“Now she’s his victim, too,” I said. “I wonder if she realizes that.”
“What are you going to do?” Battaglia asked me.
“Tell Peaser to have Blanca here at nine. I can play hardball every bit as well as that sleazebag.”
June stepped to the side as Battaglia headed for the door. “Whoever you choose to be the messenger for those updates,” he said, talking to no one in particular, “make sure he knows I like an occasional bit of good news. Best to lead with it if you’ve got it.”
The door slammed behind him. “Now that the DA has brought you back for this, Alex, you damn well better get it right,” Pat McKinney said, “or you might as well book your return trip to France. You and Monsieur Gil-Darsin.”
THIRTEEN
Mike was sitting at our usual corner table, his back to the window that fronted Second Avenue, when Mercer and I entered Primola, one of my favorite Italian restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a little after nine-thirty in the evening. He was working his way through a double dose of vodka.
“Buona sera, Alessandra,” the owner, Giuliano, said as we came in. He seated us and called out to the bartender. “Fenton, a Dewar’s on the rocks for Ms. Cooper, subito!”
“I’ll have what Mike’s drinking,” Mercer said, holding out a chair for me.
Ryan had opted to go home to put his daughter to bed, so Mercer and I drove uptown together. He used the time to fill me in on everything I needed to know about Blanca Robles. That was obviously more important than a conversation about my stalled love life.
We were such regulars at Primola that none of us needed the menu to order. I’d skipped the meal service on the flight and was starving for some comfort food, trying to forget the fact that it was three-thirty in the morning back in Mougins.
“I’m switching over to club soda after this one,” Mike said. “Gotta work tonight. I slept all day.”
“I slept all day, too.” The restaurant was midway between my apartment and Mike’s, but our homes might as well have been in different cities. My father’s trust-not my public service salary-allowed me to live in the high-rent high-rise district in the East 70s, on the twentieth floor of a building with dazzling views and great security.
Mike’s tiny studio apartment was southeast of the restaurant, a walk-up in an old tenement building in the East 60s. He’d dubbed it “the coffin” years ago, for its darkness and small size. There was a brief period when Valerie had tried to decorate it and organize the hundreds of books on military history that were stacked against every wall, but when Mike was overwhelmed with grief at her death, disorder reclaimed its space.
Mercer and Vickee were practically suburban. After Logan’s birth, they moved to a large, handsome house in Douglaston, Queens, a tree-lined neighborhood that was convenient to work but looked nothing like the city streets from which our cases came.
“Hungry?” Mercer asked me as Dominick approached to take our order.
“Starving. I’ll have the linguine with white clam sauce, please.”
“I’ll have that, too,” Mike said. “Along with an order of chicken parmigiana.”
“The chicken’s the size of an entire dinner plate,” I said. “That’s two enormous entrées.”
“I’m paying. What do you care?” The garlic bread Mike was inhaling might actually serve him well if he was called to a murder scene during his tour. If the smell of a body was any stronger than the garlic, I’d be surprised.
“Chicken parm for me, too. Salad on the side,” Mercer said. He reached out and the three of us clinked our glasses together. “To Blanca Robles. Here’s to truth, justice, and the American way.”
“Cheers,” I said. “I’m so sorry she’s in the hands of Byron Peaser.”
“When did this happen?” Mike asked.
“Tonight. It’s a real game-changer.”
“She’s entitled to a civil suit.”
“Of course she is. But they’ve got no problem with a statute of limitations. The criminal case tolls all their deadlines. It complicates things terribly for us.”
“How so?”
“McKinney specifically asked her if she was contemplating a lawsuit and she said this wasn’t about money, that the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. At the very same time, someone in her circle of friends was making calls to the Sleazer. Remember, he had a massive recovery for that Guatemalan cabdriver who was shot reaching for his wallet when cops thought it was a gun.”
“So she changed her mind,” Mike said, slathering more butter on the already toasted bread.
“I can live with that, but it’s always a sticking point for jurors. June says Byron won’t tell her how much he’s going to sue Gil-Darsin for, but it probably won’t be less than fifty million dollars.”
I thought the vodka was going to come out of his nose. “That could be the most expensive blow job in history.”
“And you know what the lawsuit does to the prosecution’s case?” I asked. “If I’m the one who stands before that jury for the closing argument, I need to be able to convince them that Blanca Robles has no motive to lie.”
“You can still do that.”
“The Court of Appeals reversed me in one of the toughest date-rape cases I’ve ever tried. The civil suit was filed the day after the conviction, and the court held that my witness had a reason to lie for every dollar she asked for in her suit.”
“Fifty million reasons to lie,” Mercer said.
“So at the same moment I start working on building my relationship with Blanca, I’ve got to tell her we think she’s made a major mistake and try to separate her from Byron as quickly-and as far-as possible.”
“And that’s before you got Lem Howell triplicating all over you,” Mike said, nibbling on thin strips of fried zucchini and doing a fine imitation of Lem’s voice. “‘Mendacity, veracity, audacity’-he’s just warming up his tongue for this jaunt. So on a lighter note, Coop, how’s Luc?”
“Thanks for asking. I think he’s fine.”
“You think?”
“I mean he’s nervous about opening the restaurant over here. It’s such a huge step and he’s got everything invested in it, financially and emotionally. And there was actually a murder in Mougins this weekend. First one in hundreds of years.”
“Talk about burying the lede,” Mike said. “A murder? You should have made yourself a pain in the ass to the French cops, like you do to me.”
“Not to worry, Detective Chapman. That’s exactly what I did.”
“Who’d the grim reaper find in that little piece of paradise you’re always telling us is so safe?”
“A woman in her twenties. Asphyxiated. Drowned in a huge lotus pond.”
“Did Luc do it?”
I opened my mouth to snap an answer at Mike, but Mercer put his hand over mine.
“I’m just kidding, Coop. The town has a population of six, according to you. Everybody there has to be a suspect.”
“There are no suspects. And I’m Luc’s alibi,” I said with a smile.
“Rock solid. Especially since you skipped out of town a week early. I’d be all over you if it were my investigation. Did you know the vic?”
“No,” I said, hesitating a second. “But Luc did. She used to work for him.”
“Now I know why you responded to Battaglia’s call. Use that ‘get out of jail free’ card while it’s still in your hand and head for home. Leave your lover to swing on his own rope.”
My drink was at my lips, but I put down the glass. I spoke calmly and evenly, with a semblance of the same smile still on my face. “Here’s the thing, Michael Patrick David Chapman. Listen up. I have made a career out of helping women who have been victimized and abused. I like doing it. I like helping them get out of relationships that are unhealthy. I like restoring their self-esteem. If I heard any one of them being talked to-talked at-in the manner in which you constantly hurl-”