I was at my desk at eight the next morning, structuring a grand jury presentation on the drug-facilitated-rape case in hopes I'd have the toxicology results before my witnesses got restless and bolted home to Canada.
By eight thirty, Mike was standing in my doorway, looking more together than he had last evening, now dressed in a navy blazer, pink oxford-cloth shirt, and neatly creased chinos.
"Have I forgotten that we were supposed to meet?"
He walked to my desk, took my unopened second cup of coffee, and began to drink. "Won't be the last time I take a bullet for you, kid."
"What now?"
"I got a call from the PC in the middle of the night. Had to be in his office at seven. And no, it wasn't for a promotion," he said, sitting opposite me and stretching his legs out in front of him.
"Something on the case?"
"Can you believe this dirtbag, Joe Berk? Gets his personal physician to check him out of the hospital around dinnertime and send him home with private-duty nurses. Calls the precinct and reports a theft from the apartment. Says the thief is either the niece, or more likely, whichever member of the department was present."
I thought of all the valuable artworks and antiques that filled the duplex. "What'd he say was stolen?"
Mike smiled as he answered me. "Three television sets from his bedroom."
"The monitors he had hooked up so he could watch women undressing?"
"Not the way he tells it. Just his entertainment center. Any theatrical mogul would have multiple screens to watch different presentations simultaneously. He didn't happen to mention that they were wired into somebody's bathroom."
"So how about Mona? Didn't you tell the commissioner we left before she did?"
"Mona denies ever being inside the apartment. LAB goes to interview her at midnight," Mike said, referring to the Internal Affairs Bureau detectives who would have been assigned to a complaint of official misconduct. "They pry her out of bed, away from her boy-friend. She says she was stopped at the door by me when she showed up at Uncle Joe's home to help her cousin through the night-and that I was inside with another woman, going through the place. Never let her inside."
"Tell Joe to check the nipples of that little device that dimmed the lights if he wants a few of Mona's skin cells." I kicked back my chair from the desk. "Were the monitors really gone? Did someone take them out after we left and before Berk got out of the hospital?"
"IAB searched the apartment. No sign of them."
"Well, I'll certainly tell the commissioner-"
"Your name never came into this. You were right about Mona paying no attention to you at all. She assumed you were another detective."
"I'll let Battaglia know as soon as he gets in."
"Let it go. Don't you see what Berk's trying to do? He just wants to jam it down my throat that he knows we're on to the concealed cameras. It's a great big 'fuck you' he's sending me, telling me to keep away from his private perversions. He could have said I took ten thousand bucks in cash from the apartment or some other valuable object. This is mainly to stick me under the PC's nose and remind me that Berk can play rough any time he wants to."
"And the PC?"
"C'mon, Coop. The commish had to stroke the old bird but he knows I'm not rolling over for a few lousy television sets. He just wanted to know how I got into the apartment and make sure my ass was covered on that."
The phone rang. "Alexandra? Dr. Kestenbaum here. I'm looking for a little legal guidance, if you don't mind. It's on Galinova."
"Sure. What's come up?"
"There's a gentleman who called last evening. He says he's cleared it with her estranged husband and he's going to claim the body and take it home to London for burial. I'm going to have written confirmation from the husband later today, but I just wanted to make sure it's okay with you and the police that I release the remains."
"Who is he? What's he to-"
"His name is Hubert Alden. I don't know much about the ballet, but this guy claims to be Galinova's patron. Does that mean anything to you?"
"Yeah. I'd like to talk to him before you sign off on it. Do you have a way for us to contact him?"
Kestenbaum gave me the number. "He's flying in on the shuttle this morning. He's got some meeting to attend today. You'll be able to reach him at his office after five."
I repeated the news to Mike. "What do you mean, patron?" he asked.
"One of the more controversial subjects in the refined world of the dance. There's very little public funding of the arts these days, so some ballet companies are offering this kind of sponsorship as a way to raise money."
"I don't get it."
"American Ballet Theater, the Atlanta Ballet, the other companies that do this, they actually hold auctions. For the right price-"
"How much?"
"For a regional company, maybe ten or twenty thousand. For a prima ballerina at ABT, maybe one hundred thousand or more. We can get a copy of last week's program. It'll have a photo of Talya and say something like 'the artistry of Natalya Galinova is supported by'"-I looked at the name I had scribbled on myPost-it-
" 'Hubert Alden.' "
"So Mr. Alden, he owned her?"
"I think the dancers would tell you no. But that's what makes the whole concept so awkward. Most of the companies claim they urge distance between the patron and the artist, but other directors want them to bond with each other. They want them to hang out so that the rich donor can introduce his or her friends to the dancers and hope they want to jump on the same bandwagon."
"So Alden after five? Then you can take a ride with me right now."
Mike was much more animated now than he had been at dinner last evening. Berk's antics had goosed him and he was getting back into the chase.
"I'd like to polish up this presentation. Where are you going?"
"To drop in on Mona Berk. Leave a note for Laura. Tell her you're in the field."
Laura would find assistants to cover the walk-ins who appeared on my doorstep when they were apprehensive about calling the police to report a crime. There was nothing on my desktop that couldn't wait until the afternoon.
We drove to midtown in Mike's department car, littered with empty soda cans, packs of red licorice twizzlers, and a stack of the weekend's tabloids announcing Talya's death.
Mike's NYPD laminated parking plaque allowed us to leave the ear just off Times Square in a loading zone on the already double-parked length of West 45th Street. The first of the tour buses was beginning to disgorge passengers into the eclectic canyon that remained the cross-roads of the city, if not the world. Above the tacky billboards rose the gleaming profiles of the Conde Nast and Reuters buildings, new entries in the booming and gentrified district.
The army recruiting station was already open and operating at Duffy Square, tourists were lining up for the evening's half-price seats at the TKTS booth, a palm reader was reaching for my arm and urging me to come upstairs for holistic healing and advice on all matters of mind and spirit, and a street missionary was handing out cards that told me exactly what I could do and how much it would cost to save my soul.
The electrified morning headlines were crawling around the ledges on several of the skyscrapers that had revitalized a neighborhood which had boasted little more than XXX-rated movie houses when I first started working in the prosecutor's office. Galinova's death and the fact that it was being mourned by balletomanes all over the world ran fifth behind the dismantling of a terrorist cell and a political scandal in New Jersey.
"You know what that's called?"
I looked up at the moving signage. "No idea."
"It's a Motogram. First one in the world was here, running on the old New York Times Tower, starting with the presidential election returns in 1928. Used fifteen thousand lightbulbs to wiggle the news around four sides of the building."
"Your dad?" Mike's father had filled the boy's head with stories of every corner of the city's history.
"Nope. This one's my mother. You know her postcard collection," he said, referring to the vintage photographs she had saved since childhood. He pointed at the giant Barbie billboard display that now garishly controlled the airspace in Times Square. "In the 1930s, there was a forty-two-foot-long angelfish advertising Wrigley's Spearmint gum. In the forties, there was a thirty-foot-high waterfall with a gargantuan woman-like an Amazon-draped in a Grecian toga. In the fifties it was a huge Pepsi bottle, which gave way to pouring Gordon's Gin a decade later. First one I remember is that giant Camel cigarette ad-don't you?-with the huge smoke ring blowing out of it. Those images are all classics-it's the most monumental advertising arena in the world."
Broadway was a throwback to another age. The business center of the theater world, its gilt-and-marble lobby had been refurbished to reflect its century-old splendor. The directory of offices listed on the wall reflected a warren of cubbyholes in which production deals and partnerships were made, and wannabes hitched their wagons to star vehicles.
Mona Berk's company was on the eighth floor. The old wrought-iron elevators still required a manual operator, who knew the stops of all his regulars and punched them into the keyboard.
We got off the elevator and found the entrance to 807, the corner suite. The secretary, who didn't appear to be more than eighteen, looked up from her fashion magazine as we entered the reception area.
"Mona Berk, please? We're here to see Ms. Berk," Mike said.
She scanned her appointment book. "She expecting you?"
"More or less."
"She'll be here any minute. She's already got a nine thirty, though."
"We'll be quick."
She picked up her pencil to make a notation in the book."Is it about a property? Would you mind giving me your names?"
"Yeah. I'm Jack Webb. It's about a musical version of Dragnet."
"Cool. Have a seat, Mr. Webb. And you are?"
"Alice. She just knows me as Alice."
Ten minutes later, Mona Berk walked in the door, laughing and talking to the man who accompanied her. She pulled up short when she saw both of us.
"Well, good morning. It's detective-detective…"
"Chapman. Mike Chapman. This is Ms. Cooper, from the District Attorney's Office. Mind if we come in for a few minutes?"
"Does this mean you haven't solved that murder case yet?" Mona said, turning to her companion to explain who we were. "These are the officers who were figuring poor Uncle Joe had taken enough Viagra last week to attack that poor ballerina."
She picked up her mail from the in-box and motioned us to follow her into her office.
The man held the door open for us.
"And how about that encore performance for your uncle? That must have made you and your cousin very happy," Mike said, taking a seat in a black leather armchair and pulling one up beside it for me.
"Hallelujah! Joe Berk lives another day to screw some other sucker out of his hard-earned cash. What can I help you with now?"
"Would you mind if we spoke to you alone?"
"Frankly, I would. This is Ross Kehoe. I'd like him to be here. He's my business partner and my fiance."
Kehoe shook hands with Mike and me, and remained standing, perched on the windowsill over Mona's shoulder. He was about forty years old, six feet tall and solidly built, with sharp-featured good looks and teeth that had been recently whitened to show off his broadly artificial smile. His European-cut shirt and tight jeans were the perfect complement to Mona's black twinset, cigarette-leg slacks, and two-inch slides that clicked as she crossed the floor.
"Funny, I didn't notice your name on the door," Mike said.
"I'm shy," Kehoe said, the smile disappearing as quickly as it had been flashed.
"How long have you two been partners?"
"Almost a year," Mona said.
"What's your role in the business?"
"Same as mine, detective. We're into production. Legitimate theater. Now what is it that we didn't finish discussing the other night?"
"It seems like after Ms. Cooper and I left the Belasco, you went back upstairs and helped yourself to some of Uncle Joe's property. I got blamed for the snatch and I'm hoping to make good on those monitors."
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. What monitors?"
Ross Kehoe folded his arms and waited for Mike to explain.
"So it's going to be like that? You know damn well there were four screens in the bedroom when you stepped off that elevator. Uncle Joe says he's short three."
"Briggs called me on my cell about ten minutes after you left. He told me that by the time he got to the hospital, he found out that his father had been resuscitated and was going to pull through, so he didn't need my help after all. Ross was back at our apartment, so I went right home."
"Which is where?" Mike said.
"SoHo. We have a loft."
"Damn. SoHo, of course. They better send me back to the academy. Can't believe I asked a stupid question like that when you've got 'trendy' written in block letters all across your forehead."
"And what the hell do you think I'd be doing with television monitors?"
"Cleaning up Uncle Joe's clubhouse 'cause your cousin asked you to. Looking around the apartment for things you weren't entitled to see. If it's got something to do with the lawsuit against your uncle, then maybe his attorneys would be interested in knowing about your midnight house call."
Mona Berk glared at Mike. "That lawsuit is nobody else's business but ours. We're a very private family and we intend to stay that way. Stick to dead bodies, Mr. Chapman. Maybe you know something about them that'll keep you occupied in your spare time and out of my hair."
The intercom buzzed and Mona Berk stabbed the button with her forefinger. "Yeah?"
"Your nine thirty's here, Mona."
"You want more of my time, detective, make an appointment."
She walked around the desk to usher us out. She picked up a bound manuscript from the table next to the door. It was entitled Platinum, and beneath that had the words "The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing."
The first person I saw in the reception area was a six-foot-tall blonde, half the age of Natalya Galinova with twice her measurements in all the significant places. Behind the young woman, seated in a chair and flipping through what appeared to be a copy of the same manuscript that Berk had picked up, was Rinaldo Vicci, the agent Talya had fired just before her tragic death.