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walked up the porch steps just as the front door flew open, and Muriel Sykes stormed out. She was wearing a warm purple coat and a cold, hard scowl.
    “Good morning, Madam Mayor,” I said.
    “America’s sweetheart was murdered in my city on my watch. What the hell is good about it?” she said. “Where are you on the case?”
    “We’ve got nothing of substance to report yet,” I said.
    “
Nothing of substance
seems to be the theme of my day,” she said. “I’m on my way to Albany to be lied to.”
    She walked down the porch steps and headed for the SUV. Charlie opened the rear door as she approached.
    Kylie and I followed. “Mayor Sykes,” I said, “you sent for us. Was it just to get an update on the Travers case?”
    “Hell, no. I knew you had nothing because nobody from Red called to say you had something.”
    She climbed into the backseat of the car, and Charlie closed the door. Sykes rolled down the rear window. “I called for something else. It’s a nasty can of worms, and I can’t trust anyone to deal with it but you.”
    “Thank you,” I said. “Do you have time to give us the details?”
    “Detective, I don’t have time to wind my watch. Howard can give you the details. He’s waiting for you inside.”
    She rolled up the window, and the SUV took off for the 145-mile trip to the state capital.
    “I’ve never seen her in such a foul mood,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to be Charlie.”
    “Hell,” Kylie said, “if this is the real Muriel Sykes, then I wouldn’t want to be Howard.”
    That got a laugh out of me. Howard Sykes was the mayor’s husband. We went back up the porch steps to find out what nasty can of worms he was about to entrust us with.

CHAPTER 7
     
    MURIEL SYKES WAS a scrappy kid from the streets of Brooklyn who worked her way through law school, was appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, then crushed a sitting mayor in her first run for office. If she had one defining quality that propelled her along the way, it was grit.
    Her husband was neither gritty nor scrappy. A privileged child raised on New York’s affluent Sutton Place, Howard Sykes had navigated his way from the city’s private school system to the Ivy League and ultimately to Madison Avenue, where his white-bread good looks and well-bred patrician manner made him a natural fit in a world where image was often more valued than substance.
    But there was a lot more to the man than a proper golf swing and a gift for captivating his dinner guests with advertising war stories. Howard was a virtuoso at orchestrating marketing campaigns that won the hearts of consumers and sweetened the bottom lines of his clients. He retired at the age of sixty to manage his wife’s political campaign and was credited with being the force behind making her the first female mayor of New York City.
    And to top it all off, he was a hell of a nice guy. Kylie and I had met him at several charity functions, and he had a way of always making us feel as important as any billionaire in the room.
    He was waiting for us in the living room of the First Family’s private residence. “Zach, Kylie, thanks for coming,” he said, ignoring the fact that it was a command performance.
    “How can we help?” I asked.
    “I’m on the board of trustees of two hospitals here in the city,” he said. “A month ago some medical equipment disappeared from Saint Cecilia’s.”
    “What kind of equipment?”
    Ever the consummate adman, Howard had prepared visual aids. He opened up a folder and pulled out a photo of a contraption that looked like an iPad on steroids.
    “That’s a portable ultrasound machine used for cardiac imaging. It weighs ten pounds, which means the tech can walk it to any bedside in the hospital.”
    “But this one walked out of the hospital,” I said.
    “This and two more just like it. They cost twenty thousand a pop. My first thought was that that’s the downside to making these machines so compact: