Killer Look

TWENTY-FOUR

The detective who had the bodyguard assignment for Paul Battaglia led me back to the SUV. The rear passenger door was open, and the district attorney slid over to allow me to get onto the seat beside him.

“Give us five minutes,” he said to the detective.

“Sure thing, boss.” He slammed the door shut and walked away from the car.

“Sorry to sneak up on you, Alex. The doorman told us you weren’t at home, so I figured I’d wait half an hour or so.”

I stared straight forward, at the headrest above the driver’s seat. I was struggling to catch my breath.

“Alex? Are you all right?”

“What’s your best guess, Paul?” I couldn’t look at him. “You couldn’t have given me a call? Waited for me in the comfort of my lobby? Or did you simply decide that the terrorist tactic of having someone sandbag me on the sidewalk close to home would be a pleasant reminder of my kidnapping?”

“Let’s not be too dramatic, Alexandra. It’s not as though you wouldn’t recognize my voice. I never thought I’d put a scare into you.”

“I scare pretty easily these days,” I said.

“Does that explain why you’re drinking so much?”

My head snapped toward him. “What’s your source for that crap, Paul?”

I used to have so much respect for him. I worked my tail off for him, day and night, trusting in both his judgment and integrity. I represented him in front of the community-at churches and synagogues, schools and precinct houses. Now I could barely recognize my own voice talking back to him.

“I don’t need a source, Alex. I can smell it on your breath.”

“Over the stink of that cigar? I doubt it very much.”

He put the Cohiba back in his mouth and continued to talk around it. “I thought you were on the Vineyard. Stabilizing yourself to get back to your desk.”

“I’m on leave, Paul. I’m not required to keep a GPS in my pocket.”

“You’ve turned on me, Alex. I need to know what that’s about.”

I put my hand on my chest, hoping to stop it from heaving.

“Sooner or later we’re going to have to talk about this,” he said. “Before you come back to work.”

“Plenty of time to go, then. As you can see, I’m not at my best.” I was lightly patting the raw skin of my left hand.

“You’re not possibly feeling I didn’t do enough for you during your ordeal? My wife thinks that perhaps-”

“What your wife thinks is of so little interest to me that I’d put it back in the bottle, Paul,” I said. “In fact, you were the first person-though many have followed-to suggest to me that your wife is a fool.”

Battaglia’s wife-who considered herself to be an artist, though she couldn’t paint her way out of a paper bag-had embarrassed him recently by writing an article for some blog. She described having intercourse with him in the bathroom of his hospital suite when he was in-patient for a gallstone procedure. It was too much information for all of my colleagues, and few could call up the image of the dignified barrister after the piece went viral in the office computer system.

“Some thoughts are best kept to yourself, Alex.”

“Then leave your wife out of our conversation.” She was despised by his secretary and was an object of ridicule to the legal staff. I knew he wouldn’t do much to defend her.

For so long, I had admired his professional ideals, despite rumors of his sordid personal life. Paul Battaglia had a reputation for sleeping his way through half of the journalists who had covered his rise to political power thirty years ago, and others who curried favor with him by stroking his private parts.

“I don’t like the way you’re talking to me,” Battaglia said, cracking the window to tip the ashes off his cigar.

“For once, you might be the one between a rock and a hard place, boss. The worst you can do-that is, the worst thing for you-would be to fire me. You’re the one who created this monster-you’ve put me in the media spotlight so many times that now I’d get a huge audience to listen to my version of the story,” I said. “Best-case scenario is that when I’m ready to have this conversation with you, you have the answers to calm me down again.”

“I must have been crazy to give you so much latitude, Alex,” he said, the cigar firmly planted between his front teeth. “There are even rumors you might make a primary run against me next year.”

We were side by side, but neither turned to face the other.

“Are you afraid to comment on that one, Alex?”

“You know I have no interest in politics,” I said. “I have one passion, and it’s my work with crime victims-women and children. That’s what drives me, Paul. I think you know that.” I paused. “Oh, and then there’s the awful risk of STDs in your job, isn’t there?”

“What are you talking about?” Battaglia asked, trying to control his vicious temper. He was the king of petty-revenge points. He’d find a way to carry the heaviest grudge for as many years as it took to think of a payback.

“You want to talk rumors? It’s all over town you got a sexually transmitted disease from Reverend Hal Shipley. That you bent over to please him one time too many and he-”

“You’ve lost your mind, Alex. Next time I talk to you, you’d better clean up-”

“Next time you talk to me, please give me enough notice to have a lawyer with me, Paul,” I said. “I know why you didn’t call me to ask whether you could drop by. ’Cause then there’d be a phone record of the call. And you waited outside the lobby so not even the doorman could say we were together.”

“So this is all about Hal Shipley, is it?”

“No, no, no. This is all about you, Mr. District Attorney. I saw the letter you sent to Shipley, telling him you could make the case I was working on go away,” I said. “I saw it with my own eyes. I hadn’t even met the victim yet or determined her credibility, but you were sending her up the river.”

The smoke seemed to be coming out of his mouth, where he’d clenched his cigar into place. I was sure it was also coming out of his ears.

“You can make whatever deal you want with the devil,” I said. “But just leave me out of your planning.”

Battaglia opened the car door on his right and yelled the detective’s name. The man came dashing back to the SUV and opened the driver’s door. “Yeah, boss?”

“Alex has to go. Let’s get out of here.”

I opened the door and started to get out of the car.

“By the way, Alex, the ME called me this afternoon. She’s declaring the Wolf Savage death a homicide,” Battaglia said. “There’s a presser at One Police Plaza right now.”

That explained why Mike hadn’t returned my call.

“Dr. Parker told me you made a cameo appearance at the morgue, Alex. I was actually coming by to talk with you about that,” the district attorney said, tossing his cigar over my head. “Better to cut out that extracurricular activity while you’re still nursing your wounds.”

“Or what, Paul?” I asked. “Or what?”

“It’s just an expression of my concern for your well-being.” Paul Battaglia said, ready to drop me and move on. “Don’t think of it for a minute as a threat.”