"Early to bed, early to rise. I didn't think you'd beat me in this morning," Mike said. "Hope you bought breakfast. I'm dead broke and starving."

I pointed at the bag on Laura's desk. "The two bagels are yours. What's with you and the money lately? I'm happy to float you a loan."

"Long story. I'll tell you next week. And I'd love to borrow a couple of hundred to get through till payday, if it's not a problem. I know my Jeopardy! tab is sky-high."

"Take whatever you need from my wallet," I said, turning my attention back to the computer screen. I had come in at seven-thirty to try to find the old case records of Emily Upshaw's drug arrest in the office archives. It was nine by the time Mike arrived.

"Any luck?"

"I don't think the system goes back far enough. Besides that, if it was her first arrest, it was most likely ACD'd." With an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, Emily's first brush with the law would have been put over for a six-month probationary period. If she had not been rearrested, the charges against her would automatically have been dismissed.

Mike walked behind my chair and picked up the phone. "Who's this? Yo, Ralph. That Upshaw woman who was autopsied yesterday, would you check if they did a fingerprint card? Yeah, I'll hold."

It was standard practice for the medical examiner to take prints of the deceased. In many cases there was an issue of identification, and in others they could be helpful in resolving criminal investigations.

"Excellent. Want to rush those down to Police Plaza? Send them to Ident, will you, please?" Mike said, hanging up the receiver. "Chances are whatever sleazeball lawyer stood up on her case never went the extra yard to have the prints expunged."

"So this will give us the name of the arresting officer."

"And maybe the guy she was hanging out with, if he was a codefendant in the case."

I swiveled back to my desktop. "Let's break down what we need to do. Is Scotty going to get property and tax records for the building on Third Street, so we can check the list of names of people who lived there twenty to thirty years ago?"

"I figured we'd ask him when he comes in-"

"You two talkin' about me?"

"Speak of the devil," Mike said, getting up to shake hands with Detective Scotty Taren. A thirty-year veteran of the job, he was a heavyset man, about Mike's height, with silver hair and a nose that looked like it had been flattened by one too many fists.

"That's what you'll be calling me, all right. I've gone over to the dark side," he said, not moving from the doorframe of my office.

"Good timing." I stood up and extended my hand to Taren, trying to pass him Dr. Ichiko's subpoena to appear before the grand jury, which I had just finished typing. "C'mon, I've got coffee and your favorite croissant. Take your coat off and let's sort out where we're going."

"No can do, Alex." Taren held up his fingers, crossed in the sign that wards off vampires and evil spirits. "I've been ordered not to take direction from you. I will grab the coffee, though. I'm freezing my ass off."

"What are you talking about?"

"The wicked prick of the east-your pal McKinney. Called me at home last night about the bones-in-the-basement case when he saw Dr. Ichiko on the late news. Had the same idea you did about hitting him with a subpoena. Lit into me when I told him you were running with it."

"Yeah? Well, that's exactly what I'm doing. Would you take this-?"

"He's pulling rank, Alex. Says he's deputy chief of the division and he hasn't yet assigned anyone to the case. I'm to scoop Ichiko up and bring him directly to McKinney. And your pet cop here, Mr. Chapman-well, it wouldn't be polite for me to tell you what I was told to do with him."

I picked up the phone to leave a message demanding to meet with Battaglia. Mike saw me put my finger on the button that hot-lined me directly to his assistant. He pushed my hand away and took the receiver from me, replacing it in the cradle.

"Pick your battles, Coop. I realize this gets your goat, but you're jumping to all kinds of conclusions about that skeleton before you even know who she is or what happened to her. McKinney wants to throw this whackjob doctor into the grand jury, let him. We got business to do. Scotty won't hold back on us."

"Just keep feeding me, Alex. I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

"Property records?"

"I started on it yesterday. We should have something by later in the week. We're getting calls from missing persons units all over the country. Once we send dental information, we should be able to eliminate some of those."

"Coop thinks your old case is connected to Sunday's homicide on the Upper East Side. You got time to sit down with me later on?" Mike asked.

"Sounds like a long shot, but I'll beep you when I get back here with Ichiko. Let me not be late for Mr. McKinney. I've never known him to be in before ten-thirty, but he promised a special arrival time just for me." Scotty Taren saluted me with his right hand as he turned back into the hallway.

"What's your day like?" Mike asked.

"Without Dr. Ichiko? I'm putting Annika Jelt, the Swedish girl, into the jury this afternoon, and helping one of the kids with a difficult witness this morning."

"Then I'll ski on down to headquarters and try to find Emily Upshaw's old paperwork. Check with you later."

Stewart Webster was a young prosecutor who had only been in the unit for five months. He was being supervised by one of my favorite colleagues, Ryan Blackmer, but the week before they had met a brick wall in the form of an uncooperative eighteen-year-old witness. I had asked them to have her in my office at ten.

Ryan got there first to tell me the facts. "You've got to have the last word about this because it's going to get press if it goes forward."

"Why?"

"Yolanda-that's the witness-she says he raped her on a moving subway train, just as it pulled into Times Square."

The location was a sure way to grab a headline, making every straphanger in town fear for her safety.

"But you think otherwise?"

"BFL."

Our informal unit code name for a big fat liar. "You couldn't break her?"

"Her older sister kept interrupting the questioning. Thought we were being too tough on her. I tried to keep her out of the room but she kept bursting back in."

"You figure any motive to lie?" There always was one in a false report, and discerning what it was could usually break the story.

"It might be she got caught by a transit cop. Somebody got off the train and reported some kind of sexual encounter near the rear of the car. When the cop approached, Yolanda stuck her head up and cried rape."

"Was he going to lock them up for public lewdness?"

"He tells me he never got that far-she started wailing first," said Ryan. "And then there's the fact that the sister came home from work early-around midnight-and Yolanda still wasn't in the house like she was supposed to be."

"What kind of job does the sister have?"

"Exotic dancer. The Pink Pussycat Lounge on Varick Street. That's how she supports her college education."

"Exotic? That's a lot classier than what I'd call it."

Webster knocked on the door. I waved him in and he stepped aside to introduce me to Yolanda and her sister, Wanda.

"Why don't you sit right here, Yolanda? And Wanda, I'm going to ask you to wait in the conference room until I'm ready for you."

"How long's this gonna be? I got school this afternoon," Wanda said.

"The more candid Yolanda is with us, the faster this will go." Wanda seemed to be pouring out of a costume from a late-night dance performance, and I couldn't begin to guess in what kind of class she was enrolled.

Wanda tilted her baby sister's chin up so their eyes met. "You tell the lady the troof now. Don't be wasting anybody's time when I got things to do."