"Mr. Battaglia told me that you knew Amber Bristol. Why don't we focus on that?"
He paced again, away from me, and lowered his head. "I'm not a crime reporter, Ms. Cooper. I've written about significant cases when they've had an impact on social issues. My experience is more, shall we say, global than street-smart."
"How did you meet Ms. Bristol?"
"At a cocktail reception. Yes, about a year ago. A cocktail party."
"Where was the event, Mr. Ackerman?" There was no need to scare him off yet by taking notes. "I need to know exactly how you became acquainted."
"Um. Let me think. Must we be that specific?"
"We certainly must."
"No, I guess it was online. I must have met her online. I'm mistaken about the party."
It was going to be a contest with Herb Ackerman. He was going to test me to figure how much he could fudge without giving me the facts I needed.
"Do you remember the site?"
"Probably she just began a correspondence because she admired something I'd written. One of my columns," he said. "People write to me every day, Ms. Cooper. I couldn't possibly keep track."
This interview was clearly not going to finish before I had to go to court with Kerry Hastings. I needed to take better control of the witness and let him know that the tabloids would like nothing more than to make this arrogant intellectual fodder for their gossip columns, if not their crime headlines.
"That's not a problem for us. Our forensic computer cops can retrieve documents-even things you've deleted-once we get hold of your hard drive." I smiled at Ackerman as he squirmed and turned to face me. "The technology is amazing. Your people probably do it at the magazine all the time, just to find drafts of old copy."
"You'll-uh, you'll actually look for, um, proof of what I'm telling you?"
"So far, sir, you haven't told me anything. I just thought that if you were having difficulty remembering how you and Ms. Bristol got to know each other, we could try to support your memory with paperwork. From the little I know about her, I suspect she wasn't a regular correspondent with your editorial board. I just assumed you might have met in a chat room or something of that nature."
He exhaled and his chin settled down into his collar while he thought about what he wanted to tell me.
"You could be right, Ms. Cooper. I spend such a lot of time on my computer. Perhaps I'm confusing her with someone else. Yes, yes-I might have come across her while I was surfing the Web."
The Middle East peace process, car bombings in Iraq, UN peacekeeping in Africa, poverty in urban America-and an escort service in New York, with a possible emphasis on sadomasochism. A natural progression in an Ackerman online search.
"Here's what we'll do, Mr. Ackerman. I'll go up to court and try my case, because that's extremely important to me right now. I've got a woman who actually wants me to help her. You think about this again and when you're ready to have a candid conversation, just give me a call."
"Please don't go," he said, reaching his hand out to grab mine. "Do you understand how difficult this is for me?"
"Amber Bristol is dead, Mr. Ackerman. How tough was that for her?"
"I called Paul Battaglia because somehow-somehow I became involved in a relationship with Amber," he said.
I tried to look him in the eye as the words spilled out more quickly, but the thick line of his bifocals distorted my view.
"I was in my office last evening when the story about her murder came over the wire. I was mortified, naturally, and thought that if I reached out for the authorities instead of waiting for them to find a reference to me in her Palm Pilot, there might be a way for me to keep my name out of this." He met my stare. "Do you think there is?"
"I obviously don't know enough to give you an answer to that. I'll start with you now, but you'll have to talk with the homicide detective, too. He's got the lead on the case until we get to the arrest phase."
"You're close to an arrest?" Ackerman was breathing deeply. "What can you tell me about that?"
"You've got this backwards, sir. There's nothing I can tell you."
"My name? Do the police have my name?"
"Assume that they do, Mr. Ackerman. When's the last time you saw Ms. Bristol?"
"It was a Friday night, the week before last. It was always a Friday. Her Palm Pilot has everything in it. It's where she kept all her information."
Two nights before her birthday, before she was supposed to meet her sister, Janet, at the bar.
"Where was that, Mr. Ackerman?"
"In my office. We met in my office."
I would need Battaglia to sign off on a forensic psychiatrist to work with me. I'd need to understand the risks Amber Bristol had been willing to take with her life. Now the case would be confused with psychobabble about why one of the most distinguished journalists in the city would meet with a hooker at the Tribune's power offices.
"Always at work?"
"Amber's been to my apartment from time to time," he said. "I'm a widower, Ms. Cooper. I invited her there occasionally, but then there are doormen to deal with in my co-op, you understand."
"And her home?"
"Never. I don't even know where she lived." He clasped his hands together and appeared to be confused by that question. "Well, if she ever told me, I've forgotten. She had a boyfriend. Obviously, she didn't want our paths to cross. I thought maybe he lived there with her."
"You know his name?"
He shook his head and his wrinkled neck jiggled. "I never asked. I think he worked in a bar. At least that's what she said. It's a problem for me to separate the stories she told me-which ones were real and which were, well, fantasies."
"It must have been even harder to get her past security at the Tribune than into a residential apartment building. Wouldn't she have to sign some kind of log?"
"Indeed, I'm sure there's a record of her visits," he said. "But believe me, if Herb Ackerman called down to say I was expecting a guest at nine or ten o'clock, and a well-dressed young woman showed up with a press pass, then-"
"A press pass? Did you help arrange that?"
He waved his hand across the desktop. "Any kid can put his or her hand on one of those. Summer interns, students at local schools, freelance writers."
"You got one for her?"
"Yes."
"With a photo and the magazine logo and her name?"
"Yes. Well, that was part of the game we played."
"Game?"
"She didn't use the name Bristol," he said, with a chuckle that I could only hope was a nervous reaction. "Amber Alert. That's what she called herself when she was with me."
Perhaps this small-town girl with an unhealthy imagination liked the fact that her alias appeared on billboards all over America.
"Let me ask a few more questions, Mr. Ackerman. Then we'll make an appointment for a longer interview."
"I'd like to get this done now."
"The last night you were with Amber, did you and she engage in any sexual acts?"
"Sexual? Oh, Ms. Cooper, you're completely mistaken," Ackerman said, his chin crawling back down onto his short neck. "Our relationship wasn't about sex."
I stood up to conclude the meeting. "I was counting on your candor to help us, Mr. Ackerman. That's the only way we can be of any use to you."
"But Amber and I never had sex," he was almost whining as he looked at me.
"Then you tell me what your get-togethers were like." I didn't want to give him any information about whips and handcuffs until he raised the subject himself.
Ackerman reached under his glasses with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and massaged his closed eyelids.
"She diapered me, Ms. Cooper. That's what she did."
"She what?"
The forensic psychiatrist I had in mind, an expert in psychosexual disorders, would probably double his rates when I gave him the case hypothetical.
"It's a-a problem I have."
"A medical problem?"
"No. No. Nothing I need," he said softly. "I like to be diapered."