My father, Benjamin, was completing his post-medical-school internship in cardiology when one night he and three friends waited in line after a twelve-hour shift at the teaching hospital to spend the evening listening to jazz at the most famous Manhattan nightclub of its day-Montparnasse. Dozens of people were killed when a kitchen fire swept through the lower floor of the crowded restaurant, the flames fueled by the starched table linens and the gauzy costumes of the chorus girls. For the next several hours, my father and the other young docs rode the ambulances that responded to treat the scores of injured patrons, alongside the beautiful but unflinching young nursing student-who escaped from the inferno with her date to join the small band of volunteers-with whom he fell in love.
Our middle-class, suburban lifestyle changed dramatically when I was twelve years old, the year that my father and his partner in medical practice invented and patented a half-inch piece of plastic tubing that became known as the Cooper-Hoffman valve. The miraculous little device became an essential part of cardiac bypass surgery, used in operating theaters all over the world for more than a decade, and modified to keep current with medical advances to the present day.
This lifesaving invention had supported my education at Wellesley, a first-rate all-women’s college where I majored in English literature, followed by my studies for a Juris Doctor at the University of Virginia School of Law. The trust funds established for my siblings and me had not only allowed me the luxury of buying a home on Martha’s Vineyard, but also made it possible for me to devote a career to public service while maintaining a more privileged lifestyle than many of my colleagues.
I had thought that my own encounter with tragedy-the death of my fiancé, Adam Nyman, in a car accident as he drove to our wedding weekend on the Vineyard-would help me relate to Mike when Val was killed. But Mike had shut down on every emotional front, and my own memories of great happiness cut short by the senseless loss of life roiled up again with fresh pain that belied the passage of so many years.
“I’ve been meaning to find the time-the right time-to ask, you know, how you’ve been doing lately,” I said. Mike’s strong profile was outlined against the car window, backlit by the overhead lights as we sped along the drive. “You want to talk?”
“Not now.” His eyes never left the road.
“I worry that you’re-”
“Worry about yourself. Worry about your case for the next few weeks. You got creatures imploding on you inside and out of the courtroom. Me? I’ll still be on the last stool at the end of the bar at Forlini’s when the verdict comes in, win or lose. We needed someone sticking Marley Dionne like you need another pair of shoes.”
Mike still wasn’t letting me any closer on the personal side. He was telling me something, though, by the way he snapped at me and refused to engage. We were back to the business of the trial, and I trusted he knew I was available for him to lean on whenever he was ready.
“You going to try to talk to Marley tomorrow?” I asked.
“I’ll be bedside in the intensive care unit before I start down to your office, pinching that IV tube from time to time to jog his memory. I’m hoping we got a Samson effect going on.”
“You mean-”
“Someone cut off his dreads and maybe his balls shrunk in the process,” Mike said, wheeling the car off the drive and onto York Avenue, circling the blocks to get to Second.
We parked across the street from the restaurant and walked over, making our way through the crowd at the bar to get to Mercer and Giuliano, the owner, who were sitting together at a table against the front windows.
“Ciao, Alessandra,” Giuliano said, rising to greet us. “Detectivo, come stai?”
“Benissimo, now that I’m here,” Mike said, slapping the taller man’s back.
“Fenton, subito,” the owner called out to the bartender, snapping his fingers to get his attention. Giuliano winked at me as he pulled out my chair. “I think Signorina Cooper needs a double tonight, from what Mr. Mercer has been telling me.”
Our cocktail preferences were so well-known here that we had only to enter the restaurant before the good-natured waiters-Adolfo, Tony, and Dominick-delivered them to our places.
“Give us some fried zucchini to nibble on with our drinks,” Mike said to Giuliano, who offered to take our order himself. “The princess here has been giving me a hard time about eating all day. Do up a vat of ziti, with some of that tomato-basil sauce. She’s been working too hard to consider cutting her food or even chewing it. This’ll just slide down her throat, no effort at all.”
“I’ve got some delicious striped bass tonight, gentlemen.”
Mercer nodded and Mike continued ordering. “Two of those, and give us some prosciutto and figs. Blondie’ll just watch.”
“Nice job of getting Kate Meade home without paparazzi,” I said to Mercer as I lifted my glass of Dewar’s to click against each of their drinks.
“I’m not sure she’d ever seen the service entrance of her apartment building or even knew there were handymen who work in the basement, but I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t tip them well come Christmas.”
“How was the ride uptown?”
“Human tear ducts must hold a lot more fluid than I imagined. She never stopped crying.”
“Did she have time to talk before her husband got home?” I asked.
“Alex, that woman was so damned distracted, thinking about what was going to happen to her marriage and her kids and her life, there wasn’t any way to do a serious interrogation.”
“Did you get anything at all?”
“Seems like Preston Meade had been caught with his pants down a few months earlier. They’d been in marriage counseling for a while, but both of them were too uptight to talk their problems out in front of a therapist.”
“So Kate took the more direct route,” Mike said as he moved the ice around in his vodka glass. “Payback, don’t you think? One shot with the guy she’s probably had the hots for since high school. You got to look out for those mousy little ones, I’m telling you. Bad-tempered ballbreakers like Coop let it out now and then, but think about how long all this has been seething inside the very proper Mrs. Meade. Some of those nuns who taught her math, manners, and morals must be doing overtime on their rosary beads tonight.”
“What happened when Preston arrived?” I asked.
Mercer started to answer and I cupped my hand, leaning over the table to try to hear his answer. The chattering customers standing at the bar behind me were competing with the group of eight over my other shoulder that had just come in to wait for a table, and from the street outside came the sudden screeching noise of sirens passing by.
Mike pulled back the white voile café curtain. “Fire engines.”
“What did you say?” I repeated to Mercer.
“Wait till they pass,” he said, pointing to the window.
But the noise didn’t abate. I lifted the curtain on my side as a block-long, red hook-and-ladder wailed its urgent noise, stuck behind several cars that were jamming the intersection. It was joined by a backup chorus of whelping vehicles, so Mike stood to walk to the door, attracted by the growing fleet of patrol cars and ambulances.
Mercer’s waistband beeper started to vibrate just as Mike flipped open his cell phone and hit a single button-speed-dialing his office, I assumed.
Mercer unclipped the beeper and frowned as he looked at the illuminated numerical message. “Ten thirty-three.”
I knew too well the numbers of most of the NYPD emergency codes, from the extremely urgent ten thirteen to assist a fellow officer to the familiar ten thirty-four of an assault in progress.
I reached for Mercer’s arm as he pushed away from the table. “What is it?”