you're going to be very happy with Santa. You've got to help me with Jake's. I've thought of almost everybody but him. I'm ready anytime you are.'
'Okay. I've set an itinerary for us. Your time is too precious to screw around with. We start at James II. Best antique cuff links in town. Across the street to Turnbull. You must get Jake some more of those great striped shirts with the white collars. He'll never outdress Brian Williams, but you can keep trying.' A wonderful respite from the week behind and the week ahead. Joan could make me laugh about anything. 'We skim past Escada. Make sure Elaine has something in mind for Jake to take you to the Washington Press Club dinner in style. A quick peek at Asprey. Then a triumphal march up Madison Avenue, in and out of all the little boutiques. Do you have things for les deux divine detectives, messieurs Chapman and Wallace? We've got to take care of those guys-they're so good to you. Lunch at Swifty's, with a spicy Bloody Mary, and dinner at Lumi's. Dewar's for you and some kind of delicious red wine for me. You can help me concoct a menu for my New Year's Eve dinner party. Are we broke yet?'
'Credit cards will be totally maxed out and it will be a perfect diversion for me.'
'And you'll turn the damn beeper off, right?'
'I'll switch it to the vibrate mode. You'll never know it's there.' Even my best friends had to deal with the fact that my days often started with an assault or were punctuated by a murder.
'Heat wave, Alex. It may actually get up to twenty-eight degrees today. See you in an hour.'
The day went exactly as planned. Bundled up against the cold, we shopped ourselves into a state of exhaustion. Most of my family's gifts had been mailed out of town so they would arrive in time for the holiday. I could scatter the rest to my friends throughout the week, take a carload to the office for everyone there, and save Jake's for Christmas Eve.
We were savoring our last cup of espresso after dinner when the small device attached to my waistband began to buzz and wriggle against me. I pulled it off and saw the lighted notice declaring that I had one page. I depressed the button and it displayed Mike's home number.
'You call him back. He always asks how you are.' I handed Joan the phone, knowing she would break the ice between Mike and me.
She dialed the number and spoke into the receiver, affecting her best French accent. 'Can I interest you in a brandy, Detective Chapman?'
'Who's-?'
'Surely a flic as brilliant as you should be able to-'
'Mademoiselle Stafford! Your place or mine?'
'I'm afraid that I'm not alone. I've got that blonde with me. Don't forget, I'm expecting some little Christmas trinket from you.'
'Well, I've got Coop's all picked out.' 'What are you getting her? I'm green with envy already.' 'You know those Lojack things you install in cars so the cops can track them in case they're stolen? I'm gonna do the first human Lojack insertion. I spend more time hunting down this broad around town, trying to figure out where she is when I need her. I'm gonna stick a needle with that computer chip deep into the buttocks of her cute little right-you've probably seen 'em bare, Joanie. Which one's cuter? The right or the left cheek?'
'Neither one's that appealing, Mike. They're both a bit scrawny. Drinks on me. Please come join us. We're at-' 'No can do. Somebody beat you to it. Put blondie on.' I put the phone back to my ear. 'Did you get my message?' I asked sheepishly.
'Yeah. Had to run right out and get myself a date last night. Didn't want you checking my hand for blisters.'
'I'm sorry for-'
'There's more important stuff to talk about. Just got a call from the captain over in the two-six. One of the custodians was going through the dorms at King's College today. Making sure everybody was out 'cause they're closing the building down till after the first of the year.
'The guy had to break open the door to one of the bedroom suites that was locked and bolted from the inside. Found a kid from Philly, a twenty-one-year-old senior, swinging from the railing in his closet. Hung himself with the drawstring from a pair of sweatpants. Suicide.'
I thought first of the boy's family, and how their lives would be shattered by this news they might not even know yet. Mike talked on.
'Criminal justice major. Julian Gariano.'
'In Lola Dakota's classes?'
connection to her that anyone can make. Seems your office was about to bust Gariano next week. Six-month investigation with an indictment that was supposed to be unsealed for his arraignment, by the Special Narcotics Bureau. Kid and his accomplice have been importing huge quantities of Ecstasy for a couple of years. His codefendant was arrested at the airport, coming in from Amsterdam with more than a hundred thousand tablets. Rolled over and gave up Gariano in a flash.'
'So what's this got to do-'
'Guess who he lived with a year ago, his main squeeze? Charlotte Voight, the girl who's been missing since April.'
10
Planning anything this particular Monday morning was a futile race against time. Every agency and business from which I needed records and information would be shutting down, some for just the period surrounding Christmas, and others for more than a week until after the New Year's holiday. Lab scientists, cops, prosecutors, and witnesses would be taking days off for traditional celebrations and trips to be with family out of town. I took a cab to the office at 7 a.m. and reviewed the file for the short hearing I had to conduct at nine-thirty.
Then I blasted out a list of e-mails on the in-house network. I had to find one of my senior attorneys to handle the new pattern in the Nineteenth Precinct, and to put a rush on the subpoena for the victim's stolen cell phone records. I drafted a list of things for Laura to work on while I was in court, and wrote memos about case developments that she needed to type and get to the district attorney.
We had our own NYPD branch, a squad detail of about fifty officers, based one flight above me, so I called the voice mail of Detective Joe Roman and told him to do a complaint report with the statements Shirley Denzig had made to the Witness Aid workers. I also asked him to run a pistol permit check on Denzig's father, in Maryland, and to determine whether his gun had in fact been stolen.
Laura had just reached her desk at nine, and before she could sit down she was buzzing me on the intercom. 'It's Howard Kramer.'
'I'll take it. But if Chapman calls, put him right through. I thought he'd be here by now.'
I picked up the phone to greet Kramer, a litigator and managing partner at one of the premier law firms in the city, Sullivan and Cromwell. Although I knew Howard through his work, we had become better acquainted after his marriage to Nan Rothschild, the Barnard professor who was also my ballet class companion.
'How've you been?'
'Fine. Everybody's well. I know how busy you are, but I thought you might want to see Nan sometime this week. She's flying in from London this afternoon, on her way back from a conference at Oxford. I read in the
I knew that Rothschild was one of the most prominent urban anthropologists in the country. A professor at Barnard College, she has led and participated in some of the most extraordinary excavations in America, including several in the heart of New York City that had unearthed Colonial burial grounds and artifacts of early settlements.
'I was talking to Nan at class a few weeks ago and she described the dig she was supervising in Central Park. Seneca Village. Is that what Dakota was involved in?' The village was a community of several hundred people who were moved from their mid-Manhattan homes in the 1850s to make way for the creation of the Great Lawn in the park. Nan had captivated me with stories of the most current high-tech means of exploring the city's past.
