Berk didn't move.

"Open your eyes. It's your hat, isn't it? Lucy's wearing your hat?"

Berk cocked an eye and examined the photograph. "The fez? C'mon, detective. You're gonna bait me, I expect you to do better than that."

"I've seen pictures of you with a hat just like that."

Joe Berk was smiling. He had the upper hand again, or so it seemed. "Once. I had one of those on my head once. Sardi's. A Jewish boy with a fez on his keppel for four hours? It seemed like a lifetime to have to wear it that long. Forty, maybe fifty years ago. Gave a million dollars to a hospital for crippled children that year, trying to buy my way into the theatrical community. In return, for one night I was an honorary member of the Ancient Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. That's what your fez is, Mr. Chapman."

"What? Shriners?"

"Of course, Shriners. The industry used to be full of them. The theaters were their playground. Yul Brynner, you kids remember him? Maybe not a real king, but what a prince. He told me that night I reminded him of Jackie Gleason and his pals at the Raccoon Lodge. Ridiculous looking. I couldn't wait to get the damn thing off my head."

Berk closed his eyes again and his voice faded. "You want a fez? You want to know who put that hat on Lucy's head? Check with Hubert Alden. He's got a thing for those red tasseled caps."

Mike walked me into One Hogan Place and took me directly to the ninth-floor District Attorney's Squad, the hand-chosen NYPD detectives who were assigned to Battaglia to work on major investigations led by some of the six hundred prosecutors on our staff. The captain wasn't there yet but a team had been brought in to assist on last night's attack and I spent the first three hours of the day being debriefed by them about the entire week's happenings so they could partner with Mike and Mercer if the events of last night at my apartment were indeed related to our investigation at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Mike left us to return to midtown, intent on bringing Hubert Alden down to me for questioning later in the day.

At noon, when we completed the first grueling round of detail, I went into the restroom to wash my face in hopes of reviving my flagging spirits.

On my way back to my own office, I ran into Mike getting off the elevator. He was carrying a tall vase of flowers that obscured his face as he made his way down the corridor.

"Are you crazy? That must have cost a-"

"Don't worry, kid. They're not from me," he said. "Security wouldn't let the poor delivery guy in the door after your express letter bomb incident."

I followed him past Laura's desk and made room for the dramatic arrangement of spring flowers-stargazer lilies and hydrangeas, deep-fuchsia anemones and pale pink long-stemmed roses.

"Open the card," Mike said.

He caught my hesitation.

"Open it. I'm not all that curious about your admirers, Coop. I just want to make sure the note doesn't explode in your puss."

I unsealed the small card. "Alex-to make up for the daffodils, and for alarming you with my doorstep delivery. Dan Bolin."

"What could possibly be in that note that makes you turn red?" Mike asked, reaching for it.

I dropped it on the top of my desk. "That's ridiculous. I'm not blushing. I don't even know the guy."

"A hundred bucks' worth of petals and you don't know him? Imagine what'll happen when you start putting out for him. Why is he sending stuff like this if you don't know him? We gotta put him in the suspect pool for last night?"

"Joan knows him. I don't mean she knows him, but she's talked to him. He was on the Vineyard this weekend."

"You're not making sense with this 'know him but we don't really know him' stuff. Guess I picked the wrong weekend to take a pass on your invite. You do a three-way or something to deserve this?"

Laura was standing in the doorway; when she started to talk to me, I stepped toward her and Mike picked up the card. "Mike, Mr. Alden is downstairs. Shall I have them let him up?"

"Yeah, he didn't want to accept my hospitality for the ride. Told me his driver would bring him down here. Given the choice, I'd pick the backseat of his limo, too," Mike said. "So who's this Bolin guy?"

"Oh, Alex? A gentleman named Bolin called this morning and asked if it was okay to have flowers sent here. Something about not wanting to upset you by asking for your home address, but I gave him this one."

"That's fine, Laura."

I bent over the desk, trying to make order out of the scattered folders and newly accumulated mail, but Mike knew I was just avoiding his glare.

"You didn't answer me. Who's this guy you know but you don't know? Where does he live? What does he do? Where was he last night?"

"Look, it was a harmless flirtation on his part. I sat next to a guy on a plane for half an hour and he tried to ask me out. Not interested."

"The florist and I would both have to say you didn't make that very clear, did you? Don't you think we have to talk to him, put him in the mix?"

Laura was still in the doorway, probably feeling responsible for the appearance of the flowers, disliking as she did any tension between Mike and me. "He sounded like a perfectly nice man, Mike. I wouldn't have given the green light if I'd known-"

"Can we leave him out of this entire discussion unless it becomes necessary to go in a new direction?"

"I don't know why you're protecting him, Coop."

"That's not what I'm doing. I'm trying to keep him out of my personal life-and my business-until this murder investigation and all its offshoots are resolved."

"Maybe last night had something to do with Dr. Sengor's case," Laura said, trying to be helpful.

"Sengor's in Turkey, his accomplice is in jail-"

"What if he had more than one accomplice?" Mike asked.

"Joan Stafford thinks I'm paranoid. Maybe it's from hanging around this place too much. Both of you see suspects everywhere."

Laura turned away from us when we heard Hubert Alden's voice from the hallway. "Is this Alexandra Cooper's office?"

Mike lifted the flower arrangement and started out of the room. "I'm putting this on Laura's desk for the time being. Doesn't exactly look like a serious prosecutor's lair with half of the Versailles gardens looming between you and your target."

He walked back in the room followed by Hubert Alden, who removed his hands from the pants pocket of his well-tailored navy pinstripe suit and rubbed them together as he surveyed the gritty surroundings of my small office-cramped, in need of a paint job, and decorated with court exhibits that were reminders of cases won and lost over the last decade.

"And you're a bureau chief, Ms. Cooper?" Alden said, watching a peeling paint chip on the ceiling as though it were about to fall on his shoulder and mar the surface of his jacket. "I can't imagine how the Indians live."

"One of the perks of public service. You never have to waste time thinking about how to redecorate. Whichever shade of gray the city uses every twenty years is fine with me. I'd like to thank you for coming down here. We have a few more things we'd like to discuss with you."

"Has there been a resolution yet about the release of Ms. Gali-nova's body from the morgue? I'm flying to Europe at the end of the week and it would truly set my mind at ease if we could get her out of the morgue and put her to rest with some dignity."

I made a note to call the ME's office. "I should be able to finalize that."

"If you're leaving town, that is," Mike said, settling into the chair next to Alden.

"How dramatic of you, detective. Now, what do you know that you think might put the brakes on my plans?"

"I remember standing in the back of the theater with you the day that Lucy DeVore had her tragic-well, let's still call it an accident. And if I'm not mistaken, that's when you told us you were not in New York on Friday night, when Ms. Galinova was murdered. Did I get that right?"