Death Dance (47 page)

"When the Shriners built Mecca Temple, this was one of the
gentlemen's lounges. It was their smoking lodge, actually. Lots of
sofas and sitting chairs, spittoons beside them. Marble floors with
Moroccan carpets. The old boys were very interested in their comfort
and elegance. Watch your heads, please."

We all stooped to exit the auditorium area and emerged into a
dingy hallway that led to the office tower.

"Careful where you walk. This is the only way through to the
studios, and it has to be kept unlocked. It's the only fire exit on
this side of the building. But it's worth your life to get through here
at the moment," Stan said, guiding me around piles of gels and high-top
sleeves that once covered the spots from recesses overhead. "We're
replacing a lot of the lighting equipment, modernizing to a digital
system."

The path was cluttered with all the backstage theatrical magic
that brought the stage alive, and Mike was annoyed at me for tiptoeing
around the mess and slowing him down.

"Sorry, Mr. Chapman. Mecca was entirely gaslit when it was
built in the twenties. Between that and the smoking habits of a lot of
the performers and workmen, we've always had to take extraordinary
precautions against fire."

A few corridors away we reached a bank of elevators.

"I'll take you up to seven. That's where Ms. Galinova liked to
work."

The age of the old theater showed itself far less gracefully
in the areas out of public view. Walls were in bad need of a paint job,
occasional corners graffitied in bright colored markers by members of
visiting dance companies whose signatures provided a riotous splash of
color against the drab beige paint.

"Did she have a dressing room?" Mike asked. "A place where she
could be alone?"

"City Center isn't like the Met. We don't have a star system
here. There are changing rooms, certainly, but nothing with Galinova's
name on it. Is it possible she found an empty office to park herself
in? Well, just try a few of the doors—there's always
something available. Dusty but available."

Dancers—women and men—brushed by us as
they passed out of a class. They all looked like
teenagers—perfectly toned bodies, unlined skin covered with
sweat, most of them in black leotards and tights topped by colorful
woolen leg warmers.

"This is Julio Bocca's Argentine company. Fabulously talented
young people. I think the oldest member of the corps is seventeen."

Stan said, waiting until they cleared through. The accompanist
was still working on the timing of a tango and the music drifted into
the corridor and followed the dancers down the hall.

We walked into the studio they had just vacated and I was
aghast at its dimensions and decor. "This is fabulous," I said to Stan.
"I've never seen rehearsal space like this in the city."

"Do you dance?"

"No, no. But I've studied ballet for years, taken lots of
classes."

The room was unusually large, in length and depth. The painted
ceilings and even the door frame were rich in architectural detail and
color. What was most unique for a Manhattan rehearsal studio was that
there were no columns at all, a completely open space in which the
dancers could stage numbers as they would be performed in a theater.

Mike wasn't listening. He headed directly to the far end of
the
room and climbed a few steps, seating himself in an oversize wooden
chair, carved with elaborate stars and crescents that I recognized now
as symbols of the Middle Eastern influence.

"What about this?"

"The potentate's throne, detective. It was in these old lodge
rooms that many of the secret rituals of the Shriners were conducted.
In almost every one of these studios, there's an altar or shrine that
played some part in the daily life of the members. I don't have a clue
what went on in here, but most of us are just grateful that all this
rich detail survived what the city did to the rest of the common
space," Stan said, gesturing back to the hallway.

Mike was down the steps and back to the door. "Where else did
Ms. Galinova spend time?"

Stan passed him and retraced his steps in the hallway. "This
dressing room is for the women. I suppose that's the one she had to
use." He looked over his shoulder at me. "Although I can't imagine for
a minute that a prima like Galinova enjoyed sharing it with anyone
else."

From within we could hear the voices of the dancers, speaking
in Spanish, and the sound of the running water from the shower.

Mike nodded at me. "Your territory, Coop. Check front."

I pushed open the door and entered the room.

The first area had been converted into a small lounge. Several
sofas and chairs were against the wall, and three of the
dancers—barefoot and robed, waiting their turn for the
shower—were curled up and chatting with one another.

I passed by them to another section of the room. Instead of
lockers, there were only open cubbies for their belongings and a
coatrack on which their clothing hung.

The last chamber was the bathroom area: several toilet stalls,
a row of sinks, and one entire wall that was mirrored. There were
backpacks on the floor, magazines and iPods stacked beside them, and
makeup on every flat surface.

One of the girls emerged from the shower, wrapped in a bath
sheet with her head turbaned in a towel. She excused herself as she
slid in front of me, and I pressed my back to the wall to let her pass.

My hands were flat against the surface, a smooth, glazed tile
that was cold to the touch. I looked around and noticed the same old
ceramic squares—undoubtedly the original 1920s
design—covering the wall opposite the showers and creating a
border along the ceiling edge and floor.

I walked to the empty shower stall, which was also elaborately
tiled, then turned to study the dark blue and pale green of the mosaics
worked into a white ground. What had Hubert Alden called the typically
Islamic motifs? A foliate design, he had said.

I ran my fingers over the beautiful image. The flowers looked
familiar to me—their shape and colors—and I tried
to recall where I had seen something like them.

Foliate, of course. Beautiful flowers. They were tulips,
Arabic style, created specially for the Mecca Temple. And the other
time I had seen them was on the monitor in Joe Berk's bedroom.

The images we suspected Berk of watching—of stealing
for some personal perversion by means of a hidden surveillance
system—must have come to him from a camera that had been
surreptitiously installed here in the dressing room used by many of the
dancers who rehearsed at City Center, including Lucy DeVore and the
late Natalya Galinova.

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.