subtly dynamic man, Wallbrecht was tall and slender, with thinning hair, keenly intelligent light gray eyes, and an aura of absolute competence and relentless energy.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Michael," he said, shaking hands with him and then Buchanan. He sat down behind his desk and removed some files from his bottom right-hand drawer. "As usual, I'd like to start by quickly evaluating our adversaries." While he spoke he handed both men a set of dossiers and laid the third set on his desk for reference if necessary. "You probably know already that the investigative team on the Manning case is made up of four members."

To Michael he said, "You mentioned Samantha Littleton, so we'll start with her first. She's thirty-three, and she only got her gold shield a little over a month ago. From what I can gather, whatever she lacks in experience, she evidently makes up for in raw intelligence and gut instinct. If you decide to piss her off," he added humorously, "be sure you're under cover. She's a crack shot, and she got her black belt in karate when, she was still a teenager. Her father," he added meaningfully, "was Ethan Littleton."

"The football coach?" Buchanan asked. When Wallbrecht nodded, Buchanan said, "So that would make her Brian and Tom Littleton's sister?"

"Right again—two Heisman Trophy winners and a legendary coach in one family. Of the four remaining brothers, two are high school football coaches, one still plays minor league baseball, and the last one owns a gym here in New York. Samantha was the youngest of the seven kids, and according to some friends of the family, the boys got all the muscles, but she got most of the brains. After her father died, her mother remarried."

He paused again for effect, and then dropped a small verbal bomb. "Detective Littleton's stepdaddy is Senator Hollenbeck."

"I wish I'd known that a little earlier," Buchanan said ruefully. "I might have been slightly less offensive. Hollenbeck and I sit on a committee together, and we have friends in common."

Wallbrecht's phone rang, and he reached across his desk and pressed a button to silence it. Without commenting on Buchanan's remarks, he said, "When Samantha made detective and said she wanted Homicide, the senator pulled strings to get her into the safest precinct in Manhattan, which is the Eighteenth. I'm told that particular little 'sweetheart deal' was made between the senator and Captain Holland and that Detective Littleton doesn't know about it. She's not particularly close to her stepfather, possibly because he's as domineering as her father and brothers were. That last is unconfirmed gossip I collected for you, by the way, not necessarily fact."

Buchanan had opened her dossier, and Wallbrecht waited politely until the attorney was finished perusing it; then he moved on to the next member of the investigative team. "Malcolm Shrader is an experienced detective with one of the best arrest-to-conviction ratios in the entire department. He's a hell of a lot smarter than he looks, so don't ever underestimate him. Word has it that he was mad as hell when he got stuck with Littleton as a temporary partner, but he's quite a supporter of hers now, so my advice to you both is—don't underestimate Littleton either."

Since neither man had opened Shrader's dossier, Wallbrecht moved on to Womack. "Detective Womack isn't as smart as Shrader, but he's good at his job. He's a plodder, but he's thorough. That's about all you need to know of him for now."

He paused, waiting for questions, and when none were forthcoming, he said, "Now we've come to Mitchell McCord, and therein, gentlemen, lies our most interesting challenge." Leaning back in his chair, he shifted his gaze to Michael and said bluntly, "According to my sources, Commissioner Trumanti handpicked McCord and gave him a single assignment: That assignment was to nail you on the Manning murder, or on anything else that might come to light during McCord's investigation of it."

"Trumanti should have chosen somebody who understood his assignment better," Michael said angrily, "because the son of a bitch he picked isn't sticking with me; he's trying to go after Leigh Manning."

Wallbrecht rolled his pen between his fingers, studying Michael Valente's face curiously; then he gave his own assessment of McCord. "Mitchell McCord is a human Sidewinder missile with a high-functioning intellect and a Ph.D. in criminal psychology," he argued. "If Mack decides you're guilty, he will lock on to you, and he will stay with you, and nothing you can do will shake him off or sidetrack him. He will keep closing the distance—and he will bring you down."

Wallbrecht waited for some sort of reaction to that, but there was none. Smiling slightly, he admitted, "You're right about what you said, though—Trumanti did pick the wrong man for this job. You can't send Mack after thewrong target and order him to stay on it for some self-serving reason of your own. If you try to do that, what you'll get is a shitload of embarrassing fallout, because Mack will not only go after the right target on his own, he'll bring him down and then he'll go after you. And that," he finished with a chuckle at Buchanan, "is why Mitchell McCord isn't next in line for Trumanti's job. He's the best detective the NYPD has ever had, but he won't play politics, and he won't kiss anybody's ass.

"I've been trying to lure Mack over here with an offer of a full partnership and a gigantic salary, but every time he's ready to turn in his resignation, somebody over at the department hands him a case he just can't resist." Wallbrecht tipped his chin and looked at Michael. "This time, the irresistible case was… yours."

Finished with his review of the major players in the case, Wallbrecht said, "Beyond that, all I can tell you right now is that your telephones are tapped and you have a tail, which you already knew. Mrs. Manning has a tail but no wiretaps yet. Now, tell me what you want me to do next."

"I want you to find out who killed Logan Manning. Whoever did it is walking around free, while his widow can't even eat in a restaurant without having people talking about her. Also, she had a stalker. Gordon will give you all the details. Whether he's involved with Manning's murder or not, I want him found and taken off the street so she doesn't have to worry about him anymore."

Wallbrecht leaned back in his chair and gazed at him in amazement. "So that's the way it is?" he said softly. "You're not interested in protecting yourself—it's Mrs. Manning you want to protect? "

"That's exactly the way it is," Michael said flatly. Opening his briefcase, he tossed the dossiers into it; then he snapped it and the locks closed.

Wallbrecht pulled a sheet of paper from a tray on his desk and held his pen poised to make notes. "Okay, what can you give us on Manning that might be helpful?"

"Very little, but you've got a file on him already. He wanted to do business with me, and in the course of normal operations, I not only asked him for a financial statement, I had one of your people check him out. Go over the report you gave me and look for anything irregular in his finances."

Wallbrecht's pen stilled. "I would have started looking for an irate husband or boyfriend of one of his bed partners. Why his finances instead?"

"Several reasons," Michael replied, standing up. "I threw my copies of his financial statements out, but I remember thinking he wasn't as solvent as I'd expected him to be, considering what I knew of his overall lifestyle."

Wallbrecht jotted a note. "What else?"

"The night before he disappeared he gave his wife a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar ruby-and-diamond pendant in a Tiffany's box. For obvious reasons, she later decided she didn't want it, but when her secretary tried to return it to Tiffany's, she was informed it hadn't come from there. When the two women looked for a record of who he did buy it from, there was nothing—no record of a check being written for it, no credit card receipt, no bill—nothing."

Wallbrecht's expression turned suspicious. "He paid cash?"

"Evidently. There's one more thing—during one of our few dinner meetings, he bragged about a clever way he knew to spend offshore money in the U.S. without attracting the notice of the IRS. He didn't actually say he was doing it, but he may have been. If he was laundering dirty money, then whoever killed him may have wanted some of it." He shook his head in disgust as he shrugged into his topcoat. "I knew when Manning didn't turn up after a few days, he was never going to be found alive. Besides what he told me about the offshore money, he also mentioned he'd bought a gun."

Wallbrecht laid his pen down and looked at Michael in bewilderment. "Why would he tell you, a virtual stranger, that he owned a gun and knew of a scam to spend offshore money?"

"Because he thought I'd be interested and impressed," Michael said, picking up his briefcase from his chair. "After all, I'm the tough ex-con who keeps beating the system in court." Ready to leave, he nodded at Buchanan, who was going to take a cab back to his own office; then he looked at Wallbrecht and said, "I don't care how many people you have to put on this or how much it costs; find out who killed that worthless son of a bitch."

He strode to the door; then he stopped and turned, with his hand on the knob. "There's one more thing," he informed Wallbrecht. "I want you to tell McCord that if he ever uses Leigh Manning's name in front of me again in connection with that murder, I will take him down, and there aren't enough cops in the city of New York to stop me."

When he walked out, Wallbrecht and Buchanan looked at each other in stunned, wary silence. "I can't believe this," Wallbrecht finally said. "That's the same man who shrugged when the state of New York filed six counts of fraud against him."

Buchanan didn't smile. "Do us all a favor—find us a lead on the real murderer, and do it fast. Because if your friend McCord tries to implicate Leigh Manning, I guarantee you that Michael Valente will not be controllable."