"No. I should have, though. At the time, I didn't think she was a candidate. I still don't, but you never know."

"Handle that, Womack," McCord said, then he pointed to the new name on the chalkboard. "Okay, here's the last woman on today's list: Sheila Winters."

"The shrink?" Shrader wrinkled his nose. "Jeez, can you imagine making love to a shrink while she a.n.a.lyzes the underlying meaning of your every groan?"

"Can we knock off the suggestive commentary and s.e.xual references," Mack said testily. "What the h.e.l.l is going on in here this morning?"

Shrader and Womack exchanged a startled look. McCord had made a comment himself about Trish Lefkowitz. Law enforcement was a tough, male-dominated domain, and nothing was taboo among the "boys." As long as they didn't aim it at Sam, they were pretty much free to carry on even under the department's regulations.

"Littleton and I interviewed Dr. Winters," Mack continued, "but not as a potential suspect, so we didn't ask for an alibi. She's blond and attractive, and Manning liked attractive blondes. She's a long shot, in my opinion, but we'll pay her another visit. That brings us to the three males on the list," he concluded.

"The first name is George Sokoloff, the architect. Littleton checked out his alibi, and it's believable but not one we can completely substantiate."

"Motive?" Womack questioned.

McCord was quiet, thinking. "We'll have to check out his claims, but if he's telling the truth, he was the real talent behind several of Manning's successful projects. Manning had promised him full credit and major responsibility for the Crescent Plaza project. Maybe Manning told him he wasn't going to deliver on those promises."

Pointing to the last two names, Mack said, "That brings us to Jason Solomon, and his boyfriend, Eric Ingram."

"They're each other's alibi," Womack said; then he belatedly recounted what they'd learned about the two hundred thousand dollars cash Manning had used to buy a share in Solomon's play.

"Let's keep digging there," Mack said. "I think the path to our killer is probably going to be paved with greenbacks. We need to find out where the h.e.l.l Manning was getting his hands on enough illegal cash to not only cover his additional office and living expenses, but buy cars for himself, and a share in a Broadway play, to name just the few items we already know of. Based on the way he was spending it, he seemed to be confident there was plenty more coming."

Womack took a sip of his cold coffee, then put the cup back on the desk.

"Maybe he was peddling drugs?"

Mack shrugged. "Anything's possible, but I don't see him risking his own skin on anything that's dangerous and hands-on. I'd a.s.sociate him with something a little more stealthy."

"Theft? Receiving stolen goods?" Womack proposed. Mack shook his head.

"Same answer as drugs."

"Blackmail?" Shrader suggested. "Extortion?"

"That would be my bet, but I'm going to have our profilers take a look at him and see what they say. Leigh Manning probably has the answer, whether she knows it or not," he finished, walking away from the chalkboard. "I want to question her today, but I'm going to try to be polite and do it with Valente's approval. That's all for this morning," he said.

Sam had been waiting for those words. Grabbing her purse off the floor, she stood up and shoved her chair back into place.

"Let's start working the leads we have-" McCord added, and Sam headed for the door, keeping Womack and Shrader between McCord and her, hoping they'd block his view. She made it almost to the doorway before McCord's implacable order checked her in midstride: "Detective Littleton. I'd like a word with you."

CHAPTER 63.

Sam swore silently and turned, stepping aside to let Shrader and Womack pa.s.s her. With her handbag over her right arm, and her tablet against her chest, Sam reluctantly approached the man who had seated himself behind his desk and was looking at her in speculative silence.

"Why?" he demanded bluntly.

Several possible reactions flashed through Sam's mind, all of them excellent diversionary tactics and highly effective methods of revoking the power of a male who had it, and who intended to demonstrate it. She decided against all of them and opted for honesty. "Are you referring to the 'ma.s.sage' remark?"

He nodded silently.

"I wish I could tell you why," she admitted, "but I'm not completely sure. I was a little off balance. You've probably been in situations like ours before, but it's a little new to me."

"Did your remark about the ma.s.sage happen to relate to my hammering you twice about being a few minutes late?"

She thought about it, and nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry. I won't overreact again."

She saw it then-a glimmer of warm amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes. "Neither will I,"

he promised. In thoughtful silence, Sam considered his confusing answer and his amused expression. "By any chance," she said, "did you do that because you thought I was all dressed up for a big date?"

He gave her a look of utter disbelief-as if the question she'd asked was laughable. "Of course."

Sam bit back a smile and momentarily lost herself in his eyes, then she turned to leave.

Behind her, Mack picked up a pencil and said, "I haven't pulled surveillance off Valente. When I know he's at his office, I want to go and see him. I want to persuade him to let Leigh Manning talk to us-openly, without a lawyer obstructing every question I ask her. If I have to, I'll have her brought in here for questioning, but I'd like to do this in a more civilized fashion for a change.

You're my best hope for getting in to see Valente."

"Don't pin much hope on me," Sam said. "I crossed the line with him the moment I asked if he was there the night we told Mrs. Manning her husband was dead. He knew we would already know that, so when I asked him the question, he downgraded me to just another devious, conniving cop."

"Just out of curiosity, why did you ask him that?" Mack asked, doodling on the yellow tablet.

"I wanted to see if he'd try to lie."

Leaning back in his chair, Mack gazed thoughtfully across the room. "It's in his best interest to let us talk to Leigh Manning. If I can just get in to see him, I think I can convince him of it. If I have him brought in here, he'll come with a lawyer and we'll have an audience of eavesdroppers. What I have to say to him I can't say in front of anyone else."

Thinking, Sam shifted her tablet to her right hand and held it against her purse. "In order to persuade him to see you-particularly without his lawyer present-you'd need to convince him that you've had a huge change of heart after yesterday, and that it's final and authentic."

McCord's lips twisted in a sardonic smile. "He sent me a very clear warning yesterday through a friend of mine at Interquest. My friend says Mr. Valente is 'deadly serious.' "

Sam rolled her eyes. "Great." She brightened suddenly. "I know a way that might work, but you aren't going to like it."

"Try me."

"Give him back the best and only piece of incriminating evidence we have on him. Give him his note back."

"You're right, I don't like it. It's in complete violation of evidentiary procedure."

Tipping her head to the side, Sam said, "That's your position. His position would be that I confiscated something that didn't belong to us, and that we're keeping it in hopes of hanging yet another criminal charge on him and/or Leigh Manning. He knows that note is very valuable to us if we're going to continue trying to ha.s.sle the two of them. He would also know all about our 'evidentiary procedure,' because he's undoubtedly had to wait many times before we released his property back to him. Give him back the note," Sam said, "and you'll be making a very serious point with him."

For a moment, Mack hesitated; then he capitulated. "All right, but make a half-dozen copies and have them authenticated. Then call the senator," he added, "and tell him you may be late for c.o.c.ktails."

He knew! Sam realized. But then, of course, he would have made it a point to investigate her very thoroughly before letting her on the team. Mack was extremely thorough about everything he did. Including kissing. "Very well, Lieutenant," she joked. "I'll do that."

Behind her, he spoke again, his voice solemn and husky. "Sam-"

She turned. "Yes?"

"You are very beautiful."

Sam's heart slammed into her rib cage. "Isn't that funny-" she said in a breathless little laugh. "I was thinking that same thing about you."

McCord watched her walk away; then he reached for his phone and noticed his doodling on the yellow pad. The page contained only one word, written several times in different scripts. Mine.

CHAPTER 64.

At three o'clock, the police surveillance car following Michael Valente reported he'd returned to his company headquarters on Sixth Avenue, in midtown Manhattan.

At three-thirty-five, McCord and Sam opened the tall doors marked "Alliance-Crossing Corporation, Executive Offices," on the forty-eighth floor.

The receptionist's desk was made of thick gla.s.s and situated in the center of a vast, carpeted area surrounded with seating groups arranged at discreet distances from each other. Beautiful gla.s.s sculptures, some of them large and abstract, gleamed beneath spotlights at positions throughout the room.

Several office doors, all of them closed at the moment, opened onto the reception area. Two men and a woman were seated near one of them, talking quietly; another man was leafing through a magazine near the windows, his briefcase on the floor near his feet.

McCord presented his card to the receptionist and asked to see Mr. Valente.

As a rule, when presented with an official "calling card" from an NYPD detective, a white-collar employee responded with either alarm, curiosity, shock, or, occasionally, wariness. They did not respond with derision. The receptionist at Valente's headquarters was a notable exception. An attractive young woman in her early thirties, she looked at McCord's card, and then at McCord, and literally rolled her eyes in disgust before she got up and disappeared down a long hallway.

"I don't think she was very impressed," Sam joked.

"I noticed that," McCord said, then he lowered his voice almost to a whisper.

"If we get in to see Valente, he'll try to record the meeting for his own protection, in case this is some sort of trap. He's no novice with the games cops play. Don't say anything significant until I've persuaded him not to record it. If he doesn't believe what I tell him, or if he chooses revenge over caution, I don't want him to have a tape recording to give to his attorneys."

The receptionist returned promptly, followed by an impeccably groomed middle-aged woman in a pale pink wool suit. She had short dark hair and the erect bearing of a queen-or a headmistress. Her voice was beautifully modulated but businesslike. "I'm Mrs. Evanston, Mr. Valente's a.s.sistant," she enunciated. "Please follow me."

McCord and Sam followed her down a long hallway, through a pa.s.sage door, then down another hall to an unmarked door at the end. As she pushed the door open and stepped behind them, she gave McCord a brief, businesslike smile and said in her very proper diction, "Mr. Valente suggests that you attempt to impregnate yourself."

The open door was directly across from the main elevators.

"I knew that was going too well." McCord said shortly as they again headed down the corridor toward the main doors into Alliance-Crossing's executive suite. "You try it this time."

"I'll have to give him back his note to Mrs. Manning, or it's a waste of time."

McCord hesitated, then nodded.

The receptionist glared as they approached her desk again, but Sam smiled briefly at her. From her handbag, she removed a pen and Valente's note, which was still in an NYPD evidence envelope. Across the evidence envelope she wrote, "Enclosed is our ticket of admission. It's yours to keep whether you agree to see us or not. Please give us a few minutes. It's about LM, and it's urgent."

She handed the envelope to the receptionist with one of her own business cards, and said, "Please take this to Mr. Valente's a.s.sistant and hold it in front of her eyes if necessary so that she reads it at once."

The receptionist obviously knew Valente's a.s.sistant had ejected them out the back door, and she took her cue from that. With a dismissive shrug, she pushed the envelope and card toward a corner of her desk and started to turn to her computer screen.

"No problem," Sam said pleasantly, reaching for the discarded items. "I'll just a.s.sume you're busy and you'd rather I take these to Mrs. Evanston myself."

The receptionist swung around, picked up the envelope and card, gave Sam a scalding look, and marched off in the same direction she'd gone before. "Valente seems to inspire a lot of loyalty in his staff," Sam remarked as they sat down to wait.

McCord said nothing; he was a.n.a.lyzing the note Sam had written on the envelope, and he was smiling a little. She'd written four short sentences, but each one delivered a significant psychological payload: "Enclosed is our ticket of admission"... If you're a reasonable man, you'll realize that our returning this note to you is an enormous gesture of good faith.

"It's yours to keep whether you agree to see us or not"... There are no strings attached. We're not trying to coerce you, and we acknowledge in advance that we could not coerce you even if we tried.

"Please give us a few minutes"... " Please." There's a word you haven't heard from the NYPD, but we realize now that you're ent.i.tled to it.

"It's about LM, and it's urgent"... We are using Leigh Manning's initials because we, too, want to protect her privacy from whoever may see this note.

MICHAEL hung up the telephone and glanced at Mrs. Evanston as she handed him an envelope and a business card with Detective Littleton's name on it. "They're back," she said, scowling.

Impatiently, Michael reached for the NYPD evidence envelope; then he glanced at Littleton's handwritten message. He opened the envelope, removed the white envelope inside it, and unfolded the note he'd written to Leigh with the pears he'd sent her in the hospital.

It was harder than I ever imagined it would be to pretend we didn't know each other Sat.u.r.day night.

If he'd been trying to frame himself and Leigh for Logan's murder, he could not have chosen better phrasing, Michael thought with disgust.

He looked again at Littleton's words, and the underlying messages in her phrasing did not escape him, but the phrase that truly swayed him was the reference to Leigh and the word "urgent." If Littleton was smart enough to play on his feelings for Leigh, she was also smart enough to have kept copies of the note. On the other hand, copies were never as effective with a jury as an original, so she was taking a gamble by returning it-evidently with McCord's consent.

Michael hesitated, tapping the end of the envelope on his desk. The idea of letting McCord into his office made him grind his teeth. Wallbrecht's summation of McCord ran through his mind... Trumanti picked the wrong man for this job.

You can't send Mack after the wrong target and order him to stay on it for some self-serving reason... because Mack will not only go after the right target on his own, he'll bring him down and then he'll go after you... He's the best detective the NYPD has ever had, but he won't play politics, and he won't kiss anybody's a.s.s.

Personally, Michael couldn't stand the arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but Wallbrecht held him in the highest esteem, and Wallbrecht was the best in his business.

"Shall I call Bill Kovack in security and have him come down here and remind the detectives of the legalities involved in being on these premises without a warrant?"

"No," Michael said curtly. "Bring them in, but first bring a tape recorder in here."

She nodded. "I understand."

CHAPTER 65.