Killer Heat by Linda Fairstein Read Free Book Online Page A

Mercer and kept us well fed through many
    long nights of highly charged casework.
    “Fenton,” he said to the bartender. "Give Signora Cooper a
    drink.
    On me."
    “She's like Ali before a big fight, Giuliano. Can't be flirting
    with a hangover when she faces the jury in the morning.”
    “I'll take a raincheck,” I said, nibbling on a bread stick as
    thin as a straw.
    Mike turned to me and rested his feet on the rungs of my stool.
    We made an odd couple, from backgrounds as different as anyone
    could imagine, but had forged a real intimacy over a decade of
    working on some of the grisliest cases the city had seen.
    “Have some pasta, Coop. You need the carbs.”
    “I just want a bowl of gazpacho. It's too hot for anything
    else.” He turned back to Fenton. “I'll start with linguine. White
    clam sauce. Then I'll have a veal chop, thick as they come.”
    Murder never got in the way of Mike's appetite. His father,
    Brian, had been one of the most decorated cops in the NYPD's
    history, retiring after twenty-six years on the job. Mike had been
    weaned on investigative skills and instincts, but he was also the
    first in his family to attend college. When Brian died of a
    massive coronary less than fortyeight hours after turning in his
    gun and shield, his only son became even more determined to follow
    in his footsteps. Immediately on graduation from Fordham, where he
    had waited tables to supplement his student loans, he, too, joined
    the department.
    “Have you ever been to Dylan's?” I asked.
    There weren't many watering holes in Manhattan that Mike had
    missed, between his personal barhopping and the complex directions
    of many of his cases.
    “Too preppy for a blue-collar guy like me.”
    “How did an Irish pub get to be so preppy?”
    “When I was in college, the place had more of a neighborhood
    feel.” He had turned thirty-seven the previous fall, six months
    before me. “Jimmy Dylan was good to the cops. Happy to have guys
    from the precinct going off duty drop in when he was trying to get
    the drunks out at the end of a long night.”
    I chewed another bread stick and leaned closer to Mike, trying
    to hear over the laughter of the patrons at the closest table.
    Mike's eyes were almost as dark as his hair, and I was pleased to
    see that they had regained some of the sparkle that had
    disappeared for the better part of a year after the accidental
    death of his fiancée, Valerie. “Dylan started to make some
    money for himself, so he began to send his kids-the oldest three
    are sons-to private schools. Junior- that's what they call the
    eldest son-he must be almost thirty now. All his high school pals
    hung out at the joint, 'cause Jimmy served them liquor when they
    were too young to get it anywhere else. He didn't really give a
    damn what anybody thought. Once you had all that teenage
    testosterone mixed in with a little alcohol, Dylan's became a
    magnet for the prep school girls, too. Fancy broads like you,
    looking to get lucky.”
    “I didn't-”
    “Yeah, sorry. You were too busy memorizing Shakespeare sonnets
    and sublimating your sexual desires swimming laps to hang out at
    pubs,” Mike said, opening one of the linen napkins on the bar and
    spreading it across my knees as he saw our waiter, Adolfo,
    approaching with my chilled soup.
    I had been raised in Harrison, an affluent suburb of New York
    City.
    My mother was a registered nurse who stopped working to raise
    her three children-my two older brothers and me. My father's
    medical career took a radical upturn when he and his partner
    designed and patented an innovative device that became a staple of
    cardiac surgery.
    The Cooper-Hoffman valve moved us to northern Westchester, where
    much of my adolescence was spent training for swim team
    competition, and paid for my superb education at Wellesley College
    and then the University of Virginia School of Law.
    Mike tucked his napkin into his open shirt collar and started
    twirling his