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the enormous stage as though it was her natural
home.
    "It's unthinkable," I said.
    "What is, Coop?" Mike's personal tragedy had made him more
cynical than ever. "That Talya Galinova might have been unfortunate
enough to put herself in the running for this year's homicide stats?"
    More than a decade in this business had made me mindful that
no one was guaranteed immunity from that often random list. But to
disappear inside the most famous theater in the world, with more than
four thousand people under the same roof at the very moment she
vanished?
    "It's not possible she was murdered at the Met."

----
4

     
    Mercer parked in the driveway that arced away from Broadway
and ran the entire length in front of the plaza at the Lincoln Center
for the Performing Arts, from 65 th down to 6znd Street. The travertine
complex of theater and music facilities was built in the 1960s at a
cost equivalent to more than a billion dollars today.
    Bright April sunshine bounced off the waters in the enormous
fountain in the center of the buildings as streams gushed in the air at
timed intervals, delighting the tourists who gathered around it with
their guidebooks. We ignored the structures to the north and
south— the Philharmonic's Avery Fisher Hall and the City
Ballet and Opera's home, the New York State Theater. The block-long
giant that dominated the plaza set back on its western end was the
Metropolitan Opera House, and I tried to keep pace with Mercer's great
strides as we both hurried to hook up with Mike Chapman.
    "I hope you didn't read him wrong."
    "He wants you here, Alex. That's why he called."
    "I'm familiar with this world. That's really why he called.
I'm not sure Mike's ready to let me back into his life."
    People with cameras were everywhere, snapping photos of one
another against the backdrop of the imposing buildings on this great
urban acropolis. Large silk banners with the Royal Ballet's logo
billowed from the flagpoles, heralding the visiting company in the calm
afternoon breeze.
    The three of us had worked as a team on more murder cases than
most prosecutors would ever handle in their entire careers. Mercer had
transferred from the Homicide Squad to Special Victims. Like me, he got
satisfaction in helping women find justice in a system that had denied
them access for so long, with archaic laws and even more stubborn human
attitudes. The legislative reforms and stunning advances in scientific
techniques brought us successes not dreamed possible even twenty years
ago.
    Mike preferred the elite world of homicide cops—no
living victims to hand-hold, few eyewitnesses to have fall apart in
court— coaxing from lifeless bodies the secrets of how they
met their deaths and then ferreting out the killers. All too often our
professional worlds intersected and we shouldered the cases together,
trying to restore moral order to a world in which lives ended so
violently and abruptly.
    "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