wind.
The running steps grew closer to me now and I turned again. This time the man was almost upon me and I could see him clearly. His face resembled the sketch of the young assailant who had been attacking women in this neighborhood for the past two months. My heart beat wildly as I tried to think of a way to get out of his path. Second Avenue was a long sprint from the middle of the block, but the brownstone buildings on either side of the quiet street required keys to get inside their front doors.
I accelerated and ran into the middle of the roadway, racing toward the busier thoroughfare ahead that would be bound to have taxi and bus traffic. Before I could reach the corner, the man had lapped me from the back. His muscular arms stabbed my shoulder blades and he tried to clutch at my mouth, muttering at me in a soft accented voice, repeatedly telling me to shut up.
I fell to the ground and my knees smashed against the concrete. My gloved hands flapped out in front of me and broke my fall. In a flash, my attacker ripped the strap of my bag off my arm and ran toward the avenue as I lay sprawled on the icy street.
28
'Hey, Quick Draw, wanna put out an APB for me?'
I was sitting inside the Nineteenth Precinct squad commander's office, shielded from the detectives' desks by the clouded glass window on the door, when I heard Chapman's voice, at top volume, calling across the room to Walter DeGraw.
'I'm looking for a dumb blonde. Big-time bad judgment written all over her. Put it out on the wires in case any of your guys see her skating around the city streets on the midnight tour. About five feet ten inches, too skinny for my taste, too stubborn to ask a cop for help, too vain to shed tears and run her mascara, too stupid to put a hat on her head in a snowstorm so her blonde hair's looking a little bedraggled from the sleet. But great wheels. And well dressed. They find her alive, she's likely to kill me if I didn't add those things. You seen her around or I oughtta try the psych ward down at Bellevue?'
DeGraw pushed open the door and Chapman reached out his arm to balance himself against the frame of it and stare down at me. I was sitting in the lieutenant's armchair, holding a steaming mug of coffee in both hands to warm them up, and wearing a turtleneck sweater that one of the guys had taken from his locker to put over my wet clothes.
'For a smart broad, sometimes you got the brains of a pigeon.'
DeGraw started to excuse himself and get out of the room.
'Don't go, Walter,' I implored him. He had begun to type the complaint report and the sooner I finished giving him the details, the faster I could get out of the cold station house.
Chapman stepped into the room and squatted in front of me. He placed his palms against my knees and realized when I jerked reflexively away from him that I had hurt them in my fall. He pried the coffee cup away from my clutches and pressed my hands between his own, rubbing them together gently but firmly.
'What's this all about, kid?'
I shook my head, not wanting to tell the whole story here and now, and DeGraw shuffled nervously, knowing that he was in the middle of something more personal. A uniformed cop knocked on the door, which was still ajar.
'Excuse me, Detective DeGraw? The desk sergeant sent me up.' He was clutching my shoulder bag. 'My partner found this on the sidewalk, about two blocks south of where she was hit. Nothing in it. Sarge wants to know if you can identify it, Counselor.'
'There wasn't much in it anyway. Yes, it's mine.'
DeGraw called over his shoulder to another detective in the squad room. 'Hey, Guido. Wanna bring me a voucher for Ms. Cooper's bag?'
Now we were five, crowded into the tiny office, filling out police forms and documenting my thickheadedness.
'Word's out on the street, Coop. Even the perp knew it wasn't worth wasting his time to make you do it.'
Don't bite, I urged myself. He's trying to make me laugh but I wasn't in the mood.
Chapman's grip on my hands was comforting, and it felt good to be with people who would care about finding the murdered woman Jake had been called about.
'What word?' Guido asked, suckered into Chapman's bait. 'Make her do what?'
'The guy who mugged her's the one who's been chasing women around up here. Making them perform oral sodomy. But he didn't even slow down his pace for Cooper. Just took the money and ran. Must have heard she's no good at blow-'
'Why don't you back off, Chapman?' Lieutenant Grier had returned from his meal and walked upstairs to see what was causing such a late-night commotion. 'There's a Mr. Tyler on the phone, Alex. Says he's a friend. Wants to know if he can come over here.'
'Tell him no, please. Tell him I'll call him tomorrow.' I pulled my hands away from Chapman and he stood up. I pressed my damp hair down and pulled the dangling strings of it behind my ears. 'I don't know how he knew where I'd be. You either.'
'You ran out of my place like a bat out of hell. Said you were going to Jake's. I waited five minutes and called him to make sure you got there.' The men were listening to our conversation with interest, forgetting they had other things to do. 'When he told me you'd had a fight and it had something to do with a missing woman, I just called over here, figuring that you had come to me to get information from the police. Next place you'd probably go was the precinct. I phoned and got Walter, who told me he had a hallucinating homeless woman, who looked like a vaguely familiar waterlogged prosecutor, dragging in a few minutes back with her tail between her legs. Told me what happened to you. Never dreamed you'd march in here as an aided case instead of an amateur dick.'
'I'm not an aided case. I don't need an ambulance.' I pulled my hands back and lowered them to my lap.
'Listen, Coop, you got less than forty-eight hours to turn your karma around before the New Year starts. Understand?'
Lieutenant Grier had walked away and returned from his own desk with a bottle of Glenfiddich. He chased the uniformed cop back downstairs, poured us each a shot into drinking glasses, and apologized to the three detectives as he served them in paper cups. 'Happy New Year, everybody.'
I drank the warm scotch and the rich single-malt stung as it went down my throat.
'Want to tell us about the call Jake got?' Mike asked.
I wasn't sure everyone in the room needed to hear the conversation.
'She gets real moody whenever she gets jealous, Loo,' Chapman said, taking off his jacket and sitting on the edge of the desk. 'Threw a tantrum 'cause she caught me with another broad. There probably isn't any missing woman at all. Just Coop trying to get my attention back.'
''Missing' isn't the operative word, Lieutenant. 'Murdered' is a bit more accurate.' Maybe I had overreacted when I saw that Mike had been in bed with a woman. I had run down the stairs without waiting for an introduction or an explanation, and now I was trying to convince myself that it was not jealousy that had sent me reeling back out to the treacherously icy street.
'See the extremes she goes to when the green monster rears its ugly head? The lights were out, the candles were lit, my clothes were tidily stacked on a chair, and for once in a blue moon I'm in bed with a-'
'We ain't all that interested in your wishful thinking, Chapman. Guido, Walter-why don't you go out and finish up what you need to do with the paperwork on Ms. Cooper's mugging.' The two old-timers reluctantly picked up their cups and reports and shuffled off to the larger squad room. 'Alex, you want to tell us what set off this whole thing?' Grier asked, closing the door behind him.
I explained to Lieutenant Grier who Jake Tyler was and why he had a professional obligation to protect his sources.
'Yeah, but not even to tell
'Believe me, Loo. I understand the principle, but it doesn't make any sense to me, either. There's no question that the information Jake got from the legal assistant who called him is that their client had killed his wife-'
