The DeadHouse

Mercer and I smiled at each other. There were categories in which we didn't stand a chance against Mike, but we could both hold our own at the movies. "Fifty bucks."

"I'm in," I said to Mercer.

Mike was reluctant. "Probably some dumbass song from a Disney flick. Make it twenty."

Mercer held his ground and Mike yielded.

"Here's the music," Trebek said. The introduction to the song played, and the Main Ingredient did the opening lines of "Everybody Plays the Fool." Mercer took my hand and started to dance with me as Trebek gave the clue.

"Tonight's answer is, the Oscar-wi

Mike protested as Mercer and I danced around him. "That's a really misleading category. What did the guy win the award for?" Mercer and I answered at the same time. "Supporting actor." "We'll split the pot on this one, Ms. Cooper, okay?" Mike, like the three contestants, did not know the right question. "That's not cricket. You two know more about Motown than I know about the Civil War."

Mercer told Trebek that the question was "'Who is Cuba Gooding Junior?' Now," he continued, turning to Mike, "Mr. Chapman, show us the money." We each took twenty-five from Chapman and began to open our presents.

"For you, Detective Wallace," I said, passing a wrapped package to him. He ripped at the paper and smiled when he lifted the cover off the box to reveal a photograph in an antique sterling-silver frame. I had asked the mayor to inscribe the picture of himself with Mercer and his father taken at City Hall, when Mercer had received an award for his work on a prominent art dealer's murder. It had been taken the week he had gotten out of a wheelchair and was walking without assistance, and the expression on Spencer's face told the whole story.

I gave Mike his gifts. First was a complete set of Alfred Hitchcock videos accompanied by gift certificates for two tickets to his local movie theater good every month of the coming year.

For each, I had sketched an IOU for a plane ticket to the Vineyard, with di

They had a bag full of surprises for me, including a little red voodoo doll, with a set of pins, labeled with Pat McKi

The last box was a tiny one, wrapped in shiny gold foil with white ribbon, with a card that read, For our favorite partner.

Inside was a pair of cuff links. Each was a miniature blue and gold NYPD detective shield, one bearing Mike's number and the other Mercer's. I took the navy silk knots out of the French-cuffed shirt I was wearing with my blazer and jeans and replaced them with their gift.

Mercer drove us across town to West Forty-ninth Street, where I had reserved an eight-thirty table at Baldoria's. The bouncer held open the door and we were greeted inside by Frank. Since the chic downtown offshoot of Rao's had opened last year, it was one of the hottest tables in town. The great buzz, the classy brown and white decor, the same superb jukebox selections, and the outstanding food combined to make the place an instant success.

Bo Dietl was at the bar. He had retired from the police department after solving the Palm Sunday Massacre in Brooklyn several years back, but he was a dogged private investigator who seemed to keep tabs on every crime that went down in Manhattan.

"Buy them a round," he told the bartender. He had Mike corralled in a bear hug as he got off his stool to offer it to me. "What are you drinking?"

"Make it doubles all around. We had a rocky ride this afternoon." The story of the tram shooting became more embellished with each telling. Bo was chewing on his cigar as Mike described how he knocked me to the ground and had to cover my mouth because I was screaming so frantically.

"I didn't scream. I was so terrified, I think the words froze in my throat."

Bo asked what we were working on and Mike explained where we were in the Dakota case. "Did you remember to call Professor Lockhart this afternoon?" he was reminded to ask, turning to me.

"Yes, from the hospital, when the hearing was over. He lives just north of the city, in White Plains. If we drive up there tomorrow morning, he'll be happy to talk with us."

Bo kept looking over my shoulder, at the table closest to the end of the bar. "Guess the case they had in Jersey is falling apart."

"Not that I'm aware of-"

"Hey, Alex. The Bo reads the newspapers, y'know." He had a Bob Doleish way of talking about himself in the third person. "That guy, sitting with the broad with all the hair poofed up on top of her head? That's Ivan Kralovic, isn't it?"

My head snapped in the direction Bo's cigar was pointing. The face of the man in the booth was obscured by an upswept bouffant hairdo, but the retired detective kept talking. "Heard it in the car on the radio when I was on my way over here. Si

I could see Kralovic clearly now as he leaned in to cut the thick veal chop on the plate in front of him. Ivan's mourning period for Lola had ended.

21

"We'll be back another time," I said, kissing Frank good-bye and trailing out of the restaurant behind Mercer and Mike. "It's not the food, it's the company." The last thing I needed was Kralovic telling his lawyer I tried to talk to him when I ran into him at di

"I had a real craving for Peking duck, anyway," Mike said, opening the rear door of Mercer's car to let me in. We drove across town to Shun Lee Palace, and I stopped in the phone booth to try to reach Paul Battaglia to tell him what had happened.

After eight rings, I remembered that he was out of town until New Year's Day. Reluctantly, I dialed Pat McKi

It would have been courteous, not to mention useful, for McKi

"Yeah, he fired Bart Frankel today. It'll be all over the papers tomorrow morning. Ivan's lawyer made a pretty compelling argument to the judge this afternoon that his client only went along with the sting because he knew in advance exactly what was happening, and wanted to be able to argue entrapment to the court."

"You mean entrapment as a defense to hiring someone to kill his wife?"

"Yeah. He's saying the tapes will prove the whole operation was Si

It had never occurred to me that Lola's husband might have any kind of viable defense to the charge of trying to kill her. But Si