"You think he's ready to settle down and work, Mercer, if this turns out to be what Mike thinks it is?"

"He's got to be ready. He lost his focus after Val's death, and nobody knows that better than he does. The man needs to get back in the mix now. Lieutenant Peterson gave him time-lots of time. I'm working with him, whatever he wants on this. You stick, too, Alex. He'd like that."

I was practically running to keep up with Mercer. "You may think so, but Mike might not say that to-"

"I'm saying it. He doesn't have a better friend than you. We got to think for him now, we got to be there when and if the center doesn't hold."

Inside the Met's lobby, straight ahead, I could see the brilliant yellow-and-red panels of the two Chagall murals-each of them three stories high-celebrating the triumph of music with figures of musicians and dancers, instruments and whimsical animals.

Mercer guided me into the revolving door and pushed from behind. Several uniformed cops stood casual guard within the lobby, keeping up an air of business-as-usual for theatergoers who queued on the lines to buy tickets for next week's performances.

One of the only African-American first-grade detectives in the city, Mercer's six-foot-six figure commanded attention wherever he went. Here he flashed his badge at a young officer, who responded by removing the red velvet rope from the brass stanchion and sending us down the carpeted staircase to the lower lobby without even questioning why I accompanied Mercer.

The long flat counter of the bar would later be filled with cocktails served up for the crush of dance aficionados during intermissions of this evening's program. Now it was covered with paper from end to end. Mike Chapman stood with his back to us, his left hand in his pants pocket and the right one combing through his thick hair.

Mercer tapped his shoulder, interrupting Mike's conversation with the two men who stood across from him behind the bar. They were all studying architectural drawings of the vast corridors, below-and aboveground, which made up this imposing theatrical venue.

Mike turned to introduce us. "Mr. Dobbis here, Chet Dobbis, is the artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera. He's overseeing the ballet company's visit because it's part of a series of fundraisers for the house.

"Mr. Dobbis, I'd like you to meet Mercer Wallace-NYPD Special Victims. This is Ms. Cooper, Alex Cooper. Alex heads the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit in the Manhattan DA's office. And she's a mean dancer."

I reached over to shake Dobbis's hand. He was taller and leaner than the photos of him I'd seen in the Times when he was hired two year ago by the great Beverly Sills-just before her retirement-and her board of directors. Forty-five, maybe older, he was dressed in a black shirt and slacks with a sweater over his shoulders, tied loosely around the neck.

"And this is Rinaldo Vicci. He's Ms. Galinova's agent." I towered over the diminutive Vicci, who bowed in my direction. I guessed him to be fifty, too portly for his height, with pasty skin that looked blotchy and irritated. The glen plaid suit he sported was in need of serious alterations, the buttons pulling across his belly as he stretched out a hand to each of us.

"Any developments since we spoke?" Mercer asked Mike.

"The commissioner gave us a green light to start searching the joint."

"That's a big concession."

"The missing person status would go real-time-twenty-four hours since Talya disappeared-in the middle of tonight's show, which would certainly disrupt the crowd. Everybody here thought we needed to ratchet it up as soon as possible."

"Where is Talya staying?" I asked.

"The Mark. But she hasn't been back to the hotel room since yesterday," Mike said. "Never called her husband, and they usually speak three or four times a day."

"Her street clothes?" I asked.

"They're still in her dressing room," Vicci said with a trace of an Italian accent. "Sweater and pants, her boots. Even the purse she carries. It's all still there. I-I can't tell you how worried I am about her. I'm absolutely frantic at the thought of anyone harming her."

"Bet you are," Mike said. "What does an agent get these days? Fifteen percent of nothing is nothing. That's why we need your help, Mr. Vicci. You got a better reason than anybody to keep her alive and well."

"Joe Berk?" I asked. "Have any of you spoken with him today?"

"Nobody can find him," Chet Dobbis said. "The office is closed for the weekend and he's not answering calls. I'm told that's not unusual, Ms. Cooper. In the middle of a Saturday afternoon, he might well be attending a performance of one of his shows."

"Mind if I take a few minutes with Detective Wallace?" Mike asked.

"I'll step inside and watch the dress rehearsal, if you don't mind. Rinaldo, why don't you wait with me?" Dobbis said, leading Vicci to the theater doors at the far end of the bar. There was a quiet elegance about him, a gracefulness in the way he moved that fit so precisely with his role in the theater.

Mike waited until they were out of range. He leaned both elbows on the bar and rested his head in his hands. "Sorry. It's been an uphill battle all night to get these guys to let us in. They'll go nuts when ESU shows up with all their gear."

"You called for Emergency Services?" I asked. They were the unit of last resort, teams of fearless cops who got into and around places that no others could manage. They rescued jumpers from bridges and building cornices, recovered bodies from tunnels and train tracks, and broke down doorways and barriers to get into wherever their colleagues needed to go. "Battering rams and the jaws of death? Isn't that giving up the ghost a little bit early?"

"Jaws of life. They're what get you out of the jaws of death. I guess you've never been backstage here, have you, kid? You're in for an eye-opener." Mike swiveled around to look at me. "Remember how old you were the first time you came to Lincoln Center?"

"Maybe eight or nine."

"What for?"

"To see the Nutcracker, next door at the State Theater. My mother brought me there every Christmas." It was almost a ritual for little girls who loved ballet and who had grown up in the city or, as I had, in the suburbs less than an hour away.

"And the Met?" Mike asked.

"A year or two later."

"How many times since?"

He knew the answer to that question. I subscribed to the annual repertory season of American Ballet Theater and frequented the opera whenever I had the chance. "Dozens of times, Mike. Maybe hundreds."

He was going somewhere with this and I waited patiently for him to make his point.

"I know you don't like the parking garage much, but did it ever scare you to sit inside the Met?"

"Scare me? To be in the audience? It's where I come to get away from the tawdry things we see and hear every day at work. It transports me to be here, to put it mildly."

I truly loved to sink into a velvet-cushioned seat at the end of a day at the prosecutor's office, wait for the 1,500 yards of Scalaman-dre silk curtain to lift and drape in Wagnerian style, and the thirty-two crystal chandeliers to rise up against the twenty-four-karat gold-leaf ceiling as they dimmed to darkness. For two or three hours I was able to lose myself in whatever world of make-believe the artists drew around me.

"Let me tell you about the first time I came here," Mike said. "Same age as you-maybe ten at the time."

Mike had turned thirty-seven a few months earlier, and I would celebrate the same birthday at the end of this month. Mercer was five years older than us, now married to another detective named Vickee and father to a baby born a bit more than a year ago.

"My old man and I were out together for the afternoon, a weekday in late July. It didn't happen often that I got to spend a whole day with him," Mike said. We knew all about his father, who'd been on the force for twenty-six years. Brian Chapman was a legend in the department, and the heart attack that killed him forty-eight hours after he turned in his gun and shield made Mike even more determined to follow in his footsteps.