Shirley Denzig. No question about it. The psychotic young woman had focused her attention on me again and waited for me outside my building tonight, just as the detectives were trying to close in on her after news of her latest scam at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Renee was inside the garage. She had disappeared from my range of vision, and Zac’s barks echoed in the hollow space of the enormous underground parking facility beneath my apartment.

I speeded my pace. Denzig’s short legs and extra weight kept her well behind me. I looked back again, anxious to know whether she was still carrying the gun she had stolen from her father’s home.

When I ran down the garage ramp I could see the attendant standing to the side, his hand on the control button that would lower the heavy metal grating behind me once I was inside.

“Hit it now, Jorge,” I yelled to him. “Close the door!”

I sprinted the last six yards and ducked beneath the electrically controlled jaws of the security device as it ground to a close, and rolled onto the oil-stained floor of the garage.

Shirley Denzig landed against the structure with all her weight. Dull thuds resounded on our side as she kicked against the metal.

Jorge helped me to my feet and I ran to his office, grabbing the phone from Renee’s hand to explain to the 911 operator what to tell the cops.

Within minutes, we could hear the sound of the approaching sirens. Denzig’s frenzied banging had stopped. She had disappeared into the night.

Jorge was adamant. And scared. He refused to open the garage door when the police started banging on it because he could not see who they were and had no idea who or what I had been running from. The cops finally gave up and came downstairs through the entrance that led from within the building’s lobby.

“Would one of you guys mind taking my friend up to her apartment?”

“Are you kidding? You think we’re leaving you now?” Renee said. “Besides, I’d like to know what all the excitement was about.”

It took me ten minutes to explain the Shirley Denzig story to the police, who called in a description of her for transmission to other patrol cars in the area. They escorted us upstairs to our apartments, and arranged to meet me in the lobby at 7:45 in the morning, to make sure I got out of the garage without incident, so I could pick up Clem and get down to my office.

I ignored the blinking light on my answering machine and went in the den with Katrina Grooten’s file, holding the portable phone on my lap while I tried to calm myself and concentrate on the investigation. If my adrenaline had not already been fueled by Angel’s predicament, my episode with Shirley ensured that I would be unable to sleep.

I turned on the television to NY1, muting the sound, waiting to see whether they cut to live coverage of the unfolding drama in East Harlem.

Another hour passed, and then two. An out-of-control blaze in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx had spectacular flames that kept the local news crew engaged. My notes to myself were no longer making sense, the to-do lists I created for Mike were growing unreasonably long, and the relaxing weekend on the Vineyard seemed like it had ended a month ago.

At three-ten the phone rang.

“She’s fine. Go to sleep now, girl.” Mercer’s deep voice allayed my worst fears.

I exhaled into the mouthpiece, too upset to speak.

“Hey, we got a pretty good track record for saves. I sure as hell wasn’t gonna let that little punk break it for me. I’ll be in late tomorrow. Catch up with you guys in the afternoon.”

“Whatever you need. Thanks a million, personally, on this one. I’ve got to ask you, Mercer, did she go there because-?”

“She went there for exactly the reasons you think. And she liked it there fine, gettin‘ it on with Ralphie. Turns out he’s dealing crack from the apartment. Kept her pretty well tuned up since she arrived. Angel decides to pocket some vials before she’s ready to leave, to make a few bucks on the visit.”

“I see it coming.”

“He catches her, smacks her around. Now she wants to scoot, but she’s got a black eye and he doesn’t want to let her out. Angel threatens to snitch, and he’s got a reason to go ballistic, ‘cause he knows she’s called the police before, to have Felix locked up. She picks up the gun and points it at Ralphie, but he grabs it back and can’t think of any place to stick it except right up against that underutilized bundle of brains the child has. Neighbor hears screams, dials 911.”

Maybe this is the wake-up call Angel needed. Why couldn’t she come out of this like Dorothy in Oz and realize that at her age there’s no place like home?

“Look, Alex, I’m whipped. I’ll give you chapter and verse tomorrow. Angel’s being treated at Mount Sinai, Ralphie’s spending the night courtesy of my brothers in blue down at central booking. We recovered two guns, a load of ammo, and forty-two crack vials from his apartment. Everybody’s safe and sound. Tell Mr. Chapman to let go of your hand and go home. See you tomorrow.”

There was no point in telling Mercer that Mike hadn’t waited out the siege with me. I turned off the tube, rolled over on the sofa, and fell asleep.

In the morning, I showered and dressed, met the cops in my lobby, who took me to the garage so that one of them could ride with me over to Park Avenue. No sign of my nocturnal stalker, so I let him out, continuing on to pick up Clem from the hotel at eight. We found a space on Mulberry Street and I tossed the laminated NYPD parking plate on the dashboard.

We walked through the small asphalt-paved park that only twenty-five years ago had been the heart of Little Italy but was now the center of a greatly expanded Chinatown. Mike called it Tiananmen Square. Men and women dressed in black mandarin-style jackets bustled back and forth, carrying plastic bags from the Canal Street fish markets and the Division Street vegetable trucks. Kids from the local elementary school played kickball. Nobody was speaking English.

As we emerged from the gates on the Baxter Street side of the park, the sound of the screeching children was replaced by the chants of about twenty adults who were marching in two rows, up and down the length of Hogan Place. Some of them were carrying posters and placards, hand-lettered with an assortment of slogans. All of them were shouting in unison.

“It’s safe and sane! End Battaglia’s reign!”

I could read the signs now as we approached the corner. It was a group from the American Alliance for Sexual Freedom, protesting my arrest of their sadomasochistic spelling whiz, Peter Kalder. A few had their organization logo labeled on large cardboard signs while others had printed more original thoughts:WHIP SOME SENSE INTO ALEX COOPER! andCOOPER-SHOW SOME RESTRAINT-STAY OUT OF OUR BEDROOMS! Stick drawings of me, cat-o‘-nine-tails in one hand and cuffs dangling from the other, would have pleased Mike Chapman immensely.

Prosecutors and cops were weaving their way among the demonstrators, visibly annoyed at having to maneuver around the rowdy cluster to get to the office entrance.

“Shit.” I stopped in my tracks when I saw aPost cameraman waiting opposite the building. This was a good morning to avoid a photo opportunity, obviously arranged by the alliance. “Do you mind if we go in through the back door of the Tombs?”

“Whatever’s easiest for you,” Clem said, standing on tiptoe to try to read all the comments. “I never realized there was a unit like yours, just specializing in sexual assault cases. You must walk a tight line, trying to keep everybody happy.”

“I gave that idea up a long time ago. Most people have no reason to know we exist until the unimaginable happens to them or a loved one.”

“Doesn’t this make the district attorney angry with you? He’s elected, isn’t he?”