Deadfall

The door was unlocked. Mercer and my three closest friends from the office—Catherine, Nan, and Marisa—were in the den, watching television. The only sound from the room was the voice of the local NBC news anchor repeating the headline story of Battaglia’s death.

Nan Toth noticed Mike and me walk in and reached me first. We put our arms around each other in a tight embrace. I’m not sure whether any words would have come to me at that moment, but we had such a close friendship that we didn’t need to speak.

“Take some deep breaths, Alex,” Nan said.

I tried to shake off the jittery way I felt. “Glad you’re all here.”

“You’ve been to hell and back,” Marisa said. “Don’t say another word.”

“Should I ask how the office was today? How you are?”

“I’d say it was like a morgue,” Catherine offered, “but that’s below the belt.”

“I’ll pour you a drink,” Nan said.

“She’s not drinking,” Mike said. “No Scotch.”

Mercer was fixing cocktails for each of them—and a martini for Mike.

“He’s kidding,” I said. “Plenty of ice for me, too.”

“You’re on the wagon, Coop.”

I laughed at Mike. “Since when?”

“Since right now. You’ve never needed to be more sober than you do right now, till the US attorney gets off your ass.”

“Here’s the national news,” Mercer said, clicking on the remote to raise the volume. “How Battaglia loved being the lead on that.”

So true. He played his media connections to the max. He called in stories to the Times editorial staff and the network news outlets, whether a white-collar crime indictment or the murder of a mogul.

“Good evening,” the anchor said. “From Manhattan, where a city is still in shock over last night’s assassination of the longtime, popular district attorney on the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

An old campaign photograph of Paul Battaglia filled the screen, with the oversize bolded letters DA above his face—and in similar typeface below, the letters DOA.

“He’d be calling up to scream at the producer right now if he could,” I said, holding my thumb and forefinger together in a signal to Mercer to pour me a short drink. “He hated that photo. It was the campaign poster for his losing Senate bid.”

“He truly hated losing,” Marisa said. “Anything.”

Mercer shook his head. He wasn’t bartending for me tonight.

Everyone waited for a commercial break to fire questions.

“Coop’s been in the hot seat all day,” Mike said, handing me a glass of sparkling water. “Your turn. What’s the buzz in the office?”

They were humoring me, all three of them. They were sticking to the story that there hadn’t been much gossip today that had involved my relationship with Battaglia. Neither Mike nor I believed it.

BREAKING NEWS. The flashing red headline was the lead as the anchor picked up the story.

“This just in. A man walking his dog on Fifth Avenue at the time of last night’s shooting of DA Paul Battaglia captured a photo on his cell phone camera. A warning to our viewers—this is an extremely graphic image.”

A grainy shot—taken across the street from the museum steps—flashed on the screen. I looked up, then covered my eyes with my hand.

“The man in the dark suit, with a gaping wound to the back of his head, is the late Paul Battaglia,” the anchor said. “You can see that his body is being held by a person—a young woman, actually—who seems to be sitting on the museum steps. They are literally knotted in each other. That person beneath him is one of his top assistants, Special Victims Unit Chief Alexandra Cooper. It’s Ms. Cooper who has the DA in a death grip.”





TEN


“Now they’ve ratcheted up the language to a death grip,” I said, sinking into the sofa and turning to Mike. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a photograph?”

“I didn’t know there was one,” he said. “Mercer’s checking.”

The story went on to cover the arc of Battaglia’s life. The six of us in my den knew it far better than the newsmen did.

Mercer finished the call and stowed the phone in his blazer pocket. “I just spoke to Vickee, who got the word from the press office. The only NYPD shots were taken by the Crime Scene Unit, and they’re not released to the public. They didn’t see this one until just this minute.”

“So this dog-walking asshole just sold his snapshots to the media. Witness to an assassination and he shutterbugs it onto the nightly news instead of calling 911,” Mike said.

“He’s about to get a knock on his door,” Mercer said. “Homicide wants his photos.”

“Count on it, Coop,” Mike said. “You’ll be cover girl on the morning’s Post.”

This was the new normal. I had prosecuted a murder case a few years back, and after the verdict, we learned that a friend of the perp’s had taken a video of him, mocking the death of his victim and strangling a doll to show how he had killed his girlfriend. She didn’t give the evidence to law enforcement, but chose instead to sell it to a tabloid reality show for twenty-five thousand dollars. The dog walker had done the same.

“How many pooch paraders you think were out there last night?” Mike said. “Somebody must have seen something.”

“The task force is using all our NYPD manpower to do a canvass tonight to find them,” Mercer said. “Dogs and drunks and anyone else out for a stroll.”

“What else is the task force doing, besides making my life miserable?” I said.

“Lose that, Coop,” Mike said. “Your life is not the issue here.”

“Collateral damage,” I said. “Is that all I am?”

“All you want to be is the mattress the body fell on,” he said. “Back off. The less you make of this, the better you’ll come out of it.”

“I hate to agree with Mike,” Nan said, refilling her wineglass. “Ever. But the best thing for you would be to normalize. Think about being back at work and getting into a rhythm again.”

I couldn’t even concentrate on a good book these last few weeks. How could I be an advocate for a rape victim or cross-examine a defendant with a felony conviction at stake?

“It’s a thought,” I said, giving my friends a wan smile.

How was I going to face hundreds of lawyers—my colleagues and literal partners in crime—who would only want to know why their boss was rushing to a clandestine meeting with me?

I was beginning to feel claustrophobic in my own home, with my best friends. I was sweating, though the evening was cool and crisp.

I powered through the rest of the news, then went into the bathroom to shower. I put one of Mike’s button-down shirts over a pair of leggings and came back to find Nan setting the dining room table. She had ordered a couple of pizzas and some salad.

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