“Impossible.”
“So where did he come from, Coop?”
“How I wish I knew.”
We were silent until we reached the restaurant and parked several spaces away from the front door. Annie, the hostess, greeted us with her characteristic enthusiasm, and Stephane, who had been maître d’ from opening day, escorted us to the tiny elevator.
“Mr. Wallace is waiting for you upstairs,” Stephane said. “Comment ça va, Ms. Cooper? I haven’t seen Mr. Rouget in quite some time.”
I swallowed hard. “You know it’s his busiest time back in France.”
“Bien sur. I hope you’re managing well without him.”
“Fine, thank you.”
The door opened onto the fourth-floor landing. Patroon was one of the only restaurants in the city to boast a rooftop dining area. The fresh air on this late spring night was exhilarating, and the crowd around the bar made it all so cheerful and refreshing.
Ken was sitting at a corner table with Mercer. They both stood up as we approached, and we exchanged kisses.
“You didn’t happen to TiVo Jeopardy! for me tonight?” Mike asked Ken.
“Give me a break, Mike.” Ken looked dapper, as always, with his custom-tailored suit, a Turnbull & Asser shirt, and horn-rimmed glasses. “I didn’t know you were coming in until after the show was over. I’ll buy you a drink instead.”
“That’s a good way to start. At least it will cover my wager. Mercer? Did you see it?”
“Yes, I did. And I lost.”
“What was the category?”
“Russian literature.”
“I’m screwed again. Make it a double, Ken.”
“The answer was something about a Russian nobleman and poet whose great-grandfather was African.”
“Who is Doctor Zhivago?” Mike said.
“And he would be a fictional character,” I said. “Like Alice in Wonderland, Mother Goose, and Norman Bates.”
“You don’t know either, really?” Mike said. “Two nights running? That’s not possible.”
“Don’t humor him, Alex,” Mercer said. “He can deal with it.”
“Alexander Pushkin. Peter the Great adopted a young Ethiopian boy as a member of the royal family. I guess that was better than enslaving him. Anyway, he was the poet’s ancestor.”
Ken knew our drinks and sent over a round for the table. Mike and Mercer ordered the porterhouse for two, I asked for the grilled sole, and Mike piled on all the sides he could think of-fries, onion rings, crispy brussels sprouts, sautéed spinach, and a salad for each of us.
I sipped the Scotch and leaned my head back, knowing it was hopeless to look for the same stars I had seen over the weekend. The city sky was just a milky gray.
“You’re coming into the case,” Mike said to Mercer.
“I know. Peterson called the office this afternoon. Told me to meet you at the lab in the morning.”
Mike asked him to take the small black statuette from there up to the Columbia archaeology team to see if he could get a provenance on it.
We spent the next hour telling Mercer everything we’d learned about the Park and how unsettling it was not to be able to figure out how the body wound up in the Lake.
“And the girl? What’s her name?” Mercer asked.
“Don’t know,” I said.
“I understand that. I meant Mike’s name for her.”
Mike always gave his victims a name. It was another way for him to humanize them, even when we didn’t know their identities. Sometimes he’d gotten heat for his bad taste, like the time a hooker was found in a cardboard shipping container on the sidewalk in Hell’s Kitchen. Foxy-his sobriquet for the fox in the box-found its way into the Post coverage of the case. He’d become gentler in the years since that embarrassment.
“There’s only one thing to call her,” Mike said. “Till someone puts a name to that sorry face, she’s Angel.”
THIRTEEN
“Is anyone in there with him?” I asked Rose on my way into Battaglia’s office.
“No, he’s alone.”
I had spent the first two hours of the morning returning yesterday’s calls and setting up a case file for all the reports from the squads and foot soldiers taking note of everything that happened in the Park. Then Battaglia arrived at 10:30 and called for me.
“If I scream for you, Rose, come bail me out.”
She continued filing the DA’s massive amount of incoming mail rather than make eye contact with me.
“Good morning, Paul.”
“Morning,” he said, turning away from the computer screen where he’d been checking the stock market’s opening activity. “How long are we going to drag this thing out?”
He reached for a match and lit the cigar that was clenched between his teeth.
“I’d like to think until we solved it, but I imagine the department will give it one week of going through the Park with a fine-tooth comb and then back off.”
“It’s one thing to put all this manpower into a case if it looks like we can make it. It’s quite another to have you all out there spinning wheels and getting nowhere.”
“I wish I could agree with you.”
“What?” He cupped his good ear and turned it to me. “Now, what’s all this crap going on with you and Chapman? Jessica Pell called me at home on Sunday.”
“She’s crazy.”
“She’s not so crazy that she doesn’t know what’s going on before I do. You swore to me a couple of years ago that you and Mike were just buddies. I wouldn’t have let you work cases with him if I thought you two had crossed that line.”
“I told you the truth then and it’s still the truth today. Even though it’s none of your business.”
“That time I heard you, Alexandra,” Battaglia said, removing the cigar from his mouth to articulate more clearly. “Everything that happens in this courthouse is my business.”
“But-”
“I won’t have you trying murder cases with your main witness on the stand, and some high-powered, high-priced mouthpiece cross-examining him, asking whether he held a gun to the suspect’s head because his demanding girlfriend won’t let him back in bed if he doesn’t come home with a confession.” Battaglia stabbed at his desktop with his forefinger. “Are you or aren’t you?”
“Am I what?” I was standing in front of the DA, flushed with anger and defiance.
“Are you in bed with Mike Chapman?”
“I was stupid enough to answer you once. Now you’ll have to decide for yourself whether it matters because I’m declaring that subject off-limits for discussion between us. You’ve got five hundred lawyers in this office. Are you policing all of their bedrooms, Paul? ’Cause that is one monstrous job, if you’re up to it.”
“I’m not policing anything. You’ve got the high-profile cases, Alex. You live in the glare of the lights, if you can.”
“You put me in that position years ago, Paul. I can live with that, and with whatever I choose to do.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to work.”
“Consider yourself lucky that I did this one-on-one. I left McKinney out of it. I’m not trying to hurt you, Alex. There are things I just need to know.”
“How fortunate can I be? There’s your man McKinney, who left his wife and kids for one of your least-talented lawyers-the laughingstock of the trial division, really-whom you only hired because her mother, at the time, was a major television news reporter. See what that got you, Paul? The mother lost her job because of some on-air tirade, and you’re stuck with the harebrained kid, who sits in the chief’s office all day drinking tea and mooning at him. Shall I move on to the next bedroom?”
“Don’t walk out on me,” Battaglia shouted as I headed for the door.
“I’ll be back as soon as I have case news to report. If it’s gossip you want, I’m pretty much up to speed on that, too. My sources are even more reliable than yours.”