Death Dance (18 page)

"Is he a friend?"

"He's everybody's friend. And he'd be your worst enemy."

There were no powerful businessmen or -women who had somehow
not been in Battaglia's orbit throughout his several terms in office as
one of the most influential law-enforcement figures in the country.
Every prominent New Yorker had been solicited for campaign
contributions over the years, and most had benefited from the services
of the great lawyers mentored in their careers by Paul Battaglia. Among
his prosecutorial alumni were partners in every major firm, litigators
sought to battle in the most controversial trials, judges on the state
and federal bench, commissioners leading government agencies of every
type, and one protege who had been a contender for the position of
attorney general of the United States— the country's premier
legal post.

"Anything I need to know?"

"Don't turn your back to him, Alex. He's vicious."

"I assume the commissioner told you he was with
Galinova— arguing with her—just before she
disappeared?"

"Take it wherever it goes. You don't need a pass from me."
Battaglia's mantra had been consistent, no matter where the tentacles
of an investigation led. I'd been given green light to do the right
thing, which is all he asked of each one of us.

"So year answer is yes? I can stay on die case? And you tell

McKinney, please. I don't even want to see him."

"I want to know everything you develop before I read it in the
Post
with a Mickey Diamond byline. Got that?"

Diamond was the veteran courthouse reporter who snagged the
best leaks from the NYPD brass, and when facts failed to fall in his
lap, he fashioned the most creative sidebars in journalism.

"And when you know where you're going with Berk, I'll give you
some background about his other run-ins with the law."

Battaglia always delivered one of his throwaway lines while I
was on the threshold of the door. I turned back. "Crimes?"

"Nothing violent. Tax fraud. Some pretty sophisticated
planning that's made him and everyone around him worth billions. Not
millions. The B word. I've been trying to get the bastard for years.
The feds took the investigation away from me when I couldn't put
together a case that'd stick, but then in the end, neither could they,"
he said, smiling broadly again. "I may have some leverage for you when
you come to need it."

"You want to tell me now?"

"I don't want to muddy the waters."

Maybe another tidbit would help. "The commissioner fill you in
on the fact that Berk got hotfooted on a manhole cover late last night?
And survived it?"

"Yeah. I wanted to make sure the PC thought it was accidental.
You agree?"

"Had all the right signs. His favorite son was taking him out
for a lobster dinner, and his driver was parked next to the manhole.
Con Ed said they'd had more than—"

"I know, I know. Forty reports this year. We're going to do a
grand jury investigation on the one from downtown. Throw last night's
matter into it, too. See if it rises to criminally negligent homicide
on that poor dogwalker who got hit last month."

I left out the fact of the television monitors in Berk's
bedroom.

There would be time for that story when we figured out where
the cameras were concealed. Otherwise, it would be one more question
for which I couldn't provide an answer—a very bad way to
start a Monday morning with Paul Battaglia.

Rose interrupted on the intercom. The mayor wanted Battaglia
immediately, which suggested there was friction between him and the
governor on an issue in which the district attorney figured centrally.
He wanted me out of the room before he talked and made it clear by
dismissing me before he picked up the phone from its cradle.

I called the squad to tell Lieutenant Peterson that I was
officially attached to the case. From this point on, anylegal
decisions—whether applications for warrants or sufficiency of
probable cause for a suspect's arrest—would be made in
consultation wartime. Peterson mentioned that he had seen Mike earlier
in the day but didn't know whether he had gone down to the Met to work
or was sitting out this shift.

The rest of my day was filled with the routine of my
prosecutorial duties in the sex crimes unit. Lawyers on trial took
precedence with often urgent issues that had arisen during the current
courtroom proceedings. Detectives dropped in regularly for guidance
about how to handle new complaints for which our pioneeringunit bad
developed protocols. Advocates and victims themselves called to ask
questions about the process they faced if they chose to report their
crimes to the police. And friends came by every day to hangout with one
another, tell war stories, and vent about the array of characters who
presented themselves to us with endless stories of bad and bizarre
human behavior.

Mercer Wallace phoned in shortly after six. "Heard your
weekend took an interesting twist."

"Mike called you?"

"Let's say I hunted him down."

"Does he know Battaglia's put me on Talya's case?"

"Good going. No, he didn't say. He's at Lincoln Center. He's
going to meet me for something to eat at Shun Lee West at seven
o'clock. Want to join us?"

"Is it okay with him?"

"Hey, who's making the ask here? You're my date."

"I'll be there."

"You're not passing off Dr. Sengor's case, are you?"

"Not a chance. I'm getting antsy about the tox results. You
think Jean and Cara are willing to hang around this week?"

"Another day or two. What are you going to do about the grand
jury?"

"I'm ready to go as soon as we get confirmation on the drug
testing."

"You talk to anyone in administration at Sengor's hospital?"

"Yes," I said. "Our perp has been suspended. Risk management
didn't want to take the chance he'd be exposed to any other patients."

Liability in medical centers had become such an expensive
prospect that most legal offices had been renamed "risk management
units," responsible for the oversight of all problems that might lead
to litigation.

"Double-edged sword. I hated to think he'd still be with
patients, but this way we have no idea of his daily whereabouts."

"They wanted him to keep his beeper so they can stay on top of
him, too. They've required him to respond to them twice a day.
Suspended with pay is the way they handled that one. He's already
called in twice, so the doctor in charge of the psychiatric department
says he's cooperating."

"I'll see you at the restaurant?"

"Absolutely." I called my friend Lesley Latham to break my
dinner date, apologizing for the last-minute cancellation. I took the
cab to West 65 th Street and found Mercer and Mike seated at the bar.

I walked past his stool and patted Mike's shoulder.

"Of all the gin joints in all the Chinese restaurants in the
world, you had to walk into mine?" he asked. "Who invited you?"

"Maybe I'm in the wrong place. I was supposed to meet a couple
of my friends here. I guess that really is a gun in your pocket and
you're not so happy to see me."

"I'll take the weight," Mercer said, embracing me. "I needed
some Peking duck and the service is so much better when we cut Alex in.
Figured it was time to get back in the
Jeopardy!
habit,
don't you think?"

For as long as I could remember, since we'd started working on
cases as a team more than a decade ago, the three of us stopped
whatever we were doing when we were together to bet one another on the
Final Jeopardy question at the end of the show. Mike had kept witnesses
waiting at the morgue, interrupted cocktail partiesin full swing, and
put the police commissioner on hold more than once to test his trivia
knowledge against ours for twenty bucks a shot.

By the time the bartender served my drink, Mercer had coaxed
him into turning the wall-mounted television set to the quiz show. We
made small talk until Alex Trebek revealed the category the final
question: Sports.

Mike and Mercer were both jocks who followed college and
professional sports with great enthusiasm. Mercerhad turned down a
football scholarship at the University of Michigan to join die NYPD. I
put my twenty-dollar bill on the bar and brightened only slightly when
Trebek's final answer involved a Yankee legend.

"Field named for Native American tribe where Babe Ruth hit his
longest home run."

I could think of rival teams in the long history of my
pinstriped favorites, but nothing about the names of any of their
fields that qualified in this category. Fenway and the Jake wouldn't do
it. Mike wanted to double the stakes, but Mercer was as puzzled as I
and we held our ground.

The music ticked away the time as all three of the contestants
seemed to be stumped.

"I'm so sorry," Trebek said, ready to reveal the question.

"What is Sing Sing prison?" Mike asked, sweeping the three
bills off the bar. "Home of the Sint Sinck Indians as well as the
aforementioned Old Sparky. Yankees played an exhibition game against
the inmates every year and the Bambino slammed the longest ball of his
career there one time. Something like six hundred and twenty feet or
more. You know why the state built the prison on the Sint Sinck land?
'Cause there was enough marble for the thugs to be put to work
quarrying it—it was murderers and rapists who dug the stone
that built Grace Church and New York University."

Mercer led us to our table, a corner in the sunken pit beneath
the giant mouth of the long black dragon that was suspended from the
ceiling.

"You know that I'm officially catching Talya's case, don't
you?" I asked Mike.

"The lieutenant just gave me the news."

"I figure you could bring me up to speed over dinner and then
I'll go back to the Met with you."

The West Side branch of our favorite Chinese restaurant was
just across Broadway from the Lincoln Center complex, a popular dining
spot for theatergoers.

Mike was crunching on a handful of crispy noodles as we waited
for our order of hot-and-sour soup. Not only did the task force have to
deal with the several hundred employees who were in the opera house on
the day and evening of the murder, but they learned that more than two
thousand other workers had been on the payroll within the last year.

"Each time we start to question somebody, seems he adds three
names nobody gave us before. It's a union shop, and most guys who work
there have had a father or uncle or cousin who got their foot in the
door earlier. If someone's covering for a relative, we'll never get to
first base."

It was rare to hear Mike sound so discouraged in the initial
stage of an investigation.

"We've still got forensics to shed some light."

"The droplets of blood near the place she went down?" Mike
said. "Preliminary run of the DNA looks like it's Natalya's. Autopsy
findings included dried blood in her nasal cavity, probably from the
same blow that knocked the contact lens out of her eye. Hair seems to
be torn out of her scalp. That figures, too. Those don't connect to
anyone else."

He slugged his vodka and gritted his teeth. "Serology lifted
two different profiles from that white kid glove that was found near
the bloodstains in the corridor. Remember, that man's glove I told you
about? One profile from skin cells on the inside, another from the
outer surface. For whatever it's worthy they don't match eachother. He
might have something more to work with by late tomorrow."

"And the white hairs? Did you ask him to submit them to the
FBI for comparison to the samples we got from Berk's office?" The more
difficult processing of mitochondrial DNA still had to be outsourced to
the FBI lab.

"Forget you ever saw Joe Berk's hair, Coop. The strands that
were found with Galinova's body? They weren't human. The guys at the
M.E.'s office didn't need the feds to tell them these came from some
kind of animal."