“Who else, besides Katrina, was involved with your work here in New York?”

She took a deep breath and shook her head. “You find out who killed her, and then I’ll give you specific names. I can’t put anyone else in harm’s way until you do.”

I placed my hand on top of her book. “It’s not just their help we need. How can we know whether or not they’re in danger if we don’t know who they are?”

Clem stood firm. “Let me sleep on it. Let me hear what you know and with whom you’ve already talked.” She raised her hand to cover her mouth, stifling a yawn, then stood and began to walk around the room, as if she were trying to shake off the jet lag. In London, it was well into the early hours of the next day.

“We should save some of this until the morning,” I said, signaling Mike to cut off the questioning.

“These partners of yours, how do you communicate with each other?”

Clem yawned again and I tapped my watch face as I looked at Mike and Mercer.

“So if we let you get some sleep, you game to come down to Alex’s office with us in the morning? Fill in the rest of these blanks?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Clem walked us to the door of her suite, talking as she did.

“You must miss your job terribly,” I said, remembering that Clem had told me she had given up the chance to work in her field, temporarily, for the less controversial role of working in the exquisite refurbished Round Reading Room of the British Museum.

“I had my reasons,” she said, grinning. “It so happens that lovely library is directly above the African galleries. I’m not without my allies there. We’re still stirring up trouble.”

I arranged to pick her up at the Park Avenue entrance to the hotel in the morning, on my way down to the office, and we said good night.

“Ten-fifteen? I’m ready to eat the ferns in the lobby,” Mike said. “Anybody for dinner at Lumi?”

We drove the short distance to the chic little restaurant on the corner of Seventieth Street and Lexington Avenue, and Mercer followed in his car. Lumi herself took us to the corner table, next to the maître d’s stand, after I told her we needed a quiet place to talk about an investigation.

Over drinks we discussed Clem’s information and came up with a plan for the following morning. I would draft an e-mail for her to send to a group of museum employees, to see whether anyone could be drawn out to talk to Clem about Katrina.

Mercer and I had our favorite pasta-cavatelli with peas and tiny bits of prosciutto-while Mike took forever to work on the osso buco he ordered whenever we ate there. While we were waiting for our espresso, Mercer’s beeper went off. He excused himself and walked up the two steps from the restaurant door to the sidewalk.

He came back to the table to tell us he had to leave.

“It’s your girl, Alex. Angel Alfieri, the fourteen-year-old.”

The china cup clattered against the saucer as it dropped from my fingers. “They found her? Is she okay?”

“She’s alive. It wasn’t Felix-the cabdriver-that she went off with. Looks like she holed up with Ralphie, to make Felixand her girlfriend jealous.”

“Thank-”

“Don’t thank anybody yet. We got a hostage situation. She’s in Ralphie’s apartment, up on Paladino, and he’s holding a loaded gun to her head.”

I pushed away from the table and stood up to leave. Just as quickly, Mercer clamped a hand on my shoulder and I dropped back into my seat.

“I’ll baby-sit. Do whatcha gotta do,” Mike said.

Mercer was a member of the hostage squad, an elite group of detectives selected and trained to negotiate with some of the most unstable criminals in the most life-threatening situations. They responded to bank robbers with automatic weapons, holding dozens of citizens after a silent alarm trapped them at the crime scene; domestics in which a psychotic or intoxicated husband had a butcher knife to his wife’s throat; and political disputes when dissidents invaded a consulate or residence. The cops chosen for the assignment came from every unit in the department. In addition to their regular squad duties, they were on call for these emergency situations whenever they arose.

Mercer had the intelligence, patience, and personal skills for the job. I had watched him coax deranged felons and jealous paramours out of their weapons several times in the years I had known him. Mike’s temperament made him completely unsuitable for the job. He had no tolerance for a perp’s threats or demands, and a shorter fuse than even I possessed.

We both watched as Mercer headed out the door to try to save the life of a kid who had jumped into water and was in way too deep over her head. I remembered that she had fabricated the forcible rape charge when Felix told her that he had had better sex with her girlfriend, who had Ralphie’s name tattooed on her rear end. Undoubtedly, this was Angel’s opportunity to get back at both of them by throwing herself at Ralphie.

“C’mon. Time to go home. We got a lot to do tomorrow.”

I walked to Mike’s car, unable to focus on the next day’s work, completely distracted by the thought of the young girl looking into the barrel of a gun and wondering whether I had helped to drive her there.

“One favor?” I asked.

Mike pursed his lips and gave me a firm, “No.”

“Ride up First Avenue, please? I swear I won’t get out of the car. I just want to know whether her mother’s out there. I’d like to see if she needs anything.”

“What you really want to see is the kid, and you know you can’t. Sticking you in her face would be like grinding sand in an open wound. I’ll humor you, blondie, but only so I don’t have to listen to you whine.”

We reached the projects a few minutes before midnight. There was a police barricade at each end of the block. A lieutenant with a bullhorn was standing on the sidewalk, and Emergency Services had set up klieg lights that were directed at a window on the sixth floor. A small crowd had gathered on the pavement, behind the row of wooden horses guarded by uniformed cops, who were encouraging the onlookers to move along. An ambulance was double-parked at the curb in case the bargaining process was unsuccessful.

I searched for Mercer among the group closest to the lieutenant in charge, but I couldn’t find his head. That was a good sign. He had probably been sent into the building to try to soothe the angry young man and convince him to open the apartment door and release his captive.

“There’s nothing to see. It’s a work in progress, Coop. Nobody hurt. They’ve got the right man for the job.” Mike reached over and took my hand off the dashboard, squeezing it tightly as he did.

Three more officers came running from the opposite side of the street, passing in front of us to sprint to the building. They each wore the hostage squad uniform, a short black bomber jacket with a bright red logo emblazoned across the back:TALK TO ME. They were followed at a more leisurely pace by a uniformed boss, a beefy guy with a captain’s shield pinned above a stack of ribbons and medals.

“Hey, Chapman, whaddaya think? You’re at some goddamn drive-in movie with your date? Get your ass out of the car and make yourself useful. Send the bimbo for a cup of coffee.”

The captain slammed his fist down on the hood of the car, yelling across the top of it to a lieutenant standing closer to the building. “Hey, Bannerman. You know Chapman here? Homicide? Throw him in the mix.”

Mike opened the car door to protest. “I’ve been rejected for hostage work more times than you’ve gotten laid. I’m no good-”

“Forget negotiating. The kid’s got a gun in there. Who the hell knows which way this thing is gonna turn. Last month out in Queens the team wound up with a homicide/suicide. All the smooth talk in the world didn’t help. Perp shot his captive in the head, then opened his mouth and plugged himself. We’re taking every bit of backup we can get at this point. Act like a cop, not a prima donna. Yo, Bannerman, put this guy to work.”