“Me too.” I looked at my watch. “Ask him to meet me here at ten thirty so we have a little time together before we go up to court.”
“Sure. And Rose says the boss is in a perfectly good mood. Somebody just comped him four tickets for opening day at the stadium.”
“That always helps,” I said as I left Laura to pass yet another security officer in order to enter Battaglia’s inner sanctum.
Rose Malone, my good friend and the DA’s longtime executive assistant, was the most trusted person in the office. She was the personification of a loyal and devoted employee who knew where all the bones were buried, with the side benefits of great looks and style that belied her age. Battaglia and his predecessors had no secrets from Rose, nor did any young assistant who caught the attention — for better or worse — of the front office.
“Good morning, Alexandra. That’s a handsome suit,” Rose said. “How is everything?”
“Too good to be true, till last night.”
The city’s murder rate had dropped to an all-time low. The mayor claimed credit for it, Police Commissioner Keith Scully went on air regularly to remind voters that dynamic policing techniques were responsible, and the DA ignored them both with arguments that he had jailed most recidivist criminals and successfully used diversionary programs to rehabilitate the rest. There was no logical explanation for the phenomenon. We all knew that such trends were cyclical and that the numbers would eventually spike again.
“You can go right in. He’s alone.”
Rose was my barometer for the measure of Battaglia’s temperament. In the few seconds I had before entering his office, the warmth of Rose’s greeting let me know how the DA’s day was going. The strong odor of cigar smoke that wafted over her desk suggested that he had just walked away from her post to settle back into his own suite.
“Have a seat, Alex.” The cigar — a contraband Cuban, no doubt, that someone had given him to curry good favor — was plugged into the middle of Battaglia’s mouth, and would be replaced throughout the day by one after another. If you hadn’t worked with him for a period of time, you’d need an interpreter to understand the words that leached out around the thick stub. “Rough scene last night, I take it?”
“Unimaginable.”
“What does Chapman think?” I could barely see his mouth over the top of the Wall Street Journal. He was examining yesterday’s market results while he talked to me.
I was tempted to tell him that I had a full plate and he was welcome to call Mike for his thoughts, rather than my own, if that was the reason he’d brought me in here. Battaglia had a much more welcoming attitude about women in the criminal justice workplace than the lead prosecutors who came before him did, but like most of the guys who had been in this business a long time, he still viewed homicide investigators as members of an elite professional men’s club.
“That the killer knew his victim, chose her purposefully. That this isn’t his first kill, nor will it be his last. That he picked his venue for a reason.”
“Good people at Mount Neboh. Don’t let the guys hassle them.”
If Wilbur Gaskin described that little encounter as a hassle, I thought, wait till he sees Mike and Mercer close in on a suspect. “Of course not. There’s no reason to.”
“Who was she?”
“We don’t know.”
“I realize no face, no fingerprints, but no paper in her pockets?”
“No clothes, Paul. A dump job. Naked, with a blanket that was torched.”
“Cops hold anything back from the press?”
They always did, in hopes that when a suspect was confronted and interrogated, he would reveal a scintilla of evidence that had never been made public.
“She might be Jewish. Or the killer is. There was a Star of David found beneath her body — a delicate piece of jewelry.”
Battaglia flattened the newspaper on his desk. “For all his bullshit, Chapman always comes up with the goods.”
No point correcting his conclusion. Mike needed the credit for occasions on which his outspoken manner and his gallows humor offended the district attorney. I nodded and smiled, explaining the history of the old church. “That’s why there may be significance to the victim’s religious affiliation.”
“You ever think about running for this job, Alex, remember what I tell you. There are three hundred seventy-one Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of New York. I’ve worshipped at one of them all my life, so I’ve got to attend. The rest are part of the must-do stops in every campaign. God knows how many Baptist and Protestant churches — the Separatists, as my mother called them all her life, even though they separated from Rome four hundred years ago.”
He laughed at his own remark. He often did.
“Ten minutes apiece on Sunday morning for every primary race, till the sermons come out your ears,” Battaglia went on. “Then Friday night or Saturday morning for the seventy-seven synagogues on this island. Shecky Feinberg contributes to your race? You’ve got to show up at his kid’s bar mitzvah — and that’s before you do the O’Donnell christening. Cold little piggies in soggy blankets and more rubber chickens than you can count. The one sure place you don’t want to find bodies is a house of worship. Got that? This one will cost me a month of Sundays at Mount Neboh.”
“Got it.” The campaign poster that hung in my office had Battaglia’s head shot over one of his favorite slogans: You Can’t Play Politics with People’s Lives.
“More likely you’ll come to your senses and settle down with your Frenchman and have a brood of little litigators who can also cook a mean omelet.”
“Now, that doesn’t sound very enlightened of you, Paul,” I said, wagging a finger at him.
“Be realistic. I got Sonia Sotomayor a seat on the Supreme Court, didn’t I? That kind of lightning won’t strike twice for my best staffers.”
He was in his late sixties and had been reelected five times, with no signs of slowing down.
“When you tell me you’re ready to step aside, I’ll have it figured out.”
I had my own unique piece of the criminal law in our Special Victims Unit, and loved everything about my ability to do advocacy for victims who’d been denied voices for so long. The political aspect of the DA’s job — trying to be all things to all voters — left me cold.
“Whatever you need, pull it together for this one. Don’t hesitate to ask for anything,” he said, reaching across his desk for the daily court calendar, the multipage roster that reported every trial case and disposition in the Supreme Court parts, where all the felony cases were argued. “How’s that Koslawski matter going? You’re doing a good job keeping it under the radar screen.”
“Flip to page five — you’ll see it there. We’re in front of Lyle Keets. I left an update memo with Rose before I went home last night. I just assumed you’d seen it.”
“Must be in this pile,” he said, twizzling the cigar butt between his lips as he looked for the memo.
“Barry Donner caught the case when it came in. He’s a good junior assistant, so I didn’t want to take it away from him. But once the defense waived a jury in front of Keets and we figured out there might be a surprise witness, I decided to second-seat Barry in the event he needed a hand.”
A second seat in the courtroom — literally an extra chair at counsel table — was usually occupied by the less-experienced lawyers who were assigned grunt work for the bigger guns. In our office, they wheeled the evidence cart of exhibits to and from the trial, put on witnesses of lesser importance, and made routine notifications to get cops and civilians to court at the proper day and hour, often haggling with police bosses about bringing essential players in on overtime.
This time we turned the tables on the tabloids. The defendant — a private-school teacher charged with molesting a fourteen-year-old student — had no name recognition to attract media attention, and by listing Barry Donner as the lead prosecutor, the crew in the press room failed to attach any high-profile connection to the case.