Night Watch

TEN

We were ten steps away from the restaurant door when Luc started to speak.

“Save it for later. I can get myself home from here, and I have no interest in what went on between you and Brigitte. Truly I don’t. You go duke it out with Jacques.”

“Wait up for me, darling. I can explain everything.”

The prosecutorial part of my brain had grown tired of explanations over the last ten years. I’d have been out of business if people didn’t find it necessary to give reasons for bad conduct and behavior.

“I’ll be awake.” I was way too wired to sleep.

“That’s my angel.”

“Look closely, Luc. I’ve traded in my wings and halo.” I was beginning to question everything Luc tried to tell me.

This time when I reached the bottom of the alley, the heavy door opened easily. Gaspard lumbered to his feet to greet me and escort me through the garden and alongside the pool to the threshold of the house. I left him in the kitchen and mounted the winding staircase that took me up to the bedroom.

I undressed, got into my robe, and put on some music, then climbed onto the bed with Luc’s laptop to Google Baby Mo and the facts of his arrest.

As soon as I pressed enter, dozens of hits popped up, starting with all the French news sources before I scrolled down to see the American, European, and African sites.

I took a blank notebook from Luc’s desk-the kind in which I usually recorded the spectacular meals and memorable wines from my travels with Luc. It was inevitable that I would have questions for Mercer Wallace and my colleagues on his team, and maybe some ideas as well. I wanted to jot them down as I read through the press accounts.

Some long-distance Monday-morning quarterbacking of the MGD affair-even though it was only Sunday evening-would be a pleasant distraction.

I read the first story from the leading French news site. The impression that I got from scanning it was complete support for Mohammed Gil-Darsin. It described him as one of the most distinguished economists in the world, educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, with a graduate degree from the London School of Economics. He was, after all, a resident of France, with a distinguished heritage and a brilliant future as the next president of the Republic of the Ivory Coast.

The second story was even stronger, headlining with the question: BÉBÉ MO-VICTIM DE COUP MONTÉ?

I didn’t know that phrase. My legs were crossed and I was working the keyboard, searching for the Larousse French-English dictionary. Monter un coup. A setup. A frame. Could it possibly be, as the journalist suggested, that this woman knew that the wealthy man in the expensive suite had political ambitions, and had she been hired to bring them to a crashing halt with this claim? I wondered whether the cops gave any thought, as some of the French did, to the idea that this crime report was a scam by political rivals out to ruin Gil-Darsin.

I wanted to see how the American news sources were handicapping the case. I went to the New York Times website and entered MGD’s name. The first story had been filed within an hour of his arrest. The reporting was cautious and recapped the same facts that had been given to me by Mike. The victim was described as a hardworking immigrant from Guatemala, a single mother who had sought asylum in the United States with her child after the civil war that had ravaged that Latin American country in the 1990s.

My fingers were typing as fast as they could move. I went to a CNN story, predicting turmoil in the powerful World Economic Bureau in the aftermath of this scandal. The WEB chief’s arrest would result in a power struggle for control of the agency, amid rumors that he would have to resign if the prosecution moved forward. Deputies in line to compete for the position-from America, Great Britain, and Japan-all refused to engage in speculation about the character of the accused.

The Daily News had already interviewed a coworker of the accuser, who described her as a deeply religious woman. The sidebar story-MGD’S CROSS TO BEAR-OR BARE?-was illustrated with a large crucifix that observers said was always visible against the black collar of her uniform. The implication was that a woman of faith wouldn’t fabricate a claim. I fretted about how Pat McKinney would deal with that issue.

Gaspard barked at something or someone near the house. I sat bolt upright and listened, but he quieted down, so I assumed no one was entering. I got up to stretch and reached for the BlackBerry.

I climbed back onto the bed and looked at the tiny screen. I had accumulated 246 messages since Friday, when I left New York. Even if a third of them were spam, there were people looking for me on what I had hoped would be a quiet spring weekend.

There was a red star on the voice mail icon. Luc wouldn’t have to know I had reneged on my promise to him, so I hit that button and listened to the recorded voice tell me that I had twenty-two messages in my mailbox.

I had gone too far to stop myself now. Lack of curiosity would be a lousy trait in a prosecutor.

The first messages were frisky. Joan Stafford called me on Friday night to test whether my pledge to keep the phone under lock and key had been successful and to ask me to call in with all the social gossip. Nina Baum, my Wellesley roommate and best friend, who lived in Los Angeles with her husband and young son, bet that I would never be able to fulfill the promise, and urged me to stay grounded against the fantasy of the Mougins lifestyle.

There were six calls on Saturday-a couple of old friends who were in town on business and some invitations to upcoming dinners. Nothing had any urgency until I heard Mercer Wallace’s voice at three o’clock this morning, which would have been 9 A.M. in Mougins.

“Alex. Mercer here. Look-I know you’re on vacation with Luc and the last thing I want to do is bust into that, but would you call me when you pick this up? It’s kind of urgent. New case. I could use your eyes on this one. Just a call please, so I can run some of the facts by you.”

Mercer never hit the panic button. He was “grace under pressure” personified, calm and dignified even when doing the dirtiest job in the NYPD, which is what the Special Victims Unit mandate was. The understatement in his tone was in sharp contrast to the hour of the call.

His next message was ten minutes later, still unruffled. “Scratch that last one, Alex. Mike just told me you’re out of the loop for the week. I apologize for hunting you down. We’re doing fine.”

The next five calls were from Mike Chapman, all made shortly before he reached me on the beach this afternoon. Unlike Mercer, there was no subtlety to Mike’s approach.

“Rise and shine, blondie. Get your ass out of bed. Where the hell are you two, anyway? This is 911, Coop. Urgent. Mercer needs you.”

He waited about fifteen minutes before dialing again. “Ignore me all you want, kid. I’m down with that. Just call Mercer pronto.”

As fast as I hit the erase function, the next message loaded. “Pat McKinney knows as much about how to deal with a rape victim as Al Sharpton would. Don’t blow this one on me.”

Someone must have cautioned Mike to back off me for an hour. Then another call. “This will rattle you, Coop. McKinney showed up at the office with his lover. He’s making this case a team project-benching you and sticking Ellen Gunsher in as a DH.”

Pat McKinney was involved in an affair with an assistant who’d been nicknamed “Gun-Shy” for her reluctance to take cases to trial. She was the daughter of a television journalist who’d been the kind of celebrity Battaglia liked to court until her career imploded because of a series of on-air temper tantrums. Gunsher had failed in a number of other positions, but the chief of the Trial Division had left home for her last year and sought to inject her in every possible new position in hopes of a fit.

“I’m warning you, Coop, you can’t taunt an alligator till you cross the creek, you know that?” In Chapman’s fifth call, he was imitating Ellen Gunsher’s Texas drawl, using the tired aphorisms with which the clueless prosecutor regularly peppered her conversations. Mike knew they would get under my skin, as they always did. “McKinney gets a hold of Baby Mo, and that half-breed Frenchman will think a West Texas rattlesnake has its teeth in his dick.”

I smiled instinctively but realized at the same moment that one of McKinney’s goals was to elbow out the talented members of the Sex Crimes Unit by taking advantage of my absence. That would give him complete control of the case.

I heard Vickee Eaton’s voice next. She was Mercer’s wife-also a detective-and one of my closest friends. She worked at DCPI, in the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information, with access to inside scoops since she would be providing the minute-by-minute updates to Commissioner Keith Scully. She was not-so-subtly leaning on me to help her husband, and that meant more to me than just about anything.

Now there were friendly calls from the women and men who worked with me in the unit. Catherine Dashfer, Ryan Blackmer, Marisa Bourges, and Nan Toth, each giving me the heads-up that a big case was on the table. Like the district attorney, I had developed an aversion to being the last to know when something happened in my professional orbit, and my good friends always covered my back. These were interspersed with a robocall from a political candidate, the new dry cleaner in the neighborhood surfing for business, an invitation to the resort season trunk show at Escada, and my local bookseller reminding me that the novels I had ordered were in stock.

I deleted them all and held the phone to my ear again. More of the same. Nothing I couldn’t ride out from this side of the ocean.

The voice on the next-to-last message was Rose Malone, Battaglia’s executive assistant. As close as she and I were, she was also my barometer to read his moods. The fact that she was working on a Sunday was unusual enough, and the edge in her voice meant she was calling on orders from him, not as a favor to me.

“Alex? It’s Rose. The Boss would like you to phone in immediately. We’re in the office-it’s Sunday afternoon around three. He knows you’re in France but he needs to talk to you.” There was a long pause. “Mr. Battaglia said he’s got only one question for you. He won’t tell me what it is, or I’d let you know, of course. Please get back to me.”

I slumped down against the thick pillows. Ugh. Now I was sorry I’d made the decision to take my phone out of the bag. One caller to go and then I could shut it off and figure out what to do.

“Alexandra Cooper?” Paul Battaglia had placed the call himself. I hadn’t been sure he knew how to do that, since he’d been spoiled for so long by Rose’s efficiency. I sat up straight, as though he was in the room with me. “There’s just one thing I want to ask you, young lady. Do you really think you can hold on to your job by ignoring everyone’s efforts to reach you while the goddamn sky is falling down over here?”

The sound of the receiver hitting the phone cradle as Battaglia hung up on me was jolting.

I got to my feet and walked to Luc’s desk to use the landline to call New York.

“Rose? It’s Alex.”

“I’ll put you right through to him.”

“Is it-?”

She didn’t take the chance of displeasing him further by talking with me.

“Alexandra?”

“Yes, Paul.”

“I got a mess on my hands and it’s your bailiwick. The mayor and most of the media want to know what you figure went on and I can’t-”

“Last I knew, neither you nor the mayor thought too much of my opinion. The archbishop seemed to have had your ear at the time.”

Battaglia didn’t like to be reminded of the few missteps he had made in his long career. I knew he wouldn’t respond to my cheap shot about the last major case I’d worked this winter. He’d rather ignore it.

“Mercer Wallace and his team would like some guidance from you,” Battaglia said. “And so would I.”

“I’m happy to help.”

“This case is more complicated than it looks on the surface. I’ve got the feds interested in the World Economic Bureau implications, the French president pushing me to let the perp out on his own recognizance, the West African leaders-at least those with democratic governments-screaming ‘foul,’ and the Latina Women’s Caucus holding a rally in front of City Hall to empower the victim. I’ve got the country’s pioneering sex crimes unit, but nobody’s here to run it, Alex. When did you make this a part-time job?”

“I’m yours 24/7, Paul. I get it.”

“Rose has you booked on an eight A.M. flight out of Nice in the morning. You’ll connect through Paris on the one-fifty-five P.M., which will have you at Kennedy at four-thirty-five. Port Authority cops will meet you and bring you to the office.”

“Excuse me?” I could hear Luc talking to the dog in the garden below the window. I was doing a slow boil at Battaglia’s presumptuousness.

“Talk to Rose. She’s got all the details. And I told them not to charge you for changing your flight.”

The district attorney put me on hold and Rose picked up. “I’m so sorry, Alex. He left me no choice.”

“Don’t be silly, Rose. I know it’s not your doing”

“There’ll be e-tickets for you at the airport.”

I held my tongue, instead of saying to her that I hadn’t yet decided whether or not I would change my plans. I wanted to get off the phone before Luc came upstairs.

“Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow.” I hung up, put Luc’s laptop back on the desk, and started to make myself comfortable on the bed.

Luc seemed pleasantly surprised to find me awake. “Everything calm, darling?”

“Guess so.”

He took off his clothes and went into the bathroom to shower. By the time he slipped into bed beside me, I had dimmed the lights and propped myself up on the pillows so that we could complete the conversation that Jacques Belgarde had prompted with his mention of what had happened at Brigitte’s house.

Luc took my face between his hands and kissed me-first my forehead, then on each cheek, and then my mouth. He was ready to make love, but I was in another time zone altogether.

“Did you tell Jacques about the guys on motorcycles? About the gun?”

Luc was nuzzling my neck. His muffled answer sounded like yes.

“What did he have to say about that?”

He picked his head up, so that our faces were just inches apart. “He assumes they were just ordinary thugs, looking to steal your jewelry or my sexy motorcycle.”

“But you saw the gun.”

“Maybe a gun, maybe a black glove, maybe a-”

“Maybe what-a baguette pointed at you? You were terrified, Luc, and you scared me to death, too. Something spooked you for real.”

He rested his elbow on the bed and held up his head with it. His other hand was stroking my hair. “Can we discuss this tomorrow?”

“After we talk about what happened between you and Brigitte today?”

He rolled over onto his back, clearly deflated by my cold response to his touch. “Okay, Alex, if that will make you happy.”

I didn’t know what would make me happy at this point, or any time in the immediate future.

“Tomorrow won’t work for me, Luc. I just spoke to Paul Battaglia. I’m going to fly home in the morning.”