I’d gotten in the shower and was washing myself vigorously again, even harder than at the morgue. “Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?”
“Let it go, Coop,” Mike said. “You still got blood washing off?”
“No, that’s Shakespeare I’m quoting,” I said. “Lady Macbeth, imagining forever that she couldn’t get the bloodstains out. Just that crazy feeling that no matter what I do, I’ll still be wearing a bit of Paul Battaglia for the rest of my life.”
“Knowing the way you think, you probably will.”
When I stepped out, Mike wrapped me in a bath towel and gave me the hug—long and close—that I had been waiting for. Then he patted me on my butt and told me to get dressed.
I had lots of lady lawyer clothes. A pin-striped navy-blue skirt suit with a white blouse would be appropriate, I thought as I took the pieces out of my closet. No makeup, no jewelry, no stilettos.
“Did they find the car the shooters used?” I asked.
“I know as much as you do.”
“That’s so hard to believe,” I said, sitting down to pull on my panty hose.
“Nobody’s telling me anything. I’m every bit as much a witness as you are.”
Mike was adjusting his navy blazer—as much of a uniform as he owned—and went back into the bathroom to brush his dark hair into place.
I reached for my iPad, logged in, and hit the Google app. I typed in Battaglia’s name.
“What are you doing?” Mike asked, walking back into my bedroom. “Turn that thing off.”
“I’m just checking the news. I don’t want to walk into the lion’s den like I don’t have a clue what’s going on, Mike.”
“That’s exactly the way Skeeter and the crew want you, babe,” Mike said, grabbing the machine from my hands and slapping the cover closed. “They need to talk to you before your facts are conflated with all the crap that’s floating around on the Internet. You be straight with them and they’ll be straight with you.”
“I saw the headline,” I said, smiling up at Mike. “At least give me credit for that.”
“For what?”
“OPERATION DEADFALL. The Times headline,” I said. That was as far as I’d been able to read. “That’s what the task force is naming the investigation.”
“Credit?” Mike said, looking at me as though I’d lost it. “You must be out of your mind. You think that’s a compliment?”
“It’s what I told Stern and Tinsley. That the DA and I went down together, totally entangled in each other.”
Mike sat down beside me on the bed, stroking my damp hair away from my face.
“It’s a double entendre, Coop,” Mike said. “Or maybe you just didn’t know that.”
“What is?” I asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re the one that suggested to Jaxon Stern that Battaglia’s life ended in a deadfall?”
“Don’t look so sad about it, Mike—it just means—”
“I’ll tell you what it means, Madam Prosecutor,” Mike said, standing up and shaking his head at me. “It’s not just an entanglement. It’s a term used in hunting, okay? When someone sets up a trap, kid, to catch a large animal—a really valuable kind of prey.”
“You’re thinking the district attorney was the prey? Is that what you’re telling me?” I stood too, and took the lapel of Mike’s jacket in my hand, so he would look at me.
“The animal gets lured to the trap by some kind of bait,” he went on, “and then it’s crushed to death by a heavy weight—or in this case, by a couple of pieces of lead.”
“No, no, no,” I said, pushing back, away from Mike. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
“The working theory—the word on the street, in Jaxon Stern–speak—is that you set the man up,” Mike said. “That Paul Battaglia was the prey, and that you were the bait, Coop. That you were the deadfall.”
SIX
“Have a seat, Alexandra,” Prescott said after shaking my hand.
“Thank you,” I said, sweeping the conference room with my eyes to check out the members of the task force team.
One Saint Andrews Plaza, the federal prosecutor’s office, was only a stone’s throw from the criminal courthouse where the DA’s offices were, but it was like another world. We city workers were sprawled all over the grim WPA-designed building and our overflow was housed across the street, in other dreary government buildings. The feds, who numbered only a fraction of our size, had more modern digs, as well as all the assets that the US government could place at their disposal.
“You met Jaxon Stern and Kate Tinsley earlier this morning,” Prescott said, guiding me to a seat at the end of the long table.
They each forced a smile, but I glared back at them and didn’t comment.
“Why don’t we go around the table so you can introduce yourselves to Ms. Cooper?” Prescott suggested. “Just for the record, Alexandra and I have never worked together, and we haven’t socialized in—what? Seven or eight years?”
I nodded. “And that was only because I was a friend of Skeeter’s then wife. There’s really no other personal connection between us.”
I didn’t want him to recuse himself from the case. He had a reputation for being fair, which was better than I might end up with if I made a stink about our relationship, which was nonexistent since he’d been dumped by my classmate for a hedge fund guy she represented.
“In fact, it’s been so long that Alexandra knows me by my nickname,” he said, laughing as he did, then addressing me again. “It’s James now. James Prescott. No more Skeeter.”
“I’ll try,” I said. “Old habits die hard, James.” And if he screwed with me like the cops had done, he’d be Skeeter every time I opened my mouth.
There was a junior assistant US attorney from Prescott’s criminal division, two paralegals, and two FBI agents—both men—whose names were Bart Fisher and Tom Frist.
“How are you feeling today?” Prescott asked.
“I’m feeling about the same as I did when Paul Battaglia collapsed in my arms.”
The onlookers were the most earnest group of investigators I’d ever seen—except for Stern. He was slouching in his chair and appeared to be doodling on a pad, while the others were leaning in, staring at me, as though I were an extraterrestrial just set down in their midst.
“And how was that, exactly?” Prescott said.
I spoke slowly, pausing for seconds between each word. “Despondent. Terrified. Confused. Frightened. Heartbroken—”
“Heartbroken? Really? Because you and Battaglia were so close?”
“Because we had once been so close, James. Because this was a man I’d revered when I started practicing law. Because he had treated me like his daughter. Because he—”
“I understand, Alexandra,” Prescott said, holding up his hand to stop me. “We can come back to that. Did you get any sleep after you left the morgue?”
“Yes, thank you. Three or four hours.”
“And something to eat?”
“I had a muffin on my way down in the car,” I said. “Am I being recorded, James?”
I didn’t care what name he wanted me to use in addressing him. It was better than the detective’s insistence that we stay at a formal arm’s length when we talked at the ME’s office.
“No. No, you’re not.”
“Not yet anyway,” I said.
“I’d like to explain our process to you, before I ask you any more questions,” Prescott said.
“That’s fine. I have some questions for you, also.”
“All right. Why don’t you go first?”
“Are you going to be in charge, James?” I asked. “Is it your investigation?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
“Because of the perceived conflict of interest
with our own office—and with the NYPD?”
“That’s part of it, Alexandra.”
“There’s more?”
“We had several matters that we were working in tandem with your office. We usually do, as you know,” Prescott said.
“May I ask the nature of those cases?”
Prescott hesitated for a moment, before he figured he could give me the information in a generic way. “You probably know some of your colleagues were cross-designated to work with my staff.”
“I do.” I had been cross-designated, too, from time to time, to allow me to practice in federal court, when sex-trafficking cases had required the efforts of local prosecutors.
“Then you know the kind of matters I mean,” Prescott said. “The breakup of international drug cartels, the occasional money laundering by foreign banks, seizures of illegal ivory sold by antique dealers in the city, the importation of contraband weapons. Those sorts of things.”
“Specifics, James,” I said. “Can you give me more specifics?”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
“You’re working on this yourself?” I asked. “At least, with me?”
“For the time being,” Prescott said. “For now.”
“What does that mean?” Until I was cleared, or until I was up to my eyeballs in mud?
“Next question.”
“What do you know about the shooting so far?” I asked. “What kind of gun? How many guys in the car? Did you get any images of the car from surveillance cameras?”
My eyes darted from Prescott to the agents to the AUSAs, but no one even blinked.
“We haven’t made any of that information public yet,” Prescott said.
“I’m not the damn public,” I said, trying to rein in my temper. “I was one of Battaglia’s most loyal soldiers. I was his confidante.”
“More important to us, Alexandra, is that you were an eyewitness to this,” Prescott said. “All the rest will fall into place. May we get started, or do you have any other questions?”
“What’s the point? You’re not giving me an inch.”
“Shall we, then?” Prescott said, leaning over the table and picking up his pen.
“This is the way you do your investigations?” I asked, making a sweeping motion around the room. “A gaggle of your buddies?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll talk to you and one of your deputies, James, but I’m not singing for all the boys.”
I leaned back in my chair and steepled my fingers.
“Look, Alexandra,” Prescott said, “we’ve got a long road ahead of us. I have no idea where this shooting is going to take us. The more hands, the better. The more agents I bring in—”
“The more agents you bring in, the more leaks I can expect, James. Is that what you were going to tell me?” I said. “Because I learned that a long time ago. Your people leak like they’re on their way to the ocean floor on the Titanic.”
Prescott exuded cool. If he was bothered by my attitude, he didn’t show it.
“Bart,” he said to the younger of the two FBI agents, “you stay with me. The rest of you all have business to get on with.”
There was a low rumble as chairs were pushed back and the crew picked up briefcases and muttered comments as they readied themselves to leave the room.
“One more thing, Chief,” Jaxon Stern said to Prescott.
“What is it?” Prescott asked.
“I want Ms. Cooper’s cell phone,” the detective said. “We’ve got the tech unit waiting to download all the emails and texts, check the outgoing and incoming calls.”
None of the men on the team moved.
Of course they would interrogate my phone. I should have thought to look at it on my way downtown, but I was too out of sorts to think of random communications of the past week.
As I leaned over to dig around in my tote to find it, I tried to remember the office drivel I had gossiped about recently with my buddies in the unit. For once I was grateful that Mike didn’t commit personal intimacies to digital forms.
The men and Tinsley—all standing around me with Prescott sitting directly across—watched while I unpacked my wallet and sunglasses, my credit card holder and my assortment of pens and small change.
“I don’t have my phone,” I said, sinking back into my seat. “I just realized that I don’t have it here.”
“Dump out your bag, Ms. Cooper,” Stern said.
I laughed to myself. I had said that, to those witnesses whom I had caught in a lie, so many times my colleagues made fun of it. The bag dump had often revealed items of evidence that my complainants wanted to hide—a slip of paper with the accused’s phone number, suggesting they had arranged a way to get in touch; condoms she had taken along for the date; even a handgun, once, that a young woman carried to secure her demand for money after the sexual encounter.
“You dump it, Detective. That will give you more pleasure than it gives me,” I said.
Stern took my tote by the handles and turned it over on top of the conference table. Lipstick cases and mascara and a shopping list and more coins that rolled off onto the floor. But there was no phone.
Jaxon Stern threw my empty bag down. “She must have given it to Chapman, Chief.”
“Did you, Alexandra? Does Mike Chapman have it?”
I shook my head. “No, he doesn’t.”
“Help me, will you? Where is your phone?”
I was playing for time. I didn’t want Stern to get his hands on my device before I checked it myself.
“Will you let me see it before you take it to TARU?” I asked. The Technical Assistance Response Unit would know more about me than I knew about myself once they downloaded all the information on my smartphone.
“You’d better get your head around the fact that you’re not running this case, Alexandra,” Prescott said. “Give it up.”
I thought back to last evening. I had dressed for the Costume Institute gala at the home of my friend Joan Stafford’s mother. I had borrowed one of Joan’s gowns and her mother’s pearl necklace.
“On the way to the Met,” I said, “from a friend’s apartment on the Upper East Side, I dropped off my things with my doorman.”
“What things?” Prescott asked.
“My cell phone,” I said. “My ski jacket and my apartment keys.”
“I don’t believe it,” Stern said.
“All I needed for the party was my ID to get inside the museum, and a twenty-dollar bill for my carfare home.” I directed my words to James Prescott. “I wasn’t expecting a murder. I wasn’t planning a call to 911.”
“You didn’t stop on your way in this morning to pick up the phone?”
I met Prescott’s expression of disbelief with a defiant stare. “I made an unexpected detour to the morgue, James. I had a really rough go with a hard-ass detective who seems to want to see me in handcuffs and leg restraints.”
“Don’t exaggerate—”
“So when I reached my home I was pretty much shattered. I wasn’t thinking about making any calls or catching up on my correspondence.”
“Then how did you get into your apartment?” he asked, thinking he had nailed the “gotcha” question.
“Mike,” I said, remembering that he had opened the door, letting go of my shoulder to get out his key. “Mike Chapman has a key.”
Jaxon Stern snickered.
“And this morning?” Prescott asked.
“I—I showered and dressed and didn’t even stop to think about it,” I said. “I picked up my tote and just assumed my phone was in there.”
“I’m on it, Chief,” Stern said. “I’ll get it from the day doorman now.”
“Be sure you take a subpoena, Detective,” I said. “Vinny wouldn’t give you anything I left with him otherwise.”
“You think you tip that good, Ms. Cooper?” Stern said. “He’ll give it up to me.”
“Look, Alexandra,” Prescott said. “I haven’t opened a grand jury investigation yet. I haven’t had a minute to do it. So I can’t issue a subpoena, and you know that.”
“I’m counting on it, James,” I said. “I want my phone, too.”
“Call your doorman,” he said, offering his phone to me.
“Sorry. His number’s with the contacts in my phone, which I don’t seem to have,” I said, holding my hands up in the air. “I can’t recall what it is offhand. Anyway, I don’t know what has you so anxious to get hold of my emails and messages. I’ve been on a leave of absence for weeks. I’m not exactly loaded up with breaking cases and top secret information.”
James Prescott stood and pointed at Jaxon Stern. “Go get her phone, Detective. If the doorman gives you any problem, dial me up.”
“You know, Skeeter,” I said, “leopards really don’t ever change their spots, do you?”
He looked over my head and spoke to the AUSA who’d be working with him. “Get into the grand jury before they break for lunch and open a matter.”
“United States against—?” the young lawyer asked, looking blankly at me.
“No subject,” Prescott said. “We don’t have a perp yet, obviously. Just title it ‘Investigation into the death of Paul Battaglia.’”
I faked a sigh of relief. “Must be my lucky day, guys. I’m not yet the perp.”
James Prescott wasn’t amused. “We’ve got the district attorney’s phone, Alexandra.”
Sure they did. That would have been in his pocket. “I understand.”
“I’m just trying to find out why he called you three times on his way to meet with you,” Prescott said. “On his way to his death.”
SEVEN
“Again?” I asked.
The scene on the front steps of the Met, from the moment I walked out the door until Battaglia was hit, had lasted less than three minutes. Maybe two. James Prescott had taken me through it five times already, breaking each moment into longer and longer pieces.
“Did you see anyone else on the steps?”
Deadfall Page 5
