Death Dance (46 page)

There was no point keeping Hubert Alden in my office any
longer. His information was pointing us in a new direction, reweaving
many of the same characters into a new tapestry, giving us another
venue to explore—one that was familiar to most of them.

As Mike walked Alden to the elevators, Mercer Wallace came
into my office carrying a bag full of sandwiches.

"Heard you were busy doing your StairMaster workout early this
morning," he said, unpacking the late lunch he brought for each of us.
"I figured after that you could even stand a bag of chips for a change."

"Feed me, m'man," Mike said, returning to the room and
reaching for the roast beef hero, biting into it as though he hadn't
eaten in days. "How was your weekend?"

"I think I've been in every homeless shelter and soup kitchen
in the city since you left town. Still looking for Ramon Carido,"
Mercer said. "He must be living under a rock in the park, and it has
gotta be driving him crazy. This beautiful spring
weather—every jogger and biker and stroller is out there on
his hunting ground, stoking his imagination. I doubt he'll ever go
after a dog-walker again."

"Coop missed all the local news while she was on the Vineyard.
Every station showed that sketch of him around the clock."

"Reward money's up to twenty grand from one of the
victims-advocacy groups. Some mutt'll turn him in for the loot before
too long."

"So you worked all weekend while I played hooky?"

"And lucky thing you did, Ms. Cooper. May I say that for once
you are no longer the favorite prosecutor of the Manhattan Special
Victims Squad? I don't want to be a snitch, but somebody drew a
mustache and horns on that picture of you holding my baby boy last
Christmas. You look downright evil."

"Easy come, easy go. What now?"

"The guys are really pissed at you because of the order from
Judge McFarland in the Carido case."

"You mean not being able to try to match their DNA evidence to
the linkage database? Two weeks and we'll have a whole new set of
rules. Good ones, I hope."

"In the meantime, we caught six new squeals since Thursday
night."

"Yeah, I saw the complaint reports on Laura's desk this
morning. Four of them knew their attackers. DNA won't make the
difference in those cases. Tell the squad to work those cases the
old-fashioned way—with their brains."

"Well, they need the databank in the other two. In fact, when
you look those reports over more carefully, you'll see that Saturday
night's break-in down on Allen Street may be part of a pattern. We want
to try to link it to an open series in Tribeca."

Mike had finished his hero and was working on his second bag
of nachos. "She's not going to win any popularity contests in the
Homicide Squad either. Same beef."

"I didn't go up to court intending to try to make new law,
guys. It was a command performance."

"Yeah, well, don't go calling nine-one-one again any time
soon," Mike said, wiping the mustard from his cheek with the back of
his hand. "Some dick is likely to tell you to stick your DNA up
your—"

"Laura? You just reminded me, Mike. Laura?" She poked her head
through the doorway. "Would you call down to the supply office? They
need to issue me a new cell phone. Beg them to let me keep my old
number, okay?"

"Got it."

"I had to turn mine in to the detectives this morning so they
can make a record of the exact times of the calls I made from my
building last night," I explained to Mike and Mercer. "They have to
check with Benito, too. Maybe he heard whether my attacker said
anything while the line was open."

"I thought you told me he didn't say a word."

"That's exactly what I told you. And I'm Sure of it. They just
want to double-check, in case I'm mistaken.''

"Guess you got zero credibility, Coop. Those cops trust you
about twice as much as you trust your witnesses. It's good medicine for
you. What'd you think of Hubert Alden?" Mike had finished his bottle of
root beer and reached for a swig of my Diet Coke to wash down the food.

"Same as I think about anybody who throws a curve like that
one. You and I had such tunnel vision about the Met as the geographic
center of this investigation. There's something way too slick about
Alden, and I worry that maybe he's just steering us away from the
progress we were making," I said, as Mike started to tell Mercer about
the rehearsal studios at City Center.

"Progress? You still got a ballerina in a refrigerator down at
the morgue and me itching to put cuffs on
Joe-do-you-know-who-I-am-Berk. Progress is when I ratchet those little
metal bracelets on some-body's wrists."

"When do we check the place out?" Mercer asked.

Mike looked at his watch. "It's almost three o'clock. Let's
get up there while there's still someone to show us around. Where are
your wheels?"

"Bayard Street. Near the sleazebag bail bondsman's office."

"I'm in front of the building. Let's use mine. Chow down,
blondie."

The ride up Avenue of the Americas was slowed by traffic. I
tried to nap in a corner of the cluttered rear seat of Mike's
department car. I didn't have to count sheep—I had an even
longer list, it seemed, of suspects who had eluded the long arm of the
law this past week: the Turkish doctor who drugged his victims; Ramon
Carido, the rapist who'd been bitten by a dog; and Ralph Harney, the
stagehand who'd gotten a stand-in rather than provide us with a sample
of his DNA.

"Ralph Harney," I said aloud. "You think he knows enough about
electrical stuff to have been the guy who blackened the apartments and
waited for me last night?"

Mike cocked his head and looked at me in the rearview mirror.
"He's a stagehand, not an electrician."

"But he's worked around all that elaborate stage wiring for
years. Had to pick something up, the jobs are so intertwined," Mercer
said. "Worth looking at. The guys he works with could tell us how much
he knows."

There was a hotel loading zone half a block east of City
Center. Mike pulled in and parked the car.

As we approached the theater—the great expanse of
sandstone capped by its monumental dome—a huddle of young
women walked out of the building, stopping on the sidewalk to talk
among themselves. Their long legs resting in the turned-out position of
dancers, towels around their necks, suggested they had just finished
the day's warm-up or class.

Behind them, another woman rushed out of the door, seemingly
agitated that her path was blocked. She shifted from one side to the
other, nudging the girl closest to her in order to pass by and run out
into the street to flag down a Yellow Cab. She tossed her large black
tote into the rear seat and climbed in after it.

It was impossible to tell whether she ignored the three of us
or simply didn't hear Mike Chapman call for her by name to get her to
stop. Mona Berk slammed the door of the taxi and took off down the
one-way street.

The two security guards inside the lobby were less than
impressed with Mike's gold shield. They kept no sign-in book at this
entrance, although there was one on the 56th Street side, where the
center's offices were located. And no, they had no idea who any of the
women were who had left a short while ago.

One of the men called upstairs to have someone from management
escort us inside. While we waited, I stepped back out on the sidewalk
to look at the front of the theater. The words
Mecca Temple
were too many stories above for me to see—as Alden had
suggested—but the other Islamic architectural motifs were
impossible to mistake.

I noted as if for the first time the arcade of horseshoe
arches in the tawny sandstone, the attached columns and capitals framed
by the traditional Arabic
alfiz
, and the colorful
glazed tiles that set the building apart from the low brick structures
on either side. The massive facade was dotted with lancet windows,
again in the Moorish style, which must have provided the only natural
light to the areas behind the auditorium seats in the upper balconies.

Inside the foyer, Mike and Mercer's impatience was clear as
they paced between the advance ticket sales window and a wall on the
far end, postered with coming events.

"Detective Chapman? Ms. Schiller sent me down to answer your
questions. My name is Stan," the young man said, extending his hand to
each of us. "How can we help?"

"We're investigating the homicide that occurred at the Met ten
days ago."

"Miss Galinova, of course."

"We understand that she rented studio space here for class and
rehearsal."

"Yes, she did. We were privileged to have her."

"We're going to have to look around. We need to see where she
worked, whether she kept a locker here, any record of her comings and
goings or who might have visited her. People she mixed with, dancers
who might have noticed her guests, men who—"

"Perhaps we can schedule an appropriate time to do this. I
hadn't realized how much ground you need to cover." Stan tried to reach
an arm out to stop Mike from entering the lobby, but he was
too
late.

"We might as well get started," Mercer said.

Mike had climbed the six steps that led to the rear of the
auditorium, so completely different in style from the Met and other
theaters
we had seen. Mercer and I stepped up behind him for a look.

I had never seen the old house empty. Tier after tier of red
velvet seats spread outward like a great fan, with shiny brass railings
that ran along the aisles. The stage with its arched proscenium looked
enormous; above and around the ceiling was the lacy grillwork typical
of Moorish design—large perforated stars arrayed as cutouts
above the orchestra and over the balcony seats—and gleaming
ivory paint accented with rich gold metallic trim.

"Coop, take a look at the seats."

Below the armrest of each seat on the aisle was an intricately
engraved panel, and in the middle of each one was the letter
M
.

"Miss Galinova had nothing to do with the auditorium,
detective," Stan said, pushing up the sleeve of his shirt to check the
time. "I'm leaving for the day at five, but if you'd like me to take
you up to the office tower, I can give you an idea of where she worked."

He led us out through the lobby. "If you don't mind walking up
a flight, we can actually connect through to the other space from
within the theater without going outside to the Fifty-sixth Street
entrance."

"We saw a woman leaving as we pulled up," Mike said. "Mona
Berk. D'you know her? She have an office here?"

"I have no idea who she is. The name means nothing to me."

I walked beside Stan on the broad staircase as Mike and Mercer
hurried ahead. "Very grand looking, isn't it?" I said as we reached the
mezzanine.

The wide expanse was unlike the cramped spaces in Broadway
theater lobbies, with beautifully stenciled coffered ceilings and thick
carpeting.