Stone started to pick up the phone, but he gave himself a moment to review his history with Dierdre Monahan: They had met a couple of years ago at a Christmas party in the D.A.’s office. He had been trying a case downtown, and the opposing counsel had invited him to the party. After a couple of hours of eggnog and flirtation, he and Dierdre, who was an up-and-coming assistant D.A., had found themselves in a conference room, on the long table, wearing few clothes and exploring each other’s nether regions—this at a moment when the chief deputy D.A. had walked into the room with another woman, apparently with the same activity in mind.

Dierdre had taken a lot of guff from her coworkers about the incident, to the point where she had threatened to file a sexual harassment complaint, which had resulted in a promotion and a better office. Last year she had been assigned to prosecute Herbie Fisher for a DUI and attacking a police officer, who happened to be one of her four brothers on the force.

Stone took a deep breath, picked up the phone and punched the button. “Dierdre!” he nearly shouted. “How the hell are you?”

“Oh, I’m just dandy, Stone,” she replied, “and I’m sure you are, too. I just called to make your day a little worse.”

A trickle of anxiety ran down through Stone’s bowels. “Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t do a thing like that,” he replied. “What’s up?”

“Well, the Brooklyn D.A.’s office is a little backed up, so I took the murder one charge against Herbert Fisher off their hands.”

“Murder one? Are you nuts, Dierdre? That was a clear case of self-defense!”

“That’s not how I read it, buddy. If it was self-defense, why is Mr. Fisher on the run?”

“He’s been hiding from Carmine Dattila’s goons for a couple of weeks. He owes money to a bookie, and they’ve already beaten him up and tried to kill him.”

“I haven’t been able to locate the criminal charges on that,” she said.

“We’re treating it as a civil matter for the moment, but I’ve no doubt that criminal charges will result.”

“Oh, yeah, the detective told me you were suing Carmine. We all got a great laugh out of that.”

“Well, Dattila isn’t laughing; he sent those guys to Herbie’s apartment to kill him, and Herbie got lucky. That’s all this is.”

“Tell you what, why don’t you bring Mr. Fisher down here tomorrow morning, and we’ll talk about it.”

“I think that’s a good idea, but I don’t know where the hell he is. He contacts me from time to time, so when he does, I’ll give you a call, and we’ll get together.”