“Peaser says he’s calling the shots. He’ll bring Blanca in to meet with us, but he’s demanding to sit in on the interviews. He wants to vet all the questions we ask her.”
“No way,” I said. “He’ll get his turn after we’re done in criminal court.”
“I’m telling you, Alex, Byron’s going to make this difficult for all of us. He’s taken her out of the safe housing we placed her in and relocated her as of an hour ago. Won’t tell me where. He’ll bring her in here only if we play by his rules,” June said. “What do I tell him?”
“Now she’s
his
victim, too,” I said. “I wonder if she realizes that.”
“What are you going to do?” Battaglia asked me.
“Tell Peaser to have Blanca here at nine. I can play hardball every bit as well as that sleazebag.”
June stepped to the side as Battaglia headed for the door. “Whoever you choose to be the messenger for those updates,” he said, talking to no one in particular, “make sure he knows I like an occasional bit of good news. Best to lead with it if you’ve got it.”
The door slammed behind him. “Now that the DA has brought you back for this, Alex, you damn well better get it right,” Pat McKinney said, “or you might as well book your return trip to France. You and Monsieur Gil-Darsin.”
Mike was sitting at our usual corner table, his back to the window that fronted Second Avenue, when Mercer and I entered Primola, one of my favorite Italian restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a little after nine-thirty in the evening. He was working his way through a double dose of vodka.
“
Buona sera, Alessandra
,” the owner, Giuliano, said as we came in. He seated us and called out to the bartender. “Fenton, a Dewar’s on the rocks for Ms. Cooper,
subito!
”
“I’ll have what Mike’s drinking,” Mercer said, holding out a chair for me.
Ryan had opted to go home to put his daughter to bed, so Mercer and I drove uptown together. He used the time to fill me in on everything I needed to know about Blanca Robles. That was obviously more important than a conversation about my stalled love life.
We were such regulars at Primola that none of us needed the menu to order. I’d skipped the meal service on the flight and was starving for some comfort food, trying to forget the fact that it was three-thirty in the morning back in Mougins.
“I’m switching over to club soda after this one,” Mike said. “Gotta work tonight. I slept all day.”
“I slept all day, too.” The restaurant was midway between my apartment and Mike’s, but our homes might as well have been in different cities. My father’s trust—not my public service salary—allowed me to live in the high-rent high-rise district in the East 70s, on the twentieth floor of a building with dazzling views and great security.
Mike’s tiny studio apartment was southeast of the restaurant, a walk-up in an old tenement building in the East 60s. He’d dubbed it “the coffin” years ago, for its darkness and small size. There was a brief period when Valerie had tried to decorate it and organize the hundreds of books on military history that were stacked against every wall, but when Mike was overwhelmed with grief at her death, disorder reclaimed its space.
Mercer and Vickee were practically suburban. After Logan’s birth, they moved to a large, handsome house in Douglaston, Queens, a tree-lined neighborhood that was convenient to work but looked nothing like the city streets from which our cases came.
“Hungry?” Mercer asked me as Dominick approached to take our order.
“Starving. I’ll have the linguine with white clam sauce, please.”
“I’ll have that, too,” Mike said. “Along with an order of chicken parmigiana.”
“The chicken’s the size of an entire dinner plate,” I said. “That’s two enormous entrées.”
“I’m paying. What do you care?” The garlic bread Mike was inhaling might actually serve him well if he was called to a murder scene during his tour. If the smell of a body was any stronger than the garlic, I’d be surprised.
“Chicken parm for me, too. Salad on the side,” Mercer said. He reached out and the three of us clinked our glasses together. “To Blanca Robles. Here’s to truth, justice, and the American way.”
“Cheers,” I said. “I’m so sorry she’s in the hands of Byron Peaser.”
“When did this happen?” Mike asked.
“Tonight. It’s a real game-changer.”
“She’s entitled to a civil suit.”
“Of course she is. But they’ve got no problem with a statute of limitations. The criminal case tolls all their deadlines. It complicates things terribly for us.”
“How so?”
“McKinney specifically asked her if she was contemplating a lawsuit and she said this wasn’t about money, that the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. At the very same time, someone in her circle of friends was making calls to the Sleazer. Remember, he had a massive recovery for that Guatemalan cabdriver who was shot reaching for his wallet when cops thought it was a gun.”
“So she changed her mind,” Mike said, slathering more butter on the already toasted bread.
“I can live with that, but it’s always a sticking point for jurors. June says Byron won’t tell her how much he’s going to sue Gil-Darsin for, but it probably won’t be less than fifty million dollars.”
I thought the vodka was going to come out of his nose. “That could be the most expensive blow job in history.”
“And you know what the lawsuit does to the prosecution’s case?” I asked. “If I’m the one who stands before that jury for the closing argument, I need to be able to convince them that Blanca Robles has no motive to lie.”
“You can still do that.”
“The Court of Appeals reversed me in one of the toughest date-rape cases I’ve ever tried. The civil suit was filed the day after the conviction, and the court held that my witness had a reason to lie for every dollar she asked for in her suit.”
“Fifty million reasons to lie,” Mercer said.
“So at the same moment I start working on building my relationship with Blanca, I’ve got to tell her we think she’s made a major mistake and try to separate her from Byron as quickly—and as far—as possible.”
“And that’s before you got Lem Howell triplicating all over
you,” Mike said, nibbling on thin strips of fried zucchini and doing a fine imitation of Lem’s voice. “‘Mendacity, veracity, audacity’—he’s just warming up his tongue for this jaunt. So on a lighter note, Coop, how’s Luc?”
“Thanks for asking. I think he’s fine.”
“You think?”
“I mean he’s nervous about opening the restaurant over here. It’s such a huge step and he’s got everything invested in it, financially and emotionally. And there was actually a murder in Mougins this weekend. First one in hundreds of years.”
“Talk about burying the lede,” Mike said. “A murder? You should have made yourself a pain in the ass to the French cops, like you do to me.”
“Not to worry, Detective Chapman. That’s exactly what I did.”
“Who’d the grim reaper find in that little piece of paradise you’re always telling us is so safe?”
“A woman in her twenties. Asphyxiated. Drowned in a huge lotus pond.”
“Did Luc do it?”
I opened my mouth to snap an answer at Mike, but Mercer put his hand over mine.
“I’m just kidding, Coop. The town has a population of six, according to you. Everybody there has to be a suspect.”
“There are no suspects. And I’m Luc’s alibi,” I said with a smile.
“Rock solid. Especially since you skipped out of town a week early. I’d be all over you if it were my investigation. Did you know the vic?”
“No,” I said, hesitating a second. “But Luc did. She used to work for him.”
“Now I know why you responded to Battaglia’s call. Use that ‘get out of jail free’ card while it’s still in your hand and head for home. Leave your lover to swing on his own rope.”
My drink was at my lips, but I put down the glass. I spoke calmly and evenly, with a semblance of the same smile still on my face.
“Here’s the thing, Michael Patrick David Chapman. Listen up. I have made a career out of helping women who have been victimized and abused. I like doing it. I like helping them get out of relationships that are unhealthy. I like restoring their self-esteem. If I heard any one of them being talked to—talked at—in the manner in which you constantly hurl—”
“See, Mercer? Every now and then I just laser in on that sweet spot that gets her dander up. Like a drone zeroing in on a single terrorist target in the mountains of Afghanistan. I have this knack—”
“Let her talk, Mike.”
“It’s been more than ten years. If she had something to say about this, I’d have known it by now, don’t you think?”
“If I heard any woman being abused and humiliated, in front of her coworkers and friends, no less,” I said, trying to finish my little speech.
“You know I worship the ground you walk on, Coop. What the hell happened to your sense of humor? Did it get lost in the Bermuda Triangle on the flight home?”
“He loves you, Alex. Everybody on this planet sees that except you. C’mon, girl. Say your piece and let’s get back to business. The dude’s got a sick sense of humor and we all have to put up with it.”
“Whoa, Mercer, we’re not talking love here. You know, Coop, you like it mighty fine when I’m riffing on McKinney or Gunsher, when I’m pulling Lem Howell’s leg, when I’m playing with your posse of sex crimes vixens—ragging on Catherine or Marisa or Nan. Now you’re suddenly off the table? Off the charts? Off the wall?”
I flopped back in my chair and starting drinking the Scotch. I had no idea what had made me bristle at that particular moment, other than the vision of Luc swinging from a rope because I had used the first excuse offered to run away from his problems. I never doubted Mike’s respect or affection for me. We had flirted with each other for years without ever crossing the line and becoming intimate. On my part, it was an eyes-wide-open acknowledgment that we could never remain professional partners if we had a sexual
relationship. With all the dark humor as an overlay, I wasn’t even sure that Mike had any interest in taking our friendship in that direction.
Dominick arrived with my bowl of pasta and plates for Mercer and Mike. I thanked him and prepared to dig in.
“Look at me, Coop,” Mike said, running his fingers through his thick black hair and staring at me with eyes almost as dark. “I apologize. From the heart. Really I do.”
“What did you say?”
“I apologize. From the heart.”
“Say it again.”
“You heard me.”
“I appreciate that.”
“But do you accept it? My apology, I mean. Ten years of teaching you everything I know about murder and street mooks, ten years of covering your ass in every conceivable situation including the dimwitted ones you got yourself into, ten years of making you look like a rock star in the courtroom when you didn’t know your opening from your closing—but then, the occasional insult? I apologize for all of it.”
“Okay, okay, okay. You really nailed me with that one. I accept, all right?”
He had pushed his pasta aside and was working on the chicken parm, his appetite no more diminished for upsetting me than it would be if a corpse fell off the chair behind him.
“Good. Because there’s nothing to say it won’t happen again.”
“Especially if I tell you that you now have marinara sauce all over your chin.”
Mike picked up his napkin to wipe it off. “I bet the French don’t even need napkins. I bet they don’t drip stuff like this on themselves ever.”
“So does Luc think this murdered girl has something to do with his business, since she used to work in the restaurant?” Mercer asked, determined to change the subject.
“He hopes it doesn’t have anything to do with his business or his personal life, but it’s his ex-wife who caught Lisette stealing from his restaurant, so Luc had to fire her. That mixes in both elements. He’s the only three-star restaurant in Mougins, which is the source of a lot of animosity in his professional world.”
“What’s the big deal with these stars?” Mike asked. “I thought Michelin made automobile tires. What do they know about food?”
“The Michelin brothers started making tires more than a century ago. In 1900, they published a guide that would help travelers find mechanics, gas stations, and tire dealers. They thought it made sense to throw in locations for good food and lodging for their customers in France.”
“Clever idea,” Mercer said. “Who does the ratings? People like us?”
“That’s the Zagat system,” I said, referring to the enormously popular series of American city guides developed by a husband and wife team in New York, using restaurant patrons to rate the cuisine and decor. “Michelin has always used professionals—trained inspectors who remain anonymous to the chefs—to rank food and service.”
“Everybody gets a star?” Mike asked.
“Oh no. If a restaurant isn’t deemed worthy of patronage, it simply isn’t mentioned in the guide. One star means a really good cuisine in its category, two stand for excellent dining, worth a detour, and three stars—very few of them every year—mean exceptional cuisine that’s worth a special journey.”
“And Luc has three?”
“There are more than fifteen thousand restaurants in France, and only twenty-six of them received three stars last year.”
“That’s impressive,” Mercer said.
“And backbreaking. You won’t believe the kind of attention that goes into every aspect of producing a great dining experience. You’ll get it firsthand when things start up over here.”
“What’s the time line for opening Lutèce?” he asked.
“Luc and his partners have bought the property—an elegant town house, just like his father created the first time.”
“In the East Fifties?”
“Eighty-First Street, actually. His partners claim the Eighties are the new Fifties,” I said, talking between delicious bites of pasta.
“My mother claims the same thing. Eighty-seven with the spirit of a fifty-year-old.”
“Your mother’s amazing,” I said. “Anyway, the space is furnished and decorated, and sometime in the next month, as soon as they’ve hired enough staff, we’ll all be invited to tasting dinners. Luc’s big season in Mougins begins now, so Lutèce won’t really have an opening until late fall.”