"I'd say almost ten years. I'm forty-six now, a few years older than Lola was. Met her the first time at the Aspen Institute. We were each delivering a paper at one of those summer panels. Seemed we had a lot of the same interests, professionally."

"How about personally?" Chapman jumped ahead, trying to speed the process of getting some body fluid to Bob Thaler's office. It wasn't subtle.

"Were we ever intimate, Detective? Yes, but it's been quite a while. The summer we first met, Lola and Ivan were separated. She had walked out on him the first time he lifted a hand to her."

I tried to recall the history of her marriage, as Lola had detailed it to me during our first few meetings. She had never mentioned any formal separation, but all the statistics about domestic violence supported the probability that several had occurred. In most abusive situations, there are seven failed elopements-seven unsuccessful efforts to split from the abuser-before a woman completes the move.

"How long did your relationship last?"

"The better part of a year. Long distance and infrequent, at that. I went to Paris to work on a project that just opened to the public last year. Are you familiar with it? There were extensive ruins that had been built on top of several times throughout the centuries, right at the front of the plaza where Notre Dame stands. Lutetia, it was called. The original Roman village that was settled on the He de la Cite in medieval times."

Interesting, I thought. Nan had likened Blackwells' midriver positioning to the He de la Cite, too.

"Lola was teaching at Columbia then. Used to find any excuse she could to fly over to France. Field trips, student holidays, academic seminars on international government. Boondoggles of every kind. I had a charming flat on the Left Bank, near the university, between Luxembourg Gardens and those amazing bookshops along the Seine. We spent some great weekends there."

"Ah, we'll always have Paris, right, Shreve?" Doing his best Bogie, Mike couldn't help taking a shot at the romantic reverie. The professor didn't catch the reference. "What broke it up?"

"Lola and Ivan had gotten back together. And I'd fallen madly in love with a Frenchwoman from Toulouse. Six months later I was married. I'm a French citizen now, in fact."

"So your wife lives here with you?"

"No, she doesn't. Giselle's in France. The marriage lasted eight years. But our divorce is quite amicable, and you're very welcome to talk to her, if that's what you mean. We have two young children, whom Giselle wanted to raise in her country. And she wanted to finish her degree at the Sorbonne, too. She was my student when we married, so that meant she had to drop out of the classes. She'll finish her studies and graduate in the spring."

"But she knew Lola Dakota?"

"Certainly. Whenever Ivan and Lola traveled to Europe, the four of us spent time together. It was no problem for Giselle. I'd been single when I hooked up with Lola. But I don't think Ivan ever knew anything about our relationship. Open-mindedness is not his strong suit.

"She and I always remained close. I'm to blame, if you will, for inviting her to come to King's to teach. I assumed she would have a much greater opportunity to become a department head here. Fewer entrenched alumni to battle with over her unorthodox or, shall I say, more innovative ideas, less heritage to have to embrace than back at Columbia. Lola could rub some of the traditionalists the wrong way."

"How about you? D'you ever battle with her? Get on the receiving end of her tough streak?"

"I take it you've been talking to some of the students. Lola Dakota-the professor-was a perfectionist. If these kids weren't applying themselves according to her standards, she was ruthless." He was somber now. "My department had little to do with hers, in general. But because of the Blackwells project, many of the interns from King's worked under our joint supervision. We planned a number of courses that we cotaught, combining the anthropological features of the island with the politics of the period.

"But I can't remember fighting with Lola about anything significant. On which end of the project should the dig begin? Should a student be graded a B, or did we throw in a plus or minus? How much time should be spent talking to descendants of some of the inhabitants?"

"When's the last time you slept with her?"

"She'd admire your directness, Detective," Shreve said with some hesitation. "More than I do. Eight years ago, to be exact. In her cheap hotel room on Boulevard St-Germain-des-Pres. "And it was good for me, if you want to know that, too."

I tried to get us back on course. "Did you know a girl named Charlotte Voight, Professor?"

He straightened in his chair and put both hands on the back of his neck. "Sad case, Charlotte. She was in one of my classes last spring, when she suddenly walked away from all this." He looked back at me. "Now, she was a source of disagreement between Lola and me. I thought the girl had a lot of intelligence to be channeled, and a creative imagination."

"With or without the aid of hallucinogens?"

"Her drug use was no secret, Detective. But when she was clearheaded and engaged, as I think she was in my classwork, I thought we had a chance of saving Charlotte. Lola didn't see it that way. Came down on her hard. Some of us thought that helped drive the child off, send her over the edge, emotionally speaking."

"What do you think happened to Charlotte?"

"I just assume she went home to South America. Probably wandered around Manhattan until she ran out of contacts to keep her high, then packed her bags and went home." He brightened as he spoke his next thought. "Charlotte will come back round, Ms. Cooper. I'm sure of it. Hungry to learn, anxious to be accepted, though she didn't like to show that side to people. She's not the first college girl to take a breather."

Mike was back to Lola Dakota. "Lola must have told you what went wrong with her marriage, didn't she?"

"Ivan's right hand, so far as I know. And occasionally his left. He beat her, Detective. And once she realized there could be life without him, and that his rages weren't confined to days of the month that she could predict and avoid, she was ready to walk away from it."

"Another man?"

"I hope so."

"Any guesses?"

"I'll let you know if I come up with any. Skip Lockhart, maybe. Lola seemed to be spending a lot of time with him. Perhaps even President Recantati," Shreve said, finishing his cup of coffee and recapping the empty container with its plastic lid. He laughed, adding, "But Lola would have been on top in that arrangement. He seems a bit passive for my old friend. She was vying for his attention from the moment he arrived, so I wouldn't put anything past her. Still waters and all that."

"What do you know about Ivan's business dealings?"

"That I wanted to be at arm's length from them, Detective. I don't know what he was up to, but Lola thought he'd end up in jail."

"Was she still getting money from him?" Chapman was thinking, like I was, of the shoe boxes full of cash that had been stashed in her closet.

"I don't think he'd give her a nickel, and I doubt she would have accepted anything from him. She wanted out. Over and out."

"What attracted you to the Blackwells Island project, Professor? Seems that some of you who were involved have favorite parts of the place that were of particular interest." I was curious about what drew Shreve to this site.

"Like Lola, I was attached to the work planned on the southern end, everything from the original mansion, which is about midpoint, down to the lower tip."

"The Smallpox Hospital, the City Penitentiary? That area?"

"Precisely. It was Lola who first brought me to the island, the same summer we met in Aspen. I was on my way back to Paris, and New York was hosting one of those parades of tall ships. The harbor was filled with magnificent old sailing vessels that evening. Lola packed a picnic and we took the tram over. She told me it would be the very best vantage point from which to see the schooners sailing up and down the East River, and the fireworks exploding above the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge. In those days, you could traipse on foot right down to the southern end.