The Deadhouse (26 page)

Both of us knew, from the gum that Mike had spotted in the trash
basket, that Bart had made a stop in Lola's office. I wondered if he
had done that because she had asked him to pick something up, or if he
had gone there on his own. Why wouldn't he give that to us? Why did he
continue to lie about it? And what else did it mean he was lying about?

"Was there a reason Lola didn't want you to come upstairs with her?"
I asked.

Bart reached into his pocket and stripped the wrapper off another
stick of Wrigley's spearmint.

"Not really." He rolled his head in a circle and pressed his hand
against the back of his neck. "I mean, what we had originally planned
was to spend a few hours there. But when we pulled up in front of the
building, one of her friends was on his way inside. We just decided
that I should get lost for a few hours and come back later. Lola didn't
want anyone asking questions, didn't want anything to happen to screw
up the case. Like for Ivan to find out she was sleeping with a
prosecutor. Shit, was I stupid."

"How the hell would Ivan find that out, just 'cause you were driving
her home?"

"And staying overnight? He had eyes everywhere. Lola was paranoid.
Thought he was paying people to find out information. Just figured it
would get back to Ivan if we were caught together. She told me to stay
loose and she'd give me a call later that afternoon on my cell phone."
He looked pained. "The call that never came."

"And the friend, the guy who was going in when you pulled up to the
building? What's his name?"

"Her friend, not mine. I never saw the guy before in my life. I
think he teaches with her. Black guy with dreads and a kind of
wild-looking beard."

Lavery, I thought. "Claude? Claude Lavery?"

"Yeah. That's the guy. Held the door for her and they walked in. I
never saw her again after that."

18

Chapman was itching to get out of Frankel's office. Bart followed us
past the receptionist's desk and into the hallway. "What do you think,
Alex, do I have to tell Vinny about this?"

"Hey, schmuck. Get real. You're now a permanent part of my files on
the case, and we're not even out of the box. Coop and me have a few
dozen questions for you we haven't even thought of yet. We haven't
talked about Ivan, we haven't asked you about the work Lola was doing,
we haven't asked whether you know anything about a load of cash she was
hiding. Or about drugs."

Mike gave up on the elevator and tugged on the strap of my bag as he
turned to trot down the three flights of stairs to the exit. "Next stop
for you is my office. Pick a day. Make it easy for yourself, Counselor.
And try telling Vinny the truth. Might be a new thing for you. Or, you
can tell him you're in the field. That seems to have worked for you
before."

"Let's try and schedule an appointment for the beginning of the
week, Bart," I said. "You know how this is going to break, so why don't
you tell the district attorney about it before Battaglia gives him a
call?"

Frankel was leaning over the banister, calling down to us as quietly
as he could. "Do you think I'm going to need a lawyer?"

"Line up a good proctologist first, Mr. Frankel. It's rough in those
maximum-security pens."

Mike started the engine and we sat in the lot while it took its time
warming up. "Born loser. Knew it the minute I saw him. Know how I could
tell? Grown man with a backpack. There's just no excuse for it. Half of
those twerps in your office use 'em, too. I get on the elevator at
Hogan Place, one of those guys from Appeals gets in after me and turns
around. Bam! I get smacked right in the puss with nine pounds of law
books. By the time you get out of high school, you should figure out
some other way to carry stuff around. What are you thinking about?"

"The position Frankel put himself in. That he'll be out of a job
before New Year's. Whatever his involvement is in Lola's death, he was
terribly indiscreet to be sleeping with her. And we'll have to tell
Sinnelesi that he withheld evidence from us. Not to tell us that he had
been with Lola after she left Lily's, and that he actually saw her go
into her building with a witness who we didn't even know about before
this? Irresponsible and unethical."

"There's some reason that Bart wouldn't give up the fact that he
went to Lola Dakota's office," Mike said. "Before we have him back over
to interview, let's be sure and examine the inventory of stuff that was
there, and get the photos Hal Sherman took at the college. It's even
creepier to think that he might have gone there
after
he
found out she was dead.

"Want to swing by the county jail and see if Ivan has anything to
tell us? Talk to him about his student snitch, Julian Gariano? See what
kind of mood he's in?"

"I'd love to, but his lawyer called on Tuesday while I was up at
your office. Said Anne Reininger gave him my name and number. Left me a
message telling me who he was and how to get in touch with him. And
that under no circumstances was anyone to attempt to speak with his
client out of his presence. Does Ivan still bother you, too?"

"Sure does. It's too neat to assume he didn't have something to do
with Lola's murder, when he had already gone to such lengths to get rid
of his wife. Suppose he figured out or got tipped off that the hit men
were part of a government sting operation? It's too late to remove his
voice from the tapes and get out of trouble completely. But say he sets
up some kind of defense that proves he— what do you call it in
legalese?—that he had withdrawn from the plan and he just let these
mopes go ahead with it to show what grandstanders they were.

"Meantime, he makes a backup plan to kill Lola. Paying someone in
the city to let him know when she's returned to Manhattan. Lola gets
knocked off . . . splat, all over the bottom of the elevator. So even
if you don't believe it's an accident, Ivan the Terrible's got a
rock-solid alibi for the rest of last Thursday, sitting behind bars,
waiting to be arraigned in a Jersey courtroom. And Fat Vinny looks like
the incompetent that he is."

People like to think of domestic violence as an issue of the
underclass, as something that occurs in minority communities, among the
poor and uneducated, as something personal that is not "our problem."
Both Mike and I, just like every cop and prosecutor in this country,
have investigated and charged doctors, lawyers, judges, businessmen,
and clergy with beating, raping, abusing, and murdering their spouses.
I was not about to ignore Ivan Kralovic, who had already proved that he
was at best abusive, and at worst a potential killer.

"Am I dropping you at your office?"

"Let me check my messages. It was slated to be a slow day. There's
no point going there if I don't have to." I used my cell phone to dial
into my voice mail. The mechanical voice told me that I had four new
messages. I played them back and the first two were from assistants in
the unit, telling me about the new cases that had come in over the
holiday. The third call was from Sylvia Foote.

"Your pal Sylvia called an hour ago," I told Mike. "About Professor
Lockhart, from the history department—"

"The guy who was, shall we say, 'tutoring' the law student we
interviewed?"

"Yes. He's returning to town tomorrow afternoon. She left his
number. He's agreed to speak to us over the weekend anytime we like.
Sylvia says Lockhart is willing to cooperate. Was very fond of Lola.
That's the gist of it. She's still looking for Grenier and Lavery." I
hit the prompt to save the message so that I could retrieve Lock-hart's
number and call him when he reached New York.

Message four. Three twenty-six P.M.
I looked at my watch.
It had been only ten minutes since that message was recorded.
Hey,
Alex. It's Teague. I'm up at Special Victims with a new complaining
witness. Just reaching out to see whether anyone could interview her
before she heads back out to L.A. tonight.

The Special Victims Unit occupied space in the same office building
to which Manhattan North Homicide had been transferred more than two
years ago. Just above 125th Street, in an unlikely-looking brick
structure that faced the elevated subway tracks on the West Side, the
two squads were on the same busy corridor. I dialed the number and the
civilian aide who answered passed me along to Teague Ryner, another
bright young detective who often teamed with Mercer.

"Thanks for calling back so quickly. I was hoping you'd make a
decision on this one before she hops on a plane. I don't want to make
an arrest unless you think we've got something. Want me to give you the
facts?"

"Sure."

"Girl's name is Corinne. Twenty-eight years old. Lives in Santa
Monica, says she works in the music business. It all started after she
had a few Brain Tumors—"

"Brain tumors? How awful. Is she—"

Teague laughed. "Not
that
kind. It's a drink. A pretty
lethal one."

"What's in it?"

I had seen women's vulnerability increase dramatically after downing
multiple Tequila Sunrises, Long Island Iced Teas, Sex on the Beach, and
other creations that bartenders invented with every new season. They
woke up in strangers' apartments, on the backseats of taxicabs, beneath
trees in Riverside Park, and on sidewalks in midtown. "It's my right,"
they would often tell me, "to drink whatever I want, and as much of it
as I want." Detectives, prosecutors, advocates, and jurors were
supposed to deal with the aftermath. This was my first Brain Tumor.

"About six different liqueurs mixed together," Teague told me. "She
can't remember how many of them she drank. In fact, that's the trouble.
She can't remember much of anything."

"Did she drink them voluntarily? I mean, she's not claiming someone
drugged her, is she?" Two different kinds of problems, under the law.

"Voluntarily? She was chugging them like they were root beer."

"Tell you what. I'm with Chapman, on our way back from an interview
in New Jersey. Since he's got to go up to the squad, I'll just come
with him to your office and we'll figure it out together." No point
spoiling the end of another colleague's day, as long as I was working.

"I'll check with you before I leave, okay?" I said to Mike as he let
me out in front of the building. I headed upstairs while he parked the
car.

The day tour had just ended, and the teams working four to twelve
had come on duty. Teague had caught the case in the morning, when the
victim had called the police from the emergency room at New York
Hospital to make an official report. Even though many of the cops took
vacation leave during Christmas week, sexual assaults continued to
occur at an alarming rate. Despite the drastic reduction in
street-crime statistics, the volume of acquaintance-rape cases remained
steady. Women were far more likely to be attacked by men who were known
to them rather than strangers—not the public perception but a
well-documented fact. And the alcohol that fueled so many of the
holiday parties, at people's offices as well as their homes, led to an
alarming number of new incidents.

"Hey, Sarge, how've you been?"

"We can hardly keep up with everything. What a wild week."

"Where's Teague?"

The sergeant led me to a small cubicle in the back of the squad
room. Ryner and his witness were talking quietly, as he took notes
while she recalled more events of the night before. "Corinne, this is
Alexandra Cooper. She's the prosecutor who can answer your questions."

Before I could be seated, Corinne asked the first one. "What kind of
case do you think I have? I mean, like, I really don't want to go
through, like, all the hassle if nothing's going to happen to this guy."

"I'll try to give you an answer, but I'm going to have to get a lot
more detail from you about everything that went on during the evening."

"Well, that's part of the problem. I don't remember much of the
night. I met this guy at a party. He told me he's a vocalist. Sings
with the Baby Namzoos."

"Who?" Whatever happened to rock and roll?

"They're kind of a hot group now." She could barely disguise her
disdain for my ignorance. "Anyway, I started drinking with him. Next
thing I know it's ten o'clock in the morning, and I wake up in his
hotel room. Naked. There's no way I would have done that unless he
forced me to be there."

"Did he have sex with you?"

"Why else would I be naked and in bed with him? He must have. That's
what I went to the hospital to find out."

"I'm going to have to start at the beginning with you, Corinne." No
one was going to be charged with rape in this jurisdiction because a
woman
assumed
that a crime must have occurred. The doctor or
nurse who examined Corinne may have been able to find evidence that
recent intercourse took place, but they would be unlikely to know
whether it was with or without her consent.

"Any medical findings of significance?" I asked Teague.

"Nothing."

"Lacerations, abrasions, discoloration, swelling?" He shook his head
in the negative.

I elicited background information from Corinne about her education
and employment. I questioned her about the medications she took
regularly and her alcohol consumption habits.

"Have you ever had so much to drink before that you couldn't
remember things the next day?"

"Yeah. It happens to me every now and then. I've had some blackouts,
too. Not passing out completely, but just carrying on with my friends,
and then having no memory of it the next day. My doctor tells me I'm
not supposed to mix my antidepressants with liquor, but most of the
time it doesn't really bother me. ... I haven't had anything to eat
since last night. Do you think you could send out for a sandwich for
me?"

"No problem," Teague replied. "There's a sandwich shop that
delivers, or there's a guy on the corner with a hot dog stand. I can
run down and get one for you, whichever you'd prefer."