"Write, schmite. Knock yourself out, Ms. Cooper. I'll give you two days. We'll be back here Wednesday morning. Call my clerk if there's any law on your side. Bring the jury in, Mac."

The court officer opened the door and the jurors straggled in. From the way most of them glanced at me, I knew they had heard the news about Paige. I couldn't fault them, despite the court's instructions. Several were holding folded newspapers. One of the tabloid headlines was written in bold-faced type above a photograph of the earnest young woman from the Dibingham Partners annual report:WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION-SLAIN.

The judge apologized to the panel for the inconvenience, reminded them of the now ridiculous admonition not to read press accounts involving the case and its witnesses, and excused them until Wednesday morning. I looked straight ahead to avoid making eye contact with any of them as they filed out of the room.

Mike Chapman was sitting in my chair, feet up on my desk, gnawing on a bagel, when I dragged back downstairs to my office.

"Good morning, sunshine. You look like you're in need of a turn in your luck. Ah, the wonders of the automated fingerprint identification system," he said.

"Fingerprints? Where?"

"Queenie's apartment. The lifts we got off the plastic toilet seat. This one'll please you."

"Just give me his name. I'm too whipped to guess."

"Little Miss Sweet Sixteen. Your snitch Kevin Bessemer's child bride, carrying her old mink coat."

"What?"

"Tiffany Gatts herself was inside Queenie Ransome's apartment."

18

"In case you were searching for the lowest common denominator between the two women who were killed-Queenie Ransome and Paige Vallis-looks like the computer found it for you. And I do mean the lowest," Mike said. "Killing that old lady for a long-dead rodent? Kevin Bessemer and Tiffany Gatts."

I remembered the initials on the lining of Queenie's coat: R du R. "Why didn't it cross my mind that the mink could have been hers? R as in Ransome."

" Ras in Robelon," Mike answered me. "Her initials still don't fit the monogram. Why would you think someone living on social security in a Harlem tenement was likely to be the owner of a Parisian-made fur coat, I don't know. We need to talk to that kid."

"Did you check with Corrections? Is Tiffany Gatts still in jail?"

"Yep."

"Who's got her case?"

"Nedim. Will Nedim. Trial Bureau Thirty."

"Call him for me. Tell him to get the girl's lawyer over here as soon as possible. We need to put in an order to produce Tiffany this afternoon, if he can do it that fast. Let's see whether she rolls over and gives us Kevin Bessemer when we tell her she's a suspect in a murder case," I said.

"Usually I'm not so dense. I get lost in the forest, I can follow the trail of bread crumbs to get me out of the woods," Mike said. "Tripping's in Rikers for raping Paige Vallis and beating his own son. Kevin Bessemer's his cellmate. Bessemer waits until the eve of trial and decides to be a snitch against Tripping. On his way to see you, Bessemer stops for some nooky with Gatts, and they're both gone with the wind. Ransome is found dead. Gatts is locked up. Paige Vallis testifies. The Tripping kid disappears. Vallis is killed. But for the life of me I can't think of anything to connect Queenie Ransome to the Vallis girl. You got any bread crumbs to put on my path?"

"Sure. That's why we're going to lean on the weakest link. Get me Gatts. Kevin Bessemer is the only person linked to both cases."

By two o'clock, Mike Chapman, Will Nedim, and I were sitting in my conference room with Helena Lisi, counsel for Tiffany Gatts. I had laid out the new evidence that placed Gatts in the apartment of McQueen Ransome. Lisi had given permission for her client to be picked up from the Women's House of Detention and brought to my office so the two of them could talk about what we had discovered.

When detectives arrived with the handcuffed Gatts, we stepped out of the room so Lisi and the teenager could confer privately.

"Lisi's your vintage, no? Same age?"

She had started at the Legal Aid Society, defending indigent prisoners, shortly before I joined Battaglia's staff more than a decade ago. "Yeah. She and her husband opened their own firm a few years back. Remember him? Jimmy Lisi? They handle mostly low-level crimes, here and the Bronx."

"Hookers and humps?"

"Yeah. Not exactly who you'd hire if Battaglia had you in his sights in a major investigation. Fine for a few nickel bags of dope and a stolen fur that should have been in mothballs," I said.

"Give me a pair of sharp scissors and some elocution lessons, I could make Helena Lisi a contender."

Lisi was short, squat, and pushing forty. She had drab brown hair that hung in straggly clumps below her buttocks, pinned in place from the front by a black velvet headband. Her accent called up some remote part of Brooklyn, and was aggravated by a dreadful, constant whine that cut through me like a saw.

"I'll take her just the way she is," I said. "If she had any more serious clientele than she's got, and she couldn't plead them out before trial like she does ninety-nine percent of the time, I couldn't make it through from opening to summation. The voice just wears me down."

"You think Helena is pelican division?" Mike asked. He'd had a running gag for years, creating something he called the CPD-Chapman's Perpetrators' Dictionary-filled with street lingo for criminal justice situations. Lawyers appointed by the court were selected from a panel monitored by the Appellate Division of New York's Supreme Court, and the word "appellate" had become universally bastardized by defendants, who referred to it as the "pelican division."

"An arraignment and criminal-court plea with Helena Lisi would probably fit fine in Mrs. Gatts's budget. Check with Nedim. I'd guess the mother paid for a private lawyer for her little girl."

We were interrupted by Laura, my secretary, who told me that the judge's clerk wanted to speak with me. I picked up the phone on a nearby desk and punched the extension. "Hello? This is Alex Cooper."

"Judge Moffett asked me to give you a call. Dulles Tripping's foster mother just phoned. The boy is back at home, safe and sound."

"What a relief," I said, resting my forehead in my hand. "Thank God that's been resolved successfully. Any idea where he's been?"

"Upstate with friends is all we've been told. Moffett's going to give you a few more days. He's putting the case over until next Monday-a week from today. He wants the boy to settle in at home, and then you can arrange your interview for the end of this week, when he's had a chance to calm down."

"Thanks so much. Has the judge told Peter Robelon yet that he's going to allow me to interview Dulles? And the boy's lawyers?"

"Hey, Alex. Between the two of us-are we off the record?"

"Sure."

"Well, don't get your hopes up. I overheard him talking to Robelon about the kid."

"When?"

"Just now. Peter Robelon called to make sure that Mrs. Wykoff got through to Moffett with the news. I heard him say that the mistrial was a lock. He's giving you the extra time to humor you, and to get some kind of transition set up for Dulles, so that he's not returned to his father without controls and some kind of monitoring in place. But don't knock yourself out on your research, Alex, 'cause there's not a prayer in hell that Moffett is letting you go forward with your case."

"Thanks for the heads-up," I said. Good news, bad news.

Helena Lisi stood in the doorway. "May I come in?"

Chapman stood and pulled up another chair. "Take a number."

"I don't need to sit, Alex. I've advised Tiffany not to cooperate with you." Lisi's voice scratched like fingernails on a chalkboard.