“I got a twenty-one-day rip. Suspended without pay for three weeks.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Scully got the order directly from the mayor.”
“For-?”
“Crossing the line with Jessica Pell. I’ve sworn off crazy broads for the moment. That goes for you, too.”
I picked up my foot and poked Mike’s thigh with my toes.
“Three weeks from now and no paycheck? You’ll be back. Even my kind of crazy might start to appeal to you.”
“Don’t get too cocky, Coop,” Mike said, combing his fingers through his hair while he grinned at me. “Old ways are hard to change.”
“I’m your escort tonight, Ms. Cooper,” Mercer said. “Detective Chapman has a lot of paperwork to do on his big arrest. Let me top off those glasses, will you?”
Mercer reached over to refresh both of us. Then he put the bottle down next to me and with one strong shove, he launched our rowboat onto the Lake.
“We’ll be leaving here in half an hour, Alexandra. In the meantime, don’t make waves.”
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Who was the author of the wise scheme to turn the waste lands in the centre of the island into a city park?” John Punnett Peters, the early chronicler of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, asked more than one hundred years ago. Scholars and politicians have suggested many answers to that question over time, but none argue with the necessity and brilliance of creating the glorious design that became Central Park, in the heart of Manhattan. It is, as Kenneth Jackson of the New York Historical Society has said, “the most important public space in the United States.”
I am grateful to everyone at the Central Park Conservancy and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation-employees, donors, and volunteers-who have been entrusted with maintaining this magnificent work of art.
I was fortunate to spend hours in the Park in the company of Sara Cedar Miller, Central Park historian and photographer, as well as a thoroughly delightful guide to the pathways and hidden beauties of the land. Sara’s book, Central Park: An American Masterpiece, is one of the most glorious volumes to grace a bookshelf. My thanks, again, to Susan Danilow, who opened doors and made introductions with her characteristic generosity, wisdom, and friendship.
The research for Death Angel took me everywhere from the earliest nineteenth-century reports of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park to Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar’s The Park and the People (1992) to Joe Mitchell’s New Yorker piece about “The Cave Dwellers” (1938) to Cemetery John by Robert Zorn (2012). The finest and most powerful writing about homeless youth in New York that I have ever read was in Rachel Aviv’s New Yorker essay entitled “Netherland” (2012). As always, the New York Times articles about this city and its history-past and present-have been an invaluable source of information. Most especially fascinating and useful were articles by Mark Lamster, Liz Robbins, Danielle Ofri, Anemona Hartocollis, Nina Bernstein, Christopher Gray, Lisa Foderaro, Elizabeth Harris, Michael Wilson, and two pieces without bylines-from 1857 and 1897-about caves in Central Park and their inhabitants.
Then there are the real-life heroes who have provided inspiration: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance; the women and men of the great Trial Division-and all its Special Victims Units-of that office; the women and men of the New York Police Department (and former Crime Scene Unit expert Hal Sherman); the women and men of the OCME Forensic Biology Lab, including Theresa Caragine and Adele Mitchell; Nan Rothschild of Columbia University and her co-workers on the Seneca Village project.
Commissioner Gordon Davis (he really was the New York City Parks Commissioner once) wrote of Central Park in 1981: “Of all its great achievements and features, there is none more profound or dramatically moving than the social democracy of this public place.” I was introduced to the Davis family by my husband, Justin, and those friendships have been among the most meaningful of my life. My thanks to Gordon-gently nudged by Peggy-to let me re-commission him and put words in his mouth. And to my summer family of Davises-Allison, Susan and “goddaughter” Jordan-it’s impossible for me to express the joy I have when spending time with you.
In addition to my very sincere thanks to my Dutton friends, I must add gratitude for your patience. Brian Tart, Ben Sevier, Christine Ball, Jamie McDonald, Jessica Renheim, Carrie Swetonic, Stephanie Kelly, and Andrea Santoro-you are all a class act in a very tough business. And the same to David Shelley and his team at Little, Brown UK.
Esther Newberg has long had my back, and that’s the way I like it.
Family and friends-all the usual suspects-who have been a rock for me throughout the last few years, I remain in awe of all of you.
To Karen Cooper, who has been a devoted friend for almost thirty years-since the first evening you walked through my front door on the arm of the real Alex Cooper-you have inspired me every day of the last six months with your fortitude, courage, beauty, and strength.
And always to Justin, who remains my trusted muse and guiding spirit, and who believed in me when Coop was just a creature I dreamed about, fifteen books ago.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Linda Fairstein is America’s foremost legal expert on crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence. She led the Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for twenty-six years. Her fourteen previous Alexandra Cooper novels have been critically acclaimed international bestsellers, translated into more than a dozen languages. She lives in Manhattan and on Martha’s Vineyard.
