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would have given his target the time to save herself from his approach.
     “Can you tell me exactly when it was that he took off his pants in order to have sex with you?”
     “You’re right, Miss Alex,” Clarita said, pointing a finger in my general direction with a look of consternation on her face. “That’s a berry, berry important question, I think. When did the man take off his pants? I have to think about that some more before I could tell you.”
     “We’ll come back to that. It’s okay. I know this is the part that’s hardest for you.” I eased her through the end of the story, where the defendant’s actions finally escalated from merely taking advantage of Clarita to criminal conduct. Once she decided she was not ready to receive the spirits, she pushed Cassano off her body and got to her feet. But when she ran for the door, still naked, the blind witch doctor followed with a machete that he picked up from the kitchen counter. With that, he forced her back into the room and demanded that she give him oral sex. She was only able to escape when she offered to go to the nearby liquor store to buy another bottle of rum and instead called 911 to summon the police.
     I thanked her for her cooperation and patience, directed her to the water fountain for a break, and went back over the case with Margie Burrows, clarifying which parts of the incident were chargeable as crimes and which were not.
     Laura opened my door to tell me that Rose Malone had called. The District Attorney had arrived and wanted to see me as soon as possible, before his luncheon date with the head of the editorial board ofThe New York Times. I sent Margie on her way with instructions for the grand jury presentation she would make later in the day, grabbed my pad with the notes I had assembled about the Gemma Dogen case, and headed over to Battaglia’s office.
     Rose was standing at one of the file cabinets that ringed her office, paging through folders stuffed into the drawers like too many clowns in a Volkswagen. “I’m trying to find the last few op-ed pieces theTimes published on ‘quality of life’ crimes in the city. Paul’s trying to convince them to run a series on our success rate with neighborhood cleanups of marijuana dealers and prostitutes.”
     She smiled at me over the sheaf of yellowing papers she was examining and that was my first sign that the D.A. was in a good mood. Rose was my personal early warning system.
     “He’ll be right out with you, Alex. He’s just on the phone with his wife.”
     I busied myself reviewing the few facts I had learned during my stop at the hospital, knowing that Battaglia was a stickler for detail and bound to want more information than I had here.
     His voice boomed out at Rose from within his huge office. “Have you got Cooper yet?”
     I answered the question by turning the corner and showing myself to him as he waved me in with the two fingers of his left hand that secured the ever-present cigar.
     “If you know what’s good for my domestic tranquillity, you’ll tell your pals in Homicide to solve this one fast. My wife’s running the Mid-Manhattan fundraiser—the spring gala—and the tickets were supposed to go on sale in two weeks. The caterer from the goddamn Plaza called her at eight-thirty this morning when he heard the news asking for a check today to guarantee five hundredsaumon en croûte dinners in case the committee loses supporters over this. So much for the late good doctor. Is it yours?”
     “I’d like it to be, Paul. It’s a rape-homicide and I’ve—”
     He cut me off, not needing to hear things he already knew. “I take it you’ve been up at the crime scene already?”
     “Lieutenant Peterson let Chapman bring me in on it. I stopped by for an update and then came down here to start checking M.O.s and parolees for similarities. I don’t think there’s a hospital in Manhattan where we haven’t had some kind of criminal problem in the