"That reminds me," Battaglia said. "Ellen Gunsher goes with you on some of that, okay? You're down Chapman, and he's the source of some friction there. I want Ellen to get some exposure on this. You got guns involved in the professor's shooting, you got the ex-cop who killed a kid with a gun. Ellen rides with you."

I smiled and told him that was fine before he dismissed the two of us.

"You must have delivered big to get that included in your package, Pat. Battaglia telling me to partner up with your girlfriend. What's your secret? You doing more than just lighting his cigars these days? Moved on to wiping his fingerprints off a murder weapon that you've hidden somewhere?"

He ignored me and pushed open the door to the men's room. It was his favorite way of ending our conversations.

Laura was gone, but she had taped a message on the tall head-rest of my desk chair:

Mercer's on his way to the 19th squad. He wants you to meet him there.

It was already close to six o'clock. I closed up my office and went out in front of the courthouse to hail a cab for the rush hour ride to Sixty-seventh Street.

I flashed my ID at the officer on the desk and before he could scan it, the sergeant called over his shoulder, "They're waiting for you on the second floor, Miss Cooper. Go right on up."

I'd spent many fruitful hours in the squad room over the last decade. I'd interviewed crime victims, interrogated suspects, puzzled over facts with detectives, and napped on the hard wooden bench behind the bars in the holding pens when short evenings had turned into long overnights.

Lieutenant Peterson looked up as I opened the door. He put his finger against his lips before I could greet him or the half dozen detectives standing around, and motioned me to follow him into the captain's office.

Mercer was behind the desk, ending a telephone conversation. He handed me a copy of the sketch of the Silk Stocking Rapist-I knew the image as well as I knew Mercer's features-and then gave me a copy of the official United Nations newsletter with photographs of recent receptions and conferences.

"I picked this up when I was waiting for the list of names this afternoon. Look at the delegate speaking at the December meeting on trade sanctions."

The man in the photograph looked remarkably like the composite drawing, except that he appeared to be in his mid-sixties. The hairline and round-shaped face, even the size of the nose and outline of the lips were identical to the rapist's physiognomy. The skin color was the deep ebony that witnesses had described.

"Who's your friend?"

"Sofi Maswana. Representative to the United Nations from Dahlakia."

"Enlighten me, Mercer."

"Like Eritrea, it was once part of Ethiopia. Broke off in the nineties and became an independent republic. Northern Africa, on the Red Sea, prized for its pearl fisheries."

"And Mr. Maswana?" I asked.

"He's downstairs with his number-one son, waiting to talk to us."

"I'm impressed. That's why all the guys look so wired out there?"

"They know something's up," Peterson said. "They haven't seen the pair yet."

"What do you know?"

"Maswana's a perfect gentleman," Mercer said, flipping open his notepad. "He's got business degrees from the University of London-don't go smirking there, Alex-and the Sorbonne. Sixty-eight years old. Been in the diplomatic corps for almost thirty years and has been posted here for six."

"What's the address?"

"Town house on East Seventy-fourth Street, between First and Second Avenues."

"I hope our profiler likes that for a 'jeopardy center.' Couldn't be better. What does he know at this point?" I asked.

"By four-thirty, INS confirmed visa information for other family members. There's a wife who splits her time between here and home, and five kids, all in their twenties. Three sons, two daughters. They've all come and gone from the States over the years. I got an agent to meet me at Maswana's office in the Secretariat building so I didn't have to use any ID that linked me to Special Victims. I thought immigration questions would be less threatening than telling him we were looking for a serial rapist."

I liked the sound of this. My adrenaline was pumping, just like the detectives who paced in the adjacent room. "Good start. What did he tell you?"

"The agent explained to Maswana the latest updates in airport security procedures for United Nations personnel. The government's working on a form of identification to create an express VIP service for all diplomats who've submitted to extensive anti-terrorist screening procedures. Then, it seemed natural we had to take him through the family members step by step."

"Was he cooperative?"

"One hundred percent. Help the good old USA, and grease the wheels to get through the airport more speedily. Mrs. Maswana, he told us, is here until April. Both girls are at college, one at Princeton and one at Georgetown."

"And his sons?" I asked.

"The youngest one is named after him. Sofi, Junior. He's twenty-three. Goes to graduate school at Harvard but he's been home since Christmas, doing an independent study project. Went back up to Cambridge just this past weekend, but Mr. Maswana will make him available for anything we need."

"Timing is everything," I said. "It puts him in the 'hood for the recent series, but he's a bit young for the 'scrip, especially going back to the earliest cases. How about the two older ones?"

"The middle son, David, is the one who's here with the father tonight. Twenty-seven years. He works in a family export business run by an uncle-Dahlakian pearls-on Fifth Avenue, near the diamond district. He's been in and out of town lots of times in the past five years."

"That fits with the subway stop on Fifty-first Street," I said, thinking of the MetroCard and the Forty-seventh Street hub for wholesale jewels that had stretched to the surrounding blocks.

"He's twenty-seven, lives at home with Mom and Pop. He's the spitting image of his old man. I'm not jumping to any conclusions but he looks awfully, awfully good, Ms. Cooper."

"How about his big brother?"

"Comes and goes as well. He'll be thirty on his next birthday. Has a wife back home, with twin daughters. Mr. Maswana says that Hugo's involved in private banking, but he hasn't been in the States since a brief visit last summer."

"Did you check that out with INS?" the lieutenant asked.

"It fits what they've got. All the Maswanas are present and accounted for, except Hugo."

"And he wasn't here when the pattern started up again, even according to the computer records, am I right?" I asked.

Mercer nodded.

"How'd you take the next step? How'd you tell Mr. Maswana you wanted to talk to his son about a criminal case?"

"When we'd come to the end of the general questioning, the INS agent and I stepped out for a minute. I checked with the lieutenant, who already had a team sitting on the town house, in case our subject was inside. So I went back in to the ambassador and told him the truth. I'm sure he wanted to put out my lights, but he was the model of diplomacy. Quiet, dignified, restrained. If the kid's inherited anything of his character, then I'm wrong to suspect him. Maswana said he'd produce his son at the precinct as soon as he could locate the young man, and he kept his word."

"So what's the plan?" I asked.

"Bring David up here. If we get really lucky, he spills his guts," Peterson said. "Otherwise, you try to develop some probable cause. Worst-case scenario, he sucks on a coffee cup, we keep him under surveillance tonight, and this time tomorrow we've got our DNA results."

Mercer Wallace went downstairs to bring David Maswana up to the squad, but the father was not so easily separated from his son. The three of them entered the cramped office in a row.