Linda Fairstein - Cold Hit

I pushed my chair back and walked to the door. “I’ll be in Battaglia’s office. When you and the Lipton Tea lady finish your morning tête-à-tête, feel free to come in, by yourself, to get a bulletin on the case. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you to the important matter of how many of yesterday’s token suckers failed to show up in AP 17.”

I doubled back past my office, across the main corridor, and used my magnetized identification badge to buzz myself into the executive wing. Secretaries to the administrative assistant, the first assistant, and the chief assistant were setting up their desks for the day and greeted me with interest and concern.

Rose Malone was already at her word processor when I approached her desk. She was the last to leave the building most nights-sometimes with Paul Battaglia, but never before him. And she was always the first one in place the next day.

She didn’t even turn her head to speak to me. “He’s not here yet, Alex. There’s a community board breakfast meeting in East Harlem.”

“Do you expect him before ten?”

“No. He’s going from that one directly to the Midtown Court. There’s going to be a press release about the new computer system that will track bench warrants in all the borough courthouses and police precincts.”

Great. A new technology that will make Ellen Gunsher completely obsolete. “Will he call in from the car?”

“I expect so. Shall I transfer him over to you?”

“Please. Especially if you get him within the hour, okay?”

“Anything wrong?”

“Was Pat McKinney alone with him for any period of time yesterday?”

Rose stopped typing and looked back at Battaglia’s date book, as though trying to find a way to remind herself of the day’s meetings.

“I know he called and asked if the boss would see him. They may have spoken for a minute or two, but Paul was tied up most of the afternoon with the accountants who’ve been working on that welfare fraud case. It couldn’t have been much of a conversation.”

I thanked her and walked back to my office. As much as McKinney may have wanted me off the Caxton case, I was still alive. I needed to sit down and go over what the rest of the week might produce for us, knowing that any kind of evidentiary break would help cement my position on the team.

I could hear Chapman serenading Laura as I went back to my office. What had probably started as a cross-examination of what she knew about my relationship with Jacob Tyler had segued into an impromptu version of Paul Simon’s “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.” As I turned the corner he grinned at me and continued singing. “Don’t make a mistake, Jake. Just let yourself go.”

“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” I growled.

“People to talk to, places to go, subpoenas to get. Let’s start with the latter. What happened to your manners? What about ‘Good morning, Mr. Chapman. How are you today? Thank you for bringing me another cup of coffee,’ huh? I’m even going out on a limb for a ‘Don’t you look lovely today, Miss Cooper. Could be you had a good night’s rest at long last.’ ”

“Thanks. But I’ve already been told by Ellen Gunsher that even makeup can’t help me in my current condition. Pat’s trying to knock me off your investigation.”

“What kind of suicide mission is he on?”

“There’s a meeting at ten to assign one of the senior trial counsel to Mercer’s shooting. And since I’m a witness to that, he wants to take me off the whole thing and set one of his pets up to handle it, before Rod Squires returns from vacation.” My back was to the door as I reached across my desk to replace the case papers on top of the folder. “I’m trying to get a call into Battaglia before this morning’s caucus on the subject.”

“Speaking of carcass, what’s up, McKinney?”

Mike warned me that Pat had appeared in the doorway, and I spun around.

“Now I’d like to talk to you alone, Alex. Why don’t you wait down the hall, Mike?”

“Battaglia gave me strict orders that she’s to have police protection around the clock, Pat. No can do.” Mike sat behind the desk in my chair and lifted his feet up on my desktop, one at a time, making the statement that he was not about to move. “We got some breaking developments on Caxton you might want to know about.”

“Take a walk, Chapman. C’mon.”

Mike checked with me before he slowly removed his legs, then stood up and started for the exit. “Be sure to give my best to your wife and kids, Pat.”

The intercom buzzed and I could hear Laura calling my name.

“Yes?”

“There’s a gentleman downstairs who wants to talk to you. His name is Frank Wrenley. Can he come up?”

I exchanged glances with Chapman, who had stopped in the doorway, and he nodded at me in response. “Keep him down there for ten minutes while I make a few calls. Maybe he can clear up some of this business about his relationship with Marina Sette. I’d like to find out exactly where she is right now.”

I told Laura to have security hold him there until Mike could go to the lobby to escort him in. “This isn’t a very good time to talk, Pat. Might as well go ahead with your ten o’clock meeting. I can’t make it anyway.”

“I just woke up the housekeeper in Santa Fe. She doesn’t expect Ms. Sette back there for another week. Laid on a heavy Spanish accent, says I must have misunderstood her when I called on Sunday. I’m telling you, Alex, I swear that woman told me Sette had just flown back home the other day. This is Mercer’s life, for chrissakes. It’s not anything I would have made a mistake about. Today when I press her about where I can get in touch with Sette, all I get is that the housekeeper doesn’t know. ‘ La Señora ’ is traveling.” Mike was fuming.

“All right, relax. Let’s just make a plan.”

“You know why I like it better when I’m working on something where everybody’s poor? ’Cause the friggin’ perps can’t go too far. One guy’s maybe got a mother in Queens, next one chills out at his brother’s place in the Bronx, another sleeps on the rooftop. None of this Airborne Express crap that the rich can pull. That mope I locked up for the triple homicide in the Polo Grounds projects two weeks ago? Gave me more trouble than any of ’em. His sister told me he lived in a mobile home. In New York City? No way-we don’t have ’ em here. Took me days to figure out she meant the A train. He just moved his plastic bag of worldly goods into the subway and rode from one end of the system to the other and then back, night after night. It should happen to these people. What if it actually was Marina Sette who left the message for you and Mercer to meet her?”

“Then she either has something to do with the killings or she’s on the run because she’s truly terrified of something or someone.”

“When are you gonna get results on all the subpoenas for telephone records?” His impatience was palpable.

“I call every day, and every day they tell me that the volume is tremendous and I’ll have what I need as soon as possible. The only ones back were in yesterday’s mail. Omar Sheffield’s phone calls made while he was in jail. I had Maxine and one of the other paralegals go through them to check for calls to Denise Caxton. Not a one.”

“How can that be?”

“I checked with the warden. You’ll love this one. There’s a foolproof way for inmates to place untraceable calls now. They buy those prepaid telephone cards and then use the cards to make the calls from prison pay phones. All you’re left with is a record of a call to the company that issued the card, but no link at all to the number actually dialed. Max says Omar’s phone-privilege time slots-you know, the half hour each day he had access to the booth-show lots of activity in the period that would fit with the dates after Deni started to get letters from him, but all the outgoing ones he made just reflect the number of the calling card company in Brooklyn.”