Deadfall

by Linda Fairstein

  “So this dog-walking asshole just sold his snapshots to the media. Witness to an assassination and he shutterbugs it onto the nightly news instead of calling 911,” Mike said.

  “He’s about to get a knock on his door,” Mercer said. “Homicide wants his photos.”

  “Count on it, Coop,” Mike said. “You’ll be cover girl on the morning’s Post.”

  This was the new normal. I had prosecuted a murder case a few years back, and after the verdict, we learned that a friend of the perp’s had taken a video of him, mocking the death of his victim and strangling a doll to show how he had killed his girlfriend. She didn’t give the evidence to law enforcement, but chose instead to sell it to a tabloid reality show for twenty-five thousand dollars. The dog walker had done the same.

  “How many pooch paraders you think were out there last night?” Mike said. “Somebody must have seen something.”

  “The task force is using all our NYPD manpower to do a canvass tonight to find them,” Mercer said. “Dogs and drunks and anyone else out for a stroll.”

  “What else is the task force doing, besides making my life miserable?” I said.

  “Lose that, Coop,” Mike said. “Your life is not the issue here.”

  “Collateral damage,” I said. “Is that all I am?”

  “All you want to be is the mattress the body fell on,” he said. “Back off. The less you make of this, the better you’ll come out of it.”

  “I hate to agree with Mike,” Nan said, refilling her wineglass. “Ever. But the best thing for you would be to normalize. Think about being back at work and getting into a rhythm again.”

  I couldn’t even concentrate on a good book these last few weeks. How could I be an advocate for a rape victim or cross-examine a defendant with a felony conviction at stake?

  “It’s a thought,” I said, giving my friends a wan smile.

  How was I going to face hundreds of lawyers—my colleagues and literal partners in crime—who would only want to know why their boss was rushing to a clandestine meeting with me?

  I was beginning to feel claustrophobic in my own home, with my best friends. I was sweating, though the evening was cool and crisp.

  I powered through the rest of the news, then went into the bathroom to shower. I put one of Mike’s button-down shirts over a pair of leggings and came back to find Nan setting the dining room table. She had ordered a couple of pizzas and some salad.

  “Pony up the money, ladies and gent,” Mike said. The jingle announcing Final Jeopardy! had begun to play. It was rare for Mike ever to miss a bet on the weeknight quiz show’s big question—whether at a bar or death scene or squad room.

  Mercer, Mike, and I had a long tradition of making this twenty-dollar wager. Mercer—son of a Delta mechanic who had grown up with world maps on every wall of his room—was a maven on geography; Mike knew more about military history—he had been fascinated with it since childhood and studied it at Fordham—than anyone I’d ever met; and I was a student of English literature—a devotee of romantic poetry and dense Victorian novels.

  “Let’s go, Coop,” Mike said, yanking on my wet hair. “Get back in the game.”

  “Soon,” I said. “Not tonight.”

  “The Final Jeopardy! category is: OSCAR WINNERS,” Alex Trebek said. “OSCAR WINNERS.”

  All three contestants smiled and started to write their bets on the electronic boards in front of them.

  “Everybody plays,” Mike said. He sat on the sofa and pulled me onto his lap.

  Movies and Motown were the two categories that he, Mercer, and I went overboard on. The stakes got higher because we each thought we knew so much.

  “Show me Mr. Green,” Mike said to our friends, holding out his hand for their money. “Double or nothing.”

  My girls went to their bags to take out some twenties. They were doing it to pull me into the spirit of the moment. I didn’t move.

  Trebek read aloud as the answer was revealed: THRICE NOMINATED AS BEST ACTOR, HE SUPPORTED HIMSELF WHEN BROKE BY HUSTLING CHESS PLAYERS IN NEW YORK CITY PARKS AND ARCADES.

  The Jeopardy! music ticked away as the on-air players wrote out their questions.

  “We’re in this to win, Coop.” Mike put his arms around me and nuzzled my neck. “What’s your best guess, Catherine?”

  “Who was Paul Newman?” she asked.

  “I’m in on that,” Marisa said.

  “So wrong,” Mike said, reaching forward to snag their four bills from the coffee table. “He played Fast Eddie in The Hustler, but he wasn’t one. And nominated ten times. Popcorn and salad dressing, ladies. You are so wrong.”

  Then he pointed at Nan.

  “Daniel Day-Lewis?” she asked.

  “You don’t even deserve to be in our league,” Mike said. “He’s a Brit.”

  He reached for her money, too.

  “What you got, big guy?” Mike said to Mercer.

  “I’m going Nicholson. Who is Jack Nicholson?” Mercer said.

  Before the winning question was offered by Trebek, Mike swept all the cash off the table. “Tell them, Coop.”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “You really know how to disappoint me, babe,” he said. “You need to lighten up. Who was Humphrey Bogart?”

  “That’s right,” Trebek said to the second contestant. “As a struggling young actor, Humphrey Bogart used to play for a dollar a match at New York’s famed Coney Island.”

  Mike muted the sound. “Those scenes in Casablanca with Bogie playing chess? They were all his idea.”

  “You just bought us some serious pizza,” Mercer said to Mike, getting up to answer the intercom from the front door announcing the dinner delivery. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste, Chapman.”

  We were moving to the dinner table, with each of my friends working hard to find neutral topics to discuss.

  “Tell you what,” Mike said. “If you shut down the Dewar’s, I’ll spot you one glass of wine. How’s that for a compromise?”

  “I’ll take that deal,” I said. “White. Really cold.”

  Catherine’s cell phone rang and she looked at me before answering. We both had the same thought, that it was a detective calling about a new case. A call that would have come to me had I not been on leave. She must have known that it pained me to be professionally crippled by my own victimization.

  She turned her back to me and answered the phone, then just as quickly faced me again when the speaker announced himself to her.

  “Yes, Governor,” she said. “This is Catherine.”

  What the hell was he calling her about?

  “Actually, I’m with Alex right now,” Catherine said. “I’m about to have dinner with her.”

  The governor had been a prosecutor when I joined Battaglia’s staff. I had worked with him on a number of matters and he had been like a mentor to me.

  “No, sir,” Catherine said. “The task force has her phone—just a routine part of their investigation.”

  I was waving my arms over my head, telling Catherine I didn’t want to speak with him tonight.

  “Of course you can, sir. I’ll just pass her my phone.”

  I took a deep breath and put Catherine’s phone to my ear. “Hello, Governor,” I said. “Thanks for calling.”

  We chatted for a minute or two, exchanging remembrances of Paul Battaglia and expressing our sorrow to each other. He told me how sorry he was that I was exposed to this violence, and in such a public setting.

  Nan and Mercer were plating the pizza. I figured the governor was done.

  “I wanted you to hear this straight from me, Alex,” he said. “I’m likely to give an interview tomorrow or Thursday.”

  “What’s that?” I asked. What else could possibly impact me now?

  “I’m not sure if you know any of the
politics that apply in this situation,” he said.

  “I don’t.”

  Battaglia’s campaign slogan had repeatedly been YOU CAN’T PLAY POLITICS WITH PEOPLE’S LIVES, though he had become a master at doing just that throughout his career. I despised the part of the job that sucked any of us line prosecutors into the mix.

  “The election for DA is next fall. November,” the governor said.

  I knew that. Battaglia had already been off and running, thirteen months ahead.

  “It’s my responsibility, Alex, to appoint an interim district attorney for Manhattan,” he said. “And I’ll have to do it within the next six weeks.”

  I hadn’t given a thought to that. It hadn’t yet sunk in that Battaglia’s death left this critically important office without a leader.

  “You know I’m very fond of you, Alex. You know how much respect I have for your work, for how you’ve helped with the legislative reform I’ve sponsored in your field since the start of my first term.”

  I grabbed the back of a chair, pulled it out, and sat down. The room was spinning. I didn’t need the governor to thrust me further into the spotlight right now by flattering me with a job I’d never wanted—a job I certainly couldn’t handle at the moment.

  “But, sir—” I said, scripting a polite way to refuse him.

  “I wanted to tell you myself that despite my personal feelings, I can’t see any way to put your name up with the other nominees I’m considering,” the governor said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, putting my elbows on the table. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Did you say you won’t consider me to replace Battaglia?”

  If I was truly relieved not to be a candidate, then why was my first reaction to the governor’s news to feel crushed? Why did it seem like another weight had been tossed around my neck?

  “It’s not just your kidnapping and the fact that you’re on a forced leave of absence now, Alex,” he said. “But Commissioner Scully suggested there’s the potential for scandal in the aftermath of the DA’s murder. That you’re totally tangled up in his death.”

  “I understand, Governor,” I said, practically whispering into the phone. “I understand completely.”

  “You’re out of the running, Alex. I wanted to be the one to tell you that I had to take your name off the list.”

  ELEVEN

  I was awake before Mike. I went to the door and picked up the newspapers.

  New York Post headline writers are brilliant at what they do, and often made me smile.

  But not today.

  DEAD MAN STALKING

  The lede was plastered above the photograph of my fatal embrace with Paul Battaglia. It went on to entice the reader with a story questioning why the DA set out for a midnight assignation with one of his assistants—a single woman who was in the company of another man.

  I was on my third cup of coffee when Mike joined me in the kitchen.

  I tossed the paper across the room like it was a Frisbee.

  “Do you think it can get any worse?” I asked. “Now they’ve got the idea the DA was stalking me.”

  “Hey—the man was only human.”

  “Sort of a delicate balance, don’t you think? My friends tell me that going back to work will be good for me, but I know the office will just be a hotbed of petty rumors—personal and political.”

  “Give it a week to calm down,” Mike said.

  “How about we go up to the Vineyard and hibernate till then?”

  I had an old farmhouse in Chilmark, on the quiet end of my favorite island. It was late October—after the season—so we could be there, out of harm’s way and out of the spotlight. It had always been my haven when the pressures of the job or the mayhem I often created in my personal life threatened to overtake me.

  “When James Prescott clears you to leave town, I’ll FedEx you up there for an overnight delivery,” Mike said. “Lobster from Larsen’s, fried clams from the Bite, chowder at the Galley.”

  “Home,” I said. “It’s not the food. It’s just home.”

  “We’ll get there. I promise you that.”

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do today?”

  “No instructions from Prescott?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I took the rest of the week off,” Mike said. “That way we can hang together.”

  I walked over and kissed him on the top of his head. “I like that.”

  “Let’s get a new routine going. We can go for a run in the park, or work out at the gym,” he said. “Lunch at the Beach Café. Go to the store and get a new phone.”

  “I’m sort of liking it without one,” I said. “I don’t have to talk to anyone I don’t want to, and the reporters can’t find me.”

  I opened my iPad and showed Mike the 237 pieces of new mail in my inbox.

  “My friends can find me through you or Catherine. I like it better this way,” I said, scrolling through the latest batch of twelve that had just loaded.

  “Remember the task force dudes are reading all your mail, too, from your phone.”

  “I’m keenly aware of that, Detective. The less communicating I do for the time being, the safer I feel,” I said. “And the crazier it will make the team that’s monitoring me, waiting for word from Diana.”

  I clicked and opened a few more emails. Lifelong friends and former colleagues were checking in, while every reporter who’d ever gotten my email address from the press office was writing to ask for an exclusive.

  “Joan Stafford wants to know if she should come up from DC and stay with me,” I said. “That one came in yesterday. This morning she wants to know why I was trysting with Battaglia.”

  “That’s what friends are for, Coop. The Post is Joan’s Bible.”

  “Remind me to call her from your cell when we get back from the run,” I said. “Whoops. Here’s one from Prescott’s secretary, Ella. ‘Mr. Prescott wants to know your new cell number. He’d like to get in touch with you.’”

  “Perfect reason not to invest in a new phone,” Mike said. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

  I flapped the lid of the case over my iPad screen without answering Ella. Let them figure out how to talk to me.

  We dressed for a run and went downstairs to the lobby. Vinny was standing in front of the door when it opened.

  “I saw the elevator coming down from twenty and I figured it might be you, Ms. Cooper,” he said. “There’s a pack of photographers at each end of the driveway. You might want to slip out through the basement.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up and hit the B button. There was no one waiting for me at the back door, so Mike and I broke into a jog and headed for Central Park.

  It felt good to do something that required no thought, no emotion. I wanted to get back in shape. Plus, both running and my Saturday morning ballet class traditionally helped relieve my stress and keep me on an even keel.

  We did the mile and a half around the decommissioned reservoir and loped back on the sidewalk.

  When we paused for the traffic light at the corner of Park Avenue, Mike checked the messages on his cell phone.

  “One from Mercer,” Mike said. “He’ll meet us at your place. And two from Prescott.”

  “Only two?”

  “Yeah. Both today. First he wants to know whether I’m with you, and the next is asking if you can call him on my phone,” Mike said. “The second one is more of a demand than a question.”

  “I don’t usually like playing hard to get,” I said, sprinting across Park when the light changed, “but under the circumstances, it’s a delight.”

  We went back into my building the same way we had exited. Mercer was waiting for us in my apartment.

  “Did you take the week off, too?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I asked to be put
on the task force to work on the murder, but Prescott refuses because he claims I’ll just pass all the info they gather along to you. So I’m making myself useful by picking up cases—and, yes, gathering intel to pass along to you.”

  I went to the fridge to get bottles of water, then flopped in an armchair in my living room, in between Mercer and Mike.

  “So what have you got?” I asked.

  “If you don’t like the twists and turns so far, you really won’t be too pleased with the latest,” Mercer said. “Vickee got called into work early this morning by DCPI.”

  The deputy commissioner of public information was one of the most powerful people within the NYPD. He was responsible for every piece of official news that was released concerning the work of the thirty-five thousand police officers in the city, with a department that was sitting on a five-billion-dollar budget. His team had to decide when a pattern of crimes was designated as the work of a serial killer—not too soon so as to falsely alarm the citizenry, but in time to protect them when needed. He had to consider the effect of every statement issued by Commissioner Scully as well as the mayor and the five DAs—one in each borough of the city. It was intensely high-pressure work, and Vickee Eaton had to help make those decisions, those close calls, every day she was on the job.

  “But Logan—?” I asked.

  “He’s fine,” Mercer said. “Fever’s gone—you know the way kids are—and he’s back in school.”

  “What’s Vickee got?” Mike asked.

  “DCPI is trying to put out ground fires, rumors that are spreading throughout the media,” Mercer said.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “You know that every assassination, every scandal, every event that people don’t understand, breeds conspiracy theories,” he said. “MLK, JFK, UFOs crashing in Roswell, and NASA faking the moon landing.”

  “Princess Diana killed by British Special Forces and that sort of crap,” I said. “There’s that name again.”

  “She’s not playing in this one,” Mercer said. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “What one?” I asked. “What are they saying I did now?”

  “You’re out of the bull’s-eye for the moment, but what do you remember about Scalia’s death?”