"You talk to her yet?"

"She's in what the doctors call a controlled coma. One that they've medically induced. They don't want her to wake up till they've got the pain management under control. Then they'll assess the brain damage."

What Battaglia didn't like discussing about sex, he more than made up for when the subject was financial fraud.

"Don't run off, Alex. He's quite a character. You have any idea what Joe Berk is worth today?"

"Not a clue."

"He makes the rest of the Fortune 500 look like amateurs. I'd say he and his brother built themselves an empire worth twenty-five billion dollars. Real estate, theatrical properties, airplane leasing, almost as many hotels as Hyatt and Hilton combined. It's a phenomenal operation."

"Why did you start an investigation of the Berk Organization, boss?"

"Somebody snitched-brought me in some good information."

"About Joe?"

"Joe and his brother, Izzy, they were inseparable. Izzy was the real brains of the family, plus he didn't have Joe's big mouth. They shared one common trait."

"What's that?"

"They hated the taxman. I'm not talking about shipping your purchases to an out-of-state address or minor scams like that. Izzy Berkowitz might be the shrewdest guy who ever took on the feds, back when the two of them started making money, more than forty years ago. He was doing leveraged buyouts in the 1940s, before anyone ever heard of them. Izzy had more money hidden offshore than Captain Kidd."

"Legally?"

"That's the issue. What do you know about 1740 Trusts?"

Ask me anything about the variety of deviant acts that comprised section 130 of the Penal Law and I could cite chapter and verse as well as draw diagrams, but this was as foreign to me as Swahili.

"Never heard of them. 1740-the year?"

"No, 1740 of the IRS trust and estate provisions. In the 1960s, Congress passed a set of laws that basically ended the tax benefits of foreign trusts for residents of the U.S. To get around the legislation, Izzy dreamed up a scheme that he got going down in the Bahamas. As long as he could prove to Uncle Sam that a foreign citizen actually set up the trust and kept a legal presence in the islands, he wasn't subject to U.S. taxes. Izzy found some friendly local, put him in business, and used the millions generated in cash from that general partnership to lend it to the other Berk Organization trusts and companies."

"That works with the IRS? The feds bought into it?"

"They did originally, but not anymore. By then the Berks were grandfathered in by the government when the law changed a decade ago. I went into it to try to break the damn thing up but ran into a stone wall," Battaglia said, plugging the cigar back into the corner of his mouth. "As long as the income is loaned to other Berk ventures or reinvested-get it? As long as Joe doesn't distribute the money to himself or his heirs-he sits pretty on top of his billions. No taxes, no obligation to even tell the IRS what's in the trusts."

"Quite an arrangement."

"I guess Joe's got the same idea as Izzy had. The Berk family plan is to die broke."

"Broke? You've lost me. None of them is broke."

"On the estate tax return, Alex. Izzy's heirs claimed he was only worth twenty thousand at the time of his death. That's what got me into the matter to begin with. The feds grabbed it from me-they always take the easy ones-but they made a really bad deal. They let Joe call his own terms."

"Why?"

"If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't have lost jurisdiction of the case. Joe paid ten million to settle the tax claims, and the IRS agreed never again to tax any of the Berks' oldest offshore trusts. Never."

"Sweet deal. That's why there's no way of knowing how much money is actually at stake here."

"And that's why Izzy valued the family's privacy so much. He hated Joe's flapping mouth."

"It can't make Joe very happy that now there's a lawsuit within the family. It's bound to make some of this stuff public," I said.

"Why do you think I'm watching the suit so carefully?" Battaglia hated to lose. If he could find a way back into an investigation that so obviously intrigued him, he'd be looking for the first crack in the door through which to insert his toe. "The two youngest kids-Izzy's daughter and Joe's son. They're the ones suing."

"So that would be Mona Berk-Izzy's girl. And her cousin, Briggs. Suing who?"

"Joe Berk."

"Why, exactly?"

"Greed. Entitlement. Revenge. Pick your vice. Joe and Izzy built an empire in a single generation. The whole point was to pass it along intact to their heirs, blanketing the family in this curtain of confidential dealings."

"What changed that?"

"After Izzy's death, Joe quietly started restructuring a few of the trusts. His older kids, and Izzy's, wanted some of the stock and cash transferred."

"But who suffered? I mean, how many billions does it take to feed a Berk?"

"Joe had two wives. So did Izzy. The kids from each of their first marriages are all in their late forties and fifties, all close to each other-brothers and sisters, first cousins-and very involved in the business. The two you're talking about are both the offspring of second wives, and in each instance, there was a fairly acrimonious divorce. These kids are a generation younger and don't have much to do with their half siblings. Since Joe was the trustee of Izzy's estate, he began to shift the assets around, very quietly-mainly to benefit the older kids."

"And Mona found out?"

"Joe's kid-Briggs-told her. Two years ago he was still estranged from his old man. That's when he told Mona what had been going on. I imagine it's why Joe made such an effort to bring his son back under his wing. To keep him close and get him to drop the lawsuit."

"What amount did she sue him for?"

"About five billion dollars, Alex, for the invasion of her trust fund. She claims that Uncle Joe bled her accounts dry. The irony is that the deal Joe Berk made with the feds to pay up the tax claim put such a tight clamp on his settlement agreement that even in the discovery process of her civil suit, the judge hasn't allowed Mona's lawyers to get disclosure of the terms and amounts of the trusts. Nobody really knows how much money is at the base of the Berk empire."

"Hard to believe she could want that much more money than what she's got."

Battaglia smiled at me. "Her lawyers whine to me that it isn't about the money. She just wants to be on the same footing as the other children-it's all about being treated like family, is what they tell me it's about."

"I'll let you know when I find the chink in Joe's armor. And I'll give you the latest on the Met before the weekend."

Two other bureau chiefs were lined up to see the district attorney as I said good night to Rose. It was almost six and the corridors were empty now, most workers on their way home, and many young trial lawyers hunkered down over their desks, assiduously starting a long evening of legal research or trial preparation.

Laura had left a note on my desk, clipped to three telephone messages and a crisp white envelope, hand-delivered from the hospital's general counsel, who'd been monitoring Selim Sengor's suspension since last weekend.

The three calls were personal, so I sat down to deal with the letter before I dialed to gab and make social plans with my friends.

As I tore an opening across the top of the sealed envelope, I could hear the noise of a sharp scratch against a piece of flint within it. The paper was immediately engulfed in a burst of flames, which licked at my face, setting fire to my hair and the collar of my silk blouse.