t three o'clock, the police surveillance car following Michael Valente reported he'd returned to his company headquarters on Sixth Avenue, in midtown Manhattan.

At three-thirty-five, McCord and Sam opened the tall doors marked "Alliance-Crossing Corporation, Executive Offices," on the forty-eighth floor.

The receptionist's desk was made of thick glass and situated in the center of a vast, carpeted area surrounded with seating groups arranged at discreet distances from each other. Beautiful glass sculptures, some of them large and abstract, gleamed beneath spotlights at positions throughout the room.

Several office doors, all of them closed at the moment, opened onto the reception area. Two men and a woman were seated near one of them, talking quietly; another man was leafing through a magazine near the windows, his briefcase on the floor near his feet.

McCord presented his card to the receptionist and asked to see Mr. Valente. As a rule, when presented with an official "calling card" from an NYPD detective, a white-collar employee responded with either alarm, curiosity, shock, or, occasionally, wariness. They did not respond with derision. The receptionist at Valente's headquarters was a notable exception. An attractive young woman in her early thirties, she looked at McCord's card, and then at McCord, and literally rolled her eyes in disgust before she got up and disappeared down a long hallway.

"I don't think she was very impressed," Sam joked.

"I noticed that," McCord said, then he lowered his voice almost to a whisper. "If we get in to see Valente, he'll try to record the meeting for his own protection, in case this is some sort of trap. He's no novice with the games cops play. Don't say anything significant until I've persuaded him not to record it. If he doesn't believe what I tell him, or if he chooses revenge over caution, I don't want him to have a tape recording to give to his attorneys."

The receptionist returned promptly, followed by an impeccably groomed middle-aged woman in a pale pink wool suit. She had short dark hair and the erect bearing of a queen—or a headmistress. Her voice was beautifully modulated but businesslike. "I'm Mrs. Evanston, Mr. Valente's assistant," she enunciated. "Please follow me."

McCord and Sam followed her down a long hallway, through a passage door, then down another hall to an unmarked door at the end. As she pushed the door open and stepped behind them, she gave McCord a brief, businesslike smile and said in her very proper diction, "Mr. Valente suggests that you attempt to impregnate yourself."

The open door was directly across from the main elevators.

"I knew that was going too well." McCord said shortly as they again headed down the corridor toward the main doors into Alliance-Crossing's executive suite. "You try it this time."

"I'll have to give him back his note to Mrs. Manning, or it's a waste of time."

McCord hesitated, then nodded.

The receptionist glared as they approached her desk again, but Sam smiled briefly at her. From her handbag, she removed a pen and Valente's note, which was still in an NYPD evidence envelope. Across the evidence envelope she wrote, "Enclosed is our ticket of admission. It's yours to keep whether you agree to see us or not. Please give us a few minutes. It's about LM, and it's urgent."

She handed the envelope to the receptionist with one of her own business cards, and said, "Please take this to Mr. Valente's assistant and hold it in front of her eyes if necessary so that she reads it at once."

The receptionist obviously knew Valente's assistant had ejected them out the back door, and she took her cue from that. With a dismissive shrug, she pushed the envelope and card toward a corner of her desk and started to turn to her computer screen.

"No problem," Sam said pleasantly, reaching for the discarded items. "I'll just assume you're busy and you'd rather I take these to Mrs. Evanston myself."

The receptionist swung around, picked up the envelope and card, gave Sam a scalding look, and marched off in the same direction she'd gone before. "Valente seems to inspire a lot of loyalty in his staff," Sam remarked as they sat down to wait.

McCord said nothing; he was analyzing the note Sam had written on the envelope, and he was smiling a little. She'd written four short sentences, but each one delivered a significant psychological payload:

"Enclosed is our ticket of admission"… If you're a reasonable man, you'll realize that our returning this note to you is an enormous gesture of good faith.

"It's yours to keep whether you agree to see us or not"… There are no strings attached. We're not trying to coerce you, and we acknowledge in advance that we could not coerce you even if we tried.

"Please give us a few minutes"… "Please." There's a word you haven't heard from the NYPD, but we realize now that you're entitled to it.

"It's about LM, and it's urgent"… We are using Leigh Manning's initials because we, too, want to protect her privacy from whoever may see this note.

MICHAEL hung up the telephone and glanced at Mrs. Evanston as she handed him an envelope and a business card with Detective Littleton's name on it. "They're back," she said, scowling.

Impatiently, Michael reached for the NYPD evidence envelope; then he glanced at Littleton's handwritten message. He opened the envelope, removed the white envelope inside it, and unfolded the note he'd written to Leigh with the pears he'd sent her in the hospital.

It was harder than I ever imagined it would be to pretend we didn't know each other Saturday night.

If he'd been trying to frame himself and Leigh for Logan's murder, he could not have chosen better phrasing, Michael thought with disgust.

He looked again at Littleton's words, and the underlying messages in her phrasing did not escape him, but the phrase that truly swayed him was the reference to Leigh and the word "urgent." If Littleton was smart enough to play on his feelings for Leigh, she was also smart enough to have kept copies of the note. On the other hand, copies were never as effective with a jury as an original, so she was taking a gamble by returning it—evidently with McCord's consent.

Michael hesitated, tapping the end of the envelope on his desk. The idea of letting McCord into his office made him grind his teeth. Wallbrecht's summation of McCord ran through his mind… Trumanti picked the wrong man for this job. You can't send Mack after the wrong target and order him to stay on it for some self-serving reason… 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… He's the best detective the NYPD has ever had, but he won't play politics, and he won't kiss anybody's ass.

Personally, Michael couldn't stand the arrogant bastard, but Wallbrecht held him in the highest esteem, and Wallbrecht was the best in his business.

"Shall I call Bill Kovack in security and have him come down here and remind the detectives of the legalities involved in being on these premises without a warrant?"

"No," Michael said curtly. "Bring them in, but first bring a tape recorder in here."

She nodded. "I understand."