The Deadhouse (19 page)

I tried to recall the history of her marriage, as Lola had detailed
it to me during our first few meetings. She had never mentioned any
formal separation, but all the statistics about domestic violence
supported the probability that several had occurred. In most abusive
situations, there are seven failed elopements—seven unsuccessful
efforts to split from the abuser—before a woman completes the move.

"How long did your relationship last?"

"The better part of a year. Long distance and infrequent, at that. I
went to Paris to work on a project that just opened to the public last
year. Are you familiar with it? There were extensive ruins that had
been built on top of several times throughout the centuries, right at
the front of the plaza where Notre Dame stands. Lutetia, it was called.
The original Roman village that was settled on the He de la Cite in
medieval times."

Interesting, I thought. Nan had likened Blackwells' midriver
positioning to the He de la Cite, too.

"Lola was teaching at Columbia then. Used to find any excuse she
could to fly over to France. Field trips, student holidays, academic
seminars on international government. Boondoggles of every kind. I had
a charming flat on the Left Bank, near the university, between
Luxembourg Gardens and those amazing bookshops along the Seine. We
spent some great weekends there."

"Ah, we'll always have Paris, right, Shreve?" Doing his best Bogie,
Mike couldn't help taking a shot at the romantic reverie. The professor
didn't catch the reference. "What broke it up?"

"Lola and Ivan had gotten back together. And I'd fallen madly in
love with a Frenchwoman from Toulouse. Six months later I was married.
I'm a French citizen now, in fact."

"So your wife lives here with you?"

"No, she doesn't. Giselle's in France. The marriage lasted eight
years. But our divorce is quite amicable, and you're very welcome to
talk to her, if that's what you mean. We have two young children, whom
Giselle wanted to raise in her country. And she wanted to finish her
degree at the Sorbonne, too. She was my student when we married, so
that meant she had to drop out of the classes. She'll finish her
studies and graduate in the spring."

"But she knew Lola Dakota?"

"Certainly. Whenever Ivan and Lola traveled to Europe, the four of
us spent time together. It was no problem for Giselle. I'd been single
when I hooked up with Lola. But I don't think Ivan ever knew anything
about our relationship. Open-mindedness is not his strong suit.

"She and I always remained close. I'm to blame, if you will, for
inviting her to come to King's to teach. I assumed she would have a
much greater opportunity to become a department head here. Fewer
entrenched alumni to battle with over her unorthodox or, shall I say,
more innovative ideas, less heritage to have to embrace than back at
Columbia. Lola could rub some of the traditionalists the wrong way."

"How about you? D'you ever battle with her? Get on the receiving end
of her tough streak?"

"I take it you've been talking to some of the students. Lola
Dakota—the professor—was a perfectionist. If these kids weren't
applying themselves according to her standards, she was ruthless." He
was somber now. "My department had little to do with hers, in general.
But because of the Blackwells project, many of the interns from King's
worked under our joint supervision. We planned a number of courses that
we cotaught, combining the anthropological features of the island with
the politics of the period.

"But I can't remember fighting with Lola about anything significant.
On which end of the project should the dig begin? Should a student be
graded a B, or did we throw in a plus or minus? How much time should be
spent talking to descendants of some of the inhabitants?"

"When's the last time you slept with her?"

"She'd admire your directness, Detective," Shreve said with some
hesitation. "More than I do. Eight years ago, to be exact. In her cheap
hotel room on Boulevard St-Germain-des-Pres. "And it was good for
me,
if you want to know that, too."

I tried to get us back on course. "Did you know a girl named
Charlotte Voight, Professor?"

He straightened in his chair and put both hands on the back of his
neck. "Sad case, Charlotte. She was in one of my classes last spring,
when she suddenly walked away from all this." He looked back at me.
"Now,
she
was a source of disagreement between Lola and me.
I thought the girl had a lot of intelligence to be channeled, and a
creative imagination."

"With or without the aid of hallucinogens?"

"Her drug use was no secret, Detective. But when she was clearheaded
and engaged, as I think she was in my classwork, I thought we had a
chance of saving Charlotte. Lola didn't see it that way. Came down on
her hard. Some of us thought that helped drive the child off, send her
over the edge, emotionally speaking."

"What do you think happened to Charlotte?"

"I just assume she went home to South America. Probably wandered
around Manhattan until she ran out of contacts to keep her high, then
packed her bags and went home." He brightened as he spoke his next
thought. "Charlotte will come back round, Ms. Cooper. I'm sure of it.
Hungry to learn, anxious to be accepted, though she didn't like to show
that side to people. She's not the first college girl to take a
breather."

Mike was back to Lola Dakota. "Lola must have told you what went
wrong with her marriage, didn't she?"

"Ivan's right hand, so far as I know. And occasionally his left. He
beat her, Detective. And once she realized there could be life without
him, and that his rages weren't confined to days of the month that she
could predict and avoid, she was ready to walk away from it."

"Another man?"

"I hope so."

"Any guesses?"

"I'll let you know if I come up with any. Skip Lockhart, maybe. Lola
seemed to be spending a lot of time with him. Perhaps even President
Recantati," Shreve said, finishing his cup of coffee and recapping the
empty container with its plastic lid. He laughed, adding, "But Lola
would have been on top in that arrangement. He seems a bit passive for
my old friend. She was vying for his attention from the moment he
arrived, so I wouldn't put anything past her. Still waters and all
that."

"What do you know about Ivan's business dealings?"

"That I wanted to be at arm's length from them, Detective. I don't
know what he was up to, but Lola thought he'd end up in jail."

"Was she still getting money from him?" Chapman was thinking, like I
was, of the shoe boxes full of cash that had been stashed in her closet.

"I don't think he'd give her a nickel, and I doubt she would have
accepted anything from him. She wanted out. Over and out."

"What attracted you to the Blackwells Island project, Professor?
Seems that some of you who were involved have favorite parts of the
place that were of particular interest." I was curious about what drew
Shreve to this site.

"Like Lola, I was attached to the work planned on the southern end,
everything from the original mansion, which is about midpoint, down to
the lower tip."

"The Smallpox Hospital, the City Penitentiary? That area?"

"Precisely. It was Lola who first brought me to the island, the same
summer we met in Aspen. I was on my way back to Paris, and New York was
hosting one of those parades of tall ships. The harbor was filled with
magnificent old sailing vessels that evening. Lola packed a picnic and
we took the tram over. She told me it would be the very best vantage
point from which to see the schooners sailing up and down the East
River, and the fireworks exploding above the cables of the Brooklyn
Bridge. In those days, you could traipse on foot right down to the
southern end.

"Do you know du Maurier, Ms. Cooper? That's how Lola introduced me
to Blackwells. Ever the actress—would have made her mother proud. 'Last
night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,' she said, laying a blanket
below the blackened windows of the old facade."

"That's exactly what the old hospital looks like. No wonder it's
always attracted me." I turned to Mike. "That's the opening line of the
novel
Rebecca."

"Same as the movie," he snapped back at me. I may not be as well
read as you, he was telling me, but don't push me.

"The most startling thing that night was looking back at the
incredible view of the Manhattan skyline. We were spread out on the
ground, drinking warm white wine from paper cups, and staring directly
across the water at River House. It's where my father lived before I
was born, and I'd never seen it from that angle."

So Winston Shreve came from money. The fabled apartment building,
east of First Avenue on Fifty-second Street, was constructed in 1931 as
a palatial cooperative apartment, complete with squash and tennis
courts, an interior swimming pool, and even a ballroom. It boasted a
private dock, right on the spot where the FDR Drive was later built, at
which Vincent Astor kept his famous white yacht called
Nourmahal.
Lived
in then by the rich and the royal, today it was home to world-famous
personalities like Henry Kissinger and the great international beauty
Lady Lynn de Forrest.

"Can't you do that now? Walk down to that vista, I mean?" I asked.

"Not till we've finished our dig, Ms. Cooper. And not unless the
money is raised to reconstruct Renwick's fabulous building. Now the
hospital's completely in ruins, like an old Gothic castle. No
floorboards to speak of, crumbling walls, falling granite blocks. That
portion of the island is blocked off from public access by metal
fencing across the entire plot, east to west. Topped by razor wire.
It's far too dangerous to let people near it."

Chapman poked at me with his pen. "If you're nice to me, blondie,
I'll get you a pass for Christmas. The 114th patrols there."
Present-day Roosevelt Island had its very rare criminal statistics
tallied as part of Manhattan's Nineteenth Precinct, the same Upper East
Side neighborhood in which I lived. But patrol duty fell to the
auto-accessible Queens cops, and I didn't know any of the guys assigned
to that precinct. "I'll get you in for an up-close-and-personal."

Shreve's territorial grip took hold and he spoke, brusquely, over
Mike's words. "I'll take you myself, anytime you'd like to see it."

"You got a key?"

"All of us supervising the project have access, Detective. We've got
security clearance to come and go as we please for the duration of the
study. The grounds are a bit more inviting in the spring, but as soon
as some of this ice melts I'll take you both over."

"Did you ever hear Lola refer to 'the deadhouse,' Professor?"

"All the time, Mr. Chapman. You know the island wasn't a very
inviting place, even into the twentieth century. When the city finally
abandoned these properties, the officials just walked out and closed
the doors behind them. Things were left exactly as they were on the
last days in use. Sheets were made up on the hospital beds, stretchers
stood in hallways, wheelchairs and crutches were propped in doorways
and against walls. People were afraid to go there for years, frightened
that some of the contagion still lurked in the empty corridors or
beneath the eaves.

"Lola liked it that way. When she called the place a 'dead-house,'
it conjured up ghosts of the people who perished there. Kept the
amateurs away, which suited her fine."

"I hadn't seen her in months, Professor. She had chosen to work with
the prosecutors in New Jersey rather than my office, as you certainly
know now. My boss thought their plan to stage her murder was absurd.
Can you tell us, had she been worried about Ivan lately?"

"Constantly. Fear consumed her, wherever she was. Somehow, he seemed
to know just how to spook her, whether she was walking on Broadway to
meet a friend for lunch or getting off the tram when she came to the
island. He always kept tabs on her whereabouts. Lola was certain that
she was being followed and didn't know whom to trust. I think that's
why old friends were so important to her, in the end."

"Was she afraid, even when she went to the island?" I thought
immediately of Julian Gariano, and of the thought that he had been
hired by Ivan Kralovic to sell information about her comings and goings.

"That's what she told me. I had no reason to disbelieve her. You
see," Shreve said, his elbow resting on one knee, "she really did have
a phobia that Ivan would finish her off. She was awfully prescient,
Detective, wasn't she?"

"So you think that whoever killed Lola was working for Ivan?"

"As opposed to doing the job for Sylvia Foote, Ms. Cooper?" Shreve
chuckled. "That's an idea I hadn't thought of until this moment. A
King's College cabal? Possible, I guess, but most unlikely. You'd have
to give me a pretty good reason."

"Anything else?" I said to Mike.

"I'm not going to let you go without asking a few things about
Petra, Professor. D'you mind?"

Shreve rose to his feet and stretched. "If you know of it, I can
only tell you that it's as spectacular as everything you've ever
heard." He spoke directly to me, quoting the Burgon poem. "A rose-red
city half as old as time.' Have you ever been?"

Chapman answered in place of me. "
I’ll
get there before the
princess ever will. Can you still see the citadel?"

"Not much of it left. Seven centuries older than these local ruins
of ours."

"Built during the Crusades. Part of Jordan now," Mike explained to
me, turning to walk Shreve out toward the exit. "You still have to go
into the plains over that narrow pass, on horseback? I'm definitely
gonna do that someday."

As Shreve nodded his head, Mike shook his hand, continued to chat,
and then took the empty coffee cup from the professor. "Thanks for
coming in. I'll throw that in the trash for you."