“We’ll be in town all weekend. Don’t leave me hanging, Alex.”
“I’m on it, Paul. Have a good one.”
It was almost six P.M. Both Rose and Laura left before we returned to the office. I put the lights on and sat down at my desk, relishing the quiet.
I called Evan Kruger, who was still working. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“The boss called me down.”
“I’ve got this one, Alex. I went up to court and made a record of my appearance on the case. I’ve fielded four nasty phone calls from David Drusin about his client-and some venting about you, personally-and I’ve spent the afternoon reading the evidence.”
“Lose your appetite?”
“Completely.”
“I wanted to let you know this weird thing just happened,” I said. “And you’d better watch your back.”
“What’s that?”
“Battaglia and I were called over to City Hall with Keith Scully. Of course the main event is figuring out how to deal with Grand Central in light of three murders in its orbit, moving closer and closer to the main concourse. That should have been the only thing on his plate.”
“It’s a scary situation.”
“But all the mayor wanted to talk about at first was Dominguez and why taking overt steps to find recipes to cook women in his cannibal café is a bad thing.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. So Battaglia just told me that not too long after the election, some preacher the mayor knows from Brooklyn got pulled over on a traffic stop. He had two outstanding warrants. So what does the mayor do? Calls the precinct and suggests to the CO that his buddy be released.”
“Before the man’s arraignment? Before seeing the judge? Before clearing the warrants?”
“Used his mayoral ‘get out of jail free’ card, Evan,” I said. “Used it once and it worked for him. I don’t want our case to be his second try at a fix. Just be on the alert. Somebody’s put a bug in his ear about Dominguez.”
“Thanks for covering my back, Alex. Do what you’ve got to do. I’m good with this one.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s entirely selfish,” I said. “If someone has the reach to get to City Hall about a cop with a serious death fetish, then Raymond Tanner might be hanging on his coattails, too. Keep your antennae up for me, will you?”
“Done.”
I thumbed through all the messages, crumpling and tossing the ones from journalists with questions about Corinne Thatcher and Lydia Tsarlev. Those from friends got pocketed, and inquiries from adversaries about pending cases would wait on the top of my desk until Monday.
It was six fifteen when I walked out of the revolving door onto the street. I told the cops who were waiting for me that I wanted to pick up some dinners at Forlini’s, the family-run restaurant behind the courthouse that had fed and watered more generations of lawyers and judges than anyone could count.
One of them walked down Baxter Street with me while the driver circled the block. We talked about weather and wondered aloud if tonight’s anticipated thundershowers might bring a break in the heat wave.
I didn’t even venture into the dining room, which was beginning to fill up with a mix of courthouse regulars who weren’t getting out of the city, but went directly to the bar. The room was cool and refreshing, with delicious smells wafting in from the kitchen and classic Motown sounds on the jukebox behind me.
“The usual, Alexandra?” the bartender asked.
“Nothing to drink, thanks. I just need a whole bunch of dinners to take out. Will you please do the order?”
“Sure thing.”
There would be a lot of hungry detectives working with Rocco tonight. “Let’s make it easy,” I said. “Give me a dozen veal parm, and throw in every side you’ve got. Spinach, broccoli, fried zucchini. We’re feeding a small army. And plenty of bread. Not garlic bread, please. Just Italian bread. And toss in a few salads.”
“You got a moving truck?”
“Better than that. Two cops waiting to drive me uptown. We’ll get the smell of the last hundred prisoners out of the backseat of the patrol car.”
I spun around on the bar stool and walked to the jukebox. I pulled a couple of singles out of my pocket and played all the Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye the machine had to give.
When I got back to my seat, there was a very healthy-looking pour of Dewar’s waiting for me. It seemed like a perfectly good way to relieve the day’s tension.
“Thanks for the drink,” I said, letting the ice cubes rest against my lips before sipping the Scotch. “I forgot to tell you I’ve got to put this on my tab.”
“You look like you needed a cocktail,” the bartender said, writing my name across the front of the computer-generated dinner bill and stashing it in a drawer behind the bar. “I know you’ll be back.”
Twenty minutes later, when I had practically sucked the life out of my drink, one of the waiters appeared with several shopping bags full of food and plastic utensils. I walked to the door to ask the two officers to help me carry the meals.
When we reached Grand Central, it took all three of us to carry the dinners into the Grand Hyatt entrance on the Park Avenue Viaduct, where my escorts left their patrol car, into the lobby and through one of the hidden hallways that fed onto the main concourse of the terminal.
The summer rush hour was winding down. There were certainly fewer commuters than there had been at this hour just the night before.
And there was a noticeable increase in uniformed officers on patrol. Not as many in view as Scully led me to believe would be on site, but perhaps that would come later. It could take hours to bring in all the manpower that the various agencies had promised to deliver.
“Dinner is served,” I said, leading my cops into Don Ledger’s office.
“You can throw out your Chanel No. 5, Coop, ’cause you’ve never smelled better,” Mike said. “Good thinking.”
“Spread it around, Rocco. I’ve got a dozen meals, and the portions are huge. Where’s Mercer? I got the zucchini just for him.”
“He’s back upstairs in the situation room. Scully wants us to run the PD part of the operation from there.”
“It’s the best control position for the whole terminal. Good idea.”
“C’mon,” Mike said. “Grab some meals and let’s feed him.”
“Ready.”
He pointed to the two officers who had come in with me. “Chow down, guys. As soon as Blondie has finished her dinner, the lieutenant would like you to take her out to Douglaston, to Detective Wallace’s house.”
“We’re cleared to stay with her the whole night.”
“No need for that. Wallace’s wife is home. She’s a detective, too. Just hang out here for an hour or so, and we’ll get you on your way with your dangerous cargo. Just a warning, guys: She attracts whackjobs.”
“I really do,” I said. “Help yourselves to some dinner. See you in a bit.”
We left the cramped office, carrying two bags of food out onto the concourse and across to the elevator that was out of sight, at the bottom of the ramp on the far side of the information booth.
The automated voice-even fresh at the end of a long working day-reminded travelers again to take all their belongings and to say something if they saw something. I was getting sick of her telling me to mind the gap.
Mike dangled a large key ring in front of my face. “Keys to the kingdom, Coop.”
“Nice score.”
“Rocco got a set for Mercer and for me. Must be fifty keys here.”
“Marked?”
“Of course. You think I’d have to guess which one to use if I needed to get into one of these places in a hurry?” He handed me the plastic bag while he fumbled for the key to the elevator with the unlisted seventh floor.
We snaked our way through the labyrinthine corridors lined with steam pipes, a far cry from the gleaming pink Tennessee marble of the concourse.