“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” I said. I spoke too quickly and too soon. “You know I didn’t have my phone with me. I didn’t know Paul was looking for me.”
Prescott stopped the audio. “You could have picked them up remotely, Alexandra.”
“Wouldn’t TARU know that?” I asked Stern, looking to him for backup in my desperation. “They’d be able to tell that the messages had never been played before they got the phone this afternoon, wouldn’t they?”
Stern’s gaze was glacial. He didn’t bother to respond.
Prescott pressed the Start button.
“Ten fourteen p.m.” Static on the line. Maybe an overseas call. “Alex? I’m just checking in to see how you’re doing, baby. Call us tomorrow, will you?”
I bit down on my lip. My mother, from my parents’ home in the Caribbean. The only person in the world who could still call me “baby.” They’d been thunderstruck by my kidnapping and rarely went two days now without wanting to hear my voice.
That message summoned up every emotion in me that could possibly interfere with my focus. I needed to shake it off as fast as possible.
“Ten twenty-three p.m.” This would likely be Battaglia’s third call. I held on to the arms of the chair as though I was flying through turbulence. “Jesus Christ, Alex. I’ve got the ten-o’clock news on, ready to turn out the lights for the night, and I can see you’re in the middle of that goddamn mess at the museum. You don’t listen to anything I tell you to do—not even the fact that you were instructed to keep your nose out of investigations.”
Battaglia must have stopped to turn up the volume on his television, because the background noise got louder and he paused before going on.
“I’ll meet you, Alex. Don’t you dare leave the museum before I get there. You and our mutual friend think you’re having a private get-together? Think again. I need to know everything you found out about Diana. There are lives on the line, Alex. Human lives.”
Prescott’s eyes were boring a hole through my face.
Battaglia started up again. “Diana is none of your business. Got that, dammit? Got that?”
The call ended abruptly. Battaglia still had a landline and he slammed the mouthpiece into the receiver when he was done.
“I’m going to ask you again, Alexandra,” Prescott said, clicking the Stop button. “Who is Diana?”
I was white-knuckled, clutching the arms of the chair.
“Did you hear Paul? Did you hear him demand that you tell him what you know about Diana?”
“How many times are you going to ask me?” I said. “The answer will always be the same. That’s exactly what I would have said to the district attorney if I’d had my phone in my hand when he called.”
“Were you at the Met for business, Alexandra?”
I couldn’t think of how to answer the question.
“Yes or no? Simple enough.”
“Not officially. I wasn’t there as an assistant district attorney,” I said.
“Because Battaglia put you on leave, am I right?”
I nodded.
“But you decided to go rogue at some point and work on a murder case,” Prescott said. “That’s why the DA was so surprised to turn on the news and see you in the middle of a crime scene. Because you put yourself on the very notorious murder case of Wolf Savage.”
“It wasn’t notorious when I was asked to help out with it.”
“Asked by Paul Battaglia?” he said.
I shook my head. “No.”
“By whom, then?”
“The daughter of the deceased,” I said. “She was a childhood friend.”
Prescott kept coming at me, turning the screws, not giving me a second between questions.
“Diana?” he asked. “Is her name Diana?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Is she the mutual friend that Paul was talking about?”
I took a deep breath.
“Wolf Savage’s daughter? No. Of course not,” I said, more as a reminder to myself than an answer to Prescott. “Paul never met her. She was just an acquaintance of mine, from childhood.”
“Who, then?” he asked. “Mike Chapman?”
“Mike was there. So was Mercer Wallace,” I said. “So were lots of cops and ex-cops the DA knows who work for Citadel Security. I wouldn’t think any of them was the mutual friend Paul was referring to.”
Mutual friend, I said to myself over again, mentally scanning the rows of guests who had been part of the social setting at the Temple of Dendur. I couldn’t think of one.
“Surely the list of attendees is in today’s paper,” I said. “If you let me look through the names, maybe I’ll think of someone who fits that description. A mutual friend of ours, I mean.”
“Do that on your own time,” Prescott said. “Whose lives were on the line, Alexandra?”
“I—I didn’t think anyone was in danger,” I said. “I—we had just broken a case, and the killer—uh—one of the killers was in custody.”
“That’s a tell, Chief,” Detective Stern said. “You get close to a nerve and Cooper starts with that stammering bullshit.”
Prescott didn’t say a word.
“She knows something she’s not saying,” Stern said.
“Paul Battaglia’s life was obviously in danger,” Prescott said. “You must have known that.”
“I’m done, James,” I said. “I’m all out of gas. You want something from me that I just don’t have to give you. Had I known the DA’s life was at risk while I was in the company of the best homicide detective you’ll ever meet, the man would still be alive. We’d never have let Battaglia get in the crosshairs of a killer.”
Prescott didn’t try to stop me when I got to my feet.
“I’m tired of being badgered all night and day. I’m so out of here now,” I said. “Let me know when you have something constructive for me to do.”
“You want me to call Chapman for you?” Prescott said. “I assume he’s downstairs, waiting to take you home.”
“I’ll buy a MetroCard, thanks.” I just wanted to sprint out the door and away from the building, before Prescott changed his mind and held me overnight as a material witness.
“Your assignment,” James said, “is Diana. Work that name every which way you can, through every source you have. And figure out the mutual friend.”
“I’m sure Battaglia had plenty of contacts at the gala,” I said, “but very f-f-few people we both knew. I—I can bet you money on that. I—I’m quite sure.”
This time I couldn’t control the stammer. Now I actually had an idea of who Battaglia might have freaked out about when he spotted the man on the evening news at the Met—at the same event as me. It must have been George Kwan, a witness in the Savage murder case—and whose home Mike and I had spotted Battaglia leaving a few days before his death.
Kwan wasn’t my friend. I met him briefly in the course of the Savage case interviews, but it was just like Battaglia to use sarcasm to score a dig at me.
I wanted to tell Prescott that Kwan was in fact a friend of Battaglia’s. I wanted to tell him the truth about the last time I saw the district attorney. But I just couldn’t bring myself to admit that I had lied to Jaxon Stern.
NINE
“I want to walk,” I said.
“Get in the car.”
“I need fresh air, Mike.”
“I’ve waited for you all day,” he said, jogging to overtake my long, angry stride.
“That’s so sweet,” I said.
“Say it like you mean it, kid.”
I stopped in my tracks. “I really do mean it. And I apologize.”
“My car’s behind the courthouse.”
“I’ll take the train uptown and meet you there,” I said. “I really need to blow off steam.”
“The last time you were on the subway, Coop, they were still using tokens,” Mike said. “Anyone tell you they’re no good anymore?”
“Okay, okay, okay. Take me home. Please,” I said, reaching for his hand. “And thank you for waiting. It was a gruesome day.”
We had outlasted the paparazzi and the newshounds. City workers leaving their offices at the end of another day brushed past us on the sidewalk.
“Who questioned you today?” I asked.
“Save the conversation for the car.”
“Don’t make me paranoid,” I said, glancing around. “Do you think—?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if they put an agent on you,” Mike said. “Tail you for a while.”
“How about if I become a recluse?” I asked.
Mike unlocked the beat-up black department car and I got inside.
“My kind of girl. Maybe you’ll use your stay-at home time to learn how to cook,” he said, closing the door, then going around and sliding in behind the wheel. “Talk to me, Coop. Tell me what Prescott did to you.”
I leaned back against the headrest and took Mike through the lowlights of the day as he headed for the uptown FDR Drive and my apartment.
“Who do you know named Diana?” I asked as we neared home.
“Diana who?”
“You must have a Diana in your inventory, Mike,” I said. “Apparently that’s who Battaglia was charging up the steps to talk to me about.”
“Yeah,” he said. “My mother’s butcher’s wife. Diana Della Veccia DiVencenzo. Two hundred eighty pounds, with a mustache heavier than my five-o’clock shadow. I doubt she’s been doing much the DA was interested in, except slicing bologna.”
“They played my voice mails back to me at the end of the day,” I said. “I’d forgotten that I’d walked right past the night doorman when we got home in the middle of the night and didn’t think to pick up my phone and stuff.”
“So Prescott has your cell?”
“TARU’s already downloaded everything. My texts, my emails,” I said, “and the three messages Battaglia left for me last night.”
“You didn’t bring your phone to the museum?” Mike asked.
“I didn’t think I’d need it,” I said. “Who interviewed you? Jaxon Stern?”
“Nope. They didn’t want it to be cop on cop,” Mike said. “It was one of the feebs—Tom Frist—with another of Prescott’s assistants.”
“Any surprises?”
“Pretty straightforward. Hell, the shooting was over in a flash,” he said. “They were way more into you.”
“Great,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“You and me. You and the Reverend Shipley. You and why you stuck your nose in the Savage investigation,” he said. “Mostly you and Battaglia.”
“What did you tell them about us?” I said as Mike backed into a tight parking space.
“Us?” Mike said. “None of their business.”
“Not us. About the DA and me. That us.”
“That things had turned. That he was treating you badly, in a way he had never done before.”
“Why in the world did you go there?” I asked. “They’ll think I murdered him.”
“Not after I got done.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you wouldn’t have ended it so fast,” Mike said. “You would have made his death slow and painful, torturing him every step of the way.”
I got out of the car and slammed the door.
“Don’t give me your back ’cause I said that, Coop,” he said. “That’s your nature.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Did they ask you about George Kwan?”
“Nope.”
“On the last call Battaglia made to me, he was talking about me seeing our ‘mutual friend,’” I said. “I can’t figure out who the hell he was talking about. Then I sort of wondered if he meant George Kwan.”
“Kwan’s not your friend.”
“You know the way Battaglia could get a dig in. Who else was at the museum—besides you and Mercer and some ex-cop security guys—besides Kwan?”
“So you ’fessed up about seeing the DA at Kwan’s house?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Or next time I’m down there. There was so much else going on that this just came to me on my way down from Prescott’s office.”
Now I was lying to Mike, too. I didn’t want to be weaving a tangled web, but I was doing just that.
The doorman on the afternoon shift greeted us as we entered the lobby and passed him to go to the elevator.
“Ms. Cooper,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I just let Detective Wallace go upstairs with three of your friends from the office,” he said. “The detective told me you were expecting them.”
I looked quizzically at Mike, who waved to the doorman and thanked him.
“You thought this was a good idea?” I asked Mike.
“You’re not the only one in mourning, blondie,” he said. “Ever think of it that way? All your pals have taken a huge hit. Battaglia’s murder has rocked the office.”
We got on the elevator and Mike hit twenty.
I don’t think I’d ever been as self-centered as I had been for the last twenty hours. I hadn’t even thought of the turmoil Battaglia’s death had caused to all the people who worked in the office of the New York County district attorney. They were public servants, loyal to their leader to a fault, and so steeped in integrity that these circumstances would shake each of them to the core.
The door was unlocked. Mercer and my three closest friends from the office—Catherine, Nan, and Marisa—were in the den, watching television. The only sound from the room was the voice of the local NBC news anchor repeating the headline story of Battaglia’s death.
Nan Toth noticed Mike and me walk in and reached me first. We put our arms around each other in a tight embrace. I’m not sure whether any words would have come to me at that moment, but we had such a close friendship that we didn’t need to speak.
“Take some deep breaths, Alex,” Nan said.
I tried to shake off the jittery way I felt. “Glad you’re all here.”
“You’ve been to hell and back,” Marisa said. “Don’t say another word.”
“Should I ask how the office was today? How you are?”
“I’d say it was like a morgue,” Catherine offered, “but that’s below the belt.”
“I’ll pour you a drink,” Nan said.
“She’s not drinking,” Mike said. “No Scotch.”
Mercer was fixing cocktails for each of them—and a martini for Mike.
“He’s kidding,” I said. “Plenty of ice for me, too.”
“You’re on the wagon, Coop.”
I laughed at Mike. “Since when?”
“Since right now. You’ve never needed to be more sober than you do right now, till the US attorney gets off your ass.”
“Here’s the national news,” Mercer said, clicking on the remote to raise the volume. “How Battaglia loved being the lead on that.”
So true. He played his media connections to the max. He called in stories to the Times editorial staff and the network news outlets, whether a white-collar crime indictment or the murder of a mogul.
“Good evening,” the anchor said. “From Manhattan, where a city is still in shock over last night’s assassination of the longtime, popular district attorney on the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
An old campaign photograph of Paul Battaglia filled the screen, with the oversize bolded letters DA above his face—and in similar typeface below, the letters DOA.
“He’d be calling up to scream at the producer right now if he could,” I said, holding my thumb and forefinger together in a signal to Mercer to pour me a short drink. “He hated that photo. I
t was the campaign poster for his losing Senate bid.”
“He truly hated losing,” Marisa said. “Anything.”
Mercer shook his head. He wasn’t bartending for me tonight.
Everyone waited for a commercial break to fire questions.
“Coop’s been in the hot seat all day,” Mike said, handing me a glass of sparkling water. “Your turn. What’s the buzz in the office?”
They were humoring me, all three of them. They were sticking to the story that there hadn’t been much gossip today that had involved my relationship with Battaglia. Neither Mike nor I believed it.
BREAKING NEWS. The flashing red headline was the lead as the anchor picked up the story.
“This just in. A man walking his dog on Fifth Avenue at the time of last night’s shooting of DA Paul Battaglia captured a photo on his cell phone camera. A warning to our viewers—this is an extremely graphic image.”
A grainy shot—taken across the street from the museum steps—flashed on the screen. I looked up, then covered my eyes with my hand.
“The man in the dark suit, with a gaping wound to the back of his head, is the late Paul Battaglia,” the anchor said. “You can see that his body is being held by a person—a young woman, actually—who seems to be sitting on the museum steps. They are literally knotted in each other. That person beneath him is one of his top assistants, Special Victims Unit Chief Alexandra Cooper. It’s Ms. Cooper who has the DA in a death grip.”
TEN
“Now they’ve ratcheted up the language to a death grip,” I said, sinking into the sofa and turning to Mike. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a photograph?”
“I didn’t know there was one,” he said. “Mercer’s checking.”
The story went on to cover the arc of Battaglia’s life. The six of us in my den knew it far better than the newsmen did.
Mercer finished the call and stowed the phone in his blazer pocket. “I just spoke to Vickee, who got the word from the press office. The only NYPD shots were taken by the Crime Scene Unit, and they’re not released to the public. They didn’t see this one until just this minute.”
Deadfall Page 7
