“I’ll buy a MetroCard, thanks.” I just wanted to sprint out the door and away from the building, before Prescott changed his mind and held me overnight as a material witness.
“Your assignment,” James said, “is Diana. Work that name every which way you can, through every source you have. And figure out the mutual friend.”
“I’m sure Battaglia had plenty of contacts at the gala,” I said, “but very f-f-few people we both knew. I—I can bet you money on that. I—I’m quite sure.”
This time I couldn’t control the stammer. Now I actually had an idea of who Battaglia might have freaked out about when he spotted the man on the evening news at the Met—at the same event as me. It must have been George Kwan, a witness in the Savage murder case—and whose home Mike and I had spotted Battaglia leaving a few days before his death.
Kwan wasn’t my friend. I met him briefly in the course of the Savage case interviews, but it was just like Battaglia to use sarcasm to score a dig at me.
I wanted to tell Prescott that Kwan was in fact a friend of Battaglia’s. I wanted to tell him the truth about the last time I saw the district attorney. But I just couldn’t bring myself to admit that I had lied to Jaxon Stern.
NINE
“I want to walk,” I said.
“Get in the car.”
“I need fresh air, Mike.”
“I’ve waited for you all day,” he said, jogging to overtake my long, angry stride.
“That’s so sweet,” I said.
“Say it like you mean it, kid.”
I stopped in my tracks. “I really do mean it. And I apologize.”
“My car’s behind the courthouse.”
“I’ll take the train uptown and meet you there,” I said. “I really need to blow off steam.”
“The last time you were on the subway, Coop, they were still using tokens,” Mike said. “Anyone tell you they’re no good anymore?”
“Okay, okay, okay. Take me home. Please,” I said, reaching for his hand. “And thank you for waiting. It was a gruesome day.”
We had outlasted the paparazzi and the newshounds. City workers leaving their offices at the end of another day brushed past us on the sidewalk.
“Who questioned you today?” I asked.
“Save the conversation for the car.”
“Don’t make me paranoid,” I said, glancing around. “Do you think—?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if they put an agent on you,” Mike said. “Tail you for a while.”
“How about if I become a recluse?” I asked.
Mike unlocked the beat-up black department car and I got inside.
“My kind of girl. Maybe you’ll use your stay-at home time to learn how to cook,” he said, closing the door, then going around and sliding in behind the wheel. “Talk to me, Coop. Tell me what Prescott did to you.”
I leaned back against the headrest and took Mike through the lowlights of the day as he headed for the uptown FDR Drive and my apartment.
“Who do you know named Diana?” I asked as we neared home.
“Diana who?”
“You must have a Diana in your inventory, Mike,” I said. “Apparently that’s who Battaglia was charging up the steps to talk to me about.”
“Yeah,” he said. “My mother’s butcher’s wife. Diana Della Veccia DiVencenzo. Two hundred eighty pounds, with a mustache heavier than my five-o’clock shadow. I doubt she’s been doing much the DA was interested in, except slicing bologna.”
“They played my voice mails back to me at the end of the day,” I said. “I’d forgotten that I’d walked right past the night doorman when we got home in the middle of the night and didn’t think to pick up my phone and stuff.”
“So Prescott has your cell?”
“TARU’s already downloaded everything. My texts, my emails,” I said, “and the three messages Battaglia left for me last night.”
“You didn’t bring your phone to the museum?” Mike asked.
“I didn’t think I’d need it,” I said. “Who interviewed you? Jaxon Stern?”
“Nope. They didn’t want it to be cop on cop,” Mike said. “It was one of the feebs—Tom Frist—with another of Prescott’s assistants.”
“Any surprises?”
“Pretty straightforward. Hell, the shooting was over in a flash,” he said. “They were way more into you.”
“Great,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“You and me. You and the Reverend Shipley. You and why you stuck your nose in the Savage investigation,” he said. “Mostly you and Battaglia.”
“What did you tell them about us?” I said as Mike backed into a tight parking space.
“Us?” Mike said. “None of their business.”
“Not us. About the DA and me. That us.”
“That things had turned. That he was treating you badly, in a way he had never done before.”
“Why in the world did you go there?” I asked. “They’ll think I murdered him.”
“Not after I got done.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you wouldn’t have ended it so fast,” Mike said. “You would have made his death slow and painful, torturing him every step of the way.”
I got out of the car and slammed the door.
“Don’t give me your back ’cause I said that, Coop,” he said. “That’s your nature.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Did they ask you about George Kwan?”
“Nope.”
“On the last call Battaglia made to me, he was talking about me seeing our ‘mutual friend,’” I said. “I can’t figure out who the hell he was talking about. Then I sort of wondered if he meant George Kwan.”
“Kwan’s not your friend.”
“You know the way Battaglia could get a dig in. Who else was at the museum—besides you and Mercer and some ex-cop security guys—besides Kwan?”
“So you ’fessed up about seeing the DA at Kwan’s house?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Or next time I’m down there. There was so much else going on that this just came to me on my way down from Prescott’s office.”
Now I was lying to Mike, too. I didn’t want to be weaving a tangled web, but I was doing just that.
The doorman on the afternoon shift greeted us as we entered the lobby and passed him to go to the elevator.
“Ms. Cooper,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I just let Detective Wallace go upstairs with three of your friends from the office,” he said. “The detective told me you were expecting them.”
I looked quizzically at Mike, who waved to the doorman and thanked him.
“You thought this was a good idea?” I asked Mike.
“You’re not the only one in mourning, blondie,” he said. “Ever think of it that way? All your pals have taken a huge hit. Battaglia’s murder has rocked the office.”
We got on the elevator and Mike hit twenty.
I don’t think I’d ever been as self-centered as I had been for the last twenty hours. I hadn’t even thought of the turmoil Battaglia’s death had caused to all the people who worked in the office of the New York County district attorney. They were public servants, loyal to their leader to a fault, and so steeped in integrity that these circumstances would shake each of them to the core.