“How about a photo of the lady, Commish?” a tabloid reporter yelled out. “What’d she look like? How old is she?”
“You’ll have that tomorrow afternoon.”
“How long was she registered at the hotel?” another voice called from the back of the pack.
“There is no evidence that she was a registered guest this week.”
“A hooker, maybe?” That was the New York Post’s veteran crime reporter, Mickey Diamond.
The NBC correspondent’s jaw dropped when he heard the question. The city’s crime beat set the low bar for gentility.
Keith Scully gave Diamond his best “drop dead” expression and pointed to one of the women who’d been sent by MSNBC.
“What do you intend to tell White House officials in preparation for the president’s upcoming stay here?”
“That the Waldorf Astoria is the safest place in town. I’d be more worried about the grizzlies in Yellowstone than the likelihood of running into anything dangerous in New York. That we hope to have this matter solved within days. We’re asking for everyone’s help, in calling the TIPS hotline and remaining anonymous if you choose to do that. The hotel is offering a”-Scully looked off to the right at the management representative to confirm the amount-“a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest.”
“Is that all?” Mickey Diamond shouted. “Mr. Hilton can do better. And would you tell us, Commissioner Scully, if the lady was sexually assaulted? We got a serial rapist on the loose?”
“This is a homicide, Diamond. That’s all you need for now. OCME will conduct an autopsy tomorrow.”
I knew Scully’s thinking. This news would be shocking enough. Let the medical examiner deal with the more sordid crime elements before making the panic message public. He was about to step down from the podium.
“But you’ve got Ms. Cooper warming up in the wings, Scully,” Diamond continued. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”
Keith Scully stopped himself in time to grab my elbow, rather than leave me alone and stupefied in the spotlights, and escort me off the platform, signaling to the corps that this was his last statement for the evening. “Battaglia sent us his on-call bureau chief. Just happens to be Ms. Cooper. We’re ready for anything.”
Uniformed cops led the commissioner, Pug, Mercer, and me through the hastily assembled group of reporters, past a few dozen startled hotel guests who were being questioned by detectives as they emerged from elevators, and took us back into Peacock Alley. At this hour, the stately room would normally be full of thirsty New Yorkers, throwing back late-night martinis or dining on the signature Waldorf salad. But the NYPD had closed down the chic bar early, depriving the hotel of a significant amount of revenue-as this entire tragedy would doubtlessly do. I looked wistfully at the bottles of Scotch lined up behind the empty bar.
“Anything else to do tonight, Alexandra?” Scully asked. His next meeting would be with his top commanders and the mayor.
“Just a late supper and a good night’s sleep. Rocco gave us all our marching orders.”
“I’m taking off. See you tomorrow.”
Scully’s security detail guided him out through the lobby, past the windows of the expensive jewelry store within the hotel-the scene of an armed robbery a few years back-and down the escalator toward Lexington Avenue.
As soon as he was out of the way, Sergeant Tatum began to usher in those of his men who were interviewing guests, turning Peacock Alley into a makeshift squad room. Several gents in black tie were separated and taken to tables in the rear, while two young couples dressed for a casual summer city night were squawking about being inconvenienced by the police stop.
I waited till Pug busied himself with some of his colleagues before taking Mercer aside.
“Where does a girl go to get a drink around here?”
“I hear you.”
“I’m not sure I could put down any food after that scene upstairs, but I’m having a nightcap here or at home.”
“This place isn’t an option. Start walking.”
We took the same route as the commissioner. The reporters had all scattered to the sidewalk on Park-a far more scenic shot-to do their stand-ups beneath the glittering gold lettering of the hotel name carved into the stone facade, flanked by two giant American flags.
Mercer got on the down escalator backward, looking up at me as he rode to the ground floor. “Mike’s waiting for us at Patroon. At the rooftop bar.”
I tossed my head back to avoid locking eyes with Mercer.
“It’s his mother, Alex. He flew home early because she’s in the hospital.”
Mercer was Mike’s best friend. They had worked together in homicide for years, until Mercer asked for a transfer to Special Victims. Like me, he enjoyed trying to put the pieces back together, restore dignity to those witnesses least likely to expect it from the system, and see them triumph in a court of law.
Mike, on the other hand, held his emotions close. It was more natural for him to unravel the mysteries surrounding a dead man’s dilemma than to try to comfort someone alive but traumatized by an assailant.
I bit my lip and nodded that I understood.
“You think he dissed you? Is that it?”
Still on the long descent to street level, I could look straight ahead and not make eye contact because Mercer was below me on the moving staircase. “It’s been almost two months.”
“Then think how Mike feels. Gets a very public whooping from the department,” he said, glancing over his shoulder to step off the moving staircase, “just when he’s breaking a major case that seemed impossible to crack.”
The hot air blasted my face like the exhaust from an oven when we walked onto Lexington Avenue. Patroon, my favorite restaurant, was a short walk-only three blocks from the Waldorf-with the most fantastic rooftop bar that was truly an oasis on a steamy Manhattan evening.
“For some reason, Mercer, he turned a three-week rip into a two-month odyssey abroad.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself, Ms. Cooper? Sounds like a slight whine dripping into that sultry, rarely-on-the-losing-side-of-an-argument, jury-box delivery.”
“But-”
“When’s he ever going to get a chance-or the time-for a trip like that?”
“Not till he retires, I guess.”
“And that’s a word you can’t say to him.” Brian Chapman had been determined to see that his son had a college education and didn’t wind up in uniform. Within twenty-four hours of retiring, he died of a massive coronary. Mike got his degree but immediately applied to the NYPD and started at the academy. Police work was as much a part of his DNA as the physical traits he inherited.
“Ten years of carefully balancing our relationship, I go out on a limb and all I wound up doing with Romeo was having a go at footsie in a rowboat, chaperoned by half of Manhattan North and a flotilla of EMTs.”
“The man is all nervous about you. You get that, don’t you?”
“About me?” I reached out and grabbed Mercer’s handkerchief, dabbing my own forehead after he wiped his brow.
“Other-side-of-the-tracks thing going on. Upstairs, downstairs. Mike’s blue-collar as far back as the family tree roots grow in county Cork, and you’ve got a trust fund that so far as I can tell could have helped with the Louisiana Purchase.”
“Et tu, Mercer? That really stings.”
He pulled me back to the curb as a taxi swerved toward us when I tried to cross Lex against the light.
Mercer knew my family well. My maternal grandfather had been a fireman, and my mother-descended from Finnish immigrants who were farmers-had been a nursing student with a great head for medicine, green eyes that caught everyone’s attention, and long legs that she passed on to me. My father, Benjamin-whose ancestors had fled Russia a century ago-was a brilliant physician who, with his partner, had invented a plastic tubing device that was used worldwide in a certain type of cardiac surgery. The Cooper-Hoffman valve had been a godsend to patients and had provided my family with a financial cushion that not only paid for my college education, as well as that of my brothers’, but also allowed me the privilege of dedicating a legal career to public service.