Death Dance (5 page)

"What kind of bail can he make?" Moffett asked Ingels.

"Your honor, most respectfully," I said, "I don't think you
should approach the matter that way and accommodate the pocketbook of
the very person we're charging with these crimes. We're talking about
two counts of first-degree rape. I'd like to suggest bail in the amount
of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

"
What
?" Ingels said, pounding the table
in front of him with a closed fist. "You know how much a medical
resident earns?"

"Calm down, both of you. Here's what I'm gonna do. She's gonna
holler at me anyway, Mr. Ingels. I'm going to release Dr. Sengor on his
own recognizance—no bail. You, Alexandra. Stop with the
grimace and the smoke coming out your ears. I'll put the case over for
a very short date. Next Friday, in my part. You'll have lab results by
then. I'll hear you from scratch on this issue. If the case looks
stronger then, I'll give you the opportunity to make your application
all over again."

Screwed twice. Not only would Sengor walk out the courthouse
door before I made it up to my office, but Moffett had kept the matter
in his own court part.

"I'd like him to surrender his passport to you, judge. How
about that?"

Ingels whispered to his client, who told him something in
response. "Of course, Dr. Sengor doesn't have it with him. The
detectives rousted him out of his home in the middle of the night, with
no warning."

"So get it to me at the beginning of the week. You're not
planning any vacations, are you, son?"

Selim Sengor smiled at the judge and shook his head. "Thank
you, sir. No, sir. I—I didn't—it's not
what—"

Ingels put his hand on his client's arm and told him not to
speak.

I gathered up my papers and medical research and walked the
length of the courtroom with Mercer beside me.

"You didn't want me to collar him when I was in the apartment,
did you?"

"I can't fault you for that," I said. "I never dreamed the
pills would be there in plain view. I figured you'd execute the
warrant, we'd test the findings, and the arrest would go down later
during the week. You couldn't do anything but lock him up once you saw
what you did in there. I'm fine with it."

"And now you've got to argue this case before that
Neanderthal?"

"Not if I can help it." The district attorney, Paul Battaglia,
occasionally pulled strings to move high-profile cases after too many
embarrassing episodes of trials in front of the handful of judges who
couldn't manage the more notorious crimes.

Mercer's cell phone was vibrating in his jacket pocket and he
removed it to speak while we continued through the rotunda within the
100 Centre Street lobby.

"No, we're done with that," I heard him say to his caller. "On
our way to her office. You want to ask her?"

He handed me the phone, telling me that it was Mike.

"What's up?"

"Nothing good," Mike said. "I'm on my way to Lincoln Center.
The Metropolitan Opera House."

"Natalya? Has anyone heard from Natalya yet?"

"Nope."

"No one's even seen her?" I asked.

"They found some stuff. She'd been dancing a scene from
Giselle
—that's
the one with the Wilis, right?"

"Yes." Mike knew I had studied ballet all my life.

"Like a headpiece, and some tulle from the costume that mast
have caught on a nail and ripped off."

"A garland of white flowers, with a veil?" There was a
standard costume for Giselle's graveyard scene.

"That sounds right. Would dancers like her go out on the
street after a performance, Coop, in a full-length tutu and toe
slippers?"

"Very unlikely. Even if she had a coat over her costume, she'd
put shoes on so she wouldn't rip the satin pointe slippers on cement
sidewalks or asphalt. Why, Mike? Where did they find the clothing?"

"In a hallway, going up to the third floor, a few flights
above the stage and the dressing rooms. Along with a glove—a
man's white kid glove. A dressy one, if you know what I mean. I had a
pair like it once that I had to wear when I was an usher at a wedding
at St. Patrick's. And blood, there's a few droplets that look like
blood on the wall."

"That could mean any number of—" I said.

"Did I mention a contact? One contact lens. The agent
confirmed she wears them."

I thought of what kind of blow to the socket could cause the
lens to be forced off the surface and expelled from the eye. "You're
ruling out everything but some kind of struggle, aren't you?"

"They're checking all the corridors, top to
bottom—every room and cubbyhole. That place is just massive.
I can't sit on my ass anymore and wait for the twenty-four hours to
pass."

I could picture Talya—a magnificent creature whose
fragile appearance masked the incredible strength and stamina possessed
by the great ballerinas. I had seen her at Lincoln Center just months
earlier, commanding the enormous stage as though it was her natural
home.

"It's unthinkable," I said.

"What is, Coop?" Mike's personal tragedy had made him more
cynical than ever. "That Talya Galinova might have been unfortunate
enough to put herself in the running for this year's homicide stats?"

More than a decade in this business had made me mindful that
no one was guaranteed immunity from that often random list. But to
disappear inside the most famous theater in the world, with more than
four thousand people under the same roof at the very moment she
vanished?

"It's not possible she was murdered at the Met."

Mercer parked in the driveway that arced away from Broadway
and ran the entire length in front of the plaza at the Lincoln Center
for the Performing Arts, from 65 th down to 6znd Street. The travertine
complex of theater and music facilities was built in the 1960s at a
cost equivalent to more than a billion dollars today.

Bright April sunshine bounced off the waters in the enormous
fountain in the center of the buildings as streams gushed in the air at
timed intervals, delighting the tourists who gathered around it with
their guidebooks. We ignored the structures to the north and
south— the Philharmonic's Avery Fisher Hall and the City
Ballet and Opera's home, the New York State Theater. The block-long
giant that dominated the plaza set back on its western end was the
Metropolitan Opera House, and I tried to keep pace with Mercer's great
strides as we both hurried to hook up with Mike Chapman.

"I hope you didn't read him wrong."

"He wants you here, Alex. That's why he called."

"I'm familiar with this world. That's really why he called.
I'm not sure Mike's ready to let me back into his life."

People with cameras were everywhere, snapping photos of one
another against the backdrop of the imposing buildings on this great
urban acropolis. Large silk banners with the Royal Ballet's logo
billowed from the flagpoles, heralding the visiting company in the calm
afternoon breeze.

The three of us had worked as a team on more murder cases than
most prosecutors would ever handle in their entire careers. Mercer had
transferred from the Homicide Squad to Special Victims. Like me, he got
satisfaction in helping women find justice in a system that had denied
them access for so long, with archaic laws and even more stubborn human
attitudes. The legislative reforms and stunning advances in scientific
techniques brought us successes not dreamed possible even twenty years
ago.

Mike preferred the elite world of homicide cops—no
living victims to hand-hold, few eyewitnesses to have fall apart in
court— coaxing from lifeless bodies the secrets of how they
met their deaths and then ferreting out the killers. All too often our
professional worlds intersected and we shouldered the cases together,
trying to restore moral order to a world in which lives ended so
violently and abruptly.

"You think he's ready to settle down and work, Mercer, if this
turns out to be what Mike thinks it is?"

"He's got to be ready. He lost his focus after Val's death,
and nobody knows that better than he does. The man needs to get back in
the mix now. Lieutenant Peterson gave him time—lots of time.
I'm working with him, whatever he wants on this. You stick, too, Alex.
He'd like that."

I was practically running to keep up with Mercer. "You may
think so, but Mike might not say that to—"

"I'm saying it. He doesn't have a better friend than you. We
got to think for him now, we got to be there when and if the center
doesn't hold."

Inside the Met's lobby, straight ahead, I could see the
brilliant yellow-and-red panels of the two Chagall
murals—each of them three stories high—celebrating
the triumph of music with figures of musicians and dancers, instruments
and whimsical animals.

Mercer guided me into the revolving door and pushed from
behind. Several uniformed cops stood casual guard within the lobby,
keeping up an air of business-as-usual for theatergoers who queued on
the lines to buy tickets for next week's performances.

One of the only African-American first-grade detectives in the
city, Mercer's six-foot-six figure commanded attention wherever he
went. Here he flashed his badge at a young officer, who responded by
removing the red velvet rope from the brass stanchion and sending us
down the carpeted staircase to the lower lobby without even questioning
why I accompanied Mercer.

The long flat counter of the bar would later be filled with
cocktails served up for the crush of dance aficionados during
intermissions of this evening's program. Now it was covered with paper
from end to end. Mike Chapman stood with his back to us, his left hand
in his pants pocket and the right one combing through his thick hair.

Mercer tapped his shoulder, interrupting Mike's conversation
with the two men who stood across from him behind the bar. They were
all studying architectural drawings of the vast corridors, below-and
aboveground, which made up this imposing theatrical venue.

Mike turned to introduce us. "Mr. Dobbis here, Chet Dobbis, is
the artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera. He's overseeing the
ballet company's visit because it's part of a series of fundraisers for
the house.

"Mr. Dobbis, I'd like you to meet Mercer
Wallace—NYPD Special Victims. This is Ms. Cooper, Alex
Cooper. Alex heads the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit in the Manhattan
DA's office. And she's a mean dancer."

I reached over to shake Dobbis's hand. He was taller and
leaner than the photos of him I'd seen in the
Times
when he was hired two year ago by the great Beverly
Sills—just before her retirement—and her board of
directors. Forty-five, maybe older, he was dressed in a black shirt and
slacks with a sweater over his shoulders, tied loosely around the neck.

"And this is Rinaldo Vicci. He's Ms. Galinova's agent." I
towered over the diminutive Vicci, who bowed in my direction. I guessed
him to be fifty, too portly for his height, with pasty skin that looked
blotchy and irritated. The glen plaid suit he sported was in need of
serious alterations, the buttons pulling across his belly as he
stretched out a hand to each of us.