We walked ten or fifteen feet into its mouth, and the temperature dropped noticeably. There were ghostly figures of bronze bacchanals and carved Asian dragons, heavy pieces of furniture and fluted columns. Most of these neglected or unwanted artworks had been dressed in plastic shrouds and left to guard this useless tunnel.

Mike used the point of his pen to lift the covers and poke around the objects.

“Even art goes in and out of vogue, Mr. Chapman. Something that was all the rage for collectors a century ago gets cycled out. Some of the greats have staying power, but-”

“Anything Egyptian in here, Mr. Poste?”

“I’d be surprised if there isn’t. We can light this for you more properly when you come back. There are a couple of areas like this which just aren’t the first priority to be fixed up with our limited funding.”

Our walking tour continued until we had circumnavigated the entire museum basement, peering into storerooms and skirting empty corners. Erik Poste wasn’t wrong; it would pay to come back here with reinforcements in serious numbers. Perhaps we could convince the chief of detectives to let us have some cadets from the Academy to scour the vast space for us.

We left our three escorts near the front door, where a uniformed guard was waiting to let us out. The museum had closed at five-fifteen, and it was just after seven in the evening.

Even though it was dusk, the Fifth Avenue steps remained a place for groups of all sorts to congregate. Three rappers were doing moonwalks at the bottom of the staircase, a juggler was trying to keep six balls in the air while playing the harmonica, and a bespectacled kid was reading aloud fromUlysses to the accompaniment of her friend’s guitar.

We stayed to the far south and descended the three tiers. “You think you could actually kill someone in that museum?” I asked.

“I’ll let Dr. K. figure that one out. You could sure as hell stick her there to rest for a few months without any interruption, except by chance. Or probably even have the coffin moved in and out, without anybody being the wiser. I never gave any thought to how big that place is. Kind of like an iceberg below the main display floors.”

“Millions of objects that never see the light of day.” I pulled my cell phone from my handbag and dialed Nina’s hotel, leaving her a voice mail about where to meet us for dinner.

Mike and I were the first to arrive at the restaurant on Second Avenue near Sixty-fourth Street.

“Buona sera,Signorina Cooper. You going to be four tonight?”

“Yes, Giuliano. Do you mind if we borrow your office for a few minutes?”

He laughed and told Adolfo to unlock the door at the foot of the staircase. Mike and I went down and turned on the small television set, switching the channel to find Alex Trebek. One of our common bonds was a devotion to the Final Jeopardy! question at the end of the daily quiz show. For the decade throughout which we had worked together, Mike had found a way at almost every crime scene or station house to get to the tube in time for the last question, to bet on it against me and against Mercer.

“Tonight’s category, ladies and gentlemen, is ‘The Cinema,’” Trebek said, stepping back to reveal a giant screen with those two words printed on it.

There were some topics I didn’t challenge Chapman on, and others that were completely my domain. This was one we both knew and loved.

“Twenty dollars.”

“Dinner, Coop. For four.”

“You’re on.”

“Tonight’s Final Jeopardy! answer is: William Shatner starred in this movie, filmed completely in the universal language Esperanto.”

The nauseatingly cheerful music bounced along in the background as two of the three puzzled contestants stared blankly at the board. The only one of them who ventured a guess at a title was wrong, and I told Chapman that I didn’t have the faintest idea. Before Trebek read the studio audience the question, Chapman tweaked the back of my neck. “And a good bottle of wine with that dinner, too. Right, blondie?”

I laughed and swatted his hand away. “Anything you say. Just let go of me.”

“What isIncubus? Nineteen sixty-five. A man possessed by demon spirits. Only Shatner outing worse than that one isBig Bad Mama, ” he said, shutting off the TV and walking out of the office, “where you actually get to see his pubic hair in one of the scenes. Chow time.”

“And you make it so appetizing, too.”

Fenton had our drinks ready at the bar, where Mercer had greeted Nina as they were waiting for us to come back upstairs.

“Let’s have some fried zucchini for the table while we’re talking,” Chapman told Adolfo. Nina embraced Mike, whom she had not seen in several months, and Mercer finished telling her that Vickee was less than two weeks away from delivering the child Mike referred to as “our baby.” He was the first on our team to start a family, and the significance of that was not lost on either Mike or me.

“Cheers!” We clicked glasses and caught up briefly before Mike asked Mercer to tell us what he had learned about Katrina Grooten.

“I couldn’t sneak the folder out so I just made some notes. The sergeant was sitting right next to the Xerox machine.”

“Whose case?”

“Cathy Daughtrey’s.”

“No wonder I don’t know about it.” I’ve tried several times to have her transferred out of the squad. She had burned out somewhere along the way, and never went the extra mile needed to solve the difficult cases. She would do anything possible to avoid taking direction from me or from Sarah Brenner, because it always meant more legwork than she wanted to do.

“Happened almost a year ago, just about this time of night. Monday, June eleventh. Katrina Grooten, twenty-nine years old. Employed at the Cloisters.

“Sixty-one says she left the museum a little before eight and was walking her bicycle down the steep path, through the park, on her way home. That was a small apartment near Dyckman. Says a gunman pulled her off the path behind a rock, made her undress, and raped her at gunpoint.”

“She give a ‘scrip?”

“Male black. Tall, slim.”

“That’s it?”

“Face was covered with a ski mask. Couldn’t see anything but the skin color on his hands and the back of his neck. That’s why she refused to pursue the matter. Went to the hospital to be examined. Cathy interviewed her there. But Grooten herself didn’t see any point in coming to look at photos ‘cause she couldn’t make an-”

“But DNA? Forget the corporeal ID.” I was impatient to know why I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to talk Katrina Grooten into letting us investigate and build the case.

“He didn’t ejaculate. No seminal fluid. No DNA.”

“Did we have any other cases like that in the park? Any other crimes to which we could have linked this one?”

“A couple of robberies with a guy who used a ski mask. No arrests, no suspects.”

“Witnesses? Nobody coming from or going to the museum?”

“The Cloisters is closed on Monday. Just a few of the staff working there. She thinks she was one of the last ones to leave.”

“Any record in the file that Cathy called me before closing out the case?” I believe in getting every victim into our office to be talked to by a member of the legal staff of our unit, whether or not it is a long shot, to see if there is any way to develop the facts into a stronger case or determine if the crime is the work of a serial offender or a convicted rapist on parole.

“Nope. Just EC’d it and the boss signed off on it.”

“Exceptional clearance? And she didn’t bother to call me for approval?”

“Your best friend here likes to think she runs the NYPD, and not just my life,” Chapman said to Nina, trying to make sense of this conversation for her. “In case you don’t realize it, Coop, a lieutenant can actually close out a case without your permission.”