"Fill me in over dinner."
"Another time. I'll give it to you quickly. But I'm running downtown. There's a seven-fifteen service for Paige Vallis."
"I thought she's from Virginia?"
"Her body's being shipped down tomorrow for burial. But her boss organized a memorial for her tonight, at a little church on the Battery, and he invited me to be there. Did you speak to Squeeks? Anything new on the death investigation?"
"All quiet. You want a ride?"
"I'll walk."
"It's wet out there."
"I won't melt. Mercer's invited, too. He said he was going to be late getting there, but he'll take me home."
I closed up my office, telling Mike about my conversations with Peter Robelon and Graham Hoyt before again walking to the elevator. "So all these connections to Farouk and people who worked in the Foreign Service; do you make anything of it?"
"Conspiracy or coincidence, huh? You're always seeing some dark intrigue behind things like this. Me? I'm a coincidence man. Odd things just happen sometimes. Ingrid Bergman happens to walk into Humphrey Bogart's Casablanca gin joint. Farley Granger happens to share a train compartment with a stranger who agrees to murder someone for him. Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet happen to bump into Sam Spade while they're looking for-"
"Those aren't coincidences, Mike. They're plot devices. You're talking fiction and I'm talking real life."
"Hey, how many people do you need to have in a room to guarantee the chance that at least two of them would have the same birthday?"
"I don't know. Three hundred sixty-four."
"Ha! Twenty-three. At least two out of every twenty-three people will have exactly the same birthday. Statistical odds. A lot of life is coincidence."
We walked out the door and I turned right to go to Centre Street. "Wait a minute, blondie. I got a brolly in the car."
"I don't need it."
"Don't be stubborn."
I turned my collar up and crossed the street with Mike, waiting while he fished out his car keys and shuffled through the heavy assortment of police equipment that filled the trunk.
"So I'll give you a substitute Jeopardy! question, since you're standing me up tonight," he said. "Military history."
"I lose before we get started."
"The answer is from army basic training. Three things a soldier in uniform is instructed not to do," Mike said, finding an old black golf umbrella and trying to extricate it from beneath a fingerprint-dusting kit and orange jumper cables. "I'll spare you. Push a baby carriage, wear rubbers, and use an umbrella."
He pulled it out and opened it, straightening two of the bent metal spokes. "Ever go to an Army-Navy game on a rainy fall day?" he asked. "Sailors sit under their umbrellas, soldiers get soaked. Napoleon laughed at the British troops carrying umbrellas at Waterloo in 1815. Guess who won?"
I twirled it for him a few times and got back on course. "See you in the morning. Say hi to Valerie for me."
Office workers unprepared for the change in weather were scurrying toward the entrance to the subway station in Foley Square. I passed it by, cutting across City Hall Park to walk south on Broadway, which was better lighted than the less-trafficked and twisted side streets of the city's financial district.
The gaping hole behind the Trinity Church graveyard that has become known to the world as Ground Zero still took my breath away and turned my stomach whenever I thought about it or, as now, skirted its perimeter. I kept my head down, dodging pedestrians who moved northward as I sidestepped puddles to try to keep my feet moderately dry.
At Bowling Green, I took the fork to my left and trotted the last three blocks down Whitehall, as the showers fell more steadily.
I was at the very toe of Manhattan-the Battery-named for the row of guns that had once guarded this vulnerable tip of the early colonial settlement. The address Paige Vallis's boss had given to me, 7 State Street, was about the southernmost building on the entire island, but for the fortress of Castle Clinton.
It was hard to see numbers because of the dim street lighting, and I looked in vain for something that resembled a Catholic church. People raced by me on their way to the Staten Island ferry terminal and the express bus stop that would speed them to their homes in the outer boroughs. I doubled back to find a coffee shop and asked for more specific directions to the Rectory of the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Seton.
I climbed the staircase, fooled by the appearance of the original facade. The small chapel had been an early Federal mansion-a private home-built at the end of the eighteenth century. The slender Ionic columns and delicate interior detailing had survived two hundred years of commercial development all around it, and was now a small sanctuary named for America's first saint.
The service was already under way. I walked to the far side of the room and sat on a bench below a wrought-iron balcony, shaded by its overhang, and out of sight of the others who had come to pay their respects.
There were prayers and musical offerings, and a succession of Paige's business associates extolled her virtues and mourned her untimely and unnatural death. There were more men than women, all dressed in Wall Street blues and grays. Most of the older women dabbed at their eyes with handkerchiefs.
I didn't know who, besides her boss and two coworkers, had known of Paige's involvement in the criminal case. No one mentioned it in his or her remarks. I scanned the room for the man who had told Paige that he was Harry Strait, but saw no one resembling him here.
The last hymn was "Now the Day Is Over." Everyone rose to sing and remained standing as the organist played the recessional. By the time the crowd was filing out, most of them were talking about how the market had performed today and whether the Federal Reserve was likely to raise the interest rate in response to recent signs of economic recovery. Several of them were planning to gather to carry on their reminiscences of Paige over a few martinis at the nearest watering hole.
I stepped away from the group and sat in one of the last pews for a few minutes of quiet reflection. I had not seen Mercer enter the rectory, and I assumed it had been impossible for him to park in this crowded warren of narrow streets.
I closed my eyes and thought about the Paige Vallis I had known, about the parts of her life that she had let me enter, about the terrible distress she had been in during the days and hours before her death. I didn't have to be reminded that life isn't fair. That was something I encountered every day I went to work.
Shortly before nine o'clock, the janitor came into the room with a large broom. He asked if I would mind leaving, and I told him I was sorry to have stayed so long. I said another prayer for Paige, and picked the umbrella up from the seat next to me.
There was no sign of Mercer Wallace. I ducked under the stairwell of the old building for shelter from the rain, scanning the street in both directions to look for his car. I took out my cell phone and turned it on.
"You have one unheard voice mail,"the recording said. "Message one. Eight-twelve P.M. 'Hey, Alex. I'm stuck in the Thirty-fourth Street tunnel. Bad accident. I'll get there as fast as I can.'"
A tall figure in a hooded parka, umbrella over his head, ducked in beside me. He smelled of alcohol and was mumbling to himself. I didn't wait to get a look at him, but stepped forward again onto the quiet sidewalk.
The man followed me, and I glanced around in hopes of spotting a uniformed police officer. Traffic was still moderately heavy, cars going both to the northbound entrance of the FDR Drive and west to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. I jogged across State Street to stand on the open median that divided the roadway, trying in vain to hail a cab.
The man loped after me. I could hear my own breathing now, as I tried to assure myself he was just a bum, hoping to get close enough to snatch my bag. I saw a break in the traffic and bolted back to the sidewalk, heading over to Broad Street.