“I didn’t tell you it was smart,” I said to Mike two hours later. “It’s necessary, that’s all. Until I can get the full download on Lucy’s Facebook information and go through all her friends and exactly what she’s put up and out, she can’t be at Streetwork.”
Mercer and I had dressed Lucy in surgical scrubs that the triage nurse gave us from one of the supply cabinets. Her Safe Horizon counselor had given us a baseball cap, and when Mercer brought the car around to a side door of the hospital, Lucy walked out and ducked down behind the rear seat. Then he drove back around the block to pick me up in front of the ER.
“You think you fooled anyone?” Mike asked.
“I’m just hoping we did,” I said. “At least no one saw me walk out the door with her, if anyone was watching.”
Lucy was sound asleep in my guest room. It was eight thirty in the evening—I had been in no mood for Jeopardy!—and Mike had just returned to the apartment.
“What are you thinking of doing with her after tonight?” Mike asked. “I’m a pretty good bodyguard for the late shift, but I have to report to work tomorrow.”
“We both do. Can you hold out a while on dinner and I’ll order in a pizza when Lucy wakes up?”
“Sure,” Mike said. “What about making her a material witness and finding a hotel room for her, with police protection?”
“I hate to resort to that,” I said. “Hotels are where it all started with Jake. I doubt that atmosphere will add to Lucy’s emotional stability. I now think I have to deal with him—Zach—in the morning, so I can start my grand jury case on Monday. Get Lucy’s testimony under oath, and see if I can work a rapprochement with her aunt so she can go back there.”
“Either way, kid, you need a team to guard her now that she’s broadcast her whereabouts,” Mike said. “Who are you going to ask for that?”
“Used to be I’d lay it all out for Paul Battaglia. Then he’d call the commissioner and get me whatever I wanted,” I said. “I’m not sure now who to trust with Lucy’s story and with my plans to make a case against Zachary Palmer.”
“The commissioner himself,” Mike said. “Scully respects your judgment.”
“I can’t count on that anymore. I made him pretty unhappy a few weeks ago, and also I can’t count on the fact he won’t tell Mayor DeBlowhard.”
“Sooner or later, this is going to be news,” Mike said. “Front-page news, top of the fold.”
“Once I get the indictment against Zach—if I do—and unseal it, then Scully has to give me someone to partner with Mercer on the arrest.”
“Mercer,” Mike said. “Why can’t he guard Lucy tomorrow? Do you need him for your conversation with Zach?”
“I’m going solo for that,” I said, walking to the bar to pour us each a drink.
“In your office?” Mike asked.
“No. Too many ears and eyes.”
“Not his office,” Mike said. “He’s probably got a trapdoor in the floor like a Bond villain. You’d be chum for some great whites he keeps in a tank down below.”
“I’ve had that thought,” I said. “No, I’ll call him and pick a public place. Somewhere he can’t start screaming at me when I take out the plastic baggie with Lucy’s bloody handkerchief in it and pretend I’ve had it tested. Maybe a hotel lobby in Midtown, with a lounge area. Quiet, elegant, and for me, a feeling of safety.”
“Use the Palace on East Fiftieth or the Four Seasons on Fifty-Seventh. There are ex-cop security guards all around both places, both have entrances on two sides, and neither one is far from his office.”
“Good idea,” I said.
We were watching an old movie on Turner Classics when Lucy walked into the den at nine thirty.
I stood up. “Glad you’re back on your feet,” I said. “Do you feel any better?”
“Nope. Everything aches.”
“That’s the way it goes with big bruises,” Mike said. “They’re supposed to ache. You’ll feel better after you eat.”
I ordered in a large pepperoni pizza and made sure Lucy drank plenty of water while we waited for dinner.
“Can I watch TV, too?” she asked.
“Anything you want,” I said.
I left her in the den with Mike and went inside to call Catherine to see how her meeting with Janet Corliss had gone. My call went to voice mail.
A few minutes later, Mike came to my office to talk. “Have you thought about tomorrow?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said and I think you’re right after all,” I said.
“Which one of my bright ideas did you like?”
“Kiss me,” I said. “Then I’ll tell you.”
Mike leaned over and wrapped his arms around me, sealing the deal with a long, deep kiss—and then a second one.
“I’m calling Keith,” I said, picking up my cell phone again from my desktop.
“As in the commissioner?”
“Look, Mike,” I said. “I’ll have to prepare him for whatever the grand jury does about Zach Palmer, maybe as early as tomorrow afternoon. And I’m ready to tell him that I know where Francie Fain is.”
“You can’t give up Vickee,” Mike said, slamming his hand on my desk.
“I’d never give her up—you know that. Vickee refused to tell us,” I said. “I can swear to that fact on a stack of Bibles. Just think of how many people I work with who are friends of Francie’s. I bet even Judge Corliss knows where she is.”
I turned my back to Mike and speed-dialed the commissioner’s cell.
“Keith? I’m sorry, I meant to say commissioner. It’s Alex Cooper here,” I said. We had known each other long before we were chiefs in our respective departments. I’d slipped in his first name to remind him of that. “Sorry about the late hour.”
“What have you got, Alexandra?” he said, with a hint of annoyance in his voice.
“Something unexpected dropped into my lap this week,” I said. “At first, I didn’t know what to make of it, but I’ve spent the last couple of days doubling down on the witness and she tells a monster story. I could use your help.”
“Explain yourself. I’m not a mind reader,” Scully said. He was clipped—more so than usual—but he was a man who didn’t like people wasting his time.
“The perp is fairly prominent, so I think I should sit down with you and Vickee Eaton to prep you in case the grand jury returns a true bill next week.”
“Who is he?” Scully asked.
“I’d prefer to tell you in person, if you’ve got time late afternoon tomorrow.”
“Are you taking your lessons in etiquette from Mike Chapman these days?” the commissioner said. “You’re asking for my personal involvement to help you with a case, but you’re refusing to tell me who your target is?”
“I learned from Paul Battaglia,” I said, thinking that might make Scully understand my maneuverings and be somewhat amused by my channeling of the late district attorney—a master of manipulation.
“It looked better on Battaglia,” Scully said. “May the old bastard rest in peace.”
“Tomorrow afternoon? May I come to One PP?”
“Yes,” he said. “When are you expecting an indictment?”
“Next Wednesday at the earliest.”
“Exquisite timing—to call me at ten forty-seven tonight when you’re six days out,” Scully said facetiously.
“There’s a rather urgent piece of this,” I said.
“How urgent?”
“You’ll just have to trust me, Keith.”
He paused before he spoke. “I used to.”
“I’m back, operating on all cylinders,” I said. “This isn’t a Chapman operation—it’s all Mercer and me.”
“What’s the ask?” the commissioner said.
“The victim,” I said. “Twenty-four years old. A cold case and the crime’s got great legs against a public figure, all of which I plan to be able to prove. If we don’t make a move next week, I expect before too long his name will be carved on the front of a government building in DC.”
“Wasn’t Battaglia’s mantra that you can’t play politics with people’s lives?”
“I’m not playing anything,” I said, as sharply as I could. “I’ve had my witness in a safe place for several days, but she went on social media yesterday, just in time for someone to push her onto the subway tracks this afternoon.”
“I got that report,” he said. “That’s your vic?”
I had the commissioner’s attention. “Yes.”
“Where is she now? Back at Streetwork?”
“Too chancy,” I said. “I have her at my apartment.”
“Who’s riding shotgun?” he asked. “Mike or Mercer?”
“Mike,” I said, turning to look at him. He just shook his head from side to side, obviously displeased with my approach to the problem.
“And now you want to make her a material witness? Put her up at the Mandarin Oriental for a few grand a night? Massages and manicures included?”
“I’ll ignore your sarcasm,” I said. “A hotel is too rough, given her history. You’ll understand when I fill you in tomorrow.”
I braced myself for the ask.
“I have an idea, Keith, and you’re the only person who can make it happen.”
“What?”
“I understand that the safest place in town is where you have Francie Fain,” I said. “I want to get my vic into Rockefeller Hospital, for safekeeping.”
He didn’t speak.
“Word is out, and it’s not leaked from your office, if that’s what you’re steaming about,” I said. “We can talk about that tomorrow, too.”
“I’m listening.”
“You must have cops guarding Francie Fain 24/7, don’t you?” I said. “You can get to her hospital room easily, on the East Side, but she’s in a place most people don’t even know exists.”
“It’s not going to work, Alex,” the commissioner said. “We’ve got Fain in quarantine. I can’t authorize that a healthy young woman goes into the same wing of the hospital as some kind of ruse in an unrelated case.”
“That quarantine isn’t medical,” I said. “There’s no contagion at issue with this so-called Kiss of Death nerve agent. You’re just trying to isolate my friend Francie from a possible killer—and from the press.”
“So what if I am?”
“That’s exactly what I want to do for Lucy Jenner,” I said. “I’m asking for the very same protection for my witness—for a week, max. For just one week.”
“I’m not waiting till tomorrow to find out what you’ve got,” the commissioner said. “Meet me at Rock U at midnight. The security office in the old Nurses’ Residence. Bring the girl.”