'How about the first time he was stationed there?'
'In the mid 1930s. Probably his entry-level job after college,' Battaglia said. 'But he wasn't working for the government then.'
'What did he do?'
'He was a tutor. The royal tutor. You're too young to know anything about Farouk,' the district attorney told me. 'He was the playboy pasha-a spoiled prince who grew up to be a corrupt monarch and a Nazi sympathizer. I hated his politics.'
'And Victor Vallis taught him?'
'For almost three years, when young Farouk was living in the palace in Alexandria, and later in Cairo; Vallis made his home with the family and taught the prince all his studies. Foreign languages, world history, geography.'
'So did the district attorney ever get any closer to figuring out what the feds thought this burglary was about?' I asked. 'Foreign intrigue? Terrorism?'
'He says the file was still an open case. Nobody knows. They looked for connections between Victor Vallis and the Nassan family, but if the CIA knew of any, they sure didn't tell the local prosecutor.'
'Thanks for making the call,' I said, as he handed me his notes of the conversation. 'I'll have Laura type these up.'
I headed back across the main corridor to my office, where Chapman was talking with my assistant, Sarah Brenner. 'Are the FBI agents gone?'
'Yeah,' Mike answered.
'Talk about feeling stupid. Were you able to give Ms. Chesnutt a 'scrip of Harry Strait?'
'Not a very good one,' he said, repeating it to me.
'Doesn't sound any better than mine.'
Sarah had a different perspective. 'Sounded to me like you were describing Peter Robelon.'
'Or the defendant, Andrew Tripping,' I said. 'Totally fungible white men. They're not going to get very far on what I told them.'
'Well, forget about Harry Strait for the moment and come on down to my office. I was just telling Mike that uniformed cops brought in an acquaintance of Queenie Ransome's you need to talk to.'
'Kevin Bessemer?' I asked.
'Not quite so lucky as that. But I think you'll want to question this guy.'
'Where'd they find him?'
'Inside Ransome's apartment earlier today.'
'A break-in?' Mike asked.
'No. That's what makes it so interesting. He let himself in with a key.'
20
'Is he under arrest?' I asked the cop who was standing outside the door of Sarah's office, guarding the wiry young man who sat inside.
'Not exactly. We didn't know what to charge him with.'
'Burglary?'
'He's got a key, ma'am. Says he knows the tenant.'
'The tenant's dead.'
'Yeah, but he claims she gave him permission to be in the apartment.'
'Not lately, I don't imagine,' I said.
'That's why we brought him down here. You guys can decide whether or not to charge him.'
'Was the crime scene tape still over the door?'
'Yes, ma'am. He just lifted it and went inside, apparently.'
'Didn't your sergeant think that's enough for a trespass?'
'He says the city don't pay him to think. That's why they got lawyers.'
I waited for Chapman and then entered Sarah's small office. 'My name is Alexandra Cooper,' I said. 'This is Mike Chapman. He's a detective and I'm an assistant district attorney.'
'I'm Spike Logan.' He had been resting his head on his crossed arms, on a corner of Sarah's desk. He stretched and yawned. 'Wanna tell me what this is about?'
'Happy to,' Mike said. 'Then we got a few questions for you.'
'Am I in custody?'
Mike looked to me for a decision.
'No,' I said.
'Or do you mean not yet?' Logan said. 'I'm free to leave?' He stood up, as though to challenge my response.
I stepped back to let him pass.
'That's fair,' he said, reseating himself.
'We'd like to talk to you about McQueen Ransome,' I said, 'maybe starting with what you were doing in her apartment this morning.'
'She invited me there. I had an appointment with her. Eleven o'clock.'
'What kind of appointment and when did you make it?'
'Every third Monday of the month. Been doing it since the beginning of the year. Look, these cops told me Queenie's dead. Somebody killed her. I've probably got more questions for you than you've got for me.'
Mike pulled two chairs from the anteroom outside Sarah's office and we settled in for our conversation with Spike Logan. I couldn't fathom why Queenie would have any standing engagements to meet with young men in her home, but Mike was ready to take over the questioning from me.
'You saying you didn't know Ms. Ransome was dead when you went in there today?'
'Uh-uh. Nope. I haven't been in town since last month. Just drove in last night. You gotta tell me what happened to her, man.'
'Didn't you see the tape outside her door?' I asked.
'Lady, crime scene tape on a stoop in Harlem ain't quite the odd thing it might be on the front steps in Beverly Hills.'
'Let's back up a bit,' Mike said. 'Why don't you tell us about yourself? Who you are, how you know Ms. Ransome, what the purpose of these meetings were.'
Logan leaned back and stretched his legs in front of him. Lean and slight, he was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. He was a dark-skinned black man, with a mustache and goatee, dark-framed eyeglasses, and several piercings in both ears.
'Me? I'm thirty years old. Born here in the city, went to Martin Luther King High School. College at NYU. I'm in graduate school now.'
'Where?'
'Harvard. African-American studies program.'
'You got any ID on you?'
'It's in my car, uptown. In the glove compartment. Just my driver's license.'
'No student ID?'
'I'm not enrolled this semester. I'm on leave.'
'Where do you live? Where'd you come in from last night?'
'Massachusetts. Oak Bluffs.'
Logan must have noticed my reaction. I looked over at Mike to see whether the name had registered with him. Oak Bluffs was one of the six towns on Martha's Vineyard. It had an unusual history, and for more than a century had been a summer community and home to an African-American population of professionals, scholars, and intellectuals.
'Who do you live with?'
