Marshall Fox wasn’t guilty, either. It was this man. Rosemary Fox’s lover. It was Rosemary herself.

“Oh my God.”

Megan’s hands shook as she pulled out her phone and punched in a number. It answered after two rings.

“Malone.”

Megan almost hung up. There was the right way to do this. By the book. Megan knew better. This was hardly the time to go cowboy.

Screw it.

“Fritz, it’s Megan Lamb. Listen. I’ve got a question for you. I don’t have much time here.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

A yellow snowplow was moving north along York, the diagonal snow flashing in the truck’s amber beam. The blade rutted roughly along the pavement with an angry animal sound. Seeing the cascade of salt stones coming her way, Megan turned her back to the street and huddled in to the phone.

“Any chance I can convince you to break the law a little?”

39

“THIS IS MRS. FOX,” Margo snapped into the phone. “Who is this?”

“This is Luis, Mrs. Fox. Are you okay?”

Margo threw me a wink. “Luis, listen to me. The police are going to be coming by sometime in the next hour. I want you to let them into the apartment, do you understand?”

“Are you all right, Mrs. Fox? Is-”

“Luis. Just do what I ask. Please.”

“Well, yes, ma’am. But I-”

“Thank you, Luis.” Margo hung up the phone. “So, do I make a grade-A bitch or what?”

I stepped over to the couch, knotting my tie. “Amazing.” Margo adjusted it for me. I shrugged into my coat and slid my thumb along the brim of my hat. “Well?”

“Are you honestly going with the fedora, too? This isn’t 1930.”

“It’s snowing. People wear hats in the snow.”

“Good thing you’re prettier than Humphrey Bogart. That’s all I think of when I see a fedora. Sorry, but I think it’s overkill.”

“Do I look cop enough for you?”

“A uniform would clinch it.”

“A uniform would clinch me jail time.”

She shrugged. “This’ll do fine.”

I TOOK A CAB across the park. The cabbie had his opinions about the snow, but I tuned them out, and by the time we were passing the Boathouse, he’d stopped sharing them with me. I had other matters to mull.

Megan Lamb had laid out her case quickly but succinctly. She’d emphasized that it was only a theory, but the pitch of her argument betrayed the conservative note. What if Rosemary Fox already had a lover of her own at the time her estranged husband was shagging everyone who came down the pike? What if the two of them had cooked up a scheme that not only generated some pretty audacious revenge on Rosemary’s part-the elimination of two of Fox’s lovers-but also succeeded in focusing the police investigation on Fox himself?

Megan hadn’t had time to embellish her theory or to poke and prod it to see where all the weak spots were. But she’d sounded convinced.

“Robin Burrell. There’s lover number three. I don’t know where Riddick fits in. Maybe he was becoming suspicious of Rosemary. Or maybe he was coming on to her and she set her goon on him. The point is, I need to find out the identity of Rosemary’s lover. This guy did a real number on her this morning, and for whatever reason, she’s willing to give him a pass. As my mother used to say, that don’t stink good.”

The cab came out of the park, and I directed the driver to drop me a block from Rosemary’s building. No need to let the doorman see “Captain Nicholas Finn” of the NYPD getting out of a taxicab instead of a department vehicle. Nick Finn had been a friend of mine in the days when I was attending John Jay College with an eye toward following my old man’s footsteps into the police force. Nick’s death had coincided with my abandoning those plans, and not a few people think it’s somewhat perverse that he lives on in a drawer full of falsified documents that I keep in my desk at the office.

The doorman barely glanced at my shiny badge when I presented it to him.

“I wanted to call the police when I see Mrs. Fox like that. But I don’t dare. She said she is fine, but she looks like she was hit by a bus. I got her a taxi, like she asks, but she-”

I interrupted him. “Luis, I need you to let me into Mrs. Fox’s apartment. If you’d like to call the station and speak with her first-”

The man shook his head rapidly. “No, no. It’s okay. I spoke with her already. I’ll let you in.”

Nicholas Finn slipped his badge into the pocket of his trench coat. Heeding Margo’s advice, he’d passed on the fedora.

I SAW THE BLOODSTAINS on the carpet the moment I entered the bedroom. A greenish robe was bunched nearby. I crossed to the robe and knelt down to examine it. In front of me was an accordion wall made completely of mirrors. A clothes closet. Its reflection included me and the door to the bathroom, which was open behind me. As I picked up the robe, there was a shifting of the light, and in the reflection I saw a figure-a man-stepping into the bathroom doorway. The reflection froze and so did I, but only for a split second.

“Who the-?”

He didn’t finish his own question but instead took two speedy steps into the room and shoved me with all his strength just as I was twisting around to face him. I tumbled up against the mirrored wall. The man was out the bedroom door by the time I had scrambled to my feet. As I raced into the front room, he was snatching a down jacket off the couch. He turned. He charged me. I’d been reaching for my gun but yanked my hand free to ward off the attack. The guy barreled into me and sent me reeling backward. I slammed into a small table, toppling a brass lamp and an ashtray. The man veered toward the front door. I grabbed the table and whipped it sideways at him. It hit him behind the knees, and he stumbled to the floor.

“Fuck!”

I grabbed hold of the lamp as if it were a baseball bat and gave it a sharp tug. The plug came out of the wall, the wire arcing in the air like an animal’s tail. As the man started to his feet, I charged forward and took my swing, aiming for the fences. Unfortunately, he saw the swing coming and lurched to the side so that the lamp took him on the shoulders and not the head. He wheeled around, and his fist caught me just below my ear. There was muscle behind the hit. As he came at me for another blow, I brought the lamp up and smacked it against his ear, then released it and got off a double set of hard jabs. I felt his nose collapse under the second one. As he staggered backward, I came after him, landing a pair of punches to his throat. He made a hollow swing that I easily avoided, and before he could get off another, I raised my foot as high as I could and slammed it down on his left knee. He howled. I whipped my gun from my holster, and as the man collapsed to the floor, I staggered backward, safely out of his reach.

“Stay down!”

My arms were aching, and the last thing they wanted to do was be held straight out. But I wanted him to see the gun, and I wanted him to see that it was aimed right at his bloody face. “Stay down,” I said again as he made a halfhearted move to get up. He stopped. Blood from his damaged nose fell to the tiled floor.

“I can’t…breathe,” he said in a choked voice, then began coughing.

“You can breathe.” I lowered my arms halfway, still keeping my aim. “Lie down on the floor.”

He didn’t move, so I stepped over and swept my leg under one of his arms, taking out his support. He landed on his chin and then complied, lying out flat on the ground. I moved around behind him and pressed the barrel of the gun against the back of his head. “Give me your hands.”

He obeyed, bringing around his large paws to rest at his lower back. Using the cord from the table lamp, I bound his wrists, yanking the knots as tight as I could. I requisitioned a second lamp and used its cord to secure his ankles. It was crude but sufficient. I dragged an upholstered chair over and upended it on top of him, not unlike a turtle shell. Then I went into the kitchen and splashed my face with water, gulping several mouthfuls in the process. I ran a glassful of water and fetched a tea towel from a magnetic hook on the refrigerator door and went back into the front room. The man hadn’t budged. I wet a corner of the tea towel and knelt down and dabbed at the blood on the man’s nose. He stared at me sullenly, saying nothing. He was wheezing a bit-his mouth was dropped open like a gulping fish-but he was breathing.