Read Death Dance Online

Authors: Linda Fairstein

Tags: #Ballerinas, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Lawyers, #New York (N.Y.), #Legal, #General, #Ballerinas - Crimes against, #Cooper; Alexandra (Fictitious character), #Mystery Fiction, #Women Sleuths, #Public Prosecutors, #Thrillers, #Legal stories, #Fiction

Death Dance (56 page)

BOOK: Death Dance
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Mona dropped to her knees beside him and ignored me for the
moment. Her bloodcurdling screams scattered all the pigeons perched on
the edge of the broken skylight. The gunsmoke trailed upward and gave
off an acrid smell as it drifted toward the skylight.

I dropped Chet Dobbis's arm and started in the direction of
Mona Berk and the fallen Ross Kehoe. The bullet count was in my favor,
and the whirring noise at the door behind me continued to give me
courage.

As I passed the bar, I grabbed a crystal decanter and cracked
it against the marble countertop, holding the jagged glass in my hand
by the neck of the broken bottle, and making a run at Mona Berk, who
was sobbing now, while Kehoe was silent and still beside her.

"The gun is empty, Mona," I said. "Put it down."

She didn't look up the first time I said it. She was
mesmerized, it seemed, by the pool of blood collecting on the floor
next to Kehoe's chest, trickling toward her.

"Drop it," I said, determined to get it out of her hands
before anyone managed to enter the room.

As I neared them, I could see that Kehoe's chest was moving up
and down, but Mona wasn't watching that. She couldn't take her eyes off
the blood as the rivulet reached her knee and the crimson stain started
to spread on the leg of her pants.

I took a few steps closer to her and she lifted her head,
bellowing at me like a shrew, from her kneeling position on the floor.
No words came out—only a primal scream. When she picked up
her right hand—bringing the gun up with it—I
charged at her and knocked her off balance. The revolver dropped onto
the floor and slid under the bed a few feet away, while the crystal
decanter splintered into hundreds of tiny pieces as I lost my grip, and
Mona Berk landed on it as she fell backward.

While she rolled back and forth in pain, trying hopelessly to
brush off the shards that were embedded in the skin of her neck, I
retrieved the gun and ran to alert my rescuers through the widening
crack they were creating in the entryway. Then I untied Chet Dobbis and
examined the wound that had grazed his shoulder, reassuring
him—and myself—while I waited for the powerful
spreader to open the heavy door of the great old forgotten dome of the
Mecca Temple.

46

 

"You certainly took your time coming to get me."

We were sitting in the squad room of the Midtown North station
house, a couple of blocks away from the City Center of Music and Drama.
It was five o'clock in the morning and about the only time in Manhattan
you couldn't find an open joint that was still serving liquor.

"It was a toss-up for Mercer. His SVU pals came up with Ramon
Carido in a homeless shelter in Queens, and they wanted him to go out
there for the collar. We thought we'd have good news for you on that
score, if we ever found you again. Battaglia was so damn afraid to lose
you—or to get bad press over losing you—that he got
on the phone with Interpol himself. The local Turkish constables know
where Dr. Sengor's parents live, and any day now we'll have that
pervert cuffed. Ralph Harney? Bronx Homicide's got him back in for
questioning. It'll be a trifecta, Coop. Not a bad night for the good
guys."

"How come you won't answer my questions?"

"You know the drill, Coop. Major Case has to debrief you
first."

"Tell me something, will you? What were you really doing all
those hours?"

"Classified. Top secret. No can do."

"Were you there at the dome with Emergency Services?"

"I wanted to be at the door, right behind the ESU guys when
they were opening it up. First time I saw a space, I was gonna yell it
into you, Coop. Final Jeopardy answer. That's what I was gonna say.
Only there was no room for me up there. Hey, loo, you got a bottle of
scotch stashed in one of your drawers here? Give the blonde a break."

"So what was the answer?" I asked. "What kind of clue were you
planning on giving me?"

"Phoebe Moses. That was the answer."

"You win, Mike. It wouldn't have helped me." I rubbed my eyes
and tried to control my anxiety so that I would be useful when the
detectives began questioning me.

"You don't know Phoebe Moses? That's twenty bucks from you,"
he said, pouring the golden liquid into a coffee mug that depicted a
homicide cop standing over a body, and the familiar slogan: Our Day
Begins When Your Day Ends.

"Mercer?"

"You got my money."

"Who was Annie Oakley? I figured if I told you that, you'd be
ready for me to toss my gun in to you. I thought if you were still
alive, you'd put it together with my hint and do something to help
yourself. Shoot one of those bloodsuckers."

I lifted the mug and sipped the scotch. I knew Mike was just
trying to humor me, trying to take my mind off the dreadful events of
the night. "That's quite a stretch, Detective Chapman."

"You gotta get over your phobia of guns. Kaiser Wilhelm, he
even let Oakley shoot the ashes off a cigar he had in his mouth. I'm
telling you, Coop, Oakley was so good that she outshot the greatest
sharpshooter alive, Frank Butler. And you know what? Even though she
humiliated him in public—like you're always doing to
me—he married her. He got over it."

"You willing to take that chance if you teach me how to shoot?"

"I'll just settle for my twenty bucks."

"Were there any rounds left in the gun?" I asked.

Mike shook his head. "You can't shoot yet, but your math was
okay."

"Kehoe was sure you'd never find us in the dome."

"He came close to being right," Mercer said. "We had a team
scouring that upstairs area—but they just didn't go deep
enough. Couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything. Didn't look like
people had been up in back there in ages. We couldn't even find anybody
from the crew in the middle of the night who knew how to get to it,
once we knew you were there. We finally had to wake the director up,
but that was only after we got lucky."

"Where did you think we'd gone?"

Mercer stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders. "Most of us
figured Kehoe had taken you out on the street. You know, kidnapped you
and had you in the trunk of a car on your way out of town."

"So when are you going to tell me how it went down? Who's my
hero?"

"Have mercy," Mercer said, looking over at Mike. "Don't make
her read about it in tomorrow's papers. It doesn't have anything to do
with her debriefing."

Mike started to explain. "Once we got out of our trap on that
stage, I told Peterson to send in the detectives who were sitting on
Mona Berk's SoHo apartment. See if there was anything inside
there—notes, tickets, maps, phone messages on the
machine—anything at all that would give us some direction to
look for Kehoe. Don't act so surprised, don't be giving me any of your
gotta-get-a-warrant bullshit. We're talking exigent circumstances here,
life and death. Your life. I wasn't looking for evidence to use in
court, Coop. I was looking for you."

"I'm the last one to criticize your techniques at the moment."
I lifted my mug to toast him.

"Turns out Kehoe had his own set of monitors in their
apartment, so he could keep tabs on what old Joe Berk was up to. See
whether Joe was still peeping at the dancers. Kehoe was hoist on his
own leotard."

"Petard."

"Don't correct me just about now, okay? One of the monitors
was rigged up to a camera inside the dome. The two detectives described
to us what they saw—the unusual size and rounded shape of the
room—and that Mona Berk was inside it at that very moment,
lying down on a bed. Motion-activated sensor in the camera, apparently.
But they didn't have a clue where it was."

Of course the bed—and the red velvet
swing—would have been in camera range, even if Dobbis and I
were not.

"And we wouldn't have known either," Mercer said, "if Mike and
I hadn't just been introduced to Mecca Temple. I mean there aren't a
hell of a lot of large domed ceilings in town, but I'd never even have
thought to start looking there without knowing about the video."

"Was Kehoe conscious when they put him in the ambulance?"

Mike shook his head. "He'll pull through, though. Scumbags
always do."

"So he has no idea that Serology matched the DNA on the glove
near Talya's body to his profile in the linkage database?"

"We're gonna save that tidbit for his hospital arraignment,
maybe tomorrow."

I told them what Mona Berk had told me. It sounded as though
Talya, in her attempt to blackmail Joe Berk, had figured
out—or been told by Joe—that it was Ross Kehoe who
had actually installed the surveillance equipment. The day Rinaldo
Vicci saw them together, in Talya's dressing room and let Mona think
that he had told me about it, was the moment of her confrontation with
Kehoe—a tantrum that probably sealed her fate.

"Lucy DeVore," I said, remembering the shattered body of the
young woman who'd also crossed paths with the Berks. "This means we
don't get a chance to interrogate him about Lucy DeVore."

"Mercer and I were talking about her a little while ago."

"While I was at death's door?"

"Couldn't move those jaws any faster than they were going,
kid. Remember what Hubert Alden said, that it was Talya who was
supposed to be up there on the swing at that audition?"

"Yeah."

"Kehoe must have rigged the swing to kill Talya. A backup plan
for Tuesday, in case he didn't have the opportunity to get the job done
at the Met on Friday night."

"But Lucy. How could he just let her go up there knowing the
seat was going to break?"

Mercer spoke. "'Cause Briggs Berk was infatuated with her. Or
thought he was for the last couple of weeks. So Mona and Ross Kehoe
figured it was one less distraction to deal with, one less piece of the
pie to share with anyone else. And at an open audition—a
perfect place for an accident, in front of a dozen or more witnesses.
With Lucy dead, it would have given them greater control—for
the moment—over Briggs. He'd be less likely to squeal on them
than when he was coked up with her. Although they'd have that fear
to
gnaw at them for a long time to come."

"That's the problem with blood money. It's gotta haunt you
forever. You're asking too many questions, Coop. Finish that drink so
we can take you home," Mike said. "I can just heal Joe Berk now."

"What do you mean?"

"You know, that obsession he had with people who change their
names. Moses, a girl named Phoebe Moses. Why would she have changed her
name to Annie Oakley? It's good to be Moses. That's what Joe would have
said. I gotta find out why she switched to Oakley."

"Forget about the Berks," Mercer said. "You put down that mug,
Alexandra, and before we take you home, we're going to find the first
greasy spoon in town that opens and get us all some food that doesn't
come off a sidewalk coffee cart."

"I got the place," Mike said. "As long as she's treating."

"We're making progress."

"What do you mean, Coop?"

"Ten days ago, when we started working on this case, you
turned me down flat when Mercer and I offered to take you for
breakfast."

"Don't push your luck, kid. They'll be no ballet,
no—"

"I only offered bacon and eggs."

"No opera, no—"

Mercer held out his hand and pulled me up. "We're hungry," he
said to Mike. "Let's go."

"No theater tickets. No Shakespeare, no musicals, no revivals,
no—"

"You love Broadway. You've always liked going to shows with
me."

"That was before I knew about the ghosts, Coop. Too many
ghosts in those theaters—way too many. And I still haven't
even learned how to deal with my own."

BOOK: Death Dance
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