Death Dance (23 page)

Mike ran down the narrow flights of stairs from the balcony
and vaulted over the railing into the first of the two side boxes that
hung above the orchestra. He climbed into the second one, closest to
the curtain, and reached for the metal ladder that was exposed to the
side of the proscenium arch to climb down it. He was on the stage only
seconds after Mona Berk, Ross Kehoe, and everyone else in range had
come up to surround the still body of the teenager.

I had flipped open my phone to call 911 for an ambulance and
police backup as I took the more traditional route down the staircase
and into the front of the orchestra.

However surprised people were to see Mike Chapman, they
responded well to his control of the situation. "Get back. Everybody
get back," I could hear him shouting to the group that had crowded in
around Lucy DeVore. "Give her air."

"Call for help," I heard Mona Berk say.

"There's an ambulance on the way."

Mike saw me from the stage. "Coop, get up here. The rest of
you, stand off. She's alive. She's breathing. Coop, don't let anybody
touch her. Keep 'em away. She needs air. You—any one of you,"
Mike said, gesturing to the small band of actors. "Go out to the lobby
and wait for the medics. Bring 'em right in here."

I kneeled in beside Mike. "Can you tell what's fractured?"

"The legs, obviously," he said, pointing to where the bone had
broken through the skin. "I don't know about the neck or spine. I don't
want to touch anything until there's an EMT here to check it. She
hasn't opened her eyes yet. Just stay with her while I look around."

Mike called to Mona Berk, "Who's operating the swing up above?"

She, in turn, pointed at Ross Kehoe to give the answer. "The
fly crew. We've just got two guys up there today."

"Don't let anybody leave. Make a list of everyone working here
today," Mike said, trotting into the wings to find his way up to the
fly gallery.

I sat on the stage next to the shattered body of Lucy DeVore.
I placed my hand over one of her outstretched arms and found her
pulse—a very weak one—and I kept her hand covered
in my own, stroking it and telling her she was going to be okay. She
had not fallen in the same way that Talya had been thrown to her
death— headfirst—so I tried to be optimistic that
the injuries would not be fatal.

Mike seemed to have disappeared backstage. I could no longer
see his navy blazer and shock of black hair against the dark metal
grillwork of the theater walls and scaffolding. The people who had made
up the cast and audience were split off into small circles
now—Mona huddled with Ross Kehoe and Rinaldo Vicci, on her
cell phone, explaining the situation to someone she had called; the
actors obviously distressed about the injured teenager.

I looked to the flat ladders against the backstage wall for
any sign of Mike, and saw only shadows from above. I turned my head to
the theater entrance, hoping a crew of EMTs would be nearby again this
time. And I checked Lucy's face, to see whether she had opened her eyes
yet, but that had not happened.

Mike was back at my side by the time the paramedics arrived. I
stepped away and made room for them as they began to check Lucy's vital
signs and got to work.

I followed Mike to Mona Berk's little group. "There's no one
up there. Where the hell are those guys?"

"Look," Kehoe said, "it's just a skeleton crew we brought in
for the afternoon. The Imperial's stagehands and techs don't come in
till later in the day."

"Bad choice of words, 'skeleton crew.' Who are they and
where'd they go? Was this just a way to do it on the cheap? Avoid union
labor?"

"It was supposed to be a simple walk-through, Mike. You think
I wanted the kid to get hurt? The last thing I need is a goddamn
law—suit before I even close on the property. Look at them,"
Mona said, pointing at the actors. "All these morons need to do is
start the story that this show is jinxed. The whole industry rides on
superstition. I'll end up spending a fortune and never get this show
off the ground."

She wasn't much concerned about Lucy DeVore's life, especially
if these events got in the way of ticket sales.

Vicci whispered something to Kehoe and they started to walk
toward the ladder that went up to the fly platform.

"Hold it," Mike said.

"I only asked to see what happened to the swing, detective. To
see how the ropes holding it look like," said Vicci, his accent
thickening as he pleaded for Mike's understanding.

"I got Crime Scene guys coming to do that. Just stay off, got
it?"

"But, crime… ? Who said anything about a crime?"

"Nobody yet. But this setup is going to be examined before any
one of you touches anything. The swing, where'd it come from?"

Kehoe called over to Mona, "Sweetheart, Mr. Chapman wants to
know about the swing. Where'd we get it?"

"The Brooks Atkinson Theater, Ross. Revival of Tom Stoppard's
Jumpers
,
remember? The girl on the swing that was decorated with the crescent
moon. Christ, isn't this one moving yet? Why don't they get her out of
here and over to the hospital? This is such fucking bad karma for me."

Mike was standing over the shoulder of one of the medics when
he gave me a thumbs-up. They had secured Lucy's neck in a cervical
collar and were getting ready to move her, which meant that it was
unlikely she had sustained any spinal cord injury. With Mike's help
they lifted her onto a gurney, which in turn fit on a collapsible set
of wheels, carrying the young woman out of the theater and to the
ambulance.

Once the most critical matter was dealt with, Mike turned his
attention back to the producers. "The crew, where are they?"

"On the street in the back. Grabbing a smoke. They're pretty
scared," Kehoe said, walking upstage to call out the back door.

Two kids in their twenties, dressed in jeans and filthy
T-shirts, came back into the theater. Mike wrote their names and
pedigree information in his pad and directed them to take him back up
on the catwalk to see the pipes in the fly from which the swing had
been suspended.

"You're not going to the hospital with Lucy?" I asked Rinaldo
Vicci.

"I—I don't know what to do about the poor child.
Perhaps you could tell me where they've taken her." He rubbed his
extended abdomen with one hand, again wiping sweat from his forehead
with the other. "I'm not really responsible for her."

"Someone should be with her. The doctors will need an adult to
sign a consent form for the surgery. Don't any of you care what happens
to her?"

Mona held up her hands, as though telling me to stop talking.
"Wait a minute. I've got to speak to my lawyer before I even think of
getting involved. Rinaldo, this is really in your lap. Isn't she
eighteen? You told me she was eighteen, that we were just going to say
sixteen for the publicity. You know her family?"

"Nobody. I don't know anything at all. She told me she's from
West Virginia. She told me she's here alone."

"Mr. Vicci, I expect you can do better than that. Surely you
must have some better information, something back in your office,
perhaps?"

He was playing with the fringe of the lavender cashmere scarf
he had tossed around his neck, on this mild spring afternoon. "I'm
thinking very hard, Miss Cooper. I'm thinking I don't know very much at
all. This was all to be so informal today, you understand me?"

I was thinking that if I could pull the two ends of the scarf
a bit tighter around the neck he might cough up whatever it was he
didn't want to tell me. "Who brought her to you, Mr. Vicci? How did she
come to your attention? I want some explanation, some—"

"
Scusi, signora
. There would be notes in
my office. I'm pleased to get that information for you and give you a
call later on, but for now, she's just one of the many young ladies who
knock on the door or someone refers to me."

"Where are her clothes? There must be a bag with some
beatification. Someone to get in touch with?" I turned to the small
group of actors and asked them to take me to the dressing room.

We walked behind the curtain on stage left, up a ramp to a
cheerless communal room. One side of it was lined with mirrors, below
which stood a ledge wide enough to hold makeup and hair supplies, with
stools scattered beneath that. On the opposite wall were hooks and
hangers. One of the girls from the dance number pointed at the black
sweater and Capri pants that belonged to Lucy, and the tote bag that
hung with them.

I dug around in the tote—pushing aside sunglasses,
birth control pills, a strip of nicotine gum, and a container of
mace—until I found a plastic wallet. There was thirty-four
dollars in cash, an ATM card, and a New York State driver's license.
The date of birth would have made Lucy twenty-one years old, a much
more convenient age to do just about anything a beautiful young woman
might choose to do in the big city. The residential address listed was
on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan—no mention of any connection to
West Virginia—and I guessed that whoever she really was, she
had purchased the identification in some illegal joint, not too long
ago and not very far from Times Square.

When I got back to the stage, Mike was standing in front of
the orchestra pit, writing down names and numbers of the impatient
angels who were waiting to get out of the theater. He turned his back
and put his arm around me to explain what he had seen.

"Those kids don't know anything. One of them is doped up to
the gills—it's amazing with all the marijuana in him he could
balance on the fly without taking a header himself."

"Who hired them?"

"The older one of them got a call last week from his cousin,
who's on the crew at the Belasco. That guy didn't want to get in dutch
with Joe Berk, so he passed the job along to these two, who are
buddies. The script just tells them which pipe to move and when to move
it. They have no idea who set the swing or when it was hung here."

"You got the names of everyone in the peanut gallery?"

"Yeah, these mopes can go. Hubert Alden's agreed to stay to
talk to us."

"Which one is he?" I asked, taking a casual glance at the
dozen people still milling about in the side aisles.

"The tall guy in the gray suit, trench coat over his
shoulders. Looks like an ad for Brylcreem."

Mike let the others go, still waiting for the Crime Scene Unit
to show up. This kind of event—seemingly
accidental—would not trump the day's other mayhem. I called
my paralegal, Maxine, and dispatched her to the hospital to wait
outside the recovery room for Lucy DeVore—no matter how long,
no matter how late. Whoever Lucy really was and whatever her story,
this was not a time for her to be without someone to help care for her,
and Max had tended more victims through trauma than almost anyone I
knew outside of an emergency room.

We walked Hubert Alden to the back of the theater and
introduced ourselves. He braced his back against the corner where the
walls met and folded his arms, taking us each in as we studied him.

"The medical examiner told us you called this morning. About
Natalya Galinova. I'm the detective handling her case."

"I'm grateful to you for that. Is there going to be any
problem having her—well, her body—released to meto
take home?"

"I've got some questions, naturally. And we're waiting for her
husband to sign the appropriate paperwork. Under the circumstances it's
a bit unusual for someone who's not related to be making the claim."

"We've had a professional relationship, detective. I've
supported Talya, as an artist, and I've been very generous to the dance
company, too."

"This is what I'm a little confused about," Mike said,
furrowing his brow and making circles in the air with his right hand,
in his best Columbo imitation. "Exactly how does that partnership work?"

Alden's description of his patronage was cut-and-dried. He
denied there was any sexual involvement with Talya Galinova.

"So what are you in this for?" Mike asked.

"I've made a lot of money, detective. I'm fifty-two years
old—an investment banker. Married briefly but no children. My
grandmother was one of the most important opera singers of the last
century. It's in her honor that I support great artists."

"Who was your grandmother?" Mike asked.

"Giulietta Capretta, before she became an Alden. Do you
recognize the name?"

Mike shook his head in the negative.

"And you, Ms. Cooper?" Alden said, pushing away from the wall
and walking down the aisle toward the exit door.

"I've heard recordings of her that my father had. Singing with
Caruso at the old Met, if I'm not mistaken."

Alden flashed a smile at me, imitating his grandmother for us,
as he wagged a finger, and proceeded to roll all his r's in a perfect
trill, much like Rinaldo Vicci did. " 'Alas, young lady, you can have
no idea how big my voice is if all you've listened to are the records.
When I made recordings, they had to turn my back to the horn,'" Alden
said, gesticulating grandly with his long arm, " 'or I would have
ruptured the mechanism.' That was Giulietta's rebuke to the poor folk
who never actually saw her perform in person."

Alden was playing to me and I could see that Mike was annoyed.
He got a few steps ahead of Alden and me and waited impatiently for us
to catch up.

"So that's what makes you so generous? Granny's memory?"

"That's not enough for you, Mr. Chapman? The Aldens have been
patrons of the arts for a very long time," Alden said, continuing to
walk with a swagger, tugging at the lapel of his coat to keep it in
place on his shoulder. "They were part of the cabal responsible for the
building of the old Met. Broadway and Fortieth Street, 1883. Back when
they were considered too gauche to be admitted to the Academy of Music."