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liked that kind of creative policing, as he would call it. What he never had liked was wisecracking, not even back when he had been Chapman’s boss in the Street Crime Unit, almost a decade earlier.
    “Who’s going to bring me up to speed on the new case?”
    Peterson pointed at Chapman and stepped aside. Mike rested his notes on the podium and ran his fingers through his thick dark hair. He dug one hand into the pocket of his blazer, then started his description of how he was summoned to the scene. He was thorough, detailed, and professional — the best homicide cop in the business — but I fidgeted and recrossed my legs when he got to the end of the narrative and closed his description with Dr. Fleisher’s directive to load “Gert” into the EMS van.
    “ ‘Gert’? I didn’t know she’d been identified.” Lunetta was annoyed. His head whipped from side to side as he checked with each of his aides to see if they had failed to give him the morning update on the city’s most visible crime of the moment. The case was the cover of both daily tabloids, and he should have had the newest information about the unfortunate victim before the public did.
    “She hasn’t been identified yet, Chief.”
    “Well,
is
her name Gert, or isn’t it?”
    Don’t go there, Chief, I urged quietly from the peanut gallery. All of us who worked with Mike knew that he named his victims in every case. Always did it, and often stuck with his nickname, no matter what the eventual I.D. — his own perverse way of personalizing his cases.
    “I call her that, Chief, so she’s not just some number, some cold statistic for the mayor to get off on. I named this one in honor of Gertrude Ederle — three Olympic medals and the English Channel. I figure, given the way somebody tried to send her to sleep with the fishes for keeps, she must have had the soul of a great swimmer to stay afloat.”
    There were a few snickers around the room, but most of the group knew it wasn’t the safest direction to follow.
    Lunetta wouldn’t bite twice. He moved away to the next questions. “What are you looking at here?”
    Chapman went on. “After the autopsy results today, we’ll work on a press release and sketch.”
    “Can’t you give the papers a photo from the scene — a closeup? Get an I.D. more quickly?”
    “I don’t think the way she looked coming out of the water is the way any of her loved ones would want to see her featured. We’re working with Missing Persons and each of the precincts.”
    “You checking every area that borders the creek? May turn out to be a Bronx homicide after all, Chapman. The numbers get tallied in the precinct where the crime occurred, you know.”
    “I don’t care where she dove in, Chief.
We
got her now.”
    Fat chance, Lunetta. Count it as an outer-borough murder so we keep the Manhattan numbers down? Nope, I’m with Chapman. She landed here, and no matter where she was killed, that gives us jurisdiction.
    “I see from the newspapers that you had Miss Cooper up at the scene last night. You throwing in the towel, too, Detective? Ready to call in the Feds? I can’t help but wonder what it is you need a pet D.A. for at all these crime scenes and station houses. D’you carry her lipstick case for her, or her hairbrush?” The chief smirked at his put-down, jabbing the detective and me in the same thrust.
    But trying to embarrass Chapman that way wouldn’t quite work. He’d simply use the opportunity to get more laughs, even if they would be at my expense. “No, no, sir. She never lets me near the makeup. You know me, Chief — I’m strictly a leg man. I’m in charge of her spare panty hose. Each time there’s a run in one of those suckers, I pull out a replacement pair. Best I can do at the moment.”
    A couple of my friends around the room raised their eyes cautiously to meet mine, to make sure I was rolling with the flow. Not a problem. Battaglia had trained me well. I could control my short fuse with