Death Dance (13 page)

Mike and I both lived on the Upper East Side in circumstances
as different as our backgrounds. He referred to his tiny, dark
fifth-floor walkup on York Avenue as "the coffin," while I lived on the
twentieth floor of a high-rise, in a large sunlit apartment with
twenty-four-hour doormen who enabled me to separate myself from the
day's demons when I settled in at home.

There was a comfortable chill in the early-spring night when
we left Primola, and Mike offered to walk me the few short blocks north
to my building.

When I tried to bring the conversation back to the subject of
Valerie, he countered by asking questions about my personal life.

"So what are you going home to, Coop? Grind your teeth over
the Saturday
Times
crossword puzzle and sink into
a steaming-hot bath to avoid your empty bed? Anything new in your life?"

"Ouch! You're beginning to sound like my mother. I think you
and Mercer are going to be stuck with me for a while."

"How much longer you gonna do this?" he said, steering me
across to the west side of the avenue, dodging couples arm in arm on
their way home from local eateries and bars. "Running around to crime
scenes, getting mouthed off at by scumbags, giving up your nights and
weekends—"

"Like you do."

"Shit. I get paid for overtime."

"You know anybody who has a better job than I do? Every day I
wake up and want to go to work. I like how my gut feels, I like knowing
we make things a little bit easier for people who don't expect the
system to get it right."

"But you've got to vent somewhere, other than to Mercer and
me."

Mike had come to depend on Valerie's love and support after
years of trusting no one outside the job. She had fought to get him to
open up to her, and now he was struggling to regain the tight grip he'd
always held on his emotions.

"That's why my friendships have been so important to me. You
know that."

"I'm talking about something else, Coop. Not pals, not
girl-friends, not drinking buddies. Don't you ever worry it's all gonna
pass you by because you're in over your head with this blood-and-guts
stuff? You've taken yourself out of circulation."

More than a decade ago, before I started the work that had so
absorbed my interest, the man I had been hours away from marrying had
been killed in a car accident. I had experienced a loss as great as
Mike's and could give him no assurances that a love as important as
this last one—like my love for Adam—would ever
sustain him again.

"Don't be ridiculous. I thought the reason I had no takers was
because you've been spreading the word about me for so long."

"Nobody listens to me," Mike said, veering away from me as our
elbows inadvertently rubbed together, looping his thumb over the top of
his belt. "You're your own worst enemy. You might as well be wearing a
sign that warns guys to keep their distance."

There was no moving Mike from his morose mood. "What are you
doing next weekend?" I asked. I took a few steps ahead of him and
walked backward, forcing him to look me in the eye.

"I'm catching."

"You could switch with someone, couldn't you?" I was trying to
get him to lighten up, but when he ignored me and kept walking, I
planted both hands on his chest to stop him.

"I think I've used up all my favors lately, don't you?" Mike
brushed me aside and pretended to laugh.

"I'm supposed to fly up to the Vineyard after work on Friday.
Open the house for the spring. Jim's away," I said, referring to the
fiance of my friend Joan Stafford, "so Joan will probably come with me.
Sit me in front of the fireplace and both of you can pile in on me with
pointers about turning around my love life."

We had reached my building's driveway, which cut through
between two streets. Opposite the entrance was a pocket park for the
residents, planted with daffodils and crocuses, the quarter moon
reflecting in the shallow flagstone pool surrounded by granite benches.

The doorman held the door open for me. I gave it another try.
"Want to come up for a while?" I cocked my head and smiled at Mike, who
was staring down at the pavement—oblivious to the moonlight
and flowers—but he wouldn't even meet me halfway.

Mike shook his head and told me he'd call me after the
Galinova autopsy. I walked to the elevator and pressed the button. As I
waited for it, I looked out the lobby windows and saw Mike leaning back
on one of the benches, staring at the heavens as though the brilliant
constellations weren't obscured by the bright city lights. I wasn't
used to being pushed so far away by him and wondered whether someone
else was helping him deal with his grief.

I didn't have the strength for the Saturday
Times
crossword— the toughest puzzle of the week—but I
drew a hot bath and counted on its soporific qualities to help me stop
reviewing the last hours of Talya Galinova's life. I was too tired to
fight sleep and too resigned to the current state of my social life to
mind that there hadn't been a crease on the other half of my sheet for
several months.

The dancer's death was headlined below the fold on the front
page of the
Times
when I reached for it on my
doorstep at eight thirty Sunday morning. A triumphant photograph of her
as Odile, in arabesque, ran behind the news of the rising unemployment
rate and the latest political skirmish in North Korea.

The
Post
never disappointed when it came
to bad taste. The front-page banner, murder at the met—again,
was featured in bold caps over the shot of the body bag being loaded
into the ambulance in the docking bay of the opera house. The subtitle
beneath Talya's name identified her latest role: corpse de ballet.

A gentle April rain drizzled down the windowpanes and gave me
license to spend a lazy day at home. I caught up on paying bills,
answered dozens of accumulated e-mails, napped in the late afternoon,
phoned family and friends, and put on my hooded rain slicker to cross
the street for a late-afternoon pedicure and manicure. Dinner was a
salad and turkey sandwich delivered from PJ Bernstein, and I hibernated
in my den for the evening with a slightly foxed copy of a collection of
Raymond Chandler stories that I had picked up for a dollar at the
Chilmark flea market.

I had expected Mike's call after the autopsy, but with the
morgue understaffed on weekends and a recent upsurge of violent deaths,
there was no predicting when he would report in to me.

I had just turned on the ten o'clock nightly news when the
phone rang.

"Not much to help us with," Mike said. "The fall killed her,
pretty much like we expected."

"Kestenbaum is certain Talya was alive when she was thrown
over?"

"A lot of bleeding in the brain when he opened the skull, so
her heart was still pumping when she hit. Terminal velocity, going
head-first down the shaft with hands tied behind her back, slamming
into the fan casing at about a hundred twenty miles an hour. Fractured
skull, ribs, pelvis and massive internal injuries. And the doc was
right when he said you might not be along for this ride, kid. No sign
of sexual assault. No semen in the vaginal vault, so that won't even
solve who she was cozy with yesterday."

"Has Talya's husband flown over to claim the body?"

"Nope. He told the morgue attendant that he and Talya had
separated several months ago, that her lawyers had notified him she'd
be filing for divorce. They talked frequently but that was all
basi-ness. He wasn't having anything to do with this."

"Well, how about her agent? What's his name again?"

"Rinaldo Vicci. He came down to do the I.D., but we're still
waiting for someone to confirm the arrangements. Vicci has no authority
to make any decisions either. Galinova's husband claims she fired him
more than a week ago."

"Why? Did he say why?"

"Vicci denies it. Says she often threatened to do that
whenever she had tantrums, but the husband says this time it was meant
to stick. The husband's been in constant contact with Talya's lawyers
because of the legal separation status and that's what they told him as
recently as a week ago. It's one more thing to sort out."

"You just can't let her lay there on ice indefinitely, Mike."

I clamped my jaw shut as soon as I said the words.

"Why?" he asked. "She deserves any better than Val?"

The accidental death of Mike's girlfriend in a glacial
crevasse was still foremost on his mind. There was an edge to him now,
a bitterness that had never hung between us before. I struggled to
bring back the intimacy of our friendship but was beginning to realize
it was going to be a very long road to regain it.

"How about the evidence you submitted to the lab? The physical
items, and the blood and hair?"

"Calm down, Coop. Nobody worked today. They'll get going on it
tomorrow."

"And the Met employees? Has their screening started?"

"Those guys won't know what hit them. Forget the borough.
Every squad in the city is giving us some men to do interviews, run rap
sheets, check backgrounds. We'll saturate the place. How'd you like the
morning papers?"

"I've often thought of putting my English Lit background to
work and helping them out. You just hold your breath and hope nobody
who cared about the victim ever sees those tabloid bombs."

The courthouse pressroom was plastered from ceiling to floor
with page-one stories that had won it the nickname of the wall of
shame. High-profile cases like this one would result in several more
offerings for the coveted space.

"Don't think tomorrow won't top this one, kid. I got a chance
for "you to come scoop up some of those long white hairs you were dying
to get your mitts on yesterday when we were in Joe Berk's office. Ready
for a late-night date on Broadway?"

"Where are you? What's—"

"A little too much juice on the street, Coop. Berk was
electrocuted tonight."

"
What
? Joe Berk? How'd that happen?"

"Stepped on a manhole cover outside the theater an hour ago.
Faulty insulation in the junction box."

"But he's our prime—"

"Accidents happen, kid. Con Ed has these freak hot spots all
over town and Joe Berk happened to put his fat foot on this one.
Sometimes justice is swift and certain, and I wouldn't want to miss an
opportunity like that."

"You're sure it's an accident?"

"The Lord works in strange and mysterious ways. Berk stepped
on the wrong manhole cover and spared the state some aggravation. I'm
going upstairs to take a peek at his apartment. Wanna come?"

"You picking me up?"

"Be ready in ten. And save yourself fifty cents on tomorrow's
news. It's curtains for Joe Berk. Another banner day for the tabs,
photo of the old guy lying in the gutter—that's their money
shot— his life captured in a single word:
ZAPPED
!"

"Times Square, Crossroads of the World," Mike said, stepping
out of his department car just off the main intersection of Broadway
and 44th Street, a few minutes before eleven o'clock on Sunday evening.
He pointed up at the sky. "You can fly into LaGuardia at night and read
a book sitting by an airplane window without your overhead light on,
just from the electricity generated in this neon canyon."