"You think Bessemer knows anything about Paige Vallis?" Squeeks asked.

"Only what Tripping might have told him. No sign that he ever had any contact with my witness. But he's on the loose and I have no idea what his agenda is."

Detectives had come and gone all through the hours between midnight and two, as we talked about Paige Vallis and these other characters. It had been quiet for quite a while, and the ringing phone on the front desk jarred all of us.

Mike walked over to answer it. "First PDU," he said, expecting the call to be for an officer in the First Precinct detective unit. "Yeah, Mr. B. She's still here. We got her in the hot seat." He listened to a message then hung up the phone to relay it to me.

"That was Battaglia. Got through to Langley and they called him back with the information you wanted," Mike said to me. "Harry Strait? He's ex-CIA. No longer with the Agency. Here's the contact guy who'll give you his background facts."

"He must get a pension check or some kind of retirement benefit. They still have to have some way to find him," I said, taking the paper from Mike's hand.

"Hard to do, blondie. Even for a crackerjack operation like the CIA. Harry Strait died almost twenty years ago."

17

I crawled into bed next to Jake at about four o'clock in the morning. He didn't move when I slipped in beside him, and I couldn't tell whether he was feigning sleep in order not to engage me in a self-pitying dialogue about my victim's death. I ran my finger down the length of his spine and kissed the small of his back, but got no response.

When I opened my eyes at seven, the other half of the bed was empty. I picked Jake's shirt up from the back of the chair, where he had draped it when he'd undressed last night, and put it on.

I found him in the den with a cup of coffee, reading the first section of the Sunday Times. I stood in the doorway, waiting for him to look up from the paper. "Good morning," I said. "Sorry about last night."

"Not your fault."

"How was dinner?"

"I wasn't in the mood to go with them. I just came back here when the show ended. Did you get anything to eat?"

"My stomach was too roiled up," I said. "I'm going to pour myself a cup of coffee. Want some more?"

"No, thanks. I'm fine."

I walked into the kitchen and filled a mug. I was starving, and put an English muffin in the toaster oven. While it was cooking, I went back into the den. Now he was fixed on the Style section. "Those weddings must be riveting."

"Some sweet stories, actually," Jake said.

"The bride majored in classics at Columbia and is writing her doctoral thesis on sexual mores in ancient Rome. The groom is getting an on-line degree from the University of Paducah. They both like beagles, hang gliding, and pepperoni pizza," I said, mocking what had become of the marriage announcements in the Old Gray Lady. "The bride, who is Catholic, and the groom, who is Jewish, were married on the beach in Southampton by a Buddhist priest. More than I need to know."

"I'm just trying to see what obstacles some of these couples overcome on their way to the altar. Maybe it'll inspire me."

"I didn't know you were short on inspiration."

Jake put the paper down and looked at me. "Most of the time I'm not, Alex. But I'm at a loss right now. I know how devastated you were last night, and I understand why you had to go downtown with Chapman. Now what am I supposed to do to pick up the pieces? I get tired of asking you about a case and being told you don't want to talk about it. Or worse than that, having your boss tell you not to discuss it with me because I'm a reporter. I'm damned if I don't and I'm damned if I do."

I stood up to go back to the kitchen. "I've been very open with you about the Tripping case. Friday night I told you everything that had happened in court. I don't want to exclude you from anything that's important to me."

I called back to him over my shoulder, "You ready to tell me who Deep Throat is?"

Jake followed me into the kitchen. "What are you talking about?"

"You know you're not about to reveal any of your sources on a big story. Obviously there are times I'm not going to be free to tell you everything I know."

"That's not what I mean, Alex. I want what you keep bottled up inside. I want what you're thinking and feeling when this stuff is chewing your guts apart and keeping you up at night like you had toothpicks stuck in your eyelids."

The muffin had burned to a crisp. I tossed it in the garbage and opened the package for another one. Jake took it from my hand and started the process over.

"There was a call last night. Right about midnight. Peter Robelon."

"Shit," I said, sitting at the dining room table. The body wasn't even cold yet and the vultures were beginning to pick at it. "Did he know about Paige?"

"He said he heard a late news story on one of the local stations. They didn't give her name, but he recognized the address and Peter said he knew it was a loft building with only a few residential tenants."

"Of course he knew exactly what the setup was. He'd hired a private investigator to snoop around the neighbors looking for dirt on Vallis. Don't tell me he was unctuous enough to be calling with his condolences?"

"He sounded perfectly appropriate. Thought it was tragic, wanted to make sure you knew about it-that kind of thing."

"You make it sound like a pleasant conversation."

"It was, actually. I guess he knew we're a couple. Said he recognized my voice from the tube. We talked for a couple of minutes. Did the six-degrees-of-separation thing. Friends of mine who are friends of his."

I didn't say what I was thinking.

"Whoops, did I screw up again? You've got that Cooper pout on your face. Peter Robelon isn't your enemy, even if his client is guilty."

"I know he's not my enemy. You want to chat with him, do it from your office. I don't trust the guy for a minute. You shouldn't either."

"So I'll cancel my lunch date with him."

"Keep it. Fine. Don't let me interfere with your endless efforts at intelligence gathering. When he gets indicted by one of my colleagues, Jake, I sure as hell don't want fifteen-minute phone calls showing up on the records from my place to his and vice versa."

"What do you mean, indicted?" he called after me as I headed into the bathroom to shower and dress.

"He's a sleaze," I said, closing the door behind me.

When I got back to the kitchen twenty minutes later, Jake had eaten the muffin and returned to the den. I fixed myself a bowl of cereal instead, and ate it alone at the table.

"What are you going to do today?" I asked when I finished eating.

"Read the paper. Go to the gym. Find someone who wants to have brunch at a charming sidewalk café like Swifty's and enjoy this beautiful day. Any takers?"

"If you can hold off brunch until two and let me go down to the precinct for a few hours to see what they've got, I promise to come back in a better mood."

"I don't care if your disposition is better or worse, as long as you explain it to me. Help me understand it."

"And you'll make an early-morning shuttle to D.C. tomorrow?" I asked.

"No. I'll go back on the six tonight. There's a White House briefing at nine and I can't take the chance of missing it."

It was a subtle way of pressuring me. No chance for a bedtime reconciliation, so I had better get back uptown in time for brunch. I was disappointed, but also relieved. It was easier to have Jake out of town while all this mayhem was swirling around me. That, in itself, told me something about our relationship that I had been slow to acknowledge.

Nothing had developed at the First Precinct in the few hours since I left the squad room. Squeeks and his partner had slept on cots in the locker room and were already back at the crime scene, scouring for clues and tips.