“Accidents happen, Coop,” Mike said.
He rarely showed emotion, even when rattled. We were both sitting on the edge of the loading platform, and I was clearly more shaken up than Mike.
“We can do this another time,” I said. “Is it your bad ankle?”
“I don’t have a good one.”
“He’s fine, Alex. Last thing you want to do is baby this dude,” Mercer said. “He needed a new pair of shoes anyway.”
Mercer wouldn’t let Will Jarvis have any time alone with Jillian Sorenson. He’d asked one of the workmen to take her down to Jarvis’s office if she insisted on waiting.
“You do understand this was an accident, like you just said?” Jarvis asked.
“Ms. Sorenson’s arrival? I don’t believe that for one minute.”
“I’m talking about the vault, Mr. Chapman.”
“I got no problem with that. I slipped. Not the fault of your men.”
“I can run to your place and get another pair of shoes,” I said, looking at Mike’s bare feet. No socks in summer was another of his telltale traits, and his apartment was only a block away from Day & Meyer.
“There are driving mocs in the trunk of my car,” Mike said, flexing his right ankle and standing up to put weight on it. “Two Tylenol and a six-pack of Grey Goose and I’ll be a new man.”
“Ready to take a look?” Mercer asked.
“Let’s go.”
Two of the workmen brought the vault around, opened the door, and chained it back in place.
Mercer stepped up first to give Mike his hand, and I followed behind, each of us with our flashlights.
The sight was dazzling. The entire Greensward, the magnificent vision that was Manhattan’s great public space, was laid out in its entirety—in the original silver version—upon a landscaped green suede base, with bright blue paint shimmering as we lighted it, in all the places in the Park that were filled with water.
“Can you imagine the value of this?” I asked. “All locked away where no one can see it. It shouldn’t be this way.”
“Maybe it won’t be for long,” Mercer said. “Maybe Lavinia made plans for these before she became ill.”
“Do you mind if I—?” Will Jarvis wanted to step up with us.
“Stand back,” Mike said. “Just keep away from the door.”
Our voices echoed, but we had no interest in letting anyone else know what was going on.
We were standing at the south end of the faux Park, along the gray stone walk that represented the 59th Street border.
Mike squatted again and picked up the replica of the Simon Bolivar statue, which was closest to him. He turned it over and confirmed that the Gorham and Frost hallmark was engraved in the silver base. “The originals, I’d say.”
Mercer turned left. “Coop and I will take the west side. Why don’t you go east?”
We each used our flashlights to search every inch of the vault. Last year’s visitor may have taken some items—which is what we assumed—but also may have moved others or dropped something along the way.
All three of us were working from memory, since we had no map of the Park. I was running my light back and forth across the surface of the background, checking against my recollection of landmarks that should have been represented.
The Maine Monument was in place at the southwest entrance, so I started north, parallel with Mike, who was on the far side of the vault.
Each of us called out significant markers as we could see them. I reeled off the names of gates and arches that were still in place, just as Mike did from the east-side perspective.
It was Mercer, with the advantage of a head more height than I had, who noticed the first missing piece. “The Carousel’s gone.”
“One of Lavinia’s favorite places,” I said.
“Every kid’s favorite,” Mike said. “Probably Baby Lucy’s, too.”
“Well,” Mercer said, “it’s missing.”
“The Indian Hunter’s here. So are Shakespeare and Balto.”
“The Falconer’s in place,” I said, looking north from the 70th Street parallel. “Daniel Webster, too.”
Mike spotted the 72nd Street roadway first. “The angel is gone.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“But just the angel,” he said, stooping down to examine the base of the fountain. “The top part screwed off. Whoever took these things just wanted the angel.”
And seconds later, when Mike stood by the 72nd Street Cross Drive, he pointed to the gaping holes where both Belvedere Castle and the tall Obelisk used to sit.
Farther along, at 106th Street, I noticed that the so-called Strangers’ Gate to the Park had been removed.
The north gate house—a significant site in Eddie Wicks’s tormented life—was also gone. And as Mercer and I circled to the far end of the Park, it was clear that several other statues, the Warriors’ Gate at the 110th Street entrance, and the remote Blockhouse had also been stolen.
“What do you think?” Mike asked. “Ten pieces missing? A dozen?”
“Easily,” I said.
“Anything left behind?”
“Pretty careful,” Mercer said. “I didn’t see a dropping.”
“Then let’s check out the storage locker that matches the receipt,” Mike said.
Mercer eased himself out of the vault, extending his hand first to Mike and then to me as he helped us down. Then he took the receipt from his pocket and dangled it in front of Jarvis.
“We’d like to see this locker now.”
Mike put his foot in his surviving loafer and limped along.
“But someone was here to empty it,” Jarvis said.
“I’ve got a feeling,” Mercer said, “that whoever it was got this receipt back because the unit wasn’t completely cleaned out. The person was stamped in for one visit but left here still holding the ticket, so we’d like to see what’s in there.”
Jarvis dismissed the workmen and took us down in the elevator to the fourth floor. He had given up wrangling with us and submitted meekly to our request. The foreman, who had all the master keys, accompanied us down.
Again, Mercer showed him the tag with the number on it, and the now-docile man led us to a locker that was about two feet square, resting on the floor with two rows of similar containers above it. Mike asked him to unlock it and step away, along with Jarvis.
Mercer shined his light in, and it immediately caught the glare of a shiny object inside.
“Got a pair of gloves for me, Mike?”
Mike pulled them from his rear pants pocket, and Mercer put them on. He reached into the space and came out with a pair of silver gates.
I read the words engraved on the silver slab. “Strangers’ Gate. How appropriate a name for this investigation.”
“What’s with these?” Mike asked. “They look like stones, not gates.”
“That’s the whole idea. Olmsted and V—”
“Vaux. Like hawks. You only have to tell me things once, Coop.”
“They didn’t want iron railings around the Park—so as not to break up the pastoral look of it, and also not to make it appear to shut out the poor—so they just created these stone sculptures and gave each one a name, like a gate, so people could know where to meet one another.”
“So our guy leaves behind Strangers’ Gate, okay. You know where it is?”
“106 on the west side.”
“Wonder if there’s some significance to that,” Mike said. “Anything else, Mercer?”
Mercer reached his arm in again. “Yup.”
When he brought it out and opened his hand to us, there were two very small silver figures—miniature marionettes like the ones in the Swedish cottage, strings and all.
“Damn. I wonder if that was Eddie’s idea,” Mike said, “or Verge’s.”
“You’ve got to get this to the lab,” I said. “Let them try this FST DNA testing on it.”
“What’ll that do?”
“I thought I only had to tell you things once, Mike. It can pick up mixtures of genetic material, so if two people touched these miniatures, or even three, we can prove who they are.”
“But neither Wicks nor Humphrey is in the data bank,” he said. “We get a DNA mixture, and who do we match it to?”
“If we get our hands on them again—and I assume that day will come—it’s a way of putting this all together.”
Mercer had bagged the tiny puppets and passed them along to me.
“I’m with you, Coop, if you’ll just—”
I heard the shrill voice before the light footsteps of Jillian Sorenson, approaching through the dimly lit hallway. “Put those things down right now, Ms. Cooper.”
By shutting Will Jarvis out of our investigation, we apparently had sent him scurrying back down to his office. Sorenson must have gotten him to tell her where we were. She was steaming mad as she demanded we return the silver objects to her.
“You’re a little bit late for that, Ms. Sorenson,” Mike said. “They’re evidence now.”
“You’ll be sorry you did this, Detective. Harm seems to come to everyone who touches Lavinia Dalton’s prized possessions. Deadly harm.”
It was after eight
P.M.
on Friday evening—past
Jeopardy!
—and the three of us had lost all sense of time when we pulled into Mercer’s driveway in Douglaston, a handsome neighborhood of private homes in Queens.
Vickee was at the front door, and the moment she opened it four-year-old Logan Wallace ran down the steps in his pajamas—which were printed with brightly colored dinosaurs of all varieties—flying into Mike’s arms and begging for bedtime stories. I got the second-best greeting and held the child’s hand as we walked inside the house.
I stopped short at the sight of Manny Chirico sitting on the living room sofa. Mike was behind me and did the same.
“It’s okay, Mike,” the sergeant said, getting to his feet and walking toward him. “It’s only good news I’ve got. Jessica Pell stepped down from the bench tonight.”
Mike wrapped his arms around Chirico, grabbed his face between his hands, and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Why the hell didn’t you call me?”
“Peterson told me you were in the middle of something serious,” Chirico said. “Besides, I wanted to deliver the news in person. I heard about the plan for Alex to stay here and texted Mercer to drag you along.”
“Bar’s open,” Mercer said, slapping Mike on the back.
“How’d you do it, Manny?”
“Believe me, Mike, I don’t really know. It didn’t hurt for Alex to go to bat with Battaglia.”
Mike turned to me, but I held up my hands in protest. “Keep me out of this one.”
“Did you—?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”
Vickee was trying to get Logan upstairs, but he was too excited by all the backslapping and high spirits to leave the company. “You hold on to your godson, Alex. I’ll make the drinks.”
I picked him up to give him a hug.
“Why are you crying, Lexi?” he asked.
“I’m not crying. I’m just—um—I’m just so happy to see you. It’s been a month or two.”
“But there are tears in your eyes.”
“Then wipe them away, sweetie. You, Master Logan, have the power to make me smile anytime you want to.”
I walked toward the screened-in porch that faced the backyard, staying in earshot of everyone but staring off into the night. The rooms were only separated by a tall archway. The guys were talking about how crazy Jessica Pell was and what balls Battaglia showed in getting the mayor to twist her arm to step down. I rocked Logan back and forth in my arms.
I didn’t think tonight would put an end to the problems Mike’s dalliance with the madwoman had caused.
Mike was toasting Chirico and Mercer for their friendship and support, and I sat down on the porch sofa with Logan, who was still asking for a story, even willing to accept one from me.
“Here’s your drink,” Vickee said. “I’m going to order some pizza. You cool with that?”
“Absolutely.”
Logan stood up on the sofa next to me and started tugging at Vickee’s hand. “Lexi was crying, Mom. She was crying, but I made her stop.”
“That’s my boy,” she said, patting both of us on our heads. “Ten more minutes and you are history, young man. Way past your bedtime.”
The child pouted a bit and then curled up next to me, resting his head on my thigh as I started to make up a story for him.
“Where’s Coop?”
“Out on the porch,” Mercer said.
Mike came to find me and clink glasses. He started to say something to me, but I put my fingers to my lips. Logan looked up, and any thought I had that he might have calmed himself down was gone in a flash. He jumped up and reached out for Mike to pick him up.
“I’ll be back for that,” he said, pointing to the vodka martini that Vickee had mixed.
He walked off with Logan, headed for the staircase to the boy’s bedroom, undoubtedly telling another of the tales about how he and Mercer tackled a Tyrannosaurus rex in Central Park when they were rookie cops.
I carried my Scotch into the kitchen and helped Vickee set the table for the five of us. Mercer took the opportunity to come in and embrace me, asking if it was okay if he told Mike about my confrontation with Pell.
“No way,” I said. “At least not yet. Let’s let him think this was resolved on its merits.”
“Whatever you say, Alex. You’ve earned it.”
The pizzas arrived, and the five of us were having a cozy celebration. At the heart of the matter, though, I was still peeved that Mike had left himself open to such a dangerous liaison.
At ten, while we were still gabbing and eating, Mercer got up to switch on the local news.
“It’s ten
P.M.
,” Manny said, laughing as he mimicked the old public service message about knowing where your children are. “Do you have any idea where your favorite stalker is?”
“Looking for work, I hope,” Mike said as he uncorked another bottle of wine.
The anchor led with a car crash in Times Square that took the life of one driver, followed by the drowning of a teenager in a public pool on Staten Island.
“There’s just no good news anymore,” Chirico said.
“I got all the good news I could want for one night,” Mike said. “I’m going home soon, and I expect to have pleasant dreams for a change.”
“Home?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
This wasn’t the right time or right place to take our relationship to the next step, I knew, but it was such an odd thing to be celebrating the end of Mike’s hookup with Jessica Pell with him going home alone after our night together on the Arsenal rooftop.
“It’s the summer solstice, you know?” I said. “Longest night of the year.”
Mike leaned over to refill my wineglass and whispered in my ear. “Think of it this way, kid. I owe you two short ones.”
The commercial break was followed by a story about a domestic stabbing, then another about a child abuse case in the Bronx. The body in Central Park was last week’s headline and didn’t even merit a mention.
A picture of Jessica Pell flashed on the screen. “In news that seemed to take City Hall by surprise this evening, rising judicial star Jessica Pell—a favorite of the mayor’s staff—tendered her resignation from the bench. Reporters followed her to her home, but as you see in this clip, the former judge began ranting at them—language we can’t quite use in prime time—and sped off in her car just a couple of hours ago.”
“Maybe some of those reporters got a hint of her potential for rage,” Mike said, reaching for another slice.
“Sources tell New York One that Pell has been under a lot of pressure recently because of threats she received, connected to her work in the courts. When she complained about the denial of police protection, one of her friends at City Hall green-lighted her application for a gun permit two weeks ago.”
The anchor spun away from his teleprompter, making an effort to inject a bit of humor into his commentary. “So a warning to all you reporters and paparazzi out there looking to get in the judge’s face like we tried to do tonight, Jessica Pell is armed and extremely angry.
“Now over to you for the weather forecast,” he said to the woman standing next to his desk.
“Lucky to be out of that one,” Mercer said, clicking off the TV. “There’s no taste like bad taste, Mike. I hope she’s on to her next target.”
I put my fingers against the scratches on the side of my face. I was thankful not to be alone tonight.