Death Dance (54 page)

"He'd been back there scores of times. He was an impresario,
courting talent, courting stars. Of course he'd been behind the scenes.
They could have been going to any one of the offices," Dobbis said,
pausing for several seconds. "Like Ross said to me downstairs, they
could have been coming up to my office."

"And they were fighting on the way there," I said.

"Two terrible-tempered people, both volatile and very
physical. They argued and Joe became enraged. Struck her, maybe hit her
too hard. She passed out and he panicked. Threw her down the shaft."

"He was strong enough?"

"You only saw Joe after he was hurt. He was as strong as he
was tough. It gave him the menace to back up his mouth."

I was following Dobbis's story line until he reminded me that
it was just the version that Ross Kehoe had expected the police to
believe. It was Ross who had actually worked at the
Met—worked at almost every theater in Manhattan at one point
in time or another. And Ross who knew the place well enough to steal a
white-haired wig that would help incriminate Joe Berk, too, having no
idea the Met used animal hair to make the wigs.

"So then Ross set up Joe Berk's electrocution. Which would
have been a neat way for the police to close the case, had it worked.
The killer gets his just deserts. And that's why Mona Berk came to the
Belasco the night Joe was supposed to die. She was going to leave
enough evidence—videotapes, maybe—something
connecting Joe to the threats that Talya had been making. Something
that would have given him a motive to murder his diva. Case closed."

Chet Dobbis raised his hands again to wipe away the sweat.
"You know he's going to kill us. You understand Ross has that rope here
so that he can—"

He stopped abruptly, unable to speak the words.

"But why?"

"Because Joe Berk lived too long. One week too long. Joe spent
a lot of time with you, with the detectives last week. Ross doesn't
think any of you believe Joe killed Talya. He wants to take the heat
off himself. He wants to make it look like I—"

Dobbis choked on his own words.

"See that rope?" he asked me.

I looked at the thick pile on the floor near his feet. "He
wants to make it look like you committed suicide?"

He nodded his head, and now the rivulets of sweat merged with
the teardrops.

"I guess he figures that it's easy to make a case that Talya
was on her way to my office when she was killed. Old lovers, everyone
knew that. Make the case that I was jealous of Berk, jealous of Hubert
Alden."

"But why would he do it here, in the dome, if no one would
find you?"

"That wasn't the plan. At least not until you showed up. He
had the gun. He was trying to force me to go up to the fly
gallery—backstage—just before you got there. He
must have more rope. Think how easy it would be to hang me from the
fly," Dobbis said. "Make it look like I killed myself."

No wonder Chet Dobbis had said he was glad to see us when
Mercer and I surprised him in the auditorium.

Ross Kehoe walked over to the bar, turned his back, and leaned
against it.

"Make me a drink," he said to Mona.

"Don't give me orders," she said, looking petulant and unhappy.

"I'm doing all the work. Make me a drink."

She walked toward the counter and poured from one of the
decanters. They had been quarreling with each other, from the look on
her face. Kehoe must have felt as trapped as Dobbis and I did. There
was no need to fuel that mix of desperation and nerves with alcohol.

"Your arrival tonight makes things much harder for us," Kehoe
said to me. "And that's why you're making it so much harder for
yourself."

"You don't know my partners very well. They're out of that
steel trap by now and they won't leave this building until they've
found me."

Kehoe looked at his watch, took a sip of his drink, and smiled
at me.

"The front entrance to the theater was completely barred," I
said. "They know none of us went out that way, and if they go back the
way we came in through the office tower, the security guard will tell
them we never passed by there again."

"You're giving that dumb bastard a lot more credit than I
would. And I guess you don't know there's a series of exits right
behind the stage. Three doors and a truck bay wide enough to fit a
container shipment. That would be the logical way to take anybody out
of here quickly," Kehoe said, running his tongue round and around his
lips. "Those doors are the first things your buddies would have seen
when the release went up on the firewall."

I looked at Dobbis and he nodded in agreement.

"I guarantee you they'll look everywhere else before they even
figure out there's an entrance to this dome," Kehoe said, as Mona Berk
took the glass from his hand and sipped at it. "It sits in the middle
of this city like a gigantic ball, and it's never had any use at all."

"The noise—"

"You got a lot of degrees, maybe, but you don't know anything
important, do you? Like everything else in a theater, that door is
soundproofed. Scream, Miss Prosecutor, and maybe a passing pigeon'll
hear you up above, but nobody else will."

He reached into his pants pocket and withdrew something. They
were small objects that I couldn't see, but I could hear the metallic
sound as he jiggled them together in his fingers.

Kehoe opened the chamber of his revolver. He lifted his hand
to his mouth and I watched in horror as he kissed the tip of a bullet
and placed it in the gun. He grinned at me and sucked in air again,
kissing a second bullet and loading it in the chamber.

"I wasn't counting on two of you," he said. "I hate to waste
the lead."

I raised my head and tried to scoff at his arrogance, which
frightened me every bit as much as it did Chet Dobbis. I knew there was
no way out, but Ross Kehoe must have known that, too. We were all
trapped here together. "They're not stupid enough to think a woman
disappeared from within a theater and simply couldn't be found
anywhere."

"Don't be so sure of yourself, Alex," Kehoe said, pointing the
gun at me and cocking his head, as though he was practicing taking aim.
"That theory didn't do anything to help Natalya Galinova get out of the
Met alive, did it?"

Two hours must have passed before Ross Kehoe and Mona Berk
left the area where Chet Dobbis and I had been restrained. They had
forbidden us to talk to each other as they whispered between
themselves, reformulating their plans.

The only other noise I could hear came through the broken
skylight above—the honking of car horns and the occasional
scream of sirens, too far away to be useful to me.

Kehoe walked away from us and down the staircase. I was even
more tired now and terribly frightened as I had watched Kehoe
deteriorate throughout the night, fighting with Mona and then pouring
himself a second drink.

My arms ached from trying to stretch at and work the binds
behind me, but I sat up at attention when I heard what sounded like the
door—our only connection to freedom—slide on its
tracks. It seemed like Kehoe had left.

Ten minutes later the door reopened and Kehoe walked up the
steps and back to us.

He spoke to Mona. "Nobody down there. They've got the lights
on now, but I couldn't see anyone."

I whispered to Dobbis, "How can he tell? What could he see?"

"Do you remember those perforated stars, the enormous ones
over the proscenium with cutouts in the grillwork?"

They were the most beautiful part of the auditorium's design.
"Yes, of course."

"If Kehoe walked around that entire dark chamber we came
through, he'd reach the area behind those eight stars. When the
Shriners built the place, that was an organ loft. Another anachronism,
another empty space. But from behind those stars you can pretty well
see the entire auditorium. And you can do it without being seen from
below."

Everything seemed to be working to Kehoe's advantage.

Mona got up from the bar stool and moved to the bed,
stretching out on top of it. Kehoe walked over to us.

"You might as well rest. You need to save some energy to make
your way out of here when we're ready to go."

His back was to Mona, who had rolled over on her side. As he
squatted to look behind me to check that the ties were still secure, he
laid his hand on my knee, then ran his forefinger up the length of the
inside of my thigh. I suppressed a gag as my eyes followed his dirty
fingernail along the seam of my gray slacks.

"Go where? How?" I asked as he pushed up to his feet. Had he
lost it entirely that he thought he could walk us out of this dome?

"Chet will tell you. This theater has more trapdoors and
underground passages than the Vatican. Two, three in the morning, maybe
we'll get moving. Might even have to wait until tomorrow night."

Kehoe lifted the revolver and stroked his cheek with the
barrel. "Unless you get on my nerves too much."

"And then what?" I asked. "Cops will be looking for you
everywhere. Your home, the airports, the train stations, the car
rental—"

"You know, Alex, that's the nice thing about owning your own
planes. BerkAir. Not that we intend to take you and Chet quite that far
with us. Maybe a little insurance to get us to the right private field."

"BerkAir to the Bahamas, no doubt."

"Follow the money," Kehoe said, sitting up against the
headboard of the bed, next to Mona, to keep an eye on us. He rested the
gun on his chest.

"Mona's money," I said, wondering whether Joe Berk had fixed
things in his will after Briggs dropped the lawsuit.

"I hate fucking rich people," he said, rubbing his hand over
Mona's backside and laughing to himself. "It's just their money I like."

If she had appeared to have been reclining calmly before he
made that remark, Mona was on her feet and obviously restless again,
looking for something, or someone, to be the target for her hostility.
She paced back and forth beside the bed before walking to the swing
that was suspended from the ceiling high above us. With one hand she
grabbed the brass chain while she steadied the seat with her other one.

"Stay off that," Kehoe said.

"Why?" she asked. I didn't think that Mona Berk was used to
taking orders. She ignored him and pulled herself up on the swing,
pumping her legs to get it moving,

"You want me to pull you off that or what?" Kehoe's mildest
threat would have done the trick for me.

"I want you to get us out of here, Ross. That's what the fuck
I want." She was going higher and higher, disappearing for seconds
against the backdrop of the dark walls as she flew by. I could see only
the shiny brass chain making a dizzying arc as I tried to follow its
motion.

Kehoe walked toward the swing and Mona kicked harder, nearly
grazing the top of his head as he came closer.

When she flew back past him, Kehoe reached out and grabbed
Mona's leg, pulling on it as he twisted the chain around and around
with his well-muscled arm. Her head snapped forward and she wrapped her
elbows tightly against the metal links to keep herself from falling off.