“We’d better let them know about any other dirtbags you’re sitting on.”
“That would be my entire caseload,” I said. “I specialize in dirtbags. Can’t think of a single one that has any respect for the DA, nor for me, for that matter.”
Mike had stepped into the shower and the room was filling up with steam, which actually felt quite good.
“Who’s got it for the feds?” I asked.
“I don’t know who the agents are yet, but for the moment, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York is handling the investigation himself,” Mike said. “The Honorable James Prescott.”
“Skeeter? Damn it.”
“Skeeter, really?” Mike asked, pulling back the shower curtain. “Grown man and that’s the best he can do? Did he get bit by a bug or something?”
“Do you have a problem with names? First Jaxon and now this one,” I said. “It’s a southern thing, Prescott’s name. A kid’s nickname that took.”
“You ever do him?”
“Why is that always your first question?” I said. “No, but thanks for asking. I went to law school with Skeeter’s wife. His ex, actually. I just don’t need him knowing all my business.”
“Once the New York Post gets through with this, what Skeeter or anyone else knows will take a backseat to the tabs,” Mike said, wiping his face and chest with a towel, then changing places with me. “Then there’s the DA’s fight with the mayor.”
“They hate each other.”
“Hated,” Mike said. “Once you’ve got a dead man, the story gets rewritten. The mayor’s a complete horse’s ass, but I don’t think anyone’s going to go with a hired-killer theory.”
“Then there’s all the office politics,” I said. “So much infighting.”
“Yeah. A real hornet’s nest.”
“Five hundred lawyers. Most of them are loyal and collegial, but there’s a handful or two who care about nothing except their own careers,” I said. “All led by an elected official who was so vain he refused to deal with the idea that someone would eventually succeed him.”
I’d gotten in the shower and was washing myself vigorously again, even harder than at the morgue. “Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?”
“Let it go, Coop,” Mike said. “You still got blood washing off?”
“No, that’s Shakespeare I’m quoting,” I said. “Lady Macbeth, imagining forever that she couldn’t get the bloodstains out. Just that crazy feeling that no matter what I do, I’ll still be wearing a bit of Paul Battaglia for the rest of my life.”
“Knowing the way you think, you probably will.”
When I stepped out, Mike wrapped me in a bath towel and gave me the hug—long and close—that I had been waiting for. Then he patted me on my butt and told me to get dressed.
I had lots of lady lawyer clothes. A pin-striped navy-blue skirt suit with a white blouse would be appropriate, I thought as I took the pieces out of my closet. No makeup, no jewelry, no stilettos.
“Did they find the car the shooters used?” I asked.
“I know as much as you do.”
“That’s so hard to believe,” I said, sitting down to pull on my panty hose.
“Nobody’s telling me anything. I’m every bit as much a witness as you are.”
Mike was adjusting his navy blazer—as much of a uniform as he owned—and went back into the bathroom to brush his dark hair into place.
I reached for my iPad, logged in, and hit the Google app. I typed in Battaglia’s name.
“What are you doing?” Mike asked, walking back into my bedroom. “Turn that thing off.”
“I’m just checking the news. I don’t want to walk into the lion’s den like I don’t have a clue what’s going on, Mike.”
“That’s exactly the way Skeeter and the crew want you, babe,” Mike said, grabbing the machine from my hands and slapping the cover closed. “They need to talk to you before your facts are conflated with all the crap that’s floating around on the Internet. You be straight with them and they’ll be straight with you.”
“I saw the headline,” I said, smiling up at Mike. “At least give me credit for that.”
“For what?”
“OPERATION DEADFALL. The Times headline,” I said. That was as far as I’d been able to read. “That’s what the task force is naming the investigation.”
“Credit?” Mike said, looking at me as though I’d lost it. “You must be out of your mind. You think that’s a compliment?”
“It’s what I told Stern and Tinsley. That the DA and I went down together, totally entangled in each other.”
Mike sat down beside me on the bed, stroking my damp hair away from my face.
“It’s a double entendre, Coop,” Mike said. “Or maybe you just didn’t know that.”
“What is?” I asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re the one that suggested to Jaxon Stern that Battaglia’s life ended in a deadfall?”
“Don’t look so sad about it, Mike—it just means—”
“I’ll tell you what it means, Madam Prosecutor,” Mike said, standing up and shaking his head at me. “It’s not just an entanglement. It’s a term used in hunting, okay? When someone sets up a trap, kid, to catch a large animal—a really valuable kind of prey.”
“You’re thinking the district attorney was the prey? Is that what you’re telling me?” I stood too, and took the lapel of Mike’s jacket in my hand, so he would look at me.
“The animal gets lured to the trap by some kind of bait,” he went on, “and then it’s crushed to death by a heavy weight—or in this case, by a couple of pieces of lead.”
“No, no, no,” I said, pushing back, away from Mike. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
“The working theory—the word on the street, in Jaxon Stern–speak—is that you set the man up,” Mike said. “That Paul Battaglia was the prey, and that you were the bait, Coop. That you were the deadfall.”
SIX
“Have a seat, Alexandra,” Prescott said after shaking my hand.
“Thank you,” I said, sweeping the conference room with my eyes to check out the members of the task force team.
One Saint Andrews Plaza, the federal prosecutor’s office, was only a stone’s throw from the criminal courthouse where the DA’s offices were, but it was like another world. We city workers were sprawled all over the grim WPA-designed building and our overflow was housed across the street, in other dreary government buildings. The feds, who numbered only a fraction of our size, had more modern digs, as well as all the assets that the US government could place at their disposal.
“You met Jaxon Stern and Kate Tinsley earlier this morning,” Prescott said, guiding me to a seat at the end of the long table.
They each forced a smile, but I glared back at them and didn’t comment.
“Why don’t we go around the table so you can introduce yourselves to Ms. Cooper?” Prescott suggested. “Just for the record, Alexandra and I have never worked together, and we haven’t socialized in—what? Seven or eight years?”