out while you make a difficult telephone call, it would be all right with me."

     "A judgment call," he replied frostily.

     "I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t expecting to hear slang in a Dean’s office. So you are faced with a difficult decision. Can I assume that Dr. Moore and Dr. Taylor have explained to you what I have explained to them?"

     "Yes."

     "Then I don’t see why you would have any difficulty making your ‘judgment call.’"

     "That is for me to decide, not for you," he said, dropping his voice to a temperature that would liquefy oxygen.

     I reached into my backpack, pulled out the packet of photos and tossed them down on his desk. "Perhaps these will help you decide which side of the fence to come down on."

     He opened the envelope like he knew it was bad news.

     "They were taken after two of your security men, Joseph Klouski and Alberto Alonso, broke into my boat and beat me up. I have a positive I.D. on them. I managed to disarm them. Their pistols are in the custody of the Florida Marine Patrol."

     The Dean feigned surprise, but he didn’t fool me. He probably didn’t fool Moore and Taylor, either. I told him about discovering his two officers on my boat, the tear gas in the face, the struggle in the water, my retrieval of the guns and the record I compiled with the Florida Marine Patrol. I complained about my head wound. The Dean was silent for a long time.

     "Of course, this doesn’t really prove anything," he said brazenly, but searching for my reaction.

     "Then I’ll pick up where I left off with the police. Thanks for your time. I’ll see you in criminal and civil court."

     "Mr. Candidi!"

     "What?"

     Again, an embarrassingly long silence. The guy had been too long at liquid-nitrogen temperature and was frozen stiff. It was up to me to thaw him out.

     "Sir, the problem may be inflated pride. It gets in the way of intelligence, and then people do damage to themselves. When a human being gets away with treating people like shit for too long, it goes to his head. Let me propose a deal: You don’t bullshit me, and I don’t bullshit you." I let this sink in. "Now, on behalf of yourself and your institution, what do you have to say?"

     "I’m sorry."

     "That’s all I wanted to hear. I forgive you and your institution. Now, let me make one more proposal. You and your people leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone." I turned to Moore and Taylor. "And no more cowardly innuendo and comparing me with a farm boy who tracked cow shit into the house. If I hear any more of this, I’m transferring out to a more respectable institution. Is there anything more to say, gentlemen?" We would have to solve all the details during these golden moments with the Dean.

     They were silent.

     "Then I’d like to return to the lab. If there are any afterthoughts, you can find me there." I turned on my heel.

     "Mr. Candidi," called the Dean, as I reached the door. "The negatives?" The guy had been reading too many L.A. detective novels.

     "You’ll just have to trust me on that one."

     Thus, black sheep Ben Candidi was taken back into the fold, never again to feel the shepherd’s crook. I checked my mailbox. There was a note to call "Steve." I used the phone in the med student lounge.

     Steve Burk told me that my services would no longer be needed at the M.E.’s Office. "In the last several months we’ve gotten pretty damned good at extending our assay capabilities."

     "Well, goddamn! Westley promised — "

     "Keep cool, buddy, and let me finish. The Dade County Environmental Resources Agency wants you as a consultant on chromatographic methods. They’re going to give you a three-year contract at twenty-five thousand dollars a year. All you have to do is visit them several times a year, and be available when they need an opinion. The Old Man put in a good word for you. Congratulations!"

     "Congratulations to you, Steve! You did a great job. I know you must have had your hands full."

     "You’ll never know how much. Say, maybe after you get your Ph.D. and things get back to normal here, we can go down to that beer joint of yours and shoot the breeze a little. And check out the Swedish tits."

     "Sounds great. You’re on. ’Til then."

     I left the Department, took a long walk and then met Rebecca as she came out from the exam. She was in good spirits, and I took her for a nice dinner in Coral Gables. The next morning she went back for the second round. I figured Dr. Taylor and Dr. Moore had enough time to tell everyone to lay off of Ben Candidi, so I went back to the Department. Dr. Rob McGregor and Dr. Al Kozinski were pleased with my idea for a dissertation project under their joint mentorship.