“We don’t know anything yet,” the district attorney said. “Do we, Alex?”

I didn’t want to lie to the mayor, but I didn’t want to lose my job either.

“Don’t put Alex on the spot, Mr. Mayor,” Rowdy said. “We can have all that from the department. I’ll get a call into DCPI for those facts.”

The NYPD’s deputy commissioner of public information, Guido Lentini, would give the mayor’s aides anything they needed.

“The girl’s Hispanic, isn’t that right, Alex?” Battaglia said, realizing there was no need to stonewall Statler completely. He didn’t want to look like he didn’t have as much info as DCPI.

“She’s from Mexico,” I said. “Her name is Salma Zunega.”

“And there’s really a kid?”

“Yes, a baby girl.”

“This Ms. Zunega, is she here legally?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said.

“Where was Ethan coming from when he had the accident. Spanish Harlem?”

Battaglia laughed. “Don’t let your constituents hear you, Vin. Bad ethnic profiling. She lives across the street from you.”

“From me?”

Like Bloomberg and Koch before him, Statler kept his own apartment, a lavish co-op on Fifth Avenue, rather than live in the mayor’s official residence, Gracie Mansion.

“Well, spitting distance from the mansion. That fancy new condo on East End, just below Eighty-ninth Street.”

“Moses Leighton always thought his kid was going to be the first Jewish president,” Statler said. “Poured his heart, the last fifteen years of his life, and about thirty million dollars into trying to make that happen. For what? For this?”

“Are you looking for facts about Ethan’s case,” Battaglia asked, “or just ways to shove it down his father’s throat? Lots of politicians have had second acts after a sexual indiscretion or two.”

The door opened and Statler’s assistant stuck his head in. “The speaker would like a word with you, sir.”

“Hold her off a minute, okay?” Statler said. He was standing practically nose to nose with Battaglia now. “Anything else I ought to know?”

“Tell me who you want Alex to keep in contact with. You’ll get whatever we get.”

“Very good, Paul. I’ll have my office set up a liaison. In the meantime, Alex,” the mayor said as he put his arm around my shoulder to escort us out of the Governor’s Room, “let me know what you find out about the nine-one-one call this Zunega woman made earlier this afternoon, will you?”

Battaglia snapped his head to look at me. “What call?”

“What did you tell me, Roland?” the mayor said, turning to Rowdy Kitts, whose pipeline to case information was proving far better than mine. “Something about Ethan Leighton threatening to kill his paramour.”

“Today? He threatened her today?” Battaglia said, talking to Statler but looking me in the eye, skewering me as though I’d neglected to tell him another important fact.

“I just got word from the nineteenth squad myself, Mr. Battaglia. Right before you walked in here,” Kitts said. “Wasn’t any way Alex could have known about it. They’re probably trying to reach out for some advice from her right now.”

SIX

“Get everything you can on that nine-one-one call before I see you in the morning,” Battaglia said. He was in the front seat of his official car, and I was trying not to choke on the cigar smoke that wafted back into my face. “Keep Tim in the loop on this. All of it.”

“Will do.” I hated it when Battaglia inserted Spindlis as an intermediary. I was never sure what he filtered out of conversation with the boss when I passed facts along through him.

“We’re going to the West Side for a community council meeting. Can we drop you off?”

“The office is good. I need to pick up some work to take home with me.”

When the driver stopped for the light at the corner of Centre and Worth, a block south of the courthouse, I took the opportunity to say good-night and hop out.

I was going against the flow. Lawyers and secretaries waved at me as they rushed downtown toward the large subway hub at the City Hall station. I envied the few who weren’t carrying briefcases or litigation bags full of work, and would be home in time to enjoy dinner with family or friends.

“Alexandra!” A car door slammed and as I turned into Hogan Place, I saw Lem Howell step out of a black limousine. “Time to call it a day, Ms. Cooper. Let me deliver you home on the way uptown.”

I blew him a kiss, shook my head, and continued walking toward my office.

“I promise I won’t say a word about Karim Griffin.”

“Going home isn’t in my immediate future. Remember those all-nighters at the morgue?” I turned to say good-night to Lem, and he waved me on again.

“Get your case folder. My chariot awaits.”

“The cameramen all gone?”

“Would I be talking to you, young lady, if I had the slimmest of chances, the shortest of moments, the briefest of sound bites to make my case to a tristate viewing audience of millions? Check out the eleven o’clock news. I gave them my best stuff. Be quick.”

It was a combination of the cold evening, my long friendship with Lem, and the thought that he might reveal something to me about Leighton-whose personal problems seemed more intriguing to the higher-ups than the mass disaster in Queens-that moved me to accept his ride up to Thirtieth Street and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

I pushed through the revolving door, went up to my office to grab the last batch of messages Laura had stacked on my desk, and took a new Redweld with colored folders-blue for the autopsy notes, red for witness interviews, green for the first day’s pile of DD5s-the Detective Division reports of the shipwreck that would grow to overwhelm us within a week’s time.

When I got back downstairs, Lem was leaning against the limo, talking into his cell, the collar of his trim black overcoat turned up against the wind. I walked toward him and he opened the door so that I could slide across the backseat.

He got in beside me and before he slammed the door and the driver stepped on the gas, despite the dark tinted windows and the dim lighting in the overhead panel, I could see there was someone sitting across from me.

“I think you two have met before,” Lem said.

Ethan Leighton leaned forward out of the shadowy corner. “Hello, Alex.”

“You taught me well, Lem. But never dirty tricks,” I snapped, trying to keep my temper under control. “Be honorable, you used to say. All you’ve got to trade on is your reputation.”

“I asked him to do this,” Ethan said. “It wasn’t Lem’s idea.”

Leighton’s face was lined, his eyes were bloodshot, and his voice quavered. It was completely inappropriate for us to be meeting in secret, given the circumstances, yet I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for him. I had met him years before when I was cross-designated on a sexual assault investigation that the feds were conducting at a Veterans Administration hospital. He was handsome in a nontraditional way-a prominent, slightly crooked nose, wavy brown hair that was thinning on top, and green eyes set a bit too close, but when he smiled the whole package presented attractively. He wasn’t smiling tonight.

“I don’t care whose idea it was. It’s lousy.”

“Look, I used to be a prosecutor. I understand how you feel.” Tonight, in the dim lighting of the limo, Leighton’s eyes resembled the beady stare of an animal in the sights of a predator. The long, bony fingers of his hands twisted and then untangled from each other, knuckles cracking as he tried to find the words to calm me.

“My least favorite introduction. ‘I used to be…’ ” Every new defense attorney opened with the lame attempt at bonding by claiming former prosecutorial understanding.

“Don’t throw a scene and storm out of the car,” Lem said.

“I’m actually too tired to do that. Too tired and too disappointed in you.”