This time I really could help her. Six years earlier, Battaglia had promoted me to the position of Chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit in the Manhattan D.A."s Office. I supervised the investigation and prosecution of all cases of sexual assault reported in the county, as well as the more sensitive, bizarre cases like stalkers. The unit had been the first of its kind in the country and we prided ourselves in doing innovative work to better the plight of women who had long been denied justice in the courtrooms when victimized in these traumatic cases.

"Isabella had called me from California to ask what to do about the letters and calls. We opened cases on both coasts, and when she came to New York we set up a sting operation to try to lure the guy in. We had taped all the incoming calls, the phone company "trapped" them for us, and even though most of them were made from a phone booth outside his house in Jersey, we knew exactly where he was."

Mike asked what the content of the letters had been.

"The usual. Vivid descriptions of which of his body parts he wanted to rub against which of hers, why it would be better than anything she'd ever known before, how she shouldn't be making love on the screen to wops like Nick Cage and kikes like Harvey Keitel"... and if she didn't meet with him soon, her beautiful blond head would be sitting in his bowling bag at the bottom of his closet so no one else could see it again."

"I remember this case now," Mike said, signaling for the exit from the Drive to the ramp leading down to the narrow one-way streets of the courthouse area.

"You arranged a special autograph session for the Lascar fan club members twelve undercover detectives and one fucking whack job. And your man showed up, bowling bag and all."

"Yeah, we had a bus in front of the hotel, with a big banner on the side: Operation Screen-Play. We made a point of searching everyone who boarded to be taken to Miss Lascar's secret location. Arthur Piggott got on line eagerly surrounded by twelve guys from the D.A."s squad, who had taken to calling him "Piggy" and they took him down flat when they found a fifteen-inch machete in the zippered compartment of the bag. Not a tough case for the good guys even you might have been able to solve it."

"What happened to Piggy?"

"Bellevue Psych Ward, awaiting trial. He's not competent at the moment, Mike. A bit delusional thinks he and Isabella are married, he just can't find the certificate or the wedding photos."

"And Isabella's most recent trip, Alex?"

"She called me two weeks ago, shortly after getting into town. And she told me that she was being harassed again.

Phone messages and then notes, but she didn't think they were much so she hadn't saved them."

"Piggy again?" Mike asked.

"Not likely. I checked Bellevue, but the judge had denied him phone privileges and there's a mail screen on everything that goes out.

Anyway, two of the guys are working on it, but there isn't a lot to go on.

"So then Isabella called again, with a more familiar intonation: a favor.

"Darling, I've heard you and Nina talk so much about that quaint little farmhouse you have on Martha's Vineyard. I'm so sick and tired of being harassed by these crazy characters, and Nina thought you wouldn't mind if I went up there alone for a few days to be a recluse and read a few scripts. Is it a problem, Alex?"

"For once," I explained to Mike, 'it was no problem she wasn't asking me to use my government job to get her some stupid perk. I just assumed she interjected a second stalker to let me think she truly needed to get out of town. The end of September is the most spectacular time on the island, and I was delighted to let her use the house... especially if I didn't have to hang out with her and listen to all her crap about "the industry."" "Did you go up there with her?"

Mike asked.

"No. Isabella had to be in Boston at the end of the week, so she was going to go down to the Cape from there, and either fly or take the ferry over to the Vineyard. I had reserved the rental car and charged it to my credit card 'cause my car's in storage for the winter, and I didn't want to give the rental agent her name. Once anybody in town knew there was going to be another movie star on the island, she'd have no privacy at all."

"Any calls from her once she got there? Any problems?"

I thought for a moment.

"She called a couple of times the first day, just to ask where things were in the house, and how to get to the beach, but she seemed quite happy and relaxed."

I had been talking with a reasonable degree of calm as I brought Mike up to date, but I choked on the fact of Isabella's death, which still didn't seem possible to me, and the circumstances in which it occurred.

"Mike, if I hadn't given her the house and if..."

"You can't do the "what ifs," kid. You did what you did and that's not the reason she's dead. If Isabella Lascar was the target, then whoever hit her would have found his opportunity at one time or another. And if Isabella Lascar was not the target, then we have a different situation on our hands, a real monster."

I shook my head in disbelief.

"That's what the D.A. thinks, too. He really thinks someone was trying to kill me, not Isabella. But that's absurd, Mike. I know any prosecutor makes enemies, but it's a hell of a stretch to think I'm likely to be on a country road on the Vineyard in the middle of the week at the end of September instead of right here in town a simple call to the office switchboard would have confirmed that."

"Alex, you think we're dealing with someone who's wrapped that tight?

All I know is that Battaglia called the Chief of Detectives right after you spoke with him and gave him two orders. First was to send someone to the Post offices to stop the presses on the headline that had you as the victim that's the version I brought up to your apartment when I came this morning and make sure they ran the correct story about Isabella. But most important was to get someone from Manhattan North to babysit for you until this thing plays out and we know who killed her. I got hit with both of those tasks that's why they sent me up to your place so early."

"I know. Battaglia told me he was insisting on a bodyguard. You've had better assignments, Mike, but I asked him to ask for you. I need a friend to do this, to be with me, so please don't be mad at me. I wanted it to be you."

"Hey, I wouldn't miss this one for the world. You think I'd rather be stepping over dead bodies in a Harlem crack den or killing cockroaches back at the precinct? This isn't exactly combat duty. Besides, I told the chief I didn't even have to go home I could go right to your place because I had left some clean underwear there last month."

"Mike, you didn't say..."

"Relax, kid. You can't lose your sense of humor over this."

He rounded the corner onto Hogan Place and parked a few feet from our building entrance on the south end of the criminal courthouse not a lot of competition for spaces at six-twenty in the morning.

"You've got a lot of friends and every one of them is going to help you through the next few days."

We got out of the car and headed for the steps.

"What does lover boy have to say about all this?" Mike asked, as he held open the door and we moved into the dingy lobby of the District Attorney's Office, nodding hello and showing our IDs to get past a security guard and the metal detectors.

I wasn't even aware that I frowned as I tried to form an answer to that question, knowing that Mike was never short on opinions about guys I had dated over all the years we had known each other. I liked to think that some of it was because he was a little jealous. It was an easy topic for ridicule, so he often took aim at the 'white collar wimps' he met at office parties and courthouse bars. Jed Segal, investment banker, didn't escape Mike's strike, even though he was not in that category. Jed had first had a brilliant career practicing law, which led to a stint in Washington, before he returned home to California to make an unsuccessful run for the Senate last year. To my good fortune, a tempting corporate offer had lured him to New York earlier this year, when I met and started to date him.

"He's not back from Europe yet. I, uh... I tried to reach him but, you know, with the time difference and all. I'll tell him when he calls today."

"That's what you really need, Cooper, a guy who's always there for you when trouble strikes just an ocean away.

Another deal to close. Then he'll come back to comfort you one of these nights and he'll be all wet and slurpy and I'll be keeping you both safe with my trusty six-shooter by my side, sitting in your living room watching reruns of "I Love Lucy" while he gets consoled on your big brass bed.

If only the Police Academy gave MBAs - I coulda been a contender, know what I mean?"

"No, then you'd be an investment banker, too, Mike," I said as we got off the elevator on the eighth floor and turned into the corridor toward my office, '... but you'd still be an asshole. Leave me alone on this."

"I hit a nerve, blondie, didn't I? Maybe even deep enough for root canal, huh? Lover boy's off limits. I understand."

I unlocked the door to my office, flipped on the light and sat at my desk, while Mike settled himself at the post in the anteroom where my secretary worked. He had indeed hit a nerve. It was one of those moments when I didn't want to be the tough litigator who could solve everyone else's problems and separate the emotional baggage from the realities of any situation. I wanted to stay curled up at home on my sofa, with Jed holding me in his arms, caressing me and assuring me that everything would be all right. But I wasn't at home and it would probably be days before Jed would be there to make love to me, and the best I could hope for was that the business of a hectic day in the office would temporarily distract me from the nightmare that had so suddenly enveloped me.

CHAPTER.

Manhattan's Criminal Courts Building is a massive, ugly, gray structure, the facade of which unconsciously reflects the rumor not true that it was built during the Depression as a WPA effort. The usual maxims about the search for truth and justice are chiseled into its exterior columns and above its entrances which stretch the length of several city blocks. But its even more grim interior houses the cramped work cubbyholes of the thousands of worker bees who do the everyday business of the criminal justice system: judges, assistant district attorneys, Legal Aid Society lawyers, and probation officers.

The northern end of the complex the only piece of it to have been remodeled in more than half a century is named the Tombs, the cells in which prisoners are held before arraignment or during trials, connected to the courthouse by the Bridge of Sighs.

Mike liked to call the prison Landin Lounge, after the federal judge who ordered it rebuilt because of the overcrowded conditions that had prompted riots and lawsuits a decade ago.

"Yeah, build those scumbags a first-class joint.

Give 'em private rooms and color tubes and a gym so they can pump themselves up so they can run faster next time I'm chasing 'em. After all, they're killing each other to get in there, might as well make it comfy for them. Oh, and showers, six showers on every cellblock.