2

“WHY DON’T I GO AND, YOU KNOW, SLIP INTO SOMETHING more comfortable,” Ariadne Stupenagel purred, fending off the groping hands of her lover. “Now, now, no long faces…be a good Murry-wurry and fix us a couple of teeny-weeny martinis.”

Gilbert Murrow pouted. It had been a long, frustrating day filling in for his boss at the District Attorney’s Office, and he’d have just as soon forgotten the preliminaries with Ariadne and gone straight to the main event.

Then again—now that he had a moment to consider what she’d just said—it might be worth the wait. He never ceased to be amazed by her imaginative and ceaseless attempts to keep their sex lives ramped up. Which meant that he couldn’t be sure if “something more comfortable” meant naughty silk undergarments from Victoria’s Secret or something in leather and chains from the Kittens Toy Room catalog that she kept in her nightstand.

Besides, he thought, a martini might take the edge off the day and give me the courage necessary to keep up with Ariadne’s more imaginative ideas.

“Make the drinks and meet me on the roof, sugar buns,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ve been dreaming all day long about holding on to the railing and looking out at the lights of the city as you slip up from behind me and…” She purposely left the end of the sentence dangling, like Murrow’s jaw, and disappeared into her bedroom.

With effort, Murrow willed his mouth shut and hurried to the “bar,” which occupied most of the kitchen counter. He intended to make Vespers, the famous James Bond vodka martini from Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale. “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet,” Murrow said in his best Bond, which wasn’t very good. “Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large, thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”

He’d just located the bottle of Kina Lillet when he caught sight of the New York Guardian newspaper lying off to the side. His attention was drawn to the top headline, Russians Implicated in St. Patrick’s Crisis. Groaning, he read the first couple of paragraphs beneath Ariadne Stupenagel’s byline.

Murrow rubbed his eyes, hoping that it might produce a miracle that would make the story disappear, but it was still there when he looked again. He decided to add an extra jigger of vodka to the shaker. His boss, Butch Karp, was sure to assume that he, loyal and tight-lipped aide-de-camp Gilbert Murrow, was one of the unnamed sources. Karp, who’d recently been released from the hospital, was already too fond of accusing him of “sleeping with the enemy,” a journalist, and this was sure to add fuel to that fire.

Karp had a love-hate relationship with Ariadne that went back decades, before Murrow was even on the scene. Part of it was that Karp considered most journalists in the same light as he did porn stars and politicians; part of it was that Ariadne had been Marlene’s college roommate and there was the inevitable friction when a man came between two female friends. Sometimes when Butch and Ariadne squared off, it was all that Murrow—who at five foot eight was four inches shorter than Stupenagel and nine inches shorter than Karp—could do to step between them without being physically injured.

Karp had been surprised, and not thrilled, when Murrow and Ariadne had become “an item.” He’d warned Murrow that she was a vamp—having allegedly bedded crown princes, athletes, and dictators (word had it that she’d broken Fidel’s heart) to get her stories. But other than raising an eyebrow, he had not continued with his dissection of her character when Murrow politely but firmly let it be known that he did not appreciate any aspersions on his girlfriend’s character.

In fact, Karp had even been willing to admit over the past couple of months that as journalists went, Ariadne was not the worst of the lot. She did not burn her bridges for a scoop. And while she could be a loud and abrasive advocate of the “people’s right to know,” which did not always coincide with Karp’s view of what they should know, she also knew when to keep a secret.

For the most part, Karp also seemed to believe Murrow when he said that he wasn’t divulging any state secrets during pillow talk. Name, rank, and serial number is all she gets out of me, Murrow had promised.

I doubt that in a literal sense, but I’ll take your word for it if it means not having to hear all the squishy details, Karp had replied, but with a smile.

The truth was that Murrow knew that she was working on another story about the attack, but he purposefully didn’t ask what it was about. Nor did he know where she was getting her information. He didn’t want to know. As a couple, they had an agreement: he wouldn’t talk with her about anything confidential from the DAO, and she wouldn’t stop asking him questions and promising exotic sexual favors if he answered them. So far he’d kept his side of the bargain. Then again, because she’d been generous with the favors on what she suspiciously referred to as her “investment plan,” his resolve had never been really tested.

One of Ariadne’s earlier stories about the St. Patrick’s Cathedral attack indicated that the terrorists had helped Kane escape.

The rest of the media, of course, had had a field day with the events. But it was Stupenagel who’d broke the definitive story on what had occurred at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which had also been particularly critical of the Department of Homeland Security.

In the aftermath of the attack, there’d been a lot of finger-pointing at both the department and the FBI, each blaming the other for security lapses. However, Ariadne’s story had revealed that it was the Homeland Security department that Kane had infiltrated. The breach not only had exposed the Pope and the hostages in St. Patrick’s to a terrorism attack, but also had resulted in the earlier deaths of several federal agents trying to capture Kane in Aspen, Colorado.

According to a Department of Homeland Security press release issued in response, the agent whose identity Kane had assumed had come from another agency—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—and therefore wasn’t personally known to Jon Ellis, the assistant director of special operations for the department. Ellis had been responsible for directing his agency’s efforts to find Kane, as well as providing antiterrorism security for the Pope’s visit, and he’d been taking the heat in the press for what had happened.

Public pressure mounted on the government after Ariadne’s stories began to appear, and a U.S. senator from Montana, Tom McCullum, had been calling for a congressional hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee and threatening to subpoena “if necessary” the directors of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, and others to testify. However, McCullum was in the minority party and so far his demands had been stymied by the majority party and the administration as “not in the best interest of national security.”

Ariadne’s last story had been published shortly before Karp was shot. After he recovered, Karp had not complained about the story. In fact, his off-the-record indication was that he was pleased that the information had come out.

Then Ariadne’s second story was published when Karp was still in the hospital. In it, the complexity of Kane’s plot was revealed. According to Ariadne’s anonymous sources, Emil Stavros, a powerful banker and political kingmaker, was being blackmailed by Kane to wire the ransom money into offshore bank accounts. Kane had known of the murder of Stavros’s wife and used it to force the man to cooperate or else spend the rest of his life in prison.

If that wasn’t enough of a conspiracy, Ariadne had then linked Stavros to Rachel Rachman’s campaign and implied that the assassination attempt on Karp had been motivated by revenge, not to secure the election for herself. The big question was—with Kane dead—who else would have had the motive and the juice to persuade Rachman to pull the trigger?

After Karp was shot, Murrow had gone into his office to secure whatever papers might have been left out and noted the school photos of the murdered children spread like a fan on the desk. Next to them was a yellow legal-sized notebook with a series of names and incidents with lines leading from one to the other. He’d studied the pad for a minute but concluded only that the names and lines were connected to the photographs.

Even in the hospital, Karp kept working the case. The day before he was released, he’d called and asked Murrow to quietly run the name Jamys Kellagh through the CCIC national crime computer. He’d had a few hits, including a Kansas City bank robber named James Kellough, who’d since had a sex change. However, none of the names matched the spelling, nor seemed to strike a chord with Karp, who was playing his cards close to the vest and didn’t volunteer why he was interested in the name. But Murrow knew it had to do with the yellow legal pad and the murdered children.

While he had not criticized Ariadne’s stories, Karp made it very clear to his inner circle that no one in the DAO was to comment to the press or provide information, even on background, regarding what they were referring to as the “The Kane Affair.” He’d emphasized his point by giving Murrow the evil eye.

Recalling the glare, Murrow wondered if Karp would blame him for this latest story. He considered what it would take to keep Karp from ever seeing the new article in the Guardian, a weekly so-called alternative newspaper. But even if he could pull off that miracle, Murrow knew that the big dailies were sure to follow up on the story, and he’d be suspect again. In other words, he was doomed. There was bound to be a call from Karp in the morning.

Beyond his boss, Murrow had his own concerns about the stories. But it had less to do with incurring his boss’s ire than being worried about Ariadne’s safety. It was one thing to challenge the competence, and even integrity, of a U.S. law enforcement agency. But she was now intimating that a foreign government—the Russians no less—was involved.

He knew that his girlfriend had as much courage as any man. She’d written stories blasting dictators and mob bosses, corrupt politicians and dirty cops. She’d been shot at, beat up, and sued. She was no more apt to back off a hot story than Karp was likely to stop prosecuting criminals.

Murrow heaved a sigh. One of these days he was going to retire and write a series of books on the exploits of the Karp-Ciampi clan and their strange collection of friends, though no one would believe him and he’d probably have to publish their adventures as works of fiction.

In the meantime, the balancing act was wearing him out. Back at the DAO ranch, Harry “Hotspur” Kipman, the chief of the office appeals bureau and one of Karp’s most trusted friends, was handling the business end of the office by overseeing the assignment of cases to the assistant district attorneys and running the weekly bureau chief meetings. But that left the actual running of the office—the telephone calls, the paperwork, the press conferences, and personnel matters—to Murrow.

By education and training, Murrow was also a prosecutor, but he had served as Karp’s special assistant ever since Karp had been appointed to replace DA Jack Keegan, who’d left for a judge’s seat on the federal bench nearly two years earlier. As the special assistant, Murrow’s job had been to act as Karp’s troubleshooter, keep an ear to the ground for what was going on in the office, and be the official keeper of Karp’s time.

It hadn’t left Murrow with much time to devote to the job he liked best, which was running Karp’s reelection campaign. No swallow returning to Capistrano, no salmon swimming upriver had ever experienced a more instinctual homecoming than Murrow to the messy nest of politics. He so loved the battle that he’d even had to admit to himself that Rachman’s death at Marlene’s hands, and the opposition’s failure to field a replacement candidate, had taken the fun out of election night.

In fact, that day he’d been feeling downright bluesy as he contemplated that the election was only a few weeks away and then they would all be back to the real business of the New York District Attorney’s Office, which was prosecuting criminals.

Of course, they’d be doing that without the boss for a while. At least physically.

Karp had been ordered to stay away from the office by his physician, and he’d agreed in order for the doctor to let him out of the hospital. But he’d taken that to mean he wasn’t supposed to physically go to the Criminal Courts Building.

Little by little, he’d been insinuating himself back into the running of the office. It began when he was still in the hospital and he’d call to discuss the bigger cases with Kipman or one of his other inner-circle bureau chiefs, like V. T. Newbury, the head of the bureau that investigated official corruption and malfeasance. Then he started hinting that he might “drop by” just in case someone needed a little face time or even to quietly “catch up on some paperwork.”

That afternoon, Murrow could have sworn that he saw Karp standing across Centre Street. The man had been wearing a broad-brimmed hat that he’d pulled down to cover most of his face, so it was hard to say for sure, but he had the same build, and when he moved, it was with a limp.

Murrow learned that his Karp sighting was the real McCoy a couple of hours later when he got a call from a terse Marlene Ciampi. “Gilbert, this is Marlene,” she said, unnecessarily giving her name, as he would have recognized her voice, and been very afraid, in any dark alley. “I’m sitting here with my husband, Butch. Now, Gilbert, I’m going to ask you a question, and I expect you to answer me honestly.”

Gilbert swallowed hard. He didn’t need her to say “or else” to understand that this was an “or else” situation. The boss’s wife had a temper straight from her ancestral home of Sicily and he wanted no part of it. “Yes, Marlene,” he answered meekly.

“Gilbert, did you see my husband today?”

Hoping to be saved by a technicality, he answered, “I’m not sure.”

There was a very pregnant pause. Then Marlene hissed. “Gilbert, are you toying with me?”

That’s all it took. He cracked like a bad egg. “I think I may have seen him…. I was across the street, but it looked like him.”

“Way to go down with the ship!” Gilbert heard Karp shout in the background.

“Tell him I couldn’t commit perjury,” Gilbert pleaded.

“No, Gilbert dear, you did the right thing…the smart thing,” Marlene purred. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to cut a liar’s tongue out of his mouth.”

Gilbert had hung up the telephone feeling like a twelve-year-old kid who’d just ratted out his best friend to avoid getting grounded. And he should know, he’d been that kind of a kid.

It was for his own good, he told himself as he carved a curl of lemon peel into a martini glass. There was nothing I could do. She knew. No sense both of us paying the price.

Still queasy at the thought of his close call with Marlene’s temper, Murrow jumped at the sound of Ariadne’s voice from the bedroom. “I hope the only reason you’re so quiet out there is because you’re stretching before the big game.”

He paused to consider the merit of her suggestion. Not only was she taller, she outweighed him by fifteen pounds and, except for plenty of soft padding in the right places, was more muscular. Sometimes it paid to be limber when she was in one of her “moods.”

“I’m shaking, not stirring, baby cakes,” he yelled back. He cut the second lemon peel and plopped it into the other glass.

Murrow left the drinks on the counter and walked over to Ariadne’s sound system—a Bose that could peel the paint off the walls when she was having a heavy-metal moment—and inserted a CD of Sinatra’s greatest hits.

“These little town blues/are melting away/I’ll make a brand-new start of it/in old New York…” Murrow sang along with Ol’ Blue Eyes as he picked up the drinks.

A lot of people gave him and Ariadne one look and started to giggle. He figured other men were wondering what the voluptuous sex goddess saw in the pear-shaped little man in the wire-rimmed glasses whose taste in fashion embraced bow ties, vests, and tweed coats with a pocket watch.

To be honest, he’d wondered the same thing. But he gradually came to accept that for some unfathomable reason, she actually thought he was sexy, as well as smart. The fact was, however, that for all their physical differences, they had a lot in common.

For one thing, they loved the same music. Their friends might have been surprised if they’d seen them dressed in tight leather pants, leather vests, and dog collars at CBGB’s, the seedy but trendy nightclub on the Bowery, attending a reunion concert of the Ramones. But they enjoyed a wide variety of music, including Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack, as well as big-band swing.

They were both also fascinated with American history. Anyone who ever listened to the way they talked to each other in some settings might have thought that the only book they had in common was the Kama Sutra. But the truth was that most of their evenings together were spent quietly lying in bed, reading aloud from some historical narrative like Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton.

Who would have ever imagined that Ariadne could be turned on by a dramatic rendition of the Federalist Papers, he thought. Speaking of getting turned on…

“You coming?” he called back to the bedroom. “I think the Viagra is starting to wear off!”

“You won’t need any Viagra when you see what I bought at VS today,” she yelled back.

Murrow smiled and grabbed the martinis before heading out onto the rooftop garden area that was the chief benefit of the loft apartment on Fifty-fifth Street between Second and Third avenues. Ariadne didn’t own the place—she couldn’t have afforded it—it was on loan from one of her former lovers, a writer who’d “sold out” to author best-selling motivational books.

At first, Murrow wasn’t thrilled about staying in the apartment of a former lover. But she’d convinced him that there was something particularly virile about having his way with her in the home—nay, on the very bed—of his rival, so he’d gotten over it.

Outside it was a lovely fall evening, and the air still carried a hint of summer. The roof had a nice clear view of the top half of the Chrysler Building and Midtown city lights, and was high enough not to be terribly disturbed by honking taxis and the smell of garbage. He placed the drinks on the ledge and reached up to adjust his glasses.

Good thing, too, because at that moment, the garrote that dropped over his head would have quickly accomplished its task. As it was, his hand was caught between the nylon cord and his neck.

Back in the apartment, Ariadne paused her primping to listen. She thought she heard a glass breaking, but there was no sound other than Sinatra and the far-off noises of the city. Gilbert could be a little clumsy; she just hoped he hadn’t dropped one of the martini glasses given to her years before by an enraptured British Member of Parliament when she was on assignment in London.

“I want to be a part of it/New York, New York,” she sang as she brushed out her hair.

There was no one more surprised than she at her attraction to Gilbert Murrow. Karp’s estimate of the number of notches on her bedpost was not totally inaccurate. She’d screwed some of the world’s wealthiest, most powerful, and even best-looking men for the sake of a story, but she’d given them all up for a nearsighted intellectual who barely reached her chin.

However, she could not have cared less what people thought of her falling for Gilbert. He had a brilliant mind, was well read, and wasn’t so in love with his own voice that he couldn’t pause long enough to listen to her. And not just listen politely the way some men did when all they really wanted was to get laid. All of this made Murrow more desirable than any athlete with six-pack abs and buns of steel.

Along with the lovable personality traits, Gilbert had a few surprises of his own. For one thing, he was the most attentive and unselfish lover she’d ever known, and with the stamina to keep up with her own healthy libido. He claimed it was from all his years of abstinence. And he was delightfully funny for someone who came off even to his friends as such a straight arrow. He’d also discovered a latent calling for clandestine activities, whether it was assisting her with a story—as long as it didn’t involve the DAO—or suggesting having sex in public places where they stood a decent chance of getting caught.

It was almost too good to last, and she worried what was next. Lately, she’d caught him looking at her as if weighing whether to say something, and she felt sure that a couple of times he was about to “pop the question.” The idea had filled her with both dread—she’d avoided matrimony like she avoided stepping in the result of someone failing to curb his dog—and, surprisingly, excitement. She’d even tried out the name-change thing. Mrs. Gilbert Murrow didn’t work, but Ariadne Stupenagel-Murrow had a sort of magnificently multisyllabic cadence to it.

Ariadne knew that Gilbert was worried about her safety because of the stories. He pointed out a story in the Times that noted that journalism was one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

“Yes, but not so much here in the United States,” she assured him. “Don’t worry, honey bunny, killing reporters only brings more reporters and most bad guys know that.” She knew that only went so far, and he didn’t buy it at all.

The truth was, she didn’t know the identities of the men giving her the information for her latest series. One she figured was a fed, maybe FBI, maybe Homeland Security. Someone who didn’t like what was going on in the aftermath of the St. Patrick’s hostage situation.

The other source spoke with what sounded like a Russian accent. She pressed to meet with him, but he’d refused.

Okay, enough business for one day, she told herself. One last look in the mirror and she pronounced herself fit for duty.

Out on the rooftop, the assassin struggled to finish off the little man, who was putting up a surprisingly spirited battle—stomping on his feet, and fighting against the garrote like a marlin on the hook.

The job had been more difficult than anticipated from the beginning. The woman was supposed to have been alone and her murder staged to look like another Manhattan break-in where the tenant walked in on a burglar and was killed. He’d also intended on raping her for good measure. He supposed some of his colleagues in the assassination business would think that was unprofessional, but he was a man who liked a little fun with his job, and thought it worked well with the break-in scenario.

The assassin had reached the rooftop by first breaking into an apartment on a lower floor and accessing the fire escape. When the boyfriend arrived at the apartment, he’d cursed but hadn’t panicked. If necessary, he’d shoot them both, though he hoped to catch them one at a time so that he could use his favorite weapon, the garrote. It was so much more personal.

The killer was a big man, six foot two and 250 pounds of muscle, but he was having a devil of a time trying to choke the life out of the little shit. Blood was flowing from a cut on his target’s hand, and it made the rope slippery. He felt his grip giving way as they crashed into a trellis covered with the vines of a climbing rose. The thorns bit into his back as his arm muscles complained about the unexpected workout.

Maybe I’ll just drop him over the edge, he thought. He forced the thrashing man over to the retaining wall. But just when he thought he could force him over, the punk-ass boyfriend put his feet on the ledge and shoved back.

“Oof,” the assassin grunted as his intended victim landed on his stomach, but the effort seemed to have taken quite a bit out of his opponent as well. Furious, he rolled over on top of the man, and then knelt on his back to get more leverage as he pulled the garrote tight. “Come on, guy, let’s just finish this,” he pleaded, winded from the effort.

“Hey, asshole!”

The killer heard the voice behind him and reacted instantly by shoving his victim forward and standing. Without hesitating, he whirled with a back kick that should have caught the woman in the head. But she wasn’t standing where she’d been when she spoke, and he struck nothing but air.

Then there was a moment when time stood still and he found himself facing a beautiful Amazon in a push-up bra, crotchless panties, garters, and nylons. But he also noted that the look on her face wasn’t one of fear, as he would have expected; it was pure, unadulterated rage.

Only then did he see the baseball bat—the wooden Louisville Slugger. A baseball fan, he recognized Joe DiMaggio’s signature on the barrel right before it caught him in the mouth, driving his front teeth down his throat, smashing his nose into a pulp, and propelling him backward toward the ledge.

Dazed, he was, however, not finished. He reached for the pistol in his waistband. But as well trained and fast as he was, he was no match for the angry woman.

“Nobody…” the big blonde snarled. The bat whistled down and caught him on the wrist, crushing the bone. The gun flew out of his hand.

“Fucks…” A backhand blow with the bat caught him on the elbow of his other arm, making it impossible to lift that hand to ward off the next blow, which caught him in the rib cage.

“With my…” The last blow caught him in the side of the head and sent him over the wall and into space.

“Boyfriend,” Ariadne concluded as she looked over the edge at the body lying on the sidewalk five stories below. A woman who had been walking her poodle past the building started screaming and frantically yanked on the leash as her dog tried to inspect the pool of blood spreading from the corpse.

Ariadne turned and ran back to Murrow, who was staggering to his feet as he pulled the garrote off his neck and threw it to the ground. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around his injured hand. Then, with her arm around his shoulders, they walked over to the wall and looked down.

A crowd had gathered around the body and several people were looking up and pointing at the faces of the man and woman on the rooftop of the building above them. Several were on their cell phones, apparently summoning the sirens that could be heard in the distance.

Murrow pulled back from the edge and looked at Ariadne. “Wow, that’s some outfit,” he croaked with admiration. “But the cops will be here in a few minutes. You might want to cover up.”

“You think?” Ariadne asked as she went inside, picked up the telephone, and dialed 911, turning back to face him.

“Well,” Murrow gulped, “only as long as you promise to wear it again sometime.”

As Murrow and Ariadne pulled back from the parapet, a man who’d been sitting in the back of a stretch limousine down the block and on the other side of the street reached forward and knocked on the partition. “Let’s go,” he said when the driver lowered the glass.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Kellagh,” the driver replied.

As the car pulled away from the curb and rolled past the crowd around the body, Kellagh shook his head and muttered, “Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh.”