Mike and Mercer were both jocks who followed college and professional sports with great enthusiasm. Mercerhad turned down a football scholarship at the University of Michigan to join die NYPD. I put my twenty-dollar bill on the bar and brightened only slightly when Trebek's final answer involved a Yankee legend.

"Field named for Native American tribe where Babe Ruth hit his longest home run."

I could think of rival teams in the long history of my pinstriped favorites, but nothing about the names of any of their fields that qualified in this category. Fenway and the Jake wouldn't do it. Mike wanted to double the stakes, but Mercer was as puzzled as I and we held our ground.

The music ticked away the time as all three of the contestants seemed to be stumped.

"I'm so sorry," Trebek said, ready to reveal the question.

"What is Sing Sing prison?" Mike asked, sweeping the three bills off the bar. "Home of the Sint Sinck Indians as well as the aforementioned Old Sparky. Yankees played an exhibition game against the inmates every year and the Bambino slammed the longest ball of his career there one time. Something like six hundred and twenty feet or more. You know why the state built the prison on the Sint Sinck land? 'Cause there was enough marble for the thugs to be put to work quarrying it-it was murderers and rapists who dug the stone that built Grace Church and New York University."

Mercer led us to our table, a corner in the sunken pit beneath the giant mouth of the long black dragon that was suspended from the ceiling.

"You know that I'm officially catching Talya's case, don't you?" I asked Mike.

"The lieutenant just gave me the news."

"I figure you could bring me up to speed over dinner and then I'll go back to the Met with you."

The West Side branch of our favorite Chinese restaurant was just across Broadway from the Lincoln Center complex, a popular dining spot for theatergoers.

Mike was crunching on a handful of crispy noodles as we waited for our order of hot-and-sour soup. Not only did the task force have to deal with the several hundred employees who were in the opera house on the day and evening of the murder, but they learned that more than two thousand other workers had been on the payroll within the last year.

"Each time we start to question somebody, seems he adds three names nobody gave us before. It's a union shop, and most guys who work there have had a father or uncle or cousin who got their foot in the door earlier. If someone's covering for a relative, we'll never get to first base."

It was rare to hear Mike sound so discouraged in the initial stage of an investigation.

"We've still got forensics to shed some light."

"The droplets of blood near the place she went down?" Mike said. "Preliminary run of the DNA looks like it's Natalya's. Autopsy findings included dried blood in her nasal cavity, probably from the same blow that knocked the contact lens out of her eye. Hair seems to be torn out of her scalp. That figures, too. Those don't connect to anyone else."

He slugged his vodka and gritted his teeth. "Serology lifted two different profiles from that white kid glove that was found near the bloodstains in the corridor. Remember, that man's glove I told you about? One profile from skin cells on the inside, another from the outer surface. For whatever it's worthy they don't match eachother. He might have something more to work with by late tomorrow."

"And the white hairs? Did you ask him to submit them to the FBI for comparison to the samples we got from Berk's office?" The more difficult processing of mitochondrial DNA still had to be outsourced to the FBI lab.

"Forget you ever saw Joe Berk's hair, Coop. The strands that were found with Galinova's body? They weren't human. The guys at the M.E.'s office didn't need the feds to tell them these came from some kind of animal."

I was at my desk at eight the next morning, structuring a grand jury presentation on the drug-facilitated-rape case in hopes I'd have the toxicology results before my witnesses got restless and bolted home to Canada.

By eight thirty, Mike was standing in my doorway, looking more together than he had last evening, now dressed in a navy blazer, pink oxford-cloth shirt, and neatly creased chinos.

"Have I forgotten that we were supposed to meet?"

He walked to my desk, took my unopened second cup of coffee, and began to drink. "Won't be the last time I take a bullet for you, kid."

"What now?"

"I got a call from the PC in the middle of the night. Had to be in his office at seven. And no, it wasn't for a promotion," he said, sitting opposite me and stretching his legs out in front of him.

"Something on the case?"

"Can you believe this dirtbag, Joe Berk? Gets his personal physician to check him out of the hospital around dinnertime and send him home with private-duty nurses. Calls the precinct and reports a theft from the apartment. Says the thief is either the niece, or more likely, whichever member of the department was present."

I thought of all the valuable artworks and antiques that filled the duplex. "What'd he say was stolen?"

Mike smiled as he answered me. "Three television sets from his bedroom."

"The monitors he had hooked up so he could watch women undressing?"

"Not the way he tells it. Just his entertainment center. Any theatrical mogul would have multiple screens to watch different presentations simultaneously. He didn't happen to mention that they were wired into somebody's bathroom."

"So how about Mona? Didn't you tell the commissioner we left before she did?"

"Mona denies ever being inside the apartment. LAB goes to interview her at midnight," Mike said, referring to the Internal Affairs Bureau detectives who would have been assigned to a complaint of official misconduct. "They pry her out of bed, away from her boy-friend. She says she was stopped at the door by me when she showed up at Uncle Joe's home to help her cousin through the night-and that I was inside with another woman, going through the place. Never let her inside."

"Tell Joe to check the nipples of that little device that dimmed the lights if he wants a few of Mona's skin cells." I kicked back my chair from the desk. "Were the monitors really gone? Did someone take them out after we left and before Berk got out of the hospital?"

"IAB searched the apartment. No sign of them."

"Well, I'll certainly tell the commissioner-"

"Your name never came into this. You were right about Mona paying no attention to you at all. She assumed you were another detective."

"I'll let Battaglia know as soon as he gets in."

"Let it go. Don't you see what Berk's trying to do? He just wants to jam it down my throat that he knows we're on to the concealed cameras. It's a great big 'fuck you' he's sending me, telling me to keep away from his private perversions. He could have said I took ten thousand bucks in cash from the apartment or some other valuable object. This is mainly to stick me under the PC's nose and remind me that Berk can play rough any time he wants to."

"And the PC?"

"C'mon, Coop. The commish had to stroke the old bird but he knows I'm not rolling over for a few lousy television sets. He just wanted to know how I got into the apartment and make sure my ass was covered on that."

The phone rang. "Alexandra? Dr. Kestenbaum here. I'm looking for a little legal guidance, if you don't mind. It's on Galinova."

"Sure. What's come up?"

"There's a gentleman who called last evening. He says he's cleared it with her estranged husband and he's going to claim the body and take it home to London for burial. I'm going to have written confirmation from the husband later today, but I just wanted to make sure it's okay with you and the police that I release the remains."