Final Jeopardy

CHAPTER 1

I sat on my living-room sofa at five o’clock in the morning with a copy of the mock-up of the front page of the day’s New York Post in my hand, looking at my own obituary.

The headline I was reading had been prepared hours earlier, when the cops thought that it was my head that had been blown apart by a rifle blast on a quiet country road in a little Massachusetts town called Chilmark.

“SEX PROSECUTOR SLAIN – FBI, STATE TROOPERS JOIN SEARCH FOR KILLER‘

Mike Chapman sat opposite me as he worked on his second egg sandwich and lukewarm cup of coffee. He had brought them along with the news story, and in the fashion of an experienced Homicide detective he continued chewing even as he described to me the details of the murder scene – bullet holes, blood spatter, and body bag.

“Good thing you’ve been a source for so many stories at the Post all these years. It’s a very complimentary obit…"

He stopped eating long enough for that familiar grin to emerge, then added, “And a great picture of you – looks like they airbrushed most of your wrinkles out. Your phone’ll be ringing off the hook once all those lonely guys in this city realize you’re still alive – maybe you’ll get lucky.”

Most of the time Mike could defuse every situation and get me to laugh, but I had been crying for so many hours that it was impossible to respond to his lousy cracks or to focus on anything else but the dreadful day that lay ahead.

A woman had been killed on the path leading to my country house, driving a car that had been rented in my name. The body of the tall, slender, thirtyish victim was missing her face, so most of the local cops who arrived on the scene assumed that I had been the target.

We were more than two hundred miles away from the crime scene, twenty stories above the noise of the garbage trucks that rolled through Manhattan streets every morning before dawn, in the safe confines of my high-rise apartment on the Upper East Side. Too many years of investigating break-ins of brownstones and townhouses, with rapists climbing in from fire escapes or pushing in vestibule doors behind unsuspecting tenants, had driven me to a luxury building low on quaintness and charm but high on doormen and rent.

My mother had come into town for two weeks to decorate for me when I moved a few years earlier, but the French provincial antiques and lavish Brunschwig fabrics were an incongruous backdrop for this deadly conversation.

“How’d you get the call?” Mike asked, brushing the crumbs off his slacks and onto the carpet, ready to give me his undivided attention.

“One of the guys in the unit is about to start a trial in front of Torres and grabbed me just as I was going to leave the office for the night. His victim is a junkie – she came in to be prepped for court and was so high she couldn’t hold her head up. God knows if she remembers anything about the rape. I had to make the arrangements to get a hotel room for her overnight so we could try to dry her out before she gets on the witness stand. By the time we finished it was nine-thirty, and I just called my friend Joan Stafford to meet for a late supper.”

“I didn’t ask you for your alibi, for Chrissakes. How’d you hear about this?”

“I can’t even focus straight, Mike. You’ve got to take me down to my office so I can be there before everyone starts to arrive – I’ll never make it through all the questions.”

“Just talk to me, Alex.”

Reliving the events of the past few hours as a witness and not a prosecutor was an unsettling role for me. I tried to reconstruct what had happened after I walked into my apartment shortly before midnight and headed to the answering machine to play back the messages as I started to undress.

Beep one: “Hi, Alex. I’m on the Ventura Freeway, taking the baby to his play group. Tell me more about the case with the therapist who seduced his patient. It sounds fascinating.

How many people do you think he’s fucked up? Speak with you later.” Nina Baum, my college roommate, still my best friend, making her regular phone car call from one of the endless L.A. roadways on which she seemed to spend her life.

Beep two: Just the deliberate click of a hang-up call.

Beep three: “Yo, Coop. Wallace here. The lieutenant asked me to give you a heads up. The Con Ed rapist hit again today. Nothing for you to do now. Lady’s been to the hospital and released, so we put her to bed for the night. You do the same, and we’ll be down at your office tomorrow. Behave. G’night.” The deep, familiar voice of Mercer Wallace, formerly of Homicide, who was now my lead detective in the Special Victims Squad, the unit which investigated all of the sexual assault and child abuse cases that occurred in Manhattan.

Beep four: “I’m trying to reach a friend or next-of-kin to Alexandra Cooper. This is an emergency. Please call me, Chief Wally Flanders, Chilmark Police Martha’s Vineyard. It’s urgent – give a call as soon as you get this message. Area code 508-555-3044. Thanks.”

Of course I had known Wally for more than a decade – I had been going to the Vineyard since I had been in law school, and Wally was as much a local fixture as the fishing boats and the general store.

I picked up the phone to dial, wondering why he was looking for a friend or relative at my apartment instead of asking for me. When he got on the line, he expressed how surprised he was to hear my voice.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“In Manhattan, in my apartment, Chief.”

“Well, Alex, there’s been a terrible tragedy here. Terrible.

Was there somebody stayin‘ at your house, somebody you let use it?“

“Yes, Wally, a friend of mine is there. It’s okay, she’ll be staying there for a week or two. It’s no problem, I’ve arranged everything.”

My mind was racing but I had never connected the Vineyard with any kind of crime problem except the occasional house burglary. That’s why it has always been such a refuge for me, a world away from the grim business of investigating and prosecuting rape cases. Someone must have noticed an unfamiliar person coming or going into Daggett’s Pond Way and suspected a burglary.

“Not so easy, Alex. Your friend isn’t staying for as long as you thought. She was shot sometime tonight, see, and my guys found the body a few hours ago. She’s dead, Alex, real dead.”

“Oh my God!” I repeated quietly several times into the telephone mouthpiece. I was incredulous, as people always are when they get this kind of news. And as intimately as I have worked with violence and murder for more than ten years, it had never ruptured the fragile line that separated my personal from my professional life.

“Alex? Alex? Are you alone there?”

“Yes.”

“Can you get someone over to give you a hand with this?”

With what? I thought. What else could anyone do except stare at me while I spun out of control?

Wally continued, “See, the big problem is that we thought it was you who got killed. That’s why we were tryin‘ to find your family, for notification. The press already thinks you’re the dead woman.”

“How did that happen?” I shrieked at him.

“Well, it’s really ugly. We figure that you mean she was riding in a convertible, top down and she had turned off the state road onto that wooded path that leads in to your house. Someone must have been waiting in there for you, and excuse me – just let out a blast which hit her square in the side of her head.”

I don’t suppose Wally could hear me but I was sitting on my bedroom floor, crying as he finished his story.

“We had a call during the evening to go up to the Patterson house, out your way. My boys found the body – couldn’t tell much about anything from looking at her and she didn’t have no ID. They called in the license plate and found that the Mustang had been rented in your name. Hell, it was your driveway, a rented car, and a girl with a similar build and size – it made sense that it was you.”

“I guess so,” I whimpered back to him.

“Well, I’m glad it’s not you, Alex. Everyone will be glad to know it’s not you. I figured the investigation would be a monster, tryin‘ to track down every pervert and madman you’ve sent to jail. That’s why I called in the FBI – figured we’d be hunting’ all over the place.”

Wally actually laughed a few times at that point.

“It’s a relief, really. I guess the off-island papers won’t even bother with us now.”

The chief had no idea how wrong he was and how bad this was going to be for that tranquil little island.

“Can you help us, Alex? Can you give us her name and who to notify?”

I mumbled the name into the phone, but Wally heard it loud and clear.

“Isabella Lascar.”

The news wires were about to explode with the information that the face of the dazzlingly beautiful actress and film star, Isabella Lascar, had been obliterated, and that what was left of her body lay in the tiny Vineyard morgue, with a toe tag mislabeled in the name of Alexandra Cooper.

Mike waited in the den, surfing the TV channels for clips about the murder, while I showered and dressed to go down to my office in the criminal courthouse. There wasn’t enough makeup in Manhattan to conceal the puffy circles beneath my eyes, so I just rolled on some lipstick and grabbed my sunglasses from the bedside table.

“You look like shit, blondie,” Mike offered as I headed for the front door.“Very bad for my image – doorman thinks I spent the night with a broad who looks like that.”

“If you think I look bad now, you’re going to love it when the District Attorney gets done with me in a few hours.

C’mon, let’s get going.“

Chapman is as dark-featured as I am fair – lots of thick, straight black hair and what people usually call an infectious grin, when he chose to display it. He was tall and lanky, and his years at Fordham University, where he graduated with a degree in history before following in his father’s footsteps and entering the Police Academy, left him with a taste for dressing in an almost preppy style which set him apart from most of his colleagues.

When I called the District Attorney after my conversation with Wally Flanders, he told me that he would assign a detective to stay with me for the next twenty-four hours, and I was as grateful for Mike Chapman’s jibes as I was for his company.

It was just before 6 AM when we walked to the department car he had parked around the corner on Third Avenue. Mike unlocked the door and I got in, kicking aside the usual littered remains of empty cardboard coffee cups, crushed cigarette packs, and a month’s worth of tabloids.

“Fill me in, will you? Who’d you speak to last night, after you got the call?” he asked, as he started toward the FDR Drive.

“I began with the easy stuff. My parents first, just to let them know I was alive. My brothers. Next Joan, since we’d just had dinner, and I gave her the assignment of calling friends. Then, armed with a loaded glass of Dewar’s, I called the D.A.”

Paul Battaglia, the District Attorney of New York County, believed that your name belonged in a newspaper only three times: when you’re born, when you die, and when he announced your indictment at a press conference – at a date and time entirely of his choosing. Assistant district attorneys, as the five hundred and seventy-six of us who worked for him were called, flourished best out of the harsh glare of media light.

Battaglia was the only D.A. most New Yorkers remembered, and with good reason. He had been in office almost twenty years and, at the age of sixty-two, had a national reputation for his impeccable integrity and for running the best prosecutor’s office in the country.

Like most of my colleagues, I had joined the office immediately after law school, confident that it was the best training ground for trial attorneys anywhere. I had planned to stay the four years that Battaglia required as a commitment when he extended our job offers, and then move on to the more lucrative private – practice of law.

But like the overwhelming number of young lawyers on the staff, I fell in love with the challenge of the work – trying complicated felony cases to juries, working around the clock with cops in station houses and at crime scenes, and generally being on the side of the angels in the endless battles against violent crime in the big city.

And a major aspect of my happiness was my respect for Battaglia, who had given so much to me in the eleven years since he had hired me. I liked to think that I had not done anything to disappoint him, until last night.

“You know the man almost as well as I do, Mike. The kind of publicity this thing could generate will make him very unhappy.”

“Tell me what Lascar was doing at your country house in the first place.”

Isabella and I first met three years earlier, at the suggestion of Nina Baum, who had been my roommate at Wellesley. Nina was the head of the legal department at Virgo Studios and in charge of all the contract negotiations for the superstars in most of the company productions.

The three of us were about the same age, although Isabella’s official bio shaved a few years off, and she and Nina had become great friends after working together on a number of projects.

Lascar had a few minor speaking roles in some major movies in the late eighties, but it was her love scenes with Warren Beatty in Delirious cast as his mistress, living in the Hotel du Cap, while Beatty played a roguish bank robber working the Riviera – which brought her celebrity recognition.

When Virgo bought the rights to the best-selling novel Probable Cause, Nina called me to ask a favor. Isabella had been awarded the starring role in the movie, playing the part of the federal prosecutor who investigated and convicted a powerful senator for the hired killing of his wealthy wife in their Washington, D.C.“ townhouse. I had tried a number of high-profile rape and murder cases by then, and Nina wanted me to let Isabella spend time with me, in and out of court, to give her some flavor of the work and lifestyle of a woman litigator.

Battaglia and Isabella first met when I introduced her to him at lunch one day, at a restaurant near the courthouse. He had never heard of her at that point, and he mispronounced her name, calling her Miss Lasker. She placed her hand on his forearm, leaned into him with a smile, as she made the correction.

“It’s Lass-CAR, darling.

Accent on the second syllable. It’s French.“ She had come across the name of a character – a Lyonnaise courtesan in a De Maupassant short story, Isabella later told me, and had taken it for her own.

I reminded Mike of Battaglia’s reaction to my request.

“He was very good-natured about that nonsense. I asked him if Isabella could shadow me in the office and he agreed.

As usual, his instincts were right, though. He insisted that Virgo not list us in the credits at the end of the movie, just in case the depiction wasn’t too flattering.“

“So the scenes where she slept with her boss, three senators, and one of the jurors weren’t based on you?”

Mike chuckled.

“Neither were her devastating cross-examinations, Mike.

I think the only thing they used after spending three weeks with me was the scene when she left work early to go to a shoe sale at Saks. The rest was strictly Hollywood.“

Mike knew that Isabella and I had kept in touch ever since, and that she often called me when she was in New York. And never had she called without wanting something from somebody. She had developed quite a reputation as a bitch, which did not come as much of a surprise to me.

“Darling, it’s Iz,” the typical message began.

“I’m in town, at the Carlyle. Love to see you. By the way, don’t you have some little man who can breeze me through Customs when I come back from Milano next week?” or, “You know that pass you put in your windshield when you go to a police station? Can’t I just borrow it for my driver while I’m here for the week? It’ll save us getting all those lousy parking tickets.”

Always minor irritants. Improper, but minor.

Then it changed a few months ago, when Isabella had a serious problem: she was being stalked. The first letters went to her home in Bel Air, but whenever she arrived in Manhattan, the stalker knew to send the letters to the Carlyle and the phone calls followed.

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.