“Who else?”
“There’s a partner at one of the boutique criminal defense firms who’s made a fortune representing a drug cartel,” Zach said. “A graduate of your office, about ten years before your time.”
“Name?”
“I’m not dealing in names yet,” Zach said. “No point giving him any allies before he makes a decision. But he’s really vulnerable.”
“Just because he represented drug dealers?” I asked.
Zach leaned in to me, stirring his martini before holding the glass to his lips. “More because I have so much negative stuff on him—personal stuff—that he wouldn’t be able to run for dogcatcher by the time I’m done leaking it to the press.”
“And women?” I asked. “It’s long overdue to have the first woman in this job.”
“Look, there’s a retired judge who ran twice against Battaglia and lost both times,” Zach said. “She didn’t even pull twenty percent, so I don’t think she’s jumping in again.”
“There are others,” I said. “I can think of three or four women who’d be great at the top. Stars, each of them.”
“I’m thinking you’re the lady law that everybody is watching,” Zach said, reaching his hand out to put it on top of mine. “I don’t want to make a move until I know what you’re doing.”
I shook it free and picked up my glass. “Why me?”
“Where do I start? Name recognition,” he said. “Every time you pick up a tabloid newspaper in this town, you’re putting some pervert behind bars—hear me out—and that’s a good thing. You’ll have the Women’s Bar Association, maybe even the DEA and PBA, too.”
The Detectives Endowment Association and the Police Benevolent Association made big noise endorsing candidates, but all their members lived in outer boroughs or the suburbs.
I was mildly amused. I had never stopped to think of groups that might rally behind me if I made the run. “Go on,” I said, smiling broadly. “You’re beginning to make it sound easy for me.”
“When’s the last time you checked online for New York City women’s groups?” Zach asked. “Women in Finance, Women in Real Estate, Women in Film, Women in Fashion, and so on. That’s before I even tally the advocacy groups who think you walk on water for your victims work.”
“Are you cutting this down by gender? No men for me, except the cops?”
“Too many women to count before you hook some men on board, Coop,” Zach said, sitting back and grinning at me.
“How about we turn this around? You’ve been raising money already,” I said. “I hear from all my friends at law firms and corporate headquarters that you’ve been spreading your charisma all over town. And of course, you’re deep in the pocket of that unholy man of the cloth—Reverend Hal Shipley.”
“That fat fuck? Whoops, excuse my language, Alex, but that fat fraud will buy every vote he possibly can if I give him the cash,” Zach said. “You know that as well as I do.”
“I could have guessed it, but you make it crystal clear.”
“I’ll deny I ever said it,” Zach said, patting his jacket and pants pocket, top to bottom and back up again. “Damn, I think I left my phone in the car and I have to check on something. May I borrow—?”
“Of course,” I said, reaching into my tote and passing my phone to him after unlocking the password.
Like I told Mike, I knew he’d check whether I was recording him if he veered off the reservation.
He put his reading glasses on his nose, opened the phone, and looked at the phone setting. He dialed a number and spoke to someone for less than ten seconds, just saying he’d be late. All a ruse, I was sure, to double-check on whether I had recorded him.
Zach handed the phone back to me. “The mayor is Reverend Shipley’s puppet, and now the Rev wants to expand his political empire. The only thing I agree with him about is that with the disproportionate arrests of black and brown citizens in this city, it’s time for a candidate of color to be DA.”
“So you’ll be Shipley’s puppet, too?”
“Hell, no. I’ll rip those strings off as soon as I’m elected,” Zach said. “That man’s a fool. A corrupt fool.”
“Don’t you have to live in Manhattan to run for DA of this county?” I asked. “Aren’t you still in New Jersey?”
“I guess you had no reason to know, but my wife and I split,” Zach said. “We’d been having an on-and-off thing for years. It was just time for me to go.”
“You have a place?”
“A fine apartment in Sugar Hill,” Zach said.
During the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, a wealthy community of African Americans built homes in a northern neighborhood of Hamilton Heights that came to be known as Sugar Hill, reflecting the sweet life the neighborhood provided. Willie Mays, Duke Ellington, and W. E. B. Du Bois were among the prominent residents. It would be a proper political launching pad for Zachary Palmer.
“There are some beautiful homes in Sugar Hill,” I said. “So I know you wanted to talk skeletons, Zach. Why not get started?”
He held his arms up in the air. “Just doing my due diligence, right?”
“Maybe it will help me make my decision. I’ll tell you what,” I said, acting playful for a purpose. “Give me your hands.”
I held mine out in front of me. Zach just raised his eyebrows and looked at me.
“C’mon. Just do it. When I was a kid, my friends said I had a knack for seeing the future,” I said. “Maybe I can tell if you’ve got rising political fortunes—or not. C’mon. Put them right here.”
My palms were facing up when he placed his hands on top of mine. I rested them on the tabletop, in the middle, and slid mine away from underneath.
I picked up his right hand and turned it over, running my fingers over the skin.
“Wait a second, Alexandra,” Zach said, trying to pull away. “Palm reading?”
“I think it’s as reliable as political polling these days, don’t you?”
“You can’t be serious,” he said.
“See this,” I said, pointing to the line that went from his pinky across to his index finger. “This is your heart line, Zach. And it’s really strong. So maybe you left your wife, but your love life is great.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Then there’s the head line—this one that runs across the middle of your palm. The fact that it reaches over here to your ring finger means you’re smart—but we knew that—and that you have great potential.”
“Just what I’m trying to tell you,” Zach said, pulling his hand away.
But what I wanted was to see whether Zach Palmer still bore the scar of the blood oath he had made with Lucy Jenner, and now I knew there wasn’t a trace of it on his right hand.
I grabbed his left hand, but he balled it up into a fist and wouldn’t turn it over.
“Humor me, Zach,” I said. “Just let me see your fate line for a second.”
He picked up his martini with his right hand and gave me his left.
“See that?” I said. “Your fate line intersects with your life line.”
“What, pray tell, does that mean—other than that I’m really hungry?”
“If I remember my ninth-grade wizardry, it’s telling me that your career is going to be very much affected by your emotions. That you’ve got great potential but you’re short-tempered, too. And then,” I said, peering down as though I was studying the imaginary lines and scrunching up my nose, “there’s something in your past that troubles you.”
Zach looked at me and sneered. “You must have the wrong guy’s palm, babe,” he said, pulling back again. “Don’t tell me I have to add witchcraft to your résumé when we prep for debates.”
I felt like Lucy had punched me in the gut for sucking me into her story—or at least the part of it that described their blood oath in an Io
wa hotel room. If there was something in Zach’s past that troubled him, it hadn’t left a scar on his skin.
NINETEEN
“I’m going to begin by putting my experience up against yours, to give you a reality check,” Zach said. “You’re a one-trick pony. Prosecutor for your entire career. Putting people behind bars is all you do.”
“My team has exonerated more men who’ve been falsely accused than all the innocence projects in the country put together,” I said.
“I was an assistant United States attorney for a time, with a much greater scope than you’ve had. Then I went on to Justice, before teaching Con Law at NYU.”
“You obviously thought well enough of me to ask me to lecture for your classes, year after year.”
“Yeah, and you gave the same lecture every time,” Zach said. “Just added a few new war stories is all you did. I went back to Justice and was the liaison to Homeland Security.”
Both of his hands formed a giant circle in the air.
“I get it, Zach. You’re global, not that people voting to get criminals out of their neighborhoods care much about that fact in their local prosecutor.”
“Oh, they will care, Alex. The specter of 9/11 still hangs over this city like an albatross wrapping its wings around the neck of a drowning man,” Zach said. “I’ll bring up my Homeland Security experience in a post-9/11 city every chance I get.”
In between pressing me about how many times I’d been overturned on appeal and the record of the office on minority hiring, he ordered a steak and I opted for Dover sole. We both needed a strong second drink.
“What were you doing with Paul Battaglia the night he was murdered?” Zach asked.
“You know what?” I said. “I’m still not really sure how he wound up on the steps of the museum. It was a setup by the guy who wanted him dead.”
“The anti-Coops will be picketing with copies of the headlines that blamed you for his death.”
“They’d be wrong,” I said.
“Are you ready to relive it?” Zach asked “Or will it look like you put on some sexy pantyhose and your highest heels to step over his still-warm corpse to take his place? The people who voted for Battaglia for six terms will be shocked to find out that in the end, you really had no respect for him.”
“He was a complicated man.”
“Then there’s your love life,” Zach said, smiling at me again. “I seem to think voters like women who haven’t climbed in and out of bed with a lot of guys. Maybe you should have stopped along the way to rock a cradle.”
“Off-limits, Zach.”
“I’d like to help you, but nobody can stop the rumors that are out there.” He started ticking off names of men I had dated, whether or not I’d been intimate with them.
“What did you do? Have a GPS on my ass?” I asked, stopping for a double swallow of Scotch. “How about we turn those tables on you?”
“Take your best shot, Alex, but I just don’t think you have it in you to be tough enough to throw mud at any of the candidates—especially me. It’s not your style.”
“I’m a quick study when I put my mind to something,” I said. “How long were you married?”
“Six years. Amicable split. The ex is totally in my corner,” Zach said.
“Kids?”
“Fraternal twins, a boy and a girl.”
“You left them, too?” I asked.
“Joint custody. They’re killer cute,” Zach said. “Gonna be great on the campaign trail.”
“Did you ever sleep with one of your students, Zach? At the law school, I mean.”
“I like your style, Alex. Starting right at the jugular,” Zach said. “Only the one I married, is the answer to that.”
“How about the women you worked cases with?” I asked. “Ever hit on a colleague on your trial team?”
“That’s taking me way back,” he said. “Are you counting mutual attraction, or who hit first?”
“I’m trying to count any breathing being who might suddenly stand up and shout out what you did to her and when,” I said. Then in a mocking, breathy voice, “‘There I was, pounding out my closing argument late at night in my office, when I heard a knock on the door, and it was Zach—’”
“Not my MO, Alex,” Zach said, almost chuckling. “I never knocked. I just eased on in the door, if you know what I mean.”
“Josie Breed?” I asked.
“No way,” he said. “No test-driving the body man.”
“Agents? Agents in general, when you were out on the road, working some of your high-profile magic?” I said. “It’s lonely going from town to town, I’m sure.”
“You don’t know half of it.”
“Kathy Crain?” I asked. “Wasn’t she out on the road with you, back in the day?”
“Special Agent Katharine Crain,” Zach said, looking at me over the lip of his drinking glass. “Now, that was a fine woman. You knew her?”
“I—I, uh, met her somewhere—about two years back, maybe three. It must have been some kind of women-in-law-enforcement thing, and I know she asked about you,” I said. “She wanted to know if I knew you or had any experience with you.”
Zach’s brow furrowed. “That’s kind of weird. I thought Kathy had gone off the grid. Retired down south because she wanted to get away from the action.”
He was definitely distracted by my mention of her name. I didn’t know Kathy Crain, but she must be sitting on a gold mine of negative info about Zach, having observed him in such close quarters. It was her urging, in part, that put Lucy Jenner in his hands.
“Did Kathy talk about me?” he asked. “She worked a big case with me, for a very long time.”
“I remember that. I think in this business we all remember what you did to nail that bastard Welly Baynes,” I said. “You get total props for that conviction, and it will be a huge gold star for you on the campaign trail.”
Zach nodded his head.
“Kathy, by the way, only had nice things to say,” I said, “and, well, she mentioned what a rough time it was for all of you putting the Baynes prosecution together. Lots of bumps in that road. When I asked her to talk about them with me, she told me it wasn’t the time.”
“How long ago was that? I mean, when you had this chat with Kathy Crain?”
“Two, maybe three years ago,” I said.
He was biting his lip and staring into his drink.
“C’mon, Zach. You look concerned,” I said, teasing him. “You do it with Kathy Crain?”
“She was old enough to be my mother,” he said, still thinking of something else, it seemed to me. Then he shook off whatever cloud had passed through his mind and smiled. “I don’t do old, Alex.”
“Aha! So all I have to do is keep my eyes open for the barely legals who show up at your rallies, huh?”
“What you sound like now is my wife,” Zach said. “My ex-wife.”
“Tough assignment,” I said. “You remind me so much of Jake. Always sniffing around where he didn’t belong.”
Zach Palmer put down his glass and glared at me.
“What did you just say?”
“Trust me, it wasn’t a compliment,” I said, faking a laugh. “Jake—and looking for love in all the wrong places. That’s all I meant.”
“Jake?” Zach looked angry now, as he spit out words at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t go showing that mad face on the campaign trail,” I said. “I’m not sure what kind of line I crossed, but I’ve come close to a major nerve, I think?”
“Kathy Crain,” Zach said. “She was using the name Jake?”
I put out both hands in front of me. “Slow down, Mr. Palmer. You remember Jake Tyler?”
The wrinkles on his brow returned.
“I’m talking about Jake Tyler, the guy I used to date,”
I said. “The NBC newsman—you know, he was third string for Brian Williams and Lester Holt. I introduced you to him because he did a really strong profile of you when you were at Justice.”
“Sure. Your news jock,” he said.
“Yes, the guy who cheated on me with that actress who was found dead on Martha’s Vineyard. Isabella Lascar—murdered while she was staying at my home,” I said. “With my lover. Jake Tyler. What you said about yourself just reminded me of my own lousy experience with an unfaithful man.”
He was examining me with his deep brown eyes as though he could measure my truth-telling by letting them bore into me.
“You’re free to use that story if I run against you,” I said. “It’s bound to have every woman in the room sympathizing with me.”
“Here’s the deal, Alex. I wanted to meet with you tonight to convince you not to run, okay?”
“You’re doing a fine job so far,” I said. “You’re hurling those slings and arrows at me like I did something wrong.”
“You did pretty well yourself,” Zach said. “Look, I want to be district attorney of this county for all the right reasons. The perception of justice in this town is completely skewed, and I’ve got the chops to get things fixed. Get the low-level criminals out of jail, stop prosecuting black and brown men for misdemeanors that white guys don’t get picked up for, reform Riker’s Island—which is a hellhole right now.”
“You think I don’t care about those things?”
“I’m here to make a deal with you, Alex.”
“You rip me to shreds and then you say you’ve got a deal to offer me?” I asked. “Not likely.”
Zach was laser-focused again. “Stay out of the race, which is going to get ugly.”
“Why are you so sure about that? Just because you’re going to stir things up?”
“No, not for that reason,” Zach said. “You know as well as anyone, this position is like a lifetime appointment. No term limits, and every DA we have stays in for six or eight election cycles.”
He was right about that.
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