The eight dancers looked at me as though I were crazy when I asked them to get dressed so that I could bring a man into the lounge. "For favor-vistase! Avance! Tengo que traer un hombre aqui."
I raised my voice, urging them to step out into the hallway, and even though I added a few "por favors," they didn't move.
I walked briskly past the cubbyholes to the door, again calling to them to dress themselves because a man was entering.
The three who had been changing wrapped towels around their slim bodies and stood speechless as I called to Mike to come into the bathroom.
He was too embarrassed to even make a joke, so he marched behind me to the area near the showers that the girls had been smart enough to clear.
"Look familiar?"
"Twenty dollars, Coop. The question is, What was Joe Berk looking at when the monitor in his bedroom caught these tulips?"
"I'll take your twenty. Who was he looking at? That's the answer I want."
Mike ripped back the opaque shower curtain and stepped into the wet stall. He was trying to find signs of a concealed device, and repeated his search in each of the three cubicles.
I watched him run his hands around the tops of the metal frames, and in the last booth he came up with what he wanted.
"You got it?"
"Not a camera. But there's a recess drilled in the wall there. Can't see into it-we need a ladder. But it feels like there's a mounting that could have held a small camera, and it's slanted so that focus would be on the tiled wall in the background. C'mon, let's move. Be sure and thank the young ladies on your way out. We're going back to Berk."
Mercer and Stan were waiting for us in the hallway, and Mike took Mercer aside to explain what we had seen.
"Are you done now?" Stan asked.
"Haven't even started yet," Mike called back to him. "Who's the best tech guy you know?"
Mercer answered. "Vito. Vito Taurino. Right, Alex?"
"The guy's a genius," I said. "Does all Battaglia's wiretaps and video surveillance. The kind the courts allow."
"We gotta find him now. Yesterday. Get him up here."
"I'll call Battaglia. But could someone really transmit video images from inside that shower stall?" I asked.
"It's all wireless now, Coop. It's called microwave technology- and I don't mean the kind you cook with. We used it in that murder investigation at the social club on Mulberry Street. You just need a board camera the size of a computer chip-the lens sits flat up on it-and mount it almost any place with brackets, like in that recess. Wire it through the back of the wall. Or maybe there's a dropped ceiling in the bathroom. Vito can check."
Mercer took over the explanation. "Run that up to an antenna."
"But where?" I asked.
"Just stick one on top of the building. Any building."
"Better yet," Mike said, talking to Mercer. "How about this dome? Stick a Yagi right on top of this mother, point if at a repeater, get the popcorn ready and-"
Mercer snapped his finger. "You're at the movies."
"Slow down. What's a Yagi?"
"It's a kind of antenna," Mercer explained. "You can direct them, orient them so they're facing repeaters, and the repeaters carry them the distance, to wherever the monitors are waiting."
"There are repeaters all over town," Mike said. "On top of the Empire State Building, Thirty Rock Center, the George Washington Bridge."
"Think nine-eleven," Mercer said. "When the towers collapsed, even your cell phones went dead downtown 'cause all that relay equipment was on top of the Trade Center."
I was beginning to understand. "And the camera just rolls all the time?"
"Probably motion activated," Mike said. "Someone steps in range of the lens and it's showtime."
The bathroom door opened and one of the enraged Argentines called Stan over for an explanation. He tried to mollify her but clearly wasn't successful.
"You two try to get some answers from Berk. I'll take Stan back up to the main office and see what other information they've got that might help. If Galinova was tenting rehearsal space, there have to be records of the dates. Somebody most have information about when she was here and who else hung out around her. You'll be back to me?" Mercer asked.
"Yeah. We'll stay in touch."
Stan tried to free himself when he saw us walk away. "If you're leaving, you'll have to go out the Fifty-sixth Street side. The theater's dark tonight. The entrance you came in is closed after five."
We left Mercer in the hallway. Stan was surrounded by three agitated dancers, as we waited for the elevator that returned us to the first floor. A small arrow pointed in the direction of the 56th Street exit and we followed the snaking corridors to make our way out.
The narrow, dark passages of the ground floor of the old building were lined with posters that re-created the theater history of the past few generations. I hurried to keep pace with Mike's long strides, past the life-size and youthful Lenny Bernstein-"vital music performed under a stimulating young conductor"; Mike Todd presenting Maurice Evans in Hamlet with the top ticket price of $2.40; and the 1948 image of George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, whom City Center had invited to establish a resident ballet company- which later became the New York City Ballet.
It was after five o'clock and workers were beginning to emerge from office buildings up and down the street. Mike cut a path through the crowds and I followed in his wake, down 56th and south on Sixth Avenue, then around the corner until we found the car.
The ride to the Belasco was slow, rush-how traffic blocking each intersection as we crawled down Seventh Avenue behind commuter buses and an army of Yellow Cabs.
I called the DA's Squad office to ask the captain how soon he could make Vito available to us, so I could urge Battaglia to back me up if he was in the middle of another case.
"He did an eight-to-four today, Alex. I can beep him but he was going off to his kid's Little League game. He may not call in for a couple of hoars."
"Can we have him tomorrow?"
"No problem. He's doing another day tour. He'll be in the tech room when he comes on. Just call him and tell him what you need."
"Thanks a lot."
"You got a green light?" Mike asked.
"You and Mercer can figure out where you want him to start."
"Depends what we get out of Joe Berk now."
"He's just going to deny it again," I said.
"Then you're gonna have to get a search warrant. He can deny all he wants but you and I saw those tulips on the screen in his bed-room the first time we were there. If I have to choke the old bastard, I'm gonna get answers this time."
"You've got to keep it calm. He tunes you out when you go wild on him."
"Wild? He hasn't seen me even halfway to vicious yet. I've been saving up for this kind of encounter."
Mike got out of the car and slammed the door. We walked up the street to the Belasco and headed for the entrance to Berk's apartment just west of the theater.
Mike stepped aside to let me enter and I was startled to come face-to-face with a man in a dark suit and sunglasses who was standing at the elevator controls.
Before I could say my name he had pressed the button and told us to go right up.
I was surprised to have such easy access, and I smiled at Mike as we rode up to Berk's office. As I pushed open the door, which was ajar, I could hear loud voices-a lot of them-and it was clear that the man downstairs who let us in assumed we were on the list for whatever party was in progress.
Mike followed me inside, and I scanned the dozen faces but saw no one familiar in the grand office, ringed with its bizarre collection of Napoleonic memorabilia.
My eye was drawn to the top of the staircase, outside Joe's bedroom, where Mona Berk and Ross Kehoe were engaged in a lively conversation with a man, clinking their cocktail glasses together and laughing at whatever story Kehoe was telling.
The young man seated in Berk's desk chair had just uncorked a bottle of champagne when he spotted the two of us entering the room.
"Come on in," he said, getting to his feet and walking over to greet us. "I'm Briggs. Briggs Berk. Joe's son. Have we met?"
"Chapman, Mike Chapman. This is Alexandra Cooper," Mike said, choosing not to further identify us as police and prosecutor in case the kid didn't know about our involvement with his father. "We're here for Joe."
Briggs put a hand on Mike's shoulder and laughed. "We're all here for Joe. What are you drinking?"
"No thanks. We'd like to see him, if we can. I need to talk to him for a few minutes. I don't want to break this up but it's kind of urgent."
"Talk to him? Can't help you with that, Mike. If you want to see him, the viewing doesn't start till tomorrow afternoon. Frank Campbell's, three o'clock."
Campbell 's was the most famous funeral parlor in Manhattan, known for its tasteful wakes and services for well-to-do New Yorkers.
"Right now," Briggs said, "the only place you can see Joe Berk is the morgue."