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hand. The other half is god knows where.” Before he could stop himself Fong found himself thinking, “It’s part of the message.” But even as he did he reached over and touched the frozen item in the coroner’s hand. He ran his finger along the cut edge. The cut was razor smooth for most of its length but near the top there was a jaggedness.
    “Did his knife slip here?” asked Fong with his finger on the spot.
    “No, I don’t think so,” replied the coroner with a cold smile. The coroner then put the organ down on the morgue table and removed the plastic glove from his right hand. Before Fong could ask him what he was doing, the old man reached into his mouth and with a tug pulled out a complete set of dentures. With the dentures in his right hand he picked up the heart with his left. Slowly he moved the dentures toward the jagged section of the heart. The jaggedness exactly matched the bite mark that would have been made by the ripping action of the top four front and canine teeth and the bottom six with the eye teeth at either end.
    “He chewed it and spat it out. I saw it in the photo,” said Fong.
    “You saw that in a crime scene snapshot?”
    “In one of them but not the others.”
    The coroner put down the heart and reinserted his dentures.
    Fong could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing and just for a moment their greenish cast made him feel a little wobbly on his feet.
    “You all right?”
    Fong nodded.
    “This guy’s got a hell of an MO.”
    “Personal style brought to new heights.”
    The coroner grunted a laugh.
    “Not a word of this to anyone. If by any chance this ends up in the papers, I will have your head, old man.”
    “More threats of the young? The Cultural Revolution’s over or haven’t you heard?”
    “I’ve heard. I want your report on my desk by week’s end, okay?”
    “Sure.” The coroner paused and was about to say something, then decided against it and began bundling his gruesome charge back into a large green plastic bag.

    When the State Department official handed Amanda Fallon back her passport he flipped it open to show her the forty-day, single-entry visa to China. To him, Red China.
    “The State Department picked up the forty-dollar charge for the visa.”
    Amanda was going to say thank you but she couldn’t quite think what for, then said it anyway. He smiled at her and mumbled further condolences for her loss and wished her an easy flight to Shanghai.
    When she left the State Department office on Canal Street she turned left and headed toward the Quarter. The intensity of New Orleans’s summer had not yet arrived but in the bright sunshine of mid-April it was hanging in the corners of the Quarter’s old buildings, waiting to fill five full months with heat and humidity, sweat and loving as only ol’N’orl’ns can. Although she was from the north, she had lived in New Orleans since she was seventeen and a student at All Fun U, known to the world as Tulane University. She had been accepted by the women’s college on campus but upon arriving had decided that the men’s side offered more opportunities for study in her area of greatest concern. Men. After going through the undergraduate male population in alphabetical order, she decided that forays into the realm of the faculty merited her attention. And despite the published university policy of a total ban on student/faculty “fraternization,” Amanda found few who could resist her casual offer of a drink down in the Quarter.
    So it was with a series of ghosts at her side that she stepped into the courtyard of her favourite watering hole off Talouse. If the Creole barman recognized her, he never let on. But he wasn’t surprised when she ordered a tall rum on ice. A literature professor had introduced her to the glories of this particular drink on hot days. He had consumed several that first day as they sat French style side by side on a banquette with the table in front of them. He talked about Tennessee