Deadfall

An omission in Stern’s notes didn’t trouble me. I had proven his reason to trash me by citing the case I had tried, and Prescott had signed on to that.

Tinsley was another matter. But she hadn’t taken notes. She had simply observed our interplay, so her memory of the three A.M. interrogation was as fallible as my own.

“The security guard refused to admit Mike to Kwan’s home. His home is the enterprise office too,” I said. “But it’s not this guy Kwan who’s important, of course. The issue was about Paul. It was the last time I saw Paul.”

“When?” Prescott asked, tipping his empty hand by looking up at me. “What was? On the street near your home?”

“No,” I said. “Like I told them the other night, Mike got back into his car and we were pulling out of the block, a bit frustrated that we hadn’t gotten a chance to get in and meet with Mr. Kwan.”

“And?”

“I looked up and saw one of the security men step out, so I told Mike to stop the car, figuring we might be able to get inside,” I said. “But that’s when the district attorney came through the front door. The last time I saw Paul Battaglia—before he was shot—he was leaving the home of a man named George Kwan.”





TWENTY-TWO


“You got out of the car to talk to Battaglia, I assume,” Prescott said.

He was scrambling to make sense of this piece of news, which was under his nose for the first time. I felt a huge sense of relief having unpacked the heavy piece of baggage—a link between Kwan and the dead DA—and doing so before it was Prescott who brought up the name George Kwan.

“Actually, Mike had already turned the corner, and that gave me a second to catch myself from jumping out to approach Paul, since he was already urging me to keep out of the case.”

Prescott looked as though he was trying to see through a very dark cloud that had just descended in front of his face.

“This factoid isn’t in the notes, Alexandra,” he said.

“It’s not a factoid,” I said. “It’s a fact. It happened. You can ask Mike about it too.”

Prescott looked for another Redweld labeled CHAPMAN.

“I mean, that’s assuming Stern asked him that question about having seen Battaglia, James. After all, Stern’s just out of Internal Affairs. He’s not exactly a crack homicide detective, but that’s the choice you made when you put him on this case.”

He rifled through it, but it was much thinner than my folder—and of course, no one had any reason to ask Mike about the last time he saw the DA.

“It seems like I took you away from where you wanted to go with me this morning,” I said. “I’m happy to carry on.”

“Alexandra, have you got that new phone number for me yet?” Prescott asked.

“I’m enjoying the radio silence. It’s good for my mental health.”

“Being available to me would be even better for you.”

Prescott tossed the Chapman folder to the side of his desk and picked up the stack of photographs again.

“Do you believe in coincidence, Alexandra?” he asked, eyeing me like the enemy.

“No, I don’t.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “I’ve got to hand it to you. Somehow, you got out ahead of me on this one.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“George Kwan,” he said, sifting through the photographs to pull one out from the bottom of the pile. “He was on my list of things—of people—to talk to you about today, and yet here you go, bringing up his name before I can get the first question in.”

“Now, that’s really uncanny,” I said.

Prescott slapped the photograph—the same one Vickee had shown us last night—in front of me on his desk and turned it around so it faced me.

“I understand that’s you in some kind of disguise, is it not?”

“An outfit, James. Not a disguise. A vintage dress designed by the man being honored at the Met gala.”

“You’ve seen the photograph already, haven’t you?” he asked.

“Last night, yes,” I said. “Commissioner Scully sent me a set of the shots that were downloaded from the television feed.”

“That wasn’t coincidence, either,” he said. “More like convenience, wasn’t it?”

“Scully’s not a ‘gotcha’ kind of guy, James. The video was already public record,” I said. “He had a pretty good idea that the image was familiar to me.”

“So you’re telling me between Monday night of the murder and last evening, you’d already seen this image?” Prescott asked, pushing the full-color image closer to me. “Do me the favor of looking at the picture, Alexandra, and not at my forehead.”

I held up the photograph. “I lived that moment, James. I was there, can’t you tell?”

“Fetching, weren’t you?” he said, with arrogant sneer. “And that’s Anna Wintour?”

“Sure thing.”

“And obviously—now that you’ve just refreshed my recollection of what you claim to have told Detective Stern—you know the man seated next to her, too.”

I ignored his use of the word “claim.”

“I don’t know him, James,” I said. “I’d met him once before Monday night.”

“George Kwan.”

“Exactly.”

“And you stopped to talk to him,” Prescott said.

“It certainly looks like I did,” I said.

“What did you say?” The US attorney asked.

“To Kwan? Nothing at all.”

“This is a photograph, Alexandra. It doesn’t lie.”

I had stayed up most of the night, since leaving Patroon, struggling to recall what had actually happened in this moment, captured on film.

“It’s the money shot in this case,” Prescott said. “It’s what propelled Paul Battaglia out of his lair to come at you.”

“Then he was a fool to put himself at risk over something that never happened.”

“Something else, perhaps, that you neglected to tell Jaxon Stern?”

I stood up and put the photograph between us on James Prescott’s desk.

“Do you know how I described to Vickee Eaton where Ms. Wintour was sitting?” I asked. “I told her it was on the fifty-yard line. Best seat in the house, front row and right in the middle of the runway.”

“Obviously,” he said.

“Where was the photographer who shot the roll of tape standing, do you think, from looking at this shot?”

“I’d have to call it the end zone,” Prescott said, “using your lingo. Right between the goalposts.”

“Fair to say he was at an angle from the prime seats, right? You get Wintour and Kwan in profile, and you get me almost face-forward into the camera, because I was leaning over, looking that way, between the uprights,” I said. “That’s how Battaglia made me—that’s the moment he recognized my face.”

“So now tell me what it is you muttered to Kwan,” Prescott said, not giving me an inch.

“You think I muttered? Or do you think I asked him what Battaglia was doing at his house the other day?” I said. “Really, what are the bets, James? Who’s got the over-under that I was luring Paul Battaglia out to a meet by whispering in George Kwan’s ear?”

Prescott just stared.

“Not to prove that Mike Chapman is ten times the investigator Jaxon Stern pretends to be,” I said, “but Mike had the idea to take me down to One PP this morning, on our way here.”

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