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twentieth century, could today be passed off as a perfumery from Florence: “Thrill to the scent of liberation—Anarchy, from Sacco & Vanzetti.” Who today even recalled their first names, much less their crime?
    And someday, I told myself, Angela’s celebrity would fade as well, along with the entourage of lawyers, judges, and witnesses who shared her spotlight. We’ll all meet up in the foyer of that celebrity netherworld with Bruno Hauptmann, the Lindbergh baby, O.J. Simpson, and the victims of the Great Glider Crash of 1943. As usual, Shakespeare said it first and said it best:
    Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O, that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!

Chapter Six
    I was back in my office after lunch trying to focus, trying to prepare for the two meetings tomorrow in Chicago—first with Angela’s criminal defense lawyer and then with the lawyers for all defendants in the Son of Sam lawsuit. But it was no use. I was distracted—still troubled by the Groucho Marx drug. Was it just another loose end, or an important one? How and why did something called “flunitrazepam” get into Angela Green’s bloodstream?
    I’d called Brett Abrams that morning. Brett was a lawyer friend in Chicago who specialized in plaintiffs’ medical malpractice cases. I knew that Brett, like all medical malpractice lawyers, would have a copy of the Physicians’ Desk Reference on his desk. He checked the listings for me and reported that there was no entry for flunitrazepam.
    Perhaps, I’d mused after hanging up, there was no listing because the drug wasn’t lawful to prescribe in the United States. Before leaving for my lunch meeting, I’d asked my secretary, Jacki, to check with the medical school library at St. Louis University to see whether they had a reference book with any information on the drug. When I returned to the office after lunch, Jacki’s typed notes of her telephone conversation with one of the librarians were sitting on my desk.
    The librarian had found the information in a European equivalent of the PDR . According to Jacki’s notes, flunitrazepam was in the class of drugs used to treat anxiety, convulsions, muscle tension, and sleep disorders. Developed in the 1970s by Hoffman-La Roche, the drug was more popularly known by its trade name, Rohypnol.
    Rohypnol .
    I stared at the name.
    I said it aloud.
    It sounded awfully familiar.
    I read through the rest of her notes. The drug was legal in eighty-six countries in Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Low doses of Rohypnol could cause “drowsiness, dizziness, motor incoordination, memory loss, gastrointestinal upsets, headache, reduced blood pressure, visual disturbances, dry mouth, and hangover.” Higher doses could cause coma, respiratory depression, and even death.
    I leaned back in my chair and mulled it over. Flunitrazepam could be prescribed for sleeplessness or anxiety. That was not inconsistent with Angela’s history. Over the years, her physician had given her prescriptions for sleeping pills and for tranquilizers.
    I studied the notes. Legal in eighty-six countries. According to the investigative file, Angela had visited London, Rome, and Bermuda and had taken a Caribbean cruise during the four years before Michael Green’s murder. Maybe Rohypnol was legal in one of those countries.
    I turned toward the computer screen. My computer was hooked up to Nexis, a computer data bank of hundreds and hundreds of newspapers, periodicals, and specialized journals. It was worth a shot.
    I signed onto Nexis. At the search prompt, I typed in a single word: flunitrazepam . I stared at the word for a moment, my lips pursed. This was already a long shot. Better to do the search using its trademark. That might improve my chances of a hit, since newspapers and periodicals