Terminal City by Linda Fairstein

and—”
    “I get it. I didn’t think you were flying in until Friday, so I was just totally off guard. We still on for Saturday?” As much as I didn’t want to be the one asking that question about our long-awaited romantic dinner, I was too anxious about the time gone by not to know.
    “Sure we are. Sure,” he said, stroking my hair, which had curled into ringlets around my neck. “It may be sandwiches in the squad room till Pug collars the bastard who did this, but—”
    “Your mother,” I said, pushing back. “Tell me about your mother. That’s the most important thing.”
    “She’s going to be okay. Bad scare, and my sisters called me to come home.”
    “What is it? Her heart again?”
    “Yeah, it’s the ticker. Aortic fibrillation.”
    “You should have let me know. I would have been happy to take a shift by her bedside.” Growing up as a cardiac surgeon’s daughter, I probably knew as much about A-fib as any amateur. And I adored Mike’s mother, to whom he was devoted.
    Mike smiled his best grin at me. “She’d have liked that, Coop. I just didn’t think to do it. No surgery, though. They just changed her meds. Another forty-eight hours in ICU to monitor her and she goes home. You can call her next week.”
    Mercer was making his way back to our side of the bar. We picked up our glasses to clink against his.
    “That’s a happier sight,” Mercer said as I stepped out of Mike’s embrace. “I almost hate to break it up.”
    “Don’t be silly,” I said, savoring the cold shot of Scotch and thinking of a warm night on top of the Arsenal in the park. “I just needed a little TLC from Detective Chapman. Rooftops are a good place for us, don’t you think?”
    “I wasn’t afraid of intruding on your intimacy, Alex. I just had a call from Pug. A couple of transit cops found some derelicts hauling around a beat-up piece of luggage, a couple of blocks from the hotel, on Madison Avenue. It’s big and it’s empty—”
    “Anything inside? Any potential evidence?” Mike asked.
    “Seems to have been doused with Clorox or some kind of bleach, the kind of thing that would destroy any residue of DNA or prints.”
    Mike swallowed more vodka. “I’m traveling with you, Mercer. Where’d they find it?”
    “The Northwest Passage.”
    I knew he wasn’t talking about the open sea route through the Arctic from the Atlantic to the Pacific. “Where’s that?”
    “You spend entirely too much time in turban town,” Mike said, referring in his politically incorrect way to the headdress of many of the city’s yellow cab drivers. “Public transportation wouldn’t kill you, you know.”
    “It’s the northeast corner of 47th and Madison,” Mercer said. “A thousand-foot-long corridor that leads to Grand Central.”
    “And to the subways going in every direction out of this hood,” Mike said. “However the killer got this broad into the Waldorf, I’d say he’s comfortably on his way back home.”
    “But it sounds like he left us a trophy,” I said, referring to the trunk.
    “What are the odds it’s of no forensic value?” Mike asked. “Saddle up, Mercer, and let’s check it out. Northwest Passage to nowhere.”

SIX
    Mike and Mercer walked me to my SUV, which I’d parked between Patroon and the Waldorf. The drive home took only six minutes. I used the interior staircase to get into the lobby from the garage, picked up my mail, and said good night to the two doormen on duty.
    It was late enough, almost midnight, to forget topping off the night with a cocktail, since I’d left most of mine behind on the bar. But my empty stomach was growling and the liquor was likely to knock me out and prevent nightmarish flashbacks to the image of the young woman in the hotel suite.
    A hot shower, no matter the weather, always helped to wash away the detritus of the day. I scrubbed myself, then toweled off and carried my drink into the bedroom.
    I often had trouble sleeping, but never more so than