Linda Fairstein - The DeadHouse

"You ran out of my place like a bat out of hell. Said you were going to Jake's. I waited five minutes and called him to make sure you got there." The men were listening to our conversation with interest, forgetting they had other things to do. "When he told me you'd had a fight and it had something to do with a missing woman, I just called over here, figuring that you had come to me to get information from the police. Next place you'd probably go was the precinct. I phoned and got Walter, who told me he had a hallucinating homeless woman, who looked like a vaguely familiar waterlogged prosecutor, dragging in a few minutes back with her tail between her legs. Told me what happened to you. Never dreamed you'd march in here as an aided case instead of an amateur dick."

"I'm not an aided case. I don't need an ambulance." I pulled my hands back and lowered them to my lap.

"Listen, Coop, you got less than forty-eight hours to turn your karma around before the New Year starts. Understand?"

Lieutenant Grier had walked away and returned from his own desk with a bottle of Glenfiddich. He chased the uniformed cop back downstairs, poured us each a shot into drinking glasses, and apologized to the three detectives as he served them in paper cups. "Happy New Year, everybody."

I drank the warm scotch and the rich single-malt stung as it went down my throat.

"Want to tell us about the call Jake got?" Mike asked.

I wasn't sure everyone in the room needed to hear the conversation.

"She gets real moody whenever she gets jealous, Loo," Chapman said, taking off his jacket and sitting on the edge of the desk. "Threw a tantrum 'cause she caught me with another broad. There probably isn't any missing woman at all. Just Coop trying to get my attention back."

"'Missing' isn't the operative word, Lieutenant. 'Murdered' is a bit more accurate." Maybe I had overreacted when I saw that Mike had been in bed with a woman. I had run down the stairs without waiting for an introduction or an explanation, and now I was trying to convince myself that it was not jealousy that had sent me reeling back out to the treacherously icy street.

"See the extremes she goes to when the green monster rears its ugly head? The lights were out, the candles were lit, my clothes were tidily stacked on a chair, and for once in a blue moon I'm in bed with a-"

"We ain't all that interested in your wishful thinking, Chapman. Guido, Walter-why don't you go out and finish up what you need to do with the paperwork on Ms. Cooper's mugging." The two old-timers reluctantly picked up their cups and reports and shuffled off to the larger squad room. "Alex, you want to tell us what set off this whole thing?" Grier asked, closing the door behind him.

I explained to Lieutenant Grier who Jake Tyler was and why he had a professional obligation to protect his sources.

"Yeah, but not even to tell you! It don't make sense to me."

"Believe me, Loo. I understand the principle, but it doesn't make any sense to me, either. There's no question that the information Jake got from the legal assistant who called him is that their client had killed his wife-"

"In Manhattan?"

"I'm not sure, Mike."

"Where, then?"

"Maybe Suffolk County. Jake said something about a summer-house on Long Island."

The lieutenant had less patience than I had expected. "Give me a place to start, Alex. There's five counties in the city and fifty-seven more in the rest of the state. You expect me to call every single one of them?"

He took a slug of his neat scotch and paced the floor. "What else do you know about these people? How old are they? How many children are we talking about? What does she do for-"

"I told you everything I know, Loo, and I realize it isn't much to go on. I just thought if we checked with a few of the precincts, maybe someone would have reported that a colleague hadn't shown up for work, or a sister didn't make it to a family birthday party, or that the baby-sitter was alarmed 'cause the kids were gone."

He looked at his watch as Mike walked behind me and stood at my back, rubbing my neck and shoulders. "More likely people would think the whole family's away for the weekend. I'll have the guys call around, but I wouldn't expect to hear nothing until tomorrow."

"Mind if we stay here awhile and use your phones?" Mike asked.

"Suit yourself. Seems like a shot in the dark to me." He walked out of the room.

"That's what you want to do, isn't it?"

I leaned forward, pushing the bottle out of my way, and rested my head on the desktop. "I just can't bear the thought that a woman's body is somewhere out there, exposed to this storm, while some member of my esteemed profession-for the right price-is probably arranging for the killer to get out of the jurisdiction."

"They can't do that, can they?"

"Not supposed to. But while the lawyer gets all his ducks in a row, hoping to bargain for a deal before the surrender, who knows where a financier with international connections will wind up?"

Mike refreshed his drink and sat opposite me, trying to make eye contact. "You and Jake going to be all right?"

I was silent.

"He hasn't got a choice in this, does he, Coop? He did what he had to do. You guys are good together."

"Looks like I'm the one who has a choice to make. It never occurred to me that he'd have to cover criminal cases until this happened. I'm not about to sit on the floor of the closet with the door closed and my hands over my ears when the phone rings and somebody confesses to homicide in the middle of the night."

"You want to come back up to my-?"

"I called David Mitchell as soon as I got here. He and Renee were still awake. David promised to take a spare key down to the doorman. I've slept on their couch dozens of times." Mike knew my neighbor, a prominent psychiatrist who had become a close friend over the years. He and his fiancee lived down the hall from me, and I had often spent the night, sharing the sofa with their dog, Prozac. "A wet nose snuggled up against my neck might be just what I need."

Chapman was dialing the phone as I spoke. "Mike Chapman, Manhattan North Homicide here. Who's this?" He paused to listen. "You got any missing persons reports in the last forty-eight hours? Yeah, I'll hold." A minute passed. "Fifteen-year-old runaway. Left home Thursday after a three-week correspondence with some guy she met on the Internet-" I shook my head in the negative.

"-and a female black, topless dancer from a joint on Pine Street, last seen getting into a car with a Japanese businessman two nights ago. DWA oughtta be a crime, Sarge. Thanks."

Driving While Asian was one of Chapman's favorite legislative proposals for an amendment to the Penal Law. He could never resist running his mouth at a politically incorrect target.

"Nothing unusual in the First, blondie. You keep thinking about how to put your love life back on track and I'll-" "I'm not thinking. I don't want to think anymore." "I'm on the case." He dialed again, working from the list of precinct numbers in the department telephone book in the top drawer of the desk. From the lower end of Manhattan moving north, Mike called squad after squad. At some, the phone rang interminably and he never got a response. At most, the answers were predictable. The occasional missing adolescent, the husband not back from a weekend jaunt with his pals, the family of a mentally handicapped adult who had wandered away from a vocational training program and hadn't been seen since Friday.

I walked out among the maze of old wooden desks and found the rest room. By the time I came back, Mike was waiting for a detective to check the blotter in the Twenty-fourth Precinct, on the Upper West Side. I lifted my empty purse from the metal tray of the out box and looked in the zippered compartment, knowing the cash was gone.