"Well, the woman I'm talking about is. DA's office in another borough. Can you imagine what a role model she must be?"

"Don't tell me-"

Battaglia chomped on the cigar and stood up. "Yeah, your friend Olivia. Do me a favor, Alex; if you decide to go public with your sex life, no illustrations, please. Check the October issue of that sex-and-the-single-girl's magazine. The DA's wife saw it in the dentist's office."

"Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Battaglia. Alex, Will Nedim says it's pretty important."

"Hold on a minute, Paul. This might be of interest. The Nedim kid is handling the female defendant who was caught with McQueen Ransome's mink coat. We've been trying to flip her."

I picked up Nedim's call. "Will? I've got the boss here with me. Any developments?"

"We may have a change of heart on Tiffany Gatts."

"Way to go. Helena Lisi call you?" I said, referring to Tiffany's lawyer.

"Nope. Tiffany herself just called. Left a message that she wants to talk to me after all."

"You have a plan?"

"I thought I'd have her produced in my office tomorrow."

"With the lawyer, of course."

"Certainly. I thought you might want to be there."

"No way," I said. "You'll never get anything out of her in my presence. I'm like a lightning rod for Tiffany Gatts. If she's getting along with you, let's leave it at that."

I cut Nedim short, realizing that I was holding up Battaglia. "Nothing to report yet, Paul. This girl could give us a big break on Kevin Bessemer, if we're lucky."

He waved his cigar in the air as he left, a sign that I was to carry on with whatever I had been doing before he came in the room. I sorted out the usual problems of the day and ordered in lunch for Mercer and me.

"Bernard Stark will see us at four o'clock," he reported to me. "He's the patriarch of the firm. Happy to help. Mike's going to meet us in their offices on West Fifty-seventh Street. That's the good news."

I smiled at him. "What's the bad?"

"The phone company in Massachusetts confirms that a call came in to Spike Logan's house on the Vineyard the afternoon before he drove into the city."

"You think he wasn't as surprised about Queenie's death as he told us he was?"

"The records show the caller's address-the deceased's next-door neighbor. I've checked with the squad. The guy had already been interviewed by the time he called Logan, no doubt to give him the sad news. No way that jerk didn't know she was dead."

We were eating our sandwiches at my desk at two-thirty when Laura came in with a sheaf of papers she had pulled out of the fax machine. "I got a call from an administrative assistant at the CIA," she said. "There will be a hard copy of these in the mail, with all the formal signatures and seals, but that's going to take another month. The agent said he was told to comply with Mr. Battaglia's requests as soon as possible."

"Must be nice to have a name so big you can throw your weight around gracefully and get answers the same day," Mercer said. "Maybe these papers will resolve some questions about our odd group of players."

I thumbed through the photocopied documents, knowing that the pile wasn't thick enough to contain anything of value. The answers for the file requests of Victor Vallis, Harry Strait, and McQueen Ransome had exactly the same explanation as the one for the late King Farouk.

As the agency's coordinator of information and privacy, I must advise you that the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of any CIA records responsive to your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of records containing such information would be classified for reasons of national security under Section 1.3 (a)(5)-Foreign Relations-of Executive Order 12368.

Mercer listened to me read him the response before speaking aloud what both of us were thinking. "The King of Egypt was sent into exile almost half a century ago, and he's been dead more than thirty years. What the hell does he have to do with our national security now?"

26

I was as captivated by the sparkling gold and silver coins in the window outside the entrance to the Stark brothers' offices as Holly Golightly had been while staring at the diamonds on show at Tiffany. Each was displayed against a deep blue velvet cushion, a setting that was more like a museum's than a retail operation's.

Mike was the last to arrive, and we announced ourselves to the receptionist in the waiting area. He took a quick inventory of the cases of coins. "Some piggy bank these boys have, huh?"

"You do anything useful today?" Mercer asked.

"Just a tidbit here and there. Spent a bit of time trying to figure out who might have smacked Miss Cooper here upside the shoulder last night."

"You check with the First Precinct to see if they've had other cases?" I asked.

Mike turned to Mercer. "I guess I'm just fortunate she doesn't stop by the apartment in the morning to make sure I put underwear on."

"And they haven't had anything like it?"

"There are a few hot spots downtown. But that area between the entrance to the ferry terminal and the promenade where all the buses stop is kept pretty well patrolled. Too many Wall Street high rollers to complain about bums and hustlers."

"You check on that Correction Department crew she's investigating?"

"We're getting information on all of them in the perp's team. What their work schedules are, and even though you can't make a facial ID, I want photos along with descriptions of their height and weight. Got one other piece of info."

"What's that?" Mercer asked.

"Throw in court officers. Guys in the area with blue uniform pants. Somebody who could have waited for Coop to leave the building, follow her to the church, and be waiting for a chance when she came outside."

"I've got no enemies in that department, I'd be willing to swear," I said, laughing. "My unit's probably responsible for more hours of overtime than any group of prosecutors in the office. And Laura bakes cookies for them every time I'm on trial."

"Well, your friend Etta Gatts? She's got a brother-in-law who's a court officer. Little Tiffany's favorite uncle, the brother of her late father."

"Criminal court?" I asked, racking my brain to think of an officer named Gatts.

"Uh-uh. Supreme Court, civil term. Sixty Centre Street."

"But I never-"

"She told you her people weren't through with you yet. Remember that moment?"

"Yeah, but Tiffany just called Will Nedim today. He thinks she's ready to roll over and give up Kevin Bessemer."

"Well, maybe her mama doesn't know that yet. Think of it, you had to walk directly past the front steps of his courthouse when you walked downtown last night."

"How could he know who I was?"

"Don't be naive, Coop. He could have been in the building with Etta Gatts the first day she came down here, after Tiffany was arrested. He's got the right uniform, the right ID-makes sense she would have called him to ask for help. Anybody could have pointed you out to him then. Might even have been the guy who slashed your tires that first night."

Mercer chimed in. "Motive, opportunity-"

"Pretty soon, the only joint it'll be safe for me to go is P. J. Bernstein's." My corner deli, fifty feet from the entrance to my building, was the best place for peace, quiet, and chicken noodle soup when I didn't want to stir far from home.

"Worst that can happen there is the latkes give you a little agita," Mike said.

"Mr. Stark will see you now," the receptionist said, pressing a button on her desk to open the first locked door leading to the offices. Once the three of us entered the small space, she buzzed again. The metal grating, like the kind in safe deposit vaults, swung open to admit us further, security cameras monitoring our progress.