The Deadhouse (30 page)

I gave Mike his gifts. First was a complete set of Alfred Hitchcock
videos accompanied by gift certificates for two tickets to his local
movie theater good every month of the coming year.

For each, I had sketched an IOU for a plane ticket to the Vineyard,
with dinners at the Outermost and the Beach Plum Inns, so we could all
go up for a long weekend in the spring.

They had a bag full of surprises for me, including a little red
voodoo doll, with a set of pins, labeled with Pat McKinney's name. They
had wrapped a complete collection of Smokey Robinson CDs and had
somehow managed to get Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte to sign a note
inviting me to the dugout after the opening game at Yankee Stadium in
the spring, for which we all had tickets.

The last box was a tiny one, wrapped in shiny gold foil with white
ribbon, with a card that read,
For our favorite partner.

Inside was a pair of cuff links. Each was a miniature blue
and gold NYPD detective shield, one bearing Mike's number and the other
Mercer's. I took the navy silk knots out of the French-cuffed shirt I
was wearing with my blazer and jeans and replaced them with their gift.

Mercer drove us across town to West Forty-ninth Street, where I had
reserved an eight-thirty table at Baldoria's. The bouncer held open the
door and we were greeted inside by Frank. Since the chic downtown
offshoot of Rao's had opened last year, it was one of the hottest
tables in town. The great buzz, the classy brown and white decor, the
same superb jukebox selections, and the outstanding food combined to
make the place an instant success.

Bo Dietl was at the bar. He had retired from the police department
after solving the Palm Sunday Massacre in Brooklyn several years back,
but he was a dogged private investigator who seemed to keep tabs on
every crime that went down in Manhattan.

"Buy them a round," he told the bartender. He had Mike corralled in
a bear hug as he got off his stool to offer it to me. "What are you
drinking?"

"Make it doubles all around. We had a rocky ride this afternoon."
The story of the tram shooting became more embellished with each
telling. Bo was chewing on his cigar as Mike described how he knocked
me to the ground and had to cover my mouth because I was screaming so
frantically.

"I didn't scream. I was so terrified, I think the words froze in my
throat."

Bo asked what we were working on and Mike explained where we were in
the Dakota case. "Did you remember to call Professor Lockhart this
afternoon?" he was reminded to ask, turning to me.

"Yes, from the hospital, when the hearing was over. He lives just
north of the city, in White Plains. If we drive up there tomorrow
morning, he'll be happy to talk with us."

Bo kept looking over my shoulder, at the table closest to the end of
the bar. "Guess the case they had in Jersey is falling apart."

"Not that I'm aware of—"

"Hey, Alex. The Bo reads the newspapers, y'know." He had a Bob
Doleish way of talking about himself in the third person. "That guy,
sitting with the broad with all the hair poofed up on top of her head?
That's Ivan Kralovic, isn't it?"

My head snapped in the direction Bo's cigar was pointing. The face
of the man in the booth was obscured by an upswept bouffant hairdo, but
the retired detective kept talking. "Heard it in the car on the radio
when I was on my way over here. Sinnelesi's number two man was putting
the wood to the dead professor. Sleeping with her in the middle of the
investigation. I'm telling you, it would take a prosecutor to be that
friggin' stupid. Sorry, Alex. Kralovic's lawyer made a bail application
this afternoon. Seems the defense team had known about the affair for
weeks. The judge was ripped about it, and granted the application
today. Looks like old Ivan knew where to get his first good meal."

I could see Kralovic clearly now as he leaned in to cut the thick
veal chop on the plate in front of him. Ivan's mourning period for Lola
had ended.

21

"We'll be back another time," I said, kissing Frank good-bye and
trailing out of the restaurant behind Mercer and Mike. "It's not the
food, it's the company." The last thing I needed was Kralovic telling
his lawyer I tried to talk to him when I ran into him at dinner.

"I had a real craving for Peking duck, anyway," Mike said, opening
the rear door of Mercer's car to let me in. We drove across town to
Shun Lee Palace, and I stopped in the phone booth to try to reach Paul
Battaglia to tell him what had happened.

After eight rings, I remembered that he was out of town until New
Year's Day. Reluctantly, I dialed Pat McKinney's home number. "Thanks,
Alex. I actually knew a few hours ago. Sinnelesi called me when he
couldn't find the boss."

It would have been courteous, not to mention useful, for McKinney to
have beeped me to tell me about Kralovic's release on bail. I hated
having to learn it from an outside source, late on a Friday evening
when it was impossible to get accurate details. "Did he tell you
anything else?"

"Yeah, he fired Bart Frankel today. It'll be all over the papers
tomorrow morning. Ivan's lawyer made a pretty compelling argument to
the judge this afternoon that his client only went along with the sting
because he knew in advance exactly what was happening, and wanted to be
able to argue entrapment to the court."

"You mean entrapment as a defense to hiring someone to kill his
wife?"

"Yeah. He's saying the tapes will prove the whole operation was
Sinnelesi's idea. They're going to argue that Kralovic had himself
wired up for months, every time he met with or spoke to the
undercovers. And that if the two sets of tapes aren't the same, he'll
prove the New Jersey prosecutor was corrupt and simply out to get him."

It had never occurred to me that Lola's husband might have any kind
of viable defense to the charge of trying to kill her. But Sinnelesi's
reputation was not beyond question, as Battaglia's was. Perhaps Paul's
nose had been even more accurate than usual in detecting a good reason
not to participate in the Jersey plan. If our counterparts across the
Hudson had been unable to nail Kralovic squarely for his penny-stock
fraud, then maybe they had stretched procedure and undermined the
attempted murder case.

All that was certain is that Ivan the Terrible had exactly what he
had wanted. Lola was dead, and the evidence pointing to him as the
prime mover in her killing was looking muddier and muddier.

We settled in for the meal. The little bit of appetite that remained
after the tram ride had evaporated with our sighting of Kralovic dining
at an elegant restaurant. I watched Mike and Mercer go through steamed
dumplings and chicken soong and a deliciously crispy duck, but I even
refused my fortune cookie for fear that its prophecy would depress me.

They had dropped me at Jake's apartment by eleven. I called him at
the Watergate Hotel to let him know that I had been delivered home
safely. Unable to sleep, I drew a steaming-hot bath and tried to escape
with the latest issues of
In Style
and
Architectural
Digest.
When they failed to make me sleepy, I immersed myself in
an interminable
New Yorker
piece on a lost Tibetan temple
that had been rediscovered by a group of British trekkers. Midway
through the story I was ready to turn out the light.

Mike was waiting for me outside the building at eight-fifteen. We
stopped for coffee on our way north to Westchester County, to the
suburban home where Professor Lockhart was staying. The car stops on
the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge the night before had been unsuccessful,
and the ballistics lab confirmed that the pellets had come from some
kind of shotgun, not a pistol. I tried to buy into Mike's theory that
it was simply pranksters with an early burst of holiday fireworks.

It was almost nine-thirty when I rang the bell at the neo-Victorian
home on a quiet dead-end street in White Plains. The sandy-haired man
who opened the door to us looked no older than Mike. He had fine,
chiseled features and an athletic build. "I'm Skip Lockhart. Why don't
you come inside and warm up?"

The large living room was filled with antique furniture and
decorated in a very formal style. There were pictures on all the
tabletops, which I tried to scan as he led us into a study.

"Thanks for coming up here. I'm kind of stuck for the next week."

"We just assumed that you lived here."

"It's my parents' home, actually. They've gone out to Scotts-dale to
visit my sister for the week, and I promised I'd come up here after
Christmas to keep an eye on my grandfather, who lives with them. He's
ninety, and as much as he thinks he can take care of himself, we need
to keep an eye on him. I was a friend of Lola's. Anything I can do to
be helpful, I'd like to try."

"Where's home?"

"In the city."

"Near campus? Near Lola's apartment?"

"A few blocks away."

Lockhart told us that he was thirty-eight years old, single, and an
assistant professor of American history at King's College. He had known
Lola for five or six years, and had never been romantically involved
with her. Yes, he admitted that he had dated several students at the
school, despite the fact that it was against the administrative
guidelines. But he had never known Charlotte Voight and never given any
thought to her disappearance.

"How much time did you spend with Dakota, on campus or off?"

"Very little, until she got me involved in the Blackwells Island
project."

"What was your interest in that?"

"Two things, really," Lockhart answered, sitting back in his leather
armchair and crossing one leg over the other knee. "Obviously, being a
student of Americana, I'm quite familiar with the history of the area.
An astounding number of well-known people have spent time there, and as
a social phenomenon, it's a great resource for teaching students how
we've dealt with society's outcasts throughout time."

He cleared his throat several times as he talked, looking us over
and trying to get comfortable with us, it seemed to me.

"But I've always had a personal reason to be fascinated with that
little strip of land. You see, my grandfather used to work on the
island."

Mike was engaged now, both because of the investigation and because
of his own love for historical nuggets. "What do you mean?"

"You probably know that the place was once covered by
institutions—hospitals, asylums, jailhouses. And the New York
Penitentiary."

"We were over there yesterday. That building doesn't exist at all
anymore, does it? Just a pile of rubble and rocks."

"You're right. It used to stand directly to the north of the
Smallpox Hospital, but it was demolished before the Second World War.
It was the gloomiest place on the island, which is saying quite a lot.
Unless you've made a study of it, as I have, there'd be no reason for
you to know about the terrible scandal that took place there shortly
before it was closed."

"What kind of scandal?"

"During the Tammany Hall days, the prison was a cesspool of
corruption and graft. The place was actually dominated by mob members
who were inmates. You'd have to see photographs to believe the way they
lived."

"You mean how awful it was?"

"Not for the top dogs. They had quite a luxurious lifestyle, with
personal pets and private gardens, food and liquor that was smuggled in
to them. A few even dealt drugs inside."

"That piece of it hasn't changed too much," Chapman said.

"Finally, when Fiorello La Guardia was elected to the mayoralty and
Tammany Hall fell, he named a new commissioner of correction. A
gentleman named Austin MacCormick. My grandfather was a young lawyer at
the time, hired out of your office, Miss Cooper."

Lockhart leaned over and handed me one of the old photographs from
the side table. "He wasn't even thirty years old. MacCormick hired him
to work on the cleanup of the penitentiary. He and his cronies planned
a huge surprise raid of the prison—a very successful one, which ended
up shutting it down. It was quite a big deal. Gramps still has all the
clippings to prove it."

Lockhart stood to adjust the thermostat in the room and check on the
heat.

"Did Lola Dakota ever meet your grandfather?"

"Meet him? I thought she was going to elope with him." He laughed as
he said it. "Once she found out that he had actually spent time on the
island, there was no keeping her away from this house. And it was a
godsend for my folks to have someone who took a real interest in the
old guy, who could listen to his stories day in and day out."

"What did they talk about?"

"Everything he could remember. She listened to him describe the raid
itself, she looked at his photo albums and read his diaries. In fact, I
think she may still have had some of the volumes. I suppose someone
will sort that all out and get them back to us. Seems rather irrelevant
in light of what happened to Lola."

I made a note to look for the diaries among the inventory of Lola's
books and papers.

"Were you there for those conversations?"

"Two or three times, at the outset. But I grew up on these stories
and I've heard them all my life. I don't suppose there was anything he
told her that I didn't already know. She'd just take the train up here,
have lunch with my grandfather, spell my mother for a couple of hours.
I don't think any great revelations came of it, Miss Cooper."

"Can you think of any reason, any motive for someone to kill Lola?"

"Is Ivan too obvious a choice? I've only met him a couple of times,
but I know she was very frightened of him. There are plenty of students
who hold her responsible for their not making the dean's list or
bringing down their averages, but I don't think we had any homicidal
maniacs among them."